THE WILD-CAT REEF GOLD-MINEANOTHER KLONDIKEFRENZIED SCENES ON THE STOCK EXCHANGEBROKERS FIGHT FOR SHARESRECORD BOOMUNPRECEDENTED RISE IN PRICES
Shorn of all superfluous adjectives and general journalistic exuberance, what the paper had to announce to its readers was this:
The “special commissioner” sent out by TheFinancial Argustomake an exhaustive examination of the Wild-cat Reef Mine—withthe amiable view, no doubt, of exploding Mr. Geoffrey Windlebirdonce and for all with the confiding British public—has found,to his unbounded astonishment, that there are vast quantities ofgold in the mine.The discovery of the new reef, the largest and richest, it isstated, since the famous Mount Morgan, occurred with dramaticappropriateness on the very day of his arrival. We need scarcelyremind our readers that, until that moment, Wild-cat Reef shareshad reached a very low figure, and only a few optimists retainedtheir faith in the mine. As the largest holder, Mr. Windlebirdis to be heartily congratulated on this new addition to hisfortune.The publication of the expert's report in TheFinancial Argushasresulted in a boom in Wild-cats, the like of which can seldom havebeen seen on the Stock Exchange. From something like one shillingand sixpence per bundle the one pound shares have gone up to nearlyten pounds a share, and even at this latter figure people wereliterally fighting to secure them.
The world swam about Roland. He was stupefied and even terrified. The very atmosphere seemed foggy. So far as his reeling brain was capable of thought, he figured that he was now worth about two hundred thousand pounds.
“Oh, Mrs. Windlebird,” he cried, “It's all right after all.”
Mrs. Windlebird sat back in her chair without answering.
“It's all right for every one,” screamed Roland joyfully. “Why, if I've made a couple of hundred thousand, what must Mr. Windlebird have netted. It says here that he is the largest holder. He must have pulled off the biggest thing of his life.”
He thought for a moment.
“The chap I'm sorry for,” he said meditatively, “is Mr. Windlebird's pal. You know. The fellow whom Mr. Windlebird persuaded to sell all his shares to me.”
A faint moan escaped from his hostess's pale lips. Roland did not hear it. He was reading the cricket news.
Third of a Series of Six Stories [First published inPictorial Review, July 1916]
It was one of those hard, nubbly rolls. The best restaurants charge you sixpence for having the good sense not to eat them. It hit Roland Bleke with considerable vehemence on the bridge of the nose. For the moment Roland fancied that the roof of the Regent Grill-room must have fallen in; and, as this would automatically put an end to the party, he was not altogether sorry. He had never been to a theatrical supper-party before, and within five minutes of his arrival at the present one he had become afflicted with an intense desire never to go to a theatrical supper-party again. To be a success at these gay gatherings one must possess dash; and Roland, whatever his other sterling qualities, was a little short of dash.
The young man on the other side of the table was quite nice about it. While not actually apologizing, he went so far as to explain that it was “old Gerry” whom he had had in his mind when he started the roll on its course. After a glance at old Gerry—a chinless child of about nineteen—Roland felt that it would be churlish to be angry with a young man whose intentions had been so wholly admirable. Old Gerry had one of those faces in which any alteration, even the comparatively limited one which a roll would be capable of producing, was bound to be for the better. He smiled a sickly smile and said that it didn't matter.
The charming creature who sat on his assailant's left, however, took a more serious view of the situation.
“Sidney, you make me tired,” she said severely. “If I had thought you didn't know how to act like a gentleman I wouldn't have come here with you. Go away somewhere and throw bread at yourself, and ask Mr. Bleke to come and sit by me. I want to talk to him.”
That was Roland's first introduction to Miss Billy Verepoint.
“I've been wanting to have a chat with you all the evening, Mr. Bleke,” she said, as Roland blushingly sank into the empty chair. “I've heard such a lot about you.”
What Miss Verepoint had heard about Roland was that he had two hundred thousand pounds and apparently did not know what to do with it.
“In fact, if I hadn't been told that you would be here, I shouldn't have come to this party. Can't stand these gatherings of nuts in May as a general rule. They bore me stiff.”
Roland hastily revised his first estimate of the theatrical profession. Shallow, empty-headed creatures some of them might be, no doubt, but there were exceptions. Here was a girl of real discernment—a thoughtful student of character—a girl who understood that a man might sit at a supper-party without uttering a word and might still be a man of parts.
“I'm afraid you'll think me very outspoken—but that's me all over. All my friends say, 'Billy Verepoint's a funny girl: if she likes any one she just tells them so straight out; and if she doesn't like any one she tells them straight out, too.'”
“And a very admirable trait,” said Roland, enthusiastically.
Miss Verepoint sighed. “P'raps it is,” she said pensively, “but I'm afraid it's what has kept me back in my profession. Managers don't like it: they think girls should be seen and not heard.”
Roland's blood boiled. Managers were plainly a dastardly crew.
“But what's the good of worrying,” went on Miss Verepoint, with a brave but hollow laugh. “Of course, it's wearing, having to wait when one has got as much ambition as I have; but they all tell me that my chance is bound to come some day.”
The intense mournfulness of Miss Verepoint's expression seemed to indicate that she anticipated the arrival of the desired day not less than sixty years hence. Roland was profoundly moved. His chivalrous nature was up in arms. He fell to wondering if he could do anything to help this victim of managerial unfairness. “You don't mind my going on about my troubles, do you?” asked Miss Verepoint, solicitously. “One so seldom meets anybody really sympathetic.”
Roland babbled fervent assurances, and she pressed his hand gratefully.
“I wonder if you would care to come to tea one afternoon,” she said.
“Oh, rather!” said Roland. He would have liked to put it in a more polished way but he was almost beyond speech.
“Of course, I know what a busy man you are——”
“No, no!”
“Well, I should be in to-morrow afternoon, if you cared to look in.”
Roland bleated gratefully.
“I'll write down the address for you,” said Miss Verepoint, suddenly businesslike.
Exactly when he committed himself to the purchase of the Windsor Theater, Roland could never say. The idea seemed to come into existence fully-grown, without preliminary discussion. One moment it was not—the next it was. His recollections of the afternoon which he spent drinking lukewarm tea and punctuating Miss Verepoint's flow of speech with “yes's” and “no's” were always so thoroughly confused that he never knew even whose suggestion it was.
The purchase of a West-end theater, when one has the necessary cash, is not nearly such a complicated business as the layman might imagine. Roland was staggered by the rapidity with which the transaction was carried through. The theater was his before he had time to realize that he had never meant to buy the thing at all. He had gone into the offices of Mr. Montague with the intention of making an offer for the lease for, say, six months; and that wizard, in the space of less than an hour, had not only induced him to sign mysterious documents which made him sole proprietor of the house, but had left him with the feeling that he had done an extremely acute stroke of business. Mr. Montague had dabbled in many professions in his time, from street peddling upward, but what he was really best at was hypnotism.
Altho he felt, after the spell of Mr. Montague's magnetism was withdrawn, rather like a nervous man who has been given a large baby to hold by a strange woman who has promptly vanished round the corner, Roland was to some extent consoled by the praise bestowed upon him by Miss Verepoint. She said it was much better to buy a theater than to rent it, because then you escaped the heavy rent. It was specious, but Roland had a dim feeling that there was a flaw somewhere in the reasoning; and it was from this point that a shadow may be said to have fallen upon the brightness of the venture.
He would have been even less self-congratulatory if he had known the Windsor Theater's reputation. Being a comparative stranger in the metropolis, he was unaware that its nickname in theatrical circles was “The Mugs' Graveyard”—a title which had been bestowed upon it not without reason. Built originally by a slightly insane old gentleman, whose principal delusion was that the public was pining for a constant supply of the Higher Drama, and more especially those specimens of the Higher Drama which flowed practically without cessation from the restless pen of the insane old gentleman himself, the Windsor Theater had passed from hand to hand with the agility of a gold watch in a gathering of race-course thieves. The one anxiety of the unhappy man who found himself, by some accident, in possession of the Windsor Theater, was to pass it on to somebody else. The only really permanent tenant it ever had was the representative of the Official Receiver.
Various causes were assigned for the phenomenal ill-luck of the theater, but undoubtedly the vital objection to it as a Temple of Drama lay in the fact that nobody could ever find the place where it was hidden. Cabmen shook their heads on the rare occasions when they were asked to take a fare there. Explorers to whom a stroll through the Australian bush was child's-play, had been known to spend an hour on its trail and finish up at the point where they had started.
It was precisely this quality of elusiveness which had first attracted Mr. Montague. He was a far-seeing man, and to him the topographical advantages of the theater were enormous. It was further from a fire-station than any other building of the same insurance value in London, even without having regard to the mystery which enveloped its whereabouts. Often after a good dinner he would lean comfortably back in his chair and see in the smoke of his cigar a vision of the Windsor Theater blazing merrily, while distracted firemen galloped madly all over London, vainly endeavoring to get some one to direct them to the scene of the conflagration. So Mr. Montague bought the theater for a mere song, and prepared to get busy.
Unluckily for him, the representatives of the various fire offices with which he had effected his policies got busy first. The generous fellows insisted upon taking off his shoulders the burden of maintaining the fireman whose permanent presence in a theater is required by law. Nothing would satisfy them but to install firemen of their own and pay their salaries. This, to a man in whom the instincts of the phoenix were so strongly developed as they were in Mr. Montague, was distinctly disconcerting. He saw himself making no profit on the deal—a thing which had never happened to him before.
And then Roland Bleke occurred, and Mr. Montague's belief that his race was really chosen was restored. He sold the Windsor Theater to Roland for twenty-five thousand pounds. It was fifteen thousand pounds more than he himself had given for it, and this very satisfactory profit mitigated the slight regret which he felt when it came to transferring to Roland the insurance policies. To have effected policies amounting to rather more than seventy thousand pounds on a building so notoriously valueless as the Windsor Theater had been an achievement of which Mr. Montague was justly proud, and it seemed sad to him that so much earnest endeavor should be thrown away.
Over the little lunch with which she kindly allowed Roland to entertain her, to celebrate the purchase of the theater, Miss Verepoint outlined her policy.
“What we must put up at that theater,” she announced, “is a revue. A revue,” repeated Miss Verepoint, making, as she spoke, little calculations on the back of the menu, “we could run for about fifteen hundred a week—or, say, two thousand.”
Saying two thousand, thought Roland to himself, is not quite the same as paying two thousand, so why should she stint herself?
“I know two boys who could write us a topping revue,” said Miss Verepoint. “They'd spread themselves, too, if it was for me. They're in love with me—both of them. We'd better get in touch with them at once.”
To Roland, there seemed to be something just the least bit sinister about the sound of that word “touch,” but he said nothing.
“Why, there they are—lunching over there!” cried Miss Verepoint, pointing to a neighboring table. “Now, isn't that lucky?”
To Roland the luck was not quite so apparent, but he made no demur to Miss Verepoint's suggestion that they should be brought over to their table.
The two boys, as to whose capabilities to write a topping revue Miss Verepoint had formed so optimistic an estimate, proved to be well-grown lads of about forty-five and forty, respectively. Of the two, Roland thought that perhaps R. P. de Parys was a shade the more obnoxious, but a closer inspection left him with the feeling that these fine distinctions were a little unfair with men of such equal talents. Bromham Rhodes ran his friend so close that it was practically a dead heat. They were both fat and somewhat bulgy-eyed. This was due to the fact that what revue-writing exacts from its exponents is the constant assimilation of food and drink. Bromham Rhodes had the largest appetite in London; but, on the other hand, R. P. de Parys was a better drinker.
“Well, dear old thing!” said Bromham Rhodes.
“Well, old child!” said R. P. de Parys.
Both these remarks were addressed to Miss Verepoint. The talented pair appeared to be unaware of Roland's existence.
Miss Verepoint struck the business note. “Now you stop, boys,” she said. “Tie weights to yourselves and sink down into those chairs. I want you two lads to write a revue for me.”
“Delighted!” said Bromham Rhodes; “but——”
“There is the trifling point to be raised first——” said R. P. de Parys.
“Where is the money coming from?” said Bromham Rhodes.
“My friend, Mr. Bleke, is putting up the money,” said Miss Verepoint, with dignity. “He has taken the Windsor Theater.”
The interest of the two authors in their host, till then languid, increased with a jerk. “Has he? By Jove!” they cried. “We must get together and talk this over.”
It was Roland's first experience of a theatrical talking-over, and he never forgot it. Two such talkers-over as Bromham Rhodes and R. P. de Parys were scarcely to be found in the length and breadth of theatrical London. Nothing, it seemed, could the gifted pair even begin to think of doing without first discussing the proposition in all its aspects. The amount of food which Roland found himself compelled to absorb during the course of these debates was appalling. Discussions which began at lunch would be continued until it was time to order dinner; and then, as likely as not, they would have to sit there till supper-time in order to thrash the question thoroughly out.
The collection of a cast was a matter even more complicated than the actual composition of the revue. There was the almost insuperable difficulty that Miss Verepoint firmly vetoed every name suggested. It seemed practically impossible to find any man or woman in all England or America whose peculiar gifts or lack of them would not interfere with Miss Verepoint's giving a satisfactory performance of the principal role. It was all very perplexing to Roland; but as Miss Verepoint was an expert in theatrical matters, he scarcely felt entitled to question her views.
It was about this time that Roland proposed to Miss Verepoint. The passage of time and the strain of talking over the revue had to a certain extent moderated his original fervor. He had shaded off from a passionate devotion, through various diminishing tints of regard for her, into a sort of pale sunset glow of affection. His principal reason for proposing was that it seemed to him to be in the natural order of events. Her air towards him had become distinctly proprietorial. She now called him “Roly-poly” in public—a proceeding which left him with mixed feelings. Also, she had taken to ordering him about, which, as everybody knows, is an unmistakable sign of affection among ladies of the theatrical profession. Finally, in his chivalrous way, Roland had begun to feel a little apprehensive lest he might be compromising Miss Verepoint. Everybody knew that he was putting up the money for the revue in which she was to appear; they were constantly seen together at restaurants; people looked arch when they spoke to him about her. He had to ask himself: was he behaving like a perfect gentleman? The answer was in the negative. He took a cab to her flat and proposed before he could repent of his decision.
She accepted him. He was not certain for a moment whether he was glad or sorry. “But I don't want to get married,” she went on, “until I have justified my choice of a profession. You will have to wait until I have made a success in this revue.”
Roland was shocked to find himself hugely relieved at this concession.
The revue took shape. There did apparently exist a handful of artistes to whom Miss Verepoint had no objection, and these—a scrubby but confident lot—were promptly engaged. Sallow Americans sprang from nowhere with songs, dances, and ideas for effects. Tousled-haired scenic artists wandered in with model scenes under their arms. A great cloud of chorus-ladies settled upon the theater like flies. Even Bromham Rhodes and R. P. de Parys—those human pythons—showed signs of activity. They cornered Roland one day near Swan and Edgar's, steered him into the Piccadilly Grill-room and, over a hearty lunch, read him extracts from a brown-paper-covered manuscript which, they informed him, was the first act.
It looked a battered sort of manuscript and, indeed, it had every right to be. Under various titles and at various times, Bromham Rhodes' and R. P. de Parys' first act had been refused by practically every responsible manager in London. As “Oh! What a Life!” it had failed to satisfy the directors of the Empire. Re-christened “Wow-Wow!” it had been rejected by the Alhambra. The Hippodrome had refused to consider it, even under the name of “Hullo, Cellar-Flap!” It was now called, “Pass Along, Please!” and, according to its authors, was a real revue.
Roland was to learn, as the days went on, that in the world in which he was moving everything was real revue that was not a stunt or a corking effect. He floundered in a sea of real revue, stunts, and corking effects. As far as he could gather, the main difference between these things was that real revue was something which had been stolen from some previous English production, whereas a stunt or a corking effect was something which had been looted from New York. A judicious blend of these, he was given to understand, constituted the sort of thing the public wanted.
Rehearsals began before, in Roland's opinion, his little army was properly supplied with ammunition. True, they had the first act, but even the authors agreed that it wanted bringing up-to-date in parts. They explained that it was, in a manner of speaking, their life-work, that they had actually started it about ten years ago when they were careless lads. Inevitably, it was spotted here and there with smart topical hits of the early years of the century; but that, they said, would be all right. They could freshen it up in a couple of evenings; it was simply a matter of deleting allusions to pro-Boers and substituting lines about Marconi shares and mangel-wurzels. “It'll be all right,” they assured Roland; “this is real revue.”
In times of trouble there is always a point at which one may say, “Here is the beginning of the end.” This point came with Roland at the commencement of the rehearsals. Till then he had not fully realized the terrible nature of the production for which he had made himself responsible. Moreover, it was rehearsals which gave him his first clear insight into the character of Miss Verepoint.
Miss Verepoint was not at her best at rehearsals. For the first time, as he watched her, Roland found himself feeling that there was a case to be made out for the managers who had so consistently kept her in the background. Miss Verepoint, to use the technical term, threw her weight about. There were not many good lines in the script of act one of “Pass Along, Please!” but such as there were she reached out for and grabbed away from their owners, who retired into corners, scowling and muttering, like dogs robbed of bones. She snubbed everybody, Roland included.
Roland sat in the cold darkness of the stalls and watched her, panic-stricken. Like an icy wave, it had swept over him what marriage with this girl would mean. He suddenly realised how essentially domestic his instincts really were. Life with Miss Verepoint would mean perpetual dinners at restaurants, bread-throwing suppers, motor-rides—everything that he hated most. Yet, as a man of honor, he was tied to her. If the revue was a success, she would marry him—and revues, he knew, were always successes. At that very moment there were six “best revues in London,” running at various theaters. He shuddered at the thought that in a few weeks there would be seven.
He felt a longing for rural solitude. He wanted to be alone by himself for a day or two in a place where there were no papers with advertisements of revues, no grill-rooms, and, above all, no Miss Billy Verepoint. That night he stole away to a Norfolk village, where, in happier days, he had once spent a Summer holiday—a peaceful, primitive place where the inhabitants could not have told real revue from a corking effect.
Here, for the space of a week, Roland lay in hiding, while his quivering nerves gradually recovered tone. He returned to London happier, but a little apprehensive. Beyond a brief telegram of farewell, he had not communicated with Miss Verepoint for seven days, and experience had made him aware that she was a lady who demanded an adequate amount of attention.
That his nervous system was not wholly restored to health was borne in upon him as he walked along Piccadilly on his way to his flat; for, when somebody suddenly slapped him hard between the shoulder-blades, he uttered a stifled yell and leaped in the air.
Turning to face his assailant, he found himself meeting the genial gaze of Mr. Montague, his predecessor in the ownership of the Windsor Theater.
Mr. Montague was effusively friendly, and, for some mysterious reason, congratulatory.
“You've done it, have you? You pulled it off, did you? And in the first month—by George! And I took you for the plain, ordinary mug of commerce! My boy, you're as deep as they make 'em. Who'd have thought it, to look at you? It was the greatest idea any one ever had and staring me in the face all the time and I never saw it! But I don't grudge it to you—you deserve it my boy! You're a nut!”
“I really don't know what you mean.”
“Quite right, my boy!” chuckled Mr. Montague. “You're quite right to keep it up, even among friends. It don't do to risk anything, and the least said soonest mended.”
He went on his way, leaving Roland completely mystified.
Voices from his sitting-room, among which he recognized the high note of Miss Verepoint, reminded him of the ordeal before him. He entered with what he hoped was a careless ease of manner, but his heart was beating fast. Since the opening of rehearsals he had acquired a wholesome respect for Miss Verepoint's tongue. She was sitting in his favorite chair. There were also present Bromham Rhodes and R. P. de Parys, who had made themselves completely at home with a couple of his cigars and whisky from the oldest bin.
“So here you are at last!” said Miss Verepoint, querulously. “The valet told us you were expected back this morning, so we waited. Where on earth have you been to, running away like this, without a word?”
“I only went——”
“Well, it doesn't matter where you went. The main point is, what are you going to do about it?”
“We thought we'd better come along and talk it over,” said R. P. de Parys.
“Talk what over?” said Roland: “the revue?”
“Oh, don't try and be funny, for goodness' sake!” snapped Miss Verepoint. “It doesn't suit you. You haven't the right shape of head. What do you suppose we want to talk over? The theater, of course.”
“What about the theater?”
Miss Verepoint looked searchingly at him. “Don't you ever read the papers?”
“I haven't seen a paper since I went away.”
“Well, better have it quick and not waste time breaking it gently,” said Miss Verepoint. “The theater's been burned down—that's what's happened.”
“Burned down?”
“Burned down!” repeated Roland.
“That's what I said, didn't I? The suffragettes did it. They left copies of 'Votes for Women' about the place. The silly asses set fire to two other theaters as well, but they happened to be in main thoroughfares and the fire-brigade got them under control at once. I suppose they couldn't find the Windsor. Anyhow, it's burned to the ground and what we want to know is what are you going to do about it?”
Roland was much too busy blessing the good angels of Kingsway to reply at once. R. P. de Parys, sympathetic soul, placed a wrong construction on his silence.
“Poor old Roly!” he said. “It's quite broken him up. The best thing we can do is all to go off and talk it over at the Savoy, over a bit of lunch.”
“Well,” said Miss Verepoint, “what are you going to do—rebuild the Windsor or try and get another theater?”
The authors were all for rebuilding the Windsor. True, it would take time, but it would be more satisfactory in every way. Besides, at this time of the year it would be no easy matter to secure another theater at a moment's notice.
To R. P. de Parys and Bromham Rhodes the destruction of the Windsor Theater had appeared less in the light of a disaster than as a direct intervention on the part of Providence. The completion of that tiresome second act, which had brooded over their lives like an ugly cloud, could now be postponed indefinitely.
“Of course,” said R. P. de Parys, thoughtfully, “our contract with you makes it obligatory on you to produce our revue by a certain date—but I dare say, Bromham, we could meet Roly there, couldn't we?”
“Sure!” said Rhodes. “Something nominal, say a further five hundred on account of fees would satisfy us. I certainly think it would be better to rebuild the Windsor, don't you, R. P.?”
“I do,” agreed R. P. de Parys, cordially. “You see, Roly, our revue has been written to fit the Windsor. It would be very difficult to alter it for production at another theater. Yes, I feel sure that rebuilding the Windsor would be your best course.”
There was a pause.
“What do you think, Roly-poly?” asked Miss Verepoint, as Roland made no sign.
“Nothing would delight me more than to rebuild the Windsor, or to take another theater, or do anything else to oblige,” he said, cheerfully. “Unfortunately, I have no more money to burn.”
It was as if a bomb had suddenly exploded in the room. A dreadful silence fell upon his hearers. For the moment no one spoke. R. P. de Parys woke with a start out of a beautiful dream of prawn curry and Bromham Rhodes forgot that he had not tasted food for nearly two hours. Miss Verepoint was the first to break the silence.
“Do you mean to say,” she gasped, “that you didn't insure the place?”
Roland shook his head. The particular form in which Miss Verepoint had put the question entitled him, he felt, to make this answer.
“Why didn't you?” Miss Verepoint's tone was almost menacing.
“Because it did not appear to me to be necessary.”
Nor was it necessary, said Roland to his conscience. Mr. Montague had done all the insuring that was necessary—and a bit over.
Miss Verepoint fought with her growing indignation, and lost. “What about the salaries of the people who have been rehearsing all this time?” she demanded.
“I'm sorry that they should be out of an engagement, but it is scarcely my fault. However, I propose to give each of them a month's salary. I can manage that, I think.”
Miss Verepoint rose. “And what about me? What about me, that's what I want to know. Where do I get off? If you think I'm going to marry you without your getting a theater and putting up this revue you're jolly well mistaken.”
Roland made a gesture which was intended to convey regret and resignation. He even contrived to sigh.
“Very well, then,” said Miss Verepoint, rightly interpreting this behavior as his final pronouncement on the situation. “Then everything's jolly well off.”
She swept out of the room, the two authors following in her wake like porpoises behind a liner. Roland went to his bureau, unlocked it and took out a bundle of documents. He let his fingers stray lovingly among the fire insurance policies which energetic Mr. Montague had been at such pains to secure from so many companies.
“And so,” he said softly to himself, “am I.”
Fourth of a Series of Six Stories [First published inPictorial Review, August 1916]
It was with a start that Roland Bleke realized that the girl at the other end of the bench was crying. For the last few minutes, as far as his preoccupation allowed him to notice them at all, he had been attributing the subdued sniffs to a summer cold, having just recovered from one himself.
He was embarrassed. He blamed the fate that had led him to this particular bench, but he wished to give himself up to quiet deliberation on the question of what on earth he was to do with two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, to which figure his fortune had now risen.
The sniffs continued. Roland's discomfort increased. Chivalry had always been his weakness. In the old days, on a hundred and forty pounds a year, he had had few opportunities of indulging himself in this direction; but now it seemed to him sometimes that the whole world was crying out for assistance.
Should he speak to her? He wanted to; but only a few days ago his eyes had been caught by the placard of a weekly paper bearing the title of 'Squibs,' on which in large letters was the legend “Men Who Speak to Girls,” and he had gathered that the accompanying article was a denunciation rather than a eulogy of these individuals. On the other hand, she was obviously in distress.
Another sniff decided him.
“I say, you know,” he said.
The girl looked at him. She was small, and at the present moment had that air of the floweret surprized while shrinking, which adds a good thirty-three per cent. to a girl's attractions. Her nose, he noted, was delicately tip-tilted. A certain pallor added to her beauty. Roland's heart executed the opening steps of a buck-and-wing dance.
“Pardon me,” he went on, “but you appear to be in trouble. Is there anything I can do for you?”
She looked at him again—a keen look which seemed to get into Roland's soul and walk about it with a searchlight. Then, as if satisfied by the inspection, she spoke.
“No, I don't think there is,” she said. “Unless you happen to be the proprietor of a weekly paper with a Woman's Page, and need an editress for it.”
“I don't understand.”
“Well, that's all any one could do for me—give me back my work or give me something else of the same sort.”
“Oh, have you lost your job?”
“I have. So would you mind going away, because I want to go on crying, and I do it better alone. You won't mind my turning you out, I hope, but I was here first, and there are heaps of other benches.”
“No, but wait a minute. I want to hear about this. I might be able—what I mean is—think of something. Tell me all about it.”
There is no doubt that the possession of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds tones down a diffident man's diffidence. Roland began to feel almost masterful.
“Why should I?”
“Why shouldn't you?”
“There's something in that,” said the girl reflectively. “After all, you might know somebody. Well, as you want to know, I have just been discharged from a paper called 'Squibs.' I used to edit the Woman's Page.”
“By Jove, did you write that article on 'Men Who Speak——'?”
The hard manner in which she had wrapped herself as in a garment vanished instantly. Her eyes softened. She even blushed. Just a becoming pink, you know!
“You don't mean to say you read it? I didn't think that any one ever really read 'Squibs.'”
“Read it!” cried Roland, recklessly abandoning truth. “I should jolly well think so. I know it by heart. Do you mean to say that, after an article like that, they actually sacked you? Threw you out as a failure?”
“Oh, they didn't send me away for incompetence. It was simply because they couldn't afford to keep me on. Mr. Petheram was very nice about it.”
“Who's Mr. Petheram?”
“Mr. Petheram's everything. He calls himself the editor, but he's really everything except office-boy, and I expect he'll be that next week. When I started with the paper, there was quite a large staff. But it got whittled down by degrees till there was only Mr. Petheram and myself. It was like the crew of the 'Nancy Bell.' They got eaten one by one, till I was the only one left. And now I've gone. Mr. Petheram is doing the whole paper now.”
“How is it that he can't get anything better to do?” Roland said.
“He has done lots of better things. He used to be at Carmelite House, but they thought he was too old.”
Roland felt relieved. He conjured up a picture of a white-haired elder with a fatherly manner.
“Oh, he's old, is he?”
“Twenty-four.”
There was a brief silence. Something in the girl's expression stung Roland. She wore a rapt look, as if she were dreaming of the absent Petheram, confound him. He would show her that Petheram was not the only man worth looking rapt about.
He rose.
“Would you mind giving me your address?” he said.
“Why?”
“In order,” said Roland carefully, “that I may offer you your former employment on 'Squibs.' I am going to buy it.”
After all, your man of dash and enterprise, your Napoleon, does have his moments. Without looking at her, he perceived that he had bowled her over completely. Something told him that she was staring at him, open-mouthed. Meanwhile, a voice within him was muttering anxiously, “I wonder how much this is going to cost.”
“You're going to buy 'Squibs!'”
Her voice had fallen away to an awestruck whisper.
“I am.”
She gulped.
“Well, I think you're wonderful.”
So did Roland.
“Where will a letter find you?” he asked.
“My name is March. Bessie March. I'm living at twenty-seven Guildford Street.”
“Twenty-seven. Thank you. Good morning. I will communicate with you in due course.”
He raised his hat and walked away. He had only gone a few steps, when there was a patter of feet behind him. He turned.
“I—I just wanted to thank you,” she said.
“Not at all,” said Roland. “Not at all.”
He went on his way, tingling with just triumph. Petheram? Who was Petheram? Who, in the name of goodness, was Petheram? He had put Petheram in his proper place, he rather fancied. Petheram, forsooth. Laughable.
A copy of the current number of 'Squibs,' purchased at a book-stall, informed him, after a minute search to find the editorial page, that the offices of the paper were in Fetter Lane. It was evidence of his exalted state of mind that he proceeded thither in a cab.
Fetter Lane is one of those streets in which rooms that have only just escaped being cupboards by a few feet achieve the dignity of offices. There might have been space to swing a cat in the editorial sanctum of 'Squibs,' but it would have been a near thing. As for the outer office, in which a vacant-faced lad of fifteen received Roland and instructed him to wait while he took his card in to Mr. Petheram, it was a mere box. Roland was afraid to expand his chest for fear of bruising it.
The boy returned to say that Mr. Petheram would see him.
Mr. Petheram was a young man with a mop of hair, and an air of almost painful restraint. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and the table before him was heaped high with papers. Opposite him, evidently in the act of taking his leave was a comfortable-looking man of middle age with a red face and a short beard. He left as Roland entered and Roland was surprized to see Mr. Petheram spring to his feet, shake his fist at the closing door, and kick the wall with a vehemence which brought down several inches of discolored plaster.
“Take a seat,” he said, when he had finished this performance. “What can I do for you?”
Roland had always imagined that editors in their private offices were less easily approached and, when approached, more brusk. The fact was that Mr. Petheram, whose optimism nothing could quench, had mistaken him for a prospective advertiser.
“I want to buy the paper,” said Roland. He was aware that this was an abrupt way of approaching the subject, but, after all, he did want to buy the paper, so why not say so?
Mr. Petheram fizzed in his chair. He glowed with excitement.
“Do you mean to tell me there's a single book-stall in London which has sold out? Great Scott, perhaps they've all sold out! How many did you try?”
“I mean buy the whole paper. Become proprietor, you know.”
Roland felt that he was blushing, and hated himself for it. He ought to be carrying this thing through with an air. Mr. Petheram looked at him blankly.
“Why?” he asked.
“Oh, I don't know,” said Roland. He felt the interview was going all wrong. It lacked a stateliness which this kind of interview should have had.
“Honestly?” said Mr. Petheram. “You aren't pulling my leg?”
Roland nodded. Mr. Petheram appeared to struggle with his conscience, and finally to be worsted by it, for his next remarks were limpidly honest.
“Don't you be an ass,” he said. “You don't know what you're letting yourself in for. Did you see that blighter who went out just now? Do you know who he is? That's the fellow we've got to pay five pounds a week to for life.”
“Why?”
“We can't get rid of him. When the paper started, the proprietors—not the present ones—thought it would give the thing a boom if they had a football competition with a first prize of a fiver a week for life. Well, that's the man who won it. He's been handed down as a legacy from proprietor to proprietor, till now we've got him. Ages ago they tried to get him to compromise for a lump sum down, but he wouldn't. Said he would only spend it, and preferred to get it by the week. Well, by the time we've paid that vampire, there isn't much left out of our profits. That's why we are at the present moment a little understaffed.”
A frown clouded Mr. Petheram's brow. Roland wondered if he was thinking of Bessie March.
“I know all about that,” he said.
“And you still want to buy the thing?”
“Yes.”
“But what on earth for? Mind you, I ought not to be crabbing my own paper like this, but you seem a good chap, and I don't want to see you landed. Why are you doing it?”
“Oh, just for fun.”
“Ah, now you're talking. If you can afford expensive amusements, go ahead.”
He put his feet on the table, and lit a short pipe. His gloomy views on the subject of 'Squibs' gave way to a wave of optimism.
“You know,” he said, “there's really a lot of life in the old rag yet. If it were properly run. What has hampered us has been lack of capital. We haven't been able to advertise. I'm bursting with ideas for booming the paper, only naturally you can't do it for nothing. As for editing, what I don't know about editing—but perhaps you had got somebody else in your mind?”
“No, no,” said Roland, who would not have known an editor from an office-boy. The thought of interviewing prospective editors appalled him.
“Very well, then,” resumed Mr. Petheram, reassured, kicking over a heap of papers to give more room for his feet. “Take it that I continue as editor. We can discuss terms later. Under the present regime I have been doing all the work in exchange for a happy home. I suppose you won't want to spoil the ship for a ha'porth of tar? In other words, you would sooner have a happy, well-fed editor running about the place than a broken-down wreck who might swoon from starvation?”
“But one moment,” said Roland. “Are you sure that the present proprietors will want to sell?”
“Want to sell,” cried Mr. Petheram enthusiastically. “Why, if they know you want to buy, you've as much chance of getting away from them without the paper as—as—well, I can't think of anything that has such a poor chance of anything. If you aren't quick on your feet, they'll cry on your shoulder. Come along, and we'll round them up now.”
He struggled into his coat, and gave his hair an impatient brush with a note-book.
“There's just one other thing,” said Roland. “I have been a regular reader of 'Squibs' for some time, and I particularly admire the way in which the Woman's Page——”
“You mean you want to reengage the editress? Rather. You couldn't do better. I was going to suggest it myself. Now, come along quick before you change your mind or wake up.”
Within a very few days of becoming sole proprietor of 'Squibs,' Roland began to feel much as a man might who, a novice at the art of steering cars, should find himself at the wheel of a runaway motor. Young Mr. Petheram had spoken nothing less than the truth when he had said that he was full of ideas for booming the paper. The infusion of capital into the business acted on him like a powerful stimulant. He exuded ideas at every pore.
Roland's first notion had been to engage a staff of contributors. He was under the impression that contributors were the life-blood of a weekly journal. Mr. Petheram corrected this view. He consented to the purchase of a lurid serial story, but that was the last concession he made. Nobody could accuse Mr. Petheram of lack of energy. He was willing, even anxious, to write the whole paper himself, with the exception of the Woman's Page, now brightly conducted once more by Miss March. What he wanted Roland to concentrate himself upon was the supplying of capital for ingenious advertising schemes.
“How would it be,” he asked one morning—he always began his remarks with, “How would it be?”—“if we paid a man to walk down Piccadilly in white skin-tights with the word 'Squibs' painted in red letters across his chest?”
Roland thought it would certainly not be.
“Good sound advertising stunt,” urged Mr. Petheram. “You don't like it? All right. You're the boss. Well, how would it be to have a squad of men dressed as Zulus with white shields bearing the legend 'Squibs?' See what I mean? Have them sprinting along the Strand shouting, 'Wah! Wah! Wah! Buy it! Buy it!' It would make people talk.”
Roland emerged from these interviews with his skin crawling with modest apprehension. His was a retiring nature, and the thought of Zulus sprinting down the Strand shouting “Wah! Wah! Wah! Buy it! Buy it!” with reference to his personal property appalled him.
He was beginning now heartily to regret having bought the paper, as he generally regretted every definite step which he took. The glow of romance which had sustained him during the preliminary negotiations had faded entirely. A girl has to be possessed of unusual charm to continue to captivate B, when she makes it plain daily that her heart is the exclusive property of A; and Roland had long since ceased to cherish any delusion that Bessie March was ever likely to feel anything but a mild liking for him. Young Mr. Petheram had obviously staked out an indisputable claim. Her attitude toward him was that of an affectionate devotee toward a high priest. One morning, entering the office unexpectedly, Roland found her kissing the top of Mr. Petheram's head; and from that moment his interest in the fortunes of 'Squibs' sank to zero. It amazed him that he could ever have been idiot enough to have allowed himself to be entangled in this insane venture for the sake of an insignificant-looking bit of a girl with a snub-nose and a poor complexion.
What particularly galled him was the fact that he was throwing away good cash for nothing. It was true that his capital was more than equal to the, on the whole, modest demands of the paper, but that did not alter the fact that he was wasting money. Mr. Petheram always talked buoyantly about turning the corner, but the corner always seemed just as far off.
The old idea of flight, to which he invariably had recourse in any crisis, came upon Roland with irresistible force. He packed a bag, and went to Paris. There, in the discomforts of life in a foreign country, he contrived for a month to forget his white elephant.
He returned by the evening train which deposits the traveler in London in time for dinner.
Strangely enough, nothing was farther from Roland's mind than his bright weekly paper, as he sat down to dine in a crowded grill-room near Piccadilly Circus. Four weeks of acute torment in a city where nobody seemed to understand the simplest English sentence had driven 'Squibs' completely from his mind for the time being.
The fact that such a paper existed was brought home to him with the coffee. A note was placed upon his table by the attentive waiter.
“What's this?” he asked.
“The lady, sare,” said the waiter vaguely.
Roland looked round the room excitedly. The spirit of romance gripped him. There were many ladies present, for this particular restaurant was a favorite with artistes who were permitted to “look in” at their theaters as late as eight-thirty. None of them looked particularly self-conscious, yet one of them had sent him this quite unsolicited tribute. He tore open the envelope.
The message, written in a flowing feminine hand, was brief, and Mrs. Grundy herself could have taken no exception to it.
“'Squibs,' one penny weekly, buy it,” it ran. All the mellowing effects of a good dinner passed away from Roland. He was feverishly irritated. He paid his bill and left the place.
A visit to a neighboring music-hall occurred to him as a suitable sedative. Hardly had his nerves ceased to quiver sufficiently to allow him to begin to enjoy the performance, when, in the interval between two of the turns, a man rose in one of the side boxes.
“Is there a doctor in the house?”
There was a hush in the audience. All eyes were directed toward the box. A man in the stalls rose, blushing, and cleared his throat.
“My wife has fainted,” continued the speaker. “She has just discovered that she has lost her copy of 'Squibs.'”
The audience received the statement with the bovine stolidity of an English audience in the presence of the unusual.
Not so Roland. Even as the purposeful-looking chuckers-out wended their leopard-like steps toward the box, he was rushing out into the street.
As he stood cooling his indignation in the pleasant breeze which had sprung up, he was aware of a dense crowd proceeding toward him. It was headed by an individual who shone out against the drab background like a good deed in a naughty world. Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time, and this was one of the strangest that Roland's bulging eyes had ever rested upon. He was a large, stout man, comfortably clad in a suit of white linen, relieved by a scarlet 'Squibs' across the bosom. His top-hat, at least four sizes larger than any top-hat worn out of a pantomime, flaunted the same word in letters of flame. His umbrella, which, tho the weather was fine, he carried open above his head, bore the device “One penny weekly”.
The arrest of this person by a vigilant policeman and Roland's dive into a taxicab occurred simultaneously. Roland was blushing all over. His head was in a whirl. He took the evening paper handed in through the window of the cab quite mechanically, and it was only the strong exhortations of the vendor which eventually induced him to pay for it. This he did with a sovereign, and the cab drove off.
He was just thinking of going to bed several hours later, when it occurred to him that he had not read his paper. He glanced at the first page. The middle column was devoted to a really capitally written account of the proceedings at Bow Street consequent upon the arrest of six men who, it was alleged, had caused a crowd to collect to the disturbance of the peace by parading the Strand in the undress of Zulu warriors, shouting in unison the words “Wah! Wah! Wah! Buy 'Squibs.'”
Young Mr. Petheram greeted Roland with a joyous enthusiasm which the hound Argus, on the return of Ulysses, might have equalled but could scarcely have surpassed.
It seemed to be Mr. Petheram's considered opinion that God was in His Heaven and all was right with the world. Roland's attempts to correct this belief fell on deaf ears.
“Have I seen the advertisements?” he cried, echoing his editor's first question. “I've seen nothing else.”
“There!” said Mr. Petheram proudly.
“It can't go on.”
“Yes, it can. Don't you worry. I know they're arrested as fast as we send them out, but, bless you, the supply's endless. Ever since the Revue boom started and actors were expected to do six different parts in seven minutes, there are platoons of music-hall 'pros' hanging about the Strand, ready to take on any sort of job you offer them. I have a special staff flushing the Bodegas. These fellows love it. It's meat and drink to them to be right in the public eye like that. Makes them feel ten years younger. It's wonderful the talent knocking about. Those Zulus used to have a steady job as the Six Brothers Biff, Society Contortionists. The Revue craze killed them professionally. They cried like children when we took them on.
“By the way, could you put through an expenses cheque before you go? The fines mount up a bit. But don't you worry about that either. We're coining money. I'll show you the returns in a minute. I told you we should turn the corner. Turned it! Blame me, we've whizzed round it on two wheels. Have you had time to see the paper since you got back? No? Then you haven't seen our new Scandal Page—'We Just Want to Know, You Know.' It's a corker, and it's sent the circulation up like a rocket. Everybody reads 'Squibs' now. I was hoping you would come back soon. I wanted to ask you about taking new offices. We're a bit above this sort of thing now.”
Roland, meanwhile, was reading with horrified eyes the alleged corking Scandal Page. It seemed to him without exception the most frightful production he had ever seen. It appalled him.
“This is awful,” he moaned. “We shall have a hundred libel actions.”
“Oh, no, that's all right. It's all fake stuff, tho the public doesn't know it. If you stuck to real scandals you wouldn't get a par. a week. A more moral set of blameless wasters than the blighters who constitute modern society you never struck. But it reads all right, doesn't it? Of course, every now and then one does hear something genuine, and then it goes in. For instance, have you ever heard of Percy Pook, the bookie? I have got a real ripe thing in about Percy this week, the absolute limpid truth. It will make him sit up a bit. There, just under your thumb.”
Roland removed his thumb, and, having read the paragraph in question, started as if he had removed it from a snake.
“But this is bound to mean a libel action!” he cried.
“Not a bit of it,” said Mr. Petheram comfortably. “You don't know Percy. I won't bore you with his life-history, but take it from me he doesn't rush into a court of law from sheer love of it. You're safe enough.”
But it appeared that Mr. Pook, tho coy in the matter of cleansing his scutcheon before a judge and jury, was not wholly without weapons of defense and offense. Arriving at the office next day, Roland found a scene of desolation, in the middle of which, like Marius among the ruins of Carthage, sat Jimmy, the vacant-faced office boy. Jimmy was reading an illustrated comic paper, and appeared undisturbed by his surroundings.
“He's gorn,” he observed, looking up as Roland entered.
“What do you mean?” Roland snapped at him. “Who's gone and where did he go? And besides that, when you speak to your superiors you will rise and stop chewing that infernal gum. It gets on my nerves.”
Jimmy neither rose nor relinquished his gum. He took his time and answered.
“Mr. Petheram. A couple of fellers come in and went through, and there was a uproar inside there, and presently out they come running, and I went in, and there was Mr. Petheram on the floor knocked silly and the furniture all broke, and now 'e's gorn to 'orspital. Those fellers 'ad been putting 'im froo it proper,” concluded Jimmy with moody relish.
Roland sat down weakly. Jimmy, his tale told, resumed the study of his illustrated paper. Silence reigned in the offices of 'Squibs.'
It was broken by the arrival of Miss March. Her exclamation of astonishment at the sight of the wrecked room led to a repetition of Jimmy's story.
She vanished on hearing the name of the hospital to which the stricken editor had been removed, and returned an hour later with flashing eyes and a set jaw.
“Aubrey,” she said—it was news to Roland that Mr. Petheram's name was Aubrey—“is very much knocked about, but he is conscious and sitting up and taking nourishment.”
“That's good.”
“In a spoon only.”
“Ah!” said Roland.
“The doctor says he will not be out for a week. Aubrey is certain it was that horrible book-maker's men who did it, but of course he can prove nothing. But his last words to me were, 'Slip it into Percy again this week.' He has given me one or two things to mention. I don't understand them, but Aubrey says they will make him wild.”
Roland's flesh crept. The idea of making Mr. Pook any wilder than he appeared to be at present horrified him. Panic gave him strength, and he addressed Miss March, who was looking more like a modern Joan of Arc than anything else on earth, firmly.
“Miss March,” he said, “I realize that this is a crisis, and that we must all do all that we can for the paper, and I am ready to do anything in reason—but I will not slip it into Percy. You have seen the effects of slipping it into Percy. What he or his minions will do if we repeat the process I do not care to think.”
“You are afraid?”
“Yes,” said Roland simply.
Miss March turned on her heel. It was plain that she regarded him as a worm. Roland did not like being thought a worm, but it was infinitely better than being regarded as an interesting case by the house-surgeon of a hospital. He belonged to the school of thought which holds that it is better that people should say of you, “There he goes!” than that they should say, “How peaceful he looks”.
Stress of work prevented further conversation. It was a revelation to Roland, the vigor and energy with which Miss March threw herself into the breach. As a matter of fact, so tremendous had been the labors of the departed Mr. Petheram, that her work was more apparent than real. Thanks to Mr. Petheram, there was a sufficient supply of material in hand to enable 'Squibs' to run a fortnight on its own momentum. Roland, however, did not know this, and with a view to doing what little he could to help, he informed Miss March that he would write the Scandal Page. It must be added that the offer was due quite as much to prudence as to chivalry. Roland simply did not dare to trust her with the Scandal Page. In her present mood it was not safe. To slip it into Percy would, he felt, be with her the work of a moment.
Literary composition had never been Roland's forte. He sat and stared at the white paper and chewed the pencil which should have been marring its whiteness with stinging paragraphs. No sort of idea came to him.
His brow grew damp. What sort of people—except book-makers—did things you could write scandal about? As far as he could ascertain, nobody.
He picked up the morning paper. The name Windlebird [*] caught his eye. A kind of pleasant melancholy came over him as he read the paragraph. How long ago it seemed since he had met that genial financier. The paragraph was not particularly interesting. It gave a brief account of some large deal which Mr. Windlebird was negotiating. Roland did not understand a word of it, but it gave him an idea.
[*] He is a character in the Second Episode, a fraudulent financier.
Mr. Windlebird's financial standing, he knew, was above suspicion. Mr. Windlebird had made that clear to him during his visit. There could be no possibility of offending Mr. Windlebird by a paragraph or two about the manners and customs of financiers. Phrases which his kindly host had used during his visit came back to him, and with them inspiration.
Within five minutes he had compiled the following