Part 48

"Got tired of staying out in the cold--eh?" he grinned.

"I'm tired of vaudeville," I answered. "Can't you give me a chance in a comedy?"

"Hm! Ambitious, ain't you?"

"Obermuller has a play all ready for me--written for me. He'd star me fast enough if he had the chance."

"But he'll never get the chance."

"Oh, I don't know."

"But I do. He's on the toboggan; that's where they all get, my dear, when they get big-headed enough to fight us."

"But Obermuller's not like the others. He's not so easy. And he is so clever; why, the plot of that comedy is the bulliest thing--"

"You've read it--you remember it?"

"Oh, I know it by heart--my part of it. You see, he wouldn't keep away from me while he was thinking of it. He kept consulting me about everything in it. In a way, we worked over it together."

The little man looked at me, slowly closing one eye. It is a habit of his when he's going to do something particularly nasty.

"Then, in a way, as you say, it is part yours."

"Hardly! Imagine Nance Olden writing a line of a play!"

"Still you--collaborated; that's the word. I say, my dear, if I could read that comedy, and it was--half what you say it is, I might--I don't promise, mind--but I might let you have the part that was written for you and put the thing on. Has he drilled you any, eh? He was the best stage-manager we ever had before he got the notion of managing for himself--and ruining himself."

"Well, he's all that yet. Of course, he has told me, and we agreed how the thing should be done. As he'd write, you know, he'd read the thing over to me, and I--"

"Fine--fine! A reading from that fool Obermuller would be enough to open the eyes of a clever woman. I'd like to read that comedy--yes?"

"But Obermuller would never--"

"But Olden might--"

"What?"

"Dictate the plot to my secretary, Mason, in there," he nodded his head back toward the inner room. "She could give him the plot and as much of her own part in full as she could remember. You know Mason. Used to be a newspaper man. Smart fellow, that, when he's sober. He could piece out the holes--yes?"

I looked at him. The little beast sat there, slowly closing one eye and opening it again. He looked like an unhealthy little frog, with his bald head, his thin-lipped mouth that laughed, while the wrinkles rayed away from his cold, sneering eyes that had no smile in them.

"I--I wouldn't like to make an enemy of a man like Obermuller, Mr. Tausig."

"Bah! Ain't I told you he's on the toboggan?"

"But you never can tell with a man like that. Suppose he got into that combine with Heffelfinger and Dixon and Weinstock?"

"What're you talking about?"

"Well, it's what I've heard."

"But Heffelfinger and Dixon and Weinstock are all in with us; who told you that fairy story?"

"Obermuller himself."