“You are going to operate that place?”
“Why certainly,” said Henry. “And speaking of operations, I’ve got a hunch the patient’s going to recover. I’ve just been holding a clinic.... Well––good-bye, Aunt Mirabelle.” He turned back to his wife and his friend Standish. “So that’s settled,” said Henry, and grinned, a trifle apprehensively. “We’re off in a cloud of dust.... Waiter, where’s those two portions of crow I ordered four months ago? The service in this place is getting something rotten.”
CHAPTER VI
Mr. Theodore Mix, sprawled in his desk chair, gazed with funereal gloom at the typewritten agreement which lay before him, unsigned. It was barely twenty minutes ago that Mr. Mix had risen to welcome the man who was to save his credit and his reputation; but during those twenty minutes Mr. Mix, who had felt that he was sitting on top of the world, had been unceremoniously shot off into space.
His creditors surrounded him, (and because they were small creditors they were inclined to be nasty), he owed money to his New York correspondents, whose letters were becoming peremptory, and his brokerage business was pounding against the rocks. Quietly, overnight he had located a purchaser for the Orpheum, and as soon as Henry’s name had been safe on the dotted line, Mr. Mix would have been financed for many months ahead. And then came Henry––and Henry, who had 88 been cast for the part of the lamb, had suddenly become as obstinate as a donkey. Mr. Mix, gazing at that agreement, was swept by impotent rage at Henry, and he took the document and ripped it savagely across and across, and crumpled it in both his hands, and jammed it into his scrap-basket.
For the moment, he subordinated his personal problems to his wrath at Henry. He charged Henry with full responsibility for this present crisis; for if Henry had simply scribbled his signature, Mr. Mix would have made a good deal of money. It never occurred to him that in the same transaction, Henry would have changed places with Mr. Mix. That was Henry’s look-out. And damn him, he had looked!
“I’m going to get him for that,” said Mr. Mix, half-aloud. “I’m going to get him, and get him good. Jockeying me into a pocket! Conceited young ass! And I’d have been square with the world, and paid off that infernal note, and had four ... thousand ... dollars left over.” His lips made a straight line. “And he’d have brought fifty thousand 89 dollars’ worth of business into this office––he’d have had to––he’d have had to hold up his friends––to protect his ante. Yes, sir, I’m going to get him good.”
Mr. Mix sat up, and emitted a short, mirthless laugh. He frowned thoughtfully: and then, after a little search, he examined the pamphlet which Mirabelle had given him, and skimmed through the pages until he came to the paragraph he had in mind. Enforcement of the Sunday ordinances ... hm!... present ordinance seems to prohibit Sunday theatrical performances of all kinds, but city administrations have always been lax. Want the law on the books, don’t dare to repeal it, but don’t care to enforce it.