One morning two weeks after the summer season at Jollyland had ended
Jimmy found himself in a state of moody dejection in the club car of a
fast express train en route from Washington to Baltimore. He dropped
into a chair in the rear end of the car and let himself slowly slide
forward until his shoulder blades nearly touched the seat. He swung one
leg over the other, wedged both hands into his trousers pockets and
puffed viciously at the somewhat frayed cigarette which hung from one
corner of his mouth.
Somehow or other his brain wasn’t functioning properly. His imagination
wasn’t yielding up the customary assortment of bizarre ideas and freak
suggestions from which he always was able to select one particular
inspiration to serve the need of the moment. To make the situation more
exasperating the last words of Meyerfield kept bobbing up in his train
of thought. He could see and hear the manager of the famous “Meyerfield
Frolics” as he had stood in the lobby of the New National Theatre in
Washington the night before, smoking the inevitable cigar and talking in
a loud booming voice.
“Remember,” Meyerfield had announced with great impressiveness, “I want
you to smear us all over the front page of every paper in Baltimore.
We’ve never played the ‘Frolics’ there and we’ve got to have ’em
properly introduced. I’m depending upon you to plant something that will
stir that town up like an earthquake. Get the girls into it some way.
They’re the best card we have.”
As Jimmy slouched in his seat the memory of a hundred spectacular
exploits which he had engineered swam through his mind, but he couldn’t
fasten on a new idea or on anything that hadn’t been worked and
re-worked. He was just beginning his first season with Meyerfield and
that worthy was a showman who expected results.
A memory picture of Lolita flashed into his mind and with it came the
realizing sense that her silence was perhaps responsible for his present
frame of mind. Since he said good-bye to her in New York a week before
to go ahead of the “Frolics” there had been only two letters from her,
letters written on the first two days of their separation. In the last
she had mentioned, with great enthusiasm, that she had signed a contract
to play a tiny part with a road company which was to regale the
theatre-goers of the small towns in the Middle West with a chaste little
farce then sensationally successful in New York. It was called “Ursula’s
Undies,” and it was a dainty affair designed to provoke the curiosity of
that type of male who carries around a pen-holder with a little
glass-eye piece at one end. You look in at his suggestion (he’s sure to
ask you) and you behold a couple of large and lumpy females in one-piece
bathing suits in what is alleged to be a scene suggestive of Oriental
abandon. “Ursula’s Undies” wasn’t even as wicked as that, but its
advertising manager distinctly sought to convey the impression that it
was too terrible for words and Jimmy had been moved to remonstrate with
Lolita by means of a telegram in which he had rather peremptorily
directed her to throw up her job and “get into something decent.”
There had been no reply to this wire nor to a frantic series of letters
which had followed it and Jimmy had begun to fancy that morning that all
was lost. He turned and looked out at the endless procession of fleeting
telegraph poles and at the dreary landscape apparently afloat in a
shimmering haze of mist which had followed a drizzling rain. He was
aroused from his reveries by a pleasant voice, a voice with something a
bit “precious” in its soft cadences, a voice that betokened a rather too
thick overlay of what Jimmy scornfully called “culchaw.”
“Good morning, Mr. Martin,” said the voice. “What’s the matter? You seem
sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”
Jimmy turned and recognized the speaker, a tall young man who wore
enormous tortoise shell spectacles, an impeccable two button cutaway and
a smile in which there was a touch of supercilious superiority. He was
one of Jimmy’s pet aversions, a highbrow press agent—J. Herbert Denby by
name—who was “doing a little special literary work,” as he himself
described it, ahead of a company that was presenting a repertoire of
dank and morbid Scandinavian plays on tour. He had been associate editor
of a literary magazine and had written a number of choice essays on what
he called the “new movement in the theatre” which had been published in
more or less obscure periodicals and which had been undoubtedly unread
by a vast multitude of persons. He was now enjoying his first experience
in the business world of the theatre and he had met Jimmy a few nights
before in Washington. His abysmal ignorance of practicalities had
aroused a sympathetic feeling in the latter which had been later
completely dissipated by his patronizing manner. His company was to be
Jimmy’s “opposition” in Baltimore, and he was journeying there on the
same errand that Jimmy was.
“Good morning,” grunted Jimmy. “What’s that you say?”
“I say that you seem sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,”
responded Mr. Denby, sitting down in the next chair with great
deliberation and carefully disposing of the tails of his coat. “By that
I mean that you seem lost in abstraction, as it were.”
“Not as it were,” replied Jimmy. “As it is. I’m certainly lost in
abstraction all right, all right, only I never called it that before.
The old idea box ain’t workin’ right. It’s back firin’ on me.”
“What’s the problem?” asked Mr. Denby judicially. “Maybe I can be of
some slight assistance. We represent opposite poles of the world of the
theatre, but an interchange of thought may clear up the situation.”
“The problem is one that can’t be cleared up by a flossy little piece of
writin’ marked ‘not duplicated in your city,’ old scout,” replied Jimmy
disconsolately. “Essays ain’t any more use in this situation than curry
combs in a garage.”
“But perhaps I may be able to venture a practical suggestion that might
be of value,” persisted the other.
“Practical suggestion!” snorted Jimmy. “Not a chance. You fellows are
all right, I guess, for this Ibsen stuff, but you don’t know anything
about girl shows, not a single, little thing.”
“I presume you mean the chorus girls,” suggested Mr. Denby. “Do you wish
to use them in some way for publicity purposes?”
“You’re talking,” said Jimmy. “I not only wish to I’ve got to. I’ve got
to smear ’em over the front pages of all the papers in Baltimore to keep
my job. And, believe me, Baltimore is some tight town when it comes to
handin’ out space for the showshops. The lid’s on and you’ve got to
murder someone to get it off.”
Mr. J. Herbert Denby cocked his head at a thoughtful angle and gazed
judicially through his spectacles.
“It mightn’t be a bad idea,” he said finally, weighing every word
carefully, “to get a delegation of prominent citizens to meet them at
the station with automobiles. Had you thought of that?”
Jimmy turned a look of concentrated scorn on him that would have caused
an ordinary mortal to shrivel up and pass quietly and unobtrusively into
a state of complete dissolution, but it had no such effect on J.
Herbert. He simply smiled a superior smile and awaited an answer.
“And it would be a good stunt, too,” snapped Jimmy, “to get the Governor
of the State to dance the tango with Madeline La Verne in the waiting
room of the station and to arrange to have the professors at the
university carry all the girls on their backs up to the hotel. For the
love of Mike, talk sense, man.”
“Of course, they would have to be extremely prominent citizens,” went on
J. Herbert Denby, utterly ignoring Jimmy’s biting sarcasm, “the leading
men of the city. It might be possible to arrange to have them go over to
Washington in their cars and bring the young ladies to Baltimore in them
instead of just meeting them at the station. That would add a touch of
piquancy to the proceedings that——”
He got no farther, for Jimmy choked off further utterance by springing
up and grabbing both his hands in wild exultation, almost upsetting the
porter who was emptying a bottle of mineral water for the man in the
next seat.
“You’ve got it, you old highbrow son-of-a-gun,” he shouted. “You don’t
know how good it is yourself. You know that old stuff about ‘and a child
shall lead them on.’ Well, that’s you. No offense, mind you, no offense,
but you _are_ a child in this line. I’ve got a notion to kiss you right
out in public.”
J. Herbert backed away and almost landed in the lap of a stout party who
was reading a paper.
“Please don’t,” he murmured. “Please don’t, I pray. It would embarrass
me fearfully.”
The stout party turned to his companion and spoke quietly under the
cover of his hand.
“Nuts,” he confided. “Pure Brazilian.”
Jimmy bade J. Herbert Denby a most enthusiastic farewell at the station
in Baltimore.
“There’s a dinner coming to you, old George B. Bookworm,” he shouted as
he jumped into a taxicab, “a nice young dinner with a little grape on
the sidelines and no stops for way-stations when we get our feet under
the table. See you later, old dear.”
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