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Strictly Business
by
They stand in the (ranch) library, which is furnished with mounted elk heads (didn’t the Elks have a fish fry in Amagensett once?), and the d’enouement begins. I know of no more interesting time in the run of a play unless it be when the prologue ends.
Helen thinks Jack has taken the money. Who else was there to take it? The box-office manager was at the front on his job; the orchestra hadn’t left their seats; and no man could get past “Old Jimmy,” the stage door-man, unless he could show a Skye terrier or an automobile as a guarantee of eligibility.
Goaded beyond imprudence (as before said), Helen says to Jack Valentine: “Robber and thief–and worse yet, stealer of trusting hearts, this should be your fate!”
With that out she whips, of course, the trusty 32-caliber.
“But I will be merciful,” goes on Helen. “You shall live–that will be your punishment. I will show you how easily I could have sent you to the death that you deserve. There is her picture on the mantel. I will send through her more beautiful face the bullet that should have pierced your craven heart.”
And she does it. And there’s no fake blank cartridges or assistants pulling strings. Helen fires. The bullet–the actual bullet–goes through the face of the photograph–and then strikes the hidden spring of the sliding panel in the wall–and lo! the panel slides, and there is the missing $647,000 in convincing stacks of currency and bags of gold. It’s great. You know how it is. Cherry practised for two months at a target on the roof of her boarding house. It took good shooting. In the sketch she had to hit a brass disk only three inches in diameter, covered by wall paper in the panel; and she had to stand in exactly the same spot every night, and the photo had to be in exactly the same spot, and she had to shoot steady and true every time.
Of course old “Arapahoe” had tucked the funds away there in the secret place; and, of course, Jack hadn’t taken anything except his salary (which really might have come under the head of “obtaining money under”; but that is neither here nor there); and, of course, the New York girl was really engaged to a concrete house contractor in the Bronx; and, necessarily, Jack and Helen ended in a half-Nelson–and there you are.
After Hart and Cherry had gotten “Mice Will Play” flawless, they had a try-out at a vaudeville house that accommodates. The sketch was a house wrecker. It was one of those rare strokes of talent that inundates a theatre from the roof down. The gallery wept; and the orchestra seats, being dressed for it, swam in tears.
After the show the booking agents signed blank checks and pressed fountain pens upon Hart and Cherry. Five hundred dollars a week was what it panned out.
That night at 11:30 Bob Hart took off his hat and bade Cherry good night at her boarding-house door.
“Mr. Hart,” said she thoughtfully, “come inside just a few minutes. We’ve got our chance now to make good and make money. What we want to do is to cut expenses every cent we can, and save all we can.”
“Right,” said Bob. “It’s business with me. You’ve got your scheme for banking yours; and I dream every night of that bungalow with the Jap cook and nobody around to raise trouble. Anything to enlarge the net receipts will engage my attention.”
“Come inside just a few minutes,” repeated Cherry, deeply thoughtful. “I’ve got a proposition to make to you that will reduce our expenses a lot and help you work out your own future and help me work out mine–and all on business principles.”
“Mice Will Play” had a tremendously successful run in New York for ten weeks–rather neat for a vaudeville sketch–and then it started on the circuits. Without following it, it may be said that it was a solid drawing card for two years without a sign of abated popularity.