"Great!" says he. "You're almost as good as Mary Anderson was at her best, and as for Marlowe, she can't touch you. Excellent, that last speech! What fire, what expression, what talent! Why, young woman, all you need is a Broadway production to sweep 'em off their feet! I'll arrange it for you. It means money, of course; but after the first cost--fame, nothing but fame!" Now, how was that for a hot-air blast? Wouldn't that make a short ice crop if you let it loose up the Hudson? But it wa'n't what he said, so much as how he was sayin' it, that got me int'rested. There's some voices you don't have to hear but once to remember a lifetime, an this was one of that kind. It was one of these husky baritones, like what does the coonsongs for the punky records they put into the music boxes at the penny arcades. That was as near as I could map it for a minute or so while I was tryin' to throw up the picture of the man behind the voice. And, then it hits me--Professor Booth McCallum! Oh, skincho, what a front! Why, when I was on the Sunday editor's door the professor used to show up reg'lar with some new scheme for winnin' space. Talk about your self-acting press agents! He had the bunch shoved to the curb. All he had to bank on was a ten-minute turn at a 14th-st. continuous house, fillin' in between the trained pig and the strong lady; but he wanted as much type set about himself as if he'd been Dave Warfield. When he couldn't get next to anybody else, he used to give me the earache tellin' of the times when he played stock in one of Daly's road comp'nies, and how he had to quit because John Drew was jealous of him. Then he'd leave his stuff with me and I'd promise to sneak it into the dramatic notes the first time I found the forms unlocked. And to think of a hamfatter like McCallum, who's come back from Buffalo on a brake beam so often that he always sleeps with one arm crooked around the bedpost, havin' the nerve to call himself a school of dramatic art! Course, I didn't think Marjorie was so easy as to fall for a fake like that. She must be stringin' him. But the minute I see her come out I knew she'd swallowed the hook. I'd dropped back into the far end of the hall, where it was dark; but as she walks under the skylight I sees the pleased look on her face, like she was havin' a view of her lithographs on all the gold frames in the subway. I waits until McCallum shuts himself in to throw bouquets at his picture in the glass, and then I slips down just in time to catch Marjorie as she's climbin' into the carriage. "Is this the lady that's entered for the heavyweight Juliet championship?" says I, tryin' to break the news to her gentle. It shook her up a good deal, just the same. Her face gets the color of an auction flag, and she jounces down on the seat in a way that makes the springs flat out like bed slats. "Why, Torchy!" says she. "Where did you come from, and what do you mean?"