“I can’t resist the temptation,” Bartlett wrote, “to look in on one of your seances and catch His Royal Highness and yourself in action. I must congratulate you on the success which you have achieved in putting this stunt over on the natives and I have instructed the office to give you a twenty-five per cent increase in salary.”
Mr. Denby laid the letter down and decided that, after all, theatrical managers had their proper place in the scheme of existence. Up to that moment he had always been inclined to consider them as useless encumberers of the earth.
He picked up the morning paper which lay at his elbow, adjusted his glasses and turned to the front page. He glanced cursorily at a story in the left-hand column dealing with the newest series of what are technically known in newspaper circles as “Red Raids;” let his attention wander to an account of the launching of a new presidential boom and then took a look at the right hand corner. What he saw emblazoned there caused him to almost drop the cup which he had just daintily raised to his lips and provoked an audible spluttering that sent the head-waiter hurrying in his direction from the other side of the room.
“Anything wrong, sir?” deferentially inquired the chief servitor, noting with apprehension the startled mien of the eminent lecturer.
“Nothing important,” he managed to reply. “Just some unwelcome tidings from home. I’ll be all right in a moment or two.”
When the head-waiter had bowed himself away Mr. Denby turned to a perusal of the paper. The words which struck his eyes seemed to spell to him the collapse of all things temporal.
PRINCE BAMBOOZLES SOCIETY; RAJPUT SINGH PROVED RANK IMPOSTER –––– Alleged Son of Nazir of Hydrabad and Glib Tongued Lecturer Associate Revealed as Wily Promoters of Publicity for Theatrical Enterprise. –––– FAKIRS ALMOST GOT AWAY WITH IT
The harrowing details which followed were dressed up in such sarcastic verbiage that Mr. Denby’s soul went sick and his appetite for breakfast vanished. He paid his check and sought the seclusion of his room. He wished to hide his face from the public gaze and apply poultices to his wounded dignity.
Jimmy Martin, coming up unannounced, found him a half hour later gazing pensively out of the window—a picture of incarnate misery. Jimmy wasn’t in a particularly jaunty mood himself, but he assumed his best “cheery-oh” manner when he caught a glimpse of his associate’s face.