"I don't know anything that connects you with Dorgan. If he was in with you on this, you'd better remember, before you say anything more, that it'll all be used against you."

The curtain had gone down and gone up again. I was watching the star.

She has such a boyish way of nodding her head, instead of bowing, after she waddles out to the center; and every time she wipes her lips with her lace handkerchief, as though she'd just taken one of the c.o.c.ktails she makes in the play with all the skill of a bartender. I found myself doing the same thing--wiping my lips with that very same gesture, as though I had a fat, bare forearm like a rolling-pin--when all at once the thought came to me: "You needn't bother, Nancy. It's all up. You won't have any use for it all."

"Just what is the charge?" I asked, turning to the man beside me.

"Stealing a purse containing three hundred dollars from Mrs. Paul Gates' house on the night of April twenty-seventh."

"What!"

It was Obermuller. He had pushed the curtains aside; the crashing of the orchestra had prevented our hearing the clatter of the rings. He had pushed by the man standing there, had come in and--he had heard.

"Nance!" he cried. "I don't believe a word of it." He turned in his quick way to the men. "What are your orders?"

"To take her to her flat and search it."

Obermuller came over to me then, and took my hand for a minute.

"It's a pity they don't know about the Gray rose diamond," he whispered, helping me on with my jacket. "They'd see how silly this little three-hundred dollar business is.... Brace up, Nance Olden!"

Oh, Mag, Mag, to hear a man like that talk to you as though you were his kind, when you have the feel of the coa.r.s.e prison stripes between your dry, shaking fingers, and the close prison smell is already poisoning your nostrils!

"I don't see--" my voice shook--"how you can believe--in me."

"Don't you?" he laughed. "That's easy. You've got brains, Nance, and the most imbecile thing you could do just now, when your foot is already on the ladder, would be just this--to get off in order to pick up a trinket out of the mud, when there's a fortune up at the top waiting for you. Clever people don't do asinine things. And other clever people know that they don't. You're clever, but so am I--in my weak, small way. Come along, little girl."

He pulled my hand in his arm and we walked out, followed by the two men.

Oh, no! It was all very quiet and looked just like a little theater party that had an early supper engagement. Obermuller nodded to the manager out in the deserted lobby, who stopped us and asked me what I thought of the star.

You'll think me mad, Mag. Those fellows with the badges were sure I was, but Obermuller's eyes only twinkled, and the manager's grin grew broad when, catching up the end of my skirt and cake-walking up and down, I sang under my breath that c.o.o.n-song that was trailing over and over through my head.

"Bravo! bravo!" whispered the manager, hoa.r.s.ely, clapping his hands softly.

I gave one of those quick, funny, boyish nods the star inside affects and wiped my lips with my handkerchief.

That brought down my house. Even the biggest fellow with the badge giggled recognizingly, and then put his hand quickly in front of his mouth and tried to look severe and official.

The color had come back to Obermuller's face; it was worth dancing for--that.

"Be patient, Mag; let me tell it my way."

There wasn't room in the coupe waiting out in front for more than two.

So Obermuller couldn't come in it. But he put me in--Mag, dear, dear Mag--he put me in as if I was a lady--not like Gray; a real one. A thing like that counts when two detectives are watching. It counted afterward in the way they treated me.

The big man climbed up on the seat with the driver. The blue-eyed fellow got in and sat beside me, closing the door.

"I'll be out there almost as soon as you are," Obermuller said, standing a moment beside the lowered window.

"You good fellow!" I said, and then, trying to laugh: "I'll do as much for you some day."

He shook his fist laughingly at me, and I waved my hand as we drove of.

"You know, Miss, there may be some mistake about this," said the man next to me, "and--"

"Yes, there may be. In fact, there is."

"I'm sure I'll be very glad if it is a mistake. They do happen--though not often. You spoke of Dorgan--"

"Did I?"

"Yes, Tom Dorgan, who busted out of Sing Sing the other day."

"Surely you're mistaken," I said, smiling right into his blue eyes.

"The Tom Dorgan I mentioned is a sleight-of-hand performer at the Vaudeville. Ever see him?"

"N--no."

"Clever fellow. You ought to. Perhaps you don't recognize him under that name. On the bills he's Professor Haughwout. Stage people have so many names, you know."

"Yes, so have--some other people."

I laughed, and he grinned back at me.

"Now that's mean of you," I said; "I never had but one. It was all I needed."

It flashed through me then what a thing like this might do to a name.

You know, Mag, every bit of recognition an actress steals from the world is so much capital. It isn't like the old graft when you had to begin new every time you took up a piece of work. And your name--the name the world knows--and its knowing it makes it worth having like everything--that name is the sum of every scheme you've planned, of every time you've got away with the goods, of every laugh you've lifted, of every bit of cleverness you've thought out and embodied, of everything that's in you, of everything you are.

But I didn't dare think long of this. I turned to him.

"Tell me about this charge," I said. "Where was the purse? Whose was it? And why haven't they missed it till after a week?"

"They missed it all right that night, but Mrs. Gates wanted it kept quiet till the servants had been shadowed and it was positively proved that they hadn't got away with it."

"And then she thought of me?"

"And then she thought of you."

"I wonder why?"

"Because you were the only person in that room except Mrs. Gates, the lady who lost the purse, Mrs. Ramsay, and--eh?" "N--nothing. Mrs.

Ramsay, you said?"

"Yes."

"Not Mrs. Edward Ramsay, of Philadelphia?"