On the lowest step at the last car, one foot hanging free, was a man.  His black derby hat was pulled well down to keep it from blowing away, and his coat was flying open in the wind.  He was swung well out from the car, his free hand gripping a small valise, every muscle tense for a jump.

“Good God, that’s my man!” I said hoarsely, as the audience broke into applause.  McKnight half rose:  in his seat ahead Johnson stifled a yawn and turned to eye me.

I dropped into my chair limply, and tried to control my excitement.  “The man on the last platform of the train,” I said.  “He was just about to leap; I’ll swear that was my bag.”

“Could you see his face?” McKnight asked in an undertone.  “Would you know him again?”

“No.  His hat was pulled down and his head was bent I’m going back to find out where that picture was taken.  They say two miles, but it may have been forty.”

The audience, busy with its wraps, had not noticed.  Mrs. Dallas and Alison West had gone.  In front of us Johnson had dropped his hat and was stooping for it.

“This way,” I motioned to McKnight, and we wheeled into the narrow passage beside us, back of the boxes.  At the end there was a door leading into the wings, and as we went boldly through I turned the key.

The final set was being struck, and no one paid any attention to us.  Luckily they were similarly indifferent to a banging at the door I had locked, a banging which, I judged, signified Johnson.

“I guess we’ve broken up his interference,” McKnight chuckled.

Stage hands were hurrying in every direction; pieces of the side wall of the last drawing-room menaced us; a switchboard behind us was singing like a tea-kettle.  Everywhere we stepped we were in somebody’s way.  At last we were across, confronting a man in his shirt sleeves, who by dots and dashes of profanity seemed to be directing the chaos.

“Well?” he said, wheeling on us.  “What can I do for you?”

“I would like to ask,” I replied, “if you have any idea just where the last cinematograph picture was taken.”

“Broken board—­picnickers—­lake?”

“No.  The Washington Flier.”

He glanced at my bandaged arm.

“The announcement says two miles,” McKnight put in, “but we should like to know whether it is railroad miles, automobile miles, or policeman miles.”

“I am sorry I can’t tell you,” he replied, more civilly.  “We get those pictures by contract.  We don’t take them ourselves.”

“Where are the company’s offices?”

“New York.”  He stepped forward and grasped a super by the shoulder.  “What in blazes are you doing with that gold chair in a kitchen set?  Take that piece of pink plush there and throw it over a soap box, if you haven’t got a kitchen chair.”

I had not realized the extent of the shock, but now I dropped into a chair and wiped my forehead.  The unexpected glimpse of Alison West, followed almost immediately by the revelation of the picture, had left me limp and unnerved.  McKnight was looking at his watch.