"Good!" answered Mr. Dennis Farraday, with another and still broader smile of gratification and admiration of the Violet as an artist—a smile which further infuriated, but equally inspired her. "And what a grand time we'll all have putting it across! I'm going to help Van see actors for the cast on Friday, and I'm going to sit in on rehearsals straight through. I'm due a month's vacation, and I'm going to have my mail from the office relayed back to New York from the yacht off Nantucket so that bunch of money grubbers can't find me. Think of having the honor of being co-producer for Violet Hawtry for my first shot!"
All of which enthusiasm and admiration went like wine to the head of the Violet, though it left her heart uncomfortably cold; and beautiful, cool moonlight heats the heart of a fair woman when it is not more than two feet away from that of a brave and fair man.
"Sure I'll make it a success for you, man dear!" Maggie Murphy in the Violet made an attempt to put a glow into the situation, using the brogue that was like rich cream poured over peaches, as she snuggled her bare shoulder, from which the orchid wrap had slipped, with a natural little shiver against good Dennis's wheel arm.
"You and Van are trumps to take me in for the fun, and I'm no end grateful to you both," was all she got for her manœuver.
"Yes—Van is a dear," she hedged in a matter-of-fact voice.
"Yes, and I suppose after my co-first night with him the old scout will stop baiting me about blinking the white lights. I always have been obliged to beat Van at any game before I could rest in peace." And at the thought of getting in at his David big Jonathan laughed heartily just as he began to slow up the car for the turn along the sea-wall that led under the porch ofHighcliff.
"Have you ever competed with him in thebiggest game of all?" the Violet asked softly, as the car swept into the shadow and stopped by the broad stone steps.
"What do you mean?" demanded Mr. Farraday, with a countenance so open and a voice so hearty that the Violet, used to artifice from everybody, suspected that they could not be real, and this suspicion made her give up the game for the time being. She laughed with a mocking sweetness as she sprang out of the car and to the top of the steps before he could help her.
"Some day I'll tell you what I mean," she mocked from the dark doorway. "Good-night!" And while he stood at the bottom step looking up at her, she vanished into the darkness of the house, leaving him out in the cool moonlight, a fate very different from what she had been planning for him for several hours.
"Just as old Van said, they are nothing but children, and I blame him about trifling with her more than I thought I did; she's a dear thing and a little pathetic in her anxietyto make good for him. Scout has just got to do something about it all. She's a fine and devoted woman. And beautiful—whee-ugh!" The big thirty-year-old boy ended his soliloquy with a whistle, which showed that in a measure he had appreciated the dangers of the last hours. One of the eternal questions is how can a mere man be so wicked—or so good as he is often discovered by temptation to be?
"I'll have to be publicly and finally severed from Van before I annex him, the boob," was the soliloquy of the Violet as she prepared for her slumber of beauty. Another question is how thin a veneer of feminine beauty weathers indefinitely the wash of circumstances.
Then after that moonlit night in August Fate spun her web, which she called "The Purple Slipper," rapidly, and for a number of the people involved life became very hectic. The center of the whirl was Mr. Adolph Meyers, though he was safely functioning with power behind the throne occupied by Mr. Godfrey Vandeford's nonchalant and elegantly clad figure.
"But Mr. Vandeford, sir, it is never before that you have produced a play without a reading," he remonstrated on the morning of the day set for the picking of the cast from those probably suitable chosen by Chambers, the invaluable agent of the great army of those theatrically employed. "Actors will be here from twelve o'clock even to six. How will a choice be made?"
"I'm trusting to your hunch about the purple manuscript falling on the day of the Violet letter, Pops," answered Mr. Godfrey Vandeford. "Make out a little memorandum against each name that tells me what to pick. I like the idea of going it blind that way: it may be lucky. And, Pops, split that five-thousand-dollar check of Mr. Farraday's in three ways. Pay Lindenberg two-fifty as his advance on the scenery for 'The Rosie Posie Girl,' provided he furbishes up something that will do for the little road sally of Violet's spanking-machine, tobe emblazoned as 'The Purple Slipper' on the cheapest black bills ever run off in New York. Give Hugh Willings a thousand advance for the music of 'The Rosie Posie Girl,' but make him write as many as six waltz songs even if you are sure the first is a hit; it is good to make people, specially any kind of artists, work for the money you pay 'em. The other fifteen hundred you had better put off by itself as a starter on the Violet's gowns. She likes to pay an Irish woman with a French name three hundred dollars for six dollars' worth of chiffon sewed with seventy-five cents' worth of silk."
"What is for costumes for the 'Purple Slipper'?"
"Oh, any old dolling up will do for that. The women can wear what they've got and the men borrow or rent." With a wave of the cigarette in his hand, Mr. Vandeford dismissed the scenic effects of the play for whose début Miss Elvira Henderson was concocting a dream costume to adorn theauthor for receiving triumphal plaudits.
"But, Mr. Vandeford, sir, it is a costume play of a period," the humble power behind the throne pleaded.
"Oh, is it? Then rent the nearest layout to its date that Grossmidt has for all of 'em in a lump, and make him give you a bargain. Tell him they won't be worn more than two weeks. I guess Violet will be in line by that time." With which significant order Mr. Godfrey Vandeford turned from the anxious Mr. Meyers to answer the tinkling telephone at his elbow. In a second he was speaking to the most eminent stage director on Broadway.
. . . . . .
"Yes, this is Godfrey Vandeford, Bill."
. . . . . .
"Yes. Called to know if you would like to stage a little show for me right away."
. . . . . .
"Yes. I'm going to give Hawtry a little canter before 'The Rosie Posie Girl.' Newline for her, and doubtful. Like to take hold for a pittance?"
. . . . . .
"Oh, yes, that three hundred a week for the 'Posie Girl' goes, of course, but this play is just a Hawtry whim that I have got to let her get out of her system. One hundred a week is my limit, and you ought to do it for seventy-five. You can sit in your chair all the time for all I care."
. . . . . .
"Now you get me—a hundred it is. Let her have her head and work off steam before we start 'The Rosie Posie.' Yes, Willings is doing the Rosie songs for us. They'll be hot stuff."
. . . . . .
"Yes, Corbett's making sketches for 'The Rosie Posie' scenery now. We'll start 'The Purple Slipper' on Monday. Yes, that's its blooming name. By!"
"Is it William Rooney to stage 'The Purple Slipper'?" asked Mr. Meyers, with ashrug of his narrow shoulders as he began pecking out on his machine the notes that were to guide his chief in picking the artists who were to embody the characters in the play founded on the life romance of that old grandame Madam Patricia Adair of colonial Kentucky.
"Why do you reckon Samuel Goldstein likes to build up a reputation for himself on Broadway by the name of William Rooney, Pops?" inquired Mr. Vandeford, with the idle curiosity of a free and untroubled mind.
"It is the prejudice against Hebrews for a reason," answered Mr. Meyers, with a glint in his gem-like eyes and a wave of color flushing across his high, scholarly forehead.
"Well, the top crust of the whole show business is Hebrew, and I should think the bunch of you would be proud of the fact. I'm even proud that a man named Adolph Meyers runs this whole company, and me included," said Mr. Vandeford, without taking the trouble to note the wave of gratified pride, devotion, and embarrassment thatswept over the countenance of his faithful henchman. "Now I'll get a little booking for your 'Purple Slipper,' and that is all you need expect me to do, except shoulder all the loss I haven't shunted on Denny."
"It is to be a win, not a loss," murmured the loyal Adolph under his breath, with a glance of affection at the absorbed Mr. Godfrey Vandeford.
This vow of Mr. Adolph Meyers shows that it is as dangerous to arouse the affection and loyalty of one genius as it is to incur the anger of another.
The casting of "The Purple Slipper" was a joy to Mr. Dennis Farraday. He was to pay well for it in the future, but it was conducted in pure glee. He sat beside Mr. Godfrey Vandeford in the latter's long, Persian carpeted, soft-tinted, and famous-actor-photograph-bedecked, private office beside that eminent producer, and watched the strong light from over their shoulders reveal the points of the men and women who came in to exhibit themselves. From the momentthey entered the door, through the walk or waddle or lope or saunter with which they approached their fate to the expressions of joy or disappointment which their emotions showed under Mr. Godfrey Vandeford's grilling, Mr. Farraday was deeply interested.
"You know, Bébé, it is not necessary to put on more than a hundred extra pounds when in training for the heavy mother," he genially admonished a very large lady of uncertain age—an age artfully covered with rouge, powder, pencil, and lip-stick—who sank into the chair facing him with a pathetic remnant of the former lissome grace which had got her as far as being a dependable leading woman to any star who could go her a few points better.
"Well, it's not from living on large salaries from you that I have put on the pounds, Mr. Godfrey Vandeford!" she answered with a jovial laugh.
"Still eating half of old Wallace Kent's salary checks?" Mr. Vandeford demanded.This seemed a lack of delicacy to Mr. Dennis Farraday, who blushed with a color equal to that which rose in the cheeks of the old beauty as her eyes snapped and she rose to her feet.
"As you know, he's feeding a squab chicken at Rector's to get her into the broiler class. Good-day, sir," and she prepared to sweep out of the office with all the fire she had used in many a queenly situation.
"Good old Bébé," Mr. Vandeford said, as he rose and put a restraining arm around her broad waist. "I was just teasing to see what was smouldering. How'll seventy-five a week, with costumes of frills and powdered hair, do you? Thirty sides and the center of the stage four times." "Sides," meaning single sheets of dialogue, puzzled Mr. Farraday, but he made a mental note to seek enlightenment.
"I haven't had a part this winter, Godfrey," she laughed, and sobbed on Mr. Vandeford's shoulder. "I'm living in a suitcase at Mrs. Pinkham's."
"Stop and get a twenty-five check from Dolph, and be on the job Monday at the Barrett Theatre. Now run!" Mr. Vandeford gave Miss Bébé Herne's two hundred pounds of avoirdupois a gentle shove toward the door, which hint she took with an alacrity that had in it a great deal of left-over grace.
"Supported a lot of big guns for years. Knows her business better than any actress on Broadway," said Mr. Godfrey Vandeford to his horrified confrère as the door closed behind the old beauty. "Picked up Wallace Kent when he was a piffling, faded juvenile, and taught him to be a good elderly support worth his hundred to any director. He's left her flat for a pony in the Big Show, old hound!"
"Pretty raw," observed Mr. Dennis Farraday, with a great deal of emotion very poorly concealed in his sympathetic voice.
"Oh, she's had her fling in life! Dopes a bit, but can be depended upon. Next!"
This time there entered a husky, young brute of a boy with shoulders broad enoughto run a double-decker plough. His hair was long and sleeked close to his well-shaped head, but his fine mouth and chin sagged, and his eyes were bold and sophisticated. In costume he was the glass and mould of Broadway fashion.
"Reginald Leigh," he announced himself in a nice voice, and, as he spoke, took from a case a card and laid it on the edge of Mr. Vandeford's desk.
"Experience, Mr. Leigh?" asked Mr. Vandeford, still standing and with not an atom of encouragement in his whole body from head to toe.
"College dramatics and last summer in stock at Buffalo. I've worked in two pictures for the Universal."
"Heavy juvenile at fifty a week," offered Mr. Vandeford, with an indifferent glance up from the paper in his hand prepared for his guidance by the indefatigable Mr. Meyers. The word "handsome" was typed in the offer from which Mr. Vandeford made to Mr. Leigh.
"My price is a hundred, Mr. Vandeford," answered Mr. Leigh, very pleasantly, and he took a grip on his hat and stick that was meant to convey the idea of immediate departure.
"Sorry," answered Mr. Vandeford, with a finality that staggered Mr. Dennis Farraday; for the youngster's looks and charm were so evident that it pained him to see "The Purple Slipper" lose them. "Costumes historical, furnished," added Mr. Vandeford, with increased indifference.
"Oh, in that case—" murmured the boy, almost, but not quite, unleashing his eagerness.
"Just leave your telephone number with Mr. Meyers in the outer office, please. Good-morning, Mr. Leigh," was the answer his concession got along with the dismissal in the "good-morning," which was spoken in such a tone that it was obeyed in short order.
"That is a find," said Mr. Godfrey Vandeford to the gasping Mr. Dennis Farraday."Handsome young chaps who have any kind of manliness are hard to find these days. Too busy to be actors."
"Why didn't you engage him?" further gasped his partner in the adventure of "The Purple Slipper."
"I'll let him cool his heels, to get some of the know-it out of his system. Dolph will make him come around and beg in less than twenty-four hours."
"See here, Van, these people are artists to whom you are trusting your money and reputation as a producer, and you treat them like—"
"The foolish children that they are," interrupted Mr. Vandeford. "Next!" and he pressed a button under his desk that buzzed for Mr. Meyers's ears alone.
The next three applicants were girls, who respectively giggled, glowered, and simpered. Mr. Godfrey Vandeford chose the two who glowered and simpered and got rid of the giggler by referring her telephone number to Mr. Adolph Meyers.
"That second that you sent away was the prettiest of the bunch," commented Mr. Dennis Farraday, with interest that had survived to that point with undiminished intensity.
"Not at home under that little cocked hat. That giggle was the whole bag of tricks," instructed Mr. Vandeford. "Got any men out there, Pops?" he asked through the telephone to Mr. Adolph Meyers.
Immediately there entered a debonair, very handsome, and sleek gentleman of uncertain age.
"Hello, Kent, want to support Bébé in a costume play for a hundred a week?" asked Mr. Vandeford, with not an instant's greeting in answer to that gentleman's cordial good-morning.
"In New York or on the road?" questioned Mr. Kent, with an assurance that he tried to make bold.
"To the devil if I send you there," was the answer he got straight off the bat.
"A hundred with costumes?"
"With costumes."
"Done."
"See Dolph; but not over ten-dollar advance to save your hide."
"He's giving fifty."
"To whom?"
"Bébé."
"He did that because he knew that you'd get half of what he gave her. Ten's your limit."
"All right. Good-morning!"
"Barrett on Monday morning."
"All right!"
With which Mr. Kent rapidly made his exit.
"Old reprobate! But he does feed the lines to his opposite, and Bébé happy is worth twice Bébé in a grouch. You see what the whole blamed thing is like and—" Mr. Vandeford was interrupted by the tinkle of the telephone at his elbow.
. . . . . .
"Godfrey Vandeford speaking."
. . . . . .
"When did you get in?"
. . . . . .
"Not busy at all."
. . . . . .
"The Claridge?"
. . . . . .
"Right away."
. . . . . .
"Haven't seen or heard from him in two days."
. . . . . .
"Right over. By!"
. . . . . .
From overhearing, as he was forced to do, this one-sided conversation, how could Mr. Dennis Farraday imagine that Violet Hawtry had come into sultry New York seeking him to devour and that his keeper was rushing away from his presence to his defense?
"You and Pops engage the rest, Denny. You see the trick now. Nothing left important but what Dolph puts down on this paper as 'woman support for character parts with looks.' Try your hand, old man, and if you pick a flivver there are plenty more to cast in and her out. By!" And before Mr. Farraday could protest he was left alone in the inquisition-room. And as Mr. Godfrey Vandeford went down in an elevator on his way to the Claridge to deliver the next instalment of the spanking of Miss Violet Hawtry, he passed a live wire going up opposite him and met one walking down Forty-second Street, neither of which he could be expected to recognize, as he had never seen either.
The first of the two dynamos walked into the office of the Vandeford Producing Company and failed to thrill Mr. Adolph Meyers in the least, a fact for which he could never afterward account. He motioned her into the inner office, and left her to her fate and Mr. Dennis Farraday.
"Good-morning, Mr. Vandeford," she said in a queer, throaty kind of voice that hadin it a "come hither" of unusual quality, which suggested that in her production a Romney woman might have loved a Greek dancer well. She stood at ease before the long desk with a grace that was unmistakably that of complete assurance.
"I'm not Mr. Vandeford, but his—his partner, Dennis Farraday. Er—er, won't you be seated?" and with the happy, considerate manner of his that he had always used to all women, he offered her his own chair and appropriated the one of authority that Mr. Vandeford always occupied.
"Thank you," answered the young woman, with an ease equal to his own. And then they both waited while regarding each other seriously. Finally the tension relaxed and Dennis Farraday gave a big, jovial laugh while he made his admission:
"I don't know a thing about the play business. I'm just sitting in with Mr. Vandeford for the fun of it."
"An angel?" asked the girl, with a laugh that somehow accorded with his.
"That's it. He's gone out and left me to—to cut my eye teeth."
"On me?"
"Looks that way," and again they both laughed.
"Maybe I can help you," volunteered the girl, after the laugh. "I am Mildred Lindsey, and Mr. Chambers sent me in to see if I could support Miss Hawtry."
"Er—er, what experience?" Mr. Dennis Farraday managed to ask by fishing into his impressions of the last two hours.
"Five years in stock on the Pacific coast, two years in towns between, and two weeks in a flivver here on Broadway early in the spring. Dead broke, hungry, and about ready to make good for some manager." As the answer was fired point-blank at him, Mr. Dennis Farraday seemed to see a fire of psychic hunger blaze as high as that of wolfish, physical agony in the girl's eyes.
Mr. Dennis Farraday eagerly searched on the paper of guidance in casting made out by Mr. Adolph Meyers for the benefit ofMr. Vandeford and found "woman support," and opposite the item of salary, seventy-five dollars. He doubled.
"How would a hundred and fifty a week with costumes do for salary? You can have a couple of weeks advance right now if you like," he said in an easy, nonchalant manner as much like that of Mr. Vandeford as he could muster, for those fires of hunger in the girl's eyes were searching holes in Mr. Dennis Farraday's pocket.
"It would save my life—but—but could you tell me a little about the part? I might not be able to play it." There were both hope and fear in her compelling voice.
The question found Mr. Dennis Farraday unprepared by any precedent established in the two foregoing hours, for between the artists and Mr. Vandeford there had been alone the matter of salary to be settled and not one of them had inquired whether they were being engaged to play a Billy Sunday or an Ethiopian slave. But in another way it found him better preparedthan would have been Mr. Godfrey Vandeford. He had read the manuscript of "The Purple Slipper" and Mr. Vandeford had not.
"Well, to my uninitiated way of thinking, the supporting part is about as good as the leading one," said Mr. Dennis Farraday, and forthwith he launched out on an eager, enthusiastic resumé of the plot and atmosphere, even quoting lines of "The Purple Slipper." And as he talked Mildred Lindsey leaned across the table toward him and fairly drank in his words.
"I see—it's wonderful how she keeps his enemies at bay during the first half of the banquet—while she waits. It's great!" Her enthusiasm expressed in her wonderful voice urged Mr. Dennis Farraday on and on to a fuller exposition of the play and its beauties.
"You see, the sister is really the one to carry the plot. It is on her that Rosalind leans, and she has to be all there in her quiet way."
"Yes, I see, and it can be made—" At this juncture the eye of Mr. Adolph Meyer was inserted to a crack of the door and then removed as he shook his head in puzzled doubt. He had intended to intrude to the rescue of hisco-employer'sinexperience, but he decided that the time was not ripe by one glance at Mr. Farraday's eager face, surmounted by its rampant, red leonine locks.
"I have pity for Mr. Farraday," Mr. Meyers remarked to himself as he seated himself at his machine, not knowing that in a very few minutes the second live wire would arrive in the office and this time he would get a shock himself.
For a half-hour he wrote on, while the animated voices boomed and purled and bubbled in the office beyond the crack of the door he had left open to observe the first lull that might call for relief. Then he got his shock.
The office door opened timidly, and somebody entered so quietly that she stood besideMr. Adolph Meyers before he had lifted his head.
It was the author of "The Renunciation of Rosalind," now "The Purple Slipper," and she looked every inch of it! Miss Elvira, the genius guided by "The Feminist Review," had done her best with the blue-silk suit, and Fifth Avenue could have done no better.
"May I see Mr. Vandeford? I am Miss Patricia Adair," she announced in a rich and calm Southern voice and manner.
Mr. Adolph Meyers sprang to his feet with the impact of the shock.
"Mr. Vandeford is not in the office, Madam, at present," he managed to gasp. Then he followed her big, gray eyes as they rested on the crack of the door through which the boom of Mr. Dennis Farraday's voice mingled with the excited chime of Miss Lindsey's laughter, and noticed as though for the first time that it had emblazoned upon it in large, gilt letters, "Mr. Vandeford. Private."
"It is Mr. Dennis Farraday, the partner of Mr. Vandeford, engaging actors, Miss, in his absence. Will you walk in?" and in almost the first panic in which he had ever indulged Mr. Adolph Meyers showed the proud young author into the sanctum sanctorum from which he had barricaded many an enraged virago who had threatened his life if he kept her from an appeal to the manager.
"It is Miss Adair, the author of your play, Mr. Farraday, would speak with you," he announced across the long room, bowed in a way he had never done in his life, and shut the door behind Miss Adair.
It is interesting to wonder how it would have affected the end of the whole matter if Patricia Adair had walked in behind the giggler when Mr. Godfrey Vandeford, with all his experience with authors, was seated on the throne instead of poor inexperienced Dennis Farraday, enjoying "The Purple Slipper" with his newly engaged, supporting lady.
"By jove, Miss Adair, it is little bit of all right that you should come in and catch Miss Lindsey and me chewing joy-rags over our—your play. Let me introduce Miss Lindsey, who is to support Miss Hawtry in the part of Harriet." And bonnie Dennis, the angel, beamed with pure joy at the good time he was having as a producer. At the very sight and sound of him poor Patricia, who for half an hour had been wandering up and down Forty-second Street, looking for the tallest building on it, took both comfort and delight, and her sea-gray eyes with stars in their depths returned the beam of his eyes.
"It's so wonderful that you like my play and are going to produce it—and you to act in it, Miss Lindsey," she said as she seated herself in the chair Mr. Farraday had drawn up for her. She looked at them both with respectful awe in her eyes and in her cheeks a flush of color that came and went as she spoke, in a way that at first puzzled Miss Lindsey as to its brand and then in turn awed her as she decided it was the real thing.The blue-silk triumph of Miss Elvira and "The Review" also puzzled her for a moment, but she put it down to some little Fifth Avenue shop that only débutantes and authors of plays could afford, and took it in with delight at its exquisite detail.
"I think it is a dandy play, as Mr. Farraday has been telling it to me. Crooks and—and cut-ups are about done for," said Miss Lindsey. She gave a quick glance at Mr. Farraday, to see if he resented the allusion to Mr. Vandeford's recent failure.
"Right-o!" agreed Mr. Farraday, with a sympathetic smile at her allusion, which passed over the head of the lady from Adairville, Kentucky.
Then ensued more than a half-hour of the most enthusiastic discussion of plays in general, and Miss Adair's in particular. Both Mr. Dennis Farraday and Miss Mildred Lindsey were impressed with the fact that the author of "The Renunciation of Rosalind" had learned her business from the most erudite sources, and they talked Shakespeareand Fielding until they at last wound themselves up into a complete pause.
Miss Adair broke the strain.
"I'm awfully hungry, and I don't know where to go to get something to eat," she said, with exactly the same tone of confidence she had used in asking old Jeff for a cold muffin in between the meals of her eighth summer.
"By Jove, we are all hungry! You girls come with me," exclaimed Mr. Dennis Farraday, as he jumped to his feet and looked around for his hat.
"Thank you, but I think I had better go home to—to see about—" Miss Lindsey was faltering with the embarrassment of those who are both proud and hungry, when food is offered them socially.
"Nonsense! You are coming over to the Claridge with Miss Adair and me for a bite. Then you can come back by here and see Dolph.—Dolph, make out a check for Miss Lindsey's advance. Shall we say one or two hundred, Miss Lindsey?" DennisFarraday was in his element when doing the breezy protective to two girls at once.
"One hundred, please," answered Miss Lindsey, with color mounting to her cheeks that underpainted that already there. She smiled with amusement at the surprise that manifested itself for an instant on the round face of Mr. Meyers that an actress should not "grab" all offered her and then plead for more. "But I really do feel that I had better not—go to luncheon, for I am—"
"Please do! I'd rather you would," the eminent author urged, and she clung to the show girl in a way that showed Dennis Farraday, accustomed to the women of her world, that vague proprieties were hovering beside the gates that were opening for Patricia from her old world into her new.
"You'll have to come, Miss Lindsey, to celebrate, or we shall think you are not all for the play," Mr. Farraday said with a finality in his voice that settled the matter.
And the three of them scudded along a few blocks of the sun-steamed streets intothe coolness of the Claridge, also into the heart of a situation that had been seething for an hour between Mr. Godfrey Vandeford and Miss Violet Hawtry.
"How wonderful of you, Van dear, to find me such a play at the eleventh and three-quarters hour!" had been the volley that Violet had fired at him.
"Glad you like it," he had parried, feeling sure that she was jockeying with him for position for the clinch.
"Dennis Farraday told me that you were backing my emotional handling even more than my comedy scenes. Could you for once be playing square with me and really looking forward to my development in getting this—this rather remarkable kind of a play for me?"
"I've done my best for you for five years, Violet," he quietly answered the insult, as he looked across the empty white tables that stretched away from Violet's favorite and reserved seat in the black and gold dining-room.
"'Miss Cut-up,' for instance?"
"There were several ways to put that play across. You had your way in every particular. Mine might have succeeded," was his calm answer.
"The really amusing thing about you is that you don't at all know how little brains you have," was the polite broadside delivered him as Violet began to sip the clear coffee from her cup.
"Same to you," was the reply she received. Godfrey spoke in a good-natured tone of voice. "Now, what did you come to town to talk about—'The Purple Slipper'?"
"Why did you leave Highcliff like a thief in the night?"
"Did you read the deeds Dolph gave you when he went up to pack my personal effects?"
"Yes, thanks! I suppose you consider Highcliff the price of your freedom?"
"And cheap at that."
"Then why not turn me over to Weiner?" Violet asked in a dangerous tone of voicethat made Mr. Vandeford glance around with apprehension to see who would witness the explosion if it occurred.
"I tried to buy Denny off yesterday, but you fastened 'The Purple Slipper' firmly in his head, maybe his heart, the other evening, and it would be like taking candy from a child. Maybe you can—can influence him to let go—if I give you the chance." There was something coolly insulting in his voice that told Violet he had surmised her intentions and the failure of her assault on his big Jonathan.
"Your usual impertinence! I'll get him yet, just to spite you. I'll go in and play that 'Purple Slipper' to win, and—"
"Again Miss Adair breaks in on enthusiasm for her play." Dennis Farraday's big voice boomed right at the elbows of the embattled pair. "Look who's here, Van!"
Mr. Godfrey Vandeford looked up quickly, and as quickly rose to his feet. And with one glance into slate-gray eyes behind long black lashes—eyes filled withawed, worshipful gratitude to him—his heart rose in his breast and all but flitted out upon his sleeve.
"Miss Adair, Mr. Vandeford, the producer of your play," good Dennis flourished. "And Miss Violet Hawtry! In fact, the whole happy family!"
Now, by all rules of the game, it was the prerogative of Miss Violet Hawtry to take charge of a situation in which the star of a play meets the author; but she missed her cue, and the gutter instinct within her sat dumb and dumfounded before the lady from Adairville.
"I'm charmed to meet you, Miss Hawtry," Miss Adair assured her, with a glance of such admiration and friendliness that even Violet's narrow-gage soul expanded into a variety of graciousness all its own, and she smiled back into the eyes of the young author with a radiance that had the semblance of warmth.
"And this is Miss Lindsey, whom we have chosen to support you in our play, Miss Hawtry," Mr. Dennis Farraday continued, with a glance of respectful awe at the Hawtry, which matched that given her by the author a second before and obtained for Miss Lindsey a cordial enough recognition of the introduction only slightly to frappé her instead of freezing her entirely. "We are all hungry," he added after the change of civilities.
"You are all having luncheon with me," Mr. Vandeford found his voice to say. Ignoring Violet's glance of indignation at this skilful avoidance of a climax of her scene with him, he had three extra covers laid at the corner table devoted to the services of Miss Hawtry.
"I warned you that we were hungry, Van," said Mr. Farraday, as he began to search through the menu for an article of diet safe to pour in quantities into a girl who had long been empty. "How'd rare steak and fresh mushrooms do?" he asked, and he looked away from what he was sure would be in the eyes of Miss Lindsey, and which was there.
"Wonderful!" she murmured.
"Right-o, for you and Miss Lindsey, but what about nightingales' tongues for my author?" laughed Mr. Vandeford, with an interested note in his rich voice, which caused Miss Hawtry to look at him sharply and Miss Adair to repeat the blush to such a degree that Miss Hawtry, as Miss Lindsey before her, was forced to admit that it was native and not imported. The flush did not pass unnoticed by Mr. Vandeford, as he laughed again with a question as to her nourishing.
"I want something that I don't know what the name means," calmly returned Miss Adair, with delighted excitement at the thought of adventuring into a land of strange food. "I know steak and ham and eggs and chicken and turkey."
"Will you trust me?" asked Mr. Vandeford. There was an eagerness in his voice and smile that again made the Violet glance at him and then at Mr. Dennis Farraday. The latter was beaming with mirth at the dilemma of feeding the young author whowas so frankly scattering her hay-seeds on the metropolitan atmosphere. At that instant Miss Hawtry made a momentous decision.
"Trust Mr. Vandeford and you can't go wrong," she advised with peaches and cream in her voice, and for some unknown reason Mr. Vandeford would have been glad to twist the creamy throat from which issued the creamy voice. Instead, he turned, calmly summoned the head waiter, and went into a conference with him in a few very discreet words, which the rest could not hear, though there was no sign of any intention of keeping the consultation from them.
"I think it will be wonderful not to know until I taste it and maybe not then!" exclaimed the author, with another of her sea-gray, long-lashed glances of worshiping admiration at Mr. Vandeford, the eminent Broadway producer who was putting a great star into her play based on the adventures of an ancestress.
Of course the situation was dangerous toboth Mr. Vandeford and his author, but who was to blame?
And the jolly, impromptu luncheon-party was not the kind of episode that could soon be forgotten by any of the guests. The unknown food for the author was served by the head waiter himself, and he refused to answer questions as to its origin or component parts, even when urged by Mr. Dennis Farraday. The expression on Miss Lindsey's face after her encounter with the steak and mushrooms, served with an exalted baked potato, was one of decided relaxation. The look of affection in her eyes as she glanced at the author who had dragged her into this food situation rivaled the suddenly rooted admiration which beamed in the eyes of Mr. Dennis Farraday and which put Miss Hawtry alertly on watch, so much so that Mr. Godfrey Vandeford was privileged to lean back in his chair behind a mist of cigarette-smoke and let his eyes gleam where they listed.
"Now tell us just how you happened tothink of all the wonderful things in your play, Miss Adair, specially that dinner situation," Mr. Dennis Farraday urged. He was lighting Miss Hawtry's cigarette, to the intense, though concealed, interest and astonishment of Miss Adair of Adairville, Kentucky. He thus asked sincerely and interestedly the usual question that the unsophisticated fires at an author at the first opportunity and which the author, no matter how sophisticated, really enjoys answering.
And thereupon followed the story of the old letters in the trunk, with the mortgage only so lightly and proudly alluded to that the hearts of the listeners were decidedly touched, told by the author with the delighted enthusiasm that their sympathy warranted.
"And so you see, since it couldn't be oil-wells or gold mines it had to be the play," she ended, quoting herself in her conversation with the faithful Roger, who was at that moment following his plow with hismind on the straight furrows and his heart in New York.
"You are a precious darling, and your playmustsucceed!" said Miss Lindsey impulsively at the end of the recital, and then she quickly glanced at Mr. Godfrey Vandeford to see if he resented her taking this affectionate liberty with his distinguished author. She found that eminent producer not at home to her glance; he was lost in contemplation of tears that hung on the long black lashes that veiled Miss Adair's gray eyes and a little quiver that manifested itself on her red lips. Then she shook off the tears by lifting those long lashes so that she could look straight into his eyes with a smile of absolute confidence in his intention and ability to remove from her life forever all of her distress, which was alone poverty in the concrete, by being the successful producer of her wonderful play. Men of Godfrey Vandeford's type admit many strange fires and their votaries into the outer temple of their hearts, but they keep the innershrine tightly surrounded by asbestos curtains. However, there is always one, and one only, closely guarded entrance through which the ultimate woman must slip in an unguarded moment. Mr. Godfrey Vandeford would never have thought of being on any particular guard against the author of a play in purple ribbons entitled "The Renunciation of Rosalind," but he knew almost instantly that something dire had happened to him as he sat and writhed at the thought of his plans for the extinction of that piece of dramatic art, which he had not even read. The whole sophisticated world has decided that there is no such thing as love at first sight, except the biological scientists and they know and can prove that such a thing does exist and that it is a worker of wonders. And dire pain is one of its reactions.
But all agony comes to an end and so did Mr. Vandeford's. Miss Hawtry, who had been so busy in her own mind with her own schemes that she had no time to listen to Miss Adair's, picked up her gloves from beside her final coffee-cup, and pulled the fine-meshed veil down over her beautiful, though slightly snubbed, nose as a signal for a separation of the group of feasters.
"May I motor you to your hotel, Miss Adair?" she asked very sweetly. Of course Patricia did not know that she had got in her invitation at the first signal of the feasters' disintegration, which she herself had given, for the purpose of forestalling a similar invitation from Mr. Farraday, whose Surreness she knew must be moored somewhere near. "Where are you stopping?" she asked with very little interest, and received an answer that almost upset her equanimity.
"I'm staying at the Young Women's Christian Association," calmly announced the author of "The Purple Slipper," with no sense of embarrassment in either voice or manner. "Thank you for offering to take me there, but Mr. Farraday is going to take Miss Lindsey and me to buy a hat at a place which Miss Lindsey knows of. She is goingto buy one, too, now that she is going to play in our play."
"The Y. W. C. A.! Great guns!" muttered Mr. Vandeford under his breath, while the Violet leaned back in her chair and fanned herself.
Then very suddenly Mr. Vandeford sat up and looked at Miss Mildred Lindsey keenly for half a second.
"We'll have to go back to the office to get that check for Miss Lindsey before we go hat-hunting," announced good Dennis, with a calmness that made Mr. Vandeford suspect that he had met the fact of the eminent author's abiding-place before and had got used to it. "You and Miss Hawtry going over to the office, Van, or will you come with us, if she has other folderols to follow in a different direction?"
"I am to see Adelaide about my costumes for 'The Purple Slipper' at two-twenty, so must forego the pleasure of—of hat-hunting this afternoon," Violet murmured faintly. "But I know Mr. Vandeford will adore going with you." Miss Hawtry felt that safety lay in numbers, and she preferred to leave the unsophistication of Miss Adair with both Mr. Godfrey Vandeford and Mr. Dennis Farraday than with either of them alone.
"I wish I could get out after the hat, but you people must remember that I am putting on 'The Purple Slipper,' and I have to be about Miss Adair's business while old Denny buzzes about hat roses, free and equal with her," answered Mr. Vandeford. His envy, apparent in his voice, of the care-free state of Mr. Farraday was very real, though none of the others could guess its meaning. "I'll see all of you later. By!" and with a sign to the head waiter, which tied tight Mr. Farraday's purse-strings, Mr. Vandeford left them while the going was good. So determined was his exit that Miss Hawtry could not keep him back for the finish of the fight.
And Mr. Vandeford was in a mortal hurry. He had much to do and undo. Hearrived at his office, three squares away, slightly out of breath.
"Did you see her, Pops?" he demanded of Mr. Adolph Meyers.
"I did, Mr. Vandeford, sir, and here is a carbon of the letter I sent her, not with any encouragement to come to New York at all," and in self-defense he handed out to Mr. Vandeford a copy of the letter Roger had delivered to Patricia among her roses and young onions and string-beans.
"Take it away," commanded Mr. Vandeford, seating himself at his desk and wildly shunting papers and letters about.
"Mr. Vandeford, sir, I am sorry for that young lady and I ask you to have a heart," Mr. Meyers ventured to say to his chief with a boldness which he himself could not understand, but with which Mr. Vandeford was strangely patient. He ended with, "It will be a nobleness for you to not produce a cold show for her, but pay a small damage sum for such a beautiful lady and call it all off."
"My God, Pops, I'd give half the 'Rosie Posie' to be able to do it! But Denny and Violet and that girl they engaged for support have already filled her full of success dope about the play, and if I call it off arbitrarily, where shall I stand with her?" Ignorance of the completeness of his own capitulation to the faith and tears in the sea-gray eyes, and the genuine, grown-on-the-spot blush from Adairville, Kentucky, showed in the consternation with which he asked the question of his henchman.
"'Stand with her'!" repeated Mr. Meyers, with a consternation that matched his chief's, but was of different origin. "You had no such fear when you called off from rehearsals in the second week the comedy of Mr. Hinkle, and a fourth of the damages paid to him will to her be—"
"Get to work under your hat, Pops, get to work! The 'Purple Slipper' has got to go on Broadway and go big. I followed that purple hunch for pure cussedness against Violet, and now watch it lead me bythe nose.Youget Gerald Height on the wire as soon as you can, while I talk to Rooney."
"But, Mr. Vandeford, sir, it is not a Hawtry play, and—"
"Get busy, get busy, Pops! Put a copy of that manuscript on my desk where I can lay hands on it the minute I get a chance. Get everything going for a week later than I first called the show and—"
"Here we are!" exclaimed Mr. Dennis Farraday, as he burst into the outer office, ushering as a wedge before him Miss Patricia Adair and Miss Mildred Lindsey. "Got that hat-check, Pops? Money, I mean, for Miss Lindsey, not a pasteboard for your own lid from some hotel."
For a minute Mr. Vandeford lost himself in the depths of the worshiping, gray eyes that seemed to have been lifted to his for all eternity in that terrible faith and gratitude. Then he went into action as captain of the ship which was to come into the port ofAdairville, Kentucky, with all sails set, loaded or bearing his dead body.
"You and Miss Adair extract money from Pops with a can-opener while I discuss a few details with Miss Lindsey, in the office," he commanded coolly, ushered Miss Lindsey into the sanctum and softly closed the door.
"Mr. Vandeford," Miss Lindsey began rapidly, "I knew it wasn't fair to make any definite arrangements with Mr. Farraday, and of course I will take whatever salary you—"
"Where do you live, Miss Lindsey?" Mr. Vandeford interrupted to ask with a totally unwarranted interest on the part of a manager in the affairs of an actor he has engaged. Miss Lindsey, for the second time that day, underpainted her own cheeks and laughed as she answered:
"I wouldn't blame you if you didn't believe me, but I also live at the Y. W. C. A., though I give Mrs. Parkham's as my address for letters and telephone calls. It'scheap and—and I have done dining-room work there for a month, waiting—waiting for—for a part in a play."
"Great guns, how that hunch works!" exclaimed the well-known producer, as he sank into his chair from positive weakness. "You take in this situation, don't you?" he demanded with a quick recovery.
"I think I do," answered Miss Lindsey. Then she lifted her big black eyes, in which shone the psychic hunger, though that of the body had been appeased. "I've got to make good, Mr. Vandeford, and I'll do anything you want me to. I've got every right—to live at the Y. W. C. A., and a right to hand food to—to that child in there. You can trust me."
"I believe I can," Mr. Vandeford answered, after looking at her keenly for a few seconds with the glance with which he had picked his winners or failures in the human comedy for many experienced years. "Stop your dining-room work at the nunnery and see that she has a good time, just you andshe together. I'll send you matinée tickets to shows I want her to see, and Mr. Farraday and I'll look after the other amusement. I want her to meet only the people I introduce her to, and the Y. W. C. A. is the best place to live in New York—for her. Understand?"
"Yes."
"Find out how much money she has."
"I know now; she told me. She's got a ticket home, good until October first, and a hundred dollars to last until—until the royalties come in from the play. Those royalties have got to come in, too, or her grandfather—" Miss Lindsey's voice was positively belligerent as she began to put the situation up to Mr. Vandeford, whose heart, as that of a theatrical manager, she felt, must be hard by tradition.
"Yes, I know all about that. You get what money you want from Mr. Meyers out there, and fool her about what things cost as much as you can—until the royalties come in. Let me know when things don't runsmoothly for the two of you. Of course, this is worth money to you and—"
"I don't want money for—for—looking after her."
"How much did Mr. Farraday offer you for your part?"
"He doubled it when he saw that I was—was hungry, but I know a hundred and twenty-five is right and that's all I expect."
"The one-fifty stands. If all goes well I'll see you get your chance on Broadway this winter. We understand each other now; don't we?"
"Yes."
"Then get the hat quest going. I'm busy."
"Five dollars is her outside limit."
"Can't you juggle?"
"I'll try, but she's—well, you know what a girl like that is."
"Go to it!" With which command Mr. Vandeford led the way into the outer office. A brief aside put the situation he had just adjusted into the willing ear of hisco-producer, who beamed with satisfaction at the idea of the joint nesting of these first two theatrical experiences he had captured at the outset of his quest for adventure in the white lights. He immediately began counting Miss Lindsey's advance into her hand, thus giving Mr. Vandeford a word alone with his eminent author, beside Mr. Adolph Meyers's big window.
"Miss Lindsey tells me that she also lives at the Y. W. C. A.," he said with a curious paternal glow in his solar plexus that he had never experienced before.
"Oh, I'm so glad! I know that is foolish of me, but I am a little frightened. I don't know anybody in New York except you and her and—I've never been in a big city before, and only in Louisville a few times with my aunt. I'll enjoy it if she will take me places and bring me back and forth to rehearsals," and the gray eyes beamed with relief and anticipation of being led forth from the Y. W. C. A. into the gay world by a competent guide. "Can we go to someof thethè dansantsin the afternoon, and maybe to the Metropolitan and the Aquarium?"
"Yes, all those places and more," assented Mr. Vandeford, with a suppressed smile at the diversity of amusements his charge had planned in her sallies from the Y. W. C. A. "You see, it is both the duty and the pleasure of a producer of a play to see that his author has a good time while in the city." It was a surprise to Mr. Vandeford to find himself thus stating the case inversely.
"Oh, but I mean to work hard to help with 'The Purple Slipper,' so I'll be too tired to bother you much to take me places. And I know how hard you work, so don't have me on your mind, will you, please, sir?" The lifted curl of the black lashes and the reverential note in the soft, slurring, Blue-grass voice almost upset the staid deference with which Mr. Vandeford was conversing with the author of his new Hawtry play.
"Oh, play producing isn't so hard on theproducer and the author, so we'll have lots of time to frolic," he hastened to assure her, though an uneasy little pang shot into his heart as he thought of just what befell the average author at the rehearsals of his or her play, and he took an additional vow of protection. "Shall I come to take you to dinner and to a show to-night?"
"Oh, I'd love it," she answered, and again the color came up under the gray eyes. "It would be wonderful to have you show me Broadway the first time. I could never forget that."
Then a thought delivered a blow that laid the producer of "The Purple Slipper" low. The afternoon was half gone, and there were dozens of wires that he must manipulate since he had had a change of—heart, concerning "The Purple Slipper," and dinner-time and evening were the only hours that some of the most important could be found.
"Oh, but I can't ask you to do that," he exclaimed, and for almost the first time sincethe day of his graduation he felt color rise up under his own tanned cheeks. "I have to see the stage director and a lot more people about some things connected with your play. Still, I can't bear to have anybody else get that first night on Broadway away from me. I think it is due me." Being herself entirely sincere, Patricia recognized the utter sincerity of the distress in the voice of her producer where any other woman would have been doubtful of the ready excuse coming immediately after the invitation.
"Then I'll just go to bed early and rest up from the trip, so that I can go with you whenever you get the time to take me. You are working for us both about the play, and if you had rather I waited for you, that is only fair," Miss Adair hastened to assure him with a sincerity equal to his own.
"You are one good sport," was the reply that he made her straight from the shoulder, for the thought of a perfectly beautiful girl going to bed in the Y. W. C. A. and covering up her head and ears from the bright lights of her first night in old Manhattan just to give a strange and reverenced man the pleasure of introducing her to the old city made a profound impression upon him. "To-morrow night we'll wake up things on Broadway. I'll telephone you in the morning to let you know how the play is going and to see if there is anything I can do for you. Now you must all go and let me get busy."
"Yes, this is just about the hour that hats begin to bite well," assented Mr. Farraday, as he removed the girls down to his car with no thought or question as to whether his services would be needed in the enterprise in which he had embarked with Mr. Vandeford.
"Now for it, Pops!" said Mr. Vandeford as the door closed behind his co-workers in the production of "The Purple Slipper," whose work at that moment was to play at a distance from his labor. "I'm going to read that play, and nothing short of something that will injure its prospects if neglected by me must disturb me. When I'm done I'll make plans with you. It will take me several hours, and you stand by every second of the time. Get me?"
"Yes, Mr. Vandeford, sir," answered Mr. Adolph Meyers, and he shut his door into the outer office just as Mr. Vandeford closed his own with a bang.
Then for three hours or more, while the sun sank behind the Palisades and the white lights flashed up from Broadway beneath his window like bits of futile challenges to the dying light of day, Mr. Godfrey Vandeford went through the supreme agony of a long life on Broadway, and was paid in full for every double-cross he had administered to a confrère. He read "The Purple Slipper" and groaned aloud from page to page. He began its perusal sitting erect in his chair, and he ended it hunched over its pages spread on his desk with his head in his hands, his fingers desperately clutching his shock of gray-sprinkled hair. Then in acomplete collapse he flung himself back in his chair, elevated his feet to the edge of the desk, and began literally to devour the smoke of a small black cigar. For half an hour he sat motionless, as was his habit when fighting all preliminary battles, and his eyes seemed to be seeing the big old monster city open its thousand gleaming eyes and change its roar of the day to an incessant purr of a night-stalking beast, but in reality he was seeing and hearing a month into the future, and the spectacle thus pre-visioned was the first night of "The Purple Slipper" on Broadway. Then very suddenly he came back into his conscious self and went into action. He rang the buzzer for Mr. Adolph Meyers.
"Pops, get Grant Howard on the wire and ask him to come around here as quick as he can make it. If he talks straight wait an hour for him, if he's thick-tongued go after him yourself. Get him! Now put me on the wire with Rooney if you can find him, and make appointments withLindenbergfor scenery at eleven in the morning. Ask Corbett to send an artist to talk costumes for a period play at eleven-thirty, and have Gerald Height here at twelve sharp. Don't forget to engage that good-looking youngster—Leigh, I think is the name—even if you have to give him a hundred advance. That's all for the present. Get Rooney for me." Mr. Vandeford turned to his desk and began making rapid notes on a pad with a huge, black, press pencil. For five minutes he spread his thoughts upon the paper in great smudges; then his telephone rang, and he took up the receiver:
. . . . . .
"Yes, this is Mr. Vandeford speaking. Hello, Billy!"
. . . . . .
"That new Hawtry play is beginning to promise something. I'm delaying it a week, and I want you to come into it with your sleeves rolled up. We may make a sure-fire hit of it."
. . . . . .
"Oh, no, I'll keep right on getting 'The Rosie Posie Girl' in shape, and shunt Hawtry into it as soon as she cinches the public in this play—or fails."
. . . . . .
"That was just what I was going to hand you—you get four hundred a week for this show, but you'll have to go in and earn it. It's a departure, and you may not like it. You'll have to hammer it a lot, but I'm not signing a single 'Rosie Posie' contract until I see this in shape."
. . . . . .
"I mean it. A stage manager has to take my stuff all hot even if he thinks some of it is cold. Get me?"
. . . . . .
"That's good. I'll give you the completed manuscript Saturday so you can pound and set it for Monday next."
. . . . . .
"That's good. By!"
With which short, but sure, wire-pulling Mr. Vandeford opened his campaign to double-cross his own original plans. He had hardly stopped fixing Mr. William Rooney when Pops looked in upon him and announced Mr. Grant Howard, the eminent playwright.
"Hello, Grant," was Mr. Vandeford's short and unenthusiastic greeting to the small, black-haired person with weak, pink-rimmed, blue eyes, who sauntered into the sanctum and dropped sadly into a chair with his back to the light. A cigarette hung from the left corner of his upper lip, and his hands trembled. "Been hitting 'em up?"
"Yes," answered the playwright, laconically.
"Broke?"
"Pretty bad."
"Want to doctor a play for Hawtry for me by Friday next for a thousand dollars cash?"
"Cash now?"
"Cash Friday."
"Would have to lock myself up in my apartment to do it; but Mazie's been crying for gold-uns for a week."
"Send Mazie to me, and I'll fix that, and hand you the thousand on Friday. Here, take this manuscript over in my other office and be ready to talk it over with me by ten o'clock. I'll see Mazie in the meantime." Mr. Vandeford placed the precious "Purple Slipper" in the hands of a man who at that very moment had two successful plays running on Broadway, his interest in both of which he had sold out for a mess of pottage to be consumed in the company of Miss Mazie Villines of the "Big Show."
"Dolph had better order me up a little cold wine to start on," said Mr. Howard, as he rose languidly to incarcerate himself at the bidding of Mr. Vandeford. The same scene had been enacted between the two bright lights of American drama several times before with very good results. Mr. Howard's brain was of that peculiar caliber which does not originate an idea, but whichinserts a solid bone construction as well as keen little sparklets into the fabric of another's labor, and makes the whole translucent where before it may have been opaque. On Broadway he was called a play doctor, and Mr. Vandeford was not the first manager who had shut him up with quarts of refreshment to tinker on the play of many a literary, dramatic, bright light.
"Dolph will give you scotch and soda to your limit, no further," answered Mr. Vandeford, without graciousness. "I'll be here waiting for your talk-over at ten-thirty o'clock."
"All right. Have Mazie come for me after her show?"
"Yes."
With which the eminent playwright betook himself to a small private office which opened into the lair of Mr. Adolph Meyers. After he had entered that retreat Mr. Meyers softly rose from his typing machine and as softly locked him in. Then he proceeded to hunt for Miss Mazie Villines untilhe got her into conversational connection with Mr. Vandeford. They conversed in these words with great cordiality:
. . . . . .
"Want to earn a nice little two hundred for keeping Grant Howard working at doctoring a play by next Friday for me?"
. . . . . .
"I'm giving him a thousand if it's delivered Friday."
. . . . . .
"Two hundred to you."
. . . . . .
"Not three!"
. . . . . .
"There's Claire Furniss. Grant had her at supper last night at Rector's. She's a beauty, you know."
. . . . . .
"Two fifty."
. . . . . .
"Goes!"
. . . . . .
"Good! Come get him here at my office at eleven-fifteen. Get a taxi by the hour at your stage-door—on me—and come by for him."
. . . . . .
"Good girl! By!"
"What a life!" Mr. Vandeford muttered to himself, then rang his buzzer for Mr. Adolph Meyers.
"Pops, it's eight o'clock. Go get us a couple of slabs of pie at the automat, and then I'll go over to see Breit at the booking office."
"Yes, sir, Mr. Vandeford," Mr. Meyers acquiesced, and departed in search of provender for the lion and himself. Left to himself, Mr. Vandeford fell into another trance, from which he was dragged by another tinkle of his telephone.
"There'll be a wireless to my grave," he muttered as he took down the receiver and snapped into it:
"This is Mr. Vandeford talking."
. . . . . .
"Oh, Miss Adair. Anything the matter?"
. . . . . .
"Speak a little closer into the phone. Miss Hawtry has asked you to supper to-night? Mr. Farraday? And myself?"
. . . . . .
"Did she say I was to come for you?"
. . . . . .
"Do you know, I feel like a brute, but I'm going to tell you to go to bed as per promise. I've got two big guns from Broadway putting licks on the production of 'The Purple Slipper' until the small hours to-night, right here in the office. I'll tell Miss Hawtry about it, and you can—go to bed."
. . . . . .
"Oh, yes, she'll understand. It's her play too, you see."
. . . . . .
"No, you can't help me to-night, thank you just the same. How's Miss Lindsey? Would you like me to send my car to take you girls for a little spin in the park to cool off before you go to bed?"