“Wait,” came the somewhat startled reply.  Then after a moment a new and truculent voice sounded in his ear.

“What is this,” it demanded, “a bum joke you’re trying to put over, or what?  Come home at once!—­Don’t you know a packed house is waiting to see Miss Burton in her act?  What do ye mean, come home at once?”

“But I tell you—­”

“Go tell it somewhere else.”  Thomas Burton did not know that it was Abey Lewis himself who spoke.  “I don’t believe you—­you’re trying to string somebody—­and if the Queen of China was dying she couldn’t come now anyways.”

Slowly Abey Lewis turned from the receiver he had abruptly hung up and beckoned the subordinate who had first taken the message.

“Don’t mention this to anybody,” directed the chief tersely.  “Do you get me?  The girl mustn’t hear it—­and if any telegrams or messages come, you bring ’em to me, first, see?” Then to the stage door-man he gave a similar command, and looked at his watch.  It was two forty-five.  Mary’s act, held for the latter part of the bill, was not due for an hour.  For just a moment Mr. Lewis considered the advisability of advancing it on the program.  That might be safer—­but also it would mar the climacteric effect and so offend his sense of artistic fitness.  He thought that, after all, he had safeguarded matters well enough.

But Old Tom Burton had rushed out of the saloon and was hastening at his awkward gallop to the Eighth-street station of the elevated.  He was going to tell Mary in person and to bring her home.

Around the turn of the rails he saw a train coming, and, urged by his obsession of haste, he strove for a greater speed.  The top steps were slippery, and Old Tom was giddy and his legs uncertain.  His foot shot sideways without warning, and his body went hurtling backward.  He clutched desperately for the hand-rail and missed it.  Down the long flight of iron-edged stairs, in a bundle of ragged old humanity, he rolled limply, and lay shapeless on the pavement.  At once, a rush of feet brought a little crowd, and the same policeman who had helped him home earlier bent over him.

“Who is he?” asked someone, and the officer shook his head.

“Search me,” he said.  “He smells like a booze-barrel.  I ought to have locked him up the first time.”

An ambulance came with much clanging of its gong, and when they examined him at Bellevue, searching his pockets, they found some letters and Mary’s memorandum.  So they learned his identity, and sent a telephone message to the theater—­to be followed a half-hour later by a second announcing that life was extinct.

But while old Thomas was making his dash for the top of the stairs at the elevated, the landlord, followed by a physician, tapped on the door of the room Thomas Burton had left—­and, receiving no response, the pair went in.  Swiftly the doctor labored, and as the powerful hypodermic worked, the old woman rallied a little and her lids wavered and opened.  Her eyes wandered about the place and she spoke with a feeble voice.