He emerged from the great building and crossed an alley to another of like size. Down toward its middle was the usual wall of canvas with half-a-dozen men about the opening at one corner. A curious whirring noise came from within. He became an inconspicuous unit of the group and gazed in. The lights were on, revealing a long table elaborately set as for a banquet, but the guests who stood about gave him instant uneasiness. They were in the grossest caricatures of evening dress, both men and women, and they were not beautiful. The gowns of the women were grotesque and the men were lawless appearing, either as to hair or beards or both. He divined the dreadful thing he was stumbling upon even before he noted the sign in large letters on the back of a folding chair: “Jeff Baird’s Buckeye Comedies.” These were the buffoons who with their coarse pantomime, their heavy horse-play, did so much to debase a great art. There, even at his side, was the arch offender, none other than Jeff Baird himself, the man whose regrettable sense of so-called humour led him to make these low appeals to the witless. And even as he looked the cross-eyed man entered the scene. Garbed in the weirdly misfitting clothes of a waiter, holding aloft a loaded tray of dishes, he entered on roller skates, to halt before Baird with his uplifted tray at a precarious balance. “All right, that’s better,” said Baird. “And, Gertie, listen: don’t throw the chair in front of him. That’s out. Now we’ll have the entrance again. You other boys on the rollers, there--” Three other basely comic waiters on roller skates came to attention. “Follow him in and pile up on him when he makes the grand spill--see what I mean? Get your trays loaded now and get off. Now you other people, take your seats. No, no, Annie, you’re at the head, I told you. Tom, you’re at the foot and start the rough-house when you get the tray in the neck. Now, all set.” Merton Gill was about to leave this distressing scene but was held in spite of himself by the voice of a newcomer. “Hello, Jeff! Atta boy!” He knew without turning that the Montague girl was again at his elbow. He wondered if she could be following him. “Hello, Flips! How’s the kid?” The producer had turned cordially to her. “Just in time for the breakaway stuff. See how you like it.” “What’s the big idea?” “Swell reception at the Maison de Glue, with the waiters on roller skates in honour of rich Uncle Rollo Glue. The head waiter starts the fight by doing a fall with his tray. Tom gets the tray in the neck and soaks the nearest man--banquet goes flooey. Then we go into the chase stuff.” “Which is Uncle Rollo?” “That’s him at the table, with the herbaceous border under his chin.” “Is he in the fight?” “I think so. I was going to rehearse it once more to see if I could get a better idea. Near as I can see now, everybody takes a crack at him.”