Near the water's edge a large dance platform had been constructed and decorated especially for the occasion, in the prevailing Oriental motif. A famous jazz band borrowed from one of the chief Broadway midnight-to-morning dance clubs offered a tumult of syncopation which all the dancers pronounced too wonderful to describe. At intervals the dance floor was cleared and stars and lesser celebrities of the New York theatrical world did their bits. The professional talent had been assembled by a remarkable young man named Grantland, lean and leather-lynged and seemingly everywhere at once. He was a sort of superpress agent for a chain of country-wide vaudeville theaters and boasted that he could induce any Broadway star to go anywhere. Dudley Drake had been the means of getting in touch with him through the fact that Drake and Porter were the financial backers of the concern for which he worked.
The water was aglitter with the lights of yachts and smaller power craft loaned by their owners for the purpose of selling rides at whatever price the passenger would pay "and no change given."
Outside in the deeper water several palatial yachts, aflame with light from stem to stern, owned mostly by the millionaire Peabody and Hurd crowd, slowly raked the gala scene with
