A READY-MONEY MAN
“I want you,” bawled the gentleman with the diamond, like a rustic
washerwoman summoning her offspring to a task. “I've got a little matter
for you to look after. S'pose you come around to dinner, and we can talk
it over.”
“I'm engaged to dine with this gentleman,” said Davenport, coolly.
“Well, that's all right,” said the newcomer. “This gentleman can come,
too.”
“We prefer to dine here,” said Davenport, with firmness. “We have our own
reasons. I can meet you later.”
“No, you can't, because I've got other business later. But if you're
determined to dine here, I can dine here just as well. So come on and
dine.”
Davenport looked at the man wearily, and at Larcher apologetically; then
introduced the former to the latter by the name of Bagley. Vouchsafing a
brief condescending glance and a rough “How are you,” Mr. Bagley led the
way into the eating-house, Davenport chagrinned on Larcher's account, and
Larcher stricken dumb by the stranger's outrage upon his self-esteem.
Nothing that Mr. Bagley did or said later was calculated to improve the
state of Larcher's feelings toward him. When the three had passed from
the narrow entrance and through a small barroom to a long, low apartment
adorned with old prints and playbills, Mr. Bagley took by conquest from
another intending party a table close to a street window. He spread out
his arms over as much of the table as they would cover, and evinced in
various ways the impulse to grab and possess, which his very manner of
walking had already shown. He even talked loud, as if to monopolize the
company's hearing capacity.
As soon as dinner had been ordered,--a matter much complicated by Mr.
Bagley's calling for things which the house didn't serve, and then
wanting to know why it didn't,--he plunged at once into the details of
some business with Davenport, to which the ignored Larcher, sulking
behind an evening paper, studiously refrained from attending. By the
time the chops and potatoes had been brought, the business had been
communicated, and Bagley's mind was free to regard other things. He
suddenly took notice of Larcher.
“So you're a friend of Dav's, are you?” quoth he, looking with benign
patronage from one young man to the other.
“I've known Mr. Davenport a--short while,” said Larcher, with all the
iciness of injured conceit.
“Same business?” queried Bagley.
“I beg your pardon,” said Larcher, as if the other had spoken a foreign
language.
“Are you in the same business he's in?” said Bagley, in a louder voice.
“I--write,” said Larcher, coldly.
Bagley looked him over, and, with evident approval of his clothes,
remarked: “You seem to've made a better thing of it than Dav has.”
“I make a living,” said Larcher, curtly, with a glance at Davenport, who
showed no feeling whatever.
“Well, I guess that's about all Dav does,” said Bagley, in a jocular
manner. “How is it, Dav, old man? But you never had any business sense.”
“I can't return the compliment,” said Davenport, quietly.
Bagley uttered a mirthful “Yah!” and looked very well contented with
himself. “I've always managed to get along,” he admitted. “And a good
thing for you I have, Dav. Where'ud you be to-day if you hadn't had me
for your good angel whenever you struck hard luck?”
“I haven't the remotest idea,” said Davenport, as if vastly bored.
“Neither have I,” quoth Bagley, and filled his mouth with mutton and
potato. When he had got these sufficiently disposed of to permit further
speech, he added: “No, sir, you literary fellows think yourselves very
fine people, but I don't see many of you getting to be millionaires by
your work.”
“There are other ambitions in life,” said Larcher.
Mr. Bagley emitted a grunt of laughter. “Sour grapes! Sour grapes, young
fellow! I know what I'm talking about. I've been a literary man myself.”
Larcher arrested his fork half-way between his plate and his mouth, in
order to look his amazement. A curious twitch of the lips was the only
manifestation of Davenport, except that he took a long sip of ale.
“Nobody would ever think it,” said Larcher.
“Yes, sir; I've been a literary man; a playwright, that is. Dramatic
author, my friend Dav here would call it, I s'pose. But I made it pay.”
“I must confess I don't recognize the name of Bagley as being attached to
any play I ever heard of,” said Larcher. “And yet I've paid a good deal
of attention to the theatre.”
“That's because I never wrote but one play, and the money I made out of
that--twenty thousand dollars it was--I put into the business of managing
other people's plays. It didn't take me long to double it, did it, Dav?
Mr. Davenport here knows all about it.”
“I ought to,” replied Davenport, coldly.
“Yes, that's right, you ought to. We were chums in those days, Mr.--I
forget what your name is. We were both in hard luck then, me and Dav. But
I knew what to do if I ever got hold of a bit of capital. So I wrote that
play, and made a good arrangement with the actor that produced it, and
got hold of twenty thousand. And that was the foundation of _my_ fortune.
Oh, yes, Dav remembers. We had hall rooms in the same house in East
Fourteenth Street. We used to lend each other cuffs and collars. A man
never forgets those days.”
With Davenport's talk of the afternoon fresh in mind, Larcher had
promptly identified this big-talking vulgarian. Hot from several
affronts, which were equally galling, whether ignorant or intended, he
could conceive of nothing more sweet than to take the fellow down.
“I shouldn't wonder,” said he, “if Mr. Davenport had more particular
reasons to remember that play.”
Davenport looked up from his plate, but merely with slight surprise, not
with disapproval. Bagley himself stared hard at Larcher, then glanced at
Davenport, and finally blurted out a laugh, and said:
“So Dav has been giving you his fairy tale? I thought he'd dropped it as
a played-out chestnut. God knows how the delusion ever started in his
head. That's a question for the psychologists--or the doctors, maybe. But
he used to imagine--I give him credit for really imagining it--he used to
imagine he had written that play. I s'pose that's what he's been telling
you. But I thought he'd got over the hallucination; or got tired telling
about it, anyhow.”
But, in the circumstances, no nice consideration of probabilities was
necessary to make Larcher the warm partisan of Davenport. He answered,
with as fine a derision as he could summon:
“Any unbiased judge, with you two gentlemen before him, if he had to
decide which had written that play, wouldn't take long to agree with Mr.
Davenport's hallucination, as you call it.”
Mr. Bagley gazed at Larcher for a few moments in silence, as if not
knowing exactly what to make of him, or what manner to use toward him. He
seemed at last to decide against a wrathful attitude, and replied:
“I suppose you're a very unbiased judge, and a very superior person all
round. But nobody's asking for your opinion, and I guess it wouldn't
count for much if they did. The public has long ago made up its mind
about Mr. Davenport's little delusion.”
“As one of 'the public,' perhaps I have a right to dispute that,”
retorted Larcher. “Men don't have such delusions.”
“Oh, don't they? That's as much as you know about the eccentricities of
human nature,--and yet you presume to call yourself a writer. I guess you
don't know the full circumstances of this case. Davenport himself admits
that he was very ill at the time I disposed of the rights of that play.
We were in each other's confidence then, and I had read the play to him,
and talked it over with him, and he had taken a very keen interest in it,
as any chum would. And then this illness came on, just when the marketing
of the piece was on the cards. He was out of his head a good deal during
his illness, and I s'pose that's how he got the notion he was the author.
As it was, I gave him five hundred dollars as a present, to celebrate the
acceptance of the piece. And I gave him that at once, too--half the amount
of the money paid on acceptance, it was; for anything I knew then, it
might have been half of all I should ever get for the play, because
nobody could predict how it would pan out. Well, I've never borne him an
ounce of malice for his delusion. Maybe at this very moment he still
honestly thinks himself the author of that play; but I've always stood by
him, and always will. Many's the piece of work I've put in his hands; and
I will say he's never failed me on his side, either. Old Reliable Dav,
that's what I call him; Old Reliable Dav, and I'd trust him with every
dollar I've got in the world.” He finished with a clap of good fellowship
on Davenport's shoulder, and then fell upon the remainder of his chop and
potato with a concentration of interest that put an end to the dispute.
As for Davenport, he had continued eating in silence, with an
expressionless face, as if the matter were one that concerned a stranger.
Larcher, observing him, saw that he had indeed put that matter behind
him, as one to which there was nothing but weariness to be gained in
returning. The rest of the meal passed without event. Mr. Bagley made
short work of his food, and left the two others with their coffee,
departing in as self-satisfied a mood as he had arrived in, and without
any trace of the little passage of words with Larcher.
A breath of relief escaped Davenport, and he said, with a faint smile:
“There was a time when I had my say about the play. We've had scenes, I
can tell you. But Bagley is a man who can brazen out any assertion; he's
a man impossible to outface. Even when he and I are alone together, he
plays the same part; won't admit that I wrote the piece; and pretends to
think I suffer under a delusion. I _was_ ill at the time he disposed of
my play; but I had written it long before the time of my illness.”
“How did he manage to pass it off as his?”
“We were friends then, as he says, or at least comrades. We met through
being inmates of the same lodging-house. I rather took to him at first.
I thought he was a breezy, cordial fellow; mistook his loudness for
frankness, and found something droll and pleasing in his nasal drawl.
That brass-horn voice!--ye gods, how I grew to shudder at it afterward!
But I liked his company over a glass of beer; he was convivial, and told
amusing stories of the people in the country town he came from, and of
his struggles in trying to get a start in business. I was struggling as
hard in my different way--a very different way, for he was an utter
savage as far as art and letters were concerned. But we exchanged
accounts of our daily efforts and disappointments, and knew all about
each other's affairs,--at least he knew all about mine. And one of mine
was the play which I wrote during the first months of our acquaintance.
I read it to him, and he seemed impressed by it, or as much of it as he
could understand. I had some idea of sending it to an actor who was then
in need of a new piece, through the failure of one he had just produced.
My play seemed rather suitable to him, and I told Bagley I thought of
submitting it as soon as I could get it typewritten. But before I could
do that, I was on my back with pneumonia, utterly helpless, and not
thinking of anything in the world except how to draw my breath.
“The first thing I did begin to worry about, when I was on the way to
recovery, was my debts, and particularly my debt to the landlady. She
was a good woman, and wouldn't let me be moved to a hospital, but took
care of me herself through all my illness. She furnished my food during
that time, and paid for my medicines; and, furthermore, I owed her for
several weeks' previous rent. So I bemoaned my indebtedness, and the
hopelessness of ever getting out of it, a thousand times, day and night,
till it became an old song in the ears of Bagley. One day he came in
with his face full of news, and told me he had got some money from the
sale of a farm, in which he had inherited a ninth interest. He said he
intended to risk his portion in the theatrical business--he had had some
experience as an advance agent--and offered to buy my play outright for
five hundred dollars.
“Well, it was like an oar held out to a drowning man. I had never before
had as much money at the same time. It was enough to pay all my debts,
and keep me on my feet for awhile to come. Of course I knew that if my
play were a fair success, the author's percentage would be many times
five hundred dollars. But it might never be accepted,--no play of mine
had been, and I had hawked two or three around among the managers,--and
in that case I should get nothing at all. As for Bagley, his risk in
producing a play by an unknown man was great. His chances of loss seemed
to me about nine in ten. I took it that his offer was out of friendship.
I grasped at the immediate certainty, and the play became the property
of Bagley.
“I consoled myself with the reflection that, if the play made a real
success, I should gain some prestige as an author, and find an easier
hearing for future work. I was reading a newspaper one morning when the
name of my play caught my eye. You can imagine how eagerly I started to
read the item about it, and what my feelings were when I saw that it was
immediately to be produced by the very actor to whom I had talked of
sending it, and that the author was George A. Bagley. I thought there
must be some mistake, and fell upon Bagley for an explanation as soon as
he came home. He laughed, as men of his kind do when they think they have
played some clever business trick; said he had decided to rent the play
to the actor instead of taking it on the road himself; and declared that
as it was his sole property, he could represent it as the work of anybody
he chose. I raised a great stew about the matter; wrote to the
newspapers, and rushed to see the actor. He may have thought I was a
lunatic from my excitement; however, he showed me the manuscript Bagley
had given him. It was typewritten, but the address of the typewriter
copyist was on the cover. I hastened to the lady, and inquired about the
manuscript from which she had made the copy. I showed her some of my
penmanship, but she assured me the manuscript was in another hand. I ran
home, and demanded the original manuscript from Bagley. 'Oh, certainly,'
he said, and fished out a manuscript in his own writing. He had copied
even my interlineations and erasures, to give his manuscript the look of
an original draft. This was the copy from which the typewriter had
worked. My own handwritten copy he had destroyed. I have sometimes
thought that when the idea first occurred to him of submitting my play to
the actor, he had meant to deal fairly with me, and to profit only by an
agent's commission. But he may have inquired about the earnings of plays,
and learned how much money a successful one brings; and the discovery may
have tempted him to the fraud. Or his design may have been complete from
the first. It is easy to understand his desire to become the sole owner
of the play. Why he wanted to figure as the author is not so clear. It
may have been mere vanity; it may have been--more probably was--a desire
to keep to himself even the author's prestige, to serve him in future
transactions of the same sort. In any case, he had created evidence of
his authorship, and destroyed all existing proof of mine. He had made
good terms,--a percentage on a sliding scale; one thousand dollars down
on account. It was out of that thousand that he paid me the five hundred.
The play was a great money-winner; Bagley's earnings from it were more
than twenty thousand dollars in two seasons. That is the sum I should
have had if I had submitted the play to the same actor, as I had intended
to do. I made a stir in the newspapers for awhile; told my tale to
managers and actors and reporters; started to take it to the courts, but
had to give up for lack of funds; in short, got myself the name, as I
told you today, of a man with a grievance. People smiled tolerantly at my
story; it got to be one of the jokes of the Rialto. Bagley soon hit on
the policy of claiming the authorship to my face, and pretending to treat
my assertion charitably, as the result of a delusion conceived in
illness. You heard him tonight. But it no longer disturbs me.”
“Has he ever written any plays of his own? Or had any more produced over
his name?” asked Larcher.
“No. He put the greater part of his profits into theatrical management.
He multiplied his investment. Then he 'branched out;' tried Wall Street
and the race-tracks; went into real estate. He speculates now in many
things. I don't know how rich he is. He isn't openly in theatrical
management any more, but he still has large interests there; he is what
they call an 'angel.'”
“He spoke of being your good angel.”
“He has been the reverse, perhaps. It's true, many a time when I've been
at the last pinch, he has come to my rescue, employing me in some affair
incidental to his manifold operations. Unless you have been hungry, and
without a market for your work; unless you have walked the streets
penniless, and been generally 'despised and rejected of men,' you,
perhaps, can't understand how I could accept anything at his hands. But
I could, and sometimes eagerly. As soon as possible after our break, he
assumed the benevolent attitude toward me. I resisted it with proper
scorn for a time. But hard lines came; 'my poverty but not my will'
consented. In course of time, there ceased to be anything strange in the
situation. I got used to his service, and his pay, yet without ever
compounding for the trick he played me. He trusts me thoroughly--he
knows men. This association with him, though it has saved me from
desperate straits, is loathsome to me, of course. It has contributed as
much as anything to my self-hate. If I had resolutely declined it, I
might have found other resources at the last extremity. My life might
have taken a different course. That is why I say he has been, perhaps,
the reverse of a good angel to me.”
“But you must have written other plays,” pursued Larcher.
“Yes; and have even had three of them produced. Two had moderate success;
but one of those I sold on low terms, in my eagerness to have it accepted
and establish a name. On the other, I couldn't collect my royalties. The
third was a failure. But none of these, or of any I have written, was up
to the level of the play that Bagley dealt with. I admit that. It was my
one work of first-class merit. I think my poor powers were affected by my
experience with that play; but certainly for some reason I
'... never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture.'
I should have been a different man if I had received the honor and the
profits of that first accepted play of mine.”
“I should think that, as Bagley is so rich, he would quietly hand you
over twenty thousand dollars, at least, for the sake of his conscience.”
“Men of Bagley's sort have no conscience where money is concerned. I used
to wonder just what share of his fortune was rightly mine, if one knew
how to estimate. It was my twenty thousand dollars he invested; what
percentage of the gains would belong to me, giving him his full due for
labor and skill? And then the credit of the authorship,--which he flatly
robbed me of,--what would be its value? But that is all matter for mere
speculation. As to the twenty thousand alone, there can be no doubt.”
“And yet he said tonight he would trust you with every dollar he had in
the world.”
“Yes, he would.” Davenport smiled. “He knows that _I_ know the difference
between a moral right and a legal right. He knows the difficulties in
the way of any attempt at self-restitution on my part,--and the
unpleasant consequences. Oh, yes, he would trust me with large sums; has
done so, in fact. I have handled plenty of his cash. He is what they call
a 'ready-money man;' does a good deal of business with bank-notes of high
denomination,--it enables him to seize opportunities and make swift
transactions. He should interest you, if you have an eye for character.”
Upon which remark, Davenport raised his cup, as if to finish the coffee
and the subject at the same time. Larcher sat silently wondering what
other dramas were comprised in the history of his singular companion,
besides that wherein Bagley was concerned, and that in which the fickle
woman had borne a part. He found himself interested, on his own account,
in this haggard-eyed, world-wearied, yet not unattractive man, as well
as for Miss Hill. When Davenport spoke again, it was in regard to the
artistic business which now formed a tie between himself and Larcher.
This business was in due time performed. It entailed as much association
with Davenport as Larcher could wish for his purpose. He learnt little
more of the man than he had learned on the first day of their
acquaintance, but that in itself was considerable. Of it he wrote a full
report to Miss Hill; and in the next few weeks he added some trifling
discoveries. In October that young woman and her aunt returned to town,
and to possession of a flat immediately south of Central Park. Often as
Larcher called there, he could not draw from Edna the cause of her
interest in Davenport. But his own interest sufficed to keep him the
regular associate of that gentleman; he planned further magazine work for
himself to write and Davenport to illustrate, and their collaboration
took them together to various parts of the city.