“It’ll spoil everything,” she repeated, feebly.

“It’ll make us … Just you wait and see.”

The journey home, to New York and then to Boston, was indeed a spectacular success. That ‘moderate amount of promotion’ which Charles Bannister had proposed, left nothing to chance: everything about it – bookings, advertising, radio time, personal appearances, local contacts – all were handled with a degree of skill and a sureness of touch which convinced him, more strongly than ever, that Jack Lett’s inclusion in their organization was not a mistake. Before they set out, Jack Lett went on ahead, bearing not only the tidings of the Esther Costello Club (which had been launched in Hollywood), but with invoices for several hundred thousand Esther Costello products, already ordered in advance, and a cabin trunk full of samples to drum up further business. He made good use of his time; and from the very start, as they retraced their steps in his wake, the idea caught on.

The dolls sold, the dogs sold, the monkey figures sold like hamburgers at a race track; the snakes and ladders game (renamed ‘Tapalong’) became a current epidemic, and Tapalong tournaments supplanted everything save canasta in the national consciousness. But it was the Esther Costello Club – for girls only – which set all hearts a-beating. Here also they kept the name ‘Tapalong’, and the proposed sale of uniforms to members: the latter rose in grade from Junior Tapalong to Seeing-Eye Tapalong, in accord with the number of members they enrolled, at a dollar a time. The uniform also followed the line that Jack Lett had planned: it consisted of a white linen apron embroidered with harps, and a kind of beret in the form of a three-leafed shamrock, with ‘Tapalong Club’ printed on the border, and the stalk hanging down at the back.

Originally, Jack Lett suggested wooden clogs to complete the outfit; but medical opinion was against this. Instead, there was a bunch of three keys, worn on a chain round the neck, and labelled ‘Sight’, ‘Hearing’, and ‘Speech’. The keys came in five different metals, from aluminium alloy to gold, according to the grade of the member. They were of special significance, and there was a complicated kind of ritual attached to their handling at meetings.

By the time the party reached New York, the club was solidly established; and the rally which they held there set the seal on what was already a national institution. Four hundred club members, in their uniforms, made up the guard of honour; Esther ‘spoke’ for over an hour; and at the end the collection, taken up by children wielding green shamrock bags at the end of long white wands, brought in nearly twenty thousand dollars.

“White wands?” said Charles Bannister later, querying a modest item in the expense account. “Why white?”

“She’s blind,” said Jack Lett cheerfully. “It’s quite legitimate.”

New York was the peak of triumph, Boston the warm clamour of homecoming. Esther had left her adopted town as a local celebrity, whose name in a Boston headline rang a familiar bell with most readers; she returned, six months later, as a national asset with a coast to coast following. Jack Lett, going on ahead as usual to prepare the way, found that there was little to do save coordinate Press publicity for Esther’s arrival, and then for her first big meeting; the Boston branch of the Esther Costello Club was already established, and, thanks to his local agents, sales of the various games and toys were booming. There was no doubt that Esther Costello had arrived.