"While you're gone down to see the boys at the Idlers' Club," said Biff, "I'm going to take Miss Carry--Miss--Miss--" "Caravaggio," interrupted the Signorina with a repetition of a laugh which had convinced Bobby that, after all, she might be a singer, though her speaking voice gave no trace of it. "Carrie for mine," insisted Biff with a confident grin. "I'm going to take Miss Carrie out to lunch some place where they don't serve prunes. I guess the Hotel Spender will do for us." Bobby surveyed Biff with an indulgent smile. "Thanks," said he. "That will give me time to see what I can do." "You take my advice, Mr. Burnit," earnestly interposed the Signorina. "Don't bother with your friends. Go and see the manager of the Orpheum and ask him about that open date. Ask him if he thinks it wouldn't be a good investment for you to back us." Biff, the conservative; Biff, whose vote was invariably for the negative on any proposition involving an investment of Bobby's funds, unexpectedly added his weight for the affirmative. "It's a good stunt, Bobby. Go to it," he counseled, and the Caravaggio smiled down at him. Again Bobby laughed. "All right, Biff," said he. "I'll hunt up the manager of the Orpheum right away." In his machine he conveyed Biff and the prima donna to the Hotel Spender, and then drove to the Orpheum. CHAPTER XIX WITH THE RELUCTANT CONSENT OF AGNES, BOBBY BECOMES A PATRON OF MUSIC The manager of the Orpheum was a strange evolution. He was a man who had spent a lifetime in the show business, running first a concert hall that "broke into the papers" every Sunday morning with an account of from two to seven fights the night before, then an equally disreputable "burlesque" house, the broad attractions of which appealed to men and boys only. To this, as he made money, he added the cheapest and most blood-curdling melodrama theater in town, then a "regular" house of the second grade. In his career he had endured two divorce cases of the most unattractive sort, and, among quiet and conventional citizens, was supposed to have horns and a barbed tail that snapped sparks where it struck on the pavement. When he first purchased the Orpheum Theater, the most exclusive playhouse of the city, he began to appear in its lobby every night in a dinner-coat or a dress-suit, silk topper and all, with an almost modest diamond stud in his white shirt-front; and ladies, as they came in, asked in awed whispers of their husbands: "Is _that_ Dan Spratt?" Some few who had occasion to meet him went away gasping: "Why, the man seems really nice!" Others of "the profession," about whom the public never knew, spoke his name with tears of gratitude. Mr. Spratt, immersed in troubles of his own, scarcely looked up as Bobby entered, and only grunted in greeting. "Spratt," began Bobby, who knew the man quite well through "sporting" events engineered by Biff Bates, "the Neapolitan Grand Opera Company is stranded here, and--"