"Twelve-fifty, you old dollar-skinner!" averred the vaudeville star, with a nasty little laugh.
"Don't try to pull off a hold-up, Mazie. It won't work. It's Grant's money," said Mr. Vandeford, with an icy calmness in his voice. And as she spoke he looked at Mr. Adolph Meyers, who answered the look with perfect comprehension.
"Then you'll get the manuscript when hell freezes over or your wad loosens," she again laughed, and this time turned toward the door with the square manila portfolio under her arm.
An interested spectator could not have said afterward just how it did happen that in half a second the manila portfolio was in the hands of Mr. Adolph Meyers, who also bore upon his left cheek a long and profusely bleeding scratch.
"Here's your check, child, and keep a good grip on Grant, so he can't get started toward East River as he did last time," Mr. Vandeford said as he handed an already prepared check to the enraged girl. She was dumb for a second, no longer.
"I was going to leave it for five hundred, you old white-skinned bluffer with your goose-grease, strong arm," she finally blurted out, and in a twinkling of her bright eyes her good-nature had returned. "Say, that is some play now, and I wish you'd let me play a dance girl at that dinner-party. I'd do it refined." There was a queer little appeal in the mobile young face. "I'd like to doll up like a lady."
"I'll think that over, Mazie," answered Mr. Vandeford. "A song and dance from you might go all right."
"Gimme a call, will you? I'll be on the job with my guzzler for a week now. I got to get him past, for he's some meal-ticket when times is dull." As Mazie disposed of the check in her stocking, a degree of affectionate anxiety for the condition of Mr. Grant Howard showed in her face for the fraction of a second, then disappeared as she looked at Mr. Adolph Meyers.
"Come on and get my wad from where I've put it, if you dare, Dolph," she challenged, then laughed, as the imperturbable Mr. Meyers both ignored and showed her to the door with all courtesy.
And as he lay on his bed reading over the Howard manuscript of "The Purple Slipper," which had just returned to him after a twenty-four hour overhauling and annotation for action by Mr. William Rooney, the stage director with the top price, Mr. Vandeford said to Mr. Adolph Meyers, who sat at a table beside the bed, taking down and inserting notes into the manuscript as they sprang from Mr. Vandeford's brain, almost before they got past his lips: