HEY entered the hotel and went directly up to their apartment.
"I'm going to bed," announced Tilly, heading at once for the inner rooms. "I'm absolutely done up. Are you going to stay out here and browse?"
"Just a minute," pleaded Bellsmith. "I want to smoke a cigar. Besides, I think that company's coming. I don't want to break his heart."
His wife disappeared and Bellsmith luxuriously sat down for his usual midnight smoke. His prophecy had not been wrong, for a moment later there came a masonic tap at the door and Charlie Barnes, in his usual snuff-colored suit and brown derby hat, came grinning into the room. The custom inaugurated on that first Saturday night in Bellsmith's library had grown during the winter into a permanent institution which even Bellsmith's marriage had hardly interrupted. Without a word the host salvaged a glass from the bath-room and took a bottle from a kit-bag which was lying on the floor. At sight of the bottle Barnes's eye gleamed.
"Then it got here all right, did it?" he asked.
"Oh, yes," said Bellsmith. "William was so anxious about it that he wanted to get his private policeman to bring it up all the way."
With the glasses in his hand Bellsmith paused.
"Charlie," he suggested, "would n't it be a good idea to go to your room and talk? Poor Tilly is tired out I'm afraid we 'll keep her awake if we try to talk here."
"By all means! By all means!" agreed the comedian.
As they went toward the door, however, Tilly came flouncing out from the inner room in a priceless lace negligée. "Gift of the groom," was the thought that flashed through Charlie Barnes's mind as he saw it.
"Where are you going?" demanded Tilly.
"Nowhere, darling," replied her husband. "I'm just going down to Charlie's room to drink heavily."
"Oh, that's all right," agreed Tilly, appeased. She apologized to Barnes, "People are always trying to get him to talk business."
The comedian's room was one of much smaller proportions. Bellsmith was offered the only practical chair, and the new host sat down on the bed.
"Salut!" said Bellsmith, lifting his glass.
"How!" replied Charlie Barnes.
He locked with longing into his glass. "I never tasted better stuff than that but once, and that was in a little town eight or ten miles out of Louisville."
He fished an old pipe from his suit-case and began to puff, but they were not there to discuss little towns eight or ten miles out of Louisville—or even old pipes.
"Well," began Bellsmith nonchalantly, "it looks as if we had put it over at last."
To even qualified praise of the new "Eleanor," Barnes flashed up as to an insult.
"Put it over?" he exclaimed. "I should say we did. We knocked 'em silly. I knew we would. Mr. Bellsmith, I'd give ten years of my life if this had been a first night in New York."
Bellsmith laughed. "Charlie, if some one had taken you up every time you had offered to give ten years of your life, you would never have been born at all. In fact, you'd owe time to your parents."
Barnes grunted. "Just the same it's true in this case. Did you see What's-his-name, the manager of the house?"
"I saw him," replied Bellsmith, "but about what in particular?"
"About the run of the show. He told you you could have four weeks, did n't he?"
Bellsmith nodded.
"Well, let me tell you something," said Barnes. "You can make that six weeks or eight, if you speak quick enough. I saw him after the show to-night, and he 'll listen. He 'll listen."
"I 'll speak to him," replied Bellsmith, non-committally. He looked up rather cautiously. "Charlie, you never had any idea, did you, that we could go to New York?"
It was a subject that was evidently painful to Barnes.
"No," he said, gruffly, "I never did. Not with this show. New York's killed for us."
"Then what do you think we ought to do, after we finish this run?"
Barnes shrugged. "That's up to you, Mr. Bellsmith."
Bellsmith paused a moment, then fired his bombshell.
"Charlie, I 've had a big offer."
Barnes looked up, startled. "An offer for the show?"
"Well, that too, but principally an offer to me personally. Did you know that Al Harcourt was out front to-night?"
"No? Was he really?"
Barnes was evidently more hurt that that choice bit of live news had escaped him than curious to know what it might mean.
Bellsmith nodded. "I had a long talk with him. I've found out why Harcourt & Gay were so anxious to buy back the show."
"Why was it?"
Bellsmith told him, and Barnes chuckled with amusement throughout the recital.