“I see,” said Rick. “Much obliged.”
And with a farewell nod he turned again and disappeared into the street.
It was noon when he awoke the next day in his room at the hotel. He first felt a vague sense of depression, then suddenly everything came back to him. He jumped out of bed, filled the washbowl with cold water and ducked his head in it, then washed and dressed. That done, he descended to the dining room and ate six eggs and two square feet of ham. After he had paid the breakfast check he went into the lobby and sank into a big leather chair.
“Let’s see,” he said to himself, “that leaves me fourteen dollars and twenty cents. Thank heaven Henderson didn’t look in my vest pocket, though he did take my watch out of the other one. That watch would have got me back to Honeville. The fare is fifty-eight dollars. I’ll starve before I’ll telegraph Fraser. Well, let’s see.”
He spent the entire afternoon loitering about the hotel, trying to get his mind to work. How to make some money? The thing appeared impossible. They don’t hold roping contests in New York. He considered everything from sweeping streets to chauffeuring. Could he drive a car around New York? No money in it, anyway, probably. But surely a man could do something.
By evening he had decided on nothing. After dinner he strolled up Broadway and bought a ticket for the revue. He was determined to find it amusing, for Mr. Henderson had said it was a bum show. It really bored him to death. But he stayed till the final curtain. Then he found himself on Broadway again.
Just how he got into Dickson’s is uncertain. He wanted a drink, and he wandered into the place and found himself in the presence of “the most famous cabaret in America.” Rick sat at a small table at one end of the immense, gorgeous room, watching the antics of the dancers and singers and other performers on the platform, and it was there that his idea came to him. Before he went to bed that night he had decided to give it a trial the very next day.
Accordingly the following morning he sought out a hardware store on Sixth Avenue and purchased thirty yards of first grade hemp rope and a gallon of crude oil. The cost was eight dollars and sixty cents. These articles he took back to the hotel, and for three hours he sat in his room rubbing the oil into the rope to bring it to the required degree of pliancy and toughness.
Then he spliced a loop in one end, doubled it through and made a six-foot noose — the size of the room would not permit a larger one — and began whirling it about his head. A sigh of satisfaction escaped him. Ah, the nimble wrist! And the rope would really do very well; a little limbering up and he would ask nothing better.
He pulled his traveling bag from under the bed, dumped out its contents and put the rope, carefully coiled, in their place. Then, with the bag in his hand, he descended to the street and made his way uptown to Dickson’s. At the entrance he halted a moment, then went boldly inside and accosted one of the young women at the door of the cloakroom.
“I want to speak to the manager of the show,” said he, hat in hand.
“You mean the headwaiter?” she hazarded.
“I don’t know,” replied Rick. “The man that runs the show on the platform. I saw it last night.”
“Oh,” she grinned. “You mean the cabaret.”
“Do I? Much obliged. Anyway, I want to see him.”
“It ain’t so easy,” the young woman observed. “The boss tends to that himself. I’ll see. Come in here.”
She led the way down a narrow, dark corridor to an office where stenographers and bookkeepers sat at their desks and machines, and turned Rick over to a wise-looking youth with a threatening mustache. The youth surveyed the caller with ill-concealed amusement at his ungraceful appearance, and when he finally condescended to speak there was a note of tolerant sarcasm in his voice.
“So you want to see Mr. Dickson,” he observed. “What do you want with him?”
“Listen, sonny.” Rick was smiling, too, quietly enough. “No doubt we’re having a lot of fun looking at each other, but my time’s valuable just now. I’m Rick Duggett from Arizona. Report the fact to your Mr. Dickson.”
Thus did Rick make his way into the presence of Lonny Dickson, the best known man on Broadway and the owner of its most famous cabaret. He was a large, smiling individual, with a clear countenance and a keen, penetrating eye. As Rick entered the inner office where he sat at a large flat desk heaped with papers, smoking a long thin cigar, he got up from his chair and held out a hand in greeting.
“Jimmie just told me,” he observed genially, looking Rick in the eye, “that a wild guy from the West wanted to see me. I’m kind of wild myself, so I don’t mind. But Jimmie didn’t get the name—”
“Duggett,” said Rick, taking the proffered hand.
“Glad to meet you, Mr. Duggett. What can I do for you?”
Rick hesitated.
“It’s this way,” he said finally. “I’m from Arizona. I’m a son of misfortune. Two days ago I had a roll big enough to choke a horse, but night before last I let it out to pasture, as though I wasn’t green enough myself. So I’m broke, and it’s a long, long way to Arizona. Last night I happened in here and saw your show, and an idea came to me. It’s a new stunt for the show, and it ought to be pretty good. So I thought I’d—”
“What is it?” interrupted Mr. Dickson, whose cordiality had rapidly disappeared as he became aware of the nature of the visitor’s errand. This was just some nut looking for a job.
“Something new,” said Rick placidly. “I can’t tell you very well; I’ve got to show you. It’ll take five minutes. All I want is a room with plenty of space, say twenty feet on each side, and a high ceiling—”
“But what is it?” the other repeated impatiently.
Rick looked at him.
“Gosh, you’re not wild,” he observed with a twinkle in his eye. “You’re just plain sassy. Didn’t I say I had to show you? Haven’t you got a room around here somewhere of the general size I indicated? Haven’t you got a pair of eyes to look at me with?”
The frown left Dickson’s brow, and he laughed.
“Well, you’re wild enough for both of us,” he declared. “I guess you’ll get back to Arizona all right, someway or other. As for your stunt for the cabaret, it’s a thousand to one that it’s rotten. Naturally you can’t be expected to know anything about cabarets. However, I’ll take a look. Come on, we’ll go up to the banquet room on the next floor; I guess you’ll find it big enough.”
“Much obliged,” said Rick.
He picked up his traveling bag and followed the restaurant proprietor out of the office.
The evening of the following day the patrons of Dickson’s of Broadway were treated to a surprise.
Do you know the main room at Dickson’s?
The first thing you notice about the place is the light — dazzling, glaring, bold; a perfect riot of light, whitish yellow, that comes from four immense chandeliers suspended from the ceiling and innumerable electric lamps on the marble pillars, attached to the walls, on the tables, everywhere.
Then your ears are assaulted, and you hear the clinking of glasses, the muffled footsteps of waiters, the confusing hum of conversation from half a thousand tongues, and mingled with all this a sound of music, now suppressed, now insistent, that comes from the orchestra on the rear of the raised platform at one side. On the front of this platform, of which a fair view may be had by each of the hundreds of diners and drinkers packed in the immense room, the cabaret performers appear in turn.
It was the height of the dinner hour, a little after seven. A young woman in a low-necked blue dress with cowlike eyes had finished three verses and choruses of a popular sentimental song, and the orchestra had rested the usual three minutes. Then they struck up again for the next “turn,” and a girl appeared on the platform, followed by a man.