"What chumps you are!" said the interloper, and went away.
Frohman wanted to get rid of the man without saying anything. This was his way of doing it, and it succeeded.
Frohman was always having queer adventures out of which he spun the most amazing yarns. This is an experience that he liked to recount:
When Augustus Thomas had an apartment in Paris he received a visit from Frohman. The flat was five flights up, but there was an elevator that worked by pushing a button.
There was a ring at the bell of the Thomas apartment. When the playwright opened the door he found Frohman gasping for breath, and he sank exhausted on a settee.
"I walked up," he managed to say. When he was able to talk Thomas said to him:
"Why in Heaven's name didn't you use the elevator?"
Frohman replied:
"I couldn't make the woman down-stairs understand what I wanted. She made motions and showed me a little door, but I thought she had designs on my life, so I preferred to walk."
That Charles Frohman had the happy faculty of saying the right thing and saying it gracefully is well illustrated by the following: