“Now,” she added, with firm finality, “this is a public boarding house, and the parlor and dining room are open for the comfort and convenience of guests. I intend to use them, as I always have done, but if you speak to me, or look at me again, I shall request Miss Bascom to guard me in some way against such annoyance.”

She turned, then, and marched out of the room with military smartness and precision.

Douglas slumped into his chair again, sighed, and looked idly out the window into the darkness of the street.

Dr. Hillary and Henry Caddock came in from a late game of billiards at the Cardinal Valley Club down town.

“Smoke another cigar before you go up, professor?” asked Caddock, stepping just inside the parlor door. “When I’m up as late as this, I don’t care when I go to bed.”

“Thanks, no; cigars are a little heavy for me after the first one. And, as for its being late, I shall write a little on the new chapter of my book before I turn in.”

“Hello!” said Caddock, catching sight of the dejected figure in the chair. “Oh, it’s Raymond. Hm—heard you on the air tonight, Raymond. Pretty good! Is the position permanent, may I ask? If so, I congratulate you, I’m sure.”

“Thanks, Mr. Caddock,” said Douglas, getting up. “I guess it is permanent from what they said. The old announcer is leaving town in a day or two; he’s going to have a job out West. I’m glad if you thought I did well.”

“Sure! You’re all right, Raymond. Well, I guess I will turn in, if you’re going upstairs, professor.”

“Did you—er—pardon me, Dr. Hillary, did you happen to hear me announcing at WXL this evening? If you did, I’d be mighty glad of your candid opinion.”

The doctor stepped in over the threshold and peered at the young man a little quizzically. Caddock went upstairs.

“Tell me,” said the doctor, ignoring the question for the moment, “is this position of announcer at WXL a—a very important one? I mean, professionally, or as a matter of prestige, or even financially. Is the attainment of such a post regarded in the light of a personal triumph?”

Douglas found himself riding in a dead calm, the wind gone from his sails.

“Why, I don’t know, doctor, as to that—exactly. I felt pretty proud, I’ll admit, when the manager of the plant told me I could try it out. He said I did well, too, after we signed off, so I guess it’s just about as good as permanent. The pay isn’t so very much, but it might lead to something bigger.”

“Life is so short,” said the doctor crisply, “that it’s rather perilous to devote oneself to aims that are contingent on something that might happen.”

The young man’s shoulders sagged a little lower.

“But if a feller keeps trying to do his best,” he said desperately, “isn’t there a pretty fair chance for him in most any line? I’ve heard you say you had quite a struggle yourself, sir, getting an education and climbing up to the top. You’re a scholar and scientist, and it seems as though real intellectual men are a good deal like artists—they sort o’ have the artistic temperament, as it were.”

“Nothing of the kind!” snapped the doctor. “My own work and study have always been devoted exclusively to the exact sciences, and pure science has absolutely nothing to do with the artistic temperament, thank God!”

“But may I inquire if you did your best this evening, Raymond?”

“I certainly tried to, doctor.”

“Then I’d give up that sort of work, my young friend, if I were you. I understand that there are many radio broadcasting stations in this country, and I suppose each one has one or more announcers.

“Well, sir, I have heard the names of a few such men who have attained some degree of success and fame. I fancy that their ‘best’ was of a somewhat higher order than yours.

“This evening, in the course of an hour, you grossly mispronounced such illustrious and familiar names as those of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt, although you profess to be a musician and should be well informed about the great composers. You pronounced Tannhäuser so that it sounded to us like Tan-howser. Inexcusable!

“Young man, a radio announcer has no right to mispronounce a single word! He stands—in some degree—in the position of an educator, and is responsible to his public.”

“But, doctor!” groaned Douglas, “I’m not a college man, you know. I certainly didn’t know I got those names wrong.”

“In Heaven’s name!” cried the exasperated professor, “does a man have to go to college to learn how to look for a word in the dictionary? It should be part of every announcer’s job, sir, to inform himself in detail—to a reasonable extent—upon every fact that he has to communicate to his audience, and verify every doubtful word or name by reference to a pronouncing dictionary. Then we might have no more announcements of Vur-dye’s Trovatorr or Mass-cag-ny’s Cava-lay-ria Rusty-cana.”

“That would mean,” sighed Douglas, gloomily reflective, “that a man would have to put in most of the day studying encyclopedias and library books, to do his work according to your ideas in the evening.”

“Well, that’s about the size of it,” agreed the doctor cheerfully. “On the same principle I put in a week of constant study and research in order to lecture intelligently on a certain subject for one hour. But of course, you never would be expected to work as hard as that, Raymond; so you needn’t be utterly despondent about it.”

“Well, I’m much obliged for the jolts, doctor. I asked for your opinion, and I got it. I shall think of it a good deal, too. The people here in the house have always been pretty nice to me, and maybe I’ve been fed too many compliments.

“Right now I don’t seem to be quite so popular, and—well, I’m sorry there had to be any trouble. I don’t claim to be entirely in the right, and I wouldn’t say that—er—that Miss Granby was altogether wrong. I—”

“Young man,” said the professor, “I am not prepared, at midnight or any other time, to go into your personal problems or your personal psychology. I was never cut out to be a keeper in a menagerie.”

VI.

“This is WXL, at Port Cardinal,” said Douglas Raymond to the air, “owned and operated by the Port Cardinal Electrical Power and Equipment Corporation. We are broadcasting on a frequency of seven hundred and eighty kilocycles by authority of the Federal Board of Radio Commissioners. Please stand by!

“Good evening, radio neighbors!” he went on a moment later. “This is Douglas Raymond announcing. We are taking and giving great pleasure this evening in presenting an hour of chamber music by the Montezuma quartet.

“Now, friends and neighbors, I don’t believe you really care a brass farthing who sponsors the Montezuma quartet, and the important thing is to jump right into the mighty fine music they’re going to give us; but I think it’s pretty decent of the Montezuma Art Fabric Company to organize this ensemble and pay for its time on the air and all the other incidental expenses, to say nothing of the salaries of such distinguished artists, just so that we music lovers can have sixty minutes of pure enjoyment.

“Like all great public benefactors, the Montezuma Art Fabric Company is very modest and self-effacing, and I’m sure they’d like to have their good deeds carefully hidden like a light under a bushel, but I’m going to drag them right out in the light of day for a moment and give them full credit.

“And I’m going to tell you, too—whether they like it or not—that the reason they can spend so much money for art and entertainment, is that they own and operate those big mills that are turning out rugs and tapestries, drapery and upholstery materials, and various decorative fabrics, after wonderful old Spanish, Mexican, and ancient Aztec designs. If you want to see the art and craftsmanship of people whose taste in music is so exquisite, just ask your dealer to show you the Montezuma fabrics.

“And now! The quartet will render ‘Une Nuit à Lisbonne,’ that fascinating barcarolle by the French genius, Charles Camille Saint-Saëns.”

Among the vast radio audience sat Dr. Hillary, with Mrs. Tredmore, Miss Stark, and Miss Bascom, in the Wistaria Lodge parlor.

“Extraordinary!” murmured the professor softly, while giving attentive ear to the first strains of the music. “I dare say that’s the first time I ever heard a very nearly perfect pronunciation of Saint-Saëns’s name over the radio.”

“It’s a name,” whispered Miss Stark, “that I’d rather write than speak; in matters linguistic, I’m an arrant coward.”

“Mr. Raymond pronounced other names and words with great authority and precision, I noticed,” said Mrs. Tredmore. “And did you mark his delivery and enunciation?”

“Perhaps that accounts for the veritable library of dictionaries and books of reference in his room,” said Miss Bascom. “He must have spent all his savings. There are works on elocution and public speaking, foreign lexicons, and all manner of strange little handbooks and things.”

“Quite commendable, really!” breathed the professor, then raised a hand to turn his ear toward the loud-speaker, thus tactfully indicating that he wished to give his entire attention to the music.