The
hide of a polar bear, its head mounted with open jaws, spread over
the rich rug beside the bed. He wondered about this interestingly.
Probably the stage would be locked at night. Still, at a suitable
hour, he could descreetly find out. On another stage a bedroom
likewise intrigued him, though this was a squalid room in a tenement
and the bed was a cheap thing sparsely covered and in sad disorder.
People were working on this set, and he presently identified the
play, for Muriel Mercer in a neat black dress entered to bring
comfort to the tenement dwellers. But this play, too, had ceased to
interest him. He knew that Vera Vanderpool had escaped the blight of
Broadway to choose the worthwhile, the true, the vital things of
life, and that was about all he now cared to know of the actual
play. This tenement bed had become for him its outstanding dramatic
value. He saw himself in it for a good night's rest, waking
refreshed in plenty of time to be dressed and out before the
tenement people would need it. He must surely learn if the big
sliding doors to these stages were locked overnight.
He loitered about the stages until late afternoon, with especial
attention to sleeping apartments.
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