Part 15

"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?"

ZONE OF QUIET

_By_ Ring W. Lardner

RING W. LARDNER

Ring Lardner was born in Niles, Mich., on March 6, 1885, became a reporter in South Bend, Ind., twenty years later, and almost immediately began a career as a sports writer, chiefly for Chicago newspapers, which has never entirely terminated, although crisscrossed in recent years by a couple of other careers. The more widely known of these is Lardner's career as a humorist; but in addition he has now become famous as a satirist of no mean powers. For particulars see "Champion" in his book, _How to Write Short Stories_.

"Zone of Quiet," which is, I think, a humorous story, but which is also certainly something else again, is from Mr. Lardner's latest collection, _The Love Nest_.

ZONE OF QUIET[1]

[1] Copyright, 1926, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1925, by The International Magazine Company.

"Well," said the doctor briskly, "how do you feel?"

"Oh, I guess I'm all right," replied the man in bed. "I'm still kind of drowsy, that's all."

"You were under the anesthetic an hour and a half. It's no wonder you aren't wide-awake yet. But you'll be better after a good night's rest, and I've left something with Miss Lyons that'll make you sleep. I'm going along now. Miss Lyons will take good care of you."

"I'm off at seven o'clock," said Miss Lyons. "I'm going to a show with my G.F. But Miss Halsey's all right. She's the night floor nurse. Anything you want, she'll get it for you. What can I give him to eat, Doctor?"

"Nothing at all; not till after I've been here tomorrow. He'll be better off without anything. Just see that he's kept quiet. Don't let him talk, and don't talk to him; that is, if you can help it."

"Help it!" said Miss Lyons. "Say, I can be old lady Sphinx herself when I want to! Sometimes I sit for hours--not alone, neither--and never say a word. Just think and think. And dream.

"I had a G.F. in Baltimore, where I took my training; she used to call me Dummy. Not because I'm dumb like some people--you know--but because I'd sit there and not say nothing. She'd say, 'A penny for your thoughts, Eleanor.' That's my first name--Eleanor."

"Well, I must run along. I'll see you in the morning."

"Good-by, Doctor," said the man in bed as he went out.

"Good-by, Doctor Cox," said Miss Lyons as the door closed.

"He seems like an awful nice fella," said Miss Lyons. "And a good doctor, too. This is the first time I've been on a case with him. He gives a girl credit for having some sense. Most of these doctors treat us like they thought we were Mormons or something. Like Doctor Holland. I was on a case with him last week. He treated me like I was a Mormon or something. Finally I told him, I said, 'I'm not as dumb as I look.' She died Friday night."

"Who?" asked the man in bed.

"The woman; the case I was on," said Miss Lyons.

"And what did the doctor say when you told him you weren't as dumb as you look?"

"I don't remember," said Miss Lyons. "He said, 'I hope not,' or something. What could he say? Gee! It's quarter to seven. I hadn't no idear it was so late. I must get busy and fix you up for the night. And I'll tell Miss Halsey to take good care of you. We're going to see 'What Price Glory?' I'm going with my G.F. Her B.F. gave her the tickets and he's going to meet us after the show and take us to supper.

"Marian--that's my G.F.--she's crazy wild about him. And he's crazy about her, to hear her tell it. But I said to her this noon--she called me up on the phone--I said to her: 'If he's so crazy about you, why don't he propose? He's got plenty of money and no strings tied to him, and as far as I can see there's no reason why he shouldn't marry you if he wants you as bad as you say he does.' So she said maybe he was going to ask her tonight. I told her: 'Don't be silly! Would he drag me along if he was going to ask you?'

"That about him having plenty of money, though, that's a joke. He told her he had and she believes him. I haven't met him yet, but he looks in his picture like he's lucky if he's getting twenty-five dollars a week. She thinks he must be rich because he's in Wall Street. I told her, I said: 'That being in Wall Street don't mean nothing. What does he do there? is the question. You know they have to have janitors in those buildings just the same like anywhere else.' But she thinks he's God or somebody.

"She keeps asking me if I don't think he's the best-looking thing I ever saw. I tell her yes, sure, but between you and I, I don't believe anybody'd ever mistake him for Richard Barthelmess.

"Oh, say! I saw him the other day, coming out of the Algonquin! He's the best-looking thing! Even better looking than on the screen. Roy Stewart."

"What about Roy Stewart?" asked the man in bed.

"Oh, he's the fella I was telling you about," said Miss Lyons. "He's my G.F.'s B.F."

"Maybe I'm a D.F. not to know, but would you tell me what a B.F. and G.F. are?"

"Well, you are dumb, aren't you!" said Miss Lyons. "A G.F., that's a girl friend, and a B.F. is a boy friend. I thought everybody knew that.

"I'm going out now and find Miss Halsey and tell her to be nice to you. But maybe I better not."

"Why not?" asked the man in bed.

"Oh, nothing. I was just thinking of something funny that happened last time I was on a case in this hospital. It was the day the man had been operated on and he was the best-looking somebody you ever saw. So when I went off duty I told Miss Halsey to be nice to him, like I was going to tell her about you. And when I came back in the morning he was dead. Isn't that funny?"

"Very!"

"Well," said Miss Lyons, "did you have a good night? You look a lot better, anyway. How'd you like Miss Halsey? Did you notice her ankles? She's got pretty near the smallest ankles I ever saw. Cute. I remember one day Tyler--that's one of the internes--he said if he could just see our ankles, mine and Miss Halsey's he wouldn't know which was which. Of course we don't look anything alike other ways. She's pretty close to thirty and--well, nobody'd ever take her for Julia Hoyt. Helen."