“Really?”
“No. That bird Devereux put it all over us like a tent.” He snorted with disgust. “Man from Standish’s office come round here a while back and asked for a price for the house for Sundays up to August. We thought it was for some forum, or something; and the damn place was shut down anyway; so we made a lease. Next twenty Sundays for four hundred and seventy-five beanos, cash in advance. Then it turns up that Standish’s office was actin’ for Devereux.”
The bloom of apoplexy rose to Mr. Mix’s cheeks. “You mean he––do you know if he leased more theatres than this one? Did he?”
“Did he! He signed up the whole damn Exhibitors’ Association. There’s twenty-two houses in town, and he’s tied up twenty-one and he owns the other. Far’s I can find out, it only cost him about six thousand to get an air-tight monopoly on Sunday shows for the next six months.”
Mr. Mix drew breath from the very bottom of his lungs. “What can you––do about it?”
“Do? What is there to do? All we can do is put on an extra feature durin’ the week, to try and buck him that way––and it won’t pay to do it. He’s got a cinch. He’s got a graft. And all the rest of us are in the soup.”
Mr. Mix was occupied with mental arithmetic. “Tell me this––is it going to pay him?”
“Pay him!” echoed the manager scornfully. “Six thou for twenty weeks is three hundred a week. Fifty a day. Twelve-fifty a performance. Twelve-fifty calls for about twenty-five people. Don’t you think he’ll draw that many new patrons, when he can give ’em on Sundays what nobody else can? And everything over twenty-five’ll be velvet. He’ll clean up two, three thousand easy and maybe more. What 223 beats me is why he didn’t get leases for the next hundred years. We wouldn’t have had the sense to block him.”
“I’ll tell you why,” said Mr. Mix, choking down his passion. “Because there’s going to be a new ordinance. It’ll deal with Sunday entertainments. And it’s going to prohibit any such horse-play as this.” He surveyed his man critically. “Does Henry Devereux belong to your Association?”