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This was the last straw. The Ghost–the Ghost that he had laid forever, the Ghost that made melodrama of this tragedy of the thinker–was risen again, and cake-walking!

Unperceived in the general convulsion and cachinnation, Pinchas leaped to his feet, and, seeing scarlet, bounded through the iron door and made for the stage. But a hand was extended in the nick of time–the hand he had kissed–and Pinchas was drawn back by the collar.

‘You don’t take your call yet,’ said the unruffled Kloot.

‘Let me go! I must speak to the people. They must learn the truth. They think me, Melchitsedek Pinchas, guilty of this tohu-bohu! My sun will set. I shall be laughed at from the Hudson to the Jordan.’

‘Hush! Hush! You are interrupting the poesy.’

‘Who has drawn and quartered my play? Speak!’

‘I’ve only arranged it for the stage,’ said Kloot, unabashed.

‘You!’ gasped the poet.

‘You said I and you are the only two men who understand how to treat poesy.’

‘You understand push-carts, not poesy!’ hissed the poet. ‘You conspire to keep me out of the theatre–I will summons you!’

‘We had to keep all authors out. Suppose Shakespeare had turned up and complained of you.’

‘Shakespeare would have been only too grateful.’

‘Hush! The boss is going on.’

From the opposite wing Hamlet was indeed advancing. Pinchas made a wild plunge forward, but Kloot’s grasp on his collar was still carefully firm.

‘Who’s mutilating the poesy now?’ Kloot frowned angrily from under his peaked cap. ‘You’ll spoil the scene.’

‘Peace, liar! You promised me your wife for Ophelia!’

Kloot’s frown relaxed into a smile. ‘Sure! The first wife I get you shall have.’

Pinchas gnashed his teeth. Goldwater’s voice rose in a joyous roulade.

‘I think you owe me a car-fare,’ said Kloot soothingly.

Pinchas waved the rejoinder aside with his cane. ‘Why does Hamlet sing?’ he demanded fiercely.

‘Because it’s Passover,’ said Kloot. ‘You are a “greener” in New York, otherwise you would know that it is a tradition to have musical plays on Passover. Our audiences wouldn’t stand for any other. You’re such an unreasonable cuss! Why else did we take your “Hamlet” for a Passover play?’

‘But “Hamlet” isn’t a musical play.’

‘Yes, it is! How about Ophelia’s songs? That was what decided us. Of course they needed eking out.’

‘But “Hamlet” is a tragedy!’ gasped Pinchas.

‘Sure!’ said Kloot cheerfully. ‘They all die at the end. Our audiences would go away miserable if they didn’t. You wait till they’re dead, then you shall take your call.’

‘Take my call, for your play!’

‘There’s quite a lot of your lines left, if you listen carefully. Only you don’t understand stage technique. Oh, I’m not grumbling; we’re quite satisfied. The idea of adapting “Hamlet” for the Yiddish stage is yours, and it’s worth every cent we paid.’

A storm of applause gave point to the speaker’s words, and removed the last partition between the poet’s great mind and momentary madness. What! here was that ape of a Goldwater positively wallowing in admiration, while he, the mighty poet, had been cast into outer darkness and his work mocked and crucified! He put forth all his might, like Samson amid the Philistines, and leaving his coat-collar in Kloot’s hand, he plunged into the circle of light. Goldwater’s amazed face turned to meet him.

‘Cutter of lines!’ The poet’s cane slashed across Hamlet’s right cheek near the right eye. ‘Perverter of poesy!’ It slashed across the left cheek near the left eye.

The Prince of Palestine received each swish with a yell of pain and fear, and the ever-ready Kloot dropped the curtain on the tragic scene.

Such hubbub and hullabaloo as rose on both sides of the curtain! Yet in the end the poet escaped scot-free. Goldwater was a coward, Kloot a sage. The same prudence that had led Kloot to exclude authors, saved him from magnifying their importance by police squabbles. Besides, a clever lawyer might prove the exclusion illegal. What was done was done. The dignity of the hero of a hundred dramas was best served by private beefsteaks and a rumoured version, irrefutable save in a court of law. It was bad enough that the Heathen Journalist should supply so graphic a picture of the midnight melodrama, coloured even more highly than Goldwater’s eyes. Kloot had been glad that the Journalist had left before the episode; but when he saw the account he wished the scribe had stayed.

‘He won’t play Hamlet with that pair of shiners,’ Pinchas prophesied early the next morning to the supping cafe.

Radsikoff beamed and refilled Pinchas’s glass with champagne. He had carried out his promise of assisting at the premiere, and was now paying for the poet’s supper.

‘You’re the first playwright Goldwater hasn’t managed to dodge,’ he chuckled.

‘Ah!’ said the poet meditatively. ‘Action is greater than Thought. Action is the greatest thing in the world.’