Mr. Bagley emitted a grunt of laughter. “Sour grapes! Sour grapes, young fellow! I know what I'm talking about. I've been a literary man myself.”
Larcher arrested his fork half-way between his plate and his mouth, in order to look his amazement. A curious twitch of the lips was the only manifestation of Davenport, except that he took a long sip of ale.
“Nobody would ever think it,” said Larcher.
“Yes, sir; I've been a literary man; a playwright, that is. Dramatic author, my friend Dav here would call it, I s'pose. But I made it pay.”
“I must confess I don't recognize the name of Bagley as being attached to any play I ever heard of,” said Larcher. “And yet I've paid a good deal of attention to the theatre.”
“That's because I never wrote but one play, and the money I made out of that—twenty thousand dollars it was—I put into the business of managing other people's plays. It didn't take me long to double it, did it, Dav? Mr. Davenport here knows all about it.”
“I ought to,” replied Davenport, coldly.
“Yes, that's right, you ought to. We were chums in those days, Mr.—I forget what your name is. We were both in hard luck then, me and Dav. But I knew what to do if I ever got hold of a bit of capital. So I wrote that play, and made a good arrangement with the actor that produced it, and got hold of twenty thousand. And that was the foundation of my fortune. Oh, yes, Dav remembers. We had hall rooms in the same house in East Fourteenth Street. We used to lend each other cuffs and collars. A man never forgets those days.”
With Davenport's talk of the afternoon fresh in mind, Larcher had promptly identified this big-talking vulgarian. Hot from several affronts, which were equally galling, whether ignorant or intended, he could conceive of nothing more sweet than to take the fellow down.
“I shouldn't wonder,” said he, “if Mr. Davenport had more particular reasons to remember that play.”