Mummers in Mufti/Chapter 33

HEY entered the hotel and went directly up to their apartment. "I'm going to bed," announced Tilly, heading at once for the inner rooms. "I'm absolutely done up. Are you going to stay out here and browse?"

"Just a minute," pleaded Bellsmith. "I want to smoke a cigar. Besides, I think that company's coming. I don't want to break his heart."

His wife disappeared and Bellsmith luxuriously sat down for his usual midnight smoke. His prophecy had not been wrong, for a moment later there came a masonic tap at the door and Charlie Barnes, in his usual snuff-colored suit and brown derby hat, came grinning into the room. The custom inaugurated on that first Saturday night in Bellsmith's library had grown during the winter into a permanent institution which even Bellsmith's marriage had hardly interrupted. Without a word the host salvaged a glass from the bath-room and took a bottle from a kit-bag which was lying on the floor. At sight of the bottle Barnes's eye gleamed.

"Then it got here all right, did it?" he asked.

"Oh, yes," said Bellsmith. "William was so anxious about it that he wanted to get his private policeman to bring it up all the way."

With the glasses in his hand Bellsmith paused.

"Charlie," he suggested, "would n't it be a good idea to go to your room and talk? Poor Tilly is tired out I'm afraid we 'll keep her awake if we try to talk here."

"By all means! By all means!" agreed the comedian.

As they went toward the door, however, Tilly came flouncing out from the inner room in a priceless lace negligée. "Gift of the groom," was the thought that flashed through Charlie Barnes's mind as he saw it.

"Where are you going?" demanded Tilly.

"Nowhere, darling," replied her husband. "I'm just going down to Charlie's room to drink heavily."

"Oh, that's all right," agreed Tilly, appeased. She apologized to Barnes, "People are always trying to get him to talk business."

The comedian's room was one of much smaller proportions. Bellsmith was offered the only practical chair, and the new host sat down on the bed.

"Salut!" said Bellsmith, lifting his glass.

"How!" replied Charlie Barnes.

He locked with longing into his glass. "I never tasted better stuff than that but once, and that was in a little town eight or ten miles out of Louisville."

He fished an old pipe from his suit-case and began to puff, but they were not there to discuss little towns eight or ten miles out of Louisville—or even old pipes.

"Well," began Bellsmith nonchalantly, "it looks as if we had put it over at last."

To even qualified praise of the new "Eleanor," Barnes flashed up as to an insult.

"Put it over?" he exclaimed. "I should say we did. We knocked 'em silly. I knew we would. Mr. Bellsmith, I'd give ten years of my life if this had been a first night in New York."

Bellsmith laughed. "Charlie, if some one had taken you up every time you had offered to give ten years of your life, you would never have been born at all. In fact, you'd owe time to your parents."

Barnes grunted. "Just the same it's true in this case. Did you see What's-his-name, the manager of the house?" "I saw him," replied Bellsmith, "but about what in particular?"

"About the run of the show. He told you you could have four weeks, did n't he?"

Bellsmith nodded.

"Well, let me tell you something," said Barnes. "You can make that six weeks or eight, if you speak quick enough. I saw him after the show to-night, and he 'll listen. He 'll listen."

"I 'll speak to him," replied Bellsmith, non-committally. He looked up rather cautiously. "Charlie, you never had any idea, did you, that we could go to New York?"

It was a subject that was evidently painful to Barnes.

"No," he said, gruffly, "I never did. Not with this show. New York's killed for us."

"Then what do you think we ought to do, after we finish this run?"

Barnes shrugged. "That's up to you, Mr. Bellsmith."

Bellsmith paused a moment, then fired his bombshell.

"Charlie, I 've had a big offer."

Barnes looked up, startled. "An offer for the show?"

"Well, that too, but principally an offer to me personally. Did you know that Al Harcourt was out front to-night?"

"No? Was he really?"

Barnes was evidently more hurt that that choice bit of live news had escaped him than curious to know what it might mean.

Bellsmith nodded. "I had a long talk with him. I've found out why Harcourt & Gay were so anxious to buy back the show."

"Why was it?"

Bellsmith told him, and Barnes chuckled with amusement throughout the recital.

"Say!" he exclaimed. "Suppose we had known that four months ago? Would n't we have made 'em squeal? What are you going to do about it now?"

"That's the question," said Bellsmith. "That's what we talked about. Charlie, I 've had a real chance to go into the show business."

"Real chance?" demanded Barnes. "What do you call this?" "No, something bigger than this. Harcourt & Gay have offered me a partnership. They want me to go in with them."

"Go into what?" "Go into their firm."

"Say that again," commanded Barnes.

"Harcourt & Gay want me to buy a share of their business." "They want yon to boy a share in their business?" demanded Barnes.

"Exactly." "Well, they 've got a nerve," scoffed Barnes. "I should say they would!"

Bellsmith felt his sense of importance oozing away from him without quite understanding the reason for it.

"Why?" he asked weakly.

"Buy a share in their business?" snorted Barnes. "My good man, did n't you know that Harcourt & Gay are about on the rocks?"

But Bellsmith had learned just how much Barne's statements of general rumor could be discounted.

"Did you know it?" he retorted, bluntly.

Barnes did qualify a little.

"Well, I did n't know it in the sense that it was published in the papers, but there's been some ugly rumors floating around for a month. I 've tried to give Israels a tip and see what he thought, but he would never pay any attention. Israels is like every one else in the show business. He knows it all.

"And I did know this for a fact," insisted Barnes, "that Al Harcourt went as far as Chicago to borrow fifty thousand dollars and did n't get it, nor any part of it. And I know that they 've been making overtures to both Birmingham and Rice & McLoughlin to help them out and that neither one of them would do it. I had that right from a man out of Birmingham's own office—that man we met in Pittsfield.

"And so that's a fact?" mused Barnes, nodding his head thoughtfully. He was now launched in a favorite vein. "You might have guessed it if you'd watched them closely. They'd bit off so much that a lot of people was wondering how they were going to chew it. They put up that new theater in New York last year with a grand hurrah and then, as soon as it's up, it comes out that a 'corporation' is formed to hold it. You know what that means. I'm willing to bet you that Harcourt & Gay don't own one fifth of the actual stock.

"Their big mistake," he continued, as if he had never made any himself, "was that they had too many expensive shows out this season, none of them any too good. This 'Eleanor' was the first. You know what that was doing when we took it over. Then they tried to run a sort of 'Follies' of their own with a big bunch of stars that was stars in salary but the public did n't see 'em that way. That's out in Chicago now where we ought to be. 'Out of Chancery' is their one dramatic show. That did make a hit, a big hit, but you can't support two big musical shows out of one dramatic piece."

Barnes's eye was kindling, not really with gloating triumph but with the born joy of the man who loves to be on the "inside."

"Say, you know I had a lively hunch about this," he went on. "I got my first suspicions when Maida Maine went back to them after she left us. She was always a favorite of theirs and expected to step right into something big. But she has n't stepped yet. She has n't worked all winter and they tell me she's getting worried.

"Then I 've been hearing one thing after another. You know, Mr. Bellsmith, the show business is a dangerous game, especially if you plunge on big shows like Harcourt & Gay. They say that in New York, in some lines, you can't borrow money on gold dollars as collateral. I 'll bet you they are n't the only ones that's anxious. All of us here in the company have been hugging ourselves that we were working for a man who was independent. If what you say is true, I should n't be surprised if the only big asset that Harcourt & Gay have got is that new show of Gaylord and Melcher's. The music publishers and the phonograph people would probably help them to get that going but they certainly won't if Harcourt & Gay don't own it. By George! I think he's telling the truth. You 've got 'em by the neck!"

Bellsmith sat in silence. He still did not take Charlie Barnes's gossip quite at its full face-value but, even with only a half or a quarter of truth in it, it left him with a genuine admiration for the quiet young Harcourt. For all that that calm young man had shown in his talk, he might have been floating in the confidence of millions. And there really might be a chance that he had been sitting there calmly playing his very last card. That was the kind of thing that even the Bellsmiths acknowledged.

"Then you think," asked Bellsmith pensively, "that Harcourt & Gay had rather pay me for those rights with a partnership than buy them outright?"

"I think that's the only way they can pay for them. In fact I know blame well it is. Just ask for cash if you want to find out."

"And you yourself," continued Bellsmith, thoughtfully. "If Harcourt & Gay should offer parts to you and—and some of the others, it would not mean as much as it would have meant a year ago?"

"There's a very good chance that it would mean nothing at all," exclaimed Barnes, "unless somebody comes to their rescue, which is n't likely. We saw what happened to Maida Maine. I know that, personally, I would feel pretty shaky if I were tied up to those people at this stage of the game. I want to stay right where I am, thank you, sir!"

A sudden horrible thought seemed to come to his own tenacious little mind, for the very first time.

"Mr. Bellsmith, you did n't have any idea of getting out of the business?"

"I—why, I—well, to tell the truth," began Bellsmith, but Barnes looked at him absolutely aghast.

"Good heavens, Mr. Bellsmith!" he exlaimed [sic]. "I thought that you were just getting your stride. I thought that now—with Miss Marshall and all—you were just beginning to get the love of the thing!"

There was no doubt about the little man's terror, and on this night of all nights. Here was one more triumph ruined and this one was the triumph of a lifetime. It was almost incredible to Bellsmith that any one could have depended on him as completely as Charlie Barnes had apparently been depending.

He rose from his chair with a gruff, nervous laugh.

"Well, Charlie," he said, "I'm going to bed. don't worry. I won't get out of the business before I 've got your future pretty well laid out."

But the little comedian was following him to the door, wiping his brow with his snuff-colored sleeve.

"It ain't that, Mr. Bellsmith," he pleaded. "It ain't that. But look at this show we 've got now. Don't that mean anything to you?"

More soberly than he had left, Bellsmith went back to his rooms. As he opened the door his feet brushed over a telegram. He took it to the light and found that it was from Dr. MacVickar. The doctor had certainly lost no time. The telegram read:

Smiling, Bellsmith went on to the inner rooms. Tilly was not yet asleep, but she listened without much interest to what he told her and having finished the recital he still stood in doubt. Then gently he leaned over and smoothed back her hair as it spread itself over the pillow.

"Sweetheart," he pleaded, "I may be a fool and all that, but I can't help liking Harcourt and apparently he's in a bad hole. It would n't hurt us to go in with him—just for those rights and a few thousand dollars more."

Tilly did not reply and he insisted:

"Would you mind very much if I did?"

His wife turned fretfully on the pillow.

"Oh, well," she answered, "if you must, I suppose you must."

And apparently, sooner or later, that was what every one had to say to the helpless Young Bellsmith.