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“I’ve got nothing better to do than just that,” Van Bibber declared, briskly.

The managers whom they interviewed were interested but non-committal. They agreed that the girl must be a remarkable dancer indeed to warrant such praise from such authorities, but they wanted to see her and judge for themselves, and they asked to be given her address, which the impresarios refused to disclose. But they secured from the managers the names of several men who taught fancy dancing, and who prepared aspirants for the vaudeville stage, and having obtained from them their prices and their opinion as to how long a time would be required to give the finishing touches to a dancer already accomplished in the art, they directed their steps to the Hotel Salisbury.

“‘From the Seventh Story to the Stage,'” said Travers. “She will make very good newspaper paragraphs, won’t she? ‘The New American Dancer, endorsed by Celestine Terrell, Letty Chamberlain, and Cortlandt Van Bibber.’ And we could get her outside engagements to dance at studios and evening parties after her regular performance, couldn’t we?” he continued. “She ought to ask from fifty to a hundred dollars a night. With her regular salary that would average about three hundred and fifty a week. She is probably making three dollars a week now, and eats in the servants’ hall.”

“And then we will send her abroad,” interrupted Van Bibber, taking up the tale, “and she will do the music halls in London. If she plays three halls a night, say one on the Surrey Side, and Islington, and a smart West End hall like the Empire or the Alhambra, at fifteen guineas a turn, that would bring her in five hundred and twenty-five dollars a week. And then she would go to the Folies Bergere in Paris, and finally to Petersburg and Milan, and then come back to dance in the Grand Opera season, under Gus Harris, with a great international reputation, and hung with flowers and medals and diamond sun-bursts and things.”

“Rather,” said Travers, shaking his head enthusiastically. “And after that we must invent a new dance for her, with colored lights and mechanical snaps and things, and have it patented; and finally she will get her picture on soda-cracker boxes and cigarette advertisements, and have a race-horse named after her, and give testimonials for nerve tonics and soap. Does fame reach farther than that?”

“I think not,” said Van Bibber, “unless they give her name to a new make of bicycle. We must give her a new name, anyway, and rechristen her, whatever her name may be. We’ll call her Cinderella–La Cinderella. That sounds fine, doesn’t it, even if it is rather long for the very largest type.”

“It isn’t much longer than Carmencita,” suggested the other. “And people who have the proud knowledge of knowing her like you and me will call her ‘Cinders’ for short. And when we read of her dancing before the Czar of All the Russias, and leading the ballet at the Grand Opera House in Paris, we’ll say, ‘that is our handiwork,’ and we will feel that we have not lived in vain.”

* * * * *

“Seventh floor, please,” said Van Bibber to the elevator boy.

The elevator boy was a young man of serious demeanor, with a smooth-shaven face and a square, determined jaw. There was something about him which seemed familiar, but Van Bibber could not determine just what it was. The elevator stopped to allow some people to leave it at the second floor, and as the young man shoved the door to again, Van Bibber asked him if he happened to know of a chambermaid with red hair, a tall girl on the seventh floor, a girl who danced very well.

The wire rope of the elevator slipped less rapidly through the hands of the young man who controlled it, and he turned and fixed his eyes with sudden interest on Van Bibber’s face, and scrutinized him and his companion with serious consideration.