Chapter 6

"After getting a skirt somewhere."

"Yes--the housekeeper's, it happened to be her evening out--why, he just naturally supposed Nora was Miss Omar."

"Ah! then her name isn't Omar. What might it be?"

"I'd rather not tell--if you don't mind."

"But when Latimer found out she had the diamonds--he did find out?"

"She confessed to him. Nora's not really so bad a girl as--"

"Very interesting! But it doesn't happen to be Latimer's version. And you say Latimer wouldn't lie."

I got pale--but the paleness was on the inside of me. Think I was going to flinch before a chump like Moriway, even if I had walked straight into his trap?

"It isn't?" I exclaimed.

"No. Latimer's note to Mrs. Kingdon said the diamonds were found in the bell-boy's jacket the thief had left behind him."

"Well! It only shows what a bad habit lying is. Nora must have fibbed to me, for the pure pleasure of fibbing. I'll never dare to trust her again. Do you believe then that she didn't have anything to do with the hotel robbery? I do hope so. It's one less sin on her wicked head. It's hard, having such a girl in the family!" Oh, wasn't I grieved!

He looked me straight in the eye. I looked at him. I was unutterably sad about that tough sister of mine, and I vow I looked holy then, though I never did before and may never again.

"Well, I only saw her in the twilight," he said slowly, watching my face all the time. "You two sisters are certainly miraculously alike."

The train was slowing down, and I got up with my basket. I stood right before him, my full face turned toward him.

"Are we?" I asked simply. "Don't you think it's more the expression than anything else, and the voice? Nora's really much fairer than I am. Good-by."

He watched me as I went out. I felt his eyes on the back of my jacket, and I was tempted to turn at the door and make a face at him. But I knew something better and safer than that. I waited till the train was just pulling out, and then, standing below his window, I motioned to him to raise it.

He did.

"I thought you were going to get out here," I called. "Are you sure you don't belong in Sing Sing, Mr. Moriway?"

I can see his face yet, Mag, and every time I think of it, it makes me nearly die of laughing. He had actually been fooled another time. It was worth the trip up there, to make a guy of him once more.

And whether it was or not, Mag, it was all I got, after all. For--would you believe Tom Dorgan would turn out such a sorehead? He's kicked up such a row ever since he got there, that it's the dark cell for him, and solitary confinement. Think of it--for Tom!

I begged, I bluffed, I cried, I coaxed, but many's the Nance Olden that has played her game against the rules of Sing Sing, and lost. They wouldn't even let me leave the things for him, or give him a message from me. And back to the station I had to carry the basket, and all the schemes I had to make old Tom Dorgan grin.

All the way back I had him in my mind. He's a tiger--Tom--when he's roused. I could see him, shut up there by himself, with not a soul to talk to, with not a human eye to look into, with not a thing on earth to do--Tom, who's action itself! He never was much of a thinker, and I never saw him read even a newspaper. What would he do to kill the time? Can't you see him there, at bay, back on his haunches, cursing and cursed, alone in the everlasting black silence?

I saw nothing else. Wherever I turned my eyes, that terrible picture was before me. And always it was just on the verge of becoming something else--something worse. He could throttle the world with his bare hands, if it had but one neck, in the mood he must be in now.

It was when I couldn't bear it a moment longer that I set my mind to find something else to think of.

I found it, Mag. Do you know what it was? It was just three words--of Obermuller's: "Earn it now."

After all, Miss Monahan, this graft of honesty they all preach so much about hasn't anything mysterious in it. All it is, is putting your wits to work according to the rules of the game and not against them. I was driven to it--the thought of big Tom crouching for a spring in the dark cell up yonder sent me whirling out into the thinking place, like the picture of the soul in the big book at Latimer's I read out of. And first thing you know, 'pon honor, Mag, it was as much fun planning how to "earn it now" as any lifting I ever schemed. It's getting the best of people that always charmed me--and here was a way to fool 'em according to law.

So busy I was making it all up, that the train pulled into the station before I knew it. I gave a last thought to that poor old hyena of a Tom, and then put him out of my mind. I had other fish to fry. Straight down to Mother Douty I went with my basket.

"A fool girl, mother, on her way up to Sing Sing, lost her basket, and Nance Olden found it; it ought to be worth a good deal."

She grinned. You couldn't make old Douty believe that the Lord himself wouldn't steal if He got a chance. And she knows the chances that come butting up against Nancy Olden.

Why did I lie to her? Not for practice, I assure you. She'd have beaten me down to the last cent if she thought it was mine, but she always thinks there'll be a find for her in something that's stolen. So I let her think I'd stolen it in the railway station, and we came to terms.

With what she gave me I bought a wig. Mag, I want you some day, when you can get off, to come and see that wig. I shouldn't wonder but you'd recognize it. It's red, of very coarse hair, but a wonderful color, and so long it--yes, it might be your own, Mag Monahan, it's so much like it. I went to the theater and got my Charity rig, took it home, and sat for hours there just looking at 'em both. When evening came I was ready to "earn it now."

You see, Obermuller had given me the whole day to be away, and neither Gray nor the other three Charities expected me back. I had to do it on the sly, you sassy Mag! Yes, it was partly because I love to cheat, but more because I was bound to have my chance once whether anybody else enjoyed it or not.

I came to the theater in my Charity rig and the wig. It looked as if I'd slept in it, and it came down to the draggled hem of the skirt. All the way there I walked like you, Mag. Once, when a newsboy grinned at me and shouted "Carrots!" I grinned back--your own, old Cruelty grin, Mag. I vow I felt so much like you--as you used to be--that when I lurched out on the stage at last, stumbling over my shoe laces and trying to push the hair out of my eyes, you'd have sworn it was little Mag Monahan I making her debut in the Cruelty room.

Oh, Mag, Mag, you darling Mag! Did you ever hear a whole house, a great big theater full of a peevish vaudeville audience, just rise at you, give one roar of laughter they hadn't expected at all to give, and then settle down to giggle at every move you made?

Girl alive, I just had 'em! They couldn't take their eyes off me. If I squirmed, they howled. If I stood on one foot, scratching the torn leg of my stocking with the other--you know, Mag!--they yelled. If I grinned, they just roared.

Oh, Mag, can't you see? Don't you understand? I was It. The center of the stage I carried round with me--it was just Nancy Olden. And for ten minutes Nancy had nothing to do but to play with 'em. 'Pon my life, Mag, it's just like stealing; the old graft exactly; it's so fascinating, so busy, and risky, except that they play the game with you and pay you and love you to fool 'em.

When the curtain fell it was different. Grays followed by the Charities, all clean and spick-and-span and--not in it; not even on the edge of it--stormed up to Obermuller standing at the wings.

"I'll quit the show here and now," she squawked. "It's a shame, a beastly shame. How dare you play me such a trick, Fred Obermuller? I never was treated so in my life--to have that dirty little wretch come tumbling on like that, without even so much as your telling me you'd made up all this new business for her! It's indecent, anyway. Why, I lost my cue. There was a gap for a full minute. The whole act was such a ghastly failure that I--"

"That you'd better go out now and make your prettiest bow, Gray. Phew! Listen to the house roar. That's what I call applause. Go on now."

She went.

Me? I didn't say a word. I looked at Obermuller and--and I just did like this. Yes, winked, Mag Monahan. I was so crazily happy I had to, didn't I?

But do you know what he did? Do you know what he did?

Well, I suppose I am screaming and the Troyons will put me out, but--he just--winked--back!

And then Gray came trailing back into the wings, and the shrieking and thumping and whistling out in front just went on--and on--and on--and on. Um! I just listened and loved it--every thump of it. And I stood there like a demure little kitten; or more like Mag Monahan after she'd had a good licking, and was good and quiet. And I never so much as budged till Obermuller said:

"Well, Nance, you have earned it. The gall of you! But it only proves that Fred Obermuller never yet bought a gold brick. Only, let me in on your racket next time. There, go on--take it. It's yours."

Oh, to have Fred Obermuller say things like that to you!

He gave me a bit of a push. 'Twas just a love-pat. I stumbled out on to the stage.

VII.

And that's why, Marguerite de Monahan, I want you to buy in with the madam here. Let 'em keep on calling it Troyon's as much as they want, but you're to be a partner on the money I'll give you. If this fairy story lasts, it'll be your own, Mag--a sort of commission you get on my take-off of you. But if anything happens to the world--if it should go crazy, or get sane, and not love Nancy Olden any more, why, here'll be a place for me, too.

Does it look that way? Divil a bit, you croaker! It looks--it looks--listen and I'll tell you how it looks.

It looks as though Gray and the great Gray rose diamond and the three Charities had all become a bit of background for Nance Olden to play upon.

It looks as though the audience likes the sound of my voice as much almost as I do myself; anyway, as much as it does the sight of me.

It looks as though the press, if you please, had discovered a new stage star, for down comes a little reporter to interview me--me, Nancy Olden! Think of that, Mag! I receive him all in my Charity rig, and in Obermuller's office, and he asks me silly questions and I tell him a lot of nonsense, but some truths, too, about the Cruelty. Fancy, he didn't know what the Cruelty was! S. P. C. C., he calls it. And all the time we talked a long-haired German artist he had brought with him was sketching Nance Olden in different poses. Isn't that the limit?

What d'ye think Tom Dorgan'd say to see half a page of Nancy Olden in the X-Ray? Wouldn't his eyes pop? Poor old Tom! ... No danger--they won't let him have the papers.... My old Tommy!

What is it, Mag? Oh, what was I saying? Yes--yes, how it looks.

Well, it looks as though the Trust--yes, the big and mighty T. T.--short for Theatrical Trust, you innocent--had heard of that same Nance Olden you read about in the papers. For one night last week, when I'd just come of and the house was yelling and shouting behind me, Obermuller meets me in the wings and trots me of to his private office.

"What for?" I asked him on the way.

"You'll find out in a minute. Come on."

I pulled up my stocking and followed. You know I wear it in that act without a garter, and it's always coming down the way yours used to, Mag. Even when it doesn't come down I pull it up, I'm so in the habit of doing it.

A little bit of a man, bald-headed, with a dyspeptic little black mustache turned down at the corners, watched me come in. He grinned at my make-up, and then at me.

"Clever little girl," he says through his nose. "How much do you stick Obermuller for?"

"Clever little man," say I, bold as brass and through my own nose; "none of your business."

"Hi--you, Olden!" roared Obermuller, as though I'd run away and he was trying to get the bit from between my teeth. "Answer the gentleman prettily. Don't you know a representative of the mighty T. T. when you see him? Can't you see the Syndicate aureole about his noble brow? This gentleman, Nance, is the great and only Max Tausig. He humbleth the exalted and uplifteth the lowly--or, if there's more money in it, he gives to him that hath and steals from him that hasn't, but would mighty well like to have. He has no conscience, no bowels, no heart. But he has got tin and nerve and power to beat the band. In short, and for all practical purposes for one in your profession, Nancy Olden, he's just God. Down on your knees and lick his boots--Trust gods wear boots, patent leathers--and thank him for permitting it, you lucky baggage!"

I looked at the little man; the angry red was just fading from the top of his cocoanut-shaped bald head.

"You always were a fool, Obermuller," he said cordially. "And you were always over-fond of your low-comedian jokes. If you hadn't been so smart with your tongue, you'd had more friends and not so many enemies in--"

"In the heavenly Syndicate, eh? Well, I have lived without--"

"You have lived, but--"

"But where do I expect to go when I die? Good theatrical managers, Nance, when they die as individuals go to Heaven--they get into the Trust. After that they just touch buttons; the Trust does the rest. Bad ones--the kickers--the Fred Obermullers go to--a place where salaries cease from troubling and royalties are at rest. It's a slow place where--where, in short, there's nothing doing. And only one thing's done--the kicker. It's that place Mr. Tausig thinks I'm bound for. And it's that place he's come to rescue you from, from sheer goodness of heart and a wary eye for all there's in it. Cinch him, Olden, for all the traffic will bear!"

I looked from one to the other--Obermuller, big and savage underneath all his gay talk, I knew him well enough to see that; the little man, his mouth turned down at the corners and a sneer in his eye for the fellow that wasn't clever enough to get in with the push.

"You must not give the young woman the big head, Obermuller. Her own is big enough, I'll bet, as it is. I ain't prepared to make any startling offer to a little girl that's just barely got her nose above the wall. The slightest shake might knock her off altogether, or she mightn't have strength enough in herself to hold on. But we'll give her a chance. And because of what it may lead to, if she works hard, because of the opportunities we can give her, there ain't so much in it in a money way as you might imagine."

Obermuller didn't say anything. His own lips and his own eyes sneered now, and he winked openly at me, which made the little man hot.

"Blast it!" he twanged. "I mean it. If you've got any notion through my coming down to your dirty little joint that we've set our hearts on having the girl, just get busy thinking something else. She may be worth something to you--measured up against the dubs you've got; but to us--"

"To you, it's not so much your not having her as my having her that--" "Exactly. It ain't our policy to leave any doubtful cards in the enemy's hands. He can have the bad ones. He couldn't get the good ones. And the doubtful ones, like this girl Olden--"

"Well, that's just where you're mistaken!" Obermuller thrust his hands deep in his pockets and put out that square chin of his like the fighter he is. "'This girl Olden' is anything but doubtful. She's a big card right now if she could be well handled. And the time isn't so far off when, if you get her, you people will be--"

"Just how much is your interest in her worth?" the little man sneered.

Obermuller glared at him, and in the pause I murmured demurely:

"Only a six-year contract."

Mag, you should have seen 'em jump--both of 'em; the little man with vexation, the big one with surprise.

A contract! Me?--Nance Olden! Why, Mag, you innocent, of course I hadn't. Managers don't give six-year contracts to girl--burglars who've never set foot on the stage.

When the little man was gone, Obermuller cornered me.

"What's your game, Olden?" he cried. "You're too deep for me; I throw up my hands. Come; what've you got in that smart little head of yours? Are you holding out for higher stakes? Do you expect him to buy that great six-year contract and divvy the proceeds with me? Because he will--when once they get their eye on you, they'll have you; and to turn up your nose at their offer if in just the way to make them itch for you. But how the deuce did you find it out? And where do you get your nerve from, anyway? A little beggar like you to refuse an offer from the T. T. and sit hatching your schemes on your little old 'steen dollars a week! ... It'll have to be twice 'steen, now, I suppose?"

"All right, just as you say," I laughed. "But why aren't you in the Trust, Fred Obermuller?"

"Why aren't you in society, Nance?"

"Um!--well, because society's prejudiced against lifting, but the Trust isn't. Do you know that's a great graft, Mr. Obermuller--lifting wholesale? Why don't you get in?"

"Because a Trust is a lot of sailors on a raft who keep their places by kicking off the drowning hands that clutch at it. Can you fancy a fellow like Tausig stooping down to help me tenderly on board to divide the pickings?"

"No, but I can fancy you grappling with him till he'd be glad to take you on rather than be pulled off himself."

"You'd be in with the push, would you, Olden, if you were managing?" he asked with a grin.

"I'd be at the top, wherever that was."

"Then why the deuce didn't you jump at Tausig's offer? Were you really crafty enough--"

"I am artiste, Monsieur Obermuller," I gutturaled like Mademoiselle Picotte, who dances on the wire. "I moost have about me those who arre--who arre congeniale--"

"You monkey!" he laughed. "Then, when Tausig comes to buy your contract--"

"We'll tell him to go to thunder."

He laughed. Say, Mag, that big fellow is like a boy when he's pleased. I guess that's what makes it such fun to please him.

"And I, who admired your business sagacity in holding off, Nance!" he said.

"I thought you admired my take-off! of Mademoiselle Picotte."

"Well?"

"Well, why don't you make use of it? Take me round to the theaters and let me mimic all the swell actors and actresses. I've got more chance with you than with that Trust gang. They wouldn't give me room to do my own stunt; they'd make me fit into theirs. But you--"

"But me! You think you can wind me round your finger?"

"Not--yet."

He chuckled. I thought I had him going. I saw Nance Olden spending her evenings at the big Broadway theaters, when, just at that minute, Ginger, the call-boy, burst in with a note.

Say, Mag, I wouldn't like to get that man Obermuller hopping mad at me, and Nancy Olden's no coward, either. But the way he gritted his teeth at that note and the devil in his eyes when he lifted them from it, made me wonder how I'd ever dared be facetious with him.

I got up to go. He'd forgotten me, but he looked up then.

"That was a great suggestion of yours, Olden, to put Lord Gray on to act himself--great!" His voice shook, he was so angry.

"Well!" I snapped. I wasn't going to let him see that a big man raging could bluff Nance Olden.

What did he mean? Why--just this: there was Lord Harold Gray, the real Lord behind the scenes, bringing the Lady who was really only a chorus girl to the show in his automobile; helping her dress like a maid; holding her box of jewels as he tagged after her like a big Newfoundland; smoking his one cigarette solemnly and admiringly while she was on the stage; poking after her like a tame bear. He's a funny fellow, that Lord Harold. He's a Tom Dorgan, with the brains and the graft and--and the brute, too, Mag, washed out of him; a Tom Dorgan that's been kept dressed in swagger clothes all his life and living at top-notch--a big, clean, handsome, stupid, good-natured, overgrown boy.

Yes, I'm coming to it. When I'd seen him go tagging after her chippy Ladyship behind the scenes long enough, I told Obermuller one day that it was absurd to send the mock Lady out on the boards and keep the live Lord hidden behind. He jumped at the idea, and they rigged up a little act for the two--the Lord and the Lady. Gray was furious when she heard of it--their making use of her Lord in such a way--but Lord Harold just swallowed his big Adam's apple with a gulp or two, and said:

"'Pon honor, it's a blawsted scheme, you know; but I'm jolly sure I'd make a bleddy ass of myself. I cawn't act, you know."

The ninny! You know he thinks Gray really can.

But Obermuller explained to him that he needn't act--just be himself out behind the wings, and lo! Lord Harold was "chawmed."

And Gray?

Why, she gave in at last; pretended to, anyway--sliding out of the Charity sketch, and rehearsing the thing with him, and all that. And--and do you know what she did, Mag? (Nance Olden may be pretty mean, but she wouldn't do a trick like that.) She waited till ten minutes before time for the thing to be put on and then threw a fit.

"She's so ill, her delicate Ladyship! So ill she just can't go on this evening! Wonder how long she thinks such an excuse will keep Lord Harold off when I want him on!" growled Obermuller, throwing her note over to me. He'd have liked to throw it at me if it'd been heavy enough to hurt; he was so thumping mad.

You see, there it was on the program:

THE CLEVER SKETCH ENTITLED

THEATRICAL ARISTOCRACY.

The Duke of Portmanteau .... Lord Harold Gray. The Duchess ................ Lady Gray.

The celebrated Gray jewels, including the great Rose Diamond, will be worn by Lady Gray in this number.

* * * * * * * * * *

No wonder Obermuller was raging. I looked at him. You don't like to tackle a fellow like that when he's dancing hot. And yet you ache to help him and--yes, yourself.

"Lord Harold's here yet, and the jewels?" I asked.

He gave a short nod. He was thinking. But so was I.

"Then all he wants is a Lady?"

"That's all," he said sarcastically.

"Well, what's the matter with me?"

He gasped.

"There's nothing the matter with your nerve, Olden."

"Thank you, so much." It was the way Gray says it when she tries to have an English accent. "Dress me up, Fred Obermuller, in Gray's new silk gown and the Gray jewels, and you'd never--"

"I'd never set eyes on you again."

"You'd never know, if you were in the audience, that it wasn't Gray herself. I can take her off to the life, and if the prompter'll stand by--"

He looked at me for a full minute.

"Try it, Olden," he said.

I did. I flew to Gray's dressing-room. She'd gone home deathly ill, of course. They gave me the best seamstress in the place. She let out the waist a bit and pulled over the lace to cover it. I got into that mass of silk and lace--oh, silk on silk, and Nance Olden inside! Beryl Blackburn did my hair, and Grace Weston put on my slippers. Topham, himself, hung me with those gorgeous shining diamonds and pearls and emeralds, till I felt like an idol loaded with booty. There were so many standing round me, rigging me up, that I didn't get a glimpse of the mirror till the second before Ginger called me. But in that second--in that second, Mag Monahan, I saw a fairy with blazing cheeks and shining eyes, with a diamond coronet in her brown hair, puffed high, and pearls on her bare neck and arms, and emeralds over the waist, and rubies and pearls on her fingers, and sprays of diamonds like frost on the lace of her skirt, and diamond buckles on her very slippers, and the rose diamond, like a sun, outshining all the rest; and--and, Mag, it was me!