PART SEVEN
"When did you become his manager?"

"Not until 1922, five years before his death. John Lange, his longtime manager, had died and after that people once more began to take advantage of Boone's generosity and blindness. I found out that a man here in town had given Boone some papers to sign, under the guise of regular business, which turned out to be checks for large sums of money and deeds to much of Boone's property. I've never been so mad. I went to this man's office and leveled my pistol at his heart. 'You've known me all your life', I said, 'and you know I mean what I say. Either you tear up those papers, or I drop you where you stand.' He tore up the papers. Then I went to Boone and said, 'Don't sign another thing until I've read it first.' So he made me his manager, and I booked him for seventeen hundred concerts over the next five years. When he became ill I cancelled fifty-seven concerts in Illinois alone."

On my last visit with Mr. Allen I heard one more story about Boone's fabulous memory.

"There was an opera in town one week and the star came into my store to buy some music. She saw Boone playing in the back of the room and said to me, 'I met him in Kansas twenty-four years ago when I was playing in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Let's see if he remembers my voice.' Then she went back and spoke to him and asked, 'Do you know who I am?' 'Yes, of course,' Boone said with a grin, 'you're Little Eva!'"

When I told Mr. Allen goodbye that day, he said, "Come back soon." But I became busy with term papers and final exams, and so it was several weeks before I remarked to a friend one day that I was on my way to visit Mr. Allen. She looked at me in surprise and said, "Mr. Allen died, didn't you know? All his things were auctioned off last weekend.

That evening I stood at the foot of his stairs looking at the faded sign, LEARN TO PLAY -- 10C A DAY. I didn't go up for I couldn't bear to see the place swept clean.

Now, years later, I still wonder who bought the square parlor grand, the piano with Mr. Allen's name in gold, the box of Blind Boone's music. They own priceless treasures from a vanished age.