Sometimes luck conspires with the brave. The first stage-hand who met the first early morning reporter and sold him the story for a drink had the usual hazy idea one brings away from a fist-battle. According to him Winfield had come back on the stage drunk and started a row by striking at Mr. Eldon.
Eldon knocked Winfield backward into the arms of Batterson and McNish, and would have finished him off if Sheila had not sheltered him. Thereupon Eldon ordered Winfield out of the theater, and he retreated under the protection of his wife, for it seemed that the poor girl had been deluded into marrying the hound.
The reporter was overjoyed at this glorious find. He hunted up Sheila and Winfield first. Sheila answered the telephone, and at Bret’s advice refused to see or be seen. She gave the reporter the message that her husband had absolutely nothing to say.
It is a safe statement at times, but just now it confirmed the reporter in a beautiful theory that Eldon had beaten Winfield up so badly that he was in no condition to be seen.
The reporter found Batterson next and told him his suspicions. Batterson, surly with wrecked slumber, was pleased to confirm the theory and make a few additions. He owed Winfield no courtesies.
When Starr Coleman and Reben were found they needed no prompting to set that snowball rolling and to play up Eldon’s heroism. Coleman added the excellent thought that Winfield’s motive was one of professional jealousy because Eldon had run away with the play and the star’s laurels were threatened. For that reason she had basely deserted the ship; but the ship would go on. Mr. Reben, in fact, had felt that Miss Kemble was an unfortunate selection for the play and had already decided to substitute his wonderful discovery, the brilliant, beautiful Dulcie Ormerod—photographs herewith.
That was the story that Bret and Sheila read when it occurred to them to send down for an evening paper. Bret was desperate with rage—rage at Eldon, at Reben, at the entire press, and the whole world. But he remembered that his father, who had been a politician, had used as his motto: “Don’t fight to-day’s paper till next week. You can’t whip a cyclone. Take to the cellar and it will soon blow over.”
Sheila was frantic with remorses of every variety. She blamed Eldon for it all. She did not absolve him even when a little note arrived from him:
Dear Mrs. Winfield,—After the exciting events of last night I overslept this morning. I have but this minute seen the outrageous stories in the newspapers. I beg you to believe that I had no part in them and that I shall do what I can to deny the ridiculous rôle they put upon me.
Yours faithfully,