“It’s like this, Mr. Burnit,” she confidently began: “when that dried-up little heathen, Matteo, who tried to run the Neapolitan Grand Opera Company with stage money, got us this far on a tour that is a disgrace to the profession, he had a sudden notion that he needed ocean air; so he took what few little dollars were in the treasury and hopped right on into New York.
“Here we are, then, at the place we were merely ‘to make connections,’ two hundred miles from our next booking and without enough money among us to buy a postage stamp. We haven’t seen a cent of salary for six weeks, and the only thing we can do is to seize the props and scenery and costumes, see if they can be sold, and disband, unless somebody gallops to the rescue in a hurry. Professor Frühlingsvogel happened to know another Dutchman here who conducts an orchestra at the Orpheum, and he sent us to you. He said you knew all the swell set and could start a benefit going if anybody in town could.”
“Yes,” said Bobby, smiling; “Schmirdonner telephoned me just a few minutes ago that the Herr Professor Frühlingsvogel would be up to see me, and asked me to do what I could. How many of you are there?”
“Seventy-three,” promptly returned Signorina Caravaggio, “and all hungry. Forty singers and an orchestra of thirty—seventy—besides props and the stage manager and Herr Frühlingsvogel, who is the musical director.”
“Where are you stopping?” asked Bobby, aghast at the size of the contract that was offered him.
“We’re not,” laughed the great Italian songstress. “We all went up and registered at a fourth-rate place they call the Hotel Larken, but that’s as far as we got, for we were told before the ink was dry that we’d have to come across before we got a single biscuit; so there they are, scattered about the S. R. O. parts of that little two-by-twice hotel, waiting for little me to trot out and find an angel. Are you it?”
Little me to trot out and find an angel. Are you it?
“I can’t really promise what I can do,” hesitated Bobby, who had never been able to refuse assistance where it seemed to be needed; “but I’ll run down to the club and see some of the boys about getting up a subscription concert for you. How much help will you need?”
“Enough to land us on little old Manhattan Island.”