The Man on the Box

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The Man on the Box, by Harold MacGrath

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Title: The Man on the Box
Author: Harold MacGrath
Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6578] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on December 29, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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[Illustration: Henry E. Dixey in "The Man on the Box."]
THE MAN ON THE BOX
by
HAROLD MACGRATH
Author of The Grey Cloak, The Puppet Crown
Illustrated by scenes from Walter N. Lawrence's beautiful production of the play as seen for 123 nights at the Madison Square Theatre, New York

To Miss Louise Everts

CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I
Introduces My Hero
II Introduces My Heroine
III The Adventure Begins
IV A Family Reunion
V The Plot Thickens
VI The Man on the Box
VII A Police Affair
VIII Another Salad Idea
IX The Heroine Hires a Groom
X Pirate
XI The First Ride
XII A Ticklish Business
XIII A Runaway
XIV An Ordeal or Two
XV Retrospective
XVI The Previous Affair
XVII Dinner is Served
XVIII Caught!
XIX "Oh, Mister Butler"
XX The Episode of the Stove Pipe
XXI The Rose
XXII The Drama Unrolls
XXIII Something About Heroes
XXIV A Fine Lover
XXV A Fine Heroine, Too
XXVI The Castle of Romance

He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, Who dares not put it to the touch To win or lose it all.

Dramatis Personae
Colonel George Annesley A retired Army Officer
Miss Betty Annesley His daughter
Lieutenant Robert Warburton Lately resigned
Mr. John Warburton His elder brother, of the War Department
Mrs. John Warburton The elder brother's wife
Miss Nancy Warburton The lieutenant's sister
Mr. Charles Henderson Her fiance
Count Karloff An unattached diplomat
Colonel Frank Raleigh The Lieutenant's Regimental Colonel
Mrs. Chadwick A product of Washington life
Monsieur Pierre A chef
Mademoiselle Celeste A lady's maid
Jane Mrs. Warburton's maid
The Hopeful A baby
William A stable-boy
Fashionable People Necessary for a dinner party
Celebrities Also necessary for a dinner party
Unfashionables Police, cabbies, grooms, clerks, etc.

TIME--Within the past ten years.
SCENE--Washington, D.C., and its environs.

I
INTRODUCES MY HERO
If you will carefully observe any map of the world that is divided into inches at so many miles to the inch, you will be surprised as you calculate the distance between that enchanting Paris of France and the third-precinct police-station of Washington, D. C, which is not enchanting. It is several thousand miles. Again, if you will take the pains to run your glance, no doubt discerning, over the police- blotter at the court (and frankly, I refuse to tell you the exact date of this whimsical adventure), you will note with even greater surprise that all this hubbub was caused by no crime against the commonwealth of the Republic or against the person of any of its conglomerate people. The blotter reads, in heavy simple fist, "disorderly conduct," a phrase which is almost as embracing as the word diplomacy, or society, or respectability.
So far as my knowledge goes, there is no such a person as James Osborne. If, by any unhappy chance, he does exist, I trust that he will pardon the civil law of Washington, my own measure of familiarity, and the questionable taste on the part of my hero--hero, because, from the rise to the fall of the curtain, he occupies the center of the stage in this little comedy-drama, and because authors have yet to find a happy synonym for the word. The name James Osborne was given for the simple reason that it was the first that occurred to the culprit's mind, so desperate an effort did he make to hide his identity. Supposing, for the sake of an argument in his favor, supposing he had said John Smith or William Jones or John Brown? To this very day he would have been hiring lawyers to extricate him from libel and false-representation suits. Besides, had he given any of these names, would not that hound-like scent of the ever suspicious police have been aroused?
To move round and round in the circle of commonplace, and