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"You go on with my bags to the Grand Bab, and get me another taxi. I'll see you in my room at the hotel at a quarter to one. Eh?" "Rather!" agreed Mr. Marrier, submissive. "Sole proprietor of the Regent Theatre."
"The deuce!" murmured Edward Henry. "May have lost a bit of it, of course," Mr. Marrier hedged. "But not much, not much!" "Well," said Edward Henry, smiling, "what about my tea? Am I to have tea all by myself?" "Will you come down and meet her?" Mr. Marrier's expression approached the wistful. "Well," said Edward Henry, "it's an idea, isn't it?
"I mean Miss Euclid of course. Here I've spent heaven knows how much on the acoustics of this theatre, and I can't make out a word she says. I can hear all the others. And this is the dress-rehearsal!" "You must remember you're in the gallery," said Mr. Marrier, firmly. "And what if I am? I'm not giving gallery seats away to-morrow night.
"How goes it?" said Edward Henry, curtly, as they drove down to the Grand Babylon Hotel now Edward Henry's regular headquarters in London. Said Mr. Marrier: "I suppose you've seen another of 'em's got a knighthood?" "No," said Edward Henry. "Who?" He knew that by "'em" Mr. Marrier meant the great race of actor-managers. "Gerald Pompey.
If I don't get it, the option will be lost, and the option's very valuable." "All the easier to find the money then!" "What? In less than twenty-four hours? It can't be done. I couldn't get it in all London." "Mr. Marrier will get it for you ... one of his certainties!" Edward Henry smiled in the Five Towns manner.
On three pounds a week he haunted the best restaurants, taxi-cabs, and other resorts, and his garb seemed always to be smarter than Edward Henry's especially in such details as waistcoat slips. Of course Mr. Marrier had a taxi-cab waiting exactly opposite the coach from which Edward Henry descended. It was just this kind of efficient attention that was gradually endearing him to his employer.
Marrier had composed the advertisement, and that he himself was paying for it, it comforted him. He was just like a child. "I say, Cunningham's made a hit!" Mr. Marrier almost shouted at him as he entered the managerial room at the Regent. "Cunningham? Who's Cunningham?" Then he remembered. She was the girl who played the Messenger.
He found out, on the morning after the highly complex transaction of getting his family from Bursley to London, that London held more problems for him than ever. He was now not merely the proprietor of a theatre approaching completion, but really a theatrical manager with a play to produce, artistes to engage, and the public to attract. He had expected to get rid of Marrier before ten.
Or perhaps it would be more honest to say that Mr.. Marrier had suffered no inconvenience from the contretemps. His apparent gleeful zest in life had not been impaired. He was a born optimist, of an extreme type unknown beyond the circumferences of theatrical circles. "I say," he emphasized, "I've got an ideah. We ought to be photographed like that. Do you no end of good."
"Your cousin, Miss Euclid, would have done it, and Marrier here was in the affair with her." "Ah!" exclaimed Elsie April. "But we didn't belong to the Movement then! We didn't know.... Come now, Mr. Machin. Sir John Pilgrim will of course be a great draw. But even if you've got him and manage to stick to him, we should beat you.
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