The Argosy, Vol. 76, No. 3 — page 215: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE. PINK PRUNE PAYS. “He looks as wise as a vaudeville agent,” she laughed. “ And isn’t that the most curious pink color under his eyes, right there where the wrinkles make him look like a prune in a grocery store!” A sudden fancy made her laugh ring out. “He does look like a pink prune!” she averred. Charlie Jayson had fought for the dignity of Socrates before when peo- ple had laughed at him, but now, very strangely, he found himself laughing with the girl and acknowledging that she was perfectly right and that So- crates resembled a pink prune. She had the whitest teeth and the reddest lips when she laughed! Then the Smasher Sisters flung their heels at the first orchestra row and the piano player started vamping Molly’s first song. Charlie stood in the wings and watched. He’d-never seen Molly’s act before. And as she stood there, simply, un- affectedly, and sang the songs of yesteryear in her trilly voice, they had a soft sweetness and a quality of ten- derness which struck straight to the heart after the ears had been dinned with the raucous, nasal shrieks of the Smasher Sisters and their rag-time. ‘“Darn shame she has to hand that stuff t’ these low-brows!” gulped Charlie when she had finished the last soft notes of “My Old Kentucky Home.” Charlie had been born in Haverstraw, New York, and his boy- hood days had been spent in Pough- keepsie. Consequently, that song al- ways aroused a funny choky feeling. Charlie didn’t have any chance to speak with her when she finished, be- cause as she bowed herself off before the curtain Charlie was posed with his dogs and Socrates behind the curtain for his act. | But she did not go directly to her dressing-room. She stood in the wings and watched him, her blue eyes danc- ing with merriment at the antics of Socrates and her hands softly ap- plauding the stunts of the dogs. 685 Her presence was a stimulation and incentive. Never had the Jayson act gone so well and so flawlessly. “Dandy!”’ she murmured enthusi- astically when he had finished and stood in the wings beside her, with Socrates perched on his shoulder and gravely chattering his opinion of the giggling girl who had been in the sec- ond orchestra row, left. Socrates had a weakness for girls who occupied orchestra seats and giggled. “Old Socks never played better in his life,” grinned Charlie, turning his head a bit to look at the monk, who thereupon clambered down and po- litely extended his hand to the girl. “Why,” she exclaimed, as she clasped it once more, everything we say!” | “And then some!” declared Char- lie, his mind vainly trying to figure how a frock that seemed to lack every- tffing stage dresses were supposed to require could be so beautiful. Then he saw her suddenly shrink back against a drop, and as he looked to find the cause he heard it. “Bah! Monkey! Ape of a man!” The hissing sneer came from a low- browed man who had stepped from the shelter of the drop. His bullet head was hunched down between his great shoulders that bulged and knot- ted with the huge muscles that played under the bare skin that was but half covered by the tawny leopard’s hide that was over one shoulder with a big gold clasp. “Ape of a man!” he _ repeated snarlingly; then he turned to the girl. “You will dine with me to-night.” It was not a question, the way he put it, but a harsh-voiced statement of an in- controvertible fact. He went a step closer. She fell back, eyes raised appealingly to Char- lie Jayson’s face. There could be but one interpretation of that look. “Miss Trainor has allowed me the pleasure.of her company.” He said it quietly enough, but there was menace in the very quietness. And the quick “he knows COMicdoo S CO@