The Bandbox - Louis Joseph Vance (read along books .TXT) 📗

“But tell me—?”

“Oh, it’s hardly worth talking about, dear boy. Only—there’s the ingenue rôle; you’ve given her too much to do; she’s on the stage in all of my biggest scenes, and has business enough in them to spoil my best effects. Of course, that can be arranged. And then the leading man’s part—I don’t want to seem hypercritical, but he’s altogether too clever; you mustn’t let him overshadow the heroine the way he does; some of his business is plainly hers—I can see myself doing it infinitely better than any leading man we could afford to engage. And those witty lines you’ve put into his mouth—I must have them; you won’t find it hard, I’m sure, to twist the lines a bit, so that they come from the heroine rather than the hero....”

Staff held up a warning hand, and laughed.

“Just a minute, Alison,” said he. “Remember this is a play, not a background for you. And with a play it’s much as with matrimony: if either turns out to be a monologue it’s bound to be a failure.”

Alison frowned slightly, then forced a laugh, and rose. “You authors are all alike,” she complained, pouting; “I mean, as authors. But I’m not going to have any trouble with you, dear boy. We’ll agree on everything; I’m going to be reasonable and you’ve got to be. Besides, we’ve heaps of time to talk it over. Now I’m going to change and get up on deck. Will you wait for me in the saloon, outside? I shan’t be ten minutes.”

“Will I?” he laughed. “Your only trouble will be to keep me away from your door, this trip.” He gathered up his manuscript and steamer-cap, then with his hand on the door-knob paused. “Oh, I forgot that blessed bandbox!”

“Never mind that now,” said Alison. “I’ll have Jane repack it and take it back to your steward. Besides, I’m in a hurry, stifling for fresh air. Just give me twenty minutes....”

She offered him a hand, and he bowed his lips to it; then quietly let himself out into the alleyway.

Late that night, Staff drifted into the smoking-room, which he found rather sparsely patronised. This fact surprised him no less than its explanation: it was after eleven o’clock. He had hardly realised the flight of time, so absorbed had he been all evening in argument with Alison Landis.

There remained in the smoking-room, at this late hour, but half a dozen detached men, smoking and talking over their nightcaps, and one table of bridge players—in whose number, of course, there was Mr. Iff.

Nodding abstractedly to the little man, Staff found a quiet corner and sat him down with a sigh and a shake of his head that illustrated vividly his frame of mind. He was a little blue and more than a little distressed. And this was nothing but natural, since he was still in the throes of the discovery that one man can hardly with success play the dual rôle of playwright and sweetheart to a successful actress.

Alison was charming, he told himself, a woman incomparable, tenderly sweet and desirable; and he loved her beyond expression. But ... his play was also more than a slight thing in his life. It meant a good deal to him; he had worked hard and put the best that was in him into its making; and hard as the work had been, it had been a labour of love. He wasn’t a man to overestimate his ability; he possessed a singularly sane and clear appreciation of the true value of his work, harbouring no illusions as to his real status either as dramatist or novelist. But at the same time, he knew when he had done good work. And A Single Woman promised to be a good play, measured by modern standards: not great, but sound and clear and strong. The plot was of sufficient originality to command attention; the construction was clear, sane, inevitable; he had mixed the elements of comedy and drama with the deftness of a sure hand; and he had carefully built up the characters in true proportion to one another and to their respective significance in the action.

Should all this then, be garbled and distorted to satisfy a woman’s passion for the centre of the stage? Must he be untrue to the fundamentals of dramaturgic art in order to earn her tolerance? Could he gain his own consent to present to the public as work representative of his fancy the misshapen monstrosity which would inevitably result of yielding to Alison’s insistence?

Small wonder that he sighed and wagged a doleful head!

Now while all this was passing through a mind wrapped in gloomy and profound abstraction, Iff’s voice disturbed him.

“Pity the poor playwright!” it said in accents of amusement.

Looking up, Staff discovered that the little man stood before him, a furtive twinkle in his pale blue eyes. The bridge game had broken up, and they two were now alone in the smoking-room—saving the presence of a steward yawning sleepily and wishing to ’Eaven they’d turn in and give ’im a charnce to snatch a wink o’ sleep.

“Hello,” said Staff, none too cordially. “What d’ you mean by that?”

“Hello,” responded Iff, dropping upon the cushioned seat beside him. He snapped his fingers at the steward. “Give it a name,” said he.

Staff gave it a name. “You don’t answer me,” he persisted. “Why pity the poor playwright?”

“He has his troubles,” quoth Mr. Iff cheerfully, if vaguely. “Need I enumerate them, to you? Anyway, if the poor playwright isn’t to be pitied, what right ’ve you got to stick round here looking like that?”

“Oh!” Staff laughed uneasily. “I was thinking....”

“I flattered you to the extent of surmising as much.” Iff elevated one of the glasses which had just been put before them. “Chin-chin,” said he—“that is, if you’ve no particular objection to chin-chinning with a putative criminal of the d’p’st dye?”

“None whatever,” returned Staff, lifting his own glass—“at least, not so long as it affords me continued opportunity to watch him cooking up his cunning little crimes.”

“Ah!” cried Iff with enthusiasm—“there spoke the true spirit of Sociological Research. Long may you rave!”

He set down an empty glass.

Staff laughed, sufficiently diverted to forget his troubles for the time being.

“I wish I could make you out,” he said slowly, eyeing the older man.

“You mean you hope I’m not going to take you in.”

“Either way—or both: please yourself.”

“Ah!” said the little man appreciatively—“I am a deep one, ain’t I?”

He laid a finger alongside his nose and looked unutterably enigmatic.

At this point they were interrupted: a man burst into the smoking-room from the deck and pulled up breathing heavily, as if he had been running, while he raked the room with quick, enquiring glances. Staff recognised Mr. Manvers, the purser, betraying every evidence of a disturbed mind. At the same moment, Manvers caught sight of the pair in the corner and made for them.

“Mr. Ismay—” he began, halting before their table and glaring gloomily at Staff’s companion.

“I beg your pardon,” said the person addressed, icily; “my name is Iff.”

Manvers made an impatient movement with one hand. “Iff or Ismay—it’s all one to me—to you too, I fancy—”

“One moment!” snapped Iff, rising. “If you were an older man,” he said stiffly, “and a smaller, I’d pull your impertinent nose, sir! As things stand, I’d probably get my head punched if I did.”

“That’s sound logic,” returned Manvers with a sneer.

“Well, then, sir? What do you want with me?”

Manvers changed his attitude to one of sardonic civility. “The captain sent me to ask you if you would be kind enough to step up to his cabin,” he said stiltedly. “May I hope you will be good enough to humour him?”

“Most assuredly,” Iff picked up his steamer-cap and set it jauntily upon his head. “Might one enquire the cause of all this-here fluster?”

“I daresay the captain—”

“Oh, very well. If you won’t talk, my dear purser, I’ll hazard a shrewd guess—by your leave.”

The purser stared. “What’s that?”

“I was about to say,” pursued Iff serenely, “that I’ll lay two to one that the Cadogan collar has disappeared.”

Manvers continued to stare, his eyes blank with amazement. “You’ve got your nerve with you, I must say,” he growled.

“Or guilty knowledge? Which, Mr. Manvers?”

A reply seemed to tremble on Manvers’ lips, but to be withheld at discretion. “I’m not the captain,” he said after a slight pause; “go and cheek him as far as you like. And we’re keeping him waiting, if I may be permitted to mention it.”

Iff turned to Staff, with an engaging smile. “Rejecting the guilty knowledge hypothesis, for the sake of the argument,” said he: “you’ll admit I’m the only suspicious personage known to be aboard; so it’s not such a wild guess—that the collar has vanished—when I’m sent for by the captain at this unearthly hour.... Lead on, Mr. Manvers,” he wound up with a dramatic gesture.

The purser nodded and turned toward the door. Staff jumped up and followed the pair.

“You don’t mind my coming?” he asked.

“No—wish you would; you can bear witness to the captain that I did everything in my power to make Miss Landis appreciate the danger—”

“Then,” Iff interrupted suavely, “the collar has disappeared—we’re to understand?”

“Yes,” the purser assented shortly.

They scurried forward and mounted the ladder to the boat-deck, where the captain’s quarters were situated in the deckhouse immediately abaft the bridge. From an open door—for the night was as warm as it was dark—a wide stream of light fell athwart the deck, like gold upon black velvet.

Pausing en silhouette against the glow, the purser knocked discreetly. Iff ranged up beside him, dwarfed by comparison. Staff held back at a little distance.

A voice from within barked: “Oh, come in!” Iff and Manvers obeyed. Staff paused on the threshold, bending his head to escape the lintel.

Standing thus, he appreciated the tableau: the neat, tidy little room—commodious for a steamship—glistening with white-enamelled woodwork in the radiance of half a dozen electric bulbs; Alison in a steamer-coat seated on the far side of a chart-table, her colouring unusually pallid, her brows knitted and eyes anxious; the maid, Jane, standing respectfully behind her mistress; Manvers to one side and out of the way, but plainly eager and distraught; Iff in the centre of the stage, his slight, round-shouldered figure lending him a deceptive effect of embarrassment which was only enhanced by his semi-placating, semi-wistful smile and his small, blinking eyes; the captain looming over him, authority and menace incarnate in his heavy, square-set, sturdy body and heavy-browed, square-jawed, beardless and weathered face....

Manvers said: “This is Mr. Iff, Captain Cobb.”

The captain nodded brusquely. His hands were in his coat-pockets; he didn’t offer to remove them. Iff blinked up at him and cocked his small head critically to one side, persistently smiling.

“I’ve heard so much of you, sir,” he said in a husky, weary voice, very subdued. “It’s a real pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Captain Cobb noticed this bit of effrontery by nothing more than a growl deep in this throat. His eyes travelled on, above Iff’s head, and Staff was conscious of their penetrating and unfriendly question. He bowed uncertainly.

“Oh—and Mr. Staff,” said Manvers hastily.

“Well?” said the captain without moving.

“A friend of Miss Landis and also—curiously—in the same room with Mr. Iff.”

“Ah,” remarked the captain. “How-d’-you-do?” He removed his right hand from its pocket and held it out with the air of a man who wishes it understood that by such action he commits himself to nothing.

Before Staff could grasp it, Iff shook it heartily. “Ah,” he said blandly, “h’ are ye?” Then he dropped the hand, thereby preventing the captain from wrenching it away, and averted his eyes modestly, thereby escaping the captain’s outraged glare.

Staff managed to overcome an