“Surely,” protested Mr Pilkington almost tearfully, “I have a voice …”
“Sure you have a voice,” retorted Mr Goble, “and you can use it any old place you want, except in my theatre. Have all the voice you like! Go round the corner and talk to yourself! Sing in your bath! But don’t come using it here, because I’m the little guy that does all the talking in this theatre! That fellow gets my goat,” he added complainingly to Wally, as Mr Pilkington withdrew like a foiled python. “He don’t know nothing about the show business, and he keeps butting in and making fool suggestions. He ought to be darned glad he’s getting his first play produced and not trying to teach me how to direct it.” He clapped his hands imperiously. The assistant stage-manager bent over the footlights. “What was that that guy said? Lord Finchley’s last speech. Take it again.”
The gentleman who was playing the part of Lord Finchley, an English character actor who specialized in London “nuts,” raised his eyebrows, annoyed. Like Mr Pilkington, he had never before come into contact with Mr Goble as stage-director, and, accustomed to the suaver methods of his native land, he was finding the experience trying. He had not yet recovered from the agony of having that water-melon line cut out of his part. It was the only good line, he considered, that he had. Any line that is cut out of an actor’s part is always the only good line he has.
“The speech about Omar Khayyam?” he enquired with suppressed irritation.
“I thought that was the way you said it. All wrong! It’s Omar of Khayyam.”
“I think you will find that Omar Khayyam is the—ah—generally accepted version of the poet’s name,” said the portrayer of Lord Finchley, adding beneath his breath. “You silly ass!”
“You say Omar of Khayyam,” bellowed Mr Goble. “Who’s running this show, anyway?”
“Just as you please.”
Mr Goble turned to Wally.
“These actors …” he began, when Mr Pilkington appeared again at his elbow.