“O, that’s all one, sir! Fit the cap on the right head. The answer’s
‘Protection,’ isn’t it? I ought to know, as I wrote, and am writing,
the stuff.”
“_You_, sir!”
All eyes were turned upon the beastly little genius, as he stood
ruffling with greed and arrogance, and thence to the sofa.
“O, shut up!” said Sweeting feebly. “It was only a joke. I paid him,
handsome I did, to let me have the kudos and letters and things. He’d
the best of the bargain by a long chalk.”
“He-he!” screeched Slater. “Why, you fool, did you think merit earned
such recognition in this suffering world? Hope you enjoyed reading
’em, Sweet, as I did writing ’em.” He turned, half-cringing,
half-defiant, upon the guest. “I’m the author of the ‘Love-Letters,’
sir—honour bright, I am; and I wrote every one of the testimonials,
too, that that ass sets such store by. You’ll take those into
consideration, I hope.”
“I shall, sir,” thundered the other—“in my estimate of a fool and his
decoy.”
He blazed round and snatched up his hat.
“Make way, gentlemen!” he roared, and strode for the door.
A slip of pasteboard fluttered from his hand to the carpet; he flung
wide the portal, banged it to behind him, and was gone.
Some one, in a sort of spasmodic torpor, picked up the card, and
immediately uttered a gasping exclamation. We all crowded round him,
and, reading the superscription at which he was pointing, “Mr.
Hannibal Withers, Momus Theatre,” exchanged dumbfounded glances.
“Why, of course,” stuttered a pallid youth; “it was Withers, Voules’s
pal; I reco’nize him now. He’s the Prime Minister’s double, you know,
and—and he’s been and goosed us.”
“What!” screamed Slater.
But I was off in a fit of hysterical laughter.
It was actually a fact. It is a mistake to suppose that your
professional scandal-monger is prepared to build except on a
substratum of truth. Voules had pricked the bubble as he had promised.
The bargain, it was admitted, had been struck—on Slater’s side for
such a consideration as would submerge him in champagne had he desired
it. He had written and sent the manuscripts to Sweeting, who had had
them typed, and passed them on to the “Argonaut” as his own. But the
real author knew that his tenure was insecure so long as the other’s
colossal vanity was not ministered to. Hence the correspondence, in
which the little monster burlesqued his own lucubrations. It might all
have ended in a case of perpetual blackmail (Sweeting never could see
beyond the end of his own nose) had not the bait answered so instantly
to Voules’s calculations.
There was a bitter attack on the immorality of the stage in the next
number of the “Argonaut,” which subsequently had to compound with
Voules under threat of an action for libel. But Sweeting had his wish.
He was “somebody,” as never yet. Until he took his notoriety for a
long sea-voyage, he was more crushingly than any gentleman in the
“Dunciad” “damn’d to fame.”