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"But Obermuller's not like the others. He's not so easy. And he is so clever; why, the plot of that comedy is the bulliest thing " "You've read it you remember it?" "Oh, I know it by heart my part of it. You see, he wouldn't keep away from me while he was thinking of it. He kept consulting me about everything in it. In a way, we worked over it together."
Oh, Mag, I don't like that word. It stings it binds it cuts. I don't know what I looked like then; I wasn't thinking of me. I was watching Obermuller's face. It seemed to grow old and thin and haggard before my eyes, as the blood drained out of it. He turned with an exclamation to the Chief and And just then there came a long ring at the telephone. Why did I stand there?
For a week I had been talking Obermuller's comedy to Mason, the secretary. In the evenings I stood about in the wings and watched the Van Twiller company in Brambles. There was one fat role in it that I just ached for, but I lost all that ache and found another, when I overheard two of the women talking about Obermuller and me one night.
You see, Mag, I knew in that minute that I'd been afraid, deathly afraid of Fred Obermuller's face, when it's scornful and sarcastic, and of his voice, when it cuts the flesh of self-conceit off your very bones. And the contrast well, it was too much for me. But something came quick to sober me. It was Gray. She stormed in, followed by Lord Harold and Topham, and half the company.
His poor head went down again with a bob, and she caught up the type-written sheets of Obermuller's play. She waited a minute longer; half because she wanted to make sure Mason was asleep again before she tore the sheets across and crammed them down into the waste-basket; half because she pitied the old fellow and was sorry to take advantage of his condition.
And because I was beautiful, I got saucy, and then calm, and then I caught Fred Obermuller's voice he had taken the book from the prompter and stood there himself and after that it was easy sailing. He was there yet when the act was over, and I trailed out, followed by my Lord. He let the prompt-book fall from his hands and reached them both out to me.
The Chief himself went to answer it. "Yes what?" he growled. "Well, tell Long Distance to get busy. What's that? St. Francis that's the jag ward, isn't it? Who is it? Who? Ramsay!" I caught Obermuller's hand. "I don't hear you," the Chief roared. "Oh yes? Yes, we've got the thief, but the money no, we haven't got the money. The deuce you say! Took it yourself? Out of your wife's purse yes.... Yes.
I was thinking about it all there in the back of my head, trying to see a way out of it you know if there is such an agreement as Obermuller swears there is, it's against the law while we rattled on, the two of us, like a couple of children on a picnic, when I heard a crash behind me. The salad bowl had slipped from Obermuller's fingers.
I couldn't make him know what I felt any more than I'd dare tell him what I did. I shut the door. But not behind me. I shut it on the street and Mag, I shut for ever another door, too; the old door that opens out on Crooked Street. With my hand on my heart, that was beating as though it would burst, I flew back again through the black corridor, through the wings and out to Obermuller's office.
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