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Suddenly an idea struck him. He hied to the nearest drug-store, and entering the telephone cabinet rang up Goldwater.

‘Hello, there!’ came the voice of Kloot. ‘Who are you?’

Pinchas had a vivid vision of the big-nosed youth, in his peaked cap, sitting on the table by the telephone, swinging his legs; but he replied craftily, in a disguised voice: ‘You, Goldwater?’

‘No; Goldwater’s on the stage.’

Pinchas groaned. But at that very instant Goldwater’s voice returned to the bureau, ejaculating complacently: ‘They’re loving it, Kloot; they’re swallowing it like ice-cream soda.’

Pinchas tingled with pleasure, but all Kloot replied was: ‘You’re wanted on the ‘phone.’

‘Hello!’ called Goldwater.

‘Hello!’ replied Pinchas in his natural voice. ‘May a sudden death smite you! May the curtain fall on a gibbering epileptic!’

‘Can’t hear!’ said Goldwater. ‘Speak plainer.’

‘I will speak plainer, swine-head! Never shall a work of mine defile itself in your dirty dollar-factory. I spit on you!’ He spat viciously into the telephone disk. ‘Your father was a Meshummad (apostate), and your mother—-‘

But Goldwater had cut off the connection. Pinchas finished for his own satisfaction: ‘An Irish fire-woman.’

‘That was worth ten cents,’ he muttered, as he strode out into the night. And patrolling the front of the theatre again, or leaning on his cane as on a sword, he was warmed by the thought that his venom had pierced through all the actor-manager’s defences.

At last a change came over the nightmare. Striding from the envied, illuminated Within appeared the Heathen Journalist, note-book in hand. At sight of the author he shied. ‘Must skedaddle, Pin-cuss,’ he said apologetically, ‘if we’re to get anything into to-morrow’s paper. Your people are so durned slow–nearly eleven, and only two acts over. You’ll have to brisk ’em up a bit. Good-bye.’

He shook the poet’s hand and was off. With an inspiration Pinchas gave chase. He caught the Journalist just boarding a car.

‘Got your theatre ticket?’ he panted.

‘What for?’

‘Give it me.’

The Journalist fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and threw him a crumpled fragment. ‘What in thunder—-‘ he began. And then, to Pinchas’s relief, the car removed the querist.

For the moment the poet was feeling only the indignity of the position, and the Heathen Journalist as trumpeter of his wrongs and avenger of the Muses had not occurred to him. He smoothed out the magic scrap, and was inside the suffocating, close-packed theatre before the disconcerted janitor could meet the new situation. Pinchas found the vacated journalistic chair in the stage-box; he was installed therein before the managerial minions arrived on ejection bent.

‘This is my house!’ screamed Pinchas. ‘I stay here! Let me be–swine, serpents, Behemoth!’

‘Sh!’ came in a shower from every quarter. ‘Sit down there! Turn him out!’ The curtain was going up; Pinchas was saved.

But only for more gruesome torture. The third act began. Hamlet collogued with the Queen. The poet pricked up his ears. Whose language was this? Certainly not Shakespeare’s or his superior’s. Angels and ministers of grace defend him! this was only the illiterate jargon of the hack playwright, with its peppering of the phrases of Hester Street. ‘You have too many dead flies on you,’ Hamlet’s mother told him. ‘You’ll get left.’ But the nightmare thickened. Hamlet and his mother opened their mouths and sang. Their songs were light and gay, and held encore verses to reward the enthusiastic. The actors, like the audience, were leisurely; here midnight and the closure were not synonymous. When there were no more encore verses, Ignatz Levitsky would turn to the audience and bow in acknowledgment of the compliment. Pinchas’s eyes were orbs straining at their sockets; froth gathered on his lips.

Mrs. Goldwater bounded on, fantastically mad, her songs set to comic airs. The great house received her in the same comic spirit. Instead of rue and rosemary she carried a rustling green Lulov–the palm-branch of the Feast of Tabernacles–and shook it piously toward every corner of the compass. At each shake the audience rolled about in spasms of merriment. A moment later a white gliding figure, moving to the measure of the cake-walk, keyed up the laughter to hysteria. It was the Ghost appearing to frighten Ophelia. His sepulchral bass notes mingled with her terror-stricken soprano.