Mr. Jimmy Delane of Broadway

by Achmed Abdullah

MR. JIMMY DELANE OF BROADWAY

By Achmed Abdullah

I

IN San Francisco he might have passed for the manicured, gardeniaed, and otherwise effete Easterner of tradition, come West to sneer at the Native Sons, the Native Oranges, and the Native Sand Fleas of the Slope, while in any of the Long Island corsair beach resorts—the sort famed for their sunsets and clam fritters—he might have passed for the latest millionaire out of the West, come East to sport his pink gills and yellow backs—treasury ones, payable in gold on demand. But a bred-in-the-bone Broadwayite would have given him the thrice-over and then registered, labeled, and dismissed him for what he was.

For his complexion was hand-laundered, his pompadour hard-boiled, his mustache short and bistre-brown and curled like the tail of a festive suckling pig; his clothes accentuated the bold Louis Seize curve of his body, his necktie looked like a Vorticist Oleograph of Flatbush by Moonlight, his watch was octangular in shape and Ingersoll in make, and his feet were innocent of neither spats nor arch supports.

Add to these external characteristics a whiff of harmless homespun psychology: a nose, as it were, turned to the ground and sniffing with the air of a lackadaisical bloodhound for gossip and rumor and the Big News; a manner which struck a happy medium between the young John Drew and the old marquis of the days before the guillotine was put into working order; a charge account in all the hotel bars on Forty-seventh east of Broadway, and a cigar-case choked with off-color perfectos. Add, furthermore, a racial dislike, an atavistic hatred, freely voiced, against the Sturdy Yeomanry of Yonkers and the Brawny Peasantry of Brooklyn—and you have—

Exactly! Mr. Jimmy Delane, press agent for the musical comedy “Stop! You Make Me Blush!” adapted from the French revue “O Boug’ de Saligaud!” which, in turn, was lifted from the German musical farce “Hör’ Dir Mal Den Blech An!” which, to complete the merry rondelay, had been plucked from the American success of five years before, “Cut It Out, Kid!”

Never lived there a better press agent between the chocolate brown of the Hudson and the melancholy slate gray of the East River. He could sell to the veteran city editor, at space rates, a tale of how Zoe Tremaine, the star over at the Gaiety, had spent three hours every day for a month to master the art of interpreting nervous emotion by wiggling her décolleté back in a manner suggestive of soft doughnuts bobbing up and down in the skillet, and how McCarthy Tibble, the low comedian, had contracted septic rheumatism by his trick of holding his big toes akimbo in that screaming scene where he throws the dish of stewed tripe at the head usher across the footlights.

He could give a new slant to the Inca legend of the operatic star who had her jewels stolen, and a new punch to the Babylonian cuneiform which tells all about May Pickwallet’s new Irish-Renaissance pergola on her country estate near Rubber Neck, L. I.

He was a well-salaried genius, and usually he was as happy as a squirrel in Washington Square; but today he seemed glum.

He looked at the deal table, the scrofulous chairs, and the ornamental cuspidor which endeavored, rather unsuccessfully, to furnish the back room at the Winterset Hotel bar, and then he looked at the purple countenance of Hennessey McParland, who was sitting across from him.

McParland was in the act of assailing his mouth with a stein of bock beer. The bock beer lost. Then he spoke.

“Jimmy,” he said, “you gotta do it—or—you know!” he added significantly as he impounded another half pint of chemicals-and-hops; and he waddled out of the room, the skirts of his morning coat moving up and down like frantic propeller blades.

Jimmy knew what the “or—you know” meant.

He looked at the wall and then he shuddered.

For, from a crevice in the paneling, the flat, vindictive eyes of a couple of water-bugs—father and daughter—were staring at him, cruelly, maliciously. It seemed a bad omen.

“Charge ’em up, Oswald!” he cried to the barkeeper as he stepped into the street—and straight into an alluvial deposit of Gotham humanity which was standing stiff aslant against the nipping December wind, the legs breathing defiance to the flapping, ragged trousers that sheathed them, the once-braided coat challenging the fuzzy wool of the greasy sweater, the hat a rimless outrage, the patched shoes moving through the inch-deep snow with the unutterable resignation of a toad between the harrow.

It was a tramp—a tramp of the sad, poignant city streets—a careless fatalist like his cousin, the tittering gutter sparrow. But today he was cold and hungry and miserable. He shivered—like a bandy-legged dachshund afflicted with chilblains—and his hands!—without gloves, red, swollen, pitiable!

Jimmy Delane looked at them.

He was a man of inspirations and lightning decisions.

At once he forgot all about the bad omen, and was as happy as a king full.

Without a word he dragged the unresisting tramp into the glowing warmth of the Winterset Hotel bar, straight into the back room, where he propped him into one of the scrofulous chairs, after giving the wondering barkeeper orders to rush ’em along quick and steaming and with a peel of lemon—

“And a double portion of free lunch,” added the tramp, who knew that once more Providence had plucked him like a brand from the burning.

Jimmy was still staring at the tramp’s hands, so fixedly that the latter felt embarrassed and tried to hide them—but at once there was a protesting cry from Jimmy.

“Keep ’em on the table! Let me look at ’em!”

“Why?”

“Because they mean Five Iron Men to you!”

The tramp—Clarence Reilly was his name—was a child of Greater New York. Washington Square was not unknown to him, and he had heard of painters and models. So he studied the acute and hirsute magenta of his hands and turned to his host.

“Say, bo,” he simpered, “them mitts of mine ain’t to worse, are they?”

Jimmy hooted like a drunken Staten Island ferryboat.

“Wott’ya think I want you for?” he inquired sarcastically. “D’ya think I want you on a model’s throne dressed in nothing but a piece of hand-painted cheesecloth and a bas-relief wen? Listen here—” and then he explained.

II

There was Chloe Van Zyle. (No. Her people had never knickerbockered worth a darn. Her so-and-so-often removed grandsire had not come out of Holland in a high-pooped frigate, nor had he traded in a plug hat, a plugged nickel, and a plug of chewing tobacco for a bully cabbage patch in the eventual vicinity of the Waldorf. She was née Mary O'Halloran, and her so-and-so-often removed grandsire had fought a brilliant rear guard action at the Battle of the Boyne.) But—there was Chloe. There was Hennessey McParland. And there was Jimmy himself.

Triangle Plot Editorial Announcement: WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE IN EVALEEN’S CASE? COMMENCE THE GREAT SERIAL IN THIS MONTH’S ISSUE!—Forget it! Chloe was the ingenue in ‘Stop! You Make Me Blush!’ Hennessey was her Angel. Jimmy touched seventy-five a week and all the expenses he could get away with—and, since the opening of the show, three weeks earlier, there hadn’t been a hand for Chloe. Not a hand!

“Get me,” continued Jimmy. “Not a hand! There’s her song in Act One where she does the slow Hoola-Hoola as a-swell Newport society girl and sings all about The Odorous Moon where we love to spoon on the Waikahoola-Waikahoola Beach—kahoola-hoo! Great stuff—but falls flat—flat as a pancake, I tellya! Then she comes on in Two, in a ten thousand dollars chinchilla, made up to look like Jane Addams and sings something up to date about What did Mr. Bluebeard do when Mrs. Bluebeard joined the Suffrage Party? What happens? Same thing—not a hand! So I had a heart-to-heart talk with the gent who writes the lyrics, and we had Chloe come on in Three with one of them old-fashioned, sentimental ditties—first-rate stuff! Hoop Skirts! Long, Lacy Pants! Antimacassars! And the words: Oh, it wasn’t so in Grandmother's times, when Streetcar Conductors still was gents! Real home dope, ain’t it? The sort that makes you feel young again—rising two or thereabouts. But—” he shouted the words, “not a hand!”

Clarence looked up. His inner man was in a sort of beatific revery—one of those strange and mysterious trains of thought so apt to be suggested by seven Hot Scotches—and the despair which throbbed in the other’s accents cut him to the quick. He would have liked to help him.

Still—he was New York to the marrow and worldly-wise. His knowledge had come from the dust and slime of the gutters, but none the less it was thorough and up-to-the-minute; he knew all about Mrs. Vernon Castle and publicity and the sworn duties of press agents.

“You poor simp,” he said pityingly, though not unkindly, “why didn’t yer …”

“I did!” interrupted Jimmy, “I assaulted two city editors and killed three cub reporters out of hand! I had her picture on the front page of the Evening Post—yes, the Evening Post—done up in a Nell Brinkley border! I got round the red-haired Mick who writes the Middle-Western Women’s Special Sob Page for the Ladies’ Home Gazette and had him describe how she goes straight home from the theater every night and helps her Dad to tuck in his jag! I had her jewels stolen and returned! I had her proposed to by three cowboys, a Presbyterian Minister, the Chief Rabbi of Sweden, Von Tirpitz, and the Chairman of the Democratic Committee! I had her sing Deutschland über Alles at the Allies’ Bazaar! I tried everything, from manslaughter to mayhem—but not a sound—not a whisper—not a hand!”

Clarence was taken aback, and he saw the five dollars which the other had promised him take wings toward the limboes of dreams.

If the trained press agent had failed, how could he help him—he, the tramp of the city streets?

“Say,” he began querulously, “you said something about—about them number elevens of mine—” and he held out his hands for inspection.

Jimmy Delane patted them caressingly. He rose. In his eyes there was something almost prophetic.

“The old dope,” he murmured, half to himself, “the dear old dope—Shades of Barrett and Keane and Bloodgood! Say—”

“What?” this from Clarence; and Jimmy whispered in his ear.

“Are you on?”

“You bet,” replied the tramp, stuffing a five-dollar bill in a mysterious region of his anatomy, and the two parted company—Clarence waddling off toward the Hotel de Gink to snatch a few hours’ repose before the evening’s labors, while the press agent entered the nearest pay station and called up Hennessey McParland.

III

“It’s a pipe, Hen,” he sang across the wires. While the other sang back, “It'd better be a pipe—or your job'll go whistling!”

Jimmy broke into a thin, anemic cackle. He had to. After all, it was McParland who paid him his seventy-five a week. Seventy-five? And this was Saturday—and he had just given five dollars to the tramp. There was only one dollar left him—and up, in her modest Harlem flat, was a little girl with russet hair and grey eyes. He had promised to take her out to dinner—and—

“Say, Hen,” he breathed into the telephone, “this is Saturday—”

“Well?—” and Jimmy retorted with a rather inadequate assumption of innocence, “you know, old man!”

The other’s reply was inexorable:

“No hand for Chloe—no mon’ for you! Come through tonight with the big applause—and I'll come through with the mazuma.”

“But …”

“But—nothing!” and from the other end of the wire came the metallic slam of Hennessey McParland’s receiver.

IV

Jimmy was dumbfounded. He had done his best—he, the best press agent on Broadway. It had not been his fault if the public refused to fall for Chloe’s superannuated charms and McParland had no right to hold up his cheque.

“Thou infamous malapert!” he grumbled in the direction of the telephone, quoting from a recent Broadway failure which was coining money on the road.

He was thoroughly mad.

McParland was trying to doublecross him—but why should he?

Why? Jimmy had always been loyal, always on the job.

Yes—why?—and, the next moment, he made a shrewd guess at the real reason.

It was Chloe’s fault, he decided. Chloe must have noticed that he’d had many a whispered conversation among the dusty stage litter with the little girl, June Trainor, who was her substitute—the little girl with the russet mane and the grey eyes whom he had invited to dinner tonight—the little girl whom he loved—the little girl whom she feared and envied because of her youth and her talent.

Sure—Chloe must have put a bee in McParland’s bonnet—and—

Suddenly Jimmy laughed.

Doublecross him—the best press agent on Broadway? Let ’em try!—and Jimmy, gaily swinging his cane, hurried to the nearest Western Union office whence he sent a telegram to June Trainor, telling her that he was unable to keep his dinner engagement, telling her furthermore to do certain things which he outlined minutely.

“You must do it,” he wired, “you must, must, must, because of your future and mine—” regardless of the fact that each additional must cut an additional hole into his last remaining dollar, and then he returned to his hotel, calmly awaiting the outcome of the evening.

That night at the Gaiety, when the ingenue had finished her opening warble about the Waikahoola Beach, instead of the usual flat, disheartening silence, a rapturous storm of applause—quick and sharp like musketry fire—broke loose from a corner high up in the gallery.

Even the cynic who played the slide-trombone felt a thrill of surprise trickling down his spine and, while the two-and-a-half dollar élite in the orchestra seats showed their native democracy by joining in the applause from upstairs by twos and threes—finally by whole rows—the enthusiast in the gallery gave vent to his feelings by rising in all the ragged, tattered, hirsute glory of a city tramp and shouting raucously to the blushing, curtseying ingenue:

“Great dope, kid! Let’s hear it once more!”—

And then encouraging shouts from all over the theater, echoing the demand of the olympian.

Even the frigid boxes took up the shout. Already the leader of the orchestra had lifted up his baton to signal the encore.

Not only that—but Walter Darwinter, the dramatic critic, who for the last three years had been denied access to the Gaiety because he would insist in his reviews that the leading lady was not as gifted as Sarah Bernhardt and that the elocutionary powers of the low comedian were inferior to those of Forbes-Robertson, had managed to sneak into an orchestra seat tonight, past the eagle eyes of ticket collector and ushers.

He had sharpened his critical hatchet—already he had made certain notes on the margin of his program which, in to-morrow’s issue, would accuse the management of the Gaiety of having returned to the old Continental trick of employing a claque—enthusiasts hired, not because of their dramatic appreciation, but because of the size and strength of their hands … when, suddenly, he altered his opinion.

He decided, on the contrary, that he would do the unusual, the unexpected thing; he would accuse the management of the Gaiety of wilfully and deliberately trying to suppress genuine applause—doubtless so as to help them to break an unfavorable contract—

For it became evident that the management had nothing to do with the gallery enthusiast.

On the contrary.

Sturdy ushers were hastening toward him—they propelled him down the stairs and out of the theater with hearty kicks—no!

This was no hired claque. And Darwinter scribbled rapidly.

V

Half an hour later, in the back room of the Winterset Hote! bar, Jimmy Delane sat once more facing the purple countenance of Hennessey McParland.

For ten minutes at a stretch the latter had been calling him names, delivered in the highest key and with extreme volubility and passion, names which reflected equally on his own morals and on Jimmy’s near relations.

“You dub!” he wound up in a low, vindictive voice, “you horse thief! You inflexible article of wooden furniture! You—you submarine captain! Didn't ya know? Didn’t ya see?”

“What?”—innocently from Jimmy—and McParland’s hissing reply: “Chloe Van Zyle did not play tonight! She’s got a cold! That was her substitute—that was young June Trainor whom your blanketty-blank tramp applauded, you big piece of goulash! Chloe hates her—and you—hang you!—you went and made her! Didn’t ya hear me whisper as you passed me in the lobby to tell your tramp to can the enthusiasm?”

“Sure I did!”—Jimmy’s reply thrilled with suppressed laughter; and McParland broke into a roar of rage that emulated Niagara—crescendo, still crescendo—wavering, faltering—then dying away to a feeble tittup and the thin, pathetic question “you heard me—d’ya mean to say you did it on purpose?”

“You bet!” replied Jimmy nonchalantly.

He finished his drink.

He rose.

He called McParland a few names of his private vintage.

“Try to doublecross me?” he said, with a laugh, “tried to hold out my seventy-five bones—when you knew I was bust—when you knew I had been trying my darnedest for you and yer precious Chloe? Listen here—yer fat, man-eating hyena!—I knew that Chloe had a cold—knew it before you did— Say,” he brought his face within an inch of the other’s, “it was me who fixed the whole thing! It was me who got her that cold!”

McParland was speechless for a minute.

“Wott’ya mean?” he finally stammered out. And again Jimmy laughed—loud and long and cruelly.

“*Member how Chloe always has to have her back powdered just before she jigs on in Act One?” he asked. “’Member how she always manages to mislay her maid just at that moment—and how she always has June do it for her—just to make her lose face in front of the company? ’Member all that?—well—I tipped June the wink—I told her to slip a piece of ice down Chloe’s back. Ice! and ice don’t go well with a constitution that’s fed on terrapin and cocktails. Get me? She sneezed—she shivered—she coughed—and right then it was time for the curtain to go up … and it was up to June to take Chloe’s part—and—” Jimmy continued inexorably, “did ya see Darwinter in the audience? Say—just watch the papers to-morrow—won't they boost little June up to the skies? Say! She won't get an engagement after tonight. O no—she won't! And I won’t be her press agent after tonight … and her big beau. O no—I wont!”

He paused and shook his finger under the other’s nose. “O yes—I will!” he wound up triumphantly and he stalked out of the bar, leaving McParland to pay for the drinks.