In the Bishop's Carriage Part 16

Me? I didn't say a word. I looked at Obermuller and--and I just did like this. Yes, winked, Mag Monahan. I was so crazily happy I had to, didn't I?

But do you know what he did? Do you know what he did?

Well, I suppose I am screaming and the Troyons will put me out, but--he just--winked--back!

And then Gray came trailing back into the wings, and the shrieking and thumping and whistling out in front just went on--and on--and on--and on. Um! I just listened and loved it--every thump of it. And I stood there like a demure little kitten; or more like Mag Monahan after she'd had a good licking, and was good and quiet. And I never so much as budged till Obermuller said:

"Well, Nance, you have earned it. The gall of you! But it only proves that Fred Obermuller never yet bought a gold brick. Only, let me in on your racket next time. There, go on--take it. It's yours."

Oh, to have Fred Obermuller say things like that to you!

He gave me a bit of a push. 'Twas just a love-pat. I stumbled out on to the stage.

VII.

And that's why, Marguerite de Monahan, I want you to buy in with the madam here. Let 'em keep on calling it Troyon's as much as they want, but you're to be a partner on the money I'll give you. If this fairy story lasts, it'll be your own, Mag--a sort of commission you get on my take-off of you. But if anything happens to the world--if it should go crazy, or get sane, and not love Nancy Olden any more, why, here'll be a place for me, too.

Does it look that way? Divil a bit, you croaker! It looks--it looks--listen and I'll tell you how it looks.

It looks as though Gray and the great Gray rose diamond and the three Charities had all become a bit of background for Nance Olden to play upon.

It looks as though the audience likes the sound of my voice as much almost as I do myself; anyway, as much as it does the sight of me.

It looks as though the press, if you please, had discovered a new stage star, for down comes a little reporter to interview me--me, Nancy Olden! Think of that, Mag! I receive him all in my Charity rig, and in Obermuller's office, and he asks me silly questions and I tell him a lot of nonsense, but some truths, too, about the Cruelty. Fancy, he didn't know what the Cruelty was! S. P. C. C., he calls it. And all the time we talked a long-haired German artist he had brought with him was sketching Nance Olden in different poses. Isn't that the limit?

What d'ye think Tom Dorgan'd say to see half a page of Nancy Olden in the X-Ray? Wouldn't his eyes pop? Poor old Tom! ... No danger--they won't let him have the papers.... My old Tommy!

What is it, Mag? Oh, what was I saying? Yes--yes, how it looks.

Well, it looks as though the Trust--yes, the big and mighty T.

T.--short for Theatrical Trust, you innocent--had heard of that same Nance Olden you read about in the papers. For one night last week, when I'd just come of and the house was yelling and shouting behind me, Obermuller meets me in the wings and trots me of to his private office.

"What for?" I asked him on the way.

"You'll find out in a minute. Come on."

I pulled up my stocking and followed. You know I wear it in that act without a garter, and it's always coming down the way yours used to, Mag. Even when it doesn't come down I pull it up, I'm so in the habit of doing it.

A little bit of a man, bald-headed, with a dyspeptic little black mustache turned down at the corners, watched me come in. He grinned at my make-up, and then at me.

"Clever little girl," he says through his nose. "How much do you stick Obermuller for?"

"Clever little man," say I, bold as bra.s.s and through my own nose; "none of your business."

"Hi--you, Olden!" roared Obermuller, as though I'd run away and he was trying to get the bit from between my teeth. "Answer the gentleman prettily. Don't you know a representative of the mighty T. T. when you see him? Can't you see the Syndicate aureole about his n.o.ble brow?

This gentleman, Nance, is the great and only Max Tausig. He humbleth the exalted and uplifteth the lowly--or, if there's more money in it, he gives to him that hath and steals from him that hasn't, but would mighty well like to have. He has no conscience, no bowels, no heart.

But he has got tin and nerve and power to beat the band. In short, and for all practical purposes for one in your profession, Nancy Olden, he's just G.o.d. Down on your knees and lick his boots--Trust G.o.ds wear boots, patent leathers--and thank him for permitting it, you lucky baggage!"

I looked at the little man; the angry red was just fading from the top of his cocoanut-shaped bald head.

"You always were a fool, Obermuller," he said cordially. "And you were always over-fond of your low-comedian jokes. If you hadn't been so smart with your tongue, you'd had more friends and not so many enemies in--"

"In the heavenly Syndicate, eh? Well, I have lived without--"

"You have lived, but--"

"But where do I expect to go when I die? Good theatrical managers, Nance, when they die as individuals go to Heaven--they get into the Trust. After that they just touch b.u.t.tons; the Trust does the rest.

Bad ones--the kickers--the Fred Obermullers go to--a place where salaries cease from troubling and royalties are at rest. It's a slow place where--where, in short, there's nothing doing. And only one thing's done--the kicker. It's that place Mr. Tausig thinks I'm bound for. And it's that place he's come to rescue you from, from sheer goodness of heart and a wary eye for all there's in it. Cinch him, Olden, for all the traffic will bear!"

I looked from one to the other--Obermuller, big and savage underneath all his gay talk, I knew him well enough to see that; the little man, his mouth turned down at the corners and a sneer in his eye for the fellow that wasn't clever enough to get in with the push.

"You must not give the young woman the big head, Obermuller. Her own is big enough, I'll bet, as it is. I ain't prepared to make any startling offer to a little girl that's just barely got her nose above the wall. The slightest shake might knock her off altogether, or she mightn't have strength enough in herself to hold on. But we'll give her a chance. And because of what it may lead to, if she works hard, because of the opportunities we can give her, there ain't so much in it in a money way as you might imagine."

Obermuller didn't say anything. His own lips and his own eyes sneered now, and he winked openly at me, which made the little man hot.

"Blast it!" he tw.a.n.ged. "I mean it. If you've got any notion through my coming down to your dirty little joint that we've set our hearts on having the girl, just get busy thinking something else. She may be worth something to you--measured up against the dubs you've got; but to us--"

"To you, it's not so much your not having her as my having her that--"

"Exactly. It ain't our policy to leave any doubtful cards in the enemy's hands. He can have the bad ones. He couldn't get the good ones. And the doubtful ones, like this girl Olden--"

"Well, that's just where you're mistaken!" Obermuller thrust his hands deep in his pockets and put out that square chin of his like the fighter he is. "'This girl Olden' is anything but doubtful. She's a big card right now if she could be well handled. And the time isn't so far off when, if you get her, you people will be--"

"Just how much is your interest in her worth?" the little man sneered.

Obermuller glared at him, and in the pause I murmured demurely:

"Only a six-year contract."

Mag, you should have seen 'em jump--both of 'em; the little man with vexation, the big one with surprise.

A contract! Me?--Nance Olden! Why, Mag, you innocent, of course I hadn't. Managers don't give six-year contracts to girl--burglars who've never set foot on the stage.

When the little man was gone, Obermuller cornered me.

"What's your game, Olden?" he cried. "You're too deep for me; I throw up my hands. Come; what've you got in that smart little head of yours?

Are you holding out for higher stakes? Do you expect him to buy that great six-year contract and divvy the proceeds with me? Because he will--when once they get their eye on you, they'll have you; and to turn up your nose at their offer if in just the way to make them itch for you. But how the deuce did you find it out? And where do you get your nerve from, anyway? A little beggar like you to refuse an offer from the T. T. and sit hatching your schemes on your little old 'steen dollars a week! ... It'll have to be twice 'steen, now, I suppose?"

"All right, just as you say," I laughed. "But why aren't you in the Trust, Fred Obermuller?"

"Why aren't you in society, Nance?"

"Um!--well, because society's prejudiced against lifting, but the Trust isn't. Do you know that's a great graft, Mr. Obermuller--lifting wholesale? Why don't you get in?"

"Because a Trust is a lot of sailors on a raft who keep their places by kicking off the drowning hands that clutch at it. Can you fancy a fellow like Tausig stooping down to help me tenderly on board to divide the pickings?"

"No, but I can fancy you grappling with him till he'd be glad to take you on rather than be pulled off himself."