With which short, but sure, wire-pulling Mr. Vandeford opened his campaign to double-cross his own original plans. He had hardly stopped fixing Mr. William Rooney when Pops looked in upon him and announced Mr. Grant Howard, the eminent playwright.
"Hello, Grant," was Mr. Vandeford's short and unenthusiastic greeting to the small, black-haired person with weak, pink-rimmed, blue eyes, who sauntered into the sanctum and dropped sadly into a chair with his back to the light. A cigarette hung from the left corner of his upper lip, and his hands trembled. "Been hitting 'em up?"
"Yes," answered the playwright, laconically.
"Broke?"
"Pretty bad."
"Want to doctor a play for Hawtry for me by Friday next for a thousand dollars cash?"
"Cash now?"
"Would have to lock myself up in my apartment to do it; but Mazie's been crying for gold-uns for a week."
"Send Mazie to me, and I'll fix that, and hand you the thousand on Friday. Here, take this manuscript over in my other office and be ready to talk it over with me by ten o'clock. I'll see Mazie in the meantime." Mr. Vandeford placed the precious "Purple Slipper" in the hands of a man who at that very moment had two successful plays running on Broadway, his interest in both of which he had sold out for a mess of pottage to be consumed in the company of Miss Mazie Villines of the "Big Show."