“I don’t like it myself, Leo. But what can we do about it?”
“That is what I would like to know. I am half-inclined to go on a strike.”
“I doubt if he has any money. Business was poor last week on account of the rain. I imagine we are lucky to get our traveling expenses and board bills paid.”
“You don’t know if the board bills really are paid,” was the suggestive response. “I haven’t seen Wampole pay Mrs. Gerston a cent.”
“Well, if he doesn’t pay we’ll have trouble; that’s a foregone conclusion,” said Carl. “He ought—Here he comes now, and two strange men with him.”
Carl broke off short as Nathan Wampole entered the dressing-room of the little country theater at which the company had been performing for the past two nights.
“I’ve got to have my money, and that’s all there is to it,” one of the men was saying. “You agreed to pay for the theater after the first performance, and you haven’t paid a cent.”
“I will pay to-morrow,” replied the owner of the organization uneasily. He was naturally a closefisted man, and bad business had made him more miserly than ever.
“That don’t go. You pay this afternoon or this theater will be dark to-night.”
A long war of words followed, and it soon transpired that the second stranger was a constable, brought to enter an attachment on the scenery and other things, should Nathan Wampole fail to come to terms.