She moved toward the door with her hand outstretched to the k.n.o.b.

"You better think twice, sister--but don't lemme keep you--there's other Red Widows as good and better'n you beatin' like an army at my door this minute. But don't lemme keep you."

"Will--will you lemme alone?"

"Sure I will, if it'll make you feel any better--you cold little queen, you. Nervous as a unbroke colt, ain't you? Sit down there and watch."

He touched a buzzer, and a uniformed boy sprang through the door to his elbow.

"Write Al Wilson to meet me here to-morrow at ten."

"Yes, sir." The uniform flashed out.

She moved around him cautiously, not taking her eyes from his face.

"Have I--have I got a job?"

"Sure you have. I'll send you out to Frisco in a chorus that'll limber you up, all right, but I won't let you stay long. I won't let a little queen like you run away for long."

"Frisco--me--gee!"

"Gad! maybe I won't neither. How would you like to play right close to home over in Brooklyn? I've got a chorus over there that'll take the stiffness out of you. I don't want to let a great, big, beautiful doll like you too far away."

"Frisco--I like Frisco."

"But hold up your right hand. Don't you tell n.o.body I'm pushing you for next season's feature--that's our little secret--between you and me and Al."

"I was gettin' thirty dollars."

"Don't you worry about that, Doll-Doll. You come back here to-morrow at ten. I wanna show Al how the Red Widow we've been lookin' for dropped right into my hands. He can't squeal to me no more about _types_."

"I--I'm going now, Mr. Myers--to-morrow, then, at ten--"

"Where you goin', Doll?"

"Home. I guess I've lost my friend now."

"Wait; I'm going your way."

"You don't even know which way I'm goin'."

"Sure I do. I'll drop you there in my car."

"Oh--I--I want--to walk--I do."

"None of that, sister. I'm treatin' you white, and you gotta do the same by me. I won't bite you, you little scare-cat! I'm goin' to make things happen to you that'll make you wake up every day pinchin' yourself."

"My little sister, Mr. Myers, has got me beat on looks."

"But you gotta treat me white, sister. We can talk business in the car, but you gotta have confidence in me. I won't bite--you big little girl, you."

"I don't want--to go--that way, Mr. Myers--I gotta go some place first."

"Comin', sister?"

"I--I--"

"Comin'?"

"Yes."

On its hundredth night "The Red Widow," playing capacity houses at the Gotham Theater, presented each lady in the audience a "handsome souvenir" of Red Widow perfume attractively nestled in a red-satin box with a color picture of Della Delaney on the label.

To the pretty whifflings and "ah's!" of every feminine nose present, to the over-a-million-copies-sold waltz-theme that was puckering the mouth of every newsboy in New York, to the rustly settling back into chairs, furs, and standing-room-only att.i.tudes against Corinthian pillars, the hundredth-night, second-act curtain rose on an audience with an additional sense unexpectedly gratified and the souvenir-loving soul of every woman present sniffing its appreciation.

Comedy is a cla.s.sic prodigal who has wandered far. Comus has discarded his mantle and donned a red nose, a split-up-the-back waistcoat, and a pair of clap-sticks.

Harlequin and Cap-and-Bells have doffed the sock and many colors for the sixty-dollar-a-week role of million-dollar pickle-magnate pursuing a forty-dollar juvenile, who, in turn, is pursuing the two-hundred-dollar-a-week Red Widow from Act One--summer hotel at Manhattan Beach to Act Two--tropical isle off the Bay of Bungel.

For the hundredth time the opening act of "The Red Widow"--a ghoul at the grave of a hundred musical comedies--sang to its background of white-flannel chorus-men, drop-curtain of too-blue ocean and jungle of cotton-back palms.

A painted ship idled on a painted ocean. Trees reared their tropical leaves into a visible drop-net.

It is the Bay--it is the Bay--it is the Ba-a-ay Of Love and Bunge-e-e-e-l--

announced the two front rows, kicking backward three times.

It is the Ba-a-a-ay Of Love and Bunge-e-e-el--

agreed the kicked-at, white-flannel background.

A shapely octet in silk-and-lisle regimentals, black-astrakhan capes flung over one shoulder, and black-astrakhan hats as high as a majordomo's bent eight silk-and-lisle left knees with rhythmic regularity. Six ponies in yellow skirts, as effulgent as inverted chrysanthemums, and led by a black pony with a gold star in her hair, kicked to the wings and adored the audience. A chain of "Bungel belles"

stretched their thin arms above their heads in a letter O and prinked about on their toes like bantams in a dust road.

Five trombones, ten violas, twelve violins, a drum and ba.s.s-viol bombardment rose to a high-C climax, with the chorus scrambling loyally after them like a mountaineer scaling a cliff for an eaglet's nest.

It is the Bay--it is the Bay--it is the Ba-a-ay Of Love and Bunge-e-e-l--

shouted the seventy-five of them, receding with a grape-vine motion into the wings.

Enter Cyrus Hinkelstein, mayor and pickle-magnate of Brineytown, on the Suwanee, in a too large white waistcoat, white-duck comedy spats, and a pink-canvas bald head.

He inst.i.tutes an immediate search behind tropical vines and along the under sides of palm fronds for the forty-dollar juvenile who is pursuing the Red Widow from the summer hotel, Act One to Act Two, tropical isle off the Bay of Bungel.

Enter the Red Widow in a black, fish-scale gown that calls out the stealthy pencil of every Middle West dressmaker in the house and rapid calculation from the women with a good memory and some fish-scales on a discarded basque.