“It isn’t revenge, Miss Ruth; it’s plain spite,” said Mr. Hammond disgustedly. “That fellow had nothing against you except that you succeeded where he tried to make you fail.”
“And something tells me,” Ruth said, with a little shrug of her shoulders, “that he still has my failure at heart and will leave no stone unturned to accomplish it.”
“Well,” said Tom, with a squaring of his shoulders and a yearning glance toward the spot in the doorway where Charlie Reid had been, “if either Bloomberg or that Reid chap gets ugly again and tries to start something, we’ll show them both they’ve been in a scrap!”
On the whole, however, Mr. Hammond and his associates seemed inclined to treat Bloomberg and any nefarious schemes he might concoct as beneath their notice and certainly as nothing to worry about.
“He may have guns, Miss Ruth, but he has no powder and shot,” Mr. Hammond assured her. “In other words, he is a rattlesnake with his venom removed. Don’t waste your time worrying about him. And meanwhile,” he put out his hand as Ruth rose to her feet, “please believe that we are all undyingly grateful to you for helping us out in this emergency. I feel as though a thousand tons had been lifted from my shoulders.”
Ruth smiled, with a return of the fighting gleam in her eye.
“I’m glad to be free to undertake it,” she said. “And—I’ll do my best!”
“That’s all we ask!” Mr. Hammond assured her, and this sentiment was echoed with many hearty handshakes by McCarty, Brun and the others.
After Ruth and Tom had left, there was just one among the men in Mr. Hammond’s office who was not enthusiastic over the success of the afternoon’s conference. This was Raymond Howell, the casting director.
“I’m not as confident of success as you all seem,” he told them, and the statement was like a dash of cold water upon their enthusiasm. “I admit that Miss Fielding is a good director—upon her own field. But I don’t know that our actors will take kindly to a woman director. They are not used to them, and this one is so young and good-looking that it seems impossible that she is as brainy and competent as they say.”