Gudrun, in the Renaissance robes of Juliet, swept into the green room
with a little grinning, long-haired man in an imitation
astrachan-collared overcoat over crumpled evening dress—a little man who
gave a large hand, with mourning nails, familiarly to Candelish, and
nodded cavalierly when Gormleigh was introduced. Slump was to read his
play to the manageress and her staff after the performance that night.
Read his play Slump did, and Cimmerian gloom gathered upon the
countenances of his listeners as the first act dragged to a close. Slump
put the typescript down on the supper-table and looked round;
Gormleigh’s head had sunk upon his folded arms. Heavy snores testified
to the depth and genuineness of his slumbers. The countenances of De
Hanna and Candelish expressed the most profound dejection, while the
intellectual half of Mrs. Gudrun’s celebrated countenance had
temporarily vanished behind her upper lip.
“What do you say to that?” Slump asked, quite undismayed by these signs
of weariness on the part of his listeners. Mrs. Gudrun came back to
answer him.
“I say that it’s the longest funeral I’ve ever been at. Open another
bottle of the Boy, Teddy, and wake up, Gormleigh.”
“I hof not been asleep,” explained Gormleigh.
“I wish I had,” sighed De Hanna. “The fact is,” he continued, prompted
by a glance from Mrs. Gudrun, “that your play don’t do.”
Slump maintained, in the face of this discouragement, a smiling front.
“Won’t do, eh?”
“Won’t do for nuts,” said De Hanna firmly. “Nobody could possibly laugh
at it,” he continued.
“It is too tam tismal,” put in Gormleigh.
“But if I prove to you that people can laugh at it, what then?” queried
the undismayed Slump. He took from a fob pocket-book a newspaper cutting
and handed it across the supper-table to De Hanna. The cutting was
headed
“OZONE AT THE BALL,”
and ran thus:
“‘Will you take a little refreshment?’
“‘Thank you, I have just had a sniff of ozone.’
“Question and answer at the ball given last night in aid of the ——
Hospital, —— Square, at the Royal Rooms, Kensington. For, besides
champagne, ozone was laid on. After every dance Dr. Blank, head of the
Hospital, wheeled about the hall an appliance in which, by electrical
action, pure oxygen was converted into the invigorating element of
mountain or seaside air, greatly to the purifying and enlivening of the
atmosphere of the ballroom.”
“My firm supplies the gas used in the treatment of the patients at that
hospital,” said Slump. “It’s a turnover of ten thousand per annum. We’re
ready to lay it on at the theater, and give the playgoers genuine ozone
with their evening’s entertainment. As for the farce, I don’t count it
A1 quality, but I’ve made up my mind to be acted and laughed at, and I’m
going to bring chemistry in to help me. Think what an advertisement for
the hoardings: ‘Real Ozone Wafted Over the Footlights,’ ‘Sea Air in the
Stalls and Gallery!’”
“By thunder! it’s a whacking notion!” cried Candelish.
“Colossal!” exclaimed De Hanna, taking fire at last.
“Poot vill de beoble loff?” asked Gormleigh.
“Ah, yes! Will they stand your farce even with an ozone accompaniment?”
doubted Mrs. Gudrun.
“I’ve a machine downstairs in the stage-door office,” said Slump calmly.
“Will you try the first act over again—with gas?”
Gormleigh groaned, but the other three nodded acquiescence; and the men
in charge of the electrical oxygen-generator received instructions to
bring the machine upstairs.
* * * * *
“Ha, ha, ha!”
“Haw, haw, haw!”
“Ach, it is too funny for anydings!” This from Gormleigh, rocking in his
chair, and mopping his streaming eyes with a red silk handkerchief.
“Ach, ha, ha, ha!”
Mrs. Gudrun held up her jeweled hands for mercy. The laughing man who
worked the machine stopped pumping, the laughing author ceased to read,
Billy the bulldog, who had been grinning from ear to ear, wiped a wet
nose on his mistress’s gown and sat down panting.
“How the deuce,” gasped De Hanna, “can oxygen make a stupid farce a
funny one? I can’t understand it, for the life of me.”
“Because,” replied Slump, with brevity and clearness, “that’s my trade
secret, and I don’t mean to give it away. Well, does _Maggs_ go on, or
do I take it to another management?”
The general assent was flattering in its unanimity. _Maggs at Margate_
went into rehearsal at the “Sceptre” next day, and in a week was
presented to the public. We refer you to the critiques published in the
_Daily Tomahawk_, the _Yelper_, and other morning prints:
“It seems as though the good old days were come again.... Peals of
irresistible laughter rang through the crowded theater as the
side-splitting story of _Maggs_ was unfolded. The audience laughed, the
orchestra laughed, the actors themselves were infected by the general
merriment.”
“Mr. Slump is a public benefactor. When ‘down,’ a dose of him will be
found to act like magic. The management’s happy notion of supplying the
theater with real ozone adds not a little to the pleasure of the
entertainment.”
And so forth, and so forth. Booking was immense, the box-office and
libraries were besieged with applicants eager to breathe the genuine sea
air wafted over the footlights at the “Sceptre.” The treasury boxes had
to be carried to the office at night by two of the strongest
commissionaires.
“Slump has a soft snap,” said De Hanna, chewing his Geyser pen
rapturously as he went over the books. “Sixty per cent. of the gross
receipts in author’s fees, and we’re averaging two thousand a week since
we went in for daily _matinées_. Then the Transatlantic Trust is running
the play in New York to phenomenal business, and we’ve planted it out
for the Colonies, while France and Germany——”
“Id vas from Chairmany dat de leading itea of de blay was orichinally
sdolen,” said Gormleigh, who had blossomed out in new clothes, a red
necktie, and a cat’s-eye pin.
“Leading idea of the play is the Ozone,” said De Hanna; “and as Slump’s
firm holds the patent for the electro-oxygen generator, and manufactures
the oxygen used in the theater——”
“Dey call it bure oxygen, poot it is not dat,” said Gormleigh, laying
his finger to his nose. “It is a motch cheaber gombound, I give you my
vort.”
“What?” De Hanna came closer, and his Oriental eyes gleamed. “If that’s
true, and we could manufacture and generate it for ourselves, we—we
could buy up every rotten play we come across—there’s heaps of them to
be had, Heaven knows—and run ’em for nuts. What is the stuff?”
“It is nitrous oxide,” said Gormleigh, “gommonly known as loffing
kass—and I hof a friend, a Chairman chemist—dat vill——Hoosh!” He laid
his finger to his nose with an air of secrecy as Mrs. Gudrun swept into
the office, enveloped in her usual clouds of silk and perfume. Candelish
was not with her, but Slump and Billy followed at her heels.
“Of course, it must be admitted, _Maggs_ is a phenomenal success,” she
was saying, “and we’re making money hand over hand; but the part of
‘Angelina’—though Cluffer says no French comedy actress of any age or
period could act it as I do—does not give me proper opportunities. Mr.
Slump thinks with me.” She smiled dazzlingly upon the enamored little
man. “And he has written a tragedy in blank verse—_The Poisoned
Smile_—which we mean to produce as soon as the run is over.” She swept
out again with her following, and De Hanna and Gormleigh exchanged a
wink of partnership.
“A tragedy in blank verse by Slump.... Phew!” De Hanna whistled. “They
won’t want laughing-gas for that.... As for us, we go snacks in biz.
I’ll find the Syndicate and the theater.”
“Oond I de blays, de sdage-management, oond de kass. De Chairman chemist
friend I dold you of, I hof vith him already a gontract made.”
“Perhaps it is a bit shady,” said De Hanna punctiliously, “to exploit an
idea that really is Slump’s property....”
“De chokes in Slump’s comic baber he sdole from a Chairman orichinal,”
said Gormleigh pachydermatously. “It is nodding poot tid for tad!”
AIR
“Sweet are the uses of advertisement.”
_The Professional Shakespeare._
“I believe in the value of an ad.,” said Mrs. Gudrun one night at the
Paris Grand Opera, the Sceptre Theatre, London, being temporarily closed
pending a new production. “Sarah believes in it, too—and that’s another
of the remarkable points of resemblance between us. And for the sake of
a puff, I’m willing to do all that a woman can.”
“Can’t do more,” said De Petoburgh, shaking his head owlishly. “Can’t
possibly do more.”
“Shut up, De Peto. That woman’s ready to bite you for talking through
her big _aria_,” commanded Mrs. Gudrun, with a slight glance of imperial
indifference towards the infuriated _prima donna_. She dropped her
opera-glasses into the orchestra with a crash, narrowly shaving the
kettle-drums, and causing the cymbal-player to miss his cue, as she
continued: “But, though I’m generally keen to see the pay-end of a big
notion, this idea of Bobby Bolsover’s won’t do for macaroons. Not that
I’m lacking in what the Americans call horse-grit—wasn’t I on De Brin’s
automobile when he won the Paris-Rouen race with his Gohard Cup Defender
in nineteen-three? That was one hairbreadth escape, from the revolver
shot that started us—you remember Bobby put in ball cartridge by
mistake—to the three flying kilometers at the finish, which we did on
one wheel, as the brakes refused to act. And I’ve hung by one coupling
over a raging American river in my own drawing-room Pullman saloon. But
when it comes to dangling in a little basket that weighs next to nothing
from a bag of gas that weighs nothing at all—I’m not taking any, and I
don’t care who knows it. A captive balloon’s another thing. You’re
cabled and sand-bagged and what not, and, unless you jump out, nothing
can happen to you. But——Do see who’s knocking at the door!”
It was a uniformed and epauletted functionary conveying the polite
intimation of the management that Madame and her party must positively
maintain silence during the performance, or make themselves the trouble
to depart!
“Tell him we’d had enough and were just going!” commanded Mrs. Gudrun.
She rose, and, followed by the Duke, Bobby Bolsover, and Teddy
Candelish—most active and ubiquitous of business managers, sailed out of
the box, knocking over a fauteuil and carrying a footstool away upon the
surging billows of her train. “Calls herself an artist!” she said, in
reference to the _prima donna_, upon whose trills and roulades an
enraptured audience hung breathless and enthralled; “and lets herself be
put about by a little thing like that! Where’s her artistic absorption,
I should like to know. Why, I’ve studied Juliet in the drawing-room
where Bobby and De Petoburgh were having a rat-hunt under the tables and
things, and what difference did it make to my conception of the part?
Not a sou. And _she_ was a shrimp-seller at Nice! They all have that
_voce squillante_ and those thick flat ankles and those rolling black
eyes like treacle-balls. Let’s go and have some supper at the Café
Paris.”
Over American grilled lobster and quails _Georges Sand_, Bobby
Bolsover’s grand notion for an advertisement, cropped up again. One may
explain that it consisted in the suggestion that Mrs. Gudrun and party
should electrify Paris, and subsequently London, by traveling _per_
motor-airship from St. Cloud, rounding the Eiffel Tower in emulation of
the immortal Santos, and returning to the Highfliers’ Club airship
station at the Parc upon the conclusion of the feat. A friend of De
Petoburgh’s, a distinguished member of the Highfliers’ Club, would
undertake to lend the airship—a newly completed vessel, with basket
accommodation for three. This philanthropist did not propose to share
the notoriety by joining the trip, and it was to be distinctly
understood that De Petoburgh was to be responsible for any expenses
involved.
And Bobby Bolsover, brimming, as usual, with genuine British bravery and
brandy-and-soda, was ready to assume command.
“You know the principle of a motor?” Bobby demanded, as the supper
proceeded, and a collection of champagne corks, gradually amassed on the
corner of the table, assumed proportions favorable to purposes of
demonstration.
“Candelish knows the principle of a motor,” said De Petoburgh. “Never
could learn myshelf. Too much borror!”
“One may say that there is gasoline in a receptacle,” began Teddy. “Air
passing through becomes charged with gas, and comes out ready to
explode. Then——”
“To explode,” agreed De Petoburgh; “absorutely correc’ dennifishion, by
Ringo!”
“Don’t mind De Peto: he’s in for one of his old attacks,” said Mrs.
Gudrun. “His legs have been all over the place since breakfast. Well?”
“You give a twirl to a crank,” said Bobby Bolsover.
“Down goes the piston,” continued Teddy.
“Down go her pistol,” nodded De Petoburgh.
“And the dashed thing begins working automatically,” exclaimed Bobby
Bolsover. De Petoburgh balked at the six-syllabled hedge. “Now, an
airship is an example of——”
“The effectiveness of an aërial propeller driven by a petrol motor,” put
in Teddy.
“Jusso,” said De Petoburgh. “Jusso.”
“There is, practically speaking, no danger whatever,” pursued Bobby
Bolsover, warming to the subject, “that does not attend other popular
pursuits. You may be thrown from a horse, or tumble off a coach-box——”
“Did once,” said De Petoburgh, smiling in sad retrospection.
“Or you may blow up in a motor,” went on Bobby.
“But in either case,” said Mrs. Gudrun, with point, “one is on the
ground, not hanging between heaven and earth, like What’s-his-name’s
coffin.”
“Brarro!” exclaimed De Petoburgh. “Encore! _Bis!_”
“Permit me to put in, dear lady,” said Teddy Candelish, with his best
professional manner, “that if you fall out of an airship, you eventually
finish on the ground!”
“Under,” gloomily interpolated De Petoburgh. “Under.”
“And, further,” said Bobby Bolsover, “the guide-rope is in connection
with the ground all the time. Seventy feet of it, trailing like——”
“Snakes!” said the irrepressible De Petoburgh, with a glassy stare.
“And,” went on Bobby, “we will have four picked men from the Highfliers’
Club Grounds to run beside the guide-rope all the way and back.”
“Thus combining personal advertisement,” said Teddy Candelish, “with
physical integrity.”
Mrs. Gudrun permitted her classical features to soften. “Now you’re
talking!” the lady said. She smiled through the bottom of her
champagne-glass as Teddy, bowed in acknowledgment of the compliment, and
the trip was arranged forthwith. Thanks to the discretion of Teddy
Candelish, the preparations were kept so profoundly secret that all
Paris was on the alert when the eventful morning dawned. The Highfliers’
Club Grounds were literally besieged, and the intending sky-navigators
fought their way to the aërodrome containing their vessel through a
surging throng of scientists, editors, journalists, dandies, actresses,
photographers, pickpockets, and politicians.
“Regular scrimmage—what?” panted Bobby Bolsover, as, bare-headed and
disheveled, he reached the private side-door of the balloon-house.
“We ought to have slept here,” said Mrs. Gudrun, straightening her
hat-brim as the breathless men collected her hairpins.
“Nothing but perches to sleep on,” objected Bobby Bolsover, indicating
the skeleton arrangements of the vast interior.
Mrs. Gudrun, whose eye soared with Bobby’s, would have changed color had
the feat been possible.
“Do we really climb up that awful ladder to get on board?” she inquired.
“I have more nerve than any woman I know; but I wasn’t educated as an
acrobat. _J’en suis tout baba_, Bobby, that you should have let us all
in for a thing like this. We’re planted, however, and must go through.
What crowds of smart women! What on earth has brought _them_ out so
early in the morning? It must have got about that I’m going to be
killed!” She gulped and clutched Teddy. “I c-can’t go on in this scene!
Make an apology—make an apology and say I’m ill. I _am_ ill—horribly!”
“I feel far from frisky,” said Bobby Bolsover candidly. “Gout all last
night in the head and eyes, and—every limb, in fact, that one relies
upon in steering a motor. But, of course, I am ready to undertake the
helm—unless anybody else would like to volunteer?”
He looked at Teddy, whose eye was clear, whose cheek was blooming, whose
golden curls encroached upon a forehead unlined with the furrows of
personal apprehension.
“W-what do you say, Teddy?” gasped Mrs. Gudrun.
“I deeply regret.... It is imperatively necessary, dear lady,” said
Teddy glibly, “that in your absolute interests I should be at the
‘Fritz’ at twelve. The Paris representatives of the _Daily Yelper_, the
_Morning Whooper_, and the _Greenroom Rag_, have appointed that hour to
receive particulars of your start; three Berlin correspondents, one from
Nice, and the editors of the _Journal Rigolo_ and the _Vie Patachon_ are
to hole in ten minutes later; and there will be thousands of telegrams
to open and answer. You know that the Syndicate of the Escurial Palace
of Varieties have actually tendered to secure the turn. Therefore,
though my heart will make the voyage in your company, I—cannot.”
Blue-eyed Teddy melted into thin air. Mrs. Gudrun, looking older than a
professional beauty has any right to look, surveyed her companions with
a hollow gaze of despair, while outside the aërodrome Paris roared and
waited. Bobby, as green as jade, in a complete suit of motor armor,
goggles included, leaned limply against the ladder that led upwards to
the platform of the aërodrome. De Petoburgh, in foul-weather yachting
kit, his glass fixed in his bloodshot left eye by the little mechanical
contrivance that keeps it from tumbling, looked back. That debilitated
nobleman, though shaky, was game to the backbone.
“I can’t drive a motor, Bolsover,” he said quite distinctly, “but I can
drive _you_. Will you—oblige me—by climbing up that ladder? We follow.
After you, dear lady!”
And the three negotiated the giddy ascent. Upon the platform they found
the owner of the airship and the four workmen who, under promise of
reward and threat of punishment, were to attend the guide-rope. The
airship itself, a vast sausage-shaped silk bag of hydrogen, from which
depended by rubber-sheathed piano wires a framework of proven bamboo
supporting three baskets—one forward, one amidships, and one aft—hovered
over the heads of the three depressed adventurers like a shapeless
embodiment of adverse Fate. And Paris was growing impatient.
“Tell ’em to stick to the guide-rope, De Croqueville, for their lives,”
urged Bobby feverishly, squeezing the hands of the owner of the machine.
“Give it ’em in their own lingo; my French isn’t fluent to-day. They’re
not to trust to my steering, but just tow us to the Tower and back.”
De Croqueville squeezed back, and embraced Bobby on both cheeks. “My
brave, my very dear, rely upon me. Madame”—he kissed the jeweled
knuckles of Mrs. Gudrun—“all Paris is assembled to behold the most
beautiful woman prove herself also to be of the most brave. M. le Duc,”
he saluted De Petoburgh distantly, and then cordially shook hands, “I am
as kin a sportsman as how you. I have plank my egg—my oof—a thousand
francs you circulate the Tour Eiffel, in spite of the wind, which blows
from the wrong quarter. Adieu!”
“Blows from the wrong quarter!” gasped Bobby Bolsover. The eyeglass of
De Petoburgh turned in his direction, and he immediately climbed the
forward ladder and got into the steersman’s creaking basket, and grasped
the wheel with an awful sinking immediately below the heart.... The Duke
helped Mrs. Gudrun to assume the central position, and got in astern.
Just before the starting word was given and the great doors of the
aërodrome rolled apart in their steel grooves, he leaned over to De
Croqueville, addressing that gentleman in his own language:
“One supposes she”—he alluded to the vessel—“is—sea—I mean
air-worthy—eh, my friend?”
De Croqueville shot up his eyebrows and spread his hands.
“One supposes.... Truly, dear friend, I know not!... The vessel is newly
complete—this is what in English you call the try-trip. That is why I
hedge my bet. One thousand francs you round the Tour Eiffel and return
uninjure—two thousand you do not return uninjure—whether you round the
Tour or no. _Adieu-dieu!_”
The electric signal rang. The colossal doors groaned apart. The four
workmen scuttled down the ladders like frightened mice, seized the
guide-rope, and towed the airship out of dock. Paris waved
handkerchiefs, cheered. Bobby Bolsover, ghastly behind his goggles,
pressed the pedal and manipulated the wheel. The engine throbbed, the
tail-shaft screw revolved. The adventurers had started.
“Qui-quite nice,” gulped Mrs. Gudrun tremulously, as the keen wind toyed
with her silk veil and fluttered her fur boa.
“She pitches,” said De Petoburgh briefly. “Keep her head to it,
Bolsover.”
There was a sickening moment as the airship mounted obliquely upward....
Then a tug at the guide-rope brought her nose down, pointing to the sea
of fluttering handkerchiefs beneath. Mrs. Gudrun groaned and clung to
the sides of her padded basket. De Petoburgh swore.
“I can’t—manage her. My—my nerve has gone. Let’s put about and take her
back to dock again,” gasped Bobby.
“For—for Heaven’s sake, do!” groaned Mrs. Gudrun. But again that new
voice spake from the blue lips of De Petoburgh, and——
“I’ve lived like a dashed blackguard, but I’m not going to die like a
cowardly cad. Curtain’s up—go through with the show. Bolsover, you
bragging, white-livered idiot, you can steer an electric launch and
drive a motor-car. If I’d ever learned to do either, I’d take your
place. But as I can’t—go ahead, and keep on as I direct, or I’ll shoot
you through your empty skull with this revolver”—the click of the weapon
came stimulatingly to the ears of the scared helmsman—“and swear I went
mad and wasn’t responsible. They—they’d believe me! Mabel, if you sit
tight and go through with this, I’ll stand you that thousand-guinea
tiara you liked at Alphonse’s, if we—when we get safe to ground. Now,
Bolsover, drive on, or take the consequences!”
Perhaps the familiar terms employed restored Bobby to the use of his
suspended faculties. Certain it is that the airship began to forge
steadily ahead at the rate of some twenty miles an hour—but _not_
absolutely in the direction of the vast spidery erection of metal which
was its destined goal. It skimmed in the direction of the Bois de
Boulogne, keeping at so lofty an altitude that of the end of the
guide-rope merely a length of some six feet trailed upon the ground.
“Those—those men l-look so funny running after it,” said Mrs. Gudrun,
upon whom the promise of the tiara had acted as a stimulant.
“I hope they may keep up with it,” muttered De Petoburgh as the airship
sailed over the humming streets of the gay city, and tiny men and women
turned white specks of faces upwards to stare. “Ease her, Bolsover,” he
commanded.
“Oh, we’re going right up again!” gasped Mrs. Gudrun. Then, as the
airship regained the horizontal: “This isn’t half bad,” she said in a
more cheerful tone, “but the housetops with their spiky chimney-pots
look dreadfully dangerous. The guide-rope has knocked a row of potted
geraniums off a third-floor balcony, and the old man who was reading the
paper in the cane chair must be swearing awfully. But where are the men?
I don’t see them; do you?”