The shabby man in the fourth row of the pit leaned forward and stared incredulously at the stage.
His shifty eyes narrowed furtively.
"Nancy Taylor!" he muttered. "By the Lord, little Nancy Taylor!"
His glance dropped to the program in his hand.
One name was printed in slightly larger type than the rest.
"Olga Stormer!
So that's what she calls herself.
Fancy yourself a star, don't you, my lady?
And you must be making a pretty little pot of money, too.
Quite forgotten your name was ever Nancy Taylor, I daresay.
I wonder now - I wonder now what you'd say if Jake Levitt should remind you of the fact?"
The curtain fell on the close of the first act.
Hearty applause filled the auditorium.
Olga Stormer, the great emotional actress, whose name in a few short years had become a household word, was adding yet another triumph to her list of successes as "Cora", in The Avenging Angel.
Jake Levitt did not join in the clapping, but a slow, appreciative grin gradually distended his mouth.
God!
What luck!
Just when he was on his beam-ends, too.
She'd try to bluff it out, he supposed, but she couldn't put it over on him.
Properly worked, the thing was a gold mine!
II On the following morning the first workings of Jake Levitt's gold mine became apparent.
In her drawing room, with its red lacquer and black hangings, Olga Stormer read and reread a letter thoughtfully.
Her pale face, with its exquisitely mobile features, was a little more set than usual, and every now and then the grey-green eyes under the level brows steadily envisaged the middle distance, as though she contemplated the threat behind rather than the actual words of the letter.
In that wonderful voice of hers, which could throb with emotion or be as clear-cut as the click of a typewriter, Olga called:
"Miss Jones!"
A neat young woman with spectacles, a shorthand pad and a pencil clasped in her hand, hastened from an adjoining room.
"Ring up Mr. Danahan, please, and ask him to come round, immediately."
Syd Danahan, Olga Stormer's manager, entered the room with the usual apprehension of the man whose life it is to deal with and overcome the vagaries of the artistic feminine.
To coax, to soothe, to bully, one at a time or all together, such was his daily routine.
To his relief, Olga appeared calm and reposed, and merely flicked a note across the table to him.
"Read that."
The letter was scrawled in an illiterate hand, of cheap paper.
Dear Madam, I much appreciated your performance in The Avenging Angel last night.
I fancy we have a mutual friend in Miss Nancy Taylor, late of Chicago.
An article regarding her is to be published shortly.
If you would care to discuss same, I could call upon you at any time convenient to yourself.
Yours respectfully,
Jake Levitt
Danahan looked lightly bewildered,
"I don't quite get it.
Who is this Nancy Taylor?"
"A girl who would be better dead, Danny." There was bitterness in her voice and a weariness that revealed her thirty-four years. "A girl who was dead until this carrion crow brought her to life again."
"Oh!
Then..."
"Me, Danny. Just me."
"This means blackmail, of course?"
She nodded.
"Of course, and by a man who knows the art thoroughly."
Danahan frowned, considering the matter.
Olga, her cheek pillowed on a long, slender hand, watched him with unfathomable eyes.