CHAPTER II. CAPTAIN STRANGWISE ENTERTAINS A GUEST
CHAPTER III. MR. MACKWAYTE MEETS AN OLD FRIEND
CHAPTER IV. MAJOR OKEWOOD ENCOUNTERS A NEW TYPE
CHAPTER V. THE MURDER AT SEVEN KINGS
CHAPTER VI. “NAME O’BARNEY”
CHAPTER VII. NUR-EL-DIN
CHAPTER VIII. THE WHITE PAPER PACKAGE
CHAPTER IX. METAMORPHOSIS
CHAPTER X. D. O. R. A. IS BAFFLED
CHAPTER XI. CREDENTIALS
CHAPTER XII. AT THE MILL HOUSE
CHAPTER XIII. WHAT SHAKESPEARE’S COMEDIES REVEALED
CHAPTER XIV. BARBARA TAKES A HAND
CHAPTER XV. MR. BELLWARD IS CALLED TO THE TELEPHONE
CHAPTER XVI. THE STAR OF POLAND
CHAPTER XVII. MR. BELLWARD ARRANGES A BRIDGE EVENING
CHAPTER XVIII. THE GATHERING OF THE SPIES
CHAPTER XIX. THE UNINVITED GUEST
CHAPTER XX. THE ODD MAN
CHAPTER XXI. THE BLACK VELVET TOQUE
CHAPTER XXII. WHAT THE CELLAR REVEALED
CHAPTER XXIII. MRS. MALPLAQUET GOES DOWN TO THE CELLAR
CHAPTER XXIV. THE TWO DESERTERS
CHAPTER XXV. TO MRS. MALPLAQUET’S
CHAPTER XXVI. THE MAN IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE
CHAPTER XXVII. THE RED LACQUER ROOM
CHAPTER XXVIII. AN OFFER FROM STRANGWISE
CHAPTER XXIX. DOT AND DASH
CHAPTER XXX. HOHENLINDEN TRENCH
CHAPTER XXXI. THE £100,000 KIT
CHAPTER I.
THE DEPUTY TURN
Mr. Arthur Mackwayte slipped noiselessly into the dining-room and took
his place at the table. He always moved quietly, a look of gentle
deprecation on his face as much as to say: “Really, you know, I can’t
help being here: if you will just overlook me this time, by and by you
won’t notice I’m there at all!” That was how he went through life, a
shy, retiring little man, quiet as a mouse, gentle as a dove, modesty
personified.
That is, at least, how Mr. Arthur Mackwayte struck his friends in
private life. Once a week, however, he fairly screamed at the public
from the advertisement columns of “The Referee”: “Mackwayte, in his
Celebrated Kerbstone Sketches. Wit! Pathos! Tragedy!!! The Epitome of
London Life. Universally Acclaimed as the Greatest Portrayer of London
Characters since the late Chas. Dickens. In Tremendous Demand for
Public Dinners. The Popular Favorite. A Few Dates still Vacant. 23,
Laleham Villas, Seven Kings. ’Phone” and so on.
But only professionally did Mr. Mackwayte thus blow his own trumpet,
and then in print alone. For the rest, he had nothing great about him
but his heart. A long and bitter struggle for existence had left no
hardness in his smooth-shaven flexible face, only wrinkles. His eyes
were gray and keen and honest, his mouth as tender as a woman’s.
His daughter, Barbara, was already at table pouring out the tea—high
tea is still an institution in music-hall circles. Mr. Mackwayte always
gazed on this tall, handsome daughter of his with amazement as the
great miracle of his life. He looked at her now fondly and thought
how.... how distinguished, yes, that was the word, she looked in the
trim blue serge suit in which she went daily to her work at the War
Office.
“Rations a bit slender to-night, daddy,” she said, handing him his cup
of tea, “only sardines and bread and butter and cheese. Our meatless
day, eh?”
“It’ll do very well for me, Barbara, my dear,” he answered in his
gentle voice, “there have been times when your old dad was glad enough
to get a cup of tea and a bite of bread and butter for his supper. And
there’s many a one worse off than we are today!”
“Any luck at the agent’s, daddy?”
Mr. Mackwayte shook his head.
“These revues are fair killing the trade, my dear, and that’s a fact.
They don’t want art to-day, only rag-time and legs and all that. Our
people are being cruelly hit by it and that’s a fact. Why, who do you
think I ran into at Harris’ this morning? Why, Barney who used to work
with the great Charles, you know, my dear. For years he drew his ten
pound a week regular. Yet there he was, looking for a job the same as
the rest of us. Poor fellow, he _was_ down on his luck!”
Barbara looked up quickly.
“Daddy, you lent him money....”
Mr. Mackwayte looked extremely uncomfortable.
“Only a trifle, my dear, just a few shillings.... to take him over the
week-end.... he’s getting something.... he’ll repay me, I feel
sure....”
“It’s too bad of you, daddy,” his daughter said severely. “I gave you
that ten shillings to buy yourself a bottle of whiskey. You know he
won’t pay you back. That Barney’s a bad egg!”
“Things are going bad with the profession,” replied Mr. Mackwayte.
“They don’t seem to want any of us old stagers today, Barbara!”
“Now, daddy, you know I don’t allow you to talk like that. Why, you are
only just finished working.... the Samuel Circuit, too!”
Barbara looked up at the old man quickly.
“Only, four weeks’ trial, my dear.... they didn’t want me, else they
would have given me the full forty weeks. No, I expect I am getting
past my work. But it’s hard on you child....”
Barbara sprang up and placed her hand across her father’s mouth.
“I won’t have you talk like that, Mac”—that was her pet name for
him—“you’ve worked hard all your life and now it’s my turn. Men have
had it all their own way before this war came along: now women are
going to have a look in. Presently, when I get to be supervisor of my
section and they raise my pay again, you will be able to refuse all
offers of work. You can go down to Harris with a big cigar in your
mouth and patronize him, daddy...”
The telephone standing on the desk in the corner of the cheap little
room tingled out sharply. Barbara rose and went across to the desk. Mr.
Mackwayte thought how singularly graceful she looked as she stood, very
slim, looking at him whimsically across the dinner-table, the receiver
in her hand.
Then a strange thing happened. Barbara quickly put the receiver down on
the desk and clasped her hands together, her eyes opened wide in
amazement.
“Daddy,” she cried, “it’s the Palaceum... the manager’s office... they
want you urgently! Oh, daddy, I believe it is an engagement!”
Mr. Mackwayte rose to his feet in agitation, a touch of color creeping
into his gray cheeks.
“Nonsense, my dear!” he answered, “at this time of night! Why, it’s
past eight... their first house is just finishing... they don’t go
engaging people at this time of day... they’ve got other things to
think of!”
He went over to the desk and picked up the receiver.
“Mackwayte speaking!” he said, with a touch of stage majesty in his
voice.
Instantly a voice broke in on the other end of the wire, a perfect
torrent of words.
“Mackwayte? Ah! I’m glad I caught you at home. Got your props there?
Good. Hickie of Hickie and Flanagan broke his ankle during their turn
at the first house just now, and I want you to take their place at the
second house. Your turn’s at 9.40: it’s a quarter past eight now: I’ll
have a car for you at your place at ten to nine sharp. Bring your band
parts and lighting directions with you... don’t forget! You get twenty
minutes, on! Right! Goodbye!”
“The Palaceum want me to deputize for Hickie and Flanagan, my dear,” he
said a little tremulously, “9.40... the second house... it’s... it’s
very unexpected!”
Barbara ran up and throwing her arms about his neck, kissed him.
“How splendid!” she exclaimed, “the Palaceum, daddy! You’ve never had
an engagement like this before... the biggest hall in London...!!
“Only for a night, my dear,” said Mr. Mackwayte modestly.
“But if they like you, daddy, if it goes down... what will you give
them, daddy?”
Mr. Mackwayte scratched his chin.
“It’s the biggest theatre in London,” he mused, “It’ll have to be broad
effects... and they’ll want something slap up modern, my dear, I’m
thinking...”
“No, no, daddy” his daughter broke in vehemently “they want the best.
This is a London audience, remember, not a half-baked provincial house.
This is London, Mac, not Wigan! And Londoners love their London! You’ll
give ’em the old London horse bus driver, the sporting cabby, and I
believe you’ll have time to squeeze in the hot potato man...”
“Well, like your poor dear mother, I expect you know what’s the best
I’ve got” replied Mr. Mackwayte, “but it’ll be a bit awkward with a
strange dresser... I can’t get hold of Potter at this time, of night...
and a stranger is sure to mix up my wigs and things...”
“Why, daddy, I’m going with you to put out your things...”
“But a lady clerk in the War Office, Barbara... a Government official,
as you might say... go behind at a music-hall... it don’t seem proper
right, my dear!”
“Nonsense, Mac. Where’s your theatre trunk? Come along. We’ll have to
try and get a taxi!”
“They’re sending a car at ten to nine, my dear!”
“Good gracious! what swells we are! And it’s half-past eight already!
Who is on the bill with you?”
“My dear, I haven’t an idea... I’m not very well up in the London
programmes, I’m afraid... but it is sure to be a good programme. The
Palaceum is the only house that’s had the courage to break away from
this rotten revue craze!”
Barbara was in the hall now, her arms plunged to the shoulder in a
great basket trunk that smelt faintly of cocoa-butter. Right and left
she flung coats and hats and trousers and band parts, selecting with a
sure eye the properties which Mr. Mackwayte would require for the
sketches he would play that evening. In the middle of it all the
throbbing of a car echoed down the quiet road outside. Then there came
a ring at the front door.
At half-past nine that night, Barbara found herself standing beside her
father in the wings of the vast Palaceum stage. Just at her back was
the little screened-off recess where Mr. Mackwayte was to make the
quick changes that came in the course of his turn. Here, since her
arrival in the theatre, Barbara had been busy laying out coats and hats
and rigs and grease-paints on the little table below the mirror with
its two brilliant electric bulbs, whilst Mr. Mackwayte was in his
dressing-room upstairs changing into his first costume.
Now, old Mackwayte stood at her elbow in his rig-out as an old London
bus-driver in the identical, characteristic clothes which he had worn
for this turn for the past 25 years. He was far too old a hand to show
any nervousness he might feel at the ordeal before him. He was chatting
in undertones in his gentle, confidential way to the stage manager.
All around them was that curious preoccupied stillness—the hush of the
power-house—which makes the false world of the stage so singularly
unreal by contrast when watched from the back. The house was packed
from floor to ceiling, for the Palaceum’s policy of breaking away from
revue and going back to Mr. Mackwayte called “straight vaudeville” was
triumphantly justifying itself.
Standing in the wings, Barbara could almost feel the electric current
running between the audience and the comedian who, with the quiet
deliberation of the finished artist, was going through his business on
the stage. As he made each of his carefully studied points, he paused,
confident of the vast rustle of laughter swelling into a hurricane of
applause which never failed to come from the towering tiers of humanity
before him, stretching away into the roof where the limelights blazed
and spluttered. Save for the low murmur of voices at her side, the
silence behind the scenes was absolute. No one was idle. Everyone was
at his post, his attention concentrated on that diminutive little
figure in the ridiculous clothes which the spot-lights tracked about
the stage.
It was the high-water mark of modern music-hall development. The
perfect smoothness of the organization gave Barbara a great feeling of
contentment for she knew how happy her father must be. Everyone had
been so kind to him. “I shall feel a stranger amongst the top-liners of
today, my dear,” he had said to her in the car on their way to the
hall. She had had no answer ready for she had feared he spoke the
truth.
Yet everyone they had met had tried to show them that Arthur Mackwayte
was not forgotten. The stage-door keeper had known him in the days of
the old Aquarium and welcomed him by name. The comedian who preceded
Mr. Mackwayte and who was on the stage at that moment had said, “Hullo,
Mac! Come to give us young ’uns some tips?” And even now the stage
manager was talking over old days with her father.
“You had a rough but good schooling, Mac,” he was saying, “but, by
Jove, it gave us finished artists. If you saw the penny reading line
that comes trying to get a job here... and gets it, by Gad!... it’d
make you sick. I tell you I have my work cut out staving them off! It’s
a pretty good show this week, though, and I’ve given you a good place,
Mac... you’re in front of Nur-el-Din!”
“Nur-el-Din?” repeated Mr. Mackwayte, “what is it, Fletcher? A
conjurer?”
“Good Lord, man, where have you been living?” replied Fletcher.
“Nur-el-Din is the greatest vaudeville proposition since Lottie
Collins. Conjurer! That’s what she is, too, by Jove! She’s the newest
thing in Oriental dancers... Spaniard or something... wonderful
clothes, what there is of ’em... and jewelry... wait till you see her!”
“Dear me,” said Mr. Mackwayte, “I’m afraid I’m a bit behind the times.
Has she been appearing here long?”
“First appearance in London, old man, and she’s made good from the word
‘Go!’ She’s been in Paris and all over the Continent, and America, too,
I believe, but she had to come to me to soar to the top of the bill. I
saw at once where _she_ belonged! She’s a real artiste, temperament,
style and all that sort of thing and a damn good producer into the
bargain! But the worst devil that ever escaped out of hell never had a
wickeder temper! She and I fight all the time! Not a show, but she
doesn’t keep the stage waiting! But I won! I won’t have her prima donna
tricks in this theatre and so I’ve told her! Hullo, Georgie’s
finishing...”
The great curtain switched down suddenly, drowning a cascade of
applause, and a bundle of old clothes, twitching nerves, liquid
perspiration and grease paint hopped off the stage into the centre of
the group. An electric bell trilled, the limelights shut off, with a
jerk that made the eyes ache, a back-cloth soared aloft and another
glided down into its place, the comedian took two, three, four calls,
then vanished into a horde of dim figures scuttling about in the gloom.
An electric bell trilled again and deep silence fell once more, broken
only by the hissing of the lights.
“You ought to stop behind after your turn and see her, Mac,” the stage
manager’s voice went on evenly. “All right, Jackson! On you go, Mac!”
Barbara felt her heart jump. Now for it, daddy!
The great curtain mounted majestically and Arthur Mackwayte, deputy
turn, stumped serenely on to the stage.