HE last note of the girl's song trilled over the crowded house. There was a momentary silence, then then a thunder of the three-piece orchestra applause. The three piece orchestra struck up the chorus once more, and again the clear soprano surged from the perfectly rounded throat.
Billy Parrish cut short his speech to the house-manager and stared interestedly from wings at the supple girl who held her audience with the sheer charm and freshness of her voice. The thin lips of the man compressed sharply, and his eyebrows were upraised slightly with epicurean appreciation.
"She can sing," he commented admiringly to the house-manager.
The other chuckled.
"Sing! You just bet your bottom dollar she can sing. She's got the stuff, that dame has."
"Who is she?"
"Dolly Veerden. Just breaking into the game."
"I'm next to the close at the Orpheum," remarked Parrish. "Think I'll trot around and watch your first show to-night."
The girl finished her song and sped into the wings amid a thunder of applause. She took five curtains, and then refused to notice the continued applause of the house. The orchestra drowned the tenacious enthusiasts, and the curtain rose on the full stage set of the Dixie Comedy Trio's offering. Dolly Veerden smiled dimplingly at the manager and walked swiftly toward the dressing-room corridor.
"Goin' good," flattered the manager.
"Thanks," smiled the girl—and disappeared to change to street dress.
"She is pretty," commented Billy. "Mighty pretty."
"As a peach," endorsed the house mogul. "And she's chock-full of qit-up-an'-git. She'll be headlinin' at the Palace yet—Noo York, I'm meanin'."
"Maybe." Billy glanced once more at the somber row of dressing-rooms, nodded and waved his hand airily. "S'long, Pete. See you to-night. Much 'bliged."
The manager stared grinningly at the well set-up figure of the young man.
"I'm thinking," muttered Pete, "that Dolly's gonna graduate into the Big Time sooner'n she thinks. And not as a single, either."
ILLY PARRISH was that rarest of all things in the vaudeville world—a comedian with a personality. "Artists" who had played with him week in and week out told marvelous tales of his ability to awaken a dead audience without speaking a word. There was something in his smile, something in his attitude of chumminess, that appealed to the most blasé theater goer.
Yet there was an intangible something which Billy lacked. He knew it, and for two years he'd been trying to put his finger on the defect.
And the managers recognized the existence of the flaw, for while Billy had been featured in almost every large vaudeville house in the country, and although he had been headlined on the biggest of road-time, he'd never reached the eminence which had been attained by other singles—the eminence, for instance, of Bert Fitzgibbon or Jack Wilson—or, among the women, of Eva Tanguay or Belle Baker.
It wasn't his voice. It wasn't his stage bearing. It wasn't the fact that he didn't always make a hit with the audience. It was something no one could put a finger on.
"It's a bit tough," he remarked one day to one of the powers-that-be in the Keith offices. "Remember, I aint kicking, but it does get my goat to know that I've got the goods, and that I get 'em across, and yet that unless I do something I'll never be a Welch or a Lauder or a Tanguay. I aim high, y'see. And I'm honest. But what I want to be is one of those headliners whose name alone puts the S. R. O. up in the lobby."
The eminent booking-agent shook his head sagely.
"You've more common-sense than most vaudevillians," he remarked easily. "Most guys on the two-a-day think us managers has a grudge against 'em—when, as a matter of fact, we are combing this country from end to end for real talent. There's too many that thinks they ought to be put on seventeen times in succession in the same show at the Palace. They're too stuck on themselves. They go on pullin' the same stuff year after year, never knowin' why we want 'em less and less. Now you—you come to me for advice, and I'm dummed if I can give it. Hard lines; that's what I call it. You've got the goods, and you'll always be a good Big-Timer—but there's a kink somewheres. That's the trouble with vaudeville: we know it's there, and yet we can't find it. Maybe,"—speculatively,—"maybe a two-act—"
Billy laughed.
"Me take a partner? Aw, say—"
And so Billy had grinned, taken a proffered perfecto, and left to play twenty-one weeks on Central Time. And in Omaha he had strolled into the Majestic, which was running small-time stuff, and had heard and been charmed with Dolly Veerden. Not that he seriously considered Dolly,