And that's why, Marguerite de Monahan, I want you to buy in with the
madam here. Let 'em keep on calling it Troyon's as much as they want,
but you're to be a partner on the money I'll give you. If this fairy
story lasts, it'll be your own, Mag--a sort of commission you get on my
take-off of you. But if anything happens to the world--if it should go
crazy, or get sane, and not love Nancy Olden any more, why, here'll be
a place for me, too.
Does it look that way? Divil a bit, you croaker! It looks--it
looks--listen and I'll tell you how it looks.
It looks as though Gray and the great Gray rose diamond and the three
Charities had all become a bit of background for Nance Olden to play
upon.
It looks as though the audience likes the sound of my voice as much
almost as I do myself; anyway, as much as it does the sight of me.
It looks as though the press, if you please, had discovered a new stage
star, for down comes a little reporter to interview me--me, Nancy
Olden! Think of that, Mag! I receive him all in my Charity rig, and
in Obermuller's office, and he asks me silly questions and I tell him a
lot of nonsense, but some truths, too, about the Cruelty. Fancy, he
didn't know what the Cruelty was! S. P. C. C., he calls it. And all
the time we talked a long-haired German artist he had brought with him
was sketching Nance Olden in different poses. Isn't that the limit?
What d'ye think Tom Dorgan'd say to see half a page of Nancy Olden in
the X-Ray? Wouldn't his eyes pop? Poor old Tom! ... No danger--they
won't let him have the papers.... My old Tommy!
What is it, Mag? Oh, what was I saying? Yes--yes, how it looks.
Well, it looks as though the Trust--yes, the big and mighty T.
T.--short for Theatrical Trust, you innocent--had heard of that same
Nance Olden you read about in the papers. For one night last week,
when I'd just come of and the house was yelling and shouting behind me,
Obermuller meets me in the wings and trots me of to his private office.
"What for?" I asked him on the way.
"You'll find out in a minute. Come on."
I pulled up my stocking and followed. You know I wear it in that act
without a garter, and it's always coming down the way yours used to,
Mag. Even when it doesn't come down I pull it up, I'm so in the habit
of doing it.
A little bit of a man, bald-headed, with a dyspeptic little black
mustache turned down at the corners, watched me come in. He grinned at
my make-up, and then at me.
"Clever little girl," he says through his nose. "How much do you stick
Obermuller for?"
"Clever little man," say I, bold as brass and through my own nose;
"none of your business."
"Hi--you, Olden!" roared Obermuller, as though I'd run away and he was
trying to get the bit from between my teeth. "Answer the gentleman
prettily. Don't you know a representative of the mighty T. T. when
you see him? Can't you see the Syndicate aureole about his noble brow?
This gentleman, Nance, is the great and only Max Tausig. He humbleth
the exalted and uplifteth the lowly--or, if there's more money in it,
he gives to him that hath and steals from him that hasn't, but would
mighty well like to have. He has no conscience, no bowels, no heart.
But he has got tin and nerve and power to beat the band. In short, and
for all practical purposes for one in your profession, Nancy Olden,
he's just God. Down on your knees and lick his boots--Trust gods wear
boots, patent leathers--and thank him for permitting it, you lucky
baggage!"
I looked at the little man; the angry red was just fading from the top
of his cocoanut-shaped bald head.
"You always were a fool, Obermuller," he said cordially. "And you were
always over-fond of your low-comedian jokes. If you hadn't been so
smart with your tongue, you'd had more friends and not so many enemies
in--"
"In the heavenly Syndicate, eh? Well, I have lived without--"
"You have lived, but--"
"But where do I expect to go when I die? Good theatrical managers,
Nance, when they die as individuals go to Heaven--they get into the
Trust. After that they just touch buttons; the Trust does the rest.
Bad ones--the kickers--the Fred Obermullers go to--a place where
salaries cease from troubling and royalties are at rest. It's a slow
place where--where, in short, there's nothing doing. And only one
thing's done--the kicker. It's that place Mr. Tausig thinks I'm bound
for. And it's that place he's come to rescue you from, from sheer
goodness of heart and a wary eye for all there's in it. Cinch him,
Olden, for all the traffic will bear!"
I looked from one to the other--Obermuller, big and savage underneath
all his gay talk, I knew him well enough to see that; the little man,
his mouth turned down at the corners and a sneer in his eye for the
fellow that wasn't clever enough to get in with the push.
"You must not give the young woman the big head, Obermuller. Her own
is big enough, I'll bet, as it is. I ain't prepared to make any
startling offer to a little girl that's just barely got her nose above
the wall. The slightest shake might knock her off altogether, or she
mightn't have strength enough in herself to hold on. But we'll give
her a chance. And because of what it may lead to, if she works hard,
because of the opportunities we can give her, there ain't so much in it
in a money way as you might imagine."
Obermuller didn't say anything. His own lips and his own eyes sneered
now, and he winked openly at me, which made the little man hot.
"Blast it!" he twanged. "I mean it. If you've got any notion through
my coming down to your dirty little joint that we've set our hearts on
having the girl, just get busy thinking something else. She may be
worth something to you--measured up against the dubs you've got; but to
us--"
"To you, it's not so much your not having her as my having her that--"
"Exactly. It ain't our policy to leave any doubtful cards in the
enemy's hands. He can have the bad ones. He couldn't get the good
ones. And the doubtful ones, like this girl Olden--"
"Well, that's just where you're mistaken!" Obermuller thrust his hands
deep in his pockets and put out that square chin of his like the
fighter he is. "'This girl Olden' is anything but doubtful. She's a
big card right now if she could be well handled. And the time isn't so
far off when, if you get her, you people will be--"
"Just how much is your interest in her worth?" the little man sneered.
Obermuller glared at him, and in the pause I murmured demurely:
"Only a six-year contract."
Mag, you should have seen 'em jump--both of 'em; the little man with
vexation, the big one with surprise.
A contract! Me?--Nance Olden! Why, Mag, you innocent, of course I
hadn't. Managers don't give six-year contracts to girl--burglars
who've never set foot on the stage.
When the little man was gone, Obermuller cornered me.
"What's your game, Olden?" he cried. "You're too deep for me; I throw
up my hands. Come; what've you got in that smart little head of yours?
Are you holding out for higher stakes? Do you expect him to buy that
great six-year contract and divvy the proceeds with me? Because he
will--when once they get their eye on you, they'll have you; and to
turn up your nose at their offer if in just the way to make them itch
for you. But how the deuce did you find it out? And where do you get
your nerve from, anyway? A little beggar like you to refuse an offer
from the T. T. and sit hatching your schemes on your little old 'steen
dollars a week! ... It'll have to be twice 'steen, now, I suppose?"
"All right, just as you say," I laughed. "But why aren't you in the
Trust, Fred Obermuller?"
"Why aren't you in society, Nance?"
"Um!--well, because society's prejudiced against lifting, but the Trust
isn't. Do you know that's a great graft, Mr. Obermuller--lifting
wholesale? Why don't you get in?"
"Because a Trust is a lot of sailors on a raft who keep their places by
kicking off the drowning hands that clutch at it. Can you fancy a
fellow like Tausig stooping down to help me tenderly on board to divide
the pickings?"
"No, but I can fancy you grappling with him till he'd be glad to take
you on rather than be pulled off himself."
"You'd be in with the push, would you, Olden, if you were managing?" he
asked with a grin.
"I'd be at the top, wherever that was."
"Then why the deuce didn't you jump at Tausig's offer? Were you really
crafty enough--"
"I am artiste, Monsieur Obermuller," I gutturaled like Mademoiselle
Picotte, who dances on the wire. "I moost have about me those who
arre--who arre congeniale--"
"You monkey!" he laughed. "Then, when Tausig comes to buy your
contract--"
"We'll tell him to go to thunder."
He laughed. Say, Mag, that big fellow is like a boy when he's pleased.
I guess that's what makes it such fun to please him.
"And I, who admired your business sagacity in holding off, Nance!" he
said.
"I thought you admired my take-off! of Mademoiselle Picotte."
"Well?"
"Well, why don't you make use of it? Take me round to the theaters and
let me mimic all the swell actors and actresses. I've got more chance
with you than with that Trust gang. They wouldn't give me room to do
my own stunt; they'd make me fit into theirs. But you--"
"But me! You think you can wind me round your finger?"
"Not--yet."
He chuckled. I thought I had him going. I saw Nance Olden spending
her evenings at the big Broadway theaters, when, just at that minute,
Ginger, the call-boy, burst in with a note.
Say, Mag, I wouldn't like to get that man Obermuller hopping mad at me,
and Nancy Olden's no coward, either. But the way he gritted his teeth
at that note and the devil in his eyes when he lifted them from it,
made me wonder how I'd ever dared be facetious with him.