The Old Adam Part 20

"Of course I was all right!" said Edward Henry, almost with brutality.

"Please take that thing away as quickly as you can. We have business to attend to."

"Yes, sir," agreed the photographer, no longer victorious.

Edward Henry rang the bell, and two gentlemen in waiting arrived.

"Clear this table immediately!"

The tone of the command startled everybody except the gentlemen in waiting and Mr. Seven Sachs. Rose Euclid gave vent to her nervous giggle. The poet and Mr. Marrier tried to appear detached and dignified, and succeeded in appearing guiltily confused--for which they contemned themselves. Despite their volition, the glances of all three of them too clearly signified: "This capitalist must be humoured. He has an unlimited supply of actual cash, and therefore he has the right to be peculiar. Moreover, we know that he is a card...." And, curiously, Edward Henry himself was deriving great force of character from the simple reflection that he had indeed a lot of money, real available money, his to do utterly as he liked with it, hidden in a secret place in that very room. "I'll show 'em what's what!" he privately mused. "Celebrities or not, I'll show 'em! If they think they can come it over me--!"

It was, I regret to say, the state of mind of a bully. Such is the noxious influence of excessive coin!

He reproached the greatest actress and the greatest dramatic poet for deceiving him, and quite ignored the nevertheless fairly obvious fact that he had first deceived them.

"Now then," he began, with something of the pomposity of a chairman at a directors' meeting, as soon as the table had been cleared and the room emptied of gentlemen in waiting and photographer and photographic apparatus, "let us see exactly where we stand."

He glanced specially at Rose Euclid, who with an air of deep business ac.u.men returned the glance.

"Yes," she eagerly replied, as one seeking after righteousness, "_do_ let's see."

"The option must be taken up to-morrow. Good! That's clear. It came rather casual-like, but it's now clear. 4,500 has to be paid down to buy the existing building on the land and so on.... Eh?"

"Yes. Of course Mr. Bryany told you all that, didn't he?" said Rose brightly.

"Mr. Bryany did tell me," Edward Henry admitted sternly. "But if Mr.

Bryany can make a mistake in the day of the week he might make a mistake in a few naughts at the end of a sum of money."

Suddenly Mr. Seven Sachs startled them all by emerging from his silence with the words:

"The figure is O.K."

Instinctively Edward Henry waited for more; but no more came. Mr. Seven Sachs was one of those rare and disconcerting persons who do not keep on talking after they have finished. He resumed his tranquillity, he re-entered into his silence, with no symptom of self-consciousness, entirely cheerful and at ease. And Edward Henry was aware of his observant and steady gaze. Edward Henry said to himself: "This man is expecting me to behave in a remarkable way. Bryany has been telling him all about me, and he is waiting to see if I really am as good as my reputation. I have just got to be as good as my reputation!" He looked up at the electric chandelier, almost with regret that it was not gas.

One cannot light one's cigarette by twisting a hundred-pound bank-note and sticking it into an electric chandelier. Moreover, there were some thousands of matches on the table. Still further, he had done the cigarette-lighting trick once for all. A first-cla.s.s card must not repeat himself.

"This money," Edward Henry proceeded, "has to be paid to Slossons, Lord Woldo's solicitors, to-morrow, Wednesday, rain or shine?" He finished the phrase on a note of interrogation, and as n.o.body offered any reply, he rapped on the table, and repeated, half menacingly: "Rain or shine!"

"Yes," said Rose Euclid, leaning timidly forward, and taking a cigarette from a gold case that lay on the table. All her movements indicated an earnest desire to be thoroughly businesslike.

"So that, Miss Euclid," Edward Henry continued impressively but with a wilful touch of incredulity, "you are in a position to pay your share of this money to-morrow?"

"Certainly!" said Miss Euclid. And it was as if she had said, aggrieved: "Can you doubt my honour?"

"To-morrow morning?"

"Ye-es."

"That is to say, to-morrow morning you will have 2,250 in actual cash--coin, notes--actually in your possession?"

Miss Euclid's disengaged hand was feeling out behind her again for some surface upon which to express its emotion and hers.

"Well--" she stopped, flushing.

("These people are astounding," Edward Henry reflected, like a G.o.d.

"She's not got the money. I knew it!")

"It's like this, Mr. Machin," Marrier began.

"Excuse me, Mr. Marrier," Edward Henry turned on him, determined if he could to eliminate the optimism from that beaming face. "Any friend of Miss Euclid's is welcome here, but you've already talked about this theatre as 'ours,' and I just want to know where you come in."

"Where I come in?" Marrier smiled, absolutely unperturbed. "Miss Euclid has appointed me general manajah."

"At what salary, if it isn't a rude question?"

"Oh! We haven't settled details yet. You see the theatre isn't built yet."

"True!" said Edward Henry. "I was forgetting! I was thinking for the moment that the theatre was all ready and going to be opened to-morrow night with 'The Orient Pearl.' Have you had much experience of managing theatres, Mr. Marrier? I suppose you have."

"Eho, yes!" exclaimed Mr. Marrier. "I began life as a lawyah's clerk, but--"

"So did I," Edward Henry interjected.

"How interesting!" Rose Euclid murmured with fervency, after puffing forth a long shaft of smoke.

"However, I threw it up," Marrier went on.

"I didn't," said Edward Henry. "I got thrown out!"

Strange that in that moment he was positively proud of having been dismissed from his first situation! Strange that all the company, too, thought the better of him for having been dismissed! Strange that Marrier regretted that he also had not been dismissed! But so it was.

The possession of much ready money emits a peculiar effluence in both directions--back to the past, forward into the future.

"I threw it up," said Marrier, "because the stage had an irresistible attraction for me. I'd been stage-manajah for an amateur company, you knaoo. I found a shop as stage-manajah of a company touring 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' I stuck to that for six years, and then I threw that up too. Then I've managed one of Miss Euclid's provincial tours. And since I met our friend Trent, I've had the chance to show what my ideas about play-producing really are. I fancy my production of Trent's one-act play won't be forgotten in a hurry.... You know--'The Nymph?' You read about it, didn't you?"

"I did not," said Edward Henry. "How long did it run?"

"Oh! it didn't run. It wasn't put on for a run. It was part of one of the Sunday-night shows of the Play-Producing Society, at the Court Theatre. Most intellectual people in London, you know. No such audience anywhere else in the wahld!" His rather chubby face glistened and shimmered with enthusiasm. "You bet!" he added. "But that was only by the way. My real game is management--general management. And I think I may say I know what it is."

"Evidently!" Edward Henry concurred. "But shall you have to give up any other engagement in order to take charge of the Muses' Theatre? Because if so--"

Mr. Marrier replied:

"No."

Edward Henry observed:

"Oh!"

"But," said Marrier rea.s.suringly, "if necessary I would throw up any engagement--you understand me, any--in favour of the Intellectual Theatah as I prefer to call it. You see, as I own part of the option--"

By these last words Edward Henry was confounded, even to muteness.