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Show Il t THE LEG I M By Alexander Harvey. H J Sheffield awoke late that night to And the H i hotel afire. By the time he had dresBed, the (' engines In the street far below were directing I their spurts of water against tongues of flames. He choked from the quantities of smoke in his m lungs as at last he stepped outside his door. The H hall was an oven. He ran to the elevator. Not a H ring resulted from his pressing of the buttons, H one after another. H Slowly he retreated to the huge window ovt- H j looking Broadway. He did not once dream of J 3- H ' scending by such a route from the interior of the H i luxurious New York hotel. Yet he felt no little H ' alarm. The total absence of all companionship in H his plight proved that he had been overlooked. He B might be the one victim of a conflagration that 1 from its spectacular character alone seemed his-V his-V I I vtoric. H; I "Help!" M v It was a woman's voice. Sheffield walked M j v quickly to a great door affording entrance to a fl suite which he knew to be one of the most lux- 1)' urious in the whole luxurious establishment. His n j , efforts were rewarded only by a repetition of "the H cry in tones more frenzed. H:. i "Hallo-o-o!" he called. , ' "Let me out. The door has settled. tot me i B Sheffield turned the great handle of the carved H wood door. It would not yield. He pushed with H: all his strength. In vain! H "It's locked!" H The slow crackle of flames had grown now Into H something very like a roar. Sheffield had td H shout. The answer came in a scream. H "The door has settled, I tell you. The key H won't turn in the lock." H Sheffield knew he had heard these accents be- H fore. He could not place them. He ran back to H the room he had slept in. From the window; he H discerned the climbing firemen, making their H slow way from one story to another far below. H There was safety for him. But what of the wo- H man in the locked suite? He dashed back to her H H "Go to your windows!" H The prisoner did not seem to comprehend. He m heard her wrenching the door handle. M "My apartment is afire!" he heard her say in k those familiar tones. "I can not leave this room. H Let me out." i Sheffield's eye caught the name under the I electric button. He started in amazement. "Is this your own apartment?" M "Yes." The answer came in a gasp. "I am B Miss Prosser." M Sheffield knew now why that appeal for help M had sounded in his ear with a witchery so famil- H M Behind that locked door, then, was Adeline H Prosser! The fame of this woman's strange B lusts, like the fame of her stranger beauty, had B' reached Sheffield in the court room. He had seen Hi the bust of this fantastic creature heaving in that H role of Semiramis upon which she had conferred H infamies more bizarre than Babylon knew. Her B' hips had writhed like serpents in an impersonates impersona-tes tion of the adulterous Clytemnestra lurking for Hl her paramour. In the interpretation of that form B of guilt in which woman reveals both her artistry H and her wickedness, Adeline Prosser could make H even her knees eloquent. No ordinary histrionic B talent could be n( equate to the ordeal of rolling H across the rugs wnich carpeted the stage when-B when-B ever she essayed the part of 'the lustful step-B step-B mother of Hippolytus It was less the expression B of her face, much as it told, which rendered Ade-B Ade-B line Prosser a tragedy queen, than the thoi and BT ' ' "" " " ""- iiimw.wi ii in ww limn i i mw i "riTmiiiwwiii n messages conveyed to an audience by her thighs and her bosom. This woman had never married or rather she was wedded to that greatest of all artists, Sin. Adeline Prosser fatigued her lovers into the grave and she had the most celebrated neck in the Anglo-Saxon world. It seemed to Sheffield as he stood outside that door and listened to the entreaties of the woman within, that her need of his courage reincarnated him. He thrilled with a sudden consciousness of being destined to tremendous things, like that prodigy who would yet unchain Prometheus. To have at his mercy so much genius, so much beauty, made Sheffield one with the heroic Perseus, Per-seus, who freed Andromeda. He reeled as he heard the woman behind the door pledge him the gift of herself did he but free her from the ilames. She spoke next of the bought love she had bestowed upon one of America's first financiers finan-ciers and compared it with the love built upon her gratitude. The actress seemed at times to rave with the fury of the priestesses she impersonated imper-sonated with hair down her arched back and naked arms aloft. She hinted at secret delights and strange sins. Her voice sank to a whisper and Sheffield observed next that she was hiBsing her pledge through the keyhole. It was subtle in her to sink that silver voice in view, of all she wished him to feel, for her promises were pagan in their meaning. He! listened in all the rapture of Paolo with Francesca's arm around his neck. A crash of stairways followed by an eruption from the volcano in the cellarage caused Sheffield to leap. He escaped by a hair's breath. The inner in-ner structure of the great hotel had been eaten from its supports by the advance of the flames. An immense chasm yawned where once had been the grand winding staircase. Shrieks below now drowned the plea of the woman behindi the door. Sheffield stole one glance over the edge of the flooring into the gulf of smoke and fire from the depths. A second's panic possessed him. He had actually act-ually turned from the door. "Remember!" she was calling to him now, pursuing entreaties never interrupted for a moment, "I will reward you with myself. Fifty mistresses could not discover such a world of woman for you as I will be." The words had scarcely ravished his ear when the transom above let fall a 3hower of glass. A foot, dainty and slender, then an ankle, then the calf of the leg, and at last a rounded knee, com pleted the conquest the appeal had begun. But the leg was prisoner. The transom swung too narrowly for her other divine contours. There, above the transom, swung the long curve of this feminine limb, outlined in sculptural sculp-tural severity against tho whiteness of the bed room door. From tho Louis XV heel of the three buckled laced shoe which encased the slim foot to the silk-finished webbing of the hose protector pro-tector just above the knee, there was no detail which did not appeal to Sheffield as the trim ankle of Lou'se de la Valllere appealed to the Sun King. No exaggeration had ever seemed more poetical to Sheffield than the statement re garding Cleopatra's nose. Were that member shorter, he once read, the world's whole history might have been changed. For the first time in his life, Sheffield realized how literally the assertion asser-tion must be accepted.' Did that limb, projected from tho transom, address its appeal to his sensibilities sensi-bilities through the medium of a knee less undulating, un-dulating, an instep less delicately arched or a calf less maddening in Its roundness, he would already al-ready be in flight from the hunger of thej flames. He stood like a man entranced as the fine quality of the opera length stocking with its mercerized garter top exploited itself below the divinity of the knee in hues of flaming red. Sheffield drew near enough to touch the black suede quartering of the laced shoe. The whole limb quivered like the preened neck of a swan. He strove to clutch the straight shin across which the lace effects of the stocking Idealized themselves as he gazed until they seemed the elaborate ornamentation of some gate into paradise. para-dise. He could j, extend his hand high enough to attain the knee. The door was so lofty that he could no more than press one kiss upon the $ three buckled effect over the instep. The foot fluttered like an imprisoned dove as he fondled it. "Save me," called the actress faintly, "I am suffocating." He released his hold upon the vamp against which his lips were glued and retreated several i steps. Sheffield was a heavy man but as he J braced himself for the agony of the impending I collision, he realized that the door was stronger than himself. So it proved. He fell against it furiously only to experience an agony In his I Bhoulder. He forgot it the next moment, for his darting eye embraced the leg in one comprehensive comprehens-ive study of garter, ankle lace and red silk. The & leg spoke unutterable things to his soul. Once more Sheffield retreated. Once more he looked for Inspiration to those agonizing curves which from instep to knee awoke the pagan in his soul. Again he hurled himself against the door Vain effort! He reeled from the shock but with never a thought of flight. At the window, a little way beyond, was life; but he preferred death, he told himself, with that long leg to make it thrilling. thrill-ing. He gasped as the fumes from the fire rolled almost at his feet, but he could; think, even then, of empires lost from motives that inspired him now. That leg was his empire the empire of a silk embroidered instep luring him to sovereignties sovereign-ties more exalted than those of Persian kings. He seemed to understand all things, standing there beneath that leg the forfeiture of the world by the Roman Emperor who preferred love to all else, the decay of the pomps of strange old cults and the growth of civilization and their slow decline de-cline and fall. The clue to such things must comprise no more than a leg, but it must be the eloquent leg, the shapely leg, the leg in silk, the leg tnat unravels riddles of the Sphinx and speaks in a subtle language to the eye to which its revelations are made. Flame roared its loudest In his ear as, thinking think-ing only of the leg outlined in its significant red silk, he made his final assault. This time the door was Incapable of further resistance. Sheffield fell across the threshold in a faint. Ho was restored in a trice by the woman who bent over. him. Their eyes met. He leaped to his feet. "You!" he gasped. "Miss Prosser!" "Yes." The reply was in tones of composure contrasting oddly with the frenzied accents of a few minutes ago. "I am Miss Prosser sister of Adeline." The firemen had appeared at the windows. There was time for one remark only. Sheffield f f made it as cruel as he could. "You are an old woman." t "If I were not an old woman," she answered j quietly, "I would not have had experience enough to make my appeal to sex. I would have appealed to your courage." Mirror. i |