Mrs. Gudrun’s season at the Sceptre Theatre was drawing to a finish, and the funds of the Syndicate were in the same condition. Teddy Candelish—Teddy of the cherubic smile and the golden mustache, constantly described by the Theatrical Piffer as the most ubiquitous of acting-managers—sat in his sanctum before an American roll-top desk, checking off applications for free seats and filing unpaid bills. Gormleigh, the stage-director, balanced himself on the end of a saddle-bag sofa, chewing an unlighted cigar; De Hanna, the representative of the Syndicate, was going over the books at a leather-covered table, his eyeglasses growing dim in the attempt to read anything beyond deficit in those neatly kept columns. Mrs. Gudrun occupied the easiest chair. Her feet, beautifully silk-stockinged and wonderfully shod, occupied the next comfortable; her silken draperies were everywhere, and a cigarette was between her finely cut lips. Her feather boa hung from an electric-globe branch, and her flowery diaphanous hat, bristling with diamond-headed pins, crowned the domelike brow of a plaster bust of the Bard of Avon.

“Well,” said the manageress, making smoke-rings and looking at De Hanna, “there’s no putting the bare fact to bed! We’ve not pulled off things as we had a right to expect.... We’ve lost our little pot, and come to the end of our resources, eh?”

“In plain terms,” said De Hanna, speaking through his nose, as he always did when upon the subject of money, “the Syndicate has run you for all the Syndicate is worth, and when we pay salaries on Saturday we shall have”—he did some figuring with a lead pencil on the back of a millionaire’s request for gratuitous stalls, and whistled sadly—“something like four hundred and fifty left to carry us through until the seventeenth.”

“We began with as nice a little nest-egg as any management could wish for,” said Candelish, dropping a smoking vesta into the waste-paper basket with fatalistic unconcern. “We thought The Stone Age would pay. I’d my doubts of a prehistoric drama in five acts and fourteen scenes that couldn’t be produced under an outlay of four thousand pounds, but we were overruled.” He veered the tail of his eye round at Mrs. Gudrun. “You and the Duke were mad about that piece.”

“De Petoburgh saw great possibilities for me in it,” said Mrs. Gudrun, throwing another cigarette-end at the fireplace and missing it. “That scene where Kaja comes in dressed in woad for battle, and brains What’s-his-name with her prehistoric stone ax because he doesn’t want to fight her, always thrilled him. He said I would be greater than Siddons in it, and, well—you remember the notices I got in the Morning Whooper. Cluffer did me justice then, if he did turn nasty afterward—the beast!”

“When I met Cluffer in the vestibule on the first night after the third act,” said Teddy Candelish, “he said he was going home because the tension of your acting was positively too great to bear. He preferred me to describe the rest of the play to him, and jotted the chief points on his cuff before he went. And I grant you the notice was a ripper, but it didn’t seem to bring people in; and after playing to paper for three weeks, we had to put up the fortnight’s notice and jam The Kiss of Clytie into rehearsal.”

“Dad vos a lofely—ach!—a lofely blay!” moaned Oscar Gormleigh, casting up his little pig’s eyes to the highly ornamental ceiling of the managerial sanctum. “Brigged from de Chairman in de pekinning, as I told you, as all de goot blays are.”

“I wish the Germans had stuck to it, I’m sure,” said De Hanna. “It always appeared to me too much over the heads of ordinary intelligent playgoers to pay worth a little damn.”

“De dranscendental element——” Gormleigh was beginning, when Mrs. Gudrun cut him short.

“I never cared for it very much myself; but Bob Bolsover was dead set upon my giving the public my reading of Clytie—and, well, you must recollect the effect I created in that studio scene. Mullekens came round afterward, and brought his critic with him, and said that the best French school of acting must now look to its laurels, and a lot more. Mullekens is the proprietor of the Daily Tomahawk, and so, of course, I thought we were in for a good thing. How could I imagine that the creature of a critic would go home and make game of the whole show? Doesn’t Mullekens pay him?”

“Ah, ja! Poot dat gritic’s vife is de sister of de Chairman agtress dat blayed Glytie in de orichinal Chairman broduction,” put in Gormleigh, whose real surname was Gameltzch, as everybody does not know. “Did I not varn you? It vas a gase of veels vidin veels.”

“Wheels or no wheels, Clytie kissed us out of three thou. odd,” said De Hanna, wearily scratching his ear with his “Geyser” pen, “and then we cut our throats with——”

“With him,” put in Candelish, jerking a contemptuous thumb at the hat-crowned effigy of the Bard of Avon.

“You were keen on my giving the great mass of playgoers a chance of seeing my Juliet,” remarked Mrs. Gudrun casting a Parthian glance at the worm that had turned.

“But they didn’t take the chance,” put in De Hanna, “and consequently—we fizzle out.”

“Like a burst bladder ...” moaned Candelish, who saw before him a weary waste of months unenlivened by paid occupation.

“Or a damp sguib,” put in Gormleigh.

“Let’s have a sputter before we expire,” said De Hanna, with a momentary revival of energy. “Lots of manuscripts have been sent in.... Isn’t there a little domestic drama of the purely popular sort, or a farce imbecile enough to pay for production, to be found among ’em?”

“Dunno,” yawled Candelish, tilting his chair.

“Who is supposed to read the plays that are sent in?” asked De Hanna, turning his large Oriental eyes toward. Mrs. Gudrun.

“I read some,” said the lady languidly, “and the dogs get the rest.”

She stretched, and an overpowering combination of fashionable perfumes, shaken from her draperies, filled the apartment. The three men sneezed simultaneously. Mrs. Gudrun rose with majesty, and going to the mantel-glass, patted her transformation fringe into form, and smiled at the perennially beautiful image that smiled and patted back. Suddenly there was a whining and scratching outside the door.

“It’s Billy. Let him in, one of you,” ordered the manageress.

All three men obeyed, clashing their heads together smartly at the portal. De Hanna, with watering eyes, opened the door, and a brindled bull of surpassing ugliness trotted into the office, carrying a chewed brown paper parcel decorated with futile red seals and trailing loops of string. Lying down in the center of the carpet and carefully arranging the parcel between his forepaws, Billy proceeded to worry it.

“Vot has de beast kott dere?” asked Gormleigh.

“Take it from him and see!” said Mrs. Gudrun carelessly. Gormleigh’s violet nose became pale lavender as Billy, looking up from the work of destruction, emitted a loud growl.

“He understonds everyding vot you say!” spluttered the stage-manager.

“Try him with German,” advised De Hanna.

“Or mit Yiddish,” retorted Gormleigh spitefully.

As De Hanna winced under the retort, Candelish, who had rummaged unnoticed in a drawer for some moments, produced a biscuit. Billy, watching out of the corner of his eye, pricked a ragged ear and whacked the carpet with his muscular tail.

“Hee, boy, hee, Billy!” Candelish said seductively. Billy rose upon his powerful bow-legs and hung out his tongue expectantly.

“Koot old Pillee!” uttered Gormleigh encouragingly. “Gleffer old poy!”

Billy vouchsafed the stage-manager not a glance; his bloodshot eyes were glued upon the biscuit as he stood over the brown paper parcel. Then, as Candelish, throwing an expression of eager voracity into his countenance, made believe to eat the coveted delicacy himself, Billy made a step forwards.... The end of the parcel projected from between his hind-legs.... De Hanna softly stepped to the fireplace and seized the tongs....

“Poo’ boy—poo’ ol’ Billy, then!” coaxed the acting-manager. He broke the biscuit with one inviting snap, Billy forgot the parcel, and De Hanna grabbed and got it. The next moment the bull, realizing his loss, pinned the representative of the Syndicate by the leg.

“Dash—dash—dash! Take the dash brute off, somebody!” shrieked De Hanna.

There was a brief scene of confusion. Then, as Billy retired under a corner table with a mouthful of ravished tweed, “He’s torn a piece out of your trow-trows, old man,” Candelish remarked sympathetically.

“He might have torn all the veins out of my leg!” De Hanna gasped.

“Den,” said Gormleigh, chuckling, “you would haf been Kosher.”

But Mrs. Gudrun was deeply disappointed in Billy. “Letting you off for a bit of cloth!” she said. “Why, the breed are famous for their bite. He ought to have taken a piece of flesh clean out—I shall never believe in that dog again!” She swept over to Gormleigh, who was busy disentangling the lengths of chewed string and removing the tatters of brown paper from Billy’s treasure-trove. It proved to be a green-covered, rather bulky volume of typescript. A red-bordered label gummed on the cover announced its title:

“What funny fool has written this?” snorted the manageress.

“De name of de author.... Ach so! De name of de author is Slump—Ferdinand Slump.”

“I know the chap, or of him. He’s a business man who owns a half share in some chemical gasworks at Hackney, and does comic literature in off hours. He writes the weekly theatrical page of Tickles,” said De Hanna, “and——”

“Dickles is a stupid halfpenny brint,” said Gormleigh, “dat sdeals all its chokes from de Chairman babers.”

“Really? It struck me that there must be some existing reason,” said Candelish, “for the wonderfully level flow of dullness the publication manages to maintain——”

“Well, I suppose somebody is going to read this farce, since that is what he calls it, by this Slump, since that is what he calls himself,” said Mrs. Gudrun, removing her hat from Shakespeare and pinning it on.

“Certainly. De Hanna, as the Representative of the Syndicate——” began Candelish eagerly.

“Pardon me. As acting-manager,” objected De Hanna, “you, Candelish, have the prior claim.”

“Didn’t you say you were going out of town to-night, Gormleigh?” interrupted Mrs. Gudrun, who had stuck in all her hatpins, and was now putting on her gloves.

“Choost for a liddle plow,” admitted Gormleigh. “Dere is a cheab night drain to Stinkton-on-Sea, sdarding from de Creat Northern at dwelve dirty. I shall sleep in de gorridor gombardmend, oond breakfast at a goffee and vinkle stall on de peach to-morrow morgen. By vich I haf poot von night to pay for at de hotel.” His bearded lips parted in a childlike smile of delight. “My vife goes not vid me,” he said, and smiled again.

“Then take this!” said Mrs. Gudrun, turning Slump’s farce over. “Report on it after the show on Monday.” And she rustled from the office on billows of silk, attended by clouds of perfume, the despised Billy, and the assiduous Candelish. The stage-manager swore. De Hanna, concealing the solution in the continuity of his tweeds with a bicycle trouser-clip, grinned.

“A little solid reading will steady you down, Gummy, and if my experience of Slump goes for anything—you’ve got it there. But you’ll report on Monday, as Her Nibs ordered. If you’ve not read it, look out for squalls on Monday night!”

“Potstausend! Hof I read dot farce!” gasped Gormleigh on the night of Monday. “Schwerlich! I hof read him tvice. Once from de beginning to de end, oond akain from de end to de beginning.” His face assumed an expression of anguish, and the veins on his bald forehead stood out as the thick drops gathered there. “I cannot make heads or dails of him.... He is gram-jam with chokes, poot I cannot lof at dem; his situations are sgreaming, poot I cannot sgream. De tears day komm instead.... Dat vork is vonderful ... it should one day be broduced, poot in de kreat National School Theatre for authors oond actors dot de gountry hos not yet founded, to brove to bubils vot is not a farce——”

“Yet I shouldn’t be surprised if we did the piece here,” said Teddy Candelish. “Slump, the author, has been talking over Her Nibs, and as he would let Maggs at Margate go for nothing down, find three hundred pounds toward the production, and merely take a nominal sixty per cent., the chances are that you’ll be rehearsing before Tuesday. Hullo!” for the stage-manager had reeled heavily against him.

“Ich bin unwohl.... It is dose undichested chokes of Slumps I haf hodd on my gonstitution since I read dot farce. Oond now you komm mit anodder,” Gormleigh groaned.

“Here’s Her Nibs with Slump,” said Candelish, with a grin; and Mrs. Gudrun, in the Renaissance robes of Juliet, swept into the green room with a little grinning, long-haired man in an imitation astrachan-collared overcoat over crumpled evening dress—a little man who gave a large hand, with mourning nails, familiarly to Candelish, and nodded cavalierly when Gormleigh was introduced. Slump was to read his play to the manageress and her staff after the performance that night.

Read his play Slump did, and Cimmerian gloom gathered upon the countenances of his listeners as the first act dragged to a close. Slump put the typescript down on the supper-table and looked round; Gormleigh’s head had sunk upon his folded arms. Heavy snores testified to the depth and genuineness of his slumbers. The countenances of De Hanna and Candelish expressed the most profound dejection, while the intellectual half of Mrs. Gudrun’s celebrated countenance had temporarily vanished behind her upper lip.

“What do you say to that?” Slump asked, quite undismayed by these signs of weariness on the part of his listeners. Mrs. Gudrun came back to answer him.

“I say that it’s the longest funeral I’ve ever been at. Open another bottle of the Boy, Teddy, and wake up, Gormleigh.”

“I hof not been asleep,” explained Gormleigh.

“I wish I had,” sighed De Hanna. “The fact is,” he continued, prompted by a glance from Mrs. Gudrun, “that your play don’t do.”

Slump maintained, in the face of this discouragement, a smiling front.

“Won’t do, eh?”

“Won’t do for nuts,” said De Hanna firmly. “Nobody could possibly laugh at it,” he continued.

“It is too tam tismal,” put in Gormleigh.

“But if I prove to you that people can laugh at it, what then?” queried the undismayed Slump. He took from a fob pocket-book a newspaper cutting and handed it across the supper-table to De Hanna. The cutting was headed

and ran thus:

“‘Will you take a little refreshment?’

“‘Thank you, I have just had a sniff of ozone.’

“Question and answer at the ball given last night in aid of the —— Hospital, —— Square, at the Royal Rooms, Kensington. For, besides champagne, ozone was laid on. After every dance Dr. Blank, head of the Hospital, wheeled about the hall an appliance in which, by electrical action, pure oxygen was converted into the invigorating element of mountain or seaside air, greatly to the purifying and enlivening of the atmosphere of the ballroom.”

“My firm supplies the gas used in the treatment of the patients at that hospital,” said Slump. “It’s a turnover of ten thousand per annum. We’re ready to lay it on at the theater, and give the playgoers genuine ozone with their evening’s entertainment. As for the farce, I don’t count it A1 quality, but I’ve made up my mind to be acted and laughed at, and I’m going to bring chemistry in to help me. Think what an advertisement for the hoardings: ‘Real Ozone Wafted Over the Footlights,’ ‘Sea Air in the Stalls and Gallery!’”

“By thunder! it’s a whacking notion!” cried Candelish.

“Colossal!” exclaimed De Hanna, taking fire at last.

“Poot vill de beoble loff?” asked Gormleigh.

“Ah, yes! Will they stand your farce even with an ozone accompaniment?” doubted Mrs. Gudrun.

“I’ve a machine downstairs in the stage-door office,” said Slump calmly. “Will you try the first act over again—with gas?”

Gormleigh groaned, but the other three nodded acquiescence; and the men in charge of the electrical oxygen-generator received instructions to bring the machine upstairs.

“Ha, ha, ha!”

“Haw, haw, haw!”

“Ach, it is too funny for anydings!” This from Gormleigh, rocking in his chair, and mopping his streaming eyes with a red silk handkerchief. “Ach, ha, ha, ha!”

Mrs. Gudrun held up her jeweled hands for mercy. The laughing man who worked the machine stopped pumping, the laughing author ceased to read, Billy the bulldog, who had been grinning from ear to ear, wiped a wet nose on his mistress’s gown and sat down panting.

“How the deuce,” gasped De Hanna, “can oxygen make a stupid farce a funny one? I can’t understand it, for the life of me.”

“Because,” replied Slump, with brevity and clearness, “that’s my trade secret, and I don’t mean to give it away. Well, does Maggs go on, or do I take it to another management?”

The general assent was flattering in its unanimity. Maggs at Margate went into rehearsal at the “Sceptre” next day, and in a week was presented to the public. We refer you to the critiques published in the Daily Tomahawk, the Yelper, and other morning prints:

“It seems as though the good old days were come again.... Peals of irresistible laughter rang through the crowded theater as the side-splitting story of Maggs was unfolded. The audience laughed, the orchestra laughed, the actors themselves were infected by the general merriment.”

“Mr. Slump is a public benefactor. When ‘down,’ a dose of him will be found to act like magic. The management’s happy notion of supplying the theater with real ozone adds not a little to the pleasure of the entertainment.”

And so forth, and so forth. Booking was immense, the box-office and libraries were besieged with applicants eager to breathe the genuine sea air wafted over the footlights at the “Sceptre.” The treasury boxes had to be carried to the office at night by two of the strongest commissionaires.

“Slump has a soft snap,” said De Hanna, chewing his Geyser pen rapturously as he went over the books. “Sixty per cent. of the gross receipts in author’s fees, and we’re averaging two thousand a week since we went in for daily matinÉes. Then the Transatlantic Trust is running the play in New York to phenomenal business, and we’ve planted it out for the Colonies, while France and Germany——”

“Id vas from Chairmany dat de leading itea of de blay was orichinally sdolen,” said Gormleigh, who had blossomed out in new clothes, a red necktie, and a cat’s-eye pin.

“Leading idea of the play is the Ozone,” said De Hanna; “and as Slump’s firm holds the patent for the electro-oxygen generator, and manufactures the oxygen used in the theater——”

“Dey call it bure oxygen, poot it is not dat,” said Gormleigh, laying his finger to his nose. “It is a motch cheaber gombound, I give you my vort.”

“What?” De Hanna came closer, and his Oriental eyes gleamed. “If that’s true, and we could manufacture and generate it for ourselves, we—we could buy up every rotten play we come across—there’s heaps of them to be had, Heaven knows—and run ’em for nuts. What is the stuff?”

“It is nitrous oxide,” said Gormleigh, “gommonly known as loffing kass—and I hof a friend, a Chairman chemist—dat vill——Hoosh!” He laid his finger to his nose with an air of secrecy as Mrs. Gudrun swept into the office, enveloped in her usual clouds of silk and perfume. Candelish was not with her, but Slump and Billy followed at her heels.

“Of course, it must be admitted, Maggs is a phenomenal success,” she was saying, “and we’re making money hand over hand; but the part of ‘Angelina’—though Cluffer says no French comedy actress of any age or period could act it as I do—does not give me proper opportunities. Mr. Slump thinks with me.” She smiled dazzlingly upon the enamored little man. “And he has written a tragedy in blank verse—The Poisoned Smile—which we mean to produce as soon as the run is over.” She swept out again with her following, and De Hanna and Gormleigh exchanged a wink of partnership.

“A tragedy in blank verse by Slump.... Phew!” De Hanna whistled. “They won’t want laughing-gas for that.... As for us, we go snacks in biz. I’ll find the Syndicate and the theater.”

“Oond I de blays, de sdage-management, oond de kass. De Chairman chemist friend I dold you of, I hof vith him already a gontract made.”

“Perhaps it is a bit shady,” said De Hanna punctiliously, “to exploit an idea that really is Slump’s property....”

“De chokes in Slump’s comic baber he sdole from a Chairman orichinal,” said Gormleigh pachydermatously. “It is nodding poot tid for tad!”