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When she had finished he sighed deeply, ecstatically. He bent his lean frame over the counter and, despite his swart coloring, seemed to glitter upon her–his eyes, his teeth, his very fingernails.

“Something led me here. I never come up on Tuesdays. But something—-“

“You was going to complain,” put in his lady, heavily, “about that Teddy Sykes at the Palace Gardens singing the same songs this week that you been boosting at the Inn.”

He put up a vibrant, peremptory hand. “Bah! What does that matter now! What does anything matter now! Listen Miss–ah–Miss—-?”

“Pl-Sheehan. Terry Sheehan.”

He gazed off a moment into space. “Hm. `Leon Sammett in Songs.

Miss Terry Sheehan at the Piano.’ That doesn’t sound bad. Now listen, Miss Sheehan. I’m singing down at the University Inn. The Gottschalk song hits. I guess you know my work. But I want to talk to you, private. It’s something to your interest. I go on down at the Inn at six. Will you come and have a little something with Ruby and me? Now?”

“Now?” faltered Terry, somewhat helplessly. Things seemed to be moving rather swiftly for her, accustomed as she was to the peaceful routine of the past four years.

“Get your hat. It’s your life chance. Wait till you see your name in two- foot electrics over the front of every big-time house in the country. You’ve got music in you. Tie to me and you’re made.” He turned to the woman beside him. “Isn’t that so, Rube?”

“Sure. Look at ME!” One would not have thought there could be so much subtle vindictiveness in a fat blonde.

Sammett whipped out a watch. “Just three quarters of an hour. Come on, girlie.”

His conversation had been conducted in an urgent undertone, with side glances at the fat man with the megaphone. Terry approached him now.

“I’m leaving now,” she said.

“Oh, no, you’re not. Six o’clock is your quitting time.”

In which he touched the Irish in Terry. “Any time I quit is my quitting time. She went in quest of hat and coat much as the girl had done whose place she had taken early in the day. The fat man followed her, protesting. Terry, putting on her hat, tried to ignore him. But he laid one plump hand on her arm and kept it there, though she tried to shake him off.

“Now, listen to me. That boy wouldn’t mind grinding his heel on your face if he thought it would bring him up a step. I know’m. See that walking stick he’s carrying? Well, compared to the yellow stripe that’s in him, that cane is a Lead pencil. He’s a song tout, that’s all he is.” Then, more feverishly, as Terry tried to pull away: “Wait a minute. You’re a decent girl. I want to–Why, he can’t even sing a note without you give it to him first. He can put a song over, yes. But how? By flashing that toothy grin of his and talking every word of it. Don’t you—-“

But Terry freed herself with a final jerk and whipped around the counter. The two, who had been talking together in an undertone, turned to welcome her. “We’ve got a half-hour. Come on. It’s just over to Clark and up a block or so.”

The University Inn, that gloriously intercollegiate institution which welcomes any graduate of any school of experience, was situated in the basement, down a flight of stairs. Into the unwonted quiet that reigns during the hour of low potentiality, between five and six, the three went, and seated themselves at a table in an obscure corner. A waiter brought them things in little glasses, though no order had been given. The woman who had been Ruby Watson was so silent as to be almost wordless. But the man talked rapidly. He talked well, too. The same quality that enabled him, voiceless though he was, to boost a song to success was making his plea sound plausible in Terry’s ears now.