A hated voice spoke at his elbow.
“I’ll make you a better offer than that,” said Wally. “Give me your share of the show for three dollars in cash and I’ll throw in a pair of sock-suspenders and an Ingersoll. Is it a go?”
Mr Goble regarded him balefully.
“Who told you to butt in?” he enquired sourly.
“Conscience!” replied Wally. “Old Henry W. Conscience! I refuse to stand by and see the slaughter of the innocents. Why don’t you wait till he’s dead before you skin him!” He turned to Mr Pilkington. “Don’t you be a fool!” he said earnestly. “Can’t you see the thing is the biggest hit in years? Do you think Jesse James here would be offering you a cent for your share if he didn’t know there was a fortune in it? Do you imagine — ?”
“It is immaterial to me,” interrupted Otis Pilkington loftily, “what Mr Goble offers. I have already sold my interest!”
“What!” cried Mr Goble.
“When?” cried Wally.
“I sold it half way through the road-tour,” said Mr Pilkington, “to a lawyer, acting on behalf of a client whose name I did not learn.”
In the silence which followed this revelation, another voice spoke.
“I should like to speak to you for a moment, Mr Goble, if I may.” It was Jill, who had joined the group unperceived.
Mr Goble glowered at Jill, who met his gaze composedly.
“I’m busy!” snapped Mr Goble. “See me tomorrow!”
“I would prefer to see you now.”
“You would prefer!” Mr Goble waved his hands despairingly, as if calling on heaven to witness the persecution of a good man.
Jill exhibited a piece of paper stamped with the letter-heading of the management.
“It’s about this,” she said. “I found it in the box as I was going out.”
“What’s that?”
“It seems to be a fortnight’s notice.”
“And that,” said Mr Goble, “is what it is!“
Wally uttered an exclamation.
“Do you mean to say — ?”
“Yes, I do!” said the manager, turning on him. He felt that he had out-maneuvred Wally. “I agreed to let her open in New York, and she’s done it, hasn’t she? Now she can get out. I don’t want her. I wouldn’t have her if you paid me. She’s a nuisance in the company, always making trouble, and she can go.”
“But I would prefer not to go,” said Jill.
“You would prefer!” The phrase infuriated Mr Goble. “And what has what you would prefer got to do with it?”
“Well, you see,” said Jill, “I forgot to tell you before, but I own the piece!”
3.
Mr Goble’s jaw fell. He had been waving his hands in another spacious gesture, and he remained frozen with out-stretched arms, like a semaphore. This evening had been a series of shocks for him, but this was the worst shock of all.
“You—what!” he stammered.
“I own the piece,” repeated Jill. “Surely that gives me authority to say what I want done and what I don’t want done.”
There was a silence. Mr Goble, who was having difficulty with his vocal chords, swallowed once or twice. Wally and Mr Pilkington stared dumbly. At the back of the stage, a belated scene-shifter, homeward bound, was whistling as much as he could remember of the refrain of a popular song.
“What do you mean you own the piece?” Mr Goble at length gurgled.
“I bought it.”
“You bought it!”
“I bought Mr Pilkington’s share through a lawyer for ten thousand dollars.”
“Ten thousand dollars! Where did you get ten thousand dollars?” Light broke upon Mr Goble. The thing became clear to him. “Damn it!” he cried. “I might have known you had some man behind you! You’d never have been so darned fresh if you hadn’t had some John in the background, paying the bills! Well, of all the —”
He broke off abruptly, not because he had said all that he wished to say, for he had only touched the fringe of his subject, but because at this point Wally’s elbow smote him in the parts about the third button of his waistcoat and jarred all the breath out of him.
“Be quiet!” said Wally dangerously. He turned to Jill. “Jill, you don’t mind telling me how you got ten thousand dollars, do you?”