“Eh?  A sketch?  You, Jim?  Where?”

“Here.  In this house.  It is entitled ‘Kidnapping Ogden’ and opens to-night.”

Mr. Crocker looked at his only son in concern.  Jimmy appeared to him to be rambling.

“Amateur theatricals?” he hazarded.

“In the sense that there is no pay for performing, yes.  Dad, you know that kid Ogden upstairs?  Well, it’s quite simple.  I want you to kidnap him for me.”

Mr. Crocker sat down heavily.  He shook his head.

“I don’t follow all this.”

“Of course not.  I haven’t begun to explain.  Dad, in your rambles through this joint you’ve noticed a girl with glorious red-gold hair, I imagine?”

“Ann Chester?”

“Ann Chester.  I’m going to marry her.”

“Jimmy!”

“But she doesn’t know it yet.  Now, follow me carefully, dad.  Five years ago Ann Chester wrote a book of poems.  It’s on that desk there.  You were using it a moment back as second-base or something.  Now, I was working at that time on the Chronicle.  I wrote a skit on those poems for the Sunday paper.  Do you begin to follow the plot?”

“She’s got it in for you?  She’s sore?”

“Exactly.  Get that firmly fixed in your mind, because it’s the source from which all the rest of the story springs.”

Mr. Crocker interrupted.

“But I don’t understand.  You say she’s sore at you.  Well, how is it that you came in together looking as if you were good friends when I let you in this morning?”

“I was waiting for you to ask that.  The explanation is that she doesn’t know that I am Jimmy Crocker.”

“But you came here saying that you were Jimmy Crocker.”

“Quite right.  And that is where the plot thickens.  I made Ann’s acquaintance first in London and then on the boat.  I had found out that Jimmy Crocker was the man she hated most in the world, so I took another name.  I called myself Bayliss.”

“Bayliss!”

“I had to think of something quick, because the clerk at the shipping office was waiting to fill in my ticket.  I had just been talking to Bayliss on the phone and his was the only name that came into my mind.  You know how it is when you try to think of a name suddenly.  Now mark the sequel.  Old Bayliss came to see me off at Paddington.  Ann was there and saw me.  She said ’Good evening, Mr. Bayliss’ or something, and naturally old Bayliss replied ‘What ho!’ or words to that effect.  The only way to handle the situation was to introduce him as my father.  I did so.  Ann, therefore, thinks that I am a young man named Bayliss who has come over to America to make his fortune.  We now come to the third reel.  I met Ann by chance at the Knickerbocker and took her to lunch.  While we were lunching, that confirmed congenital idiot, Reggie Bartling, who happened to have come over to America as well, came up and called me by my name.  I knew that, if Ann discovered who I really was, she would have nothing more to do with me, so I gave Reggie the haughty stare and told him that he had made a mistake.  He ambled away—­and possibly committed suicide in his anguish at having made such a bloomer—­leaving Ann discussing with me the extraordinary coincidence of my being Jimmy Crocker’s double.  Do you follow the story of my life so far?”