Even before the fierce Ricardo had gone into his dressing-room he was already taking upon himself the deadly character of Don Jose, and his face surged red with fury when he saw Biff Bates, gaily laughing as if no doom impended, come in at the stage door with the equally gay and care-free Caravaggio. But after Signor Ricardo had donned the costume and the desperateness of the brigadier Don Jose--it was then that the fury sank into his soul! And that fury boiled and seethed as, during the first and second acts, he found in the wings Signorina Car-r-r-r-r-r-avaggio absorbed in pleasant but very significant chat with his deadly enemy, the crude, unmusical, inartistic, soulless Biffo de Bates-s-s-s! But, ah! There was another act to come, the third act, at the beginning of which the property man handed him the long, sharp, wicked-looking, bloodthirsty knife with which he was to fight Escamillo, and with which in the fourth act he was to kill Carmen. The mere possession of that knife wrought the great tenor's soul to gory tragedy; so much so that immediately after the third act curtain calls he rushed directly to the spot where he knew the contemptible Signor Biffo de Bates-s-s-s to be standing, and with shrill Latin imprecations flourished that keen, glistening blade before the eyes of the very much astounded Biff. For a moment, thoroughly incredulous, Biff refused to believe it, until a second demonstration compelled him to acknowledge that the great Ricardo actually meant threatening things toward himself. When this conviction forced its way upon him, Biff calmly reached out, and, with a grip very much like a bear-trap, seized Signor Ricardo by the forearm of the hand which held the knife. With his unengaged hand Biff then smacked the Signor Ricardo right severely on the wrist. "You don't mean it, you know, Sig-nor Garlic," he calmly observed. "If I thought you did I'd smack you on both wrists. Why, you little red balloon, I ain't afraid of any mutt on earth that carries a knife like that, as long as I got my back to the wall." Still holding the putty-like Signor by the forearm, he delicately abstracted from his clasp the huge knife, and, folding it up gravely, handed it back to him; then deliberately he turned his back on the Signor and pushed his way through the delightedly horror-stricken emotionalists who had gathered at the fray, and strolled over to where Signorina Caravaggio had stood an interested and mirth-shaken observer. "You mustn't think all Italians are like that, Biff," she said, her first impulse, as always, to see justice done; "but singers are a different breed. I don't think he's bluffing, altogether. If he got a real good chance some place in the dark, and was sure that he wouldn't be caught, he might use a stiletto on you." "If he ever does I'll slap his forehead," said Biff. "But say, he uses that cleaver again in the show?" The Signorina Nora shrugged her shoulders.