BELIEVE
YOU ME!

NINA WILCOX PUTNAM

AUTHOR OF "ADAM'S GARDEN," "THE IMPOSSIBLE BOY," ETC., ETC.

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1919,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

BELIEVE YOU ME!

I

LADIES ENLIST

I

I wasn't going to make no statement about this here affair; and I wouldn't even yet, only for our publicity man. The day the story leaked he called me up in the A. M., which is the B. C. of the daytime, and woke me out of the first perfectly good sleep I'd had since Jim pulled that stunt and floored me so.

First off, I wouldn't answer the phone; but Musette stood by me with it in her hand and just made me.

"For my sake, mademoiselle!" says she, just like she used to in our act on the big time, which we played before I got into the dancing game. "For my sake, mademoiselle," she says, "do not refuse to talk with the publicity man!"

Well, when I heard who it was I seen some sense in what she says; so I set up amid my black-and-white-check bed, which—believe you me—is as up to date as my latest drawing-room dance. And I grabbed off the phone.

"Yes," says I in a fainting voice; "this is Miss La Tour. What is it, please? I'm far from well."

"Cut out that stuff, Mary!" says a male voice. "This is Roscoe. I want you to give out a statement about you and Jim splitting up."

"I won't!" says I, very sharp. "Whatter yer think I am?" I says. "That's nobody's business but our own!"

"Oh, ain't it, though?" says Roscoe, very sarcastic. "The biggest parlor-dancing outfit in America busts up and you can't be seen, even, for two whole days! The stage at the Royal ain't notified that your piece is called off; the De-Luxe Hotel don't get no notice that you ain't going to appear; and all the info' I could get when I called up your flat is that you was gone out!"

"And so I was!" says I, indignant.

"Then I call up Jim's hotel and they say he's gone!" shouted Roscoe. "Hell!" says he, forgetting that me and the telephone operator both was ladies. "Hell! What kind of way is that to treat a guy you're paying three thou. a year to for getting your picture in the paper every time you sneeze?"

I didn't have any comeback about that, for there was certainly some truth in what he says. But I wasn't to be put down so easy.

"I guess I know my business, Ros," I says, sharp, "or I wouldn't be living in a swell flat on the Drive, all fixed up like a furniture shop, with a limousine and two fool dogs, and earned every cent of it myself, and no one can say a word against me, if I didn't know my own business. So there!"

"Looka here, Mary," says Roscoe. "There's going to be a lot of talk up and down the Rialto if you don't come across with some explanation. I'm comin' right up to get it."

"No, you don't," I says, for I hadn't had my facial massage in three days, and, after all, Roscoe is a man, even if press agents ain't exactly human. "No, you don't, Ros!" I says. "If I gotter make some statement, I'll write the dope myself and you can fix it up after—see? It's a big story, but delicate, and I'm going to have no misunderstanding over it."

"All right, Mary," says Ros. "But you get the stuff ready for the morning papers. I'll be up for it."

Then he hung up and I knew I had to come across. Besides, Ma come in just then; and while I may boss my press agent, and even sometimes my partner and Musette and the two dogs, Ma sorter gets my goat. Ma had on a elegant rose-silk negligee I give her; and as usual, she had it ruined by tying a big gingham apron over it, which made her look the size of a house, but sort of comforting. She stopped by the bed and set both her hands on her lips—the way she does when she don't mean to be answered back.

"Now, Mary Gilligan, you get right up and wash your teeth!" says Ma, "and do your three handsprings and other exercises, decent and proper; and then eat the breakfast I got cooked for you."

Funny thing, but Ma ain't got a mite of dramatic sense. I just can't understand it, after her having been with the circus so long on the trapeze, until she got too heavy after I come; and since then in the wardrobe-end of the theater, and all. I ain't never been able to break her in to none of the refinements of life, either, and she will go into the kitchen for all I say; and some day I just know she'll call me Gilligan in public. And a nice laugh that'll get!

But, anyhow, I usually do what she says, because Ma is a fine trainer; and—believe you me—I wouldn't be able to hold on to Jim's neck and swing out straight twenty times round, like I do—or did—only for her and her keeping me on the job like she's done. The only other trouble with Ma is, she can't seem to properly understand that it's my artistic temperament which has brought in the cash—that and some good looks, and me realizing that this refined parlor-dancing stuff would go over big. Of course Jim's being able to wear a dress suit like he'd been born in it has helped some, even aside from being such a fine partner; which brings me back, as they say, to the tale.

Well, I done my exercise, and so forth, and then I had Musette bring up the sofa, a elegant gilt one—for we got what Ma calls Looie-the-Head-Waiter stuff in our parlor—to the window, so's I could lay and look dreamily out over the autos on the Drive to the ships in the river; you know—the German ships which have been taking out their naturalization papers,