By Montague Glass
MONTAGUE GLASS
I think it is not generally known that Montague (Marsden)
Glass was born in Manchester, England, on July 23, 1877, and
came to America at the age of thirteen. Once here, he was
educated at the College of the City of New York and New
York University, and in a dozen more years or so was famous
as the author of the Potash and Perlmutter stories. Perhaps
no fictional characters of our generation have enjoyed so
extensive a popularity.
"The Sixth McNally" is from Mr. Glass's book, Y' Understand.
THE SIXTH McNALLY[1]
"Yes, Mr. Leonard," Gershon Danowitz said
as he sat in the office of J.J. Leonard, manager,
producer, and personal director of the "Comics
of 1913 to 1919," both inclusive—"yes, Mr. Leonard,
your poor father olav hasholom, Sam Lippmann,
had me down right. 'Danowitz,' he used to
say, 'the trouble with you is that you are all
heart,' he used to say. 'If some one is in trouble
or misfortune,' he used to say, 'you are right
there,' he used to say, and certainly he was right."
Mr. Leonard nodded perfunctorily.
"The old man was a big jollier," he said.
"And a wonderful judge from character,"
Danowitz added, "which when he resigned from
the presidency of the Bella Hirschkind Home for
Indignant Females, Mr. Leonard, he says to me,
'Danowitz,' he says to me, 'you are my successor,'
he says to me, 'and I know how it is with a man
like you,' he says. 'You will want to do the
whole thing yourself,' he says. 'You will be
giving a thousand dollars here, a thousand dollars
there, and the first thing you know, you will be
practically supporting that Home out of your
own pocket,' he says. 'So don't be afraid to ask
my son to get up an annual benefit,' he says, and
I says that while it ain't in my nature to ask
favors for myself, y'understand, if that was his
wish and desire, I says, auch recht, I says, which
if Sunday evening February eleventh would be
convenient to you, Mr. Leonard, it would be
convenient to me."
Mr. Leonard sighed heavily. "This'll be the
fifth annual benefit I give for them rotten
females," he declared.
"And you could depend on it, Mr. Leonard,"
Danowitz said, piously, "that your poor father,
olav hasholom, which when he was alive was a
tzadik if ever there was one, knows about these
here benefits you are giving for the Home, and
appreciates it."
"Maybe he appreciates that it has cost me on
an average, $425.20 for lights, ushers, orchestra,
and advertising," Leonard retorted, "not to say
nothing about cleaning the theater and a full
stage crew at regular union rates. So I am
giving you this straight, Mr. Danowitz; next year
you've got to get some one else to get up this
here benefit, because this is positively the last
time I am going to get stung for it."
He lifted the receiver from the telephone.
"See if Al Sands of Sands & McNally is out
there, and don't let nobody else in till you find
who they are first. That was what my instructions
was the first day I hired you.... What's
that? ... Is that so! I suppose you didn't let
in a party a few minutes ago what I thought was
Manowitz the costoomer, and it turns out to be
somebody else."
As he banged the receiver back on its hook, he
fixed Danowitz with a venomous glare. It did
not, however, noticeably disturb the expression
of benevolence which, as president of the Bella
Hirschkind Home for Indigent Females, Danowitz
habitually wore.
"Well, I guess I would be moving on," the
philanthropist remarked, with precisely the same
inflection as though he anticipated being pressed
to remain for anyhow twenty minutes; "which
if there is anything you would like to ring me up
about, don't hesitate to trespass on my time."
His manner was graciousness itself as he cuddled
Leonard's resisting hand in a warm clasp of
farewell, and when he passed out of the room, a
less adamant person than Leonard might have
been left with the impression that to share in
benevolent enterprises of so admirable a
character, even to the extent of $425.20, was a
privilege and an honor. Leonard, however, did
not see it that way, and he was still muttering to
himself when Al Sands, the male partner of the
old-established team of Sands & McNally,
entered the room.
"You ain't got no objections if I bring a couple
of sandwiches along the next time, J.J.?" Al
said, by way of giving himself what he considered
to be a good speech to come on with. "I've
been waiting outside since ten o'clock."
"Always clowning, ain't you, Al?" Leonard
retorted. "Why don't you get some of that
comedy into your performance? Because if you
don't get no more laughs in this year's 'Comics'
than you did in last year's, I've got to make some
different arrangements, that's all. And as for
McNally——"
"I know, I know," Sands interrupted. "But
I ain't got that McNally no longer. The
McNally I've got this year is a wonder."
"That's what you said last year," Leonard
declared. "In fact, this'll be the sixth McNally
you've had since you and me has been doing
business together, Al, and they've been going
down steadily. The one you had last year was
the worst of the bunch."
"Sure, I know, but that McNally was Irish,"
Sands explained. "She's the only Irish McNally
I ever had, and that's where I made a big
mistake. The McNally I've got this year is all
right, J. J. She's got a wonderful voice, good
dancer, and she's right there in three dialects."
"And on your say-so, unsight unseen, without
letting the cat out of the bag or nothing, you
want me to give you a contract, I suppose,"
Leonard said.
"I ain't trying to keep no cat in a bag," Al
said. "When do you want me to bring her up here?"
"I don't want you to bring her up here never,"
Leonard replied. "I'm giving a benefit for a
home for females—the one I always give the
benefit for, on account of my father once being
the president of it, on Sunday night February
eleventh—and if they like her, I'll like her."
"You couldn't tell nothing by a benefit
audience," Al Sands protested.
"Benefit or no benefit," Leonard declared,
"if the people out front pays three dollars apiece
for an orchestra seat, y'understand, they ain't
going to laugh unless the laugh is there."
He turned to a desk heaped high with manuscripts
of plays whose fate had long since been
sealed by the circumstance that Leonard
produced nothing but his annual revue. He utilized
them, nevertheless, in the reception and
dismissal of visitors; and by way of informing Al
Sands that his visit was at an end Leonard
immediately became absorbed in the title page and
dramatis personæ of a thick manuscript bound
in blue vellum paper. To any other manager,
its inordinate length would have made it impossible,
because, reckoning that one page of manuscript
consumes one minute in its performance,
there were eight hours and twenty-five minutes
of solid drama contained within its covers; but
for J.J. Leonard's purposes, this was, if
anything, an advantage.
Thus, at the beginning of the season, when
obscure members of the "Comics" Company would
summon up sufficient courage to call on Leonard
with a request for more salary, the impression
they received from discovering their employer
in the perusal of so weighty a manuscript was not
at all dispelled by the noise with which Leonard
closed it and threw it back on his desk. It
frequently banged twenty dollars a week off a timid
actor's salary, and was therefore Leonard's
favorite manuscript.
"I suppose I get anyhow one orchestra rehearsal,"
Al Sands said, with his hand on the door
knob.
"Saturday morning at eleven downstairs,"
J.J. said, without looking up.
The manuscript was called "Death and
Transfiguration" and suggested in its treatment
Tolstoy's "Resurrection" with just a hint of "Twin
Beds," but for anything Leonard had learned of
its contents, it might just as well have been a
combination of "Romeo and Juliet" and "Oh,
Boy!" All he knew about it was that his father,
Sam Lippmann, had brought it into the office and
asked him to read it when he found the time; and
although as the resolution of the Board of
Trustees of the Bella Hirschkind Home for
Indigent Females had so aptly put it, an all-wise
Providence had gathered Sam unto his fathers
some three years before, J.J. had still not found
the time. Nevertheless, out of respect for his
father he continued to believe that he was going
to find the time some time or other, and he
periodically instructed his secretary to notify
the author that his manuscript was under
consideration by Mr. Leonard and a decision would
be rendered upon it in due course.
These notifications were all sent to Gerald
Dane, care of The Fitgood Shirt Company, 22A
Washington Place, New York City; and while
it may seem a piece of pure coincidence that,
half an hour after the incidents above set forth,
Gershon Danowitz entered the Washington
Place factory of the Fitgood Shirt Company, it
may be readily explained upon the score that he
was the sole proprietor of it and that Gerald
Dane labored there under the shirt-business name
of Gershon Danowitz, Jr.
"Well," Gershon, Jr., demanded impatiently
before his father had time to remove his hat and
coat, "did you ask him about it?"
The proprietor of the Fitgood Shirt Company
and President of the Bella Hirschkind Home for
Indigent Females immediately lost his benevolent
manner and became livid with rage.
"What do you mean—did I ask him?" he
bellowed. "It ain't enough that I am insulted
about the benefit already. I should ask him
about your verflüchte Schauspiel yet!"
He tore off his hat and coat and threw them
on to a chair.
"Sam Lippmann, that was a friend!" he cried.
"I should ought to of been shot before I ever
met that old crook, olav hasholom. Throws the
whole burden of them fakers of females on my
shoulders and then he goes to work and encourages
my only son that he should be a play writer
yet!"
"Now look here, pop," Gershon, Jr., protested.
"There isn't any need to get so excited."
"Isn't there?" Gershon, Sr., began. "Well,
let me tell you something, Gershon. Once and
for all I want you to get through with this
nonsense. You have been fooling away your
time here long enough. Either you must got to
be a play writer oder a shirt manufacturer, but
you couldn't be both, y'understand."
He had been delivering the same ultimatum at
intervals of a week or so for more than three
years, and it had always been accepted by Gershon,
Jr., as incidental to the avocation of dramatist
and to be dismissed with some such rejoinder
as "Hire a hall!" or even, in less respectful
moments, "Tell it to Sweeney." But on this
occasion Gershon, Jr., maintained what his father
ought to have recognized as an ominous silence;
for only the night before, while dining on West
Houston Street, somebody at the next table had
audibly informed a female companion that the
feller with the spectacles and that leather sample
case—don't look now—was the one that wrote all
them shows for them now Washington Square
actors. And although the female companion was
extremely rustic in her appearance and said,
"What! That homely looking feller with the
long hair?" the incident had fired his imagination,
nevertheless.
"Because when a young feller gets to be
already twenty-six years old, he ain't a child no
longer," Gershon, Sr., continued, his philanthropic
manner beginning to reassert itself. He
intended it to be a heart-to-heart conversation
such as any president of any home might hold
with a thoughtless son in whom there wasn't, so
to speak, a button's worth of harm, and to that
end settled himself comfortably in the revolving
chair at his office desk; but Gershon, Jr., refused
to perform in the role assigned to him.
"I know I ain't," he said with a firmness that
ought to have warned Gershon, Sr.
"You bet your life you ain't," Gershon, Sr.,
went on, just as though he were not addressing a
dramatist who only the night before had been
mistaken for the author of the entire Washington
Square Players repertoire. "And when a feller
gets to be twenty-six years old in any
business—particularly the shirt business——"
"To hell with the shirt business!" Gershon,
Jr., exclaimed.
If a spectator had arisen in the body of the
Supreme Court at Washington and said the
same thing about the Constitution of the United
States the combined bench and bar there present
could have been no more shocked than Gershon,
Sr., was. For at least a minute he sat in his
office chair unable to move, unable even to
enunciate; but at last he tottered to his feet.
"Go on," he said, "out of here, before I kick
you out."
"You wouldn't kick anybody out," Gershon,
Jr., retorted. "For three years now I've sat and
listened to you giving advice, and I ain't going
to stand for it any longer."
"And for how many years did he sit and listen
to you cutting teeth and having colic?" inquired
a stout, florid gentleman in a fur overcoat. He
had entered the office unnoticed at the very
moment of Gershon, Jr.'s sacrilegious outbreak
against the shirt industry, and although shirts
were only one department of the Gembitz-Jones
Mercantile Company's jobbing business in Los
Angeles, Marcus Gembitz was hardly less
shocked than Gershon, Sr., himself. "Ain't you
ashamed to talk that way to your father?"
He might just as well have asked Trotzky and
Lenin if they weren't ashamed to speak
disrespectfully about such decent, estimable people as
the Russian bourgeoisie, for in the lexicon of a
Greenwich Village dramatist, derived in great
measure from the prefaces to the published plays
of Bernard Shaw, there are no such words as
respect for parents. In fact, even in that
crucial moment—the turning point of a career, as
it were—when Gershon, Jr., was putting on his
hat and coat preparatory to abandoning the shirt
business forever, he could not help snorting
contemptuously at such a hopelessly old-fashioned
remark.
"Here!" Gershon, Sr., demanded. "Where
are you going?"
For answer Gershon, Jr., crushed his hat over
his forehead. It was a black, soft hat—essentially
a dramatist's hat and not a shirt-manufacturer's
hat. And then looking around the office,
much as the Prisoner of Chillon must have
looked around his dungeon at the moment of
liberation—if he ever was liberated—he opened
the door, and the next moment it closed behind
him with a bang. Indeed, had it closed with a
clang instead of a bang, the effect could not have
been more dramatic.
"Nu, Danowitz," Marcus Gembitz said at last,
"don't worry your head. He'll come back."
"I don't want him to come back," Gershon,
Sr., said. "He's made his bed. Now he could
rot in it for all I care."
Gembitz waved his hands in deprecation of
such harshness.
"Say!" he said. "You'll get over that
feeling." He patted Danowitz's shoulder consolingly.
"After all," he continued, "we all have
trouble with our children and it comes out all
right."
"With children maybe, but with an only child,
Mr. Gembitz, that's something else again,"
Danowitz said. His head nodded slowly as he
began to realize the bereavement he had suffered.
"Mind you," he went on, "I begged his mother
she shouldn't send him to college, because if you
have two sons and one of them goes to college,
supposing something happens to you, Gott soll
hüten, you've anyhow one left to look after the
business, but if you've got only one son and him
a college gradgewate, y'understand, what is it?
Am I right or wrong?"
"Couldn't a college gradgewate also run a
business?" Gembitz inquired.
"In some business, maybe," Danowitz said.
"But in a business where there is such a competition
like the shirt business, Mr. Gembitz, such
business you've got to learn it from the bottom
up, whereas a college gradgewate learns a
business from the top down, and while some college
gradgewates reaches the bottom quicker as
others, y'understand, when such a college gradgewate
is also a play writer, before he has learned
even the top of the business, understand me, the
bottom has dropped out of it."
"Even so," Gembitz said, "you've got to make
allowances for your boy."
"I would never forgive him—never," Danowitz
said emphatically.
"Say!" Gembitz protested. "I would make
you a bet right now that in less than two weeks
the young feller would be back on the job and
you would never think nothing had happened at
all. Forgiving children is the easiest thing
fathers could do. Why, you take me, for
instance, Danowitz, and the troubles which you
got with your boy ain't already a marker to what
I got with my daughter, which I told my wife
how it would come out if she lets her take vocal.
"'Learn her first to make a decent cup of coffee,'
I says to my wife, 'or that she should cook
chotzig a potato,' I says.
"But you know how it is in Los Angeles,
Danowitz. Everybody figures that if their
daughter ain't got no other talent, she looks like
Mary Pickford; and my wife has settled in her
mind that my Sadie has only got to take for
twelve hundred dollars singing lessons to be a
second Geraldine Patti, y'understand. Right
now she is in Chicago staying with her aunt and
taking vocal from an Italiener, which he has got
the nerve to charge more for one office call than
a first-class A-number-one stomach specialist."
"Well, that's the way it goes," Gershon, Sr.,
declared, with a tremulous sigh. "I've got a
good business and nobody to leave it to but the
boy, and nothing would do but that he must be
a play writer doch. You have got an only
daughter which you are well fixed enough that she
could have a good husband and a good home,
and I suppose the first thing you know, you
would be firing her out of the house for getting
a job singing in a moving-picture theayter or
something."
"Say!" Gembitz remarked. "The girl is
very far from reaching that point, y'understand,
but if she did, understand me, firing her out of
the house would be the furthest from my
thoughts. Hafter all, Danowitz, children has
got their rights as well as parents, and if your
son or my daughter thinks they've got openings
above the shirt business or the home, y'understand,
the thing to do is to look at the matter
from philosophy."
Once more he patted Danowitz's shoulder.
"Now come, Danowitz," he said, "this here
business about your Gershon is going to blow
over, and in the meantime I would like to see
what you've got in some popular-price percales.
My reservations for Los Angeles is all taken for
tomorrow, and I ain't got no time to lose."
For more than an hour Gershon, Sr., displayed
his spring line of shirts, and in spite of his
broken-hearted condition succeeded in procuring
from Gembitz a most satisfactory order at prices
slightly above the market, since Gembitz could
not find it within his ordinarily businesslike
nature to add to Danowitz's troubles by standing
out for bedrock figures. In fact, once or twice
Gembitz suspected that Danowitz was taking
advantage of a customer's kindness of heart by
sandwiching rather extravagant quotations
between two outbursts of emotion at his son's
ungrateful behavior. But Gembitz's sympathy for
Danowitz, as of one father for another,
outweighed the trade antagonism which as a jobber
he would normally have felt toward a manufacturer,
and he allowed Danowitz to get away with
a couple of items which upon mature reflection
he considered to be little short of grand larceny.
Nevertheless, after checking up the order and
correcting a few mistakes which Danowitz in his
grief had made in his own favor, the two parents
shook hands warmly.
"You will see, Danowitz," Gembitz declared,
"that your boy will be back here in a few days,
and you and him will be just as good friends as
ever."
"Him with me, maybe," Danowitz said, "but
not me with him."
"Ach! That's nonsense!" Gembitz exclaimed.
He was about to enlarge upon the amount of
forgiveness which a parent ought to display to an
erring child, when the telephone bell rang.
"Excuse me," Danowitz said, taking the
receiver from the hook. "Hello.... Yes, this
is the Fitgood Shirt Company. Hello....
Mister Who? ... Yes, he's right here."
He turned to Gembitz.
"For you, Mr. Gembitz," he said.
"For me?" Gembitz cried. "Why, nobody
knows I'm here, excepting I told the twentieth-floor
clerk at the hotel she should ring me up
here in case a package didn't come from my
tailor, but the package came just as I left. I
wonder who it would be?"
"Might if you answered the phone, maybe you
would find out," Danowitz suggested.
"Give it to me," Gembitz said. "Hello....
Yes, this is Mr. Gembitz.... You are the
twentieth-floor clerk, yes? ... You got a
what? ... What kind of wire? ... A
telegram? ... Sure, go ahead and open it."
He smiled at Danowitz.
"Ain't it funny, when you get a telegram, you
always think sickness or death and it turns out
to be nothing," he said. "Probably my partner
is—— Oh, hello! ... Yes, I'm listening....
It's from Chicago.... Yes, I
understand—Chicago.... Mrs. Clarence Fimpel.
That's my wife's sister.... Yes, go ahead....
What? ... Shema Beni! What do you think
of that?"
He hung up the receiver and stared at Danowitz
while his florid complexion grew suddenly
purple.
"Mr. Gembitz!" Danowitz exclaimed.
"What's the matter? Is somebody sick or something?"
Gembitz flipped his right hand in a gesture of
despair.
"Worser," he said. "My Sadie has run away
to be an actress."
"An actress?" Danowitz repeated.
"The telegram says, 'Sadie in New York,
threatens go on stage, stop her,' signed
Mrs. Clarence Fimpel," Gembitz said. "And she
don't even give the telephone number in New
York where Sadie threatens to go on the stage."
"Don't it say letter follows?" Danowitz
asked. "Most telegrams do, and usually you
couldn't tell nothing about it till the letter
arrives."
"I don't care if fifty letters follows," Gembitz
declared, striking the desk with his clenched fist.
"If the girl wants to go on the stage, she can go."
He rose from the chair on which he was sitting
and looked as though he were about to raise both
hands in the classic gesture that used to
accompany all parental curses with or without a
snowstorm off stage.
"But if she does," he said, "she'll never see a
penny of my money—not one penny."
He sank back into his chair and covered his
eyes with his right hand.
"A shame and a disgrace!" he muttered. "My
only daughter to be an actress!"
Danowitz shrugged his shoulders.
"Say!" he said. "Lots of girls from good
families has threatened to go on the stage and even
went. Hafter all, what is so terrible that your
daughter should be an actress, Mr. Gembitz? An
actress could behave herself the same like
anybody else and very often does."
"She should never come near my house again,"
Gembitz said with a groan.
"Schmooes!" Danowitz exclaimed. "If the
girl makes a hit on the stage, you will be proud
of her the same like any other father."
He patted Gembitz's back reassuringly, but
Gembitz only shook his head.
"You don't know me, Danowitz. When I
make up my mind, I make up my mind," he
concluded. "And I would never forgive her—never."
The passage of a camel through the eye of a
needle or of a rich man into Heaven is a
relatively easy matter compared with the admission
of an aspiring playwright to the presence of a
manager, and when Gershon Danowitz, Jr.,
called at the office of J.J. Leonard on the
following Saturday morning, it was only because
Leonard failed to notice the Jr. on Gershon's
visiting card that he succeeded in getting an
audience.
"Tell that faker to come in here," Leonard
said to the office boy who brought it in. "I want
to talk to him."
He almost bit his cigar in two as he framed in
sufficiently strong language just how he was
going to break to the president of the Bella
Hirschkind Home for Indigent Females that if
one-half of the increased expenses of running off
the benefit were not forthcoming from the treasury
of the Home, there wasn't going to be any
benefit at all.
"Now, looky here, Danowitz," he began, as
Gershon, Jr., entered, and then broke off
suddenly when he discovered that his visitor was
not the person he supposed him to be. "Say!
Who let you in here?" he bellowed.
It is hardly necessary to say that the question
was embroidered with profanity selected at random
from a particularly rich vocabulary, and for
a moment Gershon, Jr., forgot that he was no
longer the manager of a prosperous shirt business.
"Who do you think you're talking to—a shipping
clerk?" he asked. "I sent in my card, and
your boy told me to come in."
Leonard picked up the card and looked at it
again.
"Oh, you're the old man's son," he said.
"I'm not any man's son," Gershon replied.
"I'm here on my own account."
It was at this juncture that he saw his play on
Leonard's desk.
"I called to see you about this," he said.
Forthwith the habits of five years spent in the
shirt business began to assert themselves. What
he held in his hand seemed to him not a manuscript
but a shirt, a high-grade shirt—in fact, an
entire line of high-grade shirts—and he
addressed himself to the task of selling it to
Leonard, much as if Leonard had been a retailer with
a chain of haberdashery stores and hence a
prospective customer of large buying capacity. It
was an entirely novel experience for the theatrical
manager. He had met brash playwrights,
shy playwrights, intellectual playwrights, and
playwrights who were acquainted with every
device of the theater since the days of Corneille
and Racine, but a playwright who was also a
first-class, cracker jack, A-number-one shirt
salesman was something he had never been called
upon to cope with, and he was soon completely
at Gershon's mercy.
For more than an hour his only contributions
to the dialogue were, "But, say!" or "Now,
listen here," all of which Gershon treated as mere
punctuation. In disposing of this one manuscript,
he was using enough salesmanship to sell
shirts in gross lots, and he talked on and on to
such good purpose that by twelve o'clock, not
only had he caused Leonard to accept in writing
"Death and Transfiguration," a play in three
acts and a prologue by Gerald Dane, but they
had also discussed its forthcoming production to
the extent of changing its title to "Early to
Bed," merging the prologue into the first act and
cutting between the laughs so as to bring its
acting time well within the conventional period
of one hundred and thirty minutes.
"And now," Gershon, Jr., said, shortly before
half-past twelve, "we'll go out and have a bit of lunch."
Leonard looked at his watch and impiously
uttered a pious exclamation.
"I've got a rehearsal downstairs," he said.
"All right, I'll go with you," Gershon
remarked, and a few minutes later Leonard
vaguely wondered why he was not surprised to
find himself seated side by side with Gershon,
Jr., in one of the last rows on the ground floor
of the Cabot Theater. An orchestra of less than
ten musicians—using the term in its occupational
and not its artistic meaning—was playing an
accompaniment to a song in which the word
"Dixie" recurred at intervals. So far as it
affected Gershon, however, it might just as well
have been Bosnia or Herzegovina, for he was
concerned not with the song but the singer. He
clutched Leonard's arm convulsively.
"Who's the lady?" he asked in a shrill whisper.
"What lady?" Leonard asked in return.
"Lady" was a word he reserved for members of
the audience. For performers, whether as
principals or chorus women, he possessed a fund of
synonyms which had never been included in any
thesaurus. "Oh, her!" he exclaimed, when he
realized that he was sitting next to a layman.
"She's one of them—now—McNallys."
"Yes?" Gershon said. He had, of course,
heard of such theatrical families as the Drews,
the Barrymores, and even the Eight Brothers
Byrne, but, even though he was not prepared to
admit it, he had never heard of the McNally
family.
"Which one is she?" he asked, as though he
knew all the others.
"She's the fifth or the sixth," Leonard said.
"I forget which."
"The sixth," a voice said from the seat back
of them, "and the best of the bunch, J.J."
"But she can't sing for nuts, Al," Leonard
replied, without looking around.
"Of course, I'm no judge of singing," Gershon
began, by way of protest, but he immediately
became silent at a warning nudge from
Leonard.
"She ain't got no more voice than I have,"
Leonard said.
"Say!" Al Sands retorted. "She can put over
a song without singing a note. All she's got to
do is to stand there, and it's across. Am I right
or wrong?"
Leonard clutched Gershon's knee, but this
additional warning was entirely unnecessary. Six
years of buying and selling made him realize at
once that even though Miss McNally combined
all the more attractive features of Maxine
Elliott, Billie Burke, and Mrs. Mildred Harris
Chaplin, these were commodities just as much
subject to bargain and sale in the theater as
merchandise is in the dry-goods district.
"She's a great performer," Al Sands added,
emphatically.
Leonard turned around in his seat.
"What am I—a new beginner?" he asked.
"Have I been putting on for seven years now a
show where I got to play to twenty-two thousand
to break even, without being my own judge of
what's good and what ain't?"
These figures, representing the gross weekly
receipts of the "Comics," and the profanity with
which they were quoted, made such an impression
on Al Sands that he was silent for at least thirty
seconds.
"She's a big find," he said at last.
"She's a rank amateur," Leonard retorted. "I
bet she ain't left her home a month already."
"Well, what of it?" Sands asked. That was
just what Gershon wanted to know. Here was
a McNally—member, no doubt, of an old theatrical
family—in short, the sixth McNally, and
yet she was a rank amateur and had just left her
home.
"What of it?" Leonard said. "Why, there's
this of it: I suppose you expect I should pay you
the old figure when all you got to pay her is
fifty a week."
"Say!" Al Sands interrupted. "You don't
know her or you wouldn't talk that way. You
may think she's an amateur and I may think
she's an amateur, but she don't think so. She
struck me for two hundred right off the reel, and
she made me pay it, too."
"Back up!" Leonard cried. "What are you
trying to give me?"
"All right," Sands said. "Meet her once."
"All right, I will," Leonard said, jumping up
from his seat. He made his way down the side
aisle to the door leading from the auditorium
to the stage, followed by Al Sands. Gershon
stumbled after them through the darkness, quite
forgotten by Leonard, but when they all three
arrived on the stage, such was the effect of
Gershon's late salesmanship that Leonard accepted
his presence there as a matter of course.
"Miss McNally," Al said, "I want you to meet
Mr. Leonard, and this other gentleman here, I
don't know his name."
"He ain't interested," Leonard said, shaking
Miss McNally's ungloved hand, and not releasing
it after the handshake had concluded. "I
think I seen you somewheres before, didn't I?"
"I don't think so," Miss McNally replied.
"Good speaking voice," Sands commented.
"Great carrying quality."
"Now, listen," Leonard broke in. "Let her
do the talking, will you?"
Miss McNally withdrew her hand from Leonard's clasp.
"Mr. Sands does the talking for me," she said.
She looked at Gershon and thereby caused him
to undergo all the cardiac symptoms associated
with too much smoking and coffee-drinking.
Nevertheless, he seemed to detect a slight flicker
of Miss McNally's left eyelid.
"I suppose," Leonard said, "Al told you to
tell me that."
"What's the difference who told who?" Sands
asked. "As a matter of fact, she suggested it."
"Miss McNally," Leonard broke in angrily,
"I want you to come upstairs to my office. I'm
starting to cast my 'Comics' and I want to talk
business to you."
"The act is Sands and McNally, Mr. Leonard,"
Sands said. "I own and manage it, and
if you want to talk business, talk it to me."
For at least half a minute Leonard hesitated.
Miss McNally's physical charms were no less
evident to him than they were to Gershon, but
unlike Gershon, his heart functioned quite
normally. So did his brain. He was, in fact,
considering her attractiveness in terms of box-office
receipts, and at the end of thirty seconds he had
made up his mind.
"Come upstairs, Al," he said, and a minute
later Gershon was alone on the stage with Miss
McNally.
"Well," Miss McNally declared, "if he lands
that job in the 'Comics,' I guess I'll have burned
my boats behind me and not a cent of insurance."
Her lips parted in a melancholy smile and
Gershon smiled in return.
He had only half heard what she had said, but
Al Sands was right. All she had to do was to
stand there, and she was a hit with any audience.
For instance, she had not intended to create in
Gershon the feeling that without a home presided
over by Miss McNally, play writing and shirt
manufacturing were as one. Nevertheless,
merely by standing there and looking at him, she
had done more than that. Her melancholy smile
had automatically caused him to contrast the
hazardous compensation of a playwright with the
relatively certain income of the shirt-manufacturing
business. In short, he was considering
her attractiveness, not by Leonard's standard of
box-office receipts, but in terms of a honeymoon,
a small apartment in a good neighborhood, and
just one or two children, and by the time she
spoke again he was rapidly getting back into a
shirt-business frame of mind.
"You look like you didn't understand what I
mean," she said, "so I may as well tell you that
I left a good home to go into this."
Gershon held out his right hand.
"Shake!" he said. "I've just burned a couple
of fleets myself."
They shook hands solemnly.
"And one or two bridges," Gershon added.
"You don't mean to say that you left a good
home to be an actor?" she asked, after they were
seated side by side on a tool box against the back
wall.
"Not an actor," Gershon said; "a playwright,
and I left more than a good home. I left a good
shirt business."
"A good shirt business!" she exclaimed. "Oh,
dear! Wasn't that foolish of you!"
She laid her left hand on his right sleeve and
let it stay there for just a moment.
"Why couldn't you write plays on the side and
still stay in the shirt business?" she said.
"Ask my father," Gershon replied. "He
owns the business, and he told me that I had to
choose between being a shirt manufacturer and
a playwright, so I chose."
Miss McNally nodded her head comprehendingly.
"Aren't families just like that?" she said.
"They don't understand you one bit, do they?"
She moved up just a trifle closer to him.
"Tell me," she said. "What kind of plays do
you write?"
"Suppose I tell you at lunch," Gershon said.
"It'll be half an hour or longer before Leonard
gets through with your—your friend."
"He isn't my friend," Miss McNally assured
him. "He pays me a salary and I board with
him and Mrs. Sands up in Tremont."
"Even at that, we could leave word with the
doorman that we would be back in half an hour,"
Gershon said. "How about it?"
Miss McNally considered the proposition for
at least a minute.
"How many plays have you produced?" she asked.
"As yet, none," Gershon said, "but I've had
one accepted."
"Then I'll go to lunch with you on one
condition," Miss McNally declared. "There's an
awfully nice place right across the street where
they have the best Danish pastry."
And a moment later they were seated at a
rear table in one of those lunch rooms that seek
to divert their patrons' attention from the poor
quality of the food by an elaborate scheme of
decoration in the style of an 1895 model
Pullman Palace Car.
There over a plate of Danish pastry and two
cups of coffee they exchanged the preliminary
confidences of what was rapidly to ripen into an
ardent friendship. In fact, so rapid was the
ripening and so ardent the friendship that, by the
following Thursday, not only had they lunched
together five times and dined together six times,
but in the course of the last dinner Miss
McNally had occasion to say, "No." To be sure
she didn't say it too emphatically. Her precise
words were: "No, Gerald dear, I couldn't. Not
this season, anyway."
"But, I tell you, I'll go back into the shirt
business. I'll do anything," he protested.
"Don't I know you would?" Miss McNally
said. "But I have a contract with Mr. Sands
not to get married for the run of the 'Comics,'
anyway."
"And it may run two years," he said, hopelessly.
"Well, that can't be helped," she said. "My
contract with him says I shouldn't get married
and I can't break it."
That she was firm in this resolution, however,
may be doubted by the events of the following
morning, when Gershon Danowitz, Sr., was
interrupted in the task of checking up his monthly
statements by a visitor whose clothes could not
have been called conservative even for a man
half his age.
"Say, looky here!" the visitor said to Gershon,
Sr. "This thing has gone far enough. Is that
plain?"
Gershon, Sr., was startled into a pious expectoration.
"T'phooee!" he said. "What do you mean,
busting in here like this?"
"I mean what I say," Al Sands declared. "It's
got to stop. I know what my rights are, and
this wouldn't be the first time I made trouble for
a guy like that."
"Say, what's the matter?" Gershon asked.
"Are you meshugga or something?"
"I ain't no more crazy than you are," Al said.
"I've got a contract for the run of the 'Comics'—me
and my partner—and if your son busts it
up on me, my lawyers tell me I can put him in
jail for malicious interfering in a contract."
For a brief interval Danowitz nodded his head
while a pulse beat in his cheek.
"So that's what it is, is it?" he said. "Already
he gets into trouble."
"And he'll get into worser trouble if he fools
with me," Sands commented.
"That I couldn't help," Danowitz rejoined. "I
ain't seen the boy in a week and what he is up to,
I don't know."
"Well, I can tell you what he is up to," Sands
told him. "He's threatening to marry my partner."
"Your partner!" Danowitz repeated. "What
for a business are you in that you get a lady
partner? The millinery business?"
"I ain't in no business," Sands replied. "My
name is Sands, of Sands and McNally, my own
act now for ten years, and your son is going to
marry my partner Miss McNally."
The pulse in Danowitz's cheek beat a trifle
more quickly and he grew slightly red in the
face, but his voice was firm enough when he
spoke, even though his lips did quiver.
"Well," he said, "I didn't expect no better.
Anyone what starts out writing plays when he's
got a good home and a good business, is liable to
end up marrying a Miss McNally, even."
"And how about me?" Sands asked.
"You?" Danowitz said. "What have I got
to do with you?"
"You've got plenty to do with me," Sands
retorted. "Either you stop this thing or I put
your son in jail."
Danowitz rose from his chair.
"You mean you are going to put into jail the
young feller that is going to marry this Miss
McNally?" he said.
Al Sands nodded.
"Well, that young feller ain't my son," Danowitz
declared. "I ain't got no more a son."
For more than half an hour after Sands left,
Danowitz remained seated in his revolving chair,
his head sunk on his breast, and it was in this
attitude that Marcus Gembitz found him when
he entered the office at eleven o'clock.
"Nu, Mr. Gembitz," he asked, rousing himself
with an effort, "have you heard from your
daughter?"
"No, I ain't," Gembitz said, "and from the
looks of you, you ain't heard from your son,
either."
Danowitz smiled a rather wan smile.
"You ain't no judge of looks, Mr. Gembitz,"
he said. "The reason why I am looking this way
is that I have heard from him—indirectly."
"And how is he getting on?" Gembitz asked.
"He's getting on fine," Danowitz replied.
"He's going to marry a Miss McNally."
Gembitz sat down heavily in the revolving
chair at Gershon, Jr.'s vacant desk. "Um Gottes
Willen, you don't tell me!" he said.
He tried to think of something to say that
might be of some consolation.
"Well," he said, after a long silence, "the
chances is that you don't feel no worse over your
son marrying Miss McNally than Miss McNally's
father does about her marrying your son."
"Did I say any different?" Danowitz asked.
"And the chances is she is a very nice girl,
too," Gembitz added.
"Yaw, a nice girl!" Danowitz exclaimed.
"She's an actress."
Gembitz grew red in the face.
"What are you trying to do—insult me?" he
roared. "My own daughter is an actress."
"Say, say!" Danowitz retorted. "Your
daughter ain't no more an actress than my son is
a play writer."
"Is that so!" Gembitz cried. "Well, let me
tell you something: If my daughter wouldn't
be a better actress than your son is a play writer,
I wouldn't mention the matter at all."
Danowitz waved both hands frantically.
"Don't get excited, Mr. Gembitz," he said.
"For my part she could be a regular Clara
Bernhardt; but, just the same, if your daughter was
going to marry an actor by the name McNally,
that wouldn't be exactly nothing for you and
Mrs. Gembitz to give a sigh of relief over,
neither."
"Well, of course, when it comes time for my
daughter to get married," Gembitz said, after he
had cooled down, "I should like for her to marry
a young man of her own people, but on the other
hand if she should want to marry outside her
own people—I suppose me and my wife would
got to forgive her."
Once more Danowitz's chin rested on his shirt-front
and his eyes were fixed on vacancy. Indeed,
he presented so pitiable a spectacle that
Gembitz was moved to offer him a cigar. To be
sure, it was the same cigar that Gembitz had
accepted from Danowitz only the week before, but
that he should have offered a man from whom he
bought goods a cigar at all, since it is a rigid
convention that customers should receive cigars
and not give cigars away, indicated how deeply
he felt for the unfortunate Danowitz.
"Now, come, Danowitz," he said, patting him
on the shoulder, "if I would be in your situation,
I wouldn't take it so much to heart. My daughter
is just so much my daughter as your son is
your son, but if she would marry some one
outside her people, I would say, 'Sadie,' I would
say, 'you have done something which is wrong,'
I would say, 'but,' I would say——"
However, the hypothetical duologue thus
begun proceeded no further, for when it had
reached this critical stage of its development, the
door opened to admit a youth clothed in the
uniform of a naval lieutenant except for the words
Belsize Hotel which were embroidered in gold
thread on the collar and sleeves.
"Is there a party here by the name Gembitz?"
he inquired.
"That's me," Gembitz said.
"The floor clerk on the twentieth floor says
you left word that if any letters or telegrams
comes to bring 'em over here."
"Give it to me," Gembitz cried, and snatched
a letter from the messenger's hand. He tore it
open, and after reading its contents he sank back
into his chair with a groan.
"Mr. Gembitz!" Danowitz exclaimed.
"What's the matter?"
"I would never speak to her again so long as
I live. Why, I would never even look at her,"
he said, hoarsely.
"Mr. Gembitz!" Danowitz said. "What is it?"
"I am like you, Danowitz," he groaned. "I
ain't got no more a daughter. She's dead."
"Dead!" Danowitz exclaimed.
"Worse than dead," Gemhitz replied. "She
has gone to work and got married. And by the
name, he ain't one of our people."
The messenger from the hotel took off his cap
reverently.
"That'll be fifty cents," he said, "and ten cents
carfare."
Danowitz offered no consolation. He felt
instinctively there could be none. He did not even
inquire the name of Gembitz's son-in-law, but
what he did do was to produce from the middle
compartment of his safe in violation of the
Eighteenth Amendment of the Constitution of
the United States and the acts to enforce the
same, a quart bottle of rye whisky and two
miniature glasses. He filled them both to the brim
and handed one to Gembitz.
"L'chayim," he said piously.
"L'chayim tovim!" Gembitz replied.
As they tossed it down, the office door opened
again, and this time, J.J. Leonard, the
theatrical manager, literally flung himself into the
room.
"Huh!" he snorted. "Celebrating, ain't you!"
"I couldn't talk to you about the benefit now,"
Danowitz said, hastily replacing the bottle in the
safe.
"Benefit!" Leonard cried. "There ain't going
to be no benefit."
"Why not?" Danowitz demanded.
Leonard threw his hat on the desk and jutted
out his chin at Danowitz.
"Don't throw me no bluffs, you charity faker,
you!" he cried. "Chutzpah! Does me out of an
act that would have made the show—absolutely
made it—and then expects me I should go on
with his rotten benefit yet."
"I don't know what you're talking about at
all," Danowitz said.
"You don't, hey?" Leonard said. "I suppose
you ain't drinking that hootch because your son
gets married this morning."
"And suppose he is," Gembitz said. "What of it?"
"I don't know who you are and I don't want
to know, but I'll tell you what of it," Leonard
said. "His son busts up my 'Comics' by marrying
this here McNally, and he made up the match."
"I made up the match!" Danowitz cried. "Do
you think I'm crazy?"
"Like a fox," Leonard said. "I suppose you
don't know that girl's father is a millionaire."
Danowitz grabbed Leonard's hat from the
desk and handed it to the manager.
"You get right out of here," he shouted. "An
idea! Just because the girl's father is a
millionaire or a multimillionaire or a billionaire, he
thinks that I should go to work and make up a
match between my only son and a lady which
ain't one of our people."
"Yes, she ain't!" Leonard jeered.
"But her name is McNally," Gembitz said.
"And mine is Leonard," Leonard retorted.
"She ain't no McNally. She's only in the show
business with Al Sands under the team name of
Sands and McNally."
"Maybe he's right, Danowitz," Gembitz said.
"When a feller does business under the firm
name of the Eagle Pants Company he don't
necessarily got to be an eagle."
"Well, if her name ain't McNally," Danowitz
asked, "what is it?"
Before Leonard could answer, Gershon Danowitz,
Jr., opened the door. He was wearing a
new hat—a brown derby—in place of the old
soft black hat. It was essentially a shirt
manufacturer's hat and not a dramatist's hat.
"Pop," he said, "I want you to meet my wife."
He stood aside and disclosed in the doorway
behind him a young lady who combined all the
more attractive physical features of Maxine
Elliott, Billie Burke, and Mrs. Mildred Harris
Chaplin.
"Sadie!" Gembitz cried, and immediately
enfolded her in his arms.
"It looks like a curtain and a good one," Leonard
said, "but it ain't. I am going to see a lawyer
about this."
"Save your money," Gershon, Jr., said. "All
you can do under your contract is to get an
injunction against her acting in any other show
except yours, and if you want a written guarantee
that she won't, I'll give it to you."
"And I'll give you a written guarantee that
I wouldn't put on your show, neither," Leonard said.
"Your word is sufficient," Gershon, Jr., assured
him, "because I am out of the play-writing
business for good."
"Well," Gershon Danowitz, Sr., remarked
after Leonard had left, "it's an old saying and a
true one that all's well what ends well, but where
the Bella Hirschkind Home for Indignant Females
gets off, I don't know."
"Say," Gembitz said, "figure out what them
indignant females would of got out of this here
benefit and send me a bill for it. After all, an
only daughter only gets married once, so why
shouldn't it cost me something? Am I right or
wrong?"