Brainard and the secretary left the theater in glum silence, each possessed by an unhappy train of thought. On their way uptown they passed a billboard on which some flaming posters displayed certain tempting scenes from a soul-and-body-stirring play called _The Stolen Bonds_, now being given for the first time in New York. Brainard paused before the gaudy billboard.
“What the public really likes!” Farson commented with a grin.
Brainard remembered Louisiana’s angry taunt,—“Go and see a good melodrama—see what folks are willing to pay real money for!”
“Let’s take it in!” he exclaimed, seizing his companion’s arm. “We haven’t anything else to do this evening.”
“We’ll get all the goods before we reach the show,” the secretary observed, pointing to another series of immense posters that represented a gloomy bank vault in which a masked gentleman was holding a lantern above the prostrate form of a woman. “They’re not afraid of giving away their story!”
“Perhaps we shall find the great American play we have been hunting for all this year,” Brainard replied, as they came into the garish foyer of the theater. At one side was the entrance to a brilliant saloon, which seemed part of the establishment. “Democratic and convivial this,” he joked, thinking of the dainty “tea room” at the People’s.
There were only box seats left. When the two pushed aside the plush curtains that concealed these luxurious retreats, the curtain was up and the first act had started before a house packed with prosperous-looking citizens and their women.
“Not a dead seat in the house, I’ll bet!” whispered the secretary.
The scene represented the inside of an office, with a large safe at one side. The short, black-haired heroine was striving ineffectually to bar the way of a brawny villain, who had her covered with a revolver in one hand, and with the other whipped an ether cone from an inner pocket. She was rapidly crowded into the vault, where she succumbed in due time, after a muscular struggle and curdling shrieks, to the ether cone. Thereupon the burglar set busily to work to fill an enormous sample case with piles of yellow currency and bundles conveniently labeled BONDS, in large letters, so that a child might read. The villain then departed, carefully locking the door of the safe upon the etherized heroine.