Mummers in Mufti/Chapter 31

T was a greeting intended to be cordial enough but one made uncertain by surprise which Bellsmith returned to the newcomer, for a figure less like that which he had expected in connection with the name "Al Harcourt" it would have been difficult to imagine. As one will do, in the case of a name which has grown familiar from constant tradition, Bellsmith had, for some months, had in his mind a picture of the senior and financial member of the firm of Harcourt & Gay, a picture which had recurred so often to his imagination that he had actually come to believe it the real one.

His mental portrait had been of a man of fifty-odd, of the boulevard-banker type, heavy-jowled and cynical, faultlessly dressed but always wearing a derby hat, even at his desk, always smoking a black cigar and having, especially, a broad, black eye-glass ribbon and a little white edging at the top of his waistcoat.

And now the reality! A man little if any older than Bellsmith and looking exactly—well, just that—like a tutor from Amherst. It was a shock but wholly a pleasant one.

Harcourt nodded toward the now closed curtains and the empty orchestra pit.

"How's she going?" "Pretty well," replied Bellsmith, diffidently.

It had amused him more than once to observe how, from the minute that he had entered the new profession, he had instinctively adopted its mannerisms. His attitude now had taken on, unconsciously, that same guarded reticence which he had seen in Israels the first time that he had spoken to him in the lobby of the Leicester Lyceum.

Harcourt laughed. "It has cost you some money, has n't it?"

Bellsmith flushed. "A bit."

Harcourt's eyes wandered back to the curtain. "You 've fixed the show up quite a little."

With a tartness which in him was unusual, Bellsmith replied curtly:

"It needed it."

Harcourt looked at him keenly and with laughing eyes. The sensitive pride of a young producer was nothing novel to him. Indeed he still had it himself. "Mr. Bellsmith," he said abruptly, "suppose we go to the office and talk."

It was Bellsmith, this time, who led the way to an office very different from the cubbyhole in the old Leicester theater. Its anteroom was like a drawing-room, and not merely a drawing-room but a drawing-room on the stage—white pillars and velvet portières. Harcourt bit off the end of a cigar, spat it out, and sank into a big lounging chair.

"Well, Mr. Bellsmith," he began abruptly, "what are you going to do now?"

"Do now?" repeated Bellsmith, cautiously.

Harcourt gazed thoughtfully at the end of his cigar.

"I mean," he began slowly, "I mean what are your plans for next year? I suppose you intend to play here in Boston as long as you can but where will you go after that? Of course you can't go to New York."

"Why not?" demanded Bellsmith.

Harcourt laughed, not unpleasantly but in a way that showed the childishness of the question.

"Why, my dear fellow, you can't. You simply can't, that's all. The show has been there once and—we might as well say it—it failed. You can never take it back there again. They would n't stand for it."

"As for that," said Bellsmith, "they told me that I could never run this show at all."

Harcourt laughed appeasingly. "You really are a bulldog, are n't you? I really believe you have some wild idea of buying a theater outright."

"Not quite," said Bellsmith, but in a tone which showed that the guess had not been so far wrong as it might have been.

"Heaven knows," explained Harcourt, "that I wish you could go to New York. We'd profit by it as much as you would, but the fact remains. For all practical purposes, 'Eleanor' is dead. You must know that as well as I do."

To Bellsmith, still in his first elation of success, the words had really almost a ghastly sound.

"But it's entirely a new show," he argued.

"Yes, it is, in a way," admitted Harcourt, "but it's just enough like the old one so that the public would feel cheated if you tried to put it on again. The cast is somewhat the same, and the name is the same."

"Change the name," suggested Bellsmith.

"If you do that, what would be the good of taking it there? You would lose all you have gained, all the reputation you have built up on the road."

It was the first concession he had made, the first admission that Bellsmith had done anything at all with the once hopeless "Eleanor," and Bellsmith was still boyish enough to seize on it.

"Then you do think that we 've gathered some—reputation?"

Harcourt's cruelty had apparently been unintended, for, without any appearance of a change in mood, he was at once perfectly willing to be enthusiastic.

"Reputation?" he repeated. "Why, of course you 've built up a reputation."

He paused, shaking his head. "But it must have cost you a pretty penny."

He smiled and looked more closely at Bellsmith in a disarming way.

"Of course it would n't have been hard to guess, Mr. Bellsmith, that we fully expected to get the show back—or what we wanted of it—in two or three months, but"—he nodded back toward the auditorium—"I don't imagine that you 're in the mood to sell now."

"I had n't thought about it," said Bellsmith stiffly, but Harcourt was now thoroughly launched in his more genial manner.

"For two or three weeks," he explained, "we expected to hear from you almost any day to take up our offer, and then we lost track of you. Then reports began to come in. You see the clipping bureau was still sending us the notices. We could n't believe it—the hit you seemed to be making. At first we thought it was simply because you were playing those little towns where any New York attraction would stand them on their ear, but, after a while, we began to run across people who had actually seen the show—advance agents for other concerns and the vaudeville crowd. They said you were really getting away with it."

This was more like it. Bellsmith sat back and let Harcourt go on.

"You see, all the people in the business thought that the show was still ours, or that we were back of it, and when it finally got to the point where they began to congratulate us, it was rather embarrassing. Walter Gay himself ran up to Worcester to see it last week. He was knocked silly. He said you'd worked miracles with it."

This was at last what Bellsmith wanted to hear, and, as if Harcourt himself had known that sooner or later he must come to this admission, he now continued, quite without reserve:

Mr. Bellsmith, what you 've done is exactly what we have always said would have to be done in a season or two. You 've gone straight back to old-time operetta. Musical comedy, for season after season, has been growing into an elaborate vaudeville show, but you have had the idea—"

"It was n't my idea," interrupted Bellsmith. "The idea came right from a man in your own company."

Harcourt started, with interest. "Who? Surdam?"

"No. Charlie Barnes."

Harcourt simply tossed his head with a condescending smile.

"Charlie Barnes. Oh, Charlie Barnes! Yes, I know that he's always talking. Charlie's a good fellow and a first-class comedian, but his ideas are wild as a hawk. You know yourself that that show out there is n't Charlie Barnes. It's just what I say it is. It's natural evolution. We 've seen it coming—more music, real music, a central plot, a real story—but you beat us to it."

Over Bellsmith began to come a curious increasing feeling of having slipped back for two or three months. In some degree Harcourt was right. It was evolution, but at the same time Bellsmith could not but watch the man cynically. Harcourt, and probably his partner, were at heart so exactly what Barnes had said they would be. Bellsmith now could believe perfectly that neither one of them, neither Harcourt nor Gay, had ever seen this change coming and that neither would have ever put any faith in it, if it had been pointed out to them. But now that some one else had actually done it, had really put out a show with real music, they honestly believed that they had seen it coming, had had the idea in the first place. Would they follow still further their usual rule and pay any price to get it?

A short silence had fallen. Harcourt was apparently waiting for suggestions, but Bellsmith had none to make. Without meaning that the gesture have any significance he looked at his watch. The second act would be on presently, and he did not want to miss that, even for this talk; but Harcourt apparently considered his gesture a hint and immediately came down to business.

"Mr. Bellsmith," he said abruptly, "just what do you want?"

Bellsmith looked up in surprise.

"What do I want? I don't know that I want anything. Do you mean that you still want to buy back the show?"

"Well, perhaps a certain part of it."

"What part of it?"

"For one thing," began Harcourt, "we want Charlie Barnes. And then we want Miss Marshall. By the way, Mr. Bellsmith, I understand that I am to congratulate you."

Bellsmith nodded, and Harcourt went on: "Your wife, Mr. Bellsmith, has got the making of a real star. You did a big thing when you gave her that 'Eve' song after Maida Maine left you."

This was too much for Bellsmith. "Mrs. Bellsmith was picked for the lead before Maida Maine ever thought of leaving. That was another of Charlie Barnes's ideas."

"Was it?" asked Harcourt, casually. He was wholly unimpressed, but a moment later he showed why. He had bigger things on his mind. He paused and studied Bellsmith in silence.

"Mr. Bellsmith," he burst out suddenly, "you know, don't you, that you 've got us sewed up tight?" Bellsmith looked at him in amazement. "Sewed up tight? What in the world do you mean?"

Harcourt still could not believe in his innocence. "Don't you honestly know?"

Bellsmith shook his head.

"Well, I 'll be damned," commented Harcourt.

He paused again in his utter unbelief; then slowly explained.

"Walter Gay, to be frank, made the bull of his life when he sold you that show. I was in Chicago at the time, but believe me I gave him merry hell when I got back. He ought never to be trusted with anything in front of the curtain. Don't you know that you own the services of Tony Gaylord, the composer, and Fritz Melcher, the lyric writer? Did n't you know that you control their entire output for three years?" "I did n't know it," replied Bellsmith. "I 've never seen the contracts with them."

"Of course you have n't," replied Harcourt, "because those contracts are still in our safe." He shook his head. "My dear man, this is positively criminal. Let me tell you how it happened."

He leaned back and relit his cigar. In the lobby the gong for the second act was pealing, but Bellsmith made no move to rise.

"In the first place, " explained Harcourt, "you know of course, that Tony Gaylord and Fritz Melcher made the biggest hit of last year with 'Helena' and before that, with 'Betty.' They made fortunes for Rice & McLaughlin, those shows. Those two boys are the biggest money-makers in the country to-day. Last year of course we wanted to get them tied up to us, and this show gave us our first chance. Rice & McLaughlin had got them pretty cheap before, and they were n't quite ready to ante, so we slipped in before they had a chance and signed up Melcher and Oaylord for 'Eleanor.'"

It was now Bellsmith who was not greatly impressed and Harcourt who was pleading the case.

"'Eleanor,' as it proved, was a lemon for us, but that's neither here nor there. We had given each of those boys, Gaylord and Melcher, ten thousand dollars retainer. Our object was that, in that same contract to write 'Eleanor' for us, there was a clause that gave us the producing rights of all their output for three years. But furthermore,—and here is the joker—there was also a clause which provided that we could dispose of the contract as a whole but not any part of it. All or nothing. That is a clause which frequently appears in such contracts to keep a producer from dividing responsibility. It is purely a formal clause, and for that reason Walter Gay forgot all about it.

"In other words," announced Harcourt, "when you bought 'Eleanor' you also got the entire rights to the services of the most popular composer and the most popular song writer in New York."

"But I don't want them," said Bellsmith, blandly. "I think they 're rotten!"

Harcourt laughed aloud. "To tell the truth, so does Walter Gay. He's a man after your own heart, Mr. Bellsmith. But the fact remains that those boys are big commercial possibilities. The public likes to dance to their music even if you or Walter Gay don't care to listen to it. With proper steering those rights of yours will be worth anywhere from fifty thousand to two hundred thousand a year to some one—to Melcher and Gaylord themselves if to no one else. You see, all the things like publishing rights and phonograph rights depend on the music being brought out first in the right kind of show. You 've got a lot of people besides us tied up if you only knew it."

It did look differently when expressed in that way.

"But why," gasped Bellsmith, "why are you telling me now? I don't believe that I should ever have found it out if you had n't told me."

"My dear fellow," protested Harceourt, "we 're not wholly crooks, although I know that that's probably the opinion you had of the whole show business three or four months ago.

"Besides, you would have known it soon enough if we had ever tried to do anything about it. Tony Gaylord knew it and Fritz Melcher knew it. The whole three of us are in a delightful situation. We advanced them twenty thousand dollars for a show that never made us ten cents. We could get it back if we still had them for two years more, but now we wake up and find that they 've got our money but we have n't got them. It's you who have got them. They 've got a new show right now, the biggest thing they 've done yet, all ready for next year. But we can't do a thing about it and no more can any one else until we get this mess straightened out. Any time you pleased you could simply get out an injunction and stop the whole show."

Bellsmith grinned. "I'd almost like to do it. People are forever getting out injunctions against me." Harcourt laughed. "I heard about that—from Israels."

"But why did n't they tell me?" demanded Bellsmith. I mean Melcher or Gaylord. If they were my private slaves it seems as if I ought to have had a salaam or two occasionally."

"To tell the truth," admitted Harcourt, "all of us have been lying low to see what would happen. You could n't blame us and you could  n't blame Melcher and Gaylord. They did n't want to be tied up to an unknown producer who might never produce but yet could keep them from writing a line for the stage. Of course you understand that sooner or later somebody would have had to buy you out. None of us could have afforded to have that uncertainty hanging over our heads forever. But at first, when we thought that your experiment with the show business was going to last just about a week, of course—"

"You were waiting around to be in at the death," suggested Bellsmith, "and buy me out for a couple of fish-hooks."

Harcourt laughed. "Well, Mr. Bellsmith, it's human nature to want to buy a thing as cheaply as possible. We thought that you'd be glad enough to get the whole thing off your shoulders and never see the inside of a theater again." Bellsmith drew a long face. "There were times when I did feel just that way. If your first offer, that Saturday night, had come three or four hours earlier I should have jumped at it"

Harcourt grinned. "We expected that you would, as it was. Anyway, it's your turn to laugh now. You fooled us. You 've kept the show alive for nearly five months, and, as nearly as I can find out, you can keep it alive for five years if you feel like it. We can't wait that long. We have got to make our plans for next season. The only thing to do was to put our cards on the table, and now there they are. What do you want to do?"

"What do you?" parried Bellsmith.

Harcourt was evidently ready for just that question, for he spoke slowly but very precisely.

"Well," he replied, "there are two things that we can do. First we can take the whole business right off your hands, play through the Boston engagement, and then put the show in the storehouse."

Bellsmith was looking at the floor. "I don't think I want to sell until we have finished our run here in Boston." He smiled quizzically. "It's too sweet. It's the first real taste of success we have had."

Harcourt laughed sympathetically. "Good boy! I can understand that. I would n't take that away from you for the world. All right then. You keep it through the Boston run. After that we will take the show and lay it away."

"For how much?" asked Bellsmith, but, as he said it, it sounded almost sacrilegious, as if he were talking of selling his old house in Leicester.

"How much has it stood you in?" asked Harcourt promptly.

"About ninety thousand dollars," replied Bellsmith, "including the purchase price."

Harcourt whistled. "As much as that? Mr. Bellsmith, you 're worse than my partner. You ought not to be let out without a guardian."

"So they told me when I first bought it," replied Bellsmith.

Harcourt was thinking rapidly. "Of course you 'll get some of that back here in Boston. Your show's going well and it's just the place for it. We may be able to make a figure on that basis."

"But my people?" suggested Bellsmith. "I don't like the idea of their being thrown out suddenly if you close up the show."

"As to that," answered Harcourt, "of course we intended to take over some of them anyway. Charlie Barnes we want and of course Miss Marshall—if she intends to remain on the stage. As to the rest, you yourself never intended to support them for the rest of their lives, although I imagine that some of them would be willing enough to have you do it."

"What is the other proposition?" asked Bellsmith abruptly. "The other proposition?" replied Harcourt. "The other proposition is this: Why don't you come in with us?"

"With you?" Harcourt nodded. "Exactly. Why don't you come in with the firm of Harcourt & Gay?"

"'Harcourt, Gay & Bellsmith,'" mused Bellsmith. "It sounds like an old English revel. I'm afraid I should have to be a silent partner, with such a funny name as mine."

"Funny names are worth money in the show business," replied Harcourt. "But, seriously, Mr. Bellsmith, why don't you do it?"

"Would I be of any use to you?" asked Bellsmith, frankly.

You would be of a great deal of use to us," answered Harcourt. "In the first place you have something that we want very badly. You could hold us up if you wanted to—all our next year's plans—but I don't think you want to do it. I don't think you went into the show business with the idea of making money out of it."

"Hardly," said Bellsmith.

"And aside from that," continued Harcourt, "you 're the kind of man we want. The show business is n't standing still. You 've put rather a jolt in it yourself. Of course we 've got to go slowly. For the present we need the sort of shows that Gaylord and Melcher are writing. There will always be some demand for those, especially in New York City, but we 're already beginning to think of to-morrow—and the day after that. Your show, as you have it now, is much more the type of thing that we used to get from Vienna, and we 'll never have a better bet than those old Viennese operettas. Men with your kind of talent are scarce in this country.

"Now, there's your best bet," said Harcourt. "Think it over. We can sit down whenever you say so and make an appraisal of just what you have here. You can take any interest in our firm that you want, up to one third, and pay the difference almost any way you like. How does that strike you?"

Bellsmith sat thinking. "You don't want an answer at once?" Harcourt laughed. "You did, the night you bought 'Eleanor.'"

"And that," replied Bellsmith, "should have taught both of us a good lesson. No, Mr. Harcourt, I can't give an answer at once."

"How soon, then. To-morrow?" "Possibly."

"All right, then, I 'll stay over for your performance to-morrow."