The Mystery of Murray Davenport Part 4

"n.o.body would ever think it," said Larcher.

"Yes, sir; I've been a literary man; a playwright, that is. Dramatic author, my friend Dav here would call it, I s'pose. But I made it pay."

"I must confess I don't recognize the name of Bagley as being attached to any play I ever heard of," said Larcher. "And yet I've paid a good deal of attention to the theatre."

"That's because I never wrote but one play, and the money I made out of that--twenty thousand dollars it was--I put into the business of managing other people's plays. It didn't take me long to double it, did it, Dav?

Mr. Davenport here knows all about it."

"I ought to," replied Davenport, coldly.

"Yes, that's right, you ought to. We were chums in those days, Mr.--I forget what your name is. We were both in hard luck then, me and Dav. But I knew what to do if I ever got hold of a bit of capital. So I wrote that play, and made a good arrangement with the actor that produced it, and got hold of twenty thousand. And that was the foundation of _my_ fortune.

Oh, yes, Dav remembers. We had hall rooms in the same house in East Fourteenth Street. We used to lend each other cuffs and collars. A man never forgets those days."

With Davenport's talk of the afternoon fresh in mind, Larcher had promptly identified this big-talking vulgarian. Hot from several affronts, which were equally galling, whether ignorant or intended, he could conceive of nothing more sweet than to take the fellow down.

"I shouldn't wonder," said he, "if Mr. Davenport had more particular reasons to remember that play."

Davenport looked up from his plate, but merely with slight surprise, not with disapproval. Bagley himself stared hard at Larcher, then glanced at Davenport, and finally blurted out a laugh, and said:

"So Dav has been giving you his fairy tale? I thought he'd dropped it as a played-out chestnut. G.o.d knows how the delusion ever started in his head. That's a question for the psychologists--or the doctors, maybe. But he used to imagine--I give him credit for really imagining it--he used to imagine he had written that play. I s'pose that's what he's been telling you. But I thought he'd got over the hallucination; or got tired telling about it, anyhow."

But, in the circ.u.mstances, no nice consideration of probabilities was necessary to make Larcher the warm partisan of Davenport. He answered, with as fine a derision as he could summon:

"Any unbiased judge, with you two gentlemen before him, if he had to decide which had written that play, wouldn't take long to agree with Mr.

Davenport's hallucination, as you call it."

Mr. Bagley gazed at Larcher for a few moments in silence, as if not knowing exactly what to make of him, or what manner to use toward him. He seemed at last to decide against a wrathful att.i.tude, and replied:

"I suppose you're a very unbiased judge, and a very superior person all round. But n.o.body's asking for your opinion, and I guess it wouldn't count for much if they did. The public has long ago made up its mind about Mr. Davenport's little delusion."

"As one of 'the public,' perhaps I have a right to dispute that,"

retorted Larcher. "Men don't have such delusions."

"Oh, don't they? That's as much as you know about the eccentricities of human nature,--and yet you presume to call yourself a writer. I guess you don't know the full circ.u.mstances of this case. Davenport himself admits that he was very ill at the time I disposed of the rights of that play.

We were in each other's confidence then, and I had read the play to him, and talked it over with him, and he had taken a very keen interest in it, as any chum would. And then this illness came on, just when the marketing of the piece was on the cards. He was out of his head a good deal during his illness, and I s'pose that's how he got the notion he was the author.

As it was, I gave him five hundred dollars as a present, to celebrate the acceptance of the piece. And I gave him that at once, too--half the amount of the money paid on acceptance, it was; for anything I knew then, it might have been half of all I should ever get for the play, because n.o.body could predict how it would pan out. Well, I've never borne him an ounce of malice for his delusion. Maybe at this very moment he still honestly thinks himself the author of that play; but I've always stood by him, and always will. Many's the piece of work I've put in his hands; and I will say he's never failed me on his side, either. Old Reliable Dav, that's what I call him; Old Reliable Dav, and I'd trust him with every dollar I've got in the world." He finished with a clap of good fellowship on Davenport's shoulder, and then fell upon the remainder of his chop and potato with a concentration of interest that put an end to the dispute.

As for Davenport, he had continued eating in silence, with an expressionless face, as if the matter were one that concerned a stranger.

Larcher, observing him, saw that he had indeed put that matter behind him, as one to which there was nothing but weariness to be gained in returning. The rest of the meal pa.s.sed without event. Mr. Bagley made short work of his food, and left the two others with their coffee, departing in as self-satisfied a mood as he had arrived in, and without any trace of the little pa.s.sage of words with Larcher.

A breath of relief escaped Davenport, and he said, with a faint smile:

"There was a time when I had my say about the play. We've had scenes, I can tell you. But Bagley is a man who can brazen out any a.s.sertion; he's a man impossible to outface. Even when he and I are alone together, he plays the same part; won't admit that I wrote the piece; and pretends to think I suffer under a delusion. I _was_ ill at the time he disposed of my play; but I had written it long before the time of my illness."

"How did he manage to pa.s.s it off as his?"

"We were friends then, as he says, or at least comrades. We met through being inmates of the same lodging-house. I rather took to him at first.

I thought he was a breezy, cordial fellow; mistook his loudness for frankness, and found something droll and pleasing in his nasal drawl.

That bra.s.s-horn voice!--ye G.o.ds, how I grew to shudder at it afterward!

But I liked his company over a gla.s.s of beer; he was convivial, and told amusing stories of the people in the country town he came from, and of his struggles in trying to get a start in business. I was struggling as hard in my different way--a very different way, for he was an utter savage as far as art and letters were concerned. But we exchanged accounts of our daily efforts and disappointments, and knew all about each other's affairs,--at least he knew all about mine. And one of mine was the play which I wrote during the first months of our acquaintance.

I read it to him, and he seemed impressed by it, or as much of it as he could understand. I had some idea of sending it to an actor who was then in need of a new piece, through the failure of one he had just produced.

My play seemed rather suitable to him, and I told Bagley I thought of submitting it as soon as I could get it typewritten. But before I could do that, I was on my back with pneumonia, utterly helpless, and not thinking of anything in the world except how to draw my breath.

"The first thing I did begin to worry about, when I was on the way to recovery, was my debts, and particularly my debt to the landlady. She was a good woman, and wouldn't let me be moved to a hospital, but took care of me herself through all my illness. She furnished my food during that time, and paid for my medicines; and, furthermore, I owed her for several weeks' previous rent. So I bemoaned my indebtedness, and the hopelessness of ever getting out of it, a thousand times, day and night, till it became an old song in the ears of Bagley. One day he came in with his face full of news, and told me he had got some money from the sale of a farm, in which he had inherited a ninth interest. He said he intended to risk his portion in the theatrical business--he had had some experience as an advance agent--and offered to buy my play outright for five hundred dollars.

"Well, it was like an oar held out to a drowning man. I had never before had as much money at the same time. It was enough to pay all my debts, and keep me on my feet for awhile to come. Of course I knew that if my play were a fair success, the author's percentage would be many times five hundred dollars. But it might never be accepted,--no play of mine had been, and I had hawked two or three around among the managers,--and in that case I should get nothing at all. As for Bagley, his risk in producing a play by an unknown man was great. His chances of loss seemed to me about nine in ten. I took it that his offer was out of friendship.

I grasped at the immediate certainty, and the play became the property of Bagley.

"I consoled myself with the reflection that, if the play made a real success, I should gain some prestige as an author, and find an easier hearing for future work. I was reading a newspaper one morning when the name of my play caught my eye. You can imagine how eagerly I started to read the item about it, and what my feelings were when I saw that it was immediately to be produced by the very actor to whom I had talked of sending it, and that the author was George A. Bagley. I thought there must be some mistake, and fell upon Bagley for an explanation as soon as he came home. He laughed, as men of his kind do when they think they have played some clever business trick; said he had decided to rent the play to the actor instead of taking it on the road himself; and declared that as it was his sole property, he could represent it as the work of anybody he chose. I raised a great stew about the matter; wrote to the newspapers, and rushed to see the actor. He may have thought I was a lunatic from my excitement; however, he showed me the ma.n.u.script Bagley had given him. It was typewritten, but the address of the typewriter copyist was on the cover. I hastened to the lady, and inquired about the ma.n.u.script from which she had made the copy. I showed her some of my penmanship, but she a.s.sured me the ma.n.u.script was in another hand. I ran home, and demanded the original ma.n.u.script from Bagley. 'Oh, certainly,'

he said, and fished out a ma.n.u.script in his own writing. He had copied even my interlineations and erasures, to give his ma.n.u.script the look of an original draft. This was the copy from which the typewriter had worked. My own handwritten copy he had destroyed. I have sometimes thought that when the idea first occurred to him of submitting my play to the actor, he had meant to deal fairly with me, and to profit only by an agent's commission. But he may have inquired about the earnings of plays, and learned how much money a successful one brings; and the discovery may have tempted him to the fraud. Or his design may have been complete from the first. It is easy to understand his desire to become the sole owner of the play. Why he wanted to figure as the author is not so clear. It may have been mere vanity; it may have been--more probably was--a desire to keep to himself even the author's prestige, to serve him in future transactions of the same sort. In any case, he had created evidence of his authorship, and destroyed all existing proof of mine. He had made good terms,--a percentage on a sliding scale; one thousand dollars down on account. It was out of that thousand that he paid me the five hundred.

The play was a great money-winner; Bagley's earnings from it were more than twenty thousand dollars in two seasons. That is the sum I should have had if I had submitted the play to the same actor, as I had intended to do. I made a stir in the newspapers for awhile; told my tale to managers and actors and reporters; started to take it to the courts, but had to give up for lack of funds; in short, got myself the name, as I told you today, of a man with a grievance. People smiled tolerantly at my story; it got to be one of the jokes of the Rialto. Bagley soon hit on the policy of claiming the authorship to my face, and pretending to treat my a.s.sertion charitably, as the result of a delusion conceived in illness. You heard him tonight. But it no longer disturbs me."

"Has he ever written any plays of his own? Or had any more produced over his name?" asked Larcher.

"No. He put the greater part of his profits into theatrical management.

He multiplied his investment. Then he 'branched out;' tried Wall Street and the race-tracks; went into real estate. He speculates now in many things. I don't know how rich he is. He isn't openly in theatrical management any more, but he still has large interests there; he is what they call an 'angel.'"

"He spoke of being your good angel."

"He has been the reverse, perhaps. It's true, many a time when I've been at the last pinch, he has come to my rescue, employing me in some affair incidental to his manifold operations. Unless you have been hungry, and without a market for your work; unless you have walked the streets penniless, and been generally 'despised and rejected of men,' you, perhaps, can't understand how I could accept anything at his hands. But I could, and sometimes eagerly. As soon as possible after our break, he a.s.sumed the benevolent att.i.tude toward me. I resisted it with proper scorn for a time. But hard lines came; 'my poverty but not my will'

consented. In course of time, there ceased to be anything strange in the situation. I got used to his service, and his pay, yet without ever compounding for the trick he played me. He trusts me thoroughly--he knows men. This a.s.sociation with him, though it has saved me from desperate straits, is loathsome to me, of course. It has contributed as much as anything to my self-hate. If I had resolutely declined it, I might have found other resources at the last extremity. My life might have taken a different course. That is why I say he has been, perhaps, the reverse of a good angel to me."

"But you must have written other plays," pursued Larcher.

"Yes; and have even had three of them produced. Two had moderate success; but one of those I sold on low terms, in my eagerness to have it accepted and establish a name. On the other, I couldn't collect my royalties. The third was a failure. But none of these, or of any I have written, was up to the level of the play that Bagley dealt with. I admit that. It was my one work of first-cla.s.s merit. I think my poor powers were affected by my experience with that play; but certainly for some reason I

'... never could recapture The first fine careless rapture.'

I should have been a different man if I had received the honor and the profits of that first accepted play of mine."

"I should think that, as Bagley is so rich, he would quietly hand you over twenty thousand dollars, at least, for the sake of his conscience."

"Men of Bagley's sort have no conscience where money is concerned. I used to wonder just what share of his fortune was rightly mine, if one knew how to estimate. It was my twenty thousand dollars he invested; what percentage of the gains would belong to me, giving him his full due for labor and skill? And then the credit of the authorship,--which he flatly robbed me of,--what would be its value? But that is all matter for mere speculation. As to the twenty thousand alone, there can be no doubt."

"And yet he said tonight he would trust you with every dollar he had in the world."

"Yes, he would." Davenport smiled. "He knows that _I_ know the difference between a moral right and a legal right. He knows the difficulties in the way of any attempt at self-rest.i.tution on my part,--and the unpleasant consequences. Oh, yes, he would trust me with large sums; has done so, in fact. I have handled plenty of his cash. He is what they call a 'ready-money man;' does a good deal of business with bank-notes of high denomination,--it enables him to seize opportunities and make swift transactions. He should interest you, if you have an eye for character."

Upon which remark, Davenport raised his cup, as if to finish the coffee and the subject at the same time. Larcher sat silently wondering what other dramas were comprised in the history of his singular companion, besides that wherein Bagley was concerned, and that in which the fickle woman had borne a part. He found himself interested, on his own account, in this haggard-eyed, world-wearied, yet not unattractive man, as well as for Miss Hill. When Davenport spoke again, it was in regard to the artistic business which now formed a tie between himself and Larcher.

This business was in due time performed. It entailed as much a.s.sociation with Davenport as Larcher could wish for his purpose. He learnt little more of the man than he had learned on the first day of their acquaintance, but that in itself was considerable. Of it he wrote a full report to Miss Hill; and in the next few weeks he added some trifling discoveries. In October that young woman and her aunt returned to town, and to possession of a flat immediately south of Central Park. Often as Larcher called there, he could not draw from Edna the cause of her interest in Davenport. But his own interest sufficed to keep him the regular a.s.sociate of that gentleman; he planned further magazine work for himself to write and Davenport to ill.u.s.trate, and their collaboration took them together to various parts of the city.

CHAPTER IV.

AN UNPROFITABLE CHILD