He came hurriedly into the room—a short, easy, alert young man, wearing a voluminous frock-coat, and with a mixed aspect of extreme hurry and cordiality.
"Oh, my dear Aubrey," he said, shaking the manager's hand with effusive geniality, "so here you are! Directly I saw the paragraph in the Wire I wrote to you, asking for fuller information. Now, you won't mind telling me all there is to know, will you?"
"Sit down, Lionel," said the actor. "Will you have a drink?"
"No, thank you," replied the little man, "I never take anything in the morning. Now, what is all this? What are you going to do? What are you going to produce? That's what I want to know. All London is wondering!" He rapped with his fingers upon the table, and his face suddenly assumed a curiously ferret-like look "What is it, Aubrey, dear boy?" he concluded.
Flood leant back in his chair and lit a cigarette.
"It is a very big thing indeed, Lionel," he said, "and I don't know, dear boy, that I should be justified in letting you into it just yet. Why, we only read the play to the company this afternoon!"
Mr. Lionel C. Westwood's ears seemed positively to twitch as he elicited this first piece of information.
"Oh!" he said, with a sudden gleam of satisfaction. "Well, that is something, at any rate. That is an item, Aubrey."
"I am afraid that is as far as I shall be able to go," the shrewd manager replied.
This little comedy progressed for some twenty minutes, until at last Mr. Lionel C. Westwood was worked up into the right state of frantic curiosity and excitement. Then Aubrey Flood explained dimly the purpose and scope of the new play, hinted reluctantly at the achievement of a new star, a young actress of wonderful power and extreme beauty, who had hitherto been quite unknown in the provinces, and finally, with a gush of friendship, "Well, as it is you, Lionel, dear boy, though I would not do it for anybody else," promised the journalist that he might come to the theatre again that afternoon and form one of the privileged few, in addition to the company itself, who would be present at the reading of the play by its author, Mr. James Fabian Rose.