T the clubhouse of the Wolves, that gay association of actors, managers and others connected with the theater, Pelham signed his luncheon check and started from the dining room.
Maline, the famous producer, waved a hand to the immaculate Pelham. "Any time that the Gray Ghost dies, or you give up your battle with him," laughed the manager, "you can have a job with me, Mr. Pelham."
Pelham flushed. His warfare with the Gray Ghost was a matter of common knowledge. Nevertheless, he was sensitive on the subject. The criminal had had the better of their encounter thus far. But he shrugged and laughed.
"You look as gloomy as though you had a private Gray Ghost walking your own ancestral chambers, Maline," he said.
"Some people have got it pretty soft," declared the manager. "I'd trade jobs in a minute. if the Gray Ghost robs a bank it doesn't cost you a penny if you can't find him. But if I can't find an actor, where the deuce am I?"
Pelham looked down at the fat, red face of Maline. Usually that face was wrinkled with mirth; the small brown eyes twinkled. But today the face was lugubrious. Pelham glanced about the crowded dining room.
"I see a lot of pretty good actors here," he declared.
"Not the ones I want," frowned Maline.
"Sorry, but I can't waste sympathy on you," said Pelham. "With five plays packing New York theaters and a dozen successes on the road, you strike me as being one of the filthy rich. Why do you want actors, anyway? Aren't the ones you have satisfactory? I've seen all your current productions, and they seem well cast to me."
Maline stared at him almost angrily.
"Which interests you most? What the Gray Ghost did last year or what he is going to do tomorrow? Well, it is the same way with me. The plays that I've produced don't interest me. It's the play that I'm going to produce that counts. And here I've got the greatest manuscript I ever read and no one to play it. 'The Three Wise Men' is the name of it—a mystical melodrama. And I can't find three character actors to fill the bill."
EWEESE, who was also a producer of note, had stopped at the table and listened to Maline's plaint.
"I'm in the same boat," he said. "I have a play in the office which has elderly men's parts. Big parts. And I can't find anyone to play them."
"What do you mean?" asked Pelham. "Are character actors as scarce as that?"
"Good actors, like good detectives or generals or kings or cooks, are always scarce," declared Deweese. "There are, outside of a few recognized stars, just seven men on the American stage capable of playing, with distinction, the parts of men between fifty-five and seventy. I mean men with some reputation, who'd draw a few dollars into the box office."
"Well, why not engage them?" asked Pelham.
Deweese shrugged. Maline spoke. "I don't know about Deweese," he said, "but I've written and telegraphed to every one of those seven men. I've sent messages to their addresses, only to learn that they're all out of town. Minister, Septen, Blanford, Kelley, Swinburn, Sheddon and Garceau—every last one of them disappeared."
"Same here," stated Deweese. "Why, only last month Septen was in my office offering to work for almost nothing. And now, when I have a fat part for him, at the biggest salary he ever received In all his life, he's gone out of town and left no address." He grinned at Pelham. "How much would the Tryon Agency charge for locating Septen and the others?"
Pelham smiled, "I'd do it for nothing, Deweese, if it would make you offer a decent cast to a long-suffering public."
Deweese's face resumed its sad expression. "Sh-sh! I think I see the Gray Ghost," he whispered.
Pelham managed to join in the laugh against himself and was still smiling as he stepped out into Broadway. But once there, the smile left his lips.
Walking toward his apartment, his mind busied itself with the never-ending problem of the arrest and conviction of the Gray Ghost.
The battle between them had become more than a struggle between the forces of law and order and the forces of vice.
The fight was personal; their antagonism was personal.
Pelham went to the office of the Tryon Agency, in which he was a silent partner. But he found Jerry Tryon awaiting for him now at his apartment. With Jerry was a choleric old gentleman, Robert Bleakie, of tho international banking house of Bleakie & Horton, and it was concerning his partner that he had called upon Tryon, who, in turn, had brought him here.