The Planet of Peril

THE ABDUCTION.

Robert Ellsmore Grandon stifled a yawn with difficulty, as the curtain went down on the first act of “La Tosca.” Opera bored him utterly. He silently wished that his well-meaning aunt would not drag him with such clocklike regularity to these monotonous matinées. She had taken a box in the Chicago Auditorium for the season, and so far he had not escaped a single performance.

Not that there was anything wrong with the opera. The trouble was with Grandon himself. He was tired of the indolent, luxurious life he led with his doting aunt, tired of endless matinées, dinners, receptions and halls, tired of the pretentious mansion on Sheridan Road, the numerous servants it housed, and the dawdling idle rich who frequented its spacious halls and gardens. He longed for action, adventure, romance—for the opportunity to think and act for himself, for a chance to accomplish something worth while.