Blue-grass and Broadway Part 11

"Oh, Miss Adair. Anything the matter?"

"Speak a little closer into the phone. Miss Hawtry has asked you to supper to-night? Mr. Farraday? And myself?"

"Did she say I was to come for you?"

"Do you know, I feel like a brute, but I'm going to tell you to go to bed as per promise. I've got two big guns from Broadway putting licks on the production of 'The Purple Slipper' until the small hours to-night, right here in the office. I'll tell Miss Hawtry about it, and you can--go to bed."

"Oh, yes, she'll understand. It's her play too, you see."

"No, you can't help me to-night, thank you just the same. How's Miss Lindsey? Would you like me to send my car to take you girls for a little spin in the park to cool off before you go to bed?"

"Her hair's wet? And so is yours? I didn't know it was raining."

"Oh, a mutual shampoo? Bless you both!"

"No, you don't interrupt me when you call me. You are to call me any time you are willing to do it, if it is every five minutes."

"No, I mean it."

"Very well then--good-night and good dreams."

"Can you beat it?" Mr. Vandeford smiled to himself as he hung up the receiver. "Those two peachy girls washing each other's hair in the Y. W.

C. A., within ten blocks of the 'Follies' is to laugh--or cry. Good little Lindsey! I wager she could have got 'em both forty-seven-eleven dates." Then a thought delivered a blow just above his belt in the region of his heart. "So it's Violet's game to use her as a decoy-duck for Denny?" he questioned himself, then gave his own answer in a soft voice under his breath. "d.a.m.n her!"

Furthermore he did not communicate with Miss Hawtry to give her Miss Adair's answer to her invitation. He answered it in person, but only after much had happened in the three hours intervening.

The hours from eight to nearly ten Mr. Vandeford spent in slowly munching the refreshment retrieved from the automat by Mr. Adolph Meyers and thinking out loud to that dignitary who took down his thoughts on paper in cabalistic signs of shorthand. They were all notes of what could and must be done in the next few days in the fight for the good fate of "The Purple Slipper."

"I want to see that fellow Reid about that new lighting he provided for the new Sauls show in May. I liked it in some ways and--" Mr. Vandeford was saying when a banging on the door of the private office in which was incarcerated the eminent playwright interrupted him.

"Did you give him the right amount of booze, Pops?" Mr. Vandeford asked.

"Entirely right," answered Mr. Meyers, with his pencil still poised over his pad. The knocking continued.

"See what he wants, Pops, and give him a little more if you have to,"

decided Mr. Vandeford, as he lit a new cigar and turned to the whirlpool of his desk while he waited for Mr. Meyers's return.

"Say, do you expect me to cast a Sunday School charade into a play in six days, Vandeford?" was the storm of words hurled at him as the released and infuriated doctor of plays hurled himself and his sheaf of ma.n.u.script into the door ahead of Mr. Meyers.

"Is that what you think of it?" calmly questioned Mr. Vandeford, as he swung around in his chair. "Sit down and tell me what you intend to do for it."

"I'm going to rewrite the whole blamed mess for fifteen hundred dollars, that's what I'm going to do," announced Mr. Howard with both belligerence and excitement in his voice and in the flash of his sick little eyes.

"Is it as good--or as bad--as all that--money?" questioned Mr.

Vandeford. "You'll have to show me," he added calmly, though in the vitals of his heart he was relieved that Howard still spoke of "The Purple Slipper" as a carca.s.s on which to operate.

"It's got a perfectly ripping, basic, s.e.x-comedy idea that climaxes the third act; the rest is piffle."

"I thought some of the character drawing, and one or two of the sentimental bits were--actable," Mr. Vandeford ventured, determined to save as much of the hair and hide of Miss Adair's child as possible, enough at least to help her to recognize and claim it later.

"Oh, we can leave enough bits to anchor the author's name, if that is what you mean," the playwright admitted impatiently. "How about fifteen hundred? I won't do it for less."

"Goes," answered Mr. Vandeford, with the greatest ease with which he had ever dispensed five hundred dollars in all his life. "Now shoot me your layout of the whole thing before Mazie gets here to take you and lock you up."

"I'm going to take that dinner scene where the wife holds her husband's enemies and her lover at bay to see if he gets back home on a sporting-chance bet with lover, and write Hawtry both back and front of it; write her in as the virago she is and give her a chance to act herself for once."

"Good idea," admitted Mr. Vandeford. "But you'll have a hard time writing a gutter girl into a grand dame, won't you?"

"Women are all alike, and the worst viragos are the grand dames. It takes a gutter girl to play one let loose, as they do only on rare occasions. I've got 'em in my own family. That's the reason I'm a black sheep turned out. Got a sister that's worse than me, only respectable and fashionable. See?"

"Yes, I see," again admitted Mr. Vandeford. "You'll keep all the atmosphere and minor stabs in, you say?"

"Sure. They are pretty good staggers, some of the minor stuff. Lots of it is good talk--only wandering. That woman may write something some day if she breaks loose and goes to the devil for a while."

"She won't," said Mr. Vandeford, positively.

"Never can tell," answered Mr. Howard, with indifference. "What did Mazie say?"

"She's due here for you now," answered Mr. Vandeford, looking at his watch.

"Great girl, Mazie. Cooks me dandy rice and runny eggs, and sits on the neck of every bottle in New York while I dig. Couldn't do without her.

Say, tell her you are just giving me five hundred, will you?"

"She knows it's a thousand," answered Mr. Vandeford, truthfully. "But I'll keep the extra five hundred you are extracting dark for you."