JIMMY MARTIN’S heart persisted in acting like the well-known eyes of the young lady in the song. He just couldn’t make it behave. Up to the third week of his summer season as press agent at Jollyland, the big summer amusement park near New York, it had always been a fairly well-mannered and dependable organ which performed its physiological functions with becoming regularity and which was not accustomed to respond to any external stimuli with anything beyond an occasional slight flutter. To be sure it had acted up a little three years back in connection with a certain dark-eyed beauty who presided over the destinies of the cigar counter up in the Grand Hotel in New Haven, but that had only been a slight attack and it had resumed the even tenor of its ways after a brief interval and had been unobtrusively going through with its routine activities ever since.

A most prepossessing young person whose parents had inflicted upon her the name of Lolita Murphy was directly responsible for the alarming symptoms already hinted at. From the precise moment that Lolita came within his ken Jimmy ceased to be a rational being in full control of his faculties and his heart, in sympathetic accord with the agitated condition of its owner, began to put on an antic disposition and indulged in curious palpitations of a most annoying nature on the slightest pretext. The usual provocation at first was the sight of Lolita herself, but after a day or two even the thought of her produced a cardiac ratiplan that would have done credit to the trap drummer of a jazz band.

Lolita, it may be mentioned in passing, lived up to all the implications of the somewhat picturesque cognomen given her by McClintock, the park manager, when Jimmy first pointed her out to his superior.

“She sure is Miss Lulu Looker,” McClintock had remarked emphatically.

Lolita was all of that and a little more. Jimmy was not a poet and he was therefore unable to properly voice the feelings he had about her beauty. Had he been one he might have justly said that her cheeks seemed to have been kissed by the rosy flush of dawn; that in her sable eyes there lurked the eternal mystery of night beneath tropic skies; that her dark hair was as fragrant as the spices of Araby and that her lithe figure had all the gracile curves of a bounding antelope. As it was he contented himself with the frequent repetition of the decidedly unpoetic expression “some gal,” but this represented to him all the ideas noted above and a liberal assortment of others equally glamorous.

Lolita hailed from Cedar Rapids, Ia., and ever since the memorable occasion when Maude Adams played “Peter Pan” in that city for “one night only” she had cherished a great and overwhelming ambition. Her father ran the drug store next door to the Opera House and was a great crony of the manager. A number of boys and girls were picked up in each town to play the children in the Never Never Land scene and Lolita’s fond parent had persuaded the manager to select her as one of the group. It was a step that father was to regret vainly for many years, but on the night of her debut he was blissfully unconscious of the possibility of any bitter repining in the future and enjoyed the proceedings almost as much as Lolita did.

From that time on Lolita felt the call of the footlights and became convinced that, given the proper opportunities for the externalization of the emotional feelings that lay dormant within her, she was destined to become an international celebrity and the queen regnant of the English speaking stage. Chauncey Olcott came to town a few weeks later and she persuaded father to work her in as one of the youngsters to whom he sang a lullaby in a high tenor voice down in the “glen” which is always the setting for the third act of an Irish play. After that there was no holding her. She became a student of Miss Amanda Holliday’s School of Dramatic Expression which occupied three rooms on the second floor of the Turner block on Main Street and she participated in the semi-annual entertainments given by the budding geniuses who were under the tutelage of that small town preceptress of the arts. Versatility was her middle name. At one time she would play Ophelia in the mad scene from “Hamlet” and appear later on the program in a Spanish dance with castanets, a lace mantilla and all the other necessary properties. Six months later she would combine the balcony scene from “Romeo and Juliet” with an imitation of an imitation of Eddie Foy she had heard given by a monologue artist at the Orpheum Theatre. At the age of nineteen she was the town wonder. The dramatic editor of the Democrat-Chronicle predicted that within a short time “this talented daughter of our esteemed fellow townsman Henry P. Murphy seems destined to occupy one of the stellar places in the front ranks of the worth-while artists of our fair country.”

Lolita moved on to New York armed with a letter of commendation from Miss Amanda Holliday setting forth that she was “worthy of any role no matter what its importance” and urging theatrical managers “not to neglect this opportunity of obtaining the services of one who is a mistress of the mimetic art in all its manifold manifestations.” She also carried a full set of clippings from the Democrat-Chronicle, one half of her male parent’s attenuated account in the First National Bank and an over-abundant supply of cheery optimism.

The metropolitan managers’ office boys were decidedly cold to the advances of this gifted daughter of the Middle West. They treated her with that air of careless indifference so characteristic of their profession. With one accord all the big and little producers decided to take a big chance and neglect the opportunity which fate was offering them. They were unmoved by the clippings from the Democrat-Chronicle with which Lolita bombarded them through the mails and they were callous to the eulogistic outpourings of Miss Amanda Holliday, copies of which accompanied each written request for an interview. Lolita’s cash reserve grew perilously low and disaster threatened. Then, on a morning when disillusionment and despair moved in and took lodgings in her soul, she saw an advertisement in a newspaper which was like a life buoy tossed to a drowning man.

“Ambitious Young Women Wanted for Stage Work,” it read. “Opportunity Afforded Ambitious Amateurs to Perfect Themselves in Dramatic Technique—Apply Immediately at Manager’s Office, ‘Jollyland.’”

Lolita, filled with high hopes, took a trolley to the great playground by the sea. There destiny handed her one of those cold douches that are sometimes held in reserve for those whose ambitions o’erleap themselves. The dramatic opportunity promised in the advertisement proved to be what might be vulgarly termed a “job.”

A great free open-air spectacle was in process of preparation at Jollyland under the supervision of a famous moving picture director who specialized in that form of animated art technically known as “serials.” He had personally conducted a gazelle-eyed cinema celebrity known as June Delight through four fifteen reel affairs of this sort in which she had been threatened with mayhem, aggravated assault and battery, felonious wounding, and total and complete annihilation at the hands of numerous bands of cut-throats, bandits, thieves and white slavers. In the course of these proceedings she had performed every breath-catching feat that the festive imagination of the director had been capable of conjuring up and had succeeded, by a miracle, in keeping out of both the hospital and the obituary columns of the daily press.

Now it was proposed to let the public have a close-up view of this death-defying marvel in the flesh in the act of performing one of her most famous exploits “before your very eyes and for your attention,” as the circus announcer would put it. To permit of this the director had evolved something which he called a “dramatic spectacle” and had persuaded the management of Jollyland to arrange for its production in a huge, specially constructed open-air auditorium as a “special added attraction” intended to put a final quietus on the presumptuous efforts of a rival group of showmen who were endeavoring to arouse interest in a new park just opened that summer.

Lolita found herself in a long line of applicants, many of whom were pathetically peaked and undernourished looking, and when her turn came to meet the director she made up her mind to pocket her pride and accept whatever fate offered rather than run the risk of finding herself in like straits. Ambition still fired her soul and she was determined not to return to the little old home town until she could enter it in something at least closely akin to a spirit of triumph. To be sure the opportunity offered her was not particularly roseate. It did not hold forth much promise of either pecuniary reward or even of passing fame, but it meant that Lolita would not have to telegraph home for funds and there was a faint glimmer of hope in a remark made by the director.

“You can mingle in the front ranks of the crowd,” he said. “We’ll pay you eighteen a week. There’ll only be two shows a day.” Then he had looked at her critically. “You’re almost a ringer for Miss Delight,” he continued. “Maybe, if you’re a good little girl I might take a notion to try you out as understudy.”

So Lolita Murphy, the pride of Cedar Rapids, became a small and almost infinitesimal part of the great out-door spectacle entitled “Secret Service Sallie” which was the big sensation of the Jollyland season.

In the role of an agent of the United States secret service the charming and fascinating June Delight was swept through a series of thrilling adventures set against spectacular backgrounds depicting scenes in Berlin, Tokio, Rio de Janeiro and other world capitals and as a culminating feature she was pursued to the roof of a building in London by a howling mob which suspected her of being a spy in the employ of the Central Powers. She was saved from its hands, in the proverbial nick of time, by her fiancé, dashing Lieutenant Thurston Turner, Commander of the U.S. Dirigible N-24, who happened to be cruising about the neighborhood at the moment and who effected a rescue by circling his ship around the roof and deftly lifting the young woman into the shelter of the gondola which hung from the great gas balloon just as she was about to be beaten to death by the infuriated crowd.

Inasmuch as the spectacle was given in the open air, it was possible to use for the purposes of this scene a real dirigible which was manned by a crew commanded by one Bobby Wilkins, a personable young gentleman from Chicago who had come back from France with a major’s commission, a reputation for dare-deviltry as an aviator surpassed by no other ace in the American service and a collection of a half dozen assorted war medals bestowed by three grateful nations. Bobby had left a snug berth as “assistant to the president” of a big varnish company to go into the army, the said president being a somewhat indulgent parent who had sanguine expectations concerning his son’s commercial and industrial future and who was even now sending him daily wires to the Ritz urging him to “cut the carabets and get down to a solid rock foundation.” Father labored under the delusion that Bobby was simply vacationing in New York. Had he had an inkling of just what his son was doing he would have (to use the young major’s own expression) “tried for a new altitude record himself.” He could hardly be expected to know that dictating fool business letters and checking up the new efficiency expert’s monthly report of economies effected at the Dayton plant wouldn’t exactly appeal any more to an adventuresome young man who had been skyhooting through the upper reaches of the atmosphere for nearly two years and dodging German machine gun bullets.

Bobby had overheard the general who commanded the aviation camp at which he was demobilized remarking about a request made by the moving picture director that he recommend some aviator for the task of piloting the dirigible which was to play such an important role in the spectacle and he had offered himself for the sacrifice just as a lark. He found the experience rare sport and until something giving greater promise of adventure appeared in the offing he was determined to go on with it. Twice a day he reached down and plucked up the beautiful Miss Delight as lightly as if she were a fragile doll while the assembled thousands, on the qui vive with excitement, burst into rapturous applause. In order to insure the peace of mind of Robert Wilkins, Sr., Jimmy Martin had consented, rather reluctantly it must be admitted, to respect the wishes of the impersonator of Lieut. Thurston Turner, U.S.N., who had expressed a desire to remain incognito. Otherwise the consequences might have been lurid.

Jimmy itched to give out a story concerning the social and business connections of the young soldier, but he had given his word, and being an ex-newspaper man, that was sacred. He temporarily forgot about Bobby and devoted his spare moments to figuring out ways and means for the sensational exploitation of Lolita Murphy to whose charms he had become a shackled slave from the moment he first glimpsed her at rehearsal. Lolita, it may be mentioned in passing, was a trifle discouraged at the comparatively slight opportunities for uplifting and otherwise ennobling the American stage offered by her participation in “Secret Service Sallie.” Her name wasn’t even mentioned on the program. She figured under an impersonal heading at the bottom, together with a couple of hundred other young women who were listed as “Berlin citizens, Japanese geisha girls, South Americans, Londoners, etc., etc.”

It needed all the soaring optimism of Jimmy to keep her from slipping into a nervous decline. The press agent had obtained an introduction through the stage director and his sympathetic interest in her temporarily side-tracked ambitions had won him her esteem and high regard from the beginning. Jimmy was a rapid worker and within three days from the time of their first meeting he had vowed his ardent and palpitating devotion, and while Lolita had not completely committed herself to a reciprocal affirmation she had succeeded, nevertheless, by devious and subtle devices not unknown to her sex, in conveying the distinct impression that the star of hope was visible in the eastern sky.

It might be parenthetically recorded that Jimmy was accustomed to arriving at his destination when once he embarked on a journey. He had been kidnapped from an assistant sporting editor’s desk on a middle western paper by a small circus, while still young, and for seven years he had been touring these United States ahead of an infinite variety of attractions ranging all the way from Curran’s Colossal Carnival company (playing state fairs) to the more or less splendiferous “revues” which have their origin and their brief span of popularity along the middle reaches of Broadway.

Being more familiar with the batting averages of the best ten players in the American League than with George Henry Lewes’, “The Art of Acting,” and being utterly incapable of writing a didactic essay on “The Psychology of Laughter”, Jimmy had never been cast for one of the so-called “kid-glove jobs” in the realm of theatrical publicity, that being the name given to the positions held by the literati who seek and occasionally obtain publicity for the highbrow drama. He was not of the chosen company of the sleek and self-satisfied elect. Elegantly written stories and gracefully worded little pieces, supposedly composed by charming feminine stars, meant nothing in his young and energetic life. “Stunts” were what he specialized in, the creation of news that was so unusual, so bizarre, so full of human interest that the newspapers not only felt obliged to print it, but usually assigned their own reporters to write it up. He wasn’t dignified; his conversation reeked with slang and his methods sometimes offended against all the established canons of good taste, but he sometimes landed with one foot and not infrequently with both.

His summer engagement at Jollyland was a “fill-in” between seasons and when he entered upon it he had no notion that it would shortly become pregnant with possibilities of a most disturbing sort. He had no idea that he would presently be directing all of his energies to assuaging the anxieties and soothing the troubled spirit of a somewhat forlorn maiden from what he was in the habit of scornfully referring to as a “hick town.”

There came a night when Lolita’s disappointment was past all bearing and when she sobbed out on Jimmy’s shoulders a bitter protest against the fate that had driven her into believing that she was destined to be a great actress. They were sitting on the beach in the moonlight after the show and off in the murky distance the great Sandy Hook light was blinking like some monster fire-fly.

“Jimmy,” she said, half-chokingly. “I just don’t belong. I wish I was back in Cedar Rapids.”

“Gosh, that’s an awful wish, girlie,” responded the press agent with a foolish attempt at a pleasantry which he instantly regretted.

Lolita drew away from him quickly.

“Cedar Rapids is all right,” she retorted. “It’s better than this lonesome place.” She lapsed almost immediately into a wistful mood. “It’s just ten o’clock there now and the movies are letting out, and there’s a crowd in dad’s store and the fellows are treating the girls to sundaes or just plain ice cream and dad is fussing around and maybe helping out himself. I want to go back, Jimmy, I want to go back.”

Jimmy squeezed her hand softly.

“Listen, girlie,” he said comfortingly. “I know just how you feel—the cards ain’t runnin’ right and you want to quit the game, but I’m going to cut in with a clean deck and start a new deal. I’m goin’ to fix things so that when you do go back for a visit to the little old home town and dear old dad, the Peerless Silver Cornet band is goin’ to be down at the station and his honor the mayor is goin’ to speak a few well chosen words of welcome in the presence of a cheering crowd of friends and well-wishers. Leave it to me.”

Lolita laughed a little in spite of her mood.

“You’re a great little jollier, Jimmy,” she, said, “and I’d like to believe you, but somehow I can’t. I’m a nobody, a Cedar Rapids’ nobody.”

“But you’re goin’ to be little Miss Lolita Somebody of the well known world,” he responded cheerily, “before I get through with you. I’m goin’ to drop you right into the direct center of the front page of every paper in the U.S.A. from the New York Gazette to the Wyalusing, Pa., Rocket. You’re goin’ to make those two chaps with the whiskers on the cough drop boxes and that fat old colored dame in the pancake flour ads look like shrinkin’ violets on a foggy afternoon when I finish up with you. You just wait and see.”

“How long have I got to wait, Jimmy,” ventured Lolita who was adrift in the realms of fancy, carried thence by the soothing cadences of Jimmy’s voice.

“Only until some afternoon when this June Delight person fails to show up,—I hear she’s talkin’ of layin’ off for a few days. If you’ll promise not to even talk about it in your sleep I’ll hand you a little advance information.”

Only the silent stars and the discreet moon shared Jimmy’s confidence with Lolita. Its general tone and tenor lifted that despairing daughter of the plains out of the rut of hopeless striving into which she felt she had fallen and filled her with such anticipatory delight that when she said good-bye at the door of her boarding house she impulsively reached forward and kissed him full on the mouth.

“You’re a darling,” she murmured.

“I’ll take an encore on that, girlie,” he replied.

And he did.