A moment later a side door opened—not the door by which Miss Raymond had departed—and a young woman of determined though graceful and alluring deportment entered.
"Well," she said, "how about it, Mont? Do I get it or don't I?"
"Sit down, kid," Fieldstone said, himself seated; for he had not risen at his visitor's entrance. "How goes it, sweetheart?"
It is to be understood that "sweetheart" in this behalf had no more significance than "kid." It was a synonym for "kid" and nothing else.
"Rossmore says you're going to play Raymond in the new piece," she went on, ignoring his question; "and you know you told me——"
"Now listen here, kid," he said, "you ain't got no kick coming. In 'Rudolph' you've got a part that's really the meaty part of the whole piece. I watched your performance from behind last night, kid, and I hope I may die if I didn't say to Raymond that it was immense and you were running her out of the business. I thought she'd throw a fit!"
"Then I do get the part in the new piece?" Miss Vivian Haig insisted—for it was none other than herself.
"Well, it's like this," Fieldstone explained: "If you play another season with 'Rudolph,' and——"
Miss Haig waited to hear no more, however. She bowed her head in her hands and burst into sobs; and she might well have saved herself the trouble, for to J. Montgomery Fieldstone the tears of an actress on or off were only "bus. of weeping." He lit a fresh cigar, and it might have been supposed that he blew the smoke in Miss Haig's direction as a substitute for smelling salts or aromatic spirits of ammonia. As a matter of fact he just happened to be facing that way.
"Now don't do that, kid," he said, "because you know as well as I do that if there was anything I could do for the daughter of Morris Katzberger I'd do it. Him and me worked as cutters together in the old days when I didn't know no more about the show business than Morris does to-day; but I jumped you right from the chorus into the part of Sonia in 'Rudolph,' and you got to rest easy for a while, kid."