Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/280

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN Billy Judson had been a broker in Wall Street, a dog fancier, a first nighter and a Broadway character until paralysis laid him low. Although the paralysis was all but total, Judson continued to conduct his brokerage business from his bed in his bachelor rooms in West Forty-sixth Street, using a specially designed headgear telephone, and to keep open house there for his numerous friends. With that eager sympathy characteristic of the real Broadway, Judson's friends used to make it a point to stop in and brighten his day with the chatter of the stage, the paralytic listening wistfully to the talk of the life he had loved and now was denied him. Occasionally, when the weather was fine, a lawyer friend used to wheel him along the sidewalks of Forty-sixth Street in a hospital rolling bed, as the crowds were moving into the theaters, Judson's eyes lighting up with a pathetic blend of pleasure and pain.

Some one among his callers spoke to Judson one day of a Miss Gay MacLaren who had the remarkable gift of being able to reproduce a play line for line and character for character after watching it three or four times. "Within the Law" was the show of the moment. Judson was frantic to see it, and Miss MacLaren,