The golden eyes of the girl regarded him in a tawny appraisal. “What made you come to me?”

  “I think you’ve got everything that’s necessary to success on the stage.”

  They were seated in a little restaurant where a curtained booth gave them privacy. It was a restaurant noted for the tact of its waiters as well as for the quality of its food.

  The girl crossed her legs casually. “You mean — figure?” she asked, her tawny eyes glowing.

  He shook his head.

  “Not entirely. You have a beautiful figure, and you have a beautiful face. Those things, of course, are necessary to success on the stage. But you have more. You have a charm of personality.”

  She straightened. “Let’s be frank,” she said. “Let’s get things settled definitely.”

  He nodded. “That’s fair. I want to be convinced that you can act.”

  “Can I act?”

  “In the love scenes.”

  “You’d want a demonstration?”

  “Yes. I’d want to see that you could act the part of a woman in love—act it convincingly.”

  “Get ready, big boy, here I come!”

  Lester Leith held up a hand. “No, no. Not with me!”

  The tawny eyes widened in surprise. “Say,” she demanded, “what’s your game, anyway?”

  “Your photograph,” said Lester Leith, “was in the papers in connection with that Middleton affair. In fact, one of the tabloids had you posed in the same position you took when you first saw the mousie. It was rather a compelling pose.

  “I saw at once from those photographs, that you had charm, appeal, personality. I suspected that you had talent. My idea in backing a musical comedy of which you are to be the head, is to make money. Simply, solely, entirely, to make money.

  “Now you naturally are grateful to me for the opportunity of giving you a chance to star in a play. Therefore, it would not be too hard for you to make love to me. But that would not be acting. What I want to see is a demonstration of your ability as an actress where I know that you are acting.”

  The girl sighed. She studied him intently through her golden eyes, and then shook her head.

  Lester Leith smiled.

  The girl drained her glass, lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of the old one. Lester Leith consulted his wrist watch. His smile became a grin.

  “Well?” said the girl.

  “I have arranged with Steven Slone to join us here in ten minutes. I shall want him to help us dope out the publicity stunts for our new venture. He is, I believe, your press agent?”

  The girl sighed.

  “That bozo!” she said. After a few moments she elaborated. “He ain’t so hot as a press agent. And he can’t give good service because he’s got a jealous wife. She’s got a triple chin and an eye like a rattlesnake. Every time we’d be in the middle of a conference over something new the telephone would start ringing, and Steve would have to go bye-bye to his fat mamma. If we’re going to invest a bunch of your dough in something that is supposed to go across, let’s get the best talent we can afford.”

  Lester Leith blew a smoke ring. “You’re not so hot for Steven Slone?”

  “Baby, I’m not even lukewarm—”

  “Is he personally attractive?”

  “What, that guy? You ain’t seen him, I guess. He’s lived a hard life and he shows it. He’s got footballs under his eyes, and his cheeks sag down into his collar. He’s fat, and tries to pretend he ain’t. He wears all sorts of rubber contraptions to keep his stomach from flapping around and hitting him in the back when he turns quick, and he insists on wearing collegiate clothes.

  “He’s a typical bozo who’s all done and don’t know it. I could like the bird if he’d be himself, but he’s always trying to play the part of the twenty-year-old rah-rah just out of the sheepskin factory. He gives me a pain!”

  Lester Leith nodded.

  “In the neck,” supplemented the girl, and smiled at him with her tawny eyes.

  “That,” said Lester Leith, “makes it very nice. He is the one on whom you can demonstrate.”

  The girl set down her glass. “Huh?” she asked.

  “You can act as though you love him. If you can act convincingly, then I am sold on going ahead with the show. If you can’t convince me that you are acting so convincingly that you have convinced him you are not acting at all, then I’m finished.”

  The girl took a deep breath. “Me, make love to Steve Slone?”

  “Yes. And convince him you mean it.”

  “Why he and I have just had a business relationship for six months. He tried to get fresh the first week, and I slapped his face.

  “He let it go at that until he had me a little jingled on a sizz party one night, and then he tried to strong-arm me. I had to leave my finger-nail marks down each side of his fat face. He went to a drug store and got the clerk to bandage up his whole head, and told his wife he’d been in an automobile accident.

  “After that we got along fine. It’s been strictly business. If I should start in falling for him now he’d sure think I’d gone batty.”

  Lester Leith rubbed his hands together.

  “That’s fine. It couldn’t be better. It will require consummate acting upon your part. He will arrive in a few minutes. It will be your job to start in by degrees, warm up to him so gradually you carry conviction all the way, yet wind up in exactly one hour having him so infatuated he agrees to run away with you and leave his wife.”

  The tawny eyes were wide now. “How about the new play? He wouldn’t run away if he knew I was starring in a new play and he was to do the publicity.”

  Lester Leith nodded gravely.

  “At the proper moment, when you kick my leg under the table, I shall announce that I have changed my mind, that I am not going ahead with the play until next year. Then you can strut your stuff. If you dare him to meet you in front of the Palace Theater at precisely ten-eleven to-night, all packed and ready to run away with you, then I shall consider you have demonstrated your ability as an actress, and I will finance the show. Otherwise, the proposition is off. I shall then have to look around for some other promising actress who has talent and beauty.”

  The girl sighed. “You’ll find plenty of ‘em who are strong on the promising part,” she said.

  “Doubtless,” he commented. “You’re in this to make money?”

  “Yes.”

  “Only that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I can tell you about the B. F.,” she said.

  “The B. F.?”

  “Yeah. You know, the boyfriend.”

  “Oh,” said Lester Leith.

  The girl sidled over closer to him, placed an intimate hand on his arm, looked up into his face with her tawny eyes softened with emotion.

  “He’s got the most wonderful hair, and his mouth is so adorable.

  His eyes just do things to my heart, and he’s so tender, and so intelligent. He’s the most wonderful boy in the world.”

  Lester Leith regarded her in stern disapproval.

  “Don’t forget you’ve got to make Steven Slone fall for you — and fall hard. Thinking of your boyfriend isn’t going to be the best preparation for your act.”

  She snuggled up to him with a kittenish intimacy.

  “Oh, don’t worry about me. What I wanted to do was to tell you about the B. F. and the script.”

  “The script?”

  “Yes. He’s a playwright. He’s written a musical comedy that’s a scream. ‘Three Strikes and Out’ is the name of it. I want you to use it.”

  Lester Leith smiled gravely.

  “Don’t you think it would be better to get one of the better-known playwrights to turn out a script that would be designed to star you, than to purchase the play of an unknown? I take it this play has been offered and turned down.”

  She nodded.

  “Turned down by every damned producer in the world, and it’s a knockout. I swear it is! A real knockout! The B. F.‘s a genius!”

  Lester Leith patted her shoulder.

  “Very well,” he said, “we will use ‘Three Strikes and Out.’ If you’re for it, I’m for it.”

  The curtains parted, and a man stood in the entrance. “Hope I’m not intruding, folks.”

  CHAPTER V

  Just a Meal Ticket

  “And this is Leith, the new backer, eh?” asked Steven Slone. “Mighty glad to know you, Mr. Leith.”

  Dorothy Delano turned up yellow eyes brimful with grateful moisture.

  “Mr. Leith,” she said, “this is Steve Slone, a great little press agent.”

  Gravely, the two men shook hands.

  Steven Slone was one of those men who go through life making others feel at home. He had a booming voice, a perpetual smile, a ready hand. His figure was contained within a worsted suit of youthful cut. He gave the impression of a sausage that had been stuffed too tightly and was ready to burst. Yet there were no bulges of fat upon him. His stomach was compressed into the vest until it seemed the surplus fat must be squeezed out at his neck and ankles.

  And that was exactly the impression both neck and ankles gave. The neck wash-boarded above a tight collar. It did not seem that the fat of that neck had slipped down from the pink jowls, but rather that it had drifted up from under the collar. The ankles were thick and flabby. The feet were rather small.

  “Mighty glad to know you, Leith. Looks like you’re a genius when it comes to picking ‘em. I’ve seen ‘em come and I’ve seen ‘em go, but Dorothy here has got more on the ball than any of ‘em I’ve seen in a decade, and I’ve seen some pretty big ones.

  “That’s the reason I coppered to her. I could have got jobs by the hundred managing some of the beauties that have already arrived. But they’re on the wane. What I wanted to do was to pick a comer, and skyrocket to the top with her. She’ll be packing ‘em in like sardines in another year. You’ll see her name all over Broadway in electric lights. She’ll be endorsing cigarettes, toilet soaps, and hair tonics at so much per endorse. Shell be eating health foods at so much per eat. I can look ahead right now and see it just as plain as plain can be!”

  And Steven Slone drew up a chair and sat down. Lester Leith let his mouth sag open just a bit. “You certainly carry conviction,” he remarked.

  Steve Slone reached forth a pudgy hand, grasped the sleeve of Lester Leith’s coat. “Lis’n,” he begged in a booming voice that fairly quivered with sincerity. “Lis’n, I know what I’m talkin’ about. I’d bet all the money I ever saw that this little kid is going to knock ‘em dead. You back her and you’ll be the king of the white lights in six months, a multi-millionaire in a year!”

  Dorothy Delano glanced once at Lester Leith, glanced swiftly, surreptitiously, then her hand stole out to rest on Steve Slone’s hand.

  “Steve,” she said, “I been kinda mean to you.”

  The press agent turned his cautious eyes down upon the girl, and he half turned so that he could see her more plainly.

  “That’s all right, girlie. I’m just an old friend, married happily, taking a platonic interest, an’ a business interest. Don’t forget that business interest. I want to cop big when the time comes. But nobody don’t need to think I’m foolish enough not to know which side of the bread’s got the butter. Nobody’d ever need to get jealous of me. I’m strong for you, kiddo, but it’s just business. Nothin’ but!”

  The tawny eyes swept reproachfully over his face.

  “Mr. Leith says he don’t care nothing about me either. He wants to make money. He don’t want me to even smile at him.”

  The breath whooshed from Steven Slone’s taut waistcoat. His startled eyes surveyed Lester Leith in a stare of utter incredulity.

  Lester Leith nodded.

  Steven Slone blinked his eyes a few times. “I,” he said, “will be damned!”

  The girl glanced up into his face.

  “And then you come along and tell me I’m just the same as a meal ticket to you, that you don’t enthuse over me any more than so much pasteboard. I must be getting old or something. You used to get a thrill out of me.”

  Steven Slone was cautious, but responsive.

  “Say,” he said, “you’re the one that turned me out in the cold world. Remember that ‘automobile accident’ you got me into?”

  She moved a trifle closer to him.

  “Aw, Steve,” she crooned. “Don’t you remember? You said that when a woman struggled with you it brought out all the primitive in you? And I wanted to be cave-manned, and so—so—so I struggled. And you got mad and went home.”

  Steven Slone glanced once more at Lester Leith. There was a certain apprehension in his gaze.

  Lester Leith was busily engaged in lighting a cigarette. Apparently the conversation was of no interest to him.

  Steve Slone’s arm went around the girl’s shoulders, drew her to him with a pressure which seemed to stretch the vest buttons to the point of bursting.

  “Say, listen, baby. From the first time I ever looked into those gold eyes of yours, I felt my heart go for a loop. So don’t string me along unless you mean it, because I’d fall hard. I don’t know what you may be to other people, but to me you’re the cream on the top of the milk pitcher, the cat’s whiskers, the snake’s hips. You’re the last word!”

  She pouted, and the pout made of her mouth a kissable temptation which could have been ignored by no man under ninety-two.

  Steve Slone bent down. The narrow cut of his coat stretched under the strain of the shoulders until it seemed the cloth would burst. Dorothy’s tawny eyes looked up into the gleaming ones of the press agent, the lips half parted, as though to make some comment, and remained half parted as Steve Slone’s mouth met them. There was a moment of silence. Then Steve looked apprehensively at Lester Leith.

  That individual was consulting a notebook.

  “The name of the play we have decided upon is ‘Three Strikes and Out,’” said Leith.

  CHAPTER VI

  “Baby, I’ll Be There!”

  Slone straightened his figure, pushed the girl to one side. “That rotten thing!” he yelled.

  The girl clutched at his shoulder. “Please, Stevie, dear!”

  He looked down at her. “Say, you know it’s rotten as well as I do. You’re just falling for it because of the guy that wrote it! Why don’t you get a play we can do something with, instead of petting some long-haired down-and-outer who has a flop that’s been turned down…”

  The girl’s bare arm crept up and around his neck.

  “I promised him. Stevie—before—before I knew you cared. Now he’s going to lose me, and you wouldn’t want to see him lose out on the production as well, would you? It’s a good play. I could go over big in it. He wrote it for me. And it would break his heart to lose out on the play and to have you —to have you—” She didn’t finish the sentence, but pouted again, her lips upturned.

  Steven Slone bent down.

  There was a discreet knock. An apologetic waiter stood in the doorway, holding a desk telephone in his hands.

  “I’m very, very sorry,” he said, “but there is a call for Mr. Slone. She says it’s important, imperative. She knew you were here, sir, gave the number of the booth, even, told who you’d be with. So I thought it best, sir. You can plug the telephone in on that plug there.”

  Steven Slone sighed, straightened, reached for the telephone. The waiter snapped the plug into the hollow receptacle in the wall.

  “Hello,” said Slone.

  There was the sound of a feminine voice rasping questions.

  Steve Slone talked with the soothing insincerity some adults use with young children. His voice fairly dripped.

  “Yes, dearest…Just a few minutes ago…Yes, he’s here …Of course, she’s here.. .No, no, she’s talking with him .. .Not very late, dearest.. Just as soon as I can get away…Business…Of course… Naturally. Ain’t he the angel?.. Just as soon as I possibly can.. .Yes, sweetheart.. .Good-bye!”

  He hung up the telephone, turned back to his companion at the table, scooped her to him.

  Dorothy Delano started to cry. “I hate that woman!” she exclaimed.

  Steve Slone looked at her with widened eyes. “Why, honey?”

  “I can’t help it. Maybe she is your wife, and I should respect her rights, but she’s always interfering. You love her. You know you do. You love her more than you do me!”

  And she pillowed her head on his shoulder, and burst into an ecstasy of weeping.

  After the manner of a man who has learned his technique from many similar experiences, Steven Slone pushed aside his water glass, plate and napkin, cleared elbow room on the table and gave himself over to the situation with serious attention.

  “Why, honey, how can you think that? I married her before I ever saw you. Why, she isn’t in your class at all. She’s been a thorn in my side for the last two years. I can’t stand her. She doesn’t understand me. She’s cruel. She stifles my ambitions. If I could get the grounds, I’d have divorced her long ago. I’d run away if it wasn’t for this new job.”

  Lester Leith winced as the toe of a pointed shoe made a direct connection with his left shin bone.

  “We’ve decided not to actually open the show until next season,” Lester Leith said. “Dorothy Delano’s salary will start from the signing of the contract. But there won’t be much actual work for the first few months.”

  Dorothy Delano raised a tear-stained countenance.

  There could be no doubt of the moist nature of those tears. They had ruined the make-up on her eyelashes, had streaked down her cheeks, leaving glistening trails of ruin behind them.

  “Then we.. .can.. .run.. .away,” she sobbed.

  Steven Slone hesitated for perhaps two long breaths, then reached his decision.

  “Okay by me, baby. We’ll start tonight. We can divorce the wife in Reno or Mexico, and come back here for the rehearsals. Unless that’s going to make Mr. Leith change his mind.”

  Lester Leith beamed a blessing.

  “Not at all, not at all. It’ll be great publicity. Of course, I shall want to keep in touch with you, and I’d want to have Dorothy pick the supporting cast for the show. Reno would do very nicely.”