Torchy, Private Sec. Part 20

Who was she? Where had she come from?

"A haunting face, Fannie's was; at least, for me. It became almost an obsession. I could see it as I sat down to my work. And the first thing I knew I was writing Fannie into my play. There was a maid's part in it,--the conventional, table-dusting, note-carrying, tea-serving maid, with not half a dozen words to speak. But before I knew it this insignificant part had become so elaborated, I had sketched in Fannie's personality so vividly, that the whole action and theme of the piece were revolving about her--hinged on her. I couldn't seem to stop, either. I wrote on and on and--well, by Jove! it ended in my turning out something entirely different from that which I had begun. The original skeleton is still there, the characters are the same; but the values have exchanged places. This is a Fannie play through and through. And it's good, the biggest thing I've done; but----" Once more Oakley shrugs his shoulders and ends with a deep sigh.

"Rubbis.h.!.+" says Mr. Robert. "You and your artistic temperament! What's the real trouble, anyway?"

"As I've tried to make clear to your limited and wholly commercialized intelligence," comes back Mr. Mills, "I have created a character which is too deep and too subtle for any available American actress to handle.

If I could only find the original now, with her tractable genius for doing exactly what she was told----"

"Why not send out for her, then?" asks Mr. Robert.

"As though I hadn't!" says Oakley. "Two weeks ago I located the hotel manager in Florida and wired him a full description of the girl. All I got from him was that he'd heard she was somewhere in New York."

"How simple!" says Mr. Robert. "Here is my young friend Torchy, with wits even more brilliant than his hair. Ask him to find Fannie for you."

"A girl whose name I don't even know!" protests Oakley. "How in blazes could anyone trace a----"

"I'll bet you the dinners," cuts in Mr. Robert, "that Torchy can do it."

"Taken," says Mr. Mills, and turns to me brisk. "Now, young man, what further details would you like?"

"Don't happen to have a lock of her hair with you?" says I, grinnin'.

"Alas, no!" says he. "She favored me with no such mark of her esteem."

"Was it kind of ginger-colored," says I, "and done in a braid round her head?"

"Why--er--I believe it was," says he.

"And didn't she have sort of droopy shoulders," I goes on, "and a trick of starin' vague, with her mouth part way open?"

"Yes, yes!" says he eager. "But--but whom are you describing?"

"Ruby Everschott," says I. "Come down to the Corrugated and take a look."

Course it seemed like a 100 to 1 chance, but when I got the Wisconsin part of his yarn, and tacked it onto the rest, it didn't seem likely one State could produce two such specimens. Inside of fifteen minutes the three of us was strollin' casual through the front offices.

"Glance down the line of lady typists," I whispers to Oakley.

"By George!" says he gaspy. "The one at the far end?"

"You win," says I.

"And you also, my young wizard," says Oakley.

"I'll have her sent into my private office," suggests Mr. Robert.

And once more I was lookin' for some startled motions from Ruby when she discovers Mr. Mills. But in she comes, as woodeny and stiff as ever, goes to her little table, and spreads out her notebook, without glancin'

at any of us.

"Pardon me, Miss Everschott," says Mr. Robert, "but--er--my friend Mills here fancies that he--er--ah--oh, hang it all! you say it, Oakley."

At which Mr. Mills steps up smilin'. I should judge he was a fairly smooth, high-polished gent as a rule; but after Ruby has turned that stupid, stary look on him, without battin' an eyelash or liftin' an eyebrow, the smile fades out. She don't say a word or make a move: just continues to stare. As for Oakley, he s.h.i.+fts uneasy on his feet and flushes up under the eyes.

"Well?" says he. "I trust you remember me?"

Ruby shakes her head slow. "No, Sir," says she.

"Eh?" says Oakley. "Weren't you a waitress at the Lakeside Hotel last summer?"

"Certainly, Sir," says Ruby.

"And didn't you bring me my meals three times a day for four mortal weeks?" he insists.

"Did I?" says Ruby, starin' stupider than ever.

"Great Scott, young woman!" breaks out Oakley. "Didn't you look at me long enough and steadily enough to remember? Don't you recall I was disagreeable enough to ask you not to watch me eat?"

"Oh!" says Ruby, a flicker of almost human intelligence in her big eyes.

"The one who wanted hot plates!"

"At last," says Oakley, "I am properly identified. Yes, I am the hot-plate person."

"You had tea for breakfast too, didn't you?" asks Ruby.

"Always," says he. "An eccentricity of mine."

"And you put salt on your muskmelon, and wanted your eggs opened, and didn't like tomato soup," adds Ruby, like she was repeatin' a lesson.

"Guilty on all three counts," says Mr. Mills.

"I tried to remember," says Ruby, sort of meek.

"Tried!" gasps Oakley. "Why, you made an art of it. You never so much as---- But tell me, was it those foolish little whims of mine you were thinking so hard about while you stood there gazing so intently at me?"

Ruby nods; a shy, bashful little nod.

Mr. Mills makes a low bow. "A thousand pardons, my dear young lady!"

says he. "I stand convicted of utter selfishness. But perhaps I can atone."

And with that he proceeds to put his proposition up to her. He tells her about the play, the trouble he's had tryin' to fit one special part, and how he's sure she could do it to a T. He asks her to give it a try.

"Go on the stage!" says Ruby, her big eyes starin' at him like he'd asked her to jump off the Metropolitan Tower. "No, I don't think I could. I'm going to be a foreign missionary, you know."

"A--a what?" gasps Oakley. "Missionary! But see here--that can wait. And in one season on the stage you could make----"

Well, I must say Oakley argued it well and put it strong; but he'd have produced just as good results if he'd been out in the square askin' the bronze statue of Lafayette to hand him down a match. Ruby drops back into her vague gazin' act and shakes her head. So at last he ends by askin' her to think it over for a day, and Ruby goes back to her desk.

"How absurd!" growls Oakley. "But I simply must have her. Why, we would pay her three hundred dollars a week."