Miss June Delight summoned Manager McClintock to her dressing room just
before the Saturday night performance and successfully simulated the
classic symptoms of impending nervous prostration while she sniffed at a
vial of smelling salts and submitted to the ministrations of a tired
maid who gently massaged her forehead with her finger-tips. Miss
Delight, in a voice that was barely audible, informed the manager that
she could not possibly endure the trying ordeal of further performances
after that evening without a brief period of rest and that she was
leaving for a week’s stay at a sanitarium on the following morning.
McClintock gave voice to low moans and flew other signals of distress,
but Miss Delight was obdurate to his more or less frenzied
expostulations and remarked that while she was disturbed at having to
disappoint her “dear, lovely, friendly public,” she felt that her health
was the prime consideration. The manager was in a surly mood when he
left her to seek out the stage director.
“Who’s the understudy?” he inquired.
“She calls herself Lolita Murphy,” replied the director, “but I
understand there’s a certain party connected with the publicity
department who calls her even flossier names than that.”
“Jimmy’s gal, eh?” commented the manager. “Well, she’s there with the
looks anyway. Has she had a rehearsal?”
“She’s been through the thing roughly with the rest of the understudies,
but I can have the whole troupe called for tomorrow morning, and we can
run straight through. We’ll get out the dirigible and go through with
the rescue stunt. We mustn’t fall down on that. The little lady seems to
be there with the nerve, but I’d like to try it out.”
Jimmy was permitted to break the news to Lolita. He met her after the
performance that night and imparted the glad tidings. When he left he
gave her a final word of caution.
“Keep the little old nerve up, girlie,” he said earnestly, “and we’ll
wake up the whole country on Monday morning.”
“I’ll try, Jimmy,” she whispered. “You’re just the—well, just the
dearest boy I’ve ever known.”
On the following morning Lolita, athrill with excitement and a little
nervous, assumed the title role in “Secret Service Sallie” at a
rehearsal to the complete satisfaction of McClintock, the stage director
and Jimmy Martin. The latter watched her with adoring eyes, and when she
successfully essayed the sensational rescue scene he was moved to wild
and clamorous applause which sounded a bit startling in the great empty
auditorium. Under Bobby Wilkins’ expert direction the big clumsy
dirigible was manoeuvred around the edge of the roof and Lolita was
lifted into the car by the former ace with such adroit ease that the
whole thing seemed to be simply part of a casual everyday occurrence.
When it was over Lolita had been safely landed back on earth and had
received the congratulations of everyone concerned, she drew Jimmy aside
and clutched at his arm for support.
“I’m ready to faint,” she said weakly. “I believe I would have up on the
roof when I saw that big thing coming towards me if that fellow hadn’t
grabbed me off so quickly.”
“You need a little nap,” responded Jimmy soothingly. “The worst is over
and the best is yet to come. Don’t forget that young Mr. Arthur H.
Opportunity has a date with you this afternoon, and that the big splash
is due tomorrow morning. Now you go in and get a little sleep and I’ll
have a talk with my friend, the handsome lieutenant. I fixed things with
him last night, but I’ve got to go over some details again.”
A few minutes later the press agent was closeted with Bobby Wilkins in
the hangar in which the dirigible was housed. The park gates had just
been opened for the day and crowds of holiday merry-makers were surging
through them in quest of the fifty-seven varieties of feverish and
hectic entertainment which Jollyland provided for those in search of
diversion.
* * * * *
If anyone had called Jimmy Martin a “psychotherapist” he would have
denied the soft impeachment promptly, and then asked for a dictionary
and an explanatory blueprint. And yet, as a direct result of a random
idea which had bobbed into his active mind a few weeks before, he was
unconsciously serving in that capacity for a large and ever increasing
throng of metropolitan society women of varying ages who flocked to
Jollyland in search of a new thrill which he had provided. The winding
up of war charity work which had followed close upon the return to these
shores of the larger part of the American army had turned many of these
women back upon their own resources and their innate restless activity,
which had found such an altruistic outlet in new channels for several
years, now imperiously demanded fresh excitement, and it was this that
Jimmy offered them.
On the occasion in question, Jimmy had overheard a coy young debutante
who was watching a performance of “Secret Service Sallie” remark to a
group of friends who accompanied her that she’d “just love to go up on
the stage and mix with the crowd.” That was enough for the press agent.
Ten minutes later, during the intermission, he escorted the entire party
behind the scenes, and, under his guidance, they participated in the
London episode which concluded the show. They mingled with the crowd of
supernumeraries and entered into the proceedings attendant upon the
thrilling dirigible rescue with such gusto that the stage manager gave
Jimmy carte blanche to encourage the idea.
It happened that in this particular party were several of the socially
elect and the papers next morning carried extensive stories chronicling
the event coupled with the announcement that the park management would,
throughout the season, be pleased to extend the privilege of
participating in the entertainment to other groups who might wish to
take advantage of the opportunity for this unusual form of
entertainment. Society seized upon the idea voraciously and Jollyland
parties gave a new filip to the summer season at all the Long Island
resorts. Elderly matrons of ample girth vied with the members of the
younger set in setting the pace and in many instances came again and
again to become a part of the great spectacle. For the first time in its
history Jollyland began to figure in the society columns of the daily
press and great was the prestige which Jimmy enjoyed in McClintock’s
eyes as a result.
The particular luminary of the Long Island season at the moment and the
prospective lion of the month of August at Newport was none other than
the Hon. Betty Ashley, daughter of the second Lord Norbourne, and the
most talked about young woman in English society for a period the
beginnings of which antedated the war by several years. Before the great
European conflagration the Hon. Betty, though then still in her early
twenties, was a European celebrity. Spirited, impulsive, and headstrong
by nature she had early rebelled against the ultra-conservative
traditions of her family and had so thoroughly flouted convention that
her name was on the tip of the tongue of everyone in the tight little
island. She began it by publicly slapping the face of a certain deposed
kinglet who had sought refuge and a safe haven in England and whose sole
offense had been a mild protestation of love made at a fashionable
garden party. There had followed her sensational and entirely unarranged
presentation of a petition for woman’s suffrage to England’s monarch
himself at a formal court (an incident which sent her dignified father
to his bed for two weeks); her arrest on suspicion of being implicated
in a militant attempt to set fire to the parliament buildings and her
subsequent acquittal after she had refused to make any defense against a
damaging array of circumstantial evidence; her jilting of the Earl of
Maidsley in an explanatory and derisive letter to the Times; her winning
of the amateur tennis championship and a host of other incidents of a
distinctly unconventional nature. Then the war had come and she had gone
over to France in the first months as a motor driver and had still
managed to keep in the public eye for five years despite the somewhat
considerable amount of attention devoted by the newspapers to the main
phases of the great struggle itself. She had, for one thing, won a
D.S.O. for bravery under fire in the first battle of Ypres and she had,
for another, been reprimanded in orders for organizing a ball at a
certain chateau occupied by the staff of a certain corps during the
absence of the commanding general at a conference at G.H.Q.
Now she had come to the United States for the first time and had
materially assisted in putting zest and “punch” into a round of festive
house parties on Long Island given by prominent members of the swiftest
moving coterie of the so-called smart set. Small wonder that when she
heard of the expeditions to Jollyland which were enjoying such a vogue
that she should elect to organize one herself.
“I’m not entirely a rank amateur, my dear,” she confided to her hostess
when the party was preparing to depart. “I went on for two nights
running in the chorus at the Alhambra last winter on a five pound wager,
and I’d have stuck it out for a whole week for the fun of it if the
pater’s blood pressure hadn’t been running abnormally high. The old dear
would have gone all to smash if he had found out and he might if I’d
kept on.”
The Hon. Betty, her dark beauty set off by a rose-pink silk sweater and
a Tam o’ Shanter to match, was in the first car of the string of six
which disgorged a laughing crowd of merry-makers in front of Jollyland
on Sunday afternoon. They made for the big arena immediately as it was
within a few minutes of the advertised time for the ringing up of the
curtain on the great spectacle. The Hon. Betty let it be known to an
usher, who was duly impressed by her air of authority, that she craved
an immediate interview with the manager. McClintock, still disturbed at
the defection of the capricious Miss Delight, responded begrudgingly;
was apprised of the identity and mission of the distinguished visitor
and sought out Jimmy Martin in great excitement. He found the press
agent back on the stage.
“Say, young fellow,” he said enthusiastically, “I’ve got a Monday
morning story for you already made and ready to try on. This Betty
Ashley who’s been grabbing off space all over the world for a long time
and who’s the big noise with the real folks over here this summer, is
out in front with a crowd right out of the social register, and she
wants to go on in the London scene. I told her she could. Get busy now
and prepare for a general assault on the helpless press.”
Jimmy received this intelligence with a glumness that rather annoyed
McClintock.
“What did she want to pick out today for?” he inquired uneasily.
“What’s the matter with today? It’s the best day possible for a good
break for us. The papers are always glad of anything that makes a noise
like a story on Sunday. What’s the matter?”
“Oh, nothin’,” replied Jimmy absent-mindedly, “only I wish she’d waited
until the middle of the week. I was kinda figurin’ on—oh, never mind,
it’ll be all right.”
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