As she drew near to Longacre Square, Joan saw Quard detach himself from
an area-railing against which he had been lounging across the street,
and move over to intercept her. Since she had anticipated that he might
waylay her in some such manner, if he didn't call at the house, she was
not surprised by this manoeuvre; but she was a little surprised and
not a little amused (if quite privately) to see him throw away his cigar
as they drew together, and lift his hat. Such attentions from him were
distinctly novel--and gratifying.
Complacent, and at the same time excited beneath a placid demeanour, she
greeted him with a cool little nod.
He grinned broadly but nervously.
"I was wondering if you wouldn't happen along soon...."
"Is that so?" Joan returned blandly.
"Mind my walking with you?"
"No-o," the girl drawled.
"Of course, if I'm in the way--"
"Oh, no--I'm just looking for some place to lunch."
"Well, I'm hungry myself. Why not let me set up the eats?"
"All right," she assented indifferently.
"Fine! Where'll we go?"
"Oh, I don't know...."
"Anywheres you say."
"Well, Rector's is right handy."
"That suits me," Quard affirmed promptly.
But Joan's sidelong glance discovered a look of some discomfiture.
"I guess you got my letter, all right?" he pursued as they crossed to
the sidewalk of the New York Theatre Building.
"Oh, yes," Joan replied evenly, after a brief pause.
"Wha'd you think of the piece?"
"Oh ... the sketch! Why, it seems very interesting. Of course," Joan
added in a tone of depreciation, "I didn't have much time--just glanced
through it, you know--"
"I felt pretty sure you'd like it!"
"Oh, yes; I thought it _quite_ interesting," said the girl
patronizingly.
She seemed unconscious of his quick, questioning glance, and Quard
withdrew temporarily into suspicious, baffled silence.
In the pause they crossed Forty-fourth Street and entered the
restaurant.
It was rather crowded at that hour, but by good chance they found a
table for two by one of the windows; where a heavily-mannered captain of
waiters, probably thinking he recognized her, held a chair for Joan and
bowed her into it with an empressement that secretly delighted the girl
and lent the last effect to Quard's discomfiture.
"Please," she said gravely as the actor, with the captain suave but
vigilant at his elbow, knitted expressive eyebrows over the
menu--"please order something very simple. I hardly _ever_ have much
appetite so soon after breakfast."
"I--ah--how about a cocktail?" Quard ventured, relief manifest in his
smoothened brow.
"I thought you--"
"Oh, for you, I mean. Mine's ice'-tea."
"I think," said Joan easily, "I would like a Bronx."
And then, while Quard was distracted by the importance of his order, she
removed her gloves and, with her hands in her lap hidden beneath the
table, slipped off the ring and put it away in her wrist-bag: looking
about the room the while with a boldness which she could by no means
have mustered a month earlier, in such surroundings.
Distrustful of her cocktail, when served, for all her impudence in
naming it, she merely sipped a little and let it stand.
The mystery of the change in her worked a trace of exasperation into
Quard's humour. He eyed her narrowly, with misgivings.
"I guess you ain't lost much sleep since we blew up," he hazarded
abruptly.
"What_ever_ do you mean?" drawled Joan.
"You look and act's if you'd come into money since I saw you last."
"Perhaps I have," she said with provoking reserve.
"Meaning--mind my own business," he inferred morosely.
"Well, now, what do you think?"
"I--well, I'd be sorry to think what some folks might," he blundered.
Joan's eyes flashed ominously. "Suppose you quit worrying about me; I
guess I can take care of myself."
"I guess you can," he admitted heavily. "Excuse _me_."
"That's all right--and so'm I." Joan relented a little; lied: "I have
come into some money--not much." Her gaze was as clear and
straightforward as though her mouth had been the only authentic
well-spring of veracity. "Let it go at that."
"That's right, too." His face cleared, lightened. "Le's get down to
brass tacks: how about that sketch?"
"Didn't I say it seemed very interesting?"
He nodded with impatience. "But you ain't said how my proposition
strikes you. That's what I want to know."
"You haven't made me any proposition."
"Go on! Didn't you read my note?"
"Sure I did; but you only said you wanted me for the woman's part."
"Ain't that enough?"
She shook her head with a pitying smile. "You got to talk regular
business to me. I ain't as easy as I was once; I know the game better,
and I don't need a job so bad. How much will you pay?"
He hesitated: named reluctantly a figure higher than that which he had
had in mind: "Thirty-five dollars...."
"Nothing doing," said Joan promptly.
"But look here: you're only a beginner--"
"It's lovely weather we're having, for September, isn't it?"
"I'd offer you more if I could afford it, but--"
"Have you heard anything from Maizie since she left town?"
"Damn Maizie! How much do you want, anyhow?"
"Fifty--and transportation on the road."
He checked; whistled guardedly and incredulously; changed his manner,
bending confidentially across the table: "Listen, girlie, yunno I'd do
anything in the world for you--"
"Fifty and transportation!"
"But I had to pay the guy what wrote this piece fifty for a month's
option. If I take it up I gotta slip him a hundred more and twenty-five
a week royalty as long's we play it: and there's three others in the
cast, outsida you and me. _David_'ll want fifty at least, and the
_Thief_ thirty-five and the servant twenty-five: there's a hundred and
thirty-five already, including royalty. Add fifteen for tips and all
that: a hundred and fifty; fifty to you, two-hundred. The best I can
hope to drag down is three, and Boskerk'll want ten per cent commission
for booking us, leaving only seventy for _my_ bit--and I'm risking all I
got salted away to try it out."
He paused with an air of appeal to which Joan was utterly cold.
"It's a woman's piece," she said tersely; "if you get a sure-'nough
actress to play it, she'll want a hundred at least, if she's any good
at all. You're saving fifty if you get me at my price."
This was so indisputably true that Quard was staggered and temporarily
silenced.
"And," Joan drove her argument shrewdly home with unblushing
mendacity--"Tom Wilbrow says it's only a question of time before I can
get any figure I want to ask, in reason."
Quard's eyes started. "Tom Wilbrow!" he gasped.
"He rehearsed me in 'The Jade God' before Rideout went broke. I guess
you heard about that."
The actor nodded moodily. "But I didn't know you was in the cast....
Look here: make it--"
"Fifty or nothing."
After another moment of hesitation, Quard gave in with a surly "All
right."
At once, to hide his resentment, he attacked with more force than
elegance the food before him.
Joan permitted herself a furtive and superior smile. The success of her
tactics proved wonderfully exhilarating, even more so than the prospect
of receiving fifty dollars a week; she would have accepted fifteen
rather than lose the opportunity. She had demonstrated clearly and to
her own complete satisfaction her ability to manage men, to bend them to
her will....
There was ironic fatality in the accident which checked this tide of
gratulate reflection.
From some point in the restaurant behind Joan's back, three men who had
finished their lunch rose and filed toward the Broadway entrance.
Passing the girl, one of these looked back curiously, paused, turned,
and retraced his steps as far as her table. His voice of spirited
suavity startled her from a waking dream of power tempered by policy,
ambitions achieved through adulation of men....
"Why, Miss Thursday, how _do_ you do?"
Flashing to his face eyes of astonishment, Joan half started from her
chair, automatically thrust out a hand of welcome, gasped: "Mr.
Marbridge!"
Quard looked up with a scowl. Marbridge ignored him, having in a glance
measured the man and relegated him to a negligible status. He had Joan's
hand and the knowledge, easily to be inferred from her alarm and
hesitation, that she remembered and understood the scene of last Sunday,
and was at once flattered and frightened by that memory. His handsome
eyes ogled her effectively.
"Please don't rise. I just caught sight of you and couldn't resist
stopping to speak. How are you?"
"I"--Joan stammered--"I'm very well, thanks."
"As if one look at you wouldn't have told me you were as healthy as
happy--more charming than both! You are--eh--not lonesome?"
His intimate smile, the meaning flicker of his eyes toward Quard,
exposed the innuendo.
"Oh, no, I--"
"Venetia was saying only yesterday we ought to look you up. She wants to
call on you. Where do you put up in town?"
Almost unwillingly the girl gave her address--knowing in her heart that
the truth was not in this man.
"And, I presume, you're ordinarily at home round four in the afternoon?"
She nodded instinctively. "I'll not forget to tell Venetia.
Two-eighty-nine west Forty-fifth, eh? Right-O! I must trot along. So
glad to have run across you. Good afternoon...."
Regaining control of her flustered thoughts, Joan found Quard eyeing her
with odd intentness.
"Friend of yours?" he demanded with a sneer and a backward jerk of his
head.
"Yes--the husband of a friend of mine," she replied quickly.
The actor digested this information grimly. "Swell friends you've got,
all right!" he commented, not without a touch of envy. "Now I begin to
understand.... What's Marbridge going to do for you?"
"Do for me? Mr. Marbridge? Why, nothing," she answered blankly, in a
breath. "I don't know what you mean."
"That's all right then. But take a friendly tip, and give him the office
the minute he begins to talk about influencing managers to star you.
I've heard about that guy, and he's a rotten proposition--grab it from
me. He's Arlington's silent partner--and you know what kind of a rep.
Arlington's got."
"No, I don't," Joan challenged him sharply. "What's more, I don't care.
Anyway, I don't see what Arlington's reputation's got to do with my
being a friend of Marbridge's wife."
"No more do I," grumbled Quard--"not if Marbridge believes you are."