Part 8 (2/2)

”Then I guess I'll have to send Mr. Robert up to engage seats for that Juliet stab of yours,” says I, makin' a play to move off.

It was a bluff; but it fetched her. She was willin' to do 'most anything if I wouldn't tell Brother Robert; so back we goes up to the acting school on the top floor. I left her leanin' up against the wall, right near the open transom, and makes a break for McCallum.

He was right there, too. He's one of these short-legged, ham-faced gents that's almost as tall when he's sittin' down as when he's standin' up. A neck that takes a No. 18 turn-down collar goes with that. He has his hands in his pockets, an Egyptian joss-stick in his mouth, and he's straddlin' up and down, as satisfied with himself as if he'd just cashed a ticket on the right horse.

”h.e.l.lo, profess!” says I. ”I spots your name on the sign; so I takes the foot elevator up to see how you're comin' on.”

”Quite right, son,” says he, ”quite right.”

He didn't need any whizz plane then to beat the Curtiss record. He was soarin', soarin,' and too busy with it to take much notice of me.

”You ain't been round to the office lately,” says I, lettin' on I was still with the paper.

”No, son,” says he; ”but you can inform your dramatic man down there that if he wants an important piece of news he'd better come and see me,” and with that he taps his chest like he was stunnin' the gallery.

”Thought you looked like happy days, professor,” says I. ”What's it like? You ain't been takin' on any swell pupils, have you?”

”Haven't I, though?” says he, stickin' his thumbs in his vest pockets and comin' up on his toes as if he was goin' to crow. ”Haven't I?”

”Say, Mac,” says I confidential, ”that wasn't her I saw drivin' off in the private buggy as I come in, was it--the wide one?”

”That was her,” says he, ”the new Juliet.”

”Juliet!” says I. ”Aw, you're kiddin'! Honest, professor, do Juliets come as heavy as that?”

Then he winks. I could see he was just bustin' to let it out to some one, and here was his chance. ”Son,” says he, ”when young ladies have the price to pay for such luxuries as the cultivation of a dramatic talent that doesn't exist, size doesn't count. I've coached a Hamlet with lop ears and a pug nose, a Lady of Lyons that had a face you could chop wood with, and I guess I'm not going to draw the line at a Juliet whose father is president of a trust, even if she is something of a baby elephant!”

I heard the wall crack at that, and I suspected Marjorie'd got a shock.

”Can she act any?” says I.

”Act!” says he. ”It's enough to make the angels weep to see her try.

Imagine, my boy, a one hundred and thirty-pound Romeo trying to hug his way around a two hundred and fifty-pound Juliet! Why, we'd have to prop up the balcony with a structural iron pillar and----”

It was too bad to have the flow stopped, for he was enjoyin' himself; but just then the door was jerked open and in rushes Marjorie, her eyes blazin', her face white, and so mad she couldn't speak. As she looms up in the door, lookin' bigger'n ever, she was diggin' somethin' out of her handbag, somethin' s.h.i.+ny. It wa'n't anything but a silver purse; but the professor must have thought it was somethin' else, for he gives only one look. Then he throws up both hands, hollers ”Don't shoot, don't shoot!” and makes a dive under a desk in the corner. The hole under that desk wa'n't built for divin' through; so McCallum wedges himself in there like a cork in a bottle, wavin' his legs in the air, and callin'

for help.

”There!” says Marjorie, throwin' some bills on the floor. ”That's for what I owe you, you horrid old fraud! Baby elephant, am I? Oh, you wretch!” With that she goes out and bangs the door behind her.

It was all me and the cornet artist next door could do to separate McCallum from the desk, and even when we worked him loose he didn't want to come out. When we'd got him into a chair, and he'd felt himself all over careful, he says to me:

”Torchy, how--how many times did she shoot?”

And when I gets back to the office Mr. Robert wants to know why I didn't let 'em know I was goin' all the way to Was.h.i.+ngton after them stamps.

”Chee!” says I, ”but you're gettin' restless! Maybe you think I oughter travel by pneumatic tube? Huh!”

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