Photoplay (Feb-Sep 1917)

166 Photoplay Magazine awhile he started back to the next town for something to eat, a meal which, I afterwards learned, took the shape of a large bun. I happened to be waiting in \\'ashington for Daft', and inside an hour after she arrived I had the wires hot to the police in all parts of the state. As a result we got her car back inside of forty-eight hours, for it was lettered all over with Daff's records, and was in such bad shape that it couldn't be disguised. The tliree 'boes had abandoned it on an open road. V'ou better believe I found out what had liappened up in those mountains. Daff had to explain how she came to be riding Rollo's J'"ord Killer, and the parts she wouldn't tell, I guessed. And when I was wised up 1 felt about as sore as an extra kid watching her first big picture. Things had broken my way at last, and I figured Rollo was done for. I was right, too, for though we left his car with his man in Washington, he never followed us. I guess lie knew when he was licked. But the funny part of it was that from then on we had practically no trouble of any kind. "Was that blond prune a jonah, or was he not?" I asked Daff, and she hadn't anything to say. Well, we reached New York. Daff handed our Mayor's letter to Mitchell's secretary on the City Hall steps, and ail hands posed while the cameras clicked. The next day came the real finish. I got in beside Daff and, leaving the City Hall, we headed across Brooklyn Bridge for Coney Island. Things held together, and finally Daff drove her front wheels smack into a big Atlantic comber, and I grabbed her up out of her seat and carried her ashore high and dry amid a murderous fire. And that was the end, all except for one thing which came off while we were at dinner together that night. I had the old soup and fish on myself this time, and when I kidded the girl at the cigar counter she kidded right back, so you can judge of the illumination. "Daff," I said, and tossed her a telegram kind of careless, "read that !" She opened it. "You get a hundred meg a week from now on," it said, and was signed "Mandel." She registered unrestrained gladness, and gave me one of her tough little hands. "Gee," I said, "I've worked for that. But it wasn't for myself; it was for both of us. You know I love you Daff. I've got the bungalow all picked out, and all I ask is a rag time wedding march. Will you take me on fur a finis!) go at catch-weights, darling?" She looked at me kind of funny. Then she produced a telegram of her own from somewhere, and I read : — "Come back single and star for us at a liundred and fifty a week. That stunt in Pennsylvania was immense. Mandel." I sat still for a little with a long curse forming in my system against that foxy old devil. Still I had to hand it to him knowing human nature. Then I gave the firing stpad tile signal. "Well?" "You've been wonderful to me, Lew," she said, and I knew she meant it, "but tiiink of my career. A woman can't marry and still be a great artist." "All right, Daff, you go ahead and be a great artist. I want to see you .succeed, and I'll help you all I can." She didn't say anything either for a minute. Then she looked up at me in the shyest way. "But what great artist ever succeeded without a manager to look after her all the time?" she asked. "Daff!" I yelled so loudly that everybody within twenty feet looked around at me. "Yes," she said in a soft, sweet way that told me everything. There was considerable time thereabouts I lost track of. "But what about Mandel's offer?" I managed after a little. "Oh, he'll come around," she said serenely. "If it's a future star he wants he'll take me married or single." And he did. When we got back to the studio after our honeymoon it wasn't long till little Rollo blew in, and I must say he took his dose like a man. "I was afraid this would happen," he said when he got a little resigned. "Why?" I asked him. "Because I knew I was blown into the bouillon that night Daff took my car away from me. You see I'd hired those three bums to hold her up and set her adrift, and when she didn't fall for my heart and home, I figured I was due for a quick fade-out, and I was right."