Officer 666

A young Manhattan millionaire returns from abroad to find that a picture thief has been using his name around town, courting a woman who expects to elope with him, and holding keys to the Fifth Avenue house where his paintings hang. Travers Gladwin decides to handle it himself: he borrows the uniform of patrolman Michael Phelan, whose shield number gives the book its title, and waits. What follows is a farce of borrowed identities, pulling in a valet, an heir to a mustard fortune, and a young woman who has no idea which man is which. Currie was a newspaperman who later edited the Ladies’ Home Journal; his co-author, Augustin McHugh, wrote the Broadway version that Cohan and Harris ran at the Gaiety the same year. The timing is pure stage comedy: doors, disguises, nerve.