"And you've no idea how Kelson did that trick?"
"None, excepting, of course, that the signs he made, and what he said, must have had something to do with it."
It was on the tip of Shiel's tongue to ask her, if she would try and find out for him, but he checked himself. Even at this juncture of their friendship he dare not appear too curious. He must wait.
To go back to Hamar. He had seen Gladys act; he had become more infatuated with her than ever; and his passion was stimulated by the knowledge that she was universally admired, and that half the men in London were dying to be introduced to her.
"Money will do anything," one of Hamar's friends—they were all Jews—remarked to him. "Offer the manager of the Imperial a hundred pounds and he'll do anything you like with regard to the girl. Every manager can be bought and every actress, too."
The suggestion was a welcome one, and Hamar acted on it. But whether or not the exception proves the rule, he was immeasurably disconcerted to find that with regard to money and managers, his friend had deceived him. Far from being pleased at the offer of a bribe, the manager of the Imperial, an old Harrovian, raised his foot, and Hamar, who invariably paled at the prospect of violence, hurriedly withdrew.
On the eve of the initiation into Stage Three, the trio were very much perturbed.
"I hope to goodness nothing will appear to me," Kelson said. "My heart isn't strong enough to stand the shock of seeing striped figures. They should come to you, Curtis—a few jumps wouldn't do you any harm—you're fat enough."
Agreeing each to sleep with a light in his room, they separated, and at about two o'clock Curtis, who had been suffering of late from his liver—the effect, so the doctor told him, of living a little too well—and could not sleep, heard a knock at his door. To his astonishment it was Kelson—Kelson, in his pyjamas.
"Hulloa!" Curtis exclaimed. "What on earth brings you here, and however did you come?"