class="pnext">"Provided there's not too much to squash," Claude thrust in.

"Your remarks are all highly illuminating," said Robert Lloyd addressing the company. "But they don't help me out of my box. Remember, I promised the committee to get Cornelia for the gypsy act."

"What, my frisky youth," exclaimed Mazie. "Expect Cornelia to hide her golden coiffure under a shopworn wig! Guess again."

"Mazie's shot is a good one," said Robert. "Cornelia, you can't refuse on no better ground than that helping us would put you out of countenance."

"Out of hair," corrected Claude.

"Out of spite," added Mazie.

"Well," replied Cornelia, reluctantly yielding to this concentrated fire, "I won't go myself. But I'll get you some one else. I have a dear little girl in mind who is as charming as she is original."

"Who is this paragon?" interrupted Claude.

"She's a Brooklyn girl. Her name is Janet Barr."

"Janet Barr!" exclaimed Robert. "Why, you can't get her to come to an affair like this."

"Indeed!"

"Yes. I know her family well. She lives in an atmosphere of Puritan blue laws perfumed with brimstone and sulphur. Her mother—"

"She'll come," interrupted Cornelia, with supreme confidence. "But Claude is bored, Mazie is making sheep's eyes, and I'm hungry—let's go to supper."

"What about Big Burley," protested Mazie. "Aren't you going to wait for him?"

"No. But you may if you like. I'm too hungry."

When Cornelia saw a chance of tormenting some one, she could move with celerity. Her coat and hat were on in a twinkling, and she was ready to go while Robert and Claude were still fumbling for their hats and coats, and Mazie sat irresolute on the washtubs.

"But really, Cornelia, if somebody doesn't wait for Burley—"

"Bother Burley! He should have been here a quarter of an hour ago. If it'll quiet you, however, I'll tack a note outside the door, telling him to follow us to the Asia Minor Cafeteria."

Secretly gloating over the prospect of Burley's chagrin, she suited the action to the word. While she was writing the note, Claude said to Robert:

"I fear Big Burley will chalk up another black mark against you. He's your boss on the Evening Chronicle, isn't he?"

"Yes. His word is law there since he wrote up the Montana dynamite trial."

"Nonsense," said Cornelia. "He won't take it out on Robert. I'll see to that. He has vicious bursts of temper, but he's not bad to the core."

"Cornelia, every tiger-tamer thinks his pets are full of the milk of human kindness. You must excuse a layman for taking a more cautious view. Rob's bread and butter depend on the Evening Chronicle."

Robert cut him short.

"Don't worry, Claude," he said. "I've nothing to lose but my chains, and I've you and the girls and a merry evening to gain."

"Good, Cato, good!" cried Cornelia. "I like your spirit. You shall go with me. You, Claude, for being saucy, may stay behind and tarry till your bonnie Mazie's ready. Or you may wait for Hutchins Burley and, if possible, avert the wrath to come. Meet us at the restaurant, Mazie."

With these words, Cornelia took Robert by the sleeve and marched out, leaving Claude staring blankly after her.

"Upon my word!" said the young man, as much amused as he was vexed. "Look sharp, Mazie, will you?" he added, after a moment's pause. "We may yet catch up to them, if you don't put too fine a point—on your complexion."

III

But despatch was not Mazie's forte. And so, while she was still prinking in the bedroom, and Claude was cooling his heels in the kitchen, Hutchins Burley arrived. When Claude opened the door, the hulking Falstaffian form entered, puffing and panting, overheated with liquor as well as with climbing the stairs.

"Haven't kept the old girl waiting, have I?" he gasped, between breaths.

"Oh, no," said Claude, evasively. "She has gone ahead."

Burley, who had evidently not seen the note Cornelia had tacked on the door, acted as if he had not heard Claude's remarks either. He tramped to the door of the first bedroom, opened it unceremoniously and, when he found it empty, stalked noisily to the second.

"Where the devil is Cornelia?" he demanded, turning to Mazie.

"She was hungry and went on to the Asia Minor."

"Alone?"

"Well, Robert Lloyd happened to be here. He went too."

A sulphurous explosion of oaths testified to "Big Burley's" feelings.

Hutchins Burley was a sinister personage both in newspaper and in radical circles. Among artists who eked out their scanty talents with alcoholic inspiration and took a serious view of the Bohemianism of the Lorillard tenements, he cut a considerable figure. Others dreaded or avoided him.

Curious conclusions might have been drawn from the fact that, though he hung out with parlor anarchists of the Outlaw type and was reputed to be a close friend of real anarchists like Emma Goldman, he was an all-important member of the staff of the sham-liberal Evening Chronicle.

But no one bothered to draw these conclusions.

In truth, few people cared to think long or deeply about Hutchins Burley. A great hulk of a man, with a pitted face and shifty eyes, he was a dreadful and repellant figure, yet one that chained the attention. Some said offhand that he knew more about Charles Edward Strong, the editor and owner of the Evening Chronicle, than was good for either of them. Others believed that his influence had been won by the sensational hits he had made in "covering" the Lawrence strike and other big labor outbreaks.

One thing was certain. Newspaper Row hated and yet feared him; the Kips Bay model tenementers eyed him askance and yet elected him to high office in the Outlaw Club. A few shrewd observers troubled the placid waters in both camps by enquiring from time to time: "Can Hutchins Burley serve both Park Row and the Radicals?"

Wine was not one of Burley's weak points: he could stand any quantity of it. But women touched his Achilles' heel. On this point he was like Falstaff, "corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire."

Hence his explosion at Claude's news. The picture of Cornelia gallivanting off with Robert made his great frame shake with rage.

"What does she mean by going off with that puppy?" he snarled, ejecting the words from the left side of his mouth. "Don't she know better than to break an engagement without so much as a