"'The Guv'nor ain't satisfied with that fourth clause," said Mr. Kemmel. "He says it ain't plain--hey, there, don't let Phelps go, I want him and Klein for witnesses."
"Where isn't it plain?" demanded Adair, who remembered the document as one of unusual rigor, without even the usual two weeks' notice. "Do you wish to add penal servitude to my other fifty-seven penalties?"
Mr. Kemmel did not deign to smile. He was a pale, bald Jew of about thirty-six, with a peculiarly bleak way of addressing actors.
"No," he answered, "we want to clear up the understudy part of it."
"Understudy part of it? What do you mean?"
"Well, if you went on for five or six weeks, taking the Guv'nor's place every night and matinée--you might make out like it was a new engagement--and try to stick us."
Adair was too mystified to take offense.
"Stick you?" he repeated.
"Yes, sue us afterwards for three or four times the salary."--Mr. Kemmel sighed, and looked upward, as though reflecting on man's inhumanity to man. "In this business one has to be so careful," he added, as impersonally as though he were speaking to a stone pillar, "so careful--well, as I was saying, here we have iron-claded it, and you are to sign where it is penciled, and return the old contract to-morrow."
The typewritten words swam a little as Adair gazed at them; he was afraid of being tricked; he wanted to make sure that the precious seventy-five a week had not been tampered with. But there it was, all right, along with the new proviso. It was difficult to believe that this last amounted to anything, for O'Dowd's appearance precluded the least idea of illness. The man was as strong as a bull, with a voice that shook your ear-drums, and the shoulders of a negro coal-heaver. He was offensively healthy, and so limited in any interest but the theater that he moped visibly of a Sunday. One might as well understudy the Metropolitan Museum on the chance of its taking a night off. Adair laughed as he signed the new contract, and hardly thought of the matter for a day or two afterwards.