"Oh Tomothy Tom!" she groaned one showery April day, "those are all starchy, sweety, fatty things! Don't order another food! Or I'll want to eat them too, I shouldn't have another ounce, I shouldn't!"

"Not if you're going to take that jump over the fence in the second act," said Graemer who was lunching with them. He was her manager, Edwina Ely was a much better known person than her fat husband. And a good bit older, too, if you must know it, though of course she did not look so with her almost too blonde hair coiffed elaborately under the wicked wings of her impertinent toque and her pleasure-loving chin nestled in her white furs.

"I hate for us to eat here, the food's so good," she murmured with the same plaintive note that makes the audience weep at the end of the third act of "The Juggler."

"But I had a very special reason for wanting to come here," Graemer explained. He had to be a bit wary of the starchy things too, though he still had a figure in spite of his weight. He was complacently vain of his prematurely gray hair, his fresh youthful skin and his dark eyes. He reminded one somehow of a husky widow, he was so feminine in spite of his size. He looked leisurely enough for a busy man. You wondered how he had time to manage so many player folk, write so many plays and yet dawdle over his luncheon as he did. He leaned forward to ask Edwina's husband something. The fat man laughed uneasily.

"Well, he does usually lunch here," he admitted, "and I did use to know him rather well, but I'm not exactly the person to introduce you if you want anything from him--he's not overly fond of me--"

"I understood from Edwina that you were boyhood friends."

The fat man smiled and deliberately and delicately chucked his wife under her rosy little chin.

"Tattle-tale!" he taunted her.

"You were!" she persisted, "you know you were!"

"If you ever were," said Graemer earnestly, "Permit me to suggest that you renew your youth. What I want him for is partly on Edwina's account. "The Juggler" isn't going as well as it ought to--I haven't anything new in sight for her and I'd like to keep this going until I have. What we need is a press agent like Dudley Hamilt."

"He's not a press agent--" gasped the fat man.

"He's the prince of press agents," answered Graemer easily, "he gets more publicity, favorable publicity, for anything he touches than any one I've ever watched work. Look what he did for the coal interests-- and look at that work of his in last fall's campaign--"

"But that was politics--" protested the fat man. "He wouldn't call that being a press agent and I doubt if you could interest him in anything theatrical."

"I can if I can get at him. Some one's bound to if I don't. It isn't only for 'The Juggler' that I want him, it's for all my things--what I'm going to offer him is something big--about the biggest end of the game--but I don't want to seem to go to him so I thought that if there was some casual way--if you should ask him to lunch with us--"

"He probably wouldn't--of course he might--" the baritone ruminated, "Our fuss was a long time ago." He settled himself comfortably, he dearly loved to gossip. "He's a queer chap, Dud is. Always was. We used to sing in the same boy choir when we were kids. Little church over in Brooklyn. He was an angel terror, regulation boy sopran'. Into everything. Nearly drove the old choir master to drink. Was always being expelled. Our families both belonged to the church so Brownly always took us back after a row blew over. And carried us along while our voices were changing. When I first began doing baritone Dudley was singing all the tenor solos, had a peach of a voice, but he never did anything with it afterwards."

"After what?" asked Edwina irritably.

Her husband chuckled.

"Wait, I'm telling you. It's a long story and a funny one even if the joke is on me. You see Dud had a sweetheart on the other side of the rectory wall. He was everlastingly edging toward it, tossing things around to attract her attention and showing off generally. Funny little girl. I didn't think she looked like much when we used to see her first but gee, she certainly did come along when she got older!

Grew into a young peach! Dud just hung around silently worshipping, pretending all the time he didn't know there was anybody picking posies in the garden. I didn't know that she'd so much as noticed him until one night in the spring when we were rehearsing for a special oratorio. Some night!" The fat man sighed reminiscently. "All to the Romeo and Juliet! Choir forming on the outside, old Brownly having a tempermental fit as usual and Dud and I stationed over by the wall ready to split our epiglottises; on our marks, set all ready to go when Dud tosses up his cap, just as he used to when he was a little shaver and Bing! Cap lands on top of the wall. So up clambers Dud--"

the raconteur smiled, "and I hope I may never see anything so pretty pulled off as what happened next! That girl's head over the top of the gate! Big dreamy eyes shining in the moonlight, hair parted, big comb tucked in, lace dewdaddles around her shoulders! And Dud had been languishing about her since he was twelve! First and only love! In about one minute three seconds he had disappeared over said gate. It was no place for a fat boy. Besides old Brownly was fairly roaring from the chancel door, so I trotted along like a good child and left Dud to his philandering. Brownly nearly had apoplexy getting along without his pet tenor. After rehearsal I made a try for Dud, chirruped under that blooming wall for about half an hour until an old gentleman came out and requested me--er--more than requested me to go away.

"Old Major Trenton. Ever hear of him? Civil War hero. The fellow who raised all that rumpus about chaps taking pensions if they'd wits enough to earn their salt. He wouldn't touch one. Seems he'd gone to war after having a row with his wife, she'd lit out for Paris just before war was declared. Died over there leaving an infant daughter that he had his own troubles getting away from some of her mother's French relations. I used to hear my grandmother tell about the Trenton case by the hour. There was some kind of a queer will, something about the mother's money going to female descendants and a lot of talk about a bunch of property the dying wife had mysteriously acquired in France. The old Major only had one arm left after the war was over but he fought a duel with a chap who insinuated that his wandering wife wasn't all she might have been. By the time he'd got things settled he was the finest old grouch you'd meet in a lifetime. Had the recluse business down to a fine point. Summers he used to go off to the wilds of Canada or the Adirondacks or somewhere that his wife's will had specified their daughter must live and winters he used to lock the girl up in that mansion next to our church. Wouldn't touch a penny of his daughter's funds, actually paid rent to her, my grandmother said.

Made his living raising dogs, lap-dogs, in an old stable back of the church. They were all the style. The fair customers used to hope always that they were going to see the fascinating recluse widower.

But they never did. The only time he ever came to the surface that the public knew about was the morning after the daughter eloped with the rector's son. Grandmother says the Major smashed up a couple of reporters the _Hawk_ sent over to interview him but he did tell 'em what he thought on the woman question. n.o.body had the nerve to go near him for quite a while. Not for a couple of years or so. And then somebody found the daughter starving in an attic. The rector's son had been a nice enough chap but he hadn't enough grit to earn his living and the girl, though she wasn't so young, couldn't touch her property without the Major's consent and as she was as stiff-necked as he, she hadn't made any effort at getting that consent. The rector's son had died of pneumonia and their baby was just recovering from it and the girl herself never did get over the strain. Somebody carried her home to die, which it seems she took some years doing. Dud's sweetheart the other side of the rectory wall was her daughter. The Major had lost a wife and a daughter and he evidently had made up his mind he wasn't going to let the last generation slip away. So you can just about guess how popular Dudley Hamilt was when he broke into the Major's back yard.

"The old soldier didn't take a chance. He abso-bally-lutely disappeared the next day. Took the girl with him, of course. Dud went around like a wild man. He was twenty-one that spring, tall as he is now and had about seven times as much pep as he has now, if you can imagine that much. Evangeline looking for Gabriel was a paper chase compared to Dudley trying to find his lady-love. He spent months at it. Got haggard and wan, had a couple of fights with Burrel, a lawyer who was the only person who knew where Major Trenton had gone. Funny thing, it was that same Burrel who absconded with the American Trust Company's stuff two or three years ago. Trenton must certainly have made it worth the lawyer's while not to tell--for that lawyer was as crooked as a corkscrew and yet Dud couldn't bribe him with everything he could muster--which was quite some, for in those days the Hamilt family had scads of money.

"I made a sort of break one night--" The fat man felt of his neck ruefully. "Tried to joke with Dud a little, it was a year or so afterward and I thought he'd gotten over things--but--er--he hadn't.

He--" He paused and blushed. "That's he though, coming through the door," he ended. "Want me to try for him?"

It was the fair Edwina who dared however. She lifted her head charmingly and beckoned.

"Don't ball things up, Tommy," she murmured under her breath, "Leave it to us--get out if you see he's still miffed with you--Please come over here, Mr. Hamilt," she called softly. "I want you to meet Mr.

Graemer."

He looked as blonde as she, almost, ruddy, lithe, but somehow old. He did not smile at her greeting, he merely nodded. She gestured again, so imperiously that he obeyed, but with scant courtesy, and he did not look at all overjoyed at meeting the ill.u.s.trious Mr. Graemer. He sat down however, ordered his luncheon and listened gravely enough to Edwina's chatter.

"Have you seen me in 'The Juggler'? Aren't you willing to say I can act now? He never would--" she turned to Graemer. "He always said I couldn't--but, don't you think I do in 'The Juggler'?" she entreated Hamilt.

"It's an actress-proof part, isn't it?" he bantered, watching her lazily.

"Brute!" she pouted.

"Perhaps he is complimenting me," teased Graemer.

"Not at all," promptly answered the rude Mr. Hamilt. "You've all but ruined the play with your everlasting managing. It's a peach up to the last act. Until you chuck that maudlin bunch of slush and scenery at us. Where did you get that play, anyhow?" he asked insolently.

"Why, he wrote it last summer," protested Edwina.

"Yes?" his uplifted eyebrows were insulting as he glanced quizzically at Graemer. "Then he was about twenty-five years younger last summer than he is now. The first two acts of that play--Gad, it got me up till then, but the rest of it--" he broke a bit off a crusty roll and b.u.t.tered it carefully, "I can readily believe, Mr. Graemer," he added deliberately, "that you did write the rest of the play."

"You have to give the public what it wants," suggested Graemer blandly.

"No, you don't," said Dudley Hamilt. "You have to make the public want what it's going to get--or what it needs."

"Which is exactly what I wanted to see you about," drawled the manager significantly.

Hamilt shrugged.

"If I ever did get into the theatrical game," he answered rather more good-humoredly than he had yet spoken, "I wouldn't insult the public by a perpetual bluff that they were getting something new. I wouldn't keep handing out things that a.s.sumed the public all had salacious minds or else no minds at all. I don't mean that I'd go in for uplift stuff--that isn't what the theater is for--it's to amuse--to thrill-- to wake up our emotions--it's to _play_--But as you chaps who control the thing have it going now it's so d.a.m.nably mechanical there's no sense of play left in it. Why don't you find something that admits the audience has an imagination?"

"As for instance?" Graemer put in adroitly.

"I don't know--" Hamilt sighed, "I haven't the least idea what. Only it ought to be something that everybody is unconsciously hankering for--something that we miss all the while--something we lack in this machine-age. Something that will come across the footlights by itself instead of having to have the spotlight show it to us, something that would make us feel the way we did when we were kids--I guess it's romance--and perhaps the spirit of it is gone--"

Graemer smiled. He nodded to Edwina. Then he drew a long breath and put his case bluntly.

"I came in here rather deliberately, Mr. Hamilt, because I've been wanting to have a talk with you for a long time. It isn't only about 'The Juggler' that I wanted to talk with you but about all of my productions. There are so many of them and I am so busy with them that there are a lot of angles of the game that I do not have time to touch. The thing I need is what you have aptly described--some one who will make the public want what it's going to get. Some one who will make it think it's going to get what it wants. The kind of thing you did last fall in politics--making the whole thing seem something any regular fellow must find out about and something he'd have a lot of fun finding out. It's struck me all the while you were pulling your strings that that sort of work about the stage would wake up the theater-goer the same way you waked up the voter."

"It might," agreed Mr. Hamilt cautiously. "There might be ways--if you had something to back your statements that the game was worth while--I mean to the theater-goer--"

"Well, wouldn't you be willing to think it over and have another talk with me? I don't mean immediately and I do mean on a big scale. I'm sure you understand that--"

Hamilt motioned for the waiter, coolly insisted on paying his own check and rose.

"What you suggest is rather interesting," was all the answer he vouchsafed, "I might."

But after he'd gone Graemer looked after him and laughed.

"Middle name is Cynic--but he's pretty young yet."

"And the best looking thing," sighed Edwina pulling on her gloves, bored with her long silence.

Graemer was thoughtful.