Grand Magazine, January 1921
 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XX (cont.)

FREDDIE returned to the Albany in a state of gloom and uneasiness. Algy’s remarks, coming on top of the Wally Mason episode, had shaken him. The London in which he and Derek moved and had their being is nothing but a village, and it was evident that village gossip was hostile to Derek. People were talking about him. Local opinion had decided that he had behaved badly. Already one man had cut him. Freddie blenched at a sudden vision of streets-full of men, long Piccadillys of men, all cutting him, one after the other. Something had got to be done.

The subject was not an easy one to broach to his somewhat forbidding friend, as he discovered when the latter arrived about half an hour later. Derek had been attending the semi-annual banquet of the Worshipful Dry-Salters Company down in the City, understudying one of the speakers, a leading Member of Parliament, who had been unable to appear: and he was still in the grip of that feeling of degraded repletion which City dinners induce.

Yet, unfavourably disposed as, judging by his silence and the occasional moody grunts he uttered, he appeared to be to a discussion of his private affairs, it seemed to Freddie impossible that the night should be allowed to pass without some word spoken on the subject. He thought of Ronny, and what Ronny had said, of Algy, and what Algy had said, of Wally Mason, and how Wally had behaved in this very room; and he nerved himself to the task.

“Derek, old top.”

A grunt.

“I say, Derek, old bean.”

Derek roused himself, and looked gloomily across the room to where he stood, warming his legs at the blaze.

“Well?”

Freddie found a difficulty in selecting words. A ticklish business, this. One that might well have disconcerted a diplomat. Freddie was no diplomat, and the fact enabled him to find a way in the present crisis. Equipped by nature with an amiable tactlessness and a happy gift of blundering, he charged straight at the main point, and landed on it like a circus elephant alighting on a bottle.

“I say, you know about Jill!”

He stooped to rub the backs of his legs, on which the fire was playing with a little too fierce a glow, and missed his companion’s start and the sudden thickening of his bushy eyebrows.

“Well?” said Derek again.

Freddie nerved himself to proceed. A thought flashed across his mind that Derek was looking exactly like Lady Underhill. It was the first time he had seen the family resemblance quite so marked.

“Ronny Devereux was saying . . .” faltered Freddie.

“Damn Ronny Devereux.”

“Oh, absolutely! But . . .”

“Ronny Devereux! Who the devil is Ronny Devereux?”

“Why, old man, you’ve heard me speak of him, haven’t you? Pal of mine. He came down to the station with Algy and me to meet your mater that morning.”

“Oh, that fellow? And he has been saying something about? . . .”

“It isn’t only Ronny, you know,” Freddie hastened to interject. “Algy Martyn’s talking about it, too. And lots of other fellows. And Algy’s sister and a lot of people. They’re all saying . . .”

“What are they saying?”

Freddie bent down and chafed the back of his legs. He simply couldn’t look at Derek while he had that Lady Underhill expression on the old map. Freddie was conscious of a faint sense of grievance. He could not have put it into words, but what he felt was that a fellow had no right to go about looking like Lady Underhill.

“What are they saying?” repeated Derek grimly.

“Well . . .” Freddie hesitated. “. . . that it’s a bit tough . . . On Jill, you know.”

“They think I behaved badly?”

“Well . . . Oh, well, you know!”

Derek smiled a ghastly smile. This was not wholly due to mental disturbance. The dull heaviness which was the legacy of the Dry-Salters dinner had begun to change to something more actively unpleasant. A sub-motive of sharp pain had begun to run through it, flashing in and out like lightning through a thunder-cloud. He felt sullen and vicious.

“I wonder,” he said with savage politeness, “if, when you chat with your friends, you would mind choosing some other topic than my private affairs.”

“Sorry, old man. But they started it, don’t you know.”

“And if you feel you’ve got to discuss me, kindly keep it to yourself. Don’t come and tell me what your damned friends said to each other and to you, and what you said to them, because it bores me. I’m not interested. I don’t value their opinions as much as you seem to.” Derek paused, to battle in silence with the imperious agony within him. “It was good of you to put me up here,” he went on, “but I think I won’t trespass on your hospitality any longer. Perhaps you’ll ask Parker to pack my things to-morrow.” Derek moved, as majestically as an ex-guest of the Worshipful Company of Dry-Salters may, in the direction of the door. “I shall go to the Savoy.”

“Oh, I say, old man! No need to do that.”

“Good night.”

“But, I say . . .”

“And you can tell your friend Devereux that, if he doesn’t stop poking his nose into my private business, I’ll pull it off.”

“Well,” said Freddie doubtfully, “of course I don’t suppose you know, but . . . Ronny’s a pretty hefty bird. He boxed for Cambridge in the light-weights the last year he was up, you know. He . . .”

Derek slammed the door. Freddie was alone. He stood rubbing his legs for some minutes, a rueful expression on his usually cheerful face. Freddie hated rows. He liked everything to jog along smoothly. What a rotten place the world was these days! Just one thing after another. First, poor old Jill takes the knock and disappears. He would miss her badly. What a good sort! What a pal! And now—gone! Biffed off! Next, Derek. Together, more or less, ever since Winchester, and now—bing! . . .

Freddie heaved a sigh and reached out for the Sporting Times, his never-failing comfort in times of depression. He lit another cigar, and curled up in one of the armchairs. He was feeling tired. He had been playing squash all the afternoon, a game at which he was exceedingly expert, and to which he was much addicted.

Time passed. The paper slipped to the floor. A cold cigar followed it. From the depths of the chair came a faint snore. . .

*  *  *  *

A hand on his shoulder brought Freddie with a jerk from troubled dreams. Derek was standing beside him. A bent, tousled Derek, apparently in pain.

“Freddie!”

“Hullo!”

A spasm twisted Derek’s face.

“Have you got any pepsin?”

Derek uttered a groan. What a mocker of our pretty human dignity is this dyspepsia, bringing low the haughtiest of us, less than love itself a respecter of persons. This was a different Derek from the man who had stalked stiffly from the room two hours before. His pride had been humbled upon the rack.

“Pepsin?”

Freddie blinked, the mists of sleep floating gently before his eyes. He could not quite understand what his friend was asking for. It had sounded just like pepsin, and he didn’t believe there was such a word.

“Yes. I’ve got the most damned attack of indigestion.” Derek groaned again. “I was a fool to go to that infernal dinner!”

The mists of sleep rolled away from Freddie. He was awake again, and became immediately helpful. These were the occasions when the Last of the Rookes was a good man to have at your side. It was Freddie who suggested that Derek should recline in the armchair which he had vacated; Freddie who nipped round the corner to the all-night chemist’s, and returned with a magic bottle guaranteed to relieve an ostrich after a surfeit of soda-water bottles; Freddie who mixed and administered the dose.

His ministrations were rewarded. Presently the agony seemed to pass. Derek recovered.

One would say that Derek became himself again, but that the mood of gentle remorse which came upon him as he lay in the armchair was one so foreign to his nature. Freddie had never seen him so subdued. He was like a convalescent child.

“Freddie,” said Derek.

They were sitting over the dying fire. The clock on the mantelpiece, beside which Jill’s photograph had stood, pointed to ten minutes past two. Derek spoke in a low, soft voice. Perhaps the doctors are right after all, and two o’clock is the hour at which our self-esteem deserts us, leaving in its place regret for past sins, good resolutions for future behaviour.

“What do Algy Martyn and the others say about . . . you know?”

Freddie hesitated. Pity to start all that again.

“Oh, I know,” went on Derek. “They say I behaved like a cad.”

“Oh, well . . .”

“They are quite right. I did.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t say that, you know. Faults on both sides, and all that sort of rot.”

“I did!” Derek stared into the fire. “Is it true she has gone to America, Freddie?”

“She told me she was going.”

“What a fool I’ve been!”

The clock ticked on through the silence. The fire sputtered faintly, then gave a little wheeze, like a very old man. Derek rested his chin on his hands, gazing into the ashes.

“I wish to God I could go over there and find her.”

“Why don’t you?”

“How can I? There may be an election coming on at any moment. I can’t stir.”

Freddie leaped from his seat. The suddenness of the action sent a red-hot corkscrew of pain through Derek’s head.

“What the devil’s the matter?” he demanded irritably. Even the gentle mood which comes with convalescence after a City dinner is not guaranteed to endure against this sort of thing.

“I’ve got an idea, old bean!”

“Well, there’s no need to dance, is there!”

“I’ve nothing to keep me here, you know. What’s the matter with my popping over to America and finding Jill?” Freddie tramped the floor, aglow. Each beat of his foot jarred Derek, but he made no complaint.

“Could you?” he asked eagerly.

“Of course I could. I was saying only the other day that I had half a mind to buzz over. It’s a wheeze! I’ll get on the next boat and charge over in the capacity of a jolly old ambassador. Have her back in no time. Leave it to me, old thing! This is where I come out strong!”

 

 

CHAPTER XXI.

HUNTING UNCLE CHRIS.

NEW YORK welcomed Jill, as she came out of the Pennsylvania Station into Seventh Avenue, with a whirl of powdered snow that touched her cheek like a kiss, the cold, bracing kiss one would expect from this vivid city. She stood at the station entrance, a tiny figure beside the huge pillars, looking round her with eager eyes. A wind was whipping down the avenue. The sky was a clear, brilliant tint of the brightest blue. Energy was in the air, and hopefulness. She wondered if Mr. Elmer Mariner ever came to New York. It was hard to see how even his gloom would contrive to remain unaffected by the exhilaration of the place.

Yes, New York looked good . . . good and exciting, with all the taxicabs rattling in at the dark tunnel beside her, with all the people hurrying in and hurrying out, with all this medley of street-cars and sky-signs and crushed snow and drays and horses and policemen, and that vast hotel across the street, towering to heaven like a cliff. It even smelt good. She remembered an old picture in Punch of two country visitors standing on the step of their railway carriage at a London terminus, one saying ecstatically to the other: “Don’t speak! Just sniff! Doesn’t it smell of the Season?” She knew exactly how they had felt, and she approved of their attitude. That was the right way to behave on being introduced to a great metropolis. She stood and sniffed reverently.

She took Uncle Chris’s letter from her bag. He had written from an address on East Fifty-Seventh Street. There would be just time to catch him before he went out to lunch. She hailed a taxicab which was coming out of the station.

It was a slow ride, halted repeatedly by congestion of the traffic, but a short one for Jill. She was surprised at herself, a Londoner of long standing, for feeling so provincial and being so impressed. But London was far away. It belonged to a life that seemed years ago and a world from which she had parted forever. Moreover, this was undeniably a stupendous city through which her taxicab was carrying her. At Times Square the stream of the traffic plunged into a whirlpool, swinging out of Broadway to meet the rapids which poured in from east, west, and north. On Fifth Avenue all the automobiles in the world were gathered together. On the sidewalks pedestrians, muffled against the nipping chill of the crisp air, hurried to and fro. And, above, that sapphire sky spread a rich velvet curtain which made the tops of the buildings stand out like the white minarets of some Eastern city of romance.

The cab drew up in front of a stone apartment-house; and Jill, getting out, passed under an awning through a sort of mediæval courtyard, gay with potted shrubs, to an inner door. She was impressed. The very atmosphere was redolent of riches, and she wondered how in the world Uncle Chris had managed to acquire wealth on this scale in the extremely short space of time which had elapsed since his landing. There bustled past her an obvious millionaire—or, more probably, a greater monarch of finance who looked down upon mere millionaires and out of the goodness of his heart tried to check a tendency to speak patronisingly to them. He was concealed to the eyebrows in a fur coat, and, reaching the sidewalk, was instantly absorbed in a large limousine. Two expensive-looking ladies followed him.

Jill began to feel a little dazed. Evidently the tales one heard of fortunes accumulated overnight in this magic city were true, and one of them must have fallen to the lot of Uncle Chris. For nobody to whom money was a concern could possibly afford to live in a place like this. If Crœsus and the Count of Monte Cristo had applied for lodging here the authorities would probably have looked on them a little doubtfully at first, and hinted at the desirability of a month’s rent in advance.

In a glass case behind the inner door, reading a newspaper and chewing gum, sat a dignified old man in the rich uniform of a general in the Guatemalan army. He was a brilliant spectacle. He wore no jewellery, but this, no doubt, was due to a private distaste for display. As there was no one else of humbler rank at hand from whom Jill could solicit an introduction and the privilege of an audience, she took the bold step of addressing him directly.

“I want to see Major Selby, please.”

The Guatemalan general arrested for a moment the rhythmic action of his jaws, lowered his paper, and looked at her with raised eyebrows. At first Jill thought that he was registering haughty contempt, then she saw that what she had taken for scorn was surprise.

“No Major Selby living here.”

“Major Christopher Selby?”

“Not here,” said the associate of ambassadors and the pampered pet of Guatemala’s proudest beauties. “Never heard of him in my life!”

Jill had read works of fiction in which, at certain crises, everything had “seemed to swim” in front of the heroine’s eyes, but never till this moment had she experienced that remarkable sensation herself. The saviour of Guatemala did not actually swim, perhaps, but he certainly flickered. She had to blink to restore his prismatic outlines to their proper sharpness. Already the bustle and noise of New York had begun to induce in her that dizzy condition of unreality which one feels in dreams, and this extraordinary statement added the finishing touch.

Perhaps the fact that she had said “please” to him when she opened the conversation touched the heart of the hero of a thousand revolutions. Dignified and beautiful as he was to the eye of the stranger, it is unpleasant to have to record that he lived in a world which rather neglected the minor courtesies of speech. People did not often say “please” to him. “Here!” “Hi!” and “Gosh darn you!” yes; but seldom “please.” He seemed to approve of Jill, for he shifted his chewing gum to a position which facilitated speech, and began to be helpful.

“What was the name again?”

“Selby.”

“Howja spell it?”

“S-e-l-b-y.”

“What was the first name?”

“Christopher.”

“Christopher Selby? No one of that name living here.”

“But there must be.”

The veteran shook his head with an indulgent smile.

“You want Mr. Sipperley,” he said tolerantly. In Guatemala these mistakes are always happening. “Mr. George H. Sipperley. He’s on the fourth floor. What name shall I say?”

He had almost reached the telephone when Jill stopped him. This is an age of just-as-good substitutes, but she refused to accept any unknown Sipperley as a satisfactory alternative for Uncle Chris.

“I don’t want Mr. Sipperley. I want Major Selby.”

“Howja spell it once more?”

“S-e-l-b-y.”

“S-e-l-b-y. No one of that name living here. Mr. Sipperley”—he spoke in a wheedling voice, as if determined, in spite of herself, to make Jill see what was in her best interests—“Mr. Sipperley’s on the fourth floor. Gentleman in the real estate business,” he added, insinuatingly. “He’s got blond hair and a Boston bull-dog.”

“He may be all you say, and he may have a dozen bull-dogs . . .”

“Only one. Jack his name is.”

“. . . But he isn’t the right man. It’s absurd. Major Selby wrote to me from this address. This is eighteen East Fifty-seventh Street?”

“This is eighteen East Fifty-seventh Street,” conceded the other, cautiously.

“I’ve got his letter here.” She opened her bag, and gave an exclamation of dismay. “It’s gone!”

“Mr. Sipperley used to have a friend staying with him last fall. A Mr. Robertson. Dark-complected man with a moustache.”

“I took it out to look at the address, and I was sure I put it back. I must have dropped it.”

“There’s a Mr. Rainsby on the seventh floor. He’s a broker down on Wall Street. Short man with an impediment in his speech.”

Jill snapped the clasp of her bag.

“Never mind,” she said. “I must have made a mistake. I was quite sure that this was the address, but it evidently isn’t. Thank you so much. I’m so sorry to have bothered you.”

She walked away, leaving the Terror of Paraguay and all points west speechless: for people who said “thank you so much” to him were even rarer than those who said “please.” He followed her with an affectionate eye till she was out of sight, then, restoring his chewing-gum to circulation, returned to the perusal of his paper.

 

 

CHAPTER XXII

NELLY TAKES A HAND

JILL walked back to Fifth Avenue, crossed it, and made her way thoughtfully along the breezy street which, flanked on one side by the Park and on the other by the green-roofed Plaza Hotel and the apartment-houses of the wealthy, ends in the humbler and more democratic spaces of Columbus Circle. She perceived that she was in that position, familiar to melodrama, of being alone in a great city. The reflection brought with it a certain discomfort. The bag that dangled from her wrist contained all the money she had in the world, the very broken remains of the twenty dollars which Uncle Chris had sent her at Brookport. She had nowhere to go, nowhere to sleep, and no immediately obvious means of adding to her capital. It was a situation which she had not foreseen when she set out to walk to Brookport station.

She pondered over the mystery of Uncle Chris’s disappearance, and found no solution. The thing was inexplicable. She was as sure of the address he had given in his letter as she was of anything in the world. Yet at that address nothing had been heard of him. His name was not even known. These were deeper waters than Jill was able to fathom.

She walked on aimlessly. Presently she found herself, suddenly hungry, opposite a restaurant whose entire front was a sheet of plate-glass. On the other side of this glass, at marble-topped tables, apparently careless of their total lack of privacy, sat the impecunious, lunching, their every mouthful a spectacle for the passer-by. It reminded Jill of looking at fishes in an aquarium. In the centre of the window, gazing out in a distrait manner over piles of apples and grape-fruit, a white-robed ministrant at a stove juggled ceaselessly with buckwheat cakes. He struck the final note in the candidness of the establishment, a priest whose ritual contained no mysteries. It was a spectacle which no hungry girl could resist. Jill went in: and, as she made her way among the tables, a voice spoke her name.

“Miss Mariner!”

Jill jumped, and thought for a moment that the thing must have been an hallucination. It was impossible that anybody in the place should have called her name. Except for Uncle Chris, wherever he might be, she knew no one in New York. Then the voice spoke again, competing valiantly with a clatter of crockery so uproarious as to be more like something solid than a mere sound.

“I couldn’t believe it was you!”

A girl in blue had risen from the nearest table, and was staring at her in astonishment. Jill recognized her instantly. Those big, pathetic eyes, like a lost child’s, were unmistakable. It was the parrot girl, the girl whom she and Freddie Rooke had found in the drawing-room at Ovington Square that afternoon when the foundations of the world had given way and chaos had begun.

“Good gracious!” cried Jill. “I thought you were in London!”

That feeling of emptiness and panic, the result of her interview with the Guatemalan general at the apartment-house, vanished magically. She sat down at this unexpected friend’s table with a light heart.

“Whatever are you doing in New York?” asked the girl. “I never knew you meant to come over.”

“It was a little sudden. Still, here I am. And I’m starving. What are those things you’re eating?”

“Buckwheat cakes.”

“Oh, yes. I remember Uncle Chris talking about them on the boat. I’ll have some.”

“But when did you come over?”

“I landed about ten days ago. I’ve been down at a place called Brookport on Long Island. How funny running into you like this.”

“I was surprised that you remembered me.”

“I’ve forgotten your name,” admitted Jill, frankly. “But that’s nothing. I always forget names.”

“My name’s Nelly Bryant.”

“Of course. And you’re on the stage, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I’ve just got work with Goble and Cohn. Hullo, Phil!”

A young man, with a lithe figure and smooth black hair brushed straight back from his forehead, had paused at the table on his way to the cashier’s desk.

“Hello, Nelly.”

“I didn’t know you lunched here.”

“Don’t often. Been rehearsing with Joe up at the Century Roof, and had a quarter of an hour to get a bite. Can I sit down?”

“Sure. This is my friend, Miss Mariner.”

The young man shook hands with Jill, flashing an approving glance at her out of his dark, restless eyes.

“Pleased to meet you.”

“This is Phil Brown,” said Nelly. “He plays the straight for Joe Widgeon. They’re the best jazz-and-hokum team on the Keith Circuit.”

“Oh, hush!” said Mr. Brown modestly. “You always were a great little booster, Nelly.”

“Well, you know you are! Weren’t you held over at the Palace last time? Well, then!”

“That’s true,” admitted the young man. “Maybe we didn’t fool ’em, eh? Stop me on the street and ask me! Only eighteen bows second-house Saturday!”

Jill was listening, fascinated.

“I can’t understand a word,” she said. “It’s like another language.”

“You’re from the other side, aren’t you?” asked Mr. Brown.

“She only landed a week ago,” said Nelly.

“I thought so from the accent,” said Mr. Brown. “So our talk sort of goes over the top, does it? Well, you’ll learn American soon, if you stick around.”

“I’ve learned some already,” said Jill. The relief of meeting Nelly had made her feel very happy. She liked this smooth-haired young man. “A man on the train this morning said to me: ‘Would you care for the morning paper, sister?’ I said, ‘No, thanks, brother, I want to look out of the window and think!’ ”

“You meet a lot of fresh guys on trains,” commented Mr. Brown austerely. “You want to give ’em the cold-storage eye.” He turned to Nelly. “Did you go down to Ike, as I told you?”

“Yes.”

“Did you cop?”

“Yes. I never felt so happy in my life. I’d waited over an hour on that landing of theirs, and then Johnny Miller came along, and I yelled in his ear that I was after work, and he told me it would be all right.”

“Who,” inquired Jill, anxious to be abreast of the conversation, “is Ike?”

“Mr. Goble. Where I’ve just got work. Goble and Cohn, you know.”

“I never heard of them!”

The young man extended his hand.

“Put it there!” he said. “They never heard of me! At least, the fellow I saw when I went down to the office hadn’t! Can you beat it!”

“Oh, did you go down there, too?” asked Nelly.

“Sure. Joe wanted to get in another show on Broadway. He’d sort of got tired of vodevil. Say, I don’t want to scare you, Nelly, but, if you ask me, that show they’re putting out down there is a citron! I don’t think Ike’s got a cent of his own money in it. My belief is that he’s running it for a lot of amateurs. Why, say, listen! Joe and I blow in there to see if there’s anything for us, and there’s a tall guy in tortoiseshell cheaters sitting in Ike’s office. Said he was the author, and was engaging the principals. We told him who we were, and it didn’t make any hit with him at all. He said he had never heard of us. And, when we explained, he said no, there wasn’t going to be any of our sort of work in the show. Said he was making an effort to give the public something rather better than the usual sort of thing. No specialities required. He said it was an effort to restore the Gilbert and Sullivan tradition. Say, who are these Gilbert and Sullivan guys, anyway? They get written up in the papers all the time, and I never met anyone who’d run across them. If you want my opinion, that show down there is a comic opera!”

“For Heaven’s sake!” Nelly had the musical comedy performer’s horror of the older-established form of entertainment. “Why, comic opera died in the year one!”

“Well, these guys are going to dig it up. That’s the way it looks to me.” He lowered his voice. “Say, I saw Clarice last night,” he said in a confidential undertone. “It’s all right.”

“It is?”

“We’ve made it up. It was like this . . .”

His conversation took an intimate turn. Jill might have felt a little excluded, but for the fact that a sudden and exciting idea had come to her. She sat back, thinking. . . . After all, what else was she to do? She must do something. . . .

She bent forward and interrupted Mr. Brown.

“Do you think there would be any chance for me if I asked for work at Goble and Cohn’s?” she asked.

“You’re joking!” cried Nelly.

“I’m not at all.”

“But what do you want with work?”

Jill hesitated. She disliked discussing her private affairs, but there was obviously no way of avoiding it. Nelly was round-eyed and mystified, and Mr. Brown had manifestly no intention whatever of withdrawing tactfully. He wanted to hear all.

“I’ve lost my money,” said Jill.

“Lost your money! Do you mean? . . .”

“I’ve lost it all. Every penny I had in the world.”

“Tough!” interpolated Mr. Brown judicially. “I was broke once way out in a tank-town in Oklahoma. The manager skipped with our salaries.”

“But how?” gasped Nelly.

“It happened about the time we met in London. Do you remember Freddie Rooke, who was at our house that afternoon?”

A dreamy look came into Nelly’s eyes. There had not been an hour since their parting when she had not thought of that immaculate sportsman. It would have amazed Freddie, could he have known, but to Nelly Bryant he was the one perfect man in an imperfect world.

“Do I!” she sighed ecstatically.

Mr. Brown shot a keen glance at her.

“Aha!” he cried facetiously. “Who is he, Nelly? Who is this blue-eyed boy?”

“If you want to know,” said Nelly, defiance in her tone, “he’s the fellow who gave me fifty pounds, with no strings tied to it—get that!—when I was broke in London! If it hadn’t been for him I’d be there still.”

“Did he!” cried Jill. “Freddie!”

“Yes. Oh, Gee!” Nelly sighed once more. “I suppose I’ll never see him again in this world.”

“Introduce me to him if you do,” said Mr. Brown. “He sounds just the sort of little pal I’d like to have!”

“You remember hearing Freddie say something about losing money in a slump on the Stock Exchange,” proceeded Jill. “Well, that was how I lost mine. It’s a long story, and it’s not worth talking about, but that’s how things stand, and I’ve got to find work of some sort, and it looks to me as if I should have a better chance of finding it on the stage than anywhere else. How much would these people Goble and Cohn give me if I got an engagement?”

“Only forty a week.”

“Forty dollars a week! It’s wealth! Where are they?”

“Over at the Gotham Theatre on Forty-second Street.”

“I’ll go there at once.”

“But you’ll hate it. You don’t realise what it’s like. You wait hours and hours and nobody sees you.”

“Why shouldn’t I walk straight in and say that I’ve come for work?”

Nelly’s big eyes grew bigger.

“But you couldn’t!”

“Why not?”

Mr. Brown intervened with decision.

“You’re dead right,” he said to Jill approvingly. “If you ask me, that’s the only sensible thing to do. Where’s the sense in hanging around and getting stalled? Managers are human guys, some of ’em. Probably, if you were to try it, they’d appreciate a bit of gall. It would show ’em you’d got pep. You go down there and try walking straight in. They can’t eat you. It makes me sick when I see all those poor devils hanging about outside these offices, waiting to get noticed and nobody ever paying any attention to them. You push the office-boy in the face if he tries to stop you, and go in and make ’em take notice. And, whatever you do, don’t leave your name and address! That’s the old, moth-eaten gag they’re sure to try to pull on you. Tell ’em there’s nothing doing. Say you’re out for a quick decision! Stand ’em on their heads!”

Jill got up, fired by this eloquence. She called for her check.

“Good-bye,” she said. “I’m going to do exactly as you say. Where can I find you afterwards?” she said to Nelly.

“You aren’t really going?”

“I am!”

Nelly scribbled on a piece of paper.

“Here’s my address. I’ll be in all evening.”

“I’ll come and see you. Good-bye, Mr. Brown. And thank you.”

“You’re welcome!” said Mr. Brown.

Nelly watched Jill depart with wide eyes.

“Why did you tell her to do that?” she said.

“Why not?” said Mr. Brown. “I started something, didn’t I? Well, I guess I’ll have to be leaving, too. Got to get back to rehearsal. Say, I like that friend of yours, Nelly. There’s no yellow streak about her! I wish her luck!”

 

 

CHAPTER XXIII

THE DASHING DRIVER

THE offices of Messrs. Goble and Cohn were situated, like everything else in New York that appertains to the drama, in the neighbourhood of Times Square. They occupied the fifth floor of the Gotham Theatre on West Forty-second Street. As there was no elevator in the building except the small private one used by the two members of the firm, Jill walked up the stairs, and found signs of a thriving business beginning to present themselves as early as the third floor, where half a dozen patient persons of either sex had draped themselves like roosting fowls upon the banisters. There were more on the fourth floor, and the landing of the fifth, which served the firm as a waiting-room, was quite full.

It is the custom of theatrical managers—the lowest order of intelligence, with the possible exception of the limax maximus or garden slug, known to science—to omit from their calculations the fact that they are likely every day to receive a large number of visitors, whom they will be obliged to keep waiting; and that these people will require somewhere to wait. Such considerations never occur to them. Messrs. Goble and Cohn had provided for those who called to see them one small bench on the landing, conveniently situated at the intersecting point of three draughts, and had let it go at that.

Nobody, except perhaps the night-watchman, had ever seen this bench empty. At whatever hour of the day you happened to call, you would always find three wistful individuals seated side by side with their eyes on the tiny ante-room where sat the office-boy, the telephone-girl, and Mr. Goble’s stenographer. Beyond this was the door marked “Private,” through which, as it opened to admit some careless, debonair, thousand-dollar-a-week comedian who sauntered in with a jaunty “Hello, Ike!” or some furred and scented female star, the rank and file of the profession were greeted, like Moses on Pisgah, with a fleeting glimpse of the promised land, consisting of a large desk and a section of a very fat man with spectacles and a bald head or a younger man with fair hair and a double chin.

The keynote of the mass meeting on the landing was one of determined, almost aggressive, smartness. The men wore bright overcoats with bands round the waist, the women those imitation furs which, to the uninitiated eye, appear so much more expensive than the real thing. Everybody looked very dashing and very young, except about the eyes. Most of the eyes that glanced at Jill were weary.

For a moment Jill was somewhat daunted by the spectacle, but she recovered almost immediately. The exhilarating and heady influence of New York still wrought within her. The Berserk spirit was upon her, and she remembered the stimulating words of Mr. Brown, of Brown and Widgeon, the best jazz-and-hokum team on the Keith Circuit. “Walk straight in!” had been the burden of his inspiring address. She pushed her way through the crowd until she came to the small ante-room.

In the ante-room were the outposts, the pickets of the enemy. In one corner a girl was hammering energetically and with great speed on a typewriter: a second girl, seated at a switchboard, was having an argument with Central, which was already warm and threatened to descend shortly to personalities: on a chair tilted back so that it rested against the wall, a small boy sat eating candy and reading the comic page of an evening newspaper. All three were enclosed, like zoological specimens, in a cage formed by a high counter, terminating in brass bars.

Beyond these watchers on the threshold was the door marked “Private.” Through it, as Jill reached the outer defences, filtered the sound of a piano.

Those who have studied the subject have come to the conclusion that the boorishness of theatrical managers’ office-boys cannot be the product of mere chance. Somewhere, in some sinister den in the criminal districts of the town, there is a school where small boys are trained for these positions, where their finer instincts are rigorously uprooted, and rudeness systematically inculcated by competent professors. Of this school the candy-eating Cerberus of Messrs. Goble and Cohn had been the star scholar. Quickly seeing his natural gifts, his teachers had given him special attention. When he had graduated, it had been amidst the cordial good-wishes of the entire faculty. They had taught him all they knew and they were proud of him. They felt that he would do them credit.

This boy raised a pair of pink-rimmed eyes to Jill, sniffed—for like all theatrical managers’ office-boys he had a permanent cold in the head, bit his thumb-nail, and spoke. He was a snub-nosed boy. His ears and hair were vermilion. His name was Ralph. He had seven hundred and forty-three pimples.

“Woddyerwant?” enquired Ralph, coming within an ace of condensing the question into a word of one syllable.

“I want to see Mr. Goble.”

“Zout!” said the Pimple King, and returned to his paper.

Jill turned pink. Mr. Brown, her guide and mentor, foreseeing this situation, had, she remembered, recommended “pushing the office-boy in the face”: and for a moment she felt like following his advice. Prudence, or the fact that he was out of reach behind the brass bars, restrained her. Without further delay she made for the door of the inner room. That was her objective, and she did not intend to be diverted from it. Her fingers were on the handle before any of those present divined her intention. Then the stenographer stopped typing and sat with raised fingers, aghast. The girl at the telephone broke off in mid-sentence and stared round over her shoulder. Ralph, the office-boy, outraged, dropped his paper and constituted himself the spokesman of the invaded force.

“Hey!”

Jill stopped and eyed the lad militantly.

“Were you speaking to me?”

“Yes, I was speaking to you!”

“Don’t do it again with your mouth full,” said Jill, turning to the door.

“You can’t go in there!” he managed to articulate, his iron will triumphing over the flesh sufficiently to enable him to speak.

“I am going in there!”

“That’s Mr. Goble’s private room.”

“Well, I want a private talk with Mr. Goble.”

Ralph felt that the situation was slipping from his grip. This sort of thing had never happened to him before.

“I tell ya he zout!”

Jill looked at him sternly.

“You wretched child!” she said, encouraged by a sharp giggle from the neighbourhood of the switchboard. “Do you know where little boys go who don’t speak the truth? I can hear him playing the piano. Now he’s singing! And it’s no good telling me he’s busy. If he was busy he wouldn’t have time to sing. If you’re as deceitful as this at your age what do you expect to be when you grow up? You’re an ugly little boy, you’ve got red ears, and your collar doesn’t fit! I shall speak to Mr. Goble about you.”

With which words, Jill opened the door and walked in.

“Good afternoon,” she said brightly.

After the congested and unfurnished discomfort of the landing, the room in which Jill found herself had an air of cosiness and almost of luxury. It was a large room, solidly upholstered. Along the further wall, filling nearly the whole of its space, stood a vast and gleaming desk, covered with a litter of papers which rose at one end of it to a sort of mountain of playscripts in buff covers. There was a bookshelf to the left. Photographs covered the walls. Near the window was a deep leather lounge, to the right of which stood a small piano, the music-stool of which was occupied by a young man with untidy black hair that needed cutting. On top of the piano was balanced a large cardboard poster, displaying the legend:

 

Isaac Goble and Jacob Cohn
Present
THE ROSE OF AMERICA
(A Musical Fantasy)
Book and Lyrics by Otis Pilkington
Music by Roland Trevis

 

Turning her eyes from this, Jill became aware that something was going on at the other side of the desk: and she perceived that a second young man, the longest and thinnest she had ever seen, was in the act of rising to his feet, length upon length like an unfolding snake. He had a hatchet face and a receding chin, and he gazed at Jill through what she assumed were the “tortoiseshell cheaters” referred to by her recent acquaintance, Mr. Brown.

“Er? . . .” said this young man inquiringly in a high, flat voice.

Jill, like many other people, had a brain which was under the alternating control of two diametrically opposite forces. It was like an automobile steered in turn by two drivers, the one a dashing, reckless fellow with no regard for the speed limits, the other a timid novice. All through the proceedings up to this point the dasher had been in command. He had whisked her along at a breakneck pace, ignoring obstacles and police regulations. Now, having brought her to this situation, he abruptly abandoned the wheel and turned it over to his colleague, the shrinker. Jill, greatly daring a moment ago, now felt an overwhelming shyness.

She gulped, and her heart beat quickly. The thin man towered over her. The black-haired pianist shook his locks at her like Banquo.

“I . . .” she began.

Then, suddenly, womanly intuition came to her aid. Something seemed to tell her that these men were just as scared as she was. And, at the discovery, the dashing driver resumed his post at the wheel, and she began to deal with the situation with composure.

“I want to see Mr. Goble.”

“Mr. Goble is out,” said the long, young man, plucking nervously at the papers on the desk. Jill had affected him powerfully.

“Out!” She felt she had wronged the pimpled office-boy.

“We are not expecting him back this afternoon. Is there anything I can do?”

He spoke tenderly. This weak-minded young man—at school his coarse companions had called him Simp—was thinking that he had never seen anything like Jill before. And it was true that she was looking very pretty, with her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling. She touched a chord in the young man which seemed to make the world a flower-scented thing, full of soft music. Often as he had been in love at first sight before in his time, Otis Pilkington could not recall an occasion on which he had been in love at first sight more completely than now. When she smiled at him, it was as if the gates of Heaven had opened. He did not reflect how many times, in similar circumstances, these same gates had opened before; and that on one occasion when they had done so it had cost him eight thousand dollars to settle the case out of court. One does not think of these things at such times, for they strike a jarring note. Otis Pilkington was in love. That was all he knew or cared to know.

“Won’t you take a seat, Miss? . . .”

“Mariner,” prompted Jill. “Thank you.”

“Miss Mariner. May I introduce Mr. Roland Trevis?”

The man at the piano bowed. His black hair heaved upon his skull like seaweed in a ground swell.

“My name is Pilkington. Otis Pilkington.”

The uncomfortable silence, which always follows introductions, was broken by the sound of the telephone-bell on the desk. Otis Pilkington, who had moved out into the room and was nowhere near the desk, stretched forth a preposterous arm and removed the receiver.

“Yes? Oh, will you say, please, that I have a conference at present.” Jill was to learn that people in the theatrical business never talked: they always held conferences. “Tell Mrs. Peagrim that I shall be calling later in the afternoon, but cannot be spared just now.” He replaced the receiver. “Aunt Olive’s secretary,” he murmured in a soft aside to Mr. Trevis. “Aunt Olive wanted me to go for a ride.” He turned to Jill. “Excuse me. Is there anything I can do for you, Miss Mariner?”

Jill’s composure was now completely restored. She felt as if she were back in Ovington Square, giving tea to Freddie Rooke and Ronny Devereux and the rest of her friends of the London period. All that was needed to complete the picture was a tea-table in front of her. The business note hardly intruded on the proceedings at all. Still, as business was the object of her visit, she felt that she had better approach it.

“I came for work.”

“Work!” cried Mr. Pilkington. He, too, appeared to be regarding the interview as purely of a social nature.

“In the chorus,” explained Jill.

Mr. Pilkington seemed shocked.

“There is no chorus in ‘The Rose of America,’ ” he said.

“I thought it was a musical comedy.”

Mr. Pilkington winced.

“It is a musical fantasy,” he said. “But there will be no chorus. We shall have,” he added, a touch of rebuke in his voice, “the services of twelve refined ladies of the ensemble.”

Jill laughed.

“It does sound much better, doesn’t it?” she said. “Well, am I refined enough, do you think?”

“I shall be only too happy if you will join us,” said Mr. Pilkington promptly.

The long-haired composer looked doubtful. He struck a note up in the treble, then whirled round on his stool.

“If you don’t mind my mentioning it, Otis, we have twelve girls already.”

“Then we must have thirteen,” said Otis Pilkington firmly.

“Unlucky number,” argued Mr. Trevis.

“I don’t care. We must have Miss Mariner. You can see for yourself that she is exactly the type we need.”

He spoke feelingly. Ever since the business of engaging a company had begun, he had been thinking wistfully of the evening when “The Rose of America” had had its opening performance—at his aunt’s house at Newport last summer—with an all-star cast of Society favourites and an ensemble recruited entirely from débutantes and matrons of the Younger Set. That was the sort of company he had longed to assemble for the piece’s professional career, and until this afternoon he had met with nothing but disappointment. Jill seemed to be the only girl in theatrical New York who came up to the standard he would have liked to demand.

“Thank you very much,” said Jill.

There was another pause. The social note crept into the atmosphere again. Jill felt the hostess’s desire to keep conversation circulating.

“I hear,” she said, “that this piece is a sort of Gilbert and Sullivan opera.”

Mr. Pilkington considered the point.

“I confess,” he said, “that in writing the book, I had Gilbert before me as a model. Whether I have in any sense succeeded in . . .”

“The book,” said Mr. Trevis, running his fingers over the piano, “is as good as anything Gilbert ever wrote.”

“Oh, come, Rolie!” protested Mr. Pilkington modestly.

“Better,” insisted Mr. Trevis. “For one thing, it is up to date.”

“I do try to strike the modern note,” murmured Mr. Pilkington.

“And you have avoided Gilbert’s mistake of being too fanciful.”

“He was fanciful,” admitted Mr. Pilkington. “The music,” he added, in a generous spirit of give and take, “has all Sullivan’s melody with a newness of rhythm peculiarly its own. You will like the music.”

“It sounds,” said Jill amiably, “as though the piece is bound to be a tremendous success.”

“We hope so,” said Mr. Pilkington. “We feel that the time has come when the public is beginning to demand something better than what it has been accustomed to. People are getting tired of the brainless trash and jingly tunes which have been given them by men like Wallace Mason and George Bevan. They want a certain polish. . . . It was just the same in Gilbert and Sullivan’s day. They started writing at a time when the musical stage had reached a terrible depth of inanity. The theatre was given over to burlesques of the most idiotic description. The public was waiting eagerly to welcome something of a higher class. It is just the same to-day. But the managers will not see it. ‘The Rose of America’ went up and down Broadway for months, knocking at managers’ doors.”

“It should have walked in without knocking, like me,” said Jill. She got up. “Well, it was very kind of you to see me when I came in so unceremoniously. But I felt it was no good waiting outside on that landing. I’m so glad everything is settled. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Miss Mariner.” Mr. Pilkington took her outstretched hand devoutly. “There is a rehearsal called for the ensemble at—when is it, Rolie?”

“Eleven o’clock, day after to-morrow, at Bryant Hall.”

“I’ll be there,” said Jill. “Good-bye, and thank you very much.”

The silence which had fallen upon the room as she left it was broken by Mr. Trevis.

“Some pip!” observed Mr. Trevis.

Otis Pilkington awoke from day-dreams with a start.

“Miss Mariner,” said Mr. Pilkington, icily, “is a most charming, refined, cultured, and vivacious girl, if you mean that.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Trevis. “That was what I meant!”

*  *  *  *

JILL walked out into Forty-second Street, looking about her with the eye of a conqueror. Very little change had taken place in the aspect of New York since she had entered the Gotham Theatre, but it seemed a different city to her. An hour ago she had been a stranger, drifting aimlessly along its rapids. Now she belonged to New York and New York belonged to her. She had faced it squarely, and forced from it the means of living. She walked on with a new jauntiness in her stride.

The address which Nelly had given her was on the east side of Fifth Avenue. She made her way along Forty-Second Street. It seemed the jolliest, alivest street she had ever encountered.

She reached the Fifth Avenue corner just as the policeman out in the middle of the street swung his Stop-and-Go post round to allow the up-town traffic to proceed on its way. A stream of automobiles which had been dammed up as far as the eye could reach began to flow swiftly past. They moved in a double line, red limousines, blue limousines, mauve limousines, green limousines. She stood waiting for the flood to cease, and, as she did so, there purred past her the biggest and reddest limousine of all. It was a colossal vehicle with a polar-bear at the steering-wheel and another at his side. And in the interior, very much at his ease, his gaze bent courteously upon a massive lady in a mink coat, sat Uncle Chris.

For a moment he was so near to her that, but for the closed window, she could have touched him. Then the polar-bear at the wheel, noting a gap in the traffic, stepped on the accelerator and slipped neatly through.

Jill drew a deep breath. The Stop-and-Go sign swung round again. She crossed the avenue, and set out once more to find Nelly Bryant. It occurred to her, five minutes later, that a really practical and quick-thinking girl would have noted the number of the limousine.

 

 

CHAPTER XXIV

THE GREEN GAZE OF MR. GOBLE

THE rehearsals of a musical comedy—a term which embraces “musical fantasies”—generally begin in a desultory sort of way at that curious building, Bryant Hall, on Sixth Avenue, just off Forty-Second Street. There, in a dusty, uncarpeted room, simply furnished with a few wooden chairs and some long wooden benches, the chorus—or, in the case of “The Rose of America,” the ensemble—sit round a piano and endeavour, with the assistance of the musical director, to get the words and melodies of the first act numbers into their heads. This done, they are ready for the dance director to instil into them the steps, the groupings, and the business for the encores, of which that incurable optimist always seems to expect there will be at least six. Later, the principals are injected into the numbers. And finally, leaving Bryant Hall and dodging about from one unoccupied theatre to another, principals and chorus rehearse together, running through the entire piece over and over again till the opening night of the preliminary road tour.

To Jill, in the early stages, rehearsing was just like being back at school. She could remember her first school-mistress, whom the musical director somewhat resembled in manner and appearance, hammering out hymns on a piano and leading in a weak soprano an eager, baying pack of children, each anxious from motives of pride to outbawl her nearest neighbour.

The proceedings began on the first morning with the entrance of Mr. Saltzburg, the musical director, a brisk, busy little man with benevolent eyes behind big spectacles, who bustled over to the piano, sat down, and played a loud chord, designed to act as a sort of bugle blast, rallying the ladies of the ensemble from the corners where they sat in groups, chatting. For the process of making one another’s acquaintance had begun some ten minutes before with mutual recognitions between those who knew each other from having been together in previous productions. There followed rapid introductions of friends. Nelly Bryant had been welcomed warmly by a pretty girl with red hair, whom she introduced to Jill as Babe. Babe had a willowy blonde friend named Lois. In a body by themselves, rather forlorn and neglected, half a dozen solemn and immaculately dressed young men were propping themselves up against the wall and looking on, like men in a ball-room who do not dance.

At Mr. Saltzburg’s chord there was a general movement, and chairs and benches were dragged to the piano, Mr. Saltzburg causing a momentary delay by opening a large brown music-bag and digging in it like a terrier at a rat-hole. Conversation broke out again.

Mr. Saltzburg emerged from the bag with his hands full of papers, protesting:

“Childrun! Chil-drun! If you please, less noise and attend to me!” He distributed sheets of paper. “Act One, Opening Chorus. I will play the melody three—four times. Follow attentively. Then we will sing it la-la-la, and after that we will sing the words. So!”

He struck the yellow-keyed piano a vicious blow, producing a tinny and complaining sound. Bending forward with his spectacles almost touching the music, he plodded determinedly through the tune, then encored himself, and after that encored himself again. When he had done this, he removed his spectacles and wiped them. There was a pause.

“Izzy,” observed the willowy young lady chattily, leaning across Jill and addressing the Southern girl’s blonde friend, “has promised me a sunburst!”

A general stir of interest and a coming close together of heads.

“Well!”

“He’s just landed the hat-check privilege at the St. Aurea!”

“You don’t say!”

“He told me so last night, and promised me the sunburst. He was,” admitted the willowy girl, regretfully, “a good bit tanked at the time, but I guess he’ll make good.” She mused awhile, a rather anxious expression clouding her perfect profile. She looked like a meditative Greek goddess. “If he doesn’t,” she added with maidenly dignity, “it’s the last time I go out with the big stiff. I’d tie a can to him quicker’n look at him!”

“Childrun!” protested Mr. Saltzburg. “Chil-drun! Less noise and chatter of conversation. We are here to work! We must not waste time! So! Act One, Opening Chorus. Now, all together. La-la-la. . . .”

“La-la-la . . .”

“Tum-tum-tumty-tumty . . .”

“Tum-tum-tumty . . .”

Mr. Saltzburg pressed his hands to his ears in a spasm of pain.

“No, no, no! Sour! Sour! Sour! . . . Once again. La-la-la . . .”

A round-faced girl with golden hair and the face of a wondering cherub interrupted, speaking with a lisp.

“Mithter Thalzburg.”

“Now what is it, Miss Trevor?”

“What sort of a show is this?”

“A musical show,” said Mr. Saltzburg severely, “and this is a rehearsal of it, not a conversazione. Once more, please. . . .”

The cherub was not to be rebuffed.

“Is the music good, Mithter Thalzburg?”

“When you have rehearsed it you shall judge for yourself. Come now . . .”

“Is there anything in it as good as that waltz of yours you played us when we were rehearthing ‘Mind How You Go’? You remember. The one that went . . .”

A tall and stately girl, with sleepy brown eyes and the air of a duchess in the servants’ hall, bent forward and took a kindly interest in the conversation.

“Oh, have you composed a varlse, Mr. Saltzburg?” she asked with pleasant condescension. “How interesting, really! Won’t you play it for us?”

“Oh, Mr. Saltzburg, do!”

“Please, Mr. Saltzburg!”

“You wish it?” he said. “Well, then! This waltz, you will understand, is the theme of a musical romance which I have composed.”

A pleasant time was had by all for ten minutes.

“Ah, but this is not rehearsing, childrun!” cried Mr. Saltzburg remorsefully, at the end of that period. “This is not business. Come now, the opening chorus of Act One.”

“Mithter Thalzburg!”

“Miss Trevor?”

“There was an awfully thweet fox-trot you used to play us. I do wish . . .”

“If it is as good as the varlse,” said the duchess, stooping once more to the common level, “I am sure it must be very good indeed.”

“Which fox-trot?” asked Mr. Saltzburg, weakly.

“Play ’em all!” decided a voice on the left.

“Yes, play ’em all,” bayed the pack.

Mr. Saltzburg played ’em all. This man by now seemed entirely lost to shame. The precious minutes that belonged to his employers, and should have been earmarked for “The Rose of America,” flitted by. The ladies and gentlemen of the ensemble, who should have been absorbing and learning to deliver the melodies of Roland Trevis and the lyrics of Otis Pilkington, lolled back in their seats.

“Say, what is this, anyway? A concert?”

Mr. Saltzburg swung round on the music-stool, a startled and apprehensive man.

Two men had entered the room. One was the long Mr. Pilkington. The other, who looked shorter and stouter than he really was beside his giraffe-like companion, was a thick-set, fleshy man in the early thirties, with a blonde, clean-shaven, double-chinned face. He had smooth yellow hair, an unwholesome complexion, and light green eyes, set close together. From the edge of the semi-circle about the piano he glared menacingly over the heads of the chorus at the unfortunate Mr. Saltzburg.

“Why aren’t these girls working?”

Mr. Saltzburg, who had risen nervously from his stool, backed away apprehensively.

“I—— We—— Why, Mr. Goble . . .”

Mr. Goble turned his green gaze on the concert audience, and spread discomfort as if it were something liquid which he was spraying through a hose. The girls who were nearest looked down flutteringly at their shoes: those furthest away concealed themselves behind their neighbours.

Only Jill returned the manager’s gaze. She had never seen anything like him before, and he fascinated her. This behaviour on her part singled her out from the throng, and Mr. Goble concentrated his attention on her.

For some seconds he stood looking at her; then, raising a stubby finger, he let his eye travel over the company, and seemed to be engrossed in some sort of mathematical calculation.

“Thirteen,” he said at length. “I make it thirteen.” He rounded on Mr. Pilkington. “I told you we were going to have a chorus of twelve.”

Mr. Pilkington blushed.

“Ah, yes . . . yes,” he murmured.

“Well, there are thirteen here. Count ’em for yourself.” He whipped round on Jill. “What’s your name? Who engaged you?”

“I—er—I engaged Miss Mariner, Mr. Goble,” said Mr. Pilkington.

“Oh, you engaged her?”

He stared again at Jill. The inspection was long and lingering, and affected Jill with a sense of being inadequately clothed. She returned the gaze as defiantly as she could but her heart was beating fast.

“All right,” said Mr. Goble at last, after what seemed to Jill many minutes. He nodded to Mr. Saltzburg. “Get on with it! And try working a little this time! I don’t hire you to give musical entertainments.”

“Yes, Mr. Goble, yes. I mean no, Mr. Goble!”

“You can have the Gotham stage this afternoon,” said Mr. Goble. “Call the rehearsal for two sharp.”

Outside the door he turned to Mr. Pilkington.

“That was a fool trick of yours, hiring that girl. Thirteen! I’d sooner walk under a ladder on a Friday than open in New York with a chorus of thirteen. Well, it don’t matter. We can fire one of ’em after we open on the road.” He mused for a moment. “Darned pretty girl, that!” he went on meditatively. “Where did you get her?”

“She—ah—came into the office when you were out. She struck me as being essentially the type we required for our ensemble, so I—er—engaged her. She——” Mr. Pilkington gulped. “She is a charming, refined girl!”

“She’s darned pretty,” admitted Mr. Goble, and went on his way wrapped in thought.

(To be continued.)

 

---

Notes:
Compare this with the American serialization in Collier’s Weekly.

Note that the chapter divisions and their titles and numbering are different in this edition than in other versions of the novel. A table of correspondences (opens in a new browser window or tab) is on this site.

Printer’s errors corrected above:
Magazine, p. 515a, had «stopped to rub»; corrected to «stooped to rub» as in US and UK book editions
Magazine, p. 517b, had «Monte Christo»; corrected to «Monte Cristo» as in all other editions
Magazine, p. 517b, had «Guatemala general»; corrected to «Guatemalan general» as elsewhere
Magazine, p. 519a, had «buck-wheat»; corrected to «buckwheat» for consistency
Magazine, p. 527b, omitted closing quotation mark in “Where did you get her?”

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