what you were pulling, he'd have been here himself. But what about the author? I thought you were going to have to call the police when you failed to produce the author."

It had been rough. The skimpy crowd had milled about for a half hour screaming "Author, author!" Meanwhile, I was too choked up after the last heart-wrenching scene to get up and make a speech.

Everything had gone perfectly. Even the brief rehearsal time failed to leave any rough edges. Crawley and Pennington were so carried away with their parts that they easily doubled their considerable dramatic stature that first performance. The supporting cast caught fire, too, and, well—the likes of it is rarely seen anywhere.

The lines seemed to come out of the actors' hearts, not their mouths. Cue-lines blended with the dialogue interplay, the artificiality of stage-sets, costumery and make-up disappeared, and the simple, yet profound drama unreeled like a bolt of vividly printed silk, flowing smoothly, strongly, absorbingly to the tragic-comical climax that left the emotions reeling from the suspense and warm with relief.

Two days later I looked at the figures on advance ticket sales and could find only one conceivable complaint. Parodisiac would make Hillary Hardy so much money that not even taxes could force him to produce another for a great while.

What promised to be a major irritation, fending off the press from Hardy and protecting his anonymity, was converted into a master publicity-stroke by Hec Blankenship. He swore the few of us who knew about Hardy's youth and whereabouts, to complete secrecy, then he proceeded to build his publicity around the "mystery-author."

"But he's got a past!" I objected when Hec first presented the scheme. "Old friends and relatives will spill the beans."

"Have you really looked into Hillary's past?" Hec asked.

I confessed I hadn't. Hec said that he had. It developed that Hillary Hardy was not our boy's real name. In his passion for anonymity he had been changing his name every time he changed locations, which was often. Hec had traced his background through three moves that brought the author across the country, but the trail petered out at a ranch in Wyoming where Hillary had worked a month as a cow-hand.

The mystery-author gag worked. Inside of two weeks our promotion expense dwindled to almost nothing. Columnists were fighting for the privilege of pouring out free copy on both plays. Some of their speculations as to Hardy's real identity were pretty fabulous—Winston Churchill, Noel Coward and even a certain, witty ex-presidential candidate for the Democratic party—but no one found him out, and the advance sellout began gaining a week every day.

Now, I have made and lost my share of theater fortunes, and I have learned a certain caution. At the moment I was quite content to ride with my two smash-hits and leave Hardy to his experiments. Strangely, it was he who called upon me for action.

A month after launching Parodisiac he showed up at my office, looking leaner and more intense than ever. His crew-cut was growing out, but it was from neglect rather than a sudden artistic temperament, I was sure.

After locking the doors and cancelling my morning appointments, I said, "Well, golden boy, what brings you to civilization?"

His smile was still strong and warm, but it was no longer youthful. There was a look of deep wisdom in his blue eyes that finally justified the magnificent play he had written.

"Money," he answered briefly.

"Haven't my checks been reaching you?" I asked in amazement.

"Oh, yes. Very gratifying," he said pacing a groove in the deep carpet pile. "But I'm moving into prenatal memory now, and I accomplished it by administrations of a new B vitamin derivative. I have a staff of biochemists working for me producing this substance, but it's fearfully expensive. I need more of it, larger lab facilities to produce it secretly. I want to buy the sanitarium."

"Buy