An understanding with Lolita which contained certain qualifying clauses was one of the net results of the Adventure of the Lost Dirigible. Jimmy filed a number of demurrers, but they were over-ruled as soon as they were entered on the docket. He had been foolish enough to imagine on the celebrated morning after the night before that a perceptible scent of orange blossoms clogged the circumambient air, but this belief was soon dissipated by the young lady herself.

“I can’t get married, Jimmy,” she said earnestly, “until I find out about my career.”

“What’s that got to with it?”

“Why, just—why, everything. I was reading an article only the other day by Mary Garden in which she said that marriage cramped the career of a woman on the stage. She said that husbands were a handicap—that they held you back with the tail end of the procession and kept you from getting on. She said——”

Jimmy broke in with a scornful laugh.

“I suppose she mentioned Mrs. Fiske and Laurette Taylor and Ethel Barrymore and Blanche Bates and all the other selling platers who’ve been left at the post because they were foolish enough to enter the matrimonial stakes,” he scoffed. “It’s really too bad about ’em. It looked once as if they had a chance.”

Her mouth stiffened at this and she tossed her head with a little gesture that spelled stubborn defiance.

“Well—anyway—,” she said, “I’m going to see how it works—for a little while. Maybe there isn’t going to be any career for me beyond—well, beyond ‘Secret Service Sallie.’ If there isn’t I might possibly——”

She paused thoughtfully. Jimmy’s scornful mood had passed and he looked at her appealingly.

“You might possibly what?” he ventured, cautiously. “There isn’t goin’ to be another catch in it, is there?”

“I’m afraid there is,” she replied, quietly. “You’ll have to settle down some place first. I don’t think I’d ever learn how to keep house permanently in a hotel bed-room and besides——”

Again a disturbing pause. Jimmy was rapidly becoming a pitiful object to behold.

“Get it all out of your system, sister,” he said, weakly. “I’m a glutton for punishment.”

“Well,” she resumed evenly, “besides settling down you’d have to have some money in the bank—quite a little. That’s the most important thing. There was a girl in our town once who ran off with a fellow in the show business and lived a hand-to-mouth sort of a life for several seasons after passing up a lot of good chances among the boys she knew. She’s back selling stockings in Boyd’s Emporium on First avenue now and she looks kind of faded out and tired. I like you a lot, Jimmy, and you’ve treated me better than I deserved and you’re the nicest fellow I ever knew, but we’ve got to be sensible and wait and see how things work out. Won’t you—please?”

The “please” was long drawn out and a bit plaintive. It touched the heart-strings of the hapless press agent and played a tender little strain upon them. He meekly agreed to all the qualifying clauses in the agreement and he would have signed on the dotted line if they had been three times as numerous.

Filled with a new enthusiasm his imagination began to run riot and within two weeks his surprise assaults upon the front line trenches of the forces defending the serried columns of the metropolitan daily newspapers resulted in space returns that established new records.

He contrived to have a member of the President’s cabinet who happened to take a ride on the Dippy Dip stalled in his gondola one hundred and seventy-five feet in the air for half an hour while a squad of mechanicians labored feverishly to get things straightened out. That landed on the front page of every paper in town. He married off the Armless Wonder in Bisbee’s Carnival of Freaks to the Legless Marvel with a new result of six “picture spreads” and five and a half columns of solid reading matter. His discovery that the little dark-haired girl who danced on the open air stage in the big free show every afternoon and evening was the daughter of a grand duke who had fled in disguise from Soviet Russia and who had feared to reveal her identity because of the possibility of attack by Bolshevik sympathizers in this country was his biggest coup, however. This was sensationally played up for all it was worth and considerably more in every New York daily and had been telegraphed all over the country. As a “follow-up” on this he arranged to have two uniformed guards accompany the young woman wherever she went. This, too, landed heavily and Jimmy’s customary high opinion of his own prowess was perhaps more noticeable than ever.

One evening while he was sauntering through the incandescent splendor of Jollyland in a mood of supreme elevation, he heard the booming voice of McClintock hailing him from the porch of the administration building.

“Come out of it,” the manager shouted.

Jimmy dropped back to earth with a start and sauntered toward the office.

“Gosh,” observed McClintock, “you looked as if you were off on a long journey. I hope you brought an idea back with you. We need one. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Jimmy smiled the inscrutable smile of one who is the custodian of the wisdom of the ages.

“I’ve got a neat little assortment of goods I picked up,” he responded cockily. “What can I offer you?”

“Well, it’s this way,” returned McClintock. “You haven’t pulled anything yet about our co-worker, Signor Antonio Amado, and his trained animal show. He’s just been bawling his head off to me. Says there’s a conspiracy on foot to keep him out of the papers and threatens all kinds of trouble if we don’t slip something over about his concession right away. I know you planned to get around to him before long, but you’d better start something right off. Can you think of anything?”

Jimmy didn’t reply for nearly half a minute. His general manner betokened profound mental concentration.

“I guess we can accommodate that bird,” he finally remarked. “I don’t want to hurl any purple pansies at myself, but I think I’ve got a stunt that’ll pretty nearly crowd everything else on to the back page. I’ve got seven other animal stories ready, but I think this one has a shade on all of ’em. I’ll slip over and ooze it into our Dago friend’s intellect.”

The manager laughed good-naturedly.

“Say,” he commented, “you’re the best little friend of yourself you ever had, aren’t you? Just hand out a little of that conversation to Tony and he’ll lie down and behave for a few hours. Tell him you’ll get his picture in all the papers. That’ll make a hit with him. He’s a member of your lodge.”

The implications of the last remark made about as much impression on Jimmy as did the idle wind which at that moment was lightly brushing his cheek. He strolled over to the garish and gaudy building which housed Amado’s Colossal and Gargantuan Collection of Trained Wild Beasts from the Trackless Jungle; paused just long enough at the main entrance to tell the dark-eyed lady cashier that she looked like a pocket edition of Maxine Elliott and passed into the auditorium where Signor Amado was directing the progress of the final show of the night.

The animal trainer was a short, stocky, swarthy-hued Latin with beady eyes, shiny black hair, and a moustache to the care of which he devoted himself with self-effacing solicitude. It was a fierce looking affair with ends pointed like a rapier, which thrust themselves aggressively upwards at a sharp angle giving the signor’s dark countenance a look of great ferocity. He tried desperately hard at all times to live up to that moustache and he had a habit of working himself into violent rages which were, in reality, rather hollow and empty affairs, as even the most casual observer could see. He was at heart, a weak and excessively vain little man. Only the animals who leaped or cowered at his command were fooled by his appearance of ferocity.

At the conclusion of the show he retired to his office and began to pour into the unreceptive ears of the general director of promotion and publicity a voluble stream of protest against the neglect of himself which Jimmy was able to check only with great difficulty.

“Listen, Signor,” he finally managed to remark. “You’re wastin’ gas you’ll need some day when you’re climbin’ uphill. I came in to tell you about a scheme I’ve got that’ll put you and your show right in the center of the map in bright green, and you begin this eruption stuff that doesn’t get you even a look-in. Will you listen to me?”

“All right. I makea de listen,” replied Signor Amado, “but eef eet eesa nota one gooda schema thata makea me hava de face—Signor Antonio Amado’s face—all ever de—what you call?—all over de whole damned place—I queeta de park—so.”

He snapped his fingers airily and shrugged his shoulders. Jimmy proceeded to expound and expatiate, and as he did so the signor’s face took on a look of intense interest. Presently it was wreathed in smiles, and he was patting the press agent on the back and uttering words expressive of pleased delight. The conspirators conferred for a half an hour, carefully going over Jimmy’s plan of campaign and adjusting the smallest details thereof so that there would be no disturbing faux pas on the morrow. They pledged the success of the enterprise just before midnight in brimming glasses of Chianti which the signor drew from a secret hiding place in his desk.

At about ten o’clock on the following morning an express wagon drove up in front of Signor Amado’s concession and four husky attendants brought out a large box which was placed on it. Jimmy drew the driver aside and gave him final instructions.

“Get right near the tower on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn bridge,” he said, “and figure on making it at just about noon. Drive slowly and if anyone near you makes a noise like a cop don’t pull anything just then. Wait till there’s no one lookin’ and then reach back, unfasten the hasp and lift the lid. Then you’ve got to register surprise, consternation and annoyance and suggest calling up Signor Amado when the plot begins to thicken, if you get what I mean.”

The driver, a typical “wise” product of the New York streets, nodded his head, Signor Amado spoke a few mystic words through a wire netting at one end of the box and the “plant” started on its way after Jimmy gave a final parting instruction.

“I’ll probably be in the immediate vicinity when things begin to break,” he cautioned, “but for the love of P. T. Barnum don’t make any signs of recognition.”