Page:Fighting Back (1924).pdf/166

 dashed off 'Lightnin',' 'Forty-Five Minutes from Broadway,' 'The Bat,' 'Zaza,' 'Camille,' 'Ben Hur,' 'The Follies,' and 'Ten Nights in a Barroom.' Then I likewise had a finger in composin' 'The College Widow,' 'Brown of—

"Why—why, Mister Begay!" interrupts my delightful adversary, "those plays were written by Frank Bacon, George M. Cohan, George Ade, Dumas, and—let's see—Mary Roberts Rinehart, and—"

"Aha!" I butt in with a wink, "that's what you think. Them's just the nicknames I use so's to hide my real name if my show's a flop, get me? A man in my position has got to be careful, what I mean. One failure would just about break my heart!"

She gives me a odd look.

"Have you ever used William Shakespeare as a non de plume, Mister Begay?" she asks me.

"Well, you're certainly the smartest girl I ever met in my life!" I says, admirin'ly. "I never thought nobody would find that out! Did you guess it, or was you tipped off?"

"I knew by your conversation," she says, with a innocent smile. "The plays signed William Shakespeare are in blank verse, as you of course know, and you're blank too, aren't you?"

"Pick up the marbles," I says. "You win!"

Ptomaine, the "artist," was the next witness.

"Are you at home in oils, Mister Love?" inquires his fair tête-à-tête.

"Where d'ye get that stuff?" says Ptomaine politely. "I'm a artist, not a sardine!"