The Competitive Nephew Part 49

Miss Haig waited to hear no more, however. She bowed her head in her hands and burst into sobs; and she might well have saved herself the trouble, for to J. Montgomery Fieldstone the tears of an actress on or off were only "bus. of weeping." He lit a fresh cigar, and it might have been supposed that he blew the smoke in Miss Haig's direction as a subst.i.tute for smelling salts or aromatic spirits of ammonia. As a matter of fact he just happened to be facing that way.

"Now don't do that, kid," he said, "because you know as well as I do that if there was anything I could do for the daughter of Morris Katzberger I'd do it. Him and me worked as cutters together in the old days when I didn't know no more about the show business than Morris does to-day; but I jumped you right from the chorus into the part of Sonia in 'Rudolph,' and you got to rest easy for a while, kid."

"I g-got notices above the star," Miss Haig sobbed; "and you told popper the night after we opened in Atlantic City that you were planning to give me a b-better part next season."

"Ain't your father got diabetes?" Fieldstone demanded. "What else would I tell him?"

"But you said to Sidney Rossmore that if I could dance as well as I sang I'd be worth two hundred and fifty a week to you."

"I said a hundred and fifty," Fieldstone corrected; "and, anyhow, kid, you ain't had no experience dancing."

"Ain't I?" Miss Haig said. She flung down her pocketbook and handkerchief, and jumped from her seat. "Well, just you watch this!"

For more than ten minutes she postured, leaped, and pranced by turns, while Fieldstone puffed great clouds of smoke to obscure his admiration.

[Ill.u.s.tration: She postured, leaped, and pranced by turns]

"How's that?" she panted at last, sinking into a chair.

"Where did you get it?" Fieldstone asked.

"I got it for money--that's where I got it," Miss Haig replied; "and I got to get money for it--if not by you, by some other concern."

Fieldstone shrugged his shoulders with apparent indifference.

"You know your own book, kid," he said; "but, you can take it from me, you'll be making the mistake of your life if you quit me."

"Maybe I will and maybe I won't!" Miss Haig said as she gathered up her handkerchief and pocketbook. "I ain't going to do nothing in a hurry; but if you want to give me my two weeks' notice now go ahead and do it!"

"Think it over, kid," Fieldstone said calmly as Miss Haig started for the door. "Anything can happen in this business. Raymond might drop dead or something."

Miss Haig slammed the door behind her, but in the moment of doing it Fieldstone caught the unspoken wish in her flas.h.i.+ng eyes.

"So do I!" he said half aloud.

Lyman J. Bienenflug, of the firm of Bienenflug & Krimp, Rooms 6000 to 6020 Algonquin Theatre Building, was a theatrical lawyer in the broadest sense of the term; and it was entirely unnecessary for Mrs.

Ray Fieldstone to preface every new sentence with "Listen, Mr.

Bienenflug!" because Mr. Bienenflug was listening as a theatrical lawyer ought to listen, with legs crossed and biting on the end of a penholder, while his heavy brows were knotted in a frown of deep consideration, borrowed from Sir J. Forbes Robertson in "Hamlet," Act III, Scene 1.

"Listen, Mr. Bienenflug! I considered why should I stand for it any longer?" Mrs. Fieldstone went on. "He usen't anyhow to come home till two--three o'clock. Now he don't come home at all sometimes. Am I right or wrong?"

"Quite right," Mr. Bienenflug said. "You have ample grounds for a limited divorce."

While retaining or, rather, as a dramatic producer would say, registering the posture of listening, Mr. Bienenflug mentally reviewed all J. Montgomery Fieldstone's successes of the past year, which included the "Head of the Family," a drama, and Miss Goldie Raymond in the Viennese knockout of two continents, "Rudolph, Where Have You Been." He therefore estimated the alimony at two hundred dollars a week and a two-thousand dollar counsel fee; and he was proceeding logically though subconsciously to a contrasting of the respective motor-car refinement displayed by a ninety-horse-power J.C.B. and the new 1914 model Samsoun--both six cylinders--when Mrs. Fieldstone spoke again.

"Listen, Mr. Bienenflug!" she protested. "I don't want no divorce. I should get a divorce at my time of life, with four children already!

What for?"

"Not an absolute divorce," Mr. Bienenflug explained; "just a separation."

"A separation!" Mrs. Fieldstone exclaimed in a manner so agitated that she forgot to say, "Listen, Mr. Bienenflug!" "If I would want a separation I don't need to come to a lawyer, Mr. Bienenflug. Any married woman if she is crazy in the head could go home to her folks to live, Mr. Bienenflug, without paying money to a lawyer he should advise her to do so, Mr. Bienenflug; which I got six married sisters, Mr.

Bienenflug--and before I would go and live with any of them, Mr.

Bienenflug, my husband could make me every day fresh a blue eye--and still I wouldn't leave him. No, Mr. Bienenflug, I ain't asking you you should get me a separation. What I want is you should get him to come home and stay home."

"But a lawyer can't do that, Mrs. Fieldstone."

"I thought a lawyer could do anything," Mrs. Fieldstone said, "if he was paid for it, Mr. Bienenflug, which I got laying in savings bank over six hundred dollars; and----"

Mr. Bienenflug desired to hear no more. He uncrossed his legs and dropped the penholder abruptly. At the same time he struck a handbell on his desk to summon an office boy, who up to the opening night of the "Head of the Family," six months before, had responded to an ordinary electric pushb.u.t.ton. But anyone who has ever seen the "Head of the Family"--and, in fact, any one who knows anything about dramatic values--will appreciate how much more effective from a theatrical standpoint the handbell is than the pushb.u.t.ton. There is something about the imperative Bing! of the handbell that holds an audience. It is, in short, drama--though drama has its disadvantages in real life; for Mr. Bienenflug, after striking the handbell six times without response, was obliged to go to the door and shout "Ralph!" in a wholly untheatrical voice.

"What's the matter with you?" he said when the office boy appeared.

"Can't you hear when you're rung for?"

Ralph murmured that he thought it was a--now--Polyclinic ambulance out in the street.

"Get me a stenographer," Mr. Bienenflug said.

In the use of the indefinite article before stenographer he was once again the theatrical lawyer, because Bienenflug & Krimp kept but one stenographer, and at that particular moment she was in earnest conversation with a young lady whose face bore traces of recent tears.

It was this face and not a Polyclinic ambulance that had delayed Ralph Zinsheimer's response to his employer's bell; and after he had retired from Mr. Bienenflug's room he straightway forgot his message in listening to a very moving narrative indeed.

"And after I left his office who should I run into but Sidney Rossmore," said the young lady with the tear-stained face, whom you will now discover to be Miss Vivian Haig; "and he says that he just saw Raymond and she's going to sign up with Fieldstone for the new piece to-night yet."

She began to weep anew and Ralph could have wept with her, or done anything else to comfort her, such as taking her in his arms and allowing her head to rest on his shoulder--and but for the presence of the stenographer he would have tried it, too.

"Well," Miss Schwartz, the stenographer, said, "he'll get his come-uppings all right! His wife is in with Mr. Bienenflug now, and I guess she's going in for a little alimony."

Miss Haig dried her eyes and sat up straight.

"What for?" she said.

"You should ask what for!" Miss Schwartz commented. "I guess you know what theatrical managers are."

"Not Fieldstone ain't!" Miss Haig declared with conviction. "I'll say anything else about him, from petty larceny up; but otherwise he's a perfect gentleman."

At this juncture Mr. Bienenflug's door burst open.

"Ralph!" he roared.

"Oh, Mr. Bienenflug," Miss Haig said, "I want to see you for a minute."

She smiled on him with the same smile she had employed nightly in the second act of "Rudolph" and Mr. Bienenflug immediately regained his composure.

"Come into Mr. Krimp's room," he said.

And he closed the door of Room 6000, which was his own room, and ushered Miss Haig through Room 6010, which was the outer office, occupied by the stenographer and the office boy, into Mr. Krimp's room, or Room 6020; for it was by the simple expedient of numbering rooms in tens and units that the owner of the Algonquin Theatre Building had provided his tenants with such commodious suites of offices--on their letterheads at least.