Chapter VI: Part 6

Down on his knees went the Rev. “Billy” Williams and as thousands in the great audience bowed their heads once more he prayed fervently that everyone present who was unworthy at heart might see the light and embrace again with the simple faith of childhood the eternal truths of religion. The “Keep Moving” girls bowed their heads with the others, and if Jimmy had been a little closer he might have noticed that here and there a rouged face was stained with tears and that hard lines around the mouths of one or two of the bolder spirits had been softened as if by some subtle alchemy beyond the ken of mortal mind.

The prayer over, the evangelist sprang to his feet and raised his hand. The great choir, in instant response to his signal, began to softly sing, “Lead, Kindly Light.” At a perfectly timed moment toward the end of this most exquisite of hymns his voice sounded above the pianissimo phrasing of the massed singers and carried, with penetrating clarity, to the far end of the hushed auditorium.

“Won’t someone make the break with the past,” he exhorted. “Won’t someone be the first to lead the strayed sheep into the vineyard of the Lord?”

A tall, thin man with scraggly white hair and a pale ascetic face stood up about fifteen rows back from the platform and slid out into the nearest aisle. He bent his head as if breasting a heavy wind and his cheeks suddenly flamed at the consciousness of the thousands of eyes which were turned on him as he slouched awkwardly down toward “Billy” Williams, who had stepped from the platform and who was now standing at the end of the aisle. The evangelist reached out his hand and the tall man grasped it as he made a quick dive for a handkerchief and dabbed at his face. He mumbled something under his breath.

“Don’t be ashamed to cry, brother,” said the evangelist, putting his arm affectionately around the other’s shoulder. “Tears at a time like this are drops of God’s dew that will wash your soul as clean as morning roses.” And then he addressed the audience as the last notes of the hymn were sung by the choir. “Who’ll join our brother at the mercy seat,” he shouted. “Who’ll be the next to heed the glad tidings?”

There was a movement and a scraping of feet in every section of the building and presently men and women of all ages and all conditions began coming down the aisle to be greeted by “Billy” Williams and shunted aside into the open space designed for the reception of converts. There they stood, most of them with drooped heads and many of them crying. There were a few who held their heads up and their shoulders back and who stood four-square to all the curious glances directed toward them. On their faces were brave smiles and there was about them the air of spiritual elation that was inspiring to those who noted it.

Jimmy Martin’s emotions had been subjected to a severe grilling during the concluding portion of the preacher’s sentimental appeal and he had lost a little of his self-reserve and customary complacency during the prayer. When the first of the converts came struggling down the aisle and had begun to weep a little, the press agent found himself, for the first time in many years, struggling to hold back the tears that came unbidden into his own eyes. When the others had followed the spell was broken and he looked furtively about to see if anyone had noticed that he had been trembling on the verge of weakness. He thought once more of the mission which had brought him into this alien atmosphere and he directed his attention to the benches occupied by the young women for whom he was acting as a somewhat remote escort.

The converts were coming down the aisles now in little groups of three and four and the evangelist was keeping things at fever heat with loudly voiced exhortations. He leaned toward the “Keep Moving” girls and made a personal plea to them.

“Isn’t there someone here in this group of girls who has seen the light tonight,” he inquired. “Won’t someone among you step out here and take my hand and get right with her soul again?”

“I’ll say I will,” Jimmy heard Natalie Nugent, the girl with the pallor and the green earrings, say as she stood up and walked toward “Billy” Williams who gripped her outstretched hand and directed her to a position alongside him. The press agent looked at the other girls and noticed that they were watching her with fascinated interest. Somehow he couldn’t quite grasp what it all meant.

“God bless you, sister,” the evangelist shouted. “Won’t some of your friends join you?” He plunged again into the vernacular, choosing, as always, the effective moment. “It’s your cue, girls,” he pleaded. “The curtain’s up and the call boy is knocking at the door of your hearts. Don’t delay. You can’t tell what moment the Great Stage Manager will ring down for the last time. It may be tonight. It may be tomorrow. Don’t be caught unprepared. It’s a blessed opportunity, girls. Don’t pass it up. For mother’s sake, girls, for mother’s sake.”

Three other girls got up now and came forward. Jimmy gave an audible gasp of amazement. A fifth and a sixth moved into place beside the others and then Lolita Murphy stood up, hesitated for just a moment, caught “Billy” Williams’ warm human smile and stepped briskly forward. A half dozen others followed. The remainder sat with bowed heads. Those who had left their places stood in a little circle by themselves, clustered directly about the beaming evangelist. He made a last plea for converts to the vast audience and a stray dozen or more men and women, whose moral courage had not been quite strong enough to force a decision at the beginning, bobbed up here and there and moved toward the platform. There was a momentary pause and then the preacher spoke again.

“My friends,” he said, “a most remarkable event has occurred here tonight. Perhaps some of you here near the front have surmised what it is, but I am sure that the great majority of you have not grasped its significance. My efforts tonight have been blessed by an achievement of which I am extremely proud. Thirteen members of a theatrical company now appearing in this city—a company presenting a conglomeration bearing the idiotic title of ‘Keep Moving’—thirteen lovely young women have been rescued from the insidious temptations that lurk behind the blinding glare of the footlights and have come out here in the open and made a pledge to get back into the old, simple ways of living. It’s the most wonderful thing that has happened since I began my campaign, and while these brave and earnest souls are here with us let us all join in a prayer that they may be steadfast in their new aim and that their example may be a shining one to thousands of others in this great city. Let us pray.”

When the great throng arose after the prayer to sing the final hymn Jimmy Martin edged out of his seat and slipped unobtrusively up one of the aisles and out into the chill evening air. He was dazed and bewildered, but he had presence of mind enough to hail a taxicab and direct the chauffeur to drive him to his hotel. He had an idea that pictures of the fair converts would be in demand and he wanted to be on hand when the bright young gentlemen of the press put in an appearance.

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Chapter Twenty-Four

Chester Bartlett was not given to enthusiasm, but he felt impelled to congratulate Jimmy after glancing over the morning papers the next day and making a mental inventory of the net results of the press agent’s Sunday evening “plant.” The story leaped out of the front page of every journal in town and dwarfed, by comparison, the accounts of a super-heated debate in the United States Senate on disarmament, of a great strike which industrially paralyzed Great Britain from end to end and of a volcanic eruption in a far-flung island of the Pacific which claimed 8,000 human lives as its toll.

The “feature writers” who covered the “Billy” Williams’ meetings had figuratively and literally turned themselves loose on the proceedings and had written stories with a heart-throb in every sentence and a tear in at least every other line. They had embellished and embroidered the actual incidents so effectively that even Bartlett himself, case-hardened cynic that he was, found himself growing a bit sentimental when he read the story in the first paper to hand. The narratives were all adorned with photographs of the “Keep-Moving” beauties and the name of that blithesome musical comedy figured extensively in all of them. Bartlett particularly liked the headline in the Journal:

CHORUS BEAUTIES
CONVERTED BY
“BILLY” WILLIAMS
––––
Thirteen “Keep Moving” Girls
Hit the Trail After Eloquent
Plea by Evangelist.
––––
TEN THOUSAND WEEP AS
SOLEMN PLEDGE IS MADE
––––

“The counter attack was well developed and the ground gained is satisfactory to the higher command,” was the way Bartlett framed his congratulations over the telephone. “You can consolidate your present position and rest up for a few days.”

“All right,” Jimmy replied with a chuckle, “but there’s no tellin’ when I may make another raid on the enemy trenches. I’ve got ’em goin’. That one was as easy as getting a drink on Broadway since the U.S.A. went dry.”

“In plain, everyday English,” went on Bartlett, “that’s just about the best plant I’ve seen pulled off in the twenty years that I’ve been in the theatrical business. I noticed that your little Cedar Rapids friend was one of the ring-leaders. How you managed to get them all to play up as well as they did is what I can’t understand. How did you work it?”

Jimmy paused for a moment or two before replying and coughed uneasily.

“I’ve got ’em trained,” he finally replied. “They’ll—they’ll do anything I ask ’em to do—anything.”

It was characteristic of Jimmy to have decided, after considerable speculation, that no motive other than an unselfish desire to please himself and to assist in adding to the greater glory of the occasion had prompted Lolita and her associates to profess conversion on the night before. He had tried to reach her on the telephone several times with the idea of thanking her for her unexpected co-operation in furthering the success of his publicity scheme, but had been always met with the response that she was not in. He finally decided to defer the expression of his gratitude until that evening at the theatre. As a slight token of his good-will and heart-felt thankfulness he ordered a bouquet of roses delivered to her dressing-room and he personally wrote out a little card to be affixed to it.

“To the best little press agent ever,” it ran, “from a cheap piker at the game—Yours with love—Jimmy.”

He tried to preserve a slight semblance of becoming modesty throughout the day, but the congratulations which poured in upon him from all sides were of such a fulsome nature and coincided so perfectly with his own opinion of himself that when evening came he was as expansive as the leading man of a small town stock company and just about as reticent and self-effacing as an auctioneer. He dined alone with a fine inner glow of self-satisfaction and strolled into the lobby of the Colonial Theatre about half an hour before curtain time at peace with the world.

There was a long line of patrons extending from the box-office window almost out to the sidewalk and he watched the scramble for tickets with a feeling of exalted serenity. The sound of voices at the swinging doors leading into the foyer attracted his attention. He turned to see Bartlett and the stage manager coming through. Their mood was one that plainly boded developments of a decidedly disagreeable nature. They made for Jimmy and pounced upon him simultaneously.

“Where’s that girl of yours?” inquired Bartlett in a tone that Jimmy felt was a bit menacing.

“Yes, and where’s Natalie Nugent and Hilda Hennessey and Trixie Seville and Yvonne Elaine and Dulcie Dolores and five or six others,” chimed in the stage manager. “What do you know about ’em?”

“What do I know about ’em?” echoed Jimmy helplessly. “I don’t know anything about ’em. What’s the idea?”

“The idea is that they haven’t shown up tonight,” said Bartlett tartly. “Not a single one of that outfit that put your story over last night has put in an appearance back stage, and I have a remote suspicion that you know why they haven’t. Have you got some new stunt up your sleeve? If you have I won’t stand for it. Understand me, my dear sir, I won’t stand for it.”

“I don’t know anything about it, Mr. Peters,” said Jimmy with an air of injured innocence, “not a single little thing. I haven’t seen Lolita all day and I haven’t laid eyes on any of those other queens either. What makes you think I know anything about it?”

“Just general principles, I fancy. You’re a very smart young man and I had, and still have for that matter, an idea that you may be planning a follow-up of some sort on that yarn you landed this morning. Let me warn you that if you are, you are monkeyin’ with the well-known buzz-saw. Here are a dozen or more of the best looking de luxe girls in this show missing and the house practically sold out. I’ve got a reputation to live up to and I don’t propose to have it suffer just for a fool press story.”

“But, Mr. Bartlett,” broke in Jimmy.

“Ifs and buts are superfluous at this writing,” interrupted the manager angrily. “It’s within fifteen minutes of curtain time, and we’ll have to give a show that’ll look like a Number Three company out in the tall grass. The next time you plan a press story you’ll have to get it passed by the censor beforehand and I’m going to be the censor. Do you get me?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Jimmy weakly as Bartlett and the stage manager disappeared into the theatre again.

He leaned against the wall for support and tried to collect his thoughts. Somehow he couldn’t. He felt himself in the clutch of uncertainties beyond his understanding at the moment and vague distress was written large upon his face. One of the uniformed carriage attendants tapped him on the shoulder and slipped a letter into his hand.

“A young lady left this half an hour ago, Mr. Martin,” he said, “and told me to see as how you got it handed to you personally.”

Jimmy knew the handwriting on the envelope and a queer feeling came over him. He hesitated for a moment before reading it. When Matthews, the house manager, strolled up to him two minutes afterwards vain regret was in his heart and in his eyes there lurked a look of blended bewilderment and futile rage.

“What’s the matter, old man?” inquired Matthews. “Has Bartlett been making things hard for you?”

Jimmy smiled a sickly smile and handed over the letter.

“I don’t mind so much what he says,” he replied, “but this has got under the little old cuticle all right. Read it if you like.”

The manager adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses and read the letter, written in the stiff, vertical handwriting of a school-girl.

Dear Jimmy:

This is just to say good-bye. You’ve been very nice and very kind to
me and I’m thankful for everything and all that, but I’ve just got
to get away from the sinful stage and go back home. The other girls
are all quitting, too. I knew weeks ago that it was foolish to
pretend I’d ever be anything more than just a fifth or sixth rater
and now I’m glad that I’ve been brought to see the wickedness of it
all. I guess maybe I’ve got the “Cedar Rapids blues” you spoke about
the other night, too. Mother and dad have been writing me for weeks
to come home. Thank you again for your kindness and all that and
don’t bother trying to look me up for I’m taking a train tonight.
Many thanks again—from your little friend,

LOLITA.

“That’s mighty tough,” commented Matthews sympathetically. “Love is a great little gamble.”

“You said something,” replied Jimmy dejectedly. “I held the right cards, but I overplayed my hand.”

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Chapter Twenty-Five

“They’re always pickin’ on me,” moaned Jimmy a few weeks later as he flung the letter he had just finished reading down on his desk in a corner of the dingy office of the Colonial Theatre and kicked impulsively at a crumpled pile of discarded newspapers on the floor.

“What’s the matter, old man?” inquired Matthews, looking up from a stack of letters on his desk and regarding the press agent with a bantering smile. “Is Bartlett out on the rampage again?”

“No,” replied Jimmy in a disgusted tone of voice. “I wish he was. He’s postin’ three sheets tellin’ what a grand little fellow I am. That’s what gets my pet Angora.”

“What’s the catch?” questioned the other.

“Oh, that’s concealed in the last paragraph. He starts out with a lot of hot air about how good I am and how pleased he is at the wonderful showing I’ve landed over here in Boston, and a bunch of other junk and then he—wait, I’ll read you the finish. He says—‘and being desirous of showing my appreciation of your efforts in a concrete way I have decided to intrust to you the general direction of the publicity campaign of ’The Ganges Princess.’ I will send someone to take over ‘Keep Moving’ on Saturday, and you will kindly report at this office on Monday morning.’”

Matthews, who had sauntered over to Jimmy’s desk during the reading of Chester Bartlett’s letter, looked frankly bewildered.

“I’m pretty dense, I guess,” he said. “I don’t see anything in that to cause you to exhibit any signs of distress. He’s handing you the prize job of the season on a gold platter. You couldn’t stop the papers from printing stuff about that show with an injunction from the Supreme Court. Don’t you realize that?”

“Oh, that part of it’s all right,” replied Jimmy. “I suppose I’ve got a nerve to put up a holler, but I can’t help it. It’s this thing of bein’ bounced about like a tennis ball that makes me sore. The minute I get sewed up with one show and the machinery in the little old idea factory gets all oiled up and is makin’ 286 revolutions to the minute, along comes a letter or a wire shootin’ me on to join somethin’ else. Gee, I wish I was workin’ for myself and not for the other guy.”

Jimmy would have resented any suggestion that the look which crept into his eyes as he said this was wistful, but it was just that. He paused and gazed out of the window at the scurrying throng of early morning shoppers. Across his face there came and went the shadow of a pathetic smile, a smile that seemed to express for a moment the elation of holding within his grasp the very substance of things hoped for and which instantly merged into something that epitomized utter hopelessness. Matthews sensed his mood and put his hand on the press agent’s shoulder.

“Why don’t you take a flier on your own?” He asked. “Everybody in the business would wish you well.”

Jimmy snorted derisively.

“What would I use for money?” he inquired sarcastically. “Playwrights ain’t takin’ good wishes for advance royalties and you can’t slip a few kind words into the salary envelopes on Saturday night.”

“But it don’t take so much to make a start,” persisted the other. “Don’t you manage to save anything at all?”

“Sure. I’ve got almost enough cigarette coupons to get a gold plated safety razor or a genuine silk umbrella, and there’s 20 shares of Flying Frog copper stock in the tray of my trunk. That must be worth all of a dollar and eight cents, and it cost me about thirty dollars, too. Quit your kiddin’, old man. An agent has about as much chance these days of savin’ money as the Kaiser has of bein’ invited to a week-end party by the King of England.”

Jimmy stood up and began to pace slowly up and down the room. The wistful look came into his eyes again and the longing smile touched his mouth once more.

“Still,” he said, half to himself, “it’s kind of nice to think about ownin’ your own show even if you know you never will, and to sort of get a flash in your mind’s eye of a twenty-four sheet with ‘James T. Martin presents’ splashed across the top of it in black on yellow with red initials. ‘James T. Martin presents’—that’d certainly look immense on that low board on Broadway near Forty-fifth street that hits everybody on the big street right in the eye.”

Matthews, in response to a summons from the box-office, left him still soliloquizing under his breath and gazing pensively across the snow covered Common.

* * * * *

“The Ganges Princess” was the dramatic sensation of a decade. It had been running for a solid year at the huge Hendrik Hudson Theatre in New York, having weathered a hot summer with hardly a noticeable falling off of receipts. It was Chester Bartlett’s first venture into what is technically known as the “legitimate field” and he had staged it with that lavish disregard for expense and with that keen sense of the artistic which had given him pre-eminence as a producer of light musical entertainment.

Written by one of America’s most flamboyant playwrights it told a turgid story of Oriental passion and treachery set against a spectacular background depicting scenes in ancient India. As sheer spectacle it quite transcended anything hitherto attempted in the United States. It presented a series of settings which were so flaming in their color, so permeated with the mystery of the East and so splendid in their suggestion of great size and vast distances that each new revelation was invariably greeted with gasps of amazement from the audience. A cast bristling with distinguished names gave verisimilitude to the somewhat bombastic dialogue and purely incidental members of the company included a troupe of fifty real nautch-girls, six elephants, five camels and a flock of sheep.

“The Ganges Princess” was not merely the talk of New York. It was literally the talk of the country and its forthcoming tour promised to be one of the most important in the history of the American theatre. It was booked for extended engagements in only a few of the larger cities, there being a comparatively limited number of places containing playhouses with stages large enough to accommodate the production and possessing auditoriums of sufficient size to insure financial success.

Bartlett had mapped out a plan of exploitation which was quite the most comprehensive ever undertaken in the annals of press agentry. No less than half a dozen advance couriers—the pick of the country—were to devote their energies to the advertising and newspaper campaign alone, while the purely business details were to be intrusted to trained experts who were to have no other duties. This would leave the purveyors of publicity free and untrammeled in their assaults upon the press and a defenseless public.

Jimmy Martin was to be generalissimo, commander-in-chief and field marshal of the combined forces and was to be entrusted with delegated powers such as had never before been given to anyone holding a similar position. Matthews had understated the case when he referred to the place as the prize job of the season. It wasn’t even comparable. Nothing like it had ever been known for opportunity and power, since the modern variety of press agent came into being. Jimmy realized that himself after Bartlett had finished outlining the scope of the proposed campaign.

“Go to it, my boy,” the manager said at the completion of an hour’s talk, “and remember that the azure dome of heaven is the limit and that in the bright lexicon of showmanship there are no such words as ‘it can’t be done.’ Do I make myself clear?”

“Absolutely,” replied Jimmy cheerfully. “I’m to sit with my feet in a mustard bath and I’m to play my cards without regard to the feelin’s, digestions, general state of temperature or politics of anyone else in the game. I’m to see all raises and tilt it one for luck whenever I think the time is ripe for a killin’. Have I got the right combination?”

Bartlett laughed heartily at the flavory idioms which flowed so freely from Jimmy’s lips.

“Thou hast, most potent, grave and reverend signor,” he replied, bowing low in exaggerated mock courtesy. “By the way,” he continued, getting back to business again, “there’s another thing I completely forgot. I’ve engaged a literary chap for a special stunt, and I want you to figure out some way of getting it across so that it seems on the level.

“The general idea is to have this fellow deliver a series of lectures on India about three weeks ahead of the play date. It’ll be a camouflaged boost for the show. Every once in a while he’ll make some casual remark about the play which he understands is shortly to be seen in this city, et cetera, but there won’t be enough of this stuff for anyone to consider it as being at all out of the way.

“This gentleman will be under your direct and special control. It will be up to you to arrange to have lectures given in every city under the auspices of some literary society or social welfare group or under the patronage of the Daughters of the American Revolution—any kind of a crowd that’ll give the stunt prestige and distinction. I’ve written Mr. Denby to meet you at the theatre this evening.”

“Denby, eh? It can’t possibly be little old J. Herbert Denby, the highbrow kid, can it?”

“That’s the name. Know him?”

A grin of delight spread over Jimmy’s features.

“Fairly well,” he chuckled. “He tipped me off to a grand idea over in Baltimore a year or so ago. Old George B. Bookworm, eh? If he’s still doin’ his regular act I’ve got a lot of laughs comin’ to me on this trip. Say, you don’t know how good that bird’ll be for a stunt of this kind. When it comes to the uplift stuff and the literary bunk he’s there in seven separate and distinct languages. And innocent! Say, he could make a two year old baby look like an old offender with a Sing Sing past. They’ll fall for him on sight.”

The guileless Mr. Denby greeted Jimmy in the lobby of the Hendrik Hudson that night in his best professorial manner and smiled benignantly through his tortoise shell glasses.

“You will, I think, concede, Mr. Martin,” said he, proffering a rather limp hand, “that we give the lie direct to Mr. Kipling.”

“Eh? What’s that?” mumbled the other. “I don’t get you.”

Mr. Denby smiled condescendingly and replied in a tone of voice that Jimmy felt to be a bit too irritatingly suave.

“Mr. Kipling—the poet—you know. He says, ‘East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.’ Well, we are meeting on a common ground in a common cause and we are—may I venture to suggest—decidedly alien to each other in our thoughts and sympathies, are we not?”

Jimmy eyed him suspiciously before replying.

“Listen, old dear,” he said evenly, “I can never quite figure whether you’re kiddin’ me or not and I’m going to be too busy from now on to ask for diagrams. If we’re goin’ to get together you’ve got to get out the little old parachute and jump off into space. In plain English you’ve got to dive down to earth and keep both feet on the pavement. Save the flossy stuff for your lectures. Are you on?”

“Of course, of course,” stammered Mr. Denby. “I meant no offense. I have an unfortunate habit of making poetic allusions. I shall correct it. Believe me, my dear Mr. Martin, I shall correct it. I have much to say to you. Where shall we have a little—a little,—shall I say pow-wow—to talk over the—the ah—dope?”

“That’s the idea,” replied Jimmy, slapping the other on the back and laughing heartily. “That’s regular language. Let’s go back to the stage manager’s office and work out a plan of attack.”

The press agent led the way through a passage which ran behind the boxes to the stage and they presently found themselves dodging the canvas walls of a great Indian temple which were being deftly swung into position by a small army of stage hands and picking their steps cautiously through a cluttered array of papier-mache Buddhas, canopied thrones and other properties. Once closeted in the little office in a far corner they began a consultation which lasted for more than an hour.

It was agreed that Jimmy was to travel sufficiently far enough ahead of J. Herbert Denby to arrange for and advertise his lectures and the press agent took pains to carefully instruct the latter as to the best methods of keeping his connection with “The Ganges Princess” company a remote and cherished secret. The subjects chosen by the lecturer were, to say the least, not calculated to arouse any suspicion. Jimmy sat entranced as J. Herbert read them off from a typewritten slip he took from his card-case.

“I shall talk first,” he said, “upon ‘The Rig-Veda—A Primitive Folk Song Embodying the Soul of an Ancient People.’ I shall follow that with a discourse on ‘Brahma, Vishnu and Siva—The Triple Manifestation of the Hindu God’ and for my third and final lecture I have chosen perhaps a more popular theme—‘Mogul versus Mahratta—A Study in Dynastic Conflicts.’ Do you think that program will fill the bill?”

Jimmy was plainly a little bit groggy and he found it difficult to articulate for a moment or two.

“Say, old scout,” he finally managed to remark. “I’m almost down for the count. You talk like an encyclopedia. You’ll have ’em all pop-eyed when you pull that stuff. The harder it is to understand the harder they’ll fall. You’re there, George B. Bookworm, you’re there. I can see ’em passin’ flowers over the footlights already.”

J. Herbert, appreciating the sincerity of Jimmy’s enthusiastic approval, blushed a little and tried to appear at ease, but it was a difficult task. The two strolled out on the darkened stage and stood in the wings watching the unfolding of the final scene of the second act in which the Maharajah of Rumpore returned unexpectedly, with his followers, from a tiger-hunting expedition to find his favorite wife in the arms of the villainous Begum of Baroda.

They found themselves suddenly wedged in the center of a crowd of male supernumeraries who had come clattering down the stairs leading from the dressing rooms, accoutered in ancient armour and ready for participation in the stirring episode which was to bring the act to a close. Most of these “extra people,” that being their classification in the world of the theatre, were the usual assortment of shiftless idlers who eke out a precarious existence by doing such odd jobs on the stage and whose Oriental aspect was purely a matter of simulation. There were, however, a number of genuine East Indians among them, random visitors from an alien clime picked up here and there and utilized to give an added air of verisimilitude to the ensemble scenes.

One of these latter, a handsome chap under thirty, whose skin was the color of strong coffee diluted with rich cream and whose features had the classic regularity of a Grecian sculptured head, brushed against Jimmy’s elbow and apologized profusely.

“I am very much sorry if I have caused myself to discommode you,” he murmured, smiling pleasantly and revealing a row of teeth of dazzling whiteness.

“That’s all right,” replied Jimmy, looking at him in surprise. “You’re a regular, I see. You don’t belong to the volunteers.”

“No, sahib, I am from the East. I am long distance from home-land of my fathers, if that is what you mean.”

Jimmy looked at him with new interest. He had an air about him, an indefinable air of distinction that attracted the attention of even the aesthetic J. Herbert Denby, who edged closer and entered the conversation.

“Your English is excellent,” he remarked. “You have perhaps studied in one of our universities?”

“No, sahib, not here—in Oxford. I have been in this country but a few months. Life has been a difficult problem here in this great democracy, but I am a fatalist, sahib, and I do not make myself uneasiness as to the future. It is useless for it is written already on the scrolls of time.”

The next instant he swept forward on to the stage with the others in response to a signal from the stage manager who was peering through a small hole in the scenery.

“My word,” said the astonished Mr. Denby. “Fancy a chap like that being content to figure as one of the mob. He has the grand manner of an Indian prince.”

Jimmy looked up at him quickly.

“It’s moved and seconded that we make him one,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“All in favor of the motion signify their assent by saying ‘Aye.’ Aye! Contrary—no. The ayes have it and the motion is carried. What’ll we call him?”

“I must confess that I don’t grasp the significance of what you mean,” said the puzzled Mr. Denby.

“You will,” returned Jimmy as he led the way out to the front of the house again. “I’m goin’ to give you a little playmate on this trip if I can get Bartlett to go along. Local color stuff. You’ve slipped me another grand little idea, old man. It’s a bear.”

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Chapter Twenty-Six

Prince Rajput Singh, the mythical only son of the Nazir of Hydrabad, descended on Chicago two weeks later accompanied by J. Herbert Denby, the distinguished authority on Far Eastern affairs. Their arrival at the Senate Hotel just before the dinner hour was a spectacular divertissement, to say the least, and one well calculated to make the unsuspecting general public sit up and take notice.

His Royal Highness wore a great gray cloak when he passed through the main entrance of the hotel flanked on his right by the impeccable Mr. Denby and preceded by two massive and upstanding Hindus whose bearded faces were frozen into a semblance of stoical indifference that was as grim and forbidding as a box-office man’s impenetrable and imperturbable mask. On his head he wore a white turban trimmed with golden braid and his feet were encased in richly embroidered red slippers with turned-up toes.

He paused for a moment, surveying with a condescending air the crowd of gaping men which filled the lobby, and then clapped his hands sharply twice. The Hindu attendants moved into position back of him. Another pause and then, with a gesture of surpassing elegance he dropped the cloak from his shoulders into their waiting arms. No Roman emperor had ever done it better, Mr. Denby thought to himself. The prince stood revealed in a gorgeous silken robe which was such a shimmering mass of color that it almost made one blink to look at it. Purples, flaming shades of orange and greens which seemed to suggest the rank lush foliage of some tropical jungle were the predominating shades. The robe was admirably designed to set off to the best advantage the dark and finely chiseled features of His Royal Highness, who greeted the manager of the hotel with an air of haughty reserve that was positively imperial in its implications.

His progress through the lobby to the elevator was made amid a silence that Mr. Denby afterwards paradoxically referred to as “audible” and when the clanging doors closed behind him and he was shot up to his quarters on the third floor, the feelings of all the awed onlookers found expression in a concerted gasp.

Jimmy Martin, watching the proceedings from behind the cover of a newspaper which he pretended to be reading while he sprawled over a great leather chair, chuckled quietly to himself and agreed that he was a grand little stage manager. Then he slipped out on to windswept Michigan avenue and walked briskly away to his own hotel. He longed to remain and watch his drama unfold, but discretion warned him that it would be well for him to keep in seclusion for the present, inasmuch as representatives of the fourth estate would undoubtedly descend on the hotel shortly in a body.

Prince Rajput Singh graciously received the gentlemen of the press an hour later and discoursed at length upon the past, present and future of India. Hearing that his distinguished friend, the Sahib Denby, whom he had entertained some years ago at his father’s palace while the former was traveling in the far east, was planning a lecture tour he had decided, he said, to visit America himself and lend his aid to the project.

“It has been long dream of my existence,” he announced grandly, picking his words carefully, “to assist in bringing to new world of the west the culture and wisdom of the east. You have made wonderful discoveries in the world of material things. We have long ago found the secret of the soul. It is well we should make ourselves friends.”

The prince posed for flashlight photographs sitting in a great arm chair with his Hindu attendants, arms folded, standing erect and immovable behind him. All in all a pleasant time was had by everyone concerned and the results in the newspapers on the following morning were all that the most optimistic and sanguine publicity promoter could have desired. Two and three column pictures of His Royal Highness were given prominent positions and each interview was tagged with a paragraph announcing the first of Mr. Denby’s lectures which was to be given a day later in the grand ballroom of the hotel. The prince, it was announced, would supplement the lecturer’s remarks with a little talk of his own.

Jimmy Martin, calling on him for the purpose of giving him a few more instructions concerning his general deportment and demeanor on the morrow, was somewhat dazzled by the splendor of his surroundings and by the extent of the apartment assigned to him. There were five rooms in all, overlooking the lake, and there was a canopied bed on a raised platform in one of them as well as other evidences of extreme luxury to which he was not accustomed. He hunted up his friend, the assistant manager of the hotel.

“Say, Wilkins,” he said cautiously. “I’ve been up to see this prince you’ve got stopping here. That’s some set of rooms. I wonder what they’re going to set him back.”

“That’s the royal suite,” replied Wilkins. “We don’t get much of a chance to get any real royalty very often, and I’m making the old boy a special rate. Mr. Denby arranged for it. We’re only going to charge him two hundred dollars a day.”

“My God,” stammered Jimmy, almost swallowing his cigarette and clutching the other by the arm, “you can’t do a thing like that.”

The look of hopeless distress on the press agent’s face caused the hotel man to laugh uproariously, for a moment, but he checked himself suddenly.

“What’s the idea?” he inquired. “Why can’t we? You act as if we were going to charge the bill to you.”

“Maybe you are, old man,” was Jimmy’s response as he led Wilkins over to the latter’s little office. “I want to slip you a little side-line of conversation that you’ve got to promise to keep Masonic.”

So it came to pass that in the quiet sanctity of the little office Jimmy outlined certain unpublished details concerning the activities and real mission of Prince Rajput Singh though he said nothing about that dusky gentleman’s previous condition of servitude. He represented him as being a genuine Indian nobleman, temporarily down on his luck, who had consented to assist in a carefully contrived and ingenious scheme of indirect advertising.

“Have a heart, old man,” he pleaded when he had finished. “If you scale that two hundred down to about—well, say twenty-five and Bartlett’ll have heart failure even at that figure—I’ll arrange to have his royal niblets have dinner every night in your Egyptian dining room. You know yourself you don’t do much trade in there. We’ll have those two Hindu birds cook a lot of these curry dishes right there in full view of the audience and wait on him. You’ll be able to hang the little old S.R.O. sign out in a couple of days, take it from me.”

The assistant manager succumbed to Jimmy’s siren song and consented to slash the rate for the royal suite in return for the special performance by the prince and his entourage which the press agent promised to stage nightly.

Mr. J. Herbert Denby and Prince Rajput Singh made their joint debut on the lecture platform on the following afternoon before a select and soulful audience largely composed of middle-aged females who hung rapturously on every word uttered by both speakers.

Mr. Denby was in fine form. His discourse on “The Rig-Veda” was as vague and misty as a treatise on the Hegelian philosophy and about as full of real mental nourishment for that particular audience as a scientific monograph on the bony structure of the dactylopterus volitans would have been. He soared into the outer void and returned with bay-leaves on his brow and with esoteric phrases dripping from his tongue. The more hopelessly involved he became in the mystic mazes of his metaphysical theme, the more ardent seemed to be the rapt devotion with which his listeners received his remarks. When he finished in one grand, exultant outburst of poetic fervor a hushed silence fell upon the gathering and when a ripple of applause broke in upon it there were those whose brows darkened as if something holy had been profaned.

It remained, however, for the pseudo Prince Rajput Singh to achieve the real sensation of the afternoon. Arrayed in a purple robe and turban of exquisite silk and carrying himself with a careless air of superb distinction that was fascinating to watch, he delivered a brief talk in which he pleaded for a better understanding between the East and the West and urged a study of Indian ways and customs as the best method of bringing such an entente cordiale about, such a study as was rendered possible, for instance, by witnessing a performance of a play he had recently seen in New York—was it called “The Ganges Princess?”—he was not sure.

His dark face gleamed with animation as he spoke and his grey eyes sparkled. When he smiled his white teeth flashed brilliantly in the rays of the afternoon sun which poured through the mullioned windows and when he laughed, tossing his head back like some medieval troubadour in rollicking mood, all the impressionable women there present, young and old, went voyaging for a moment or two into the land of romance, and forgotten memory pictures of scenes from the Arabian Nights came trooping back into their several and respective, not to mention respectable, minds.

Taking it by and large Ranjit Lal, former supernumerary, devious adventurer in a foreign clime, and now, by the grace of one James T. Martin, Prince Rajput Singh, was, in the parlance of the boulevards, a knockout. When the formal festivities were over he was surrounded by a chattering swarm of females of assorted ages and subjected to that particular form of obsequious flattery which is usually reserved by the weaker sex for long-haired pianists and corpulent Italian tenors.

Mr. J. Herbert Denby, feeling himself somewhat out of the picture, viewed the proceedings from a short distance away and particularly noticed one worshiper who had edged herself into a position directly in front of his confrere and who seemed to be trying to entirely monopolize the swarthy-skinned lion of the occasion.

She was at least fifty. There was no doubting that, though she was dressed, with all the gay abandon of a debutante, in a silken frock which did not quite touch the tops of her extremely high boots. She was also inclined to stoutness, though a straight front corset kept her somewhat ample proportions cabined and confined permitting her to present to the world at large at least a semblance of curvilinear grace. There was, Mr. Denby thought, something decidedly suspicious looking about her flaxen tresses whose symmetrically marcelled regularity was relieved by two little curls which hung coyly in front of each ear. She was, it was plain to see, convinced that she was the living embodiment of Peter Pan, the young person who never grew old.

Mr. Denby could hear her high pitched voice and the gurgling laugh with which she punctuated almost every remark.

“I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer, you dear man,” she was saying. “Four thirty tomorrow afternoon in our Indian room—I’ll have just a few notables there and I have just one favor to ask of you. Please bring those perfectly dear gentlemen with whiskers along to help serve. They’ll help my background? Don’t you just love the proper background? It’s so stimulating. Oh, yes, background is the most important thing in life, if you grasp what I mean.”

A grunt escaped a tired looking man next to Mr. Denby. It was so expressive that the eminent authority on the Far East turned a questioning look on his neighbor.

“Who is she?” he inquired.

“That’s Fannie Easton,” replied the tired-looking man. “Old maid sister of Junius P. You’ve heard of him, of course. Oodles of money, houses in Chicago and New York, ranch in California, villa in Florence, three private yachts and not a damned soul to decorate ’em with except that blond nut sundae. Life’s a weird thing, sir. Too much for me.”

Mr. Denby, forgetting his own isolation for the moment, watched the continuation of the episode with a new interest. He saw the gurgling Miss Easton catch hold of his associate’s arm and he observed that the latter was devoting himself to her with assiduous attention as they walked slowly out into the corridor and disappeared, leaving behind a collection of thoroughly disappointed admirers. As the echoes of a silly laugh came floating on the air from some unseen corner of the hallway, something seemed to tell Mr. Denby that all was not well.

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Chapter Twenty-Seven

Junius P. Easton, popularly known on “the Street” as “old J. P.,” was sulking in his tent like a certain ancient Greek, the said tent being the Florentine library in his lake-side home. He was pacing up and down the great sombre room with its tapestried walls and its high raftered ceiling, chewing ferociously on a thick cigar, mumbling incoherently and thinking things utterly unfit for publication. Every two or three minutes he paused at the door opening into the music room and listened to the confused medley of sounds which came to him from an apartment in a far corner of the house—the light laughter of women, the clink of china tea things and the occasional echo of a man’s voice, an aggravatingly bland and urbane voice with a trace of a foreign accent in its rhythms.

Every time J. P. caught the sound of that voice his bushy and grizzled eye-brows came together over a deep perpendicular furrow in his forehead and he swore audibly and with gusto. This performance had been going on ever since a quarter to five that afternoon when he had arrived home from his office after a particularly trying day full of perplexing business problems and had been greeted by the butler with the announcement that Miss Fannie was entertaining some sort of an Indian prince and a group of friends at tea.

J. P. had tip-toed to the door of the Indian room, had cautiously peeped through the heavy curtain and had been greeted with the spectacle of Prince Rajput Singh, flanked by his be-whiskered servitors, lounging luxuriously on a divan completely surrounded by adoring females of uncertain age among whom his more or less revered sister was the central figure. Fannie was running true to form and was successfully monopolizing the attentions of the foreign visitor.

Filled with disgust J. P. had tip-toed away from the scene to the quiet serenity of the library and had begun his imitation of a caged beast of the jungle. It was one of the best things he did and he generally felt himself called upon to perform in this manner two or three times a week for there was no way of ever figuring what Fannie was going to do next or who she was going to invite into the house. One afternoon it might be an anarchist preaching the parlor variety of red revolutionary doctrine and the next it was just as likely to be the latest exponent of the simple life, tastefully attired in sandals and a robe made from Turkish towels.

As J. P. remarked once to his closest friend “there’s only one thing you can ever be certain about so far as Fannie is concerned—she’s always sure to make a damned fool out of herself.”

And J. P. spoke by the book. He had lived with her for fifty years and he knew whereof he spoke. He was always prepared for anything and yet he was never able to maintain that air of philosophic calm with which he would have liked to have greeted each new ebullition of her tempestuous temperament. He pictured himself sometimes, in moments of reflection, treating her with cold contempt and silent scorn, but when each new issue arose he greeted it with an emotional outburst which was utterly futile in its effect on her, but which gave him some slight measure of satisfaction. A psychologist would have told him that his affection for his sister found expression in that way. We can never be coldly contemptuous of those we love. However, J. P. was no psychologist.

The festivities in the other corner of the house lasted until nearly six o’clock and when the last guest had been given a gushing farewell by the arch Miss Fannie the hostess bounced into the library to meet her brother. She was attired in a short skirted pink silk afternoon gown that looked as if it might have been designed for a sixteen year old high school student, and she flounced into a sofa with an assumption of girlish ingenuousness that was really pathetic to watch.

“I’ve just had the darlingest afternoon, brother dear,” she said gayly, not heeding the glowering aspect of the head of the house, who stood facing her with his hands in his trousers pockets. “We’ve had the spirit and the mystery of the great, inscrutable East with us and it’s been so uplifting and so perfectly wonderful that I’m in a daze. I’m sorry you didn’t meet the dear prince, brother dear. He’s so charmingly soulful and his eyes—well, they’re just deep pools of moonlight as some poet said. I’m giving a dinner for him on Friday night. You’ll have to come to that, of course.”

Junius P. Easton tossed back his head and erupted.

“I’ll be damned if I will,” he shouted, “and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you hob-nob with this fellow either. I’ve stood a lot from you Fannie, but there’s a limit. I didn’t put up much of a holler last winter when you had that greasy Esquimeaux here that evening with that polar explorer and I’ve stood for Japanese, Chinese, Hawaiians, South Sea Islanders, snake charmers, Bolshevists, shimmy dancers, poets and short haired female nuts, but I’m going to draw the line on darkies and don’t you forget it.”

J. P. strode over to a long table, opened a humidor, extracted another cigar and savagely bit the end of it off. His sister was as unruffled as the placid surface of a mountain lake on a hot mid-summer day. She laughed a little before replying. It was such an irritatingly serene sort of a laugh that J. P. winced at the sound of it.

“You poor, dear, foolish man,” she said with the patronizing condescension of an indulgent aunt rebuking a fractious boy aged about eight years. “He isn’t a colored man. You can be perfectly ridiculous at times.”

“Well, he’s the next thing to it, isn’t he?” inquired her brother helplessly.

“Don’t be absurd, J. P. He is the descendant of kings and potentates and mighty warriors and he’s quite the most fascinating man I’ve ever met. To know him is a privilege. He calls to your soul and bids you voyage with him to the heights where you can leave behind you the petty affairs of life and commune with the eternal and the unknowable.”