Torchy Part 8

Now, how was that for a hot-air blast? Wouldn't that make a short ice crop if you let it loose up the Hudson?

But it wa'n't what he said, so much as how he was sayin' it, that got me int'rested. There's some voices you don't have to hear but once to remember a lifetime, an this was one of that kind. It was one of these husky baritones, like what does the c.o.o.nsongs for the punky records they put into the music boxes at the penny arcades. That was as near as I could map it for a minute or so while I was tryin' to throw up the picture of the man behind the voice. And, then it hits me--Professor Booth McCallum!

Oh, skincho, what a front! Why, when I was on the Sunday editor's door the professor used to show up reg'lar with some new scheme for winnin'

s.p.a.ce. Talk about your self-acting press agents! He had the bunch shoved to the curb. All he had to bank on was a ten-minute turn at a 14th-st.

continuous house, fillin' in between the trained pig and the strong lady; but he wanted as much type set about himself as if he'd been Dave Warfield.

When he couldn't get next to anybody else, he used to give me the earache tellin' of the times when he played stock in one of Daly's road comp'nies, and how he had to quit because John Drew was jealous of him.

Then he'd leave his stuff with me and I'd promise to sneak it into the dramatic notes the first time I found the forms unlocked.

And to think of a hamfatter like McCallum, who's come back from Buffalo on a brake beam so often that he always sleeps with one arm crooked around the bedpost, havin' the nerve to call himself a school of dramatic art! Course, I didn't think Marjorie was so easy as to fall for a fake like that. She must be stringin' him.

But the minute I see her come out I knew she'd swallowed the hook. I'd dropped back into the far end of the hall, where it was dark; but as she walks under the skylight I sees the pleased look on her face, like she was havin' a view of her lithographs on all the gold frames in the subway. I waits until McCallum shuts himself in to throw bouquets at his picture in the gla.s.s, and then I slips down just in time to catch Marjorie as she's climbin' into the carriage.

"Is this the lady that's entered for the heavyweight Juliet champions.h.i.+p?" says I, tryin' to break the news to her gentle.

It shook her up a good deal, just the same. Her face gets the color of an auction flag, and she jounces down on the seat in a way that makes the springs flat out like bed slats.

"Why, Torchy!" says she. "Where did you come from, and what do you mean?"

"Oh, I've taken out a b.u.t.t-in license," says I. "I'm on, Miss Ellins. I wa'n't invited to the rehearsal; but I was there."

"Listening outside?" says she.

"Uh-huh," says I.

"Oh, Torchy!" says she. "Did you hear how lovely the professor talked of the way I did it?"

"About your havin' Julia Marlowe sewed in a sack? Sure thing," says I.

"But you mustn't tell anyone," says she.

"I wouldn't want the job," says I. "I can draw a diagram of the riot there'll be when mommer and popper get the bulletin."

"I don't care," says Marjorie. "They never want me to do anything. It's always, 'Oh, Marjorie, you're too big.' In summer I can't go bathing because they say I'm a sight in a bathing suit, and in winter they won't let me skate because they're afraid I'll break through. The boys won't dance with me, and the girls shut me out of basketball. But Professor McCallum has been perfectly dear. He said right away that I wasn't a bit too stout to be an actress. I'm not, either! Why, I weigh less than two hundred, with my jacket off; honest, I do! He liked my voice, too. And this was only my third lesson. Anyway, I'd just love to play Juliet, and I mean to do it!"

Well, say, that was a proposition to give you a headache. I couldn't go runnin' to Mr. Robert or the boss with any tales about Miss Marjorie.

That ain't what I'm on the payroll for. But I couldn't let McCallum play a friend of mine for a good thing; so I just opens up on him.

"Why," says I, "he's a never was. Maybe he used to carry a spear, or play double-up parts on the haymow circuit; but that's about all. He's a common, everyday, free lunch frisker, Mac is. I used to know all about him when I was in the newspaper business; so this is a straight steer.

He's just tollin' you along because he's had a dream that if he gets you real stuck on yourself you'll come across with two or three thousand for expenses and will be too tender-hearted to squeal afterwards. That's his game, and all you've got to do to queer it is to send him ten and say the folks object."

That's about the way I put it, drawin' it as strong as I knew how. Does Marjorie see the point and heave up any thanks about my bein' her true friend? Not her! She calls me impid'nt and says she's got a good mind to box my ears right there. So it was up to me to calm her down.

"All right, Miss Marjorie," says I. "If I've said anything I can't prove, I'll take it back; but if you'll follow me upstairs again for a minute, and wait outside in the hall, I'll have a little talk with the professor that'll settle it one way or the other."

No, she wouldn't do it, and she didn't want me ever to speak to her again. I was too fresh, I was!

"Then I guess I'll have to send Mr. Robert up to engage seats for that Juliet stab of yours," says I, makin' a play to move off.

It was a bluff; but it fetched her. She was willin' to do 'most anything if I wouldn't tell Brother Robert; so back we goes up to the acting school on the top floor. I left her leanin' up against the wall, right near the open transom, and makes a break for McCallum.

He was right there, too. He's one of these short-legged, ham-faced gents that's almost as tall when he's sittin' down as when he's standin' up. A neck that takes a No. 18 turn-down collar goes with that. He has his hands in his pockets, an Egyptian joss-stick in his mouth, and he's straddlin' up and down, as satisfied with himself as if he'd just cashed a ticket on the right horse.

"h.e.l.lo, profess!" says I. "I spots your name on the sign; so I takes the foot elevator up to see how you're comin' on."

"Quite right, son," says he, "quite right."

He didn't need any whizz plane then to beat the Curtiss record. He was soarin', soarin,' and too busy with it to take much notice of me.

"You ain't been round to the office lately," says I, lettin' on I was still with the paper.

"No, son," says he; "but you can inform your dramatic man down there that if he wants an important piece of news he'd better come and see me," and with that he taps his chest like he was stunnin' the gallery.

"Thought you looked like happy days, professor," says I. "What's it like? You ain't been takin' on any swell pupils, have you?"

"Haven't I, though?" says he, stickin' his thumbs in his vest pockets and comin' up on his toes as if he was goin' to crow. "Haven't I?"

"Say, Mac," says I confidential, "that wasn't her I saw drivin' off in the private buggy as I come in, was it--the wide one?"

"That was her," says he, "the new Juliet."

"Juliet!" says I. "Aw, you're kiddin'! Honest, professor, do Juliets come as heavy as that?"

Then he winks. I could see he was just bustin' to let it out to some one, and here was his chance. "Son," says he, "when young ladies have the price to pay for such luxuries as the cultivation of a dramatic talent that doesn't exist, size doesn't count. I've coached a Hamlet with lop ears and a pug nose, a Lady of Lyons that had a face you could chop wood with, and I guess I'm not going to draw the line at a Juliet whose father is president of a trust, even if she is something of a baby elephant!"

I heard the wall crack at that, and I suspected Marjorie'd got a shock.

"Can she act any?" says I.

"Act!" says he. "It's enough to make the angels weep to see her try.

Imagine, my boy, a one hundred and thirty-pound Romeo trying to hug his way around a two hundred and fifty-pound Juliet! Why, we'd have to prop up the balcony with a structural iron pillar and----"

It was too bad to have the flow stopped, for he was enjoyin' himself; but just then the door was jerked open and in rushes Marjorie, her eyes blazin', her face white, and so mad she couldn't speak. As she looms up in the door, lookin' bigger'n ever, she was diggin' somethin' out of her handbag, somethin' s.h.i.+ny. It wa'n't anything but a silver purse; but the professor must have thought it was somethin' else, for he gives only one look. Then he throws up both hands, hollers "Don't shoot, don't shoot!" and makes a dive under a desk in the corner. The hole under that desk wa'n't built for divin' through; so McCallum wedges himself in there like a cork in a bottle, wavin' his legs in the air, and callin'

for help.

"There!" says Marjorie, throwin' some bills on the floor. "That's for what I owe you, you horrid old fraud! Baby elephant, am I? Oh, you wretch!" With that she goes out and bangs the door behind her.

It was all me and the cornet artist next door could do to separate McCallum from the desk, and even when we worked him loose he didn't want to come out. When we'd got him into a chair, and he'd felt himself all over careful, he says to me:

"Torchy, how--how many times did she shoot?"

And when I gets back to the office Mr. Robert wants to know why I didn't let 'em know I was goin' all the way to Was.h.i.+ngton after them stamps.

"Chee!" says I, "but you're gettin' restless! Maybe you think I oughter travel by pneumatic tube? Huh!"