He stiffened her up so she was willing to make good. He told her she had enough curves to make the Venus de Medici look like a barn door, and that she was a peach with the original bloom on, all of which she believed because it was pleasant for her to hear, and was getting a bit stuck on herself. It was a modern case of showing Eve all over again where the golden apple grew, and inducing her to reach up and get it.
The first trick was to come off at Memphis, Tenn., where a lot of hot sports wanted something so full of ginger that they would have put ice on the backs of their necks to keep the temperature down below the 100 mark. A committee of two called on him at the stage entrance, and after declaring themselves asked him if he had anybody with the outfit who could make good. After the preliminary skirmish it settled down to a question of price, and the matter was soon arranged, and half an hour later Daddy’s girl got the tip that she was expected to be on the job when the clock struck twelve, with a carriage to and from the hotel as a compliment to her superb figure.
No good hardened old pelter would have halted at this hurdle, and would have gone at it with a keen relish, but you must know that this was the first season out for this girl, and when it came to the time that she was to let go all that kept her from appearing in the costume that Mother Eve is supposed to have worn in the Garden of Eden, she promptly lost her nerve.
“I don’t think I can do this thing, Jim,” she remarked to the manager as they were leaving the theatre together. “It didn’t seem so bad at first, but now I don’t quite like the idea of it. I never did anything like this before, you know.”
“Of course I know,” he answered quickly, “but you want the money, don’t you? Do you want to be a piker all your life? Why, you’ll get more for a stunt like this than you can make in a month doing anything else. Just think of that.”
He was keen enough to see, however, that she was inclined to quit at any moment, but there was no proposition an old seasoned campaigner like him couldn’t handle, and when they went into the hotel cafe together he had framed things up to his own satisfaction.
“I’m going to blow you to a bottle of wine to-night, and while we’re waiting for it we’ll have a cocktail.”
He figured on dulling her sense of morality with drinks, and he went at it in the most businesslike manner possible.
Before the wine a cocktail with a cherry, then another cocktail. Three pints of extra dry, most of which she lapped up simply because it was champagne and was expensive, and then she was in a mood that was at once mellow and reckless.
“Come on,” he said, when the last drop had been drained. “Come on, the wagon is waiting and if you make a hit you won’t need to bother about those new dresses you wanted last week, for here is where you get next to a real gold mine. Why, there ain’t a girl in the show that wouldn’t go to the deuce to get this chance.”