The Competitive Nephew Part 48

Ringentaub made no reply. He was holding a fork in his hand and examining it critically.

"Of course, Trinkmann," he said, "I don't want to say nothing the first time I am coming into your place, but this here fork's got onto it something which it looks like a piece Bismarck herring."

"Don't take it so particular, Ringentaub," Maikafer said, blushing guiltily. "Wash it off in the gla.s.s water."

"A gla.s.s water you drink, Maikafer," Ringentaub rejoined, "and forks should be washed in the kitchen. And, furthermore, Trinkmann,"

Ringentaub said, "it don't do no harm if the waiters once in a while cleans with polishing powder the forks."

"I thought, Maikafer," Trinkmann said in funereal tones, "you are telling me that polishing powder is rank poison."

"_I_ didn't told you that," Maikafer replied. "It was Feinsilver says that."

"Rank poison!" Ringentaub exclaimed. "Why, you could eat a ton of it."

"Sure, I know," Maikafer concluded; "but who wants to?"

He turned to Louis, who had approached un.o.bserved. "Bring me some _Kreploch_ soup and a plate _gefullte Rinderbrust_," he said, "not too much gravy."

"Give me the same," Ringentaub added, as he gazed about him with the air of an academician at a private view. "You got a nice _gemutlicher_ place here, Mr. Trinkmann," he concluded, "only one thing you should put in."

"What's that?" Trinkmann asked.

Maikafer kicked him on the shins, but Ringentaub failed to notice it.

"Marble-top tables," he said.

CHAPTER NINE

"RUDOLPH WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN"

All that J. Montgomery Fieldstone had done to make his name a theatrical boarding-household word from the Pacific Coast to Forty-sixth Street and Seventh Avenue was to exercise as a producing manager nearly one tenth of the judgment he had displayed as Jacob M.

Fieldstone, of Fieldstone & Gips, waist manufacturers; and he voiced his business creed in the following words:

"Now listen to me, kid," he said, "my idea has always been that, no matter how much value you give for the money, goods don't sell themselves. Ain't I right?"

Miss Goldie Raymond nodded, though she was wholly absorbed in a full-length enlarged photograph which hung framed and glazed on the wall behind Fieldstone's desk. She looked at it as a millionaire collector might look at a Van Dyck he had recently acquired from an impoverished duke, against a meeting of protest held in Trafalgar Square. Her head was on one side. Her lips were parted. It was a portrait of Miss Goldie Raymond as Mitzi in the Viennese knockout of two continents--"Rudolph, Where Have You Been."

"Now this new show will stay on Broadway a year and a half, kid," Mr.

Fieldstone proceeded, "in case I get the right people to push it.

Therefore I'm offering you the part before I speak to any one else."

"Any one else!" Miss Raymond exclaimed. "Well, you've got a nerve, after all I've done for you in 'Rudolph'!"

"Sure, I know," Fieldstone said; "but you've got to hand something to Sidney Rossmore."

"Him?" Miss Raymond cried. "Say, Mont, if I had to play opposite him another season I'd go back into vaudeville."

Fieldstone began to perspire freely. As a matter of fact he had signed Rossmore for the new show that very morning after an all-night discussion in Sam's, the only restaurant enjoying the confidence of the last munic.i.p.al administration.

"Then how about the guy that wrote the music, Oskar Schottlaender?" he protested weakly. "That poor come-on don't draw down only ten thousand dollars a week royalties from England, France, and America alone!"

"Of course if you ain't going to give me any credit for what I've done----" Miss Raymond began.

"Ain't I telling you you're the first one I spoke to about this?"

Fieldstone interrupted.

"Oh, is that so?" Miss Raymond said. "I wonder you didn't offer that Vivian Haig the part, which before I called myself after a highball I'd use my real name, even if it was Katzberger."

"I told you before, kid, Vivian Haig goes with the Rudolph Number Two Company next month to play the same part as she does now; and you know as well as I do it ain't no better than walking on and off in the second act--that's all."

"Then you'd oughter learn her to walk, Mont," Miss Raymond said as she rose from her chair. "She fell all over herself last night."

"I know it," Fieldstone said, without shifting from his desk. "She ain't got nothing to do and she can't do that!"

Miss Raymond attempted what a professional producer had told her was a bitter laugh. It turned out to be a snort.

"Well, I can't stay here all day talking about people like Haig," she announced. "I got a date with my dressmaker in a quarter of an hour."

"All right, Goldie," Fieldstone said, still seated. "Take care of yourself, kid, and I'll see you after the show to-night."

He watched her as she disappeared through the doorway and sighed heavily--but not for love, because the domestic habits of a lifetime in the waist business are not to be so easily overcome. Indeed, theatrical beauty, with all its allurements, reposed in Fieldstone's office as free from temptation to the occupant as thousand dollar bills in a paying-teller's cage.

What if he did call Miss Goldie Raymond "kid"? He meant nothing by it.

In common with all other theatrical managers he meant nothing by anything he ever said to actors or playwrights, unless it appeared afterward that he ought to have meant it and would stand to lose money by not meaning it.

The telephone bell rang and he lifted the receiver from its hook.

"Who d'ye say?" he said after a pause. "Well, see if Raymond is gone down the elevator, and if it's all right tell her I'll see her."

A moment later a side door opened--not the door by which Miss Raymond had departed--and a young woman of determined though graceful and alluring deportment entered.

"Well," she said, "how about it, Mont? Do I get it or don't I?"

"Sit down, kid," Fieldstone said, himself seated; for he had not risen at his visitor's entrance. "How goes it, sweetheart?"

It is to be understood that "sweetheart" in this behalf had no more significance than "kid." It was a synonym for "kid" and nothing else.

"Rossmore says you're going to play Raymond in the new piece," she went on, ignoring his question; "and you know you told me----"

"Now listen here, kid," he said, "you ain't got no kick coming. In 'Rudolph' you've got a part that's really the meaty part of the whole piece. I watched your performance from behind last night, kid, and I hope I may die if I didn't say to Raymond that it was immense and you were running her out of the business. I thought she'd throw a fit!"

"Then I do get the part in the new piece?" Miss Vivian Haig insisted--for it was none other than herself.

"Well, it's like this," Fieldstone explained: "If you play another season with 'Rudolph,' and----"