Part 48 (1/2)

Ringentaub made no reply. He was holding a fork in his hand and examining it critically.

”Of course, Trinkmann,” he said, ”I don't want to say nothing the first time I am coming into your place, but this here fork's got onto it something which it looks like a piece Bismarck herring.”

”Don't take it so particular, Ringentaub,” Maikafer said, blus.h.i.+ng guiltily. ”Wash it off in the gla.s.s water.”

”A gla.s.s water you drink, Maikafer,” Ringentaub rejoined, ”and forks should be washed in the kitchen. And, furthermore, Trinkmann,”

Ringentaub said, ”it don't do no harm if the waiters once in a while cleans with polis.h.i.+ng powder the forks.”

”I thought, Maikafer,” Trinkmann said in funereal tones, ”you are telling me that polis.h.i.+ng powder is rank poison.”

”_I_ didn't told you that,” Maikafer replied. ”It was Feinsilver says that.”

”Rank poison!” Ringentaub exclaimed. ”Why, you could eat a ton of it.”

”Sure, I know,” Maikafer concluded; ”but who wants to?”

He turned to Louis, who had approached un.o.bserved. ”Bring me some _Kreploch_ soup and a plate _gefullte Rinderbrust_,” he said, ”not too much gravy.”

”Give me the same,” Ringentaub added, as he gazed about him with the air of an academician at a private view. ”You got a nice _gemutlicher_ place here, Mr. Trinkmann,” he concluded, ”only one thing you should put in.”

”What's that?” Trinkmann asked.

Maikafer kicked him on the s.h.i.+ns, but Ringentaub failed to notice it.

”Marble-top tables,” he said.

CHAPTER NINE

”RUDOLPH WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN”

All that J. Montgomery Fieldstone had done to make his name a theatrical boarding-household word from the Pacific Coast to Forty-sixth Street and Seventh Avenue was to exercise as a producing manager nearly one tenth of the judgment he had displayed as Jacob M.

Fieldstone, of Fieldstone & Gips, waist manufacturers; and he voiced his business creed in the following words:

”Now listen to me, kid,” he said, ”my idea has always been that, no matter how much value you give for the money, goods don't sell themselves. Ain't I right?”

Miss Goldie Raymond nodded, though she was wholly absorbed in a full-length enlarged photograph which hung framed and glazed on the wall behind Fieldstone's desk. She looked at it as a millionaire collector might look at a Van Dyck he had recently acquired from an impoverished duke, against a meeting of protest held in Trafalgar Square. Her head was on one side. Her lips were parted. It was a portrait of Miss Goldie Raymond as Mitzi in the Viennese knockout of two continents--”Rudolph, Where Have You Been.”

”Now this new show will stay on Broadway a year and a half, kid,” Mr.

Fieldstone proceeded, ”in case I get the right people to push it.

Therefore I'm offering you the part before I speak to any one else.”

”Any one else!” Miss Raymond exclaimed. ”Well, you've got a nerve, after all I've done for you in 'Rudolph'!”

”Sure, I know,” Fieldstone said; ”but you've got to hand something to Sidney Rossmore.”

”Him?” Miss Raymond cried. ”Say, Mont, if I had to play opposite him another season I'd go back into vaudeville.”