“They’re always pickin’ on me,” moaned Jimmy a few weeks later as he flung the letter he had just finished reading down on his desk in a corner of the dingy office of the Colonial Theatre and kicked impulsively at a crumpled pile of discarded newspapers on the floor.
“What’s the matter, old man?” inquired Matthews, looking up from a stack of letters on his desk and regarding the press agent with a bantering smile. “Is Bartlett out on the rampage again?”
“No,” replied Jimmy in a disgusted tone of voice. “I wish he was. He’s postin’ three sheets tellin’ what a grand little fellow I am. That’s what gets my pet Angora.”
“What’s the catch?” questioned the other.
“Oh, that’s concealed in the last paragraph. He starts out with a lot of hot air about how good I am and how pleased he is at the wonderful showing I’ve landed over here in Boston, and a bunch of other junk and then he—wait, I’ll read you the finish. He says—‘and being desirous of showing my appreciation of your efforts in a concrete way I have decided to intrust to you the general direction of the publicity campaign of ’The Ganges Princess.’ I will send someone to take over ‘Keep Moving’ on Saturday, and you will kindly report at this office on Monday morning.’”
Matthews, who had sauntered over to Jimmy’s desk during the reading of Chester Bartlett’s letter, looked frankly bewildered.
“I’m pretty dense, I guess,” he said. “I don’t see anything in that to cause you to exhibit any signs of distress. He’s handing you the prize job of the season on a gold platter. You couldn’t stop the papers from printing stuff about that show with an injunction from the Supreme Court. Don’t you realize that?”
“Oh, that part of it’s all right,” replied Jimmy. “I suppose I’ve got a nerve to put up a holler, but I can’t help it. It’s this thing of bein’ bounced about like a tennis ball that makes me sore. The minute I get sewed up with one show and the machinery in the little old idea factory gets all oiled up and is makin’ 286 revolutions to the minute, along comes a letter or a wire shootin’ me on to join somethin’ else. Gee, I wish I was workin’ for myself and not for the other guy.”
Jimmy would have resented any suggestion that the look which crept into his eyes as he said this was wistful, but it was just that. He paused and gazed out of the window at the scurrying throng of early morning shoppers. Across his face there came and went the shadow of a pathetic smile, a smile that seemed to express for a moment the elation of holding within his grasp the very substance of things hoped for and which instantly merged into something that epitomized utter hopelessness. Matthews sensed his mood and put his hand on the press agent’s shoulder.