Part 49 (2/2)

”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.

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