"The other girls and myself."

Mr. Goble jerked his head so violently that the Derby hat flew off, to be picked up, dusted, and restored by the stage-director.

"Oh, so you don't like it? Well, you know what you can do...."

"Yes," said Jill, "we do. We are going to strike."

"What?"

"If you don't let Mae go on, we shan't go on. There won't be a performance to-night, unless you like to give one without a chorus."

"Are you crazy?"

"Perhaps. But we're quite unanimous."

Mr. Goble, like most theatrical managers, was not good at words over two syllables.

"You're what?"

"We've talked it over, and we've all decided to do what I said."

Mr. Goble's hat shot off again, and gambolled away into the wings, with the stage-director bounding after it like a retriever.

"Whose idea's this?" demanded Mr. Goble. His eyes were a little foggy, for his brain was adjusting itself but slowly to the novel situation.

"Mine."

"Oh, yours! I thought as much!"

"Well," said Jill, "I'll go back and tell them that you will not do what we ask. We will keep our make-up on in case you change your mind."

She turned away.

"Come back!"

Jill proceeded toward the staircase. As she went, a husky voice spoke in her ear.

"Go to it, kid! You're all right!"

The head-carpenter had broken his Trappist vows twice in a single evening, a thing which had not happened to him since the night three years ago, when, sinking wearily into a seat in a dark corner for a bit of a rest, he found that one of his a.s.sistants had placed a pot of red paint there.

IV

To Mr. Goble, fermenting and full of strange oaths, entered Johnson Miller. The dance-director was always edgey on first nights, and during the foregoing conversation had been flitting about the stage like a white-haired moth. His deafness had kept him in complete ignorance that there was anything untoward afoot, and he now approached Mr. Goble with his watch in his hand.

"Eight twenty-five," he observed. "Time those girls were on stage."

Mr. Goble, glad of a concrete target for his wrath, cursed him in about two hundred and fifty rich and well-selected words.

"Huh?" said Miller, hand to ear.

Mr. Goble repeated the last hundred and eleven words, the pick of the bunch.

"Can't hear!" said Mr. Miller regretfully. "Got a cold."

The grave danger that Mr. Goble, a thick-necked man, would undergo some sort of a stroke was averted by the presence of mind of the stage-director, who, returning with the hat, presented it like a bouquet to his employer, and then, his hands being now unoccupied, formed them into a funnel and through this flesh-and-blood megaphone endeavoured to impart the bad news.

"The girls say they won't go on!"

Mr. Miller nodded.

"I _said_ it was time they were on."

"They're on strike!"

"It's not," said Mr. Miller austerely, "what they _like_, it's what they're paid for. They ought to be on stage. We should be ringing up in two minutes."

The stage-director drew another breath, then thought better of it. He had a wife and children, and, if dadda went under with apoplexy, what became of the home, civilization's most sacred product? He relaxed the muscles of his diaphragm, and reached for pencil and paper.

Mr. Miller inspected the message, felt for his spectacle-case, found it, opened it, took out his gla.s.ses, replaced the spectacle-case, felt for his handkerchief, polished the gla.s.ses, replaced the handkerchief, put the gla.s.ses on, and read. A blank look came into his face.

"Why?" he enquired.

The stage-director, with a nod of the head intended to imply that he must be patient and all would come right in the future, recovered the paper, and scribbled another sentence. Mr. Miller perused it.

"Because Mae D'Arcy has got her notice?" he queried, amazed. "But the girl can't dance a step."

The stage-director, by means of a wave of the hand, a lifting of both eyebrows, and a wrinkling of the nose, replied that the situation, unreasonable as it might appear to the thinking man, was as he had stated and must be faced. What, he enquired--through the medium of a clever drooping of the mouth and a shrug of the shoulders--was to be done about it?

Mr. Miller remained for a moment in meditation.

"I'll go and talk to them," he said.

He flitted off, and the stage-director leaned back against the asbestos curtain. He was exhausted, and his throat was in agony, but nevertheless he was conscious of a feeling of quiet happiness. His life had been lived in the shadow of the constant fear that some day Mr. Goble might dismiss him. Should that disaster occur, he felt there was always a future for him in the movies.

Scarcely had Mr. Miller disappeared on his peace-making errand, when there was a noise like a fowl going through a quickset hedge, and Mr.

Saltzburg, brandishing his baton as if he were conducting an unseen orchestra, plunged through the scenery at the left upper entrance and charged excitedly down the stage. Having taken his musicians twice through the overture, he had for ten minutes been sitting in silence, waiting for the curtain to go up. At last, his emotional nature cracking under the strain of this suspense, he had left his conductor's chair and plunged down under the stage by way of the musician's bolthole to ascertain what was causing the delay.

"What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it?" enquired Mr.

Saltzburg. "I wait and wait and wait and wait and wait.... We cannot play the overture again. What is it? What has happened?"

Mr. Goble, that overwrought soul, had betaken himself to the wings where he was striding up and down with his hands behind his back, chewing his cigar. The stage-director braced himself once more to the task of explanation.

"The girls have struck!"

Mr. Saltzburg blinked through his gla.s.ses.

"The girls?" he repeated blankly.