'You take your manuscript and give me my money,' said Goldwater implacably.
'Exchange would be a robbery. I will not rob you. Keep your bargain. See, here is the printer's letter.' He dragged from a tail-pocket a mass of motley manuscripts and yellow letters, and laid them beside the telephone as if to search among them.
'Be not a fool-man, Goldwater.' The poet's carneying forefinger was laid on his nose. 'I and you are the only two people in New York who serve the poetic drama--I by writing, you by producing.'
Goldwater still shook his head, albeit a whit appeased by the flattery.
Kloot replied for him: 'Your manuscript shall be returned to you by the first dustcart.'
Pinchas disregarded the youth. 'But I am willing you shall have only a fortnight's rehearsals. I believe in you, Goldwater. I have always said, "The only genius on the Yiddish stage is Goldwater." Klostermann--bah! He produces not so badly, but act? My grandmother's hen has a better stage presence. And there is Davidoff--a voice like a frog and a walk like a spider. And these charlatans I only heard of when I came to New York. But you, Goldwater--your fame has blown across the Atlantic, over the Carpathians. I journeyed from Cracow expressly to collaborate with you.'
'Then why do you spoil it all?' asked the mollified manager.
'It is my anxiety that Europe shall not be disappointed in you. Let us talk of the cast.'
'But all our worms are caught,' grinned Kloot. 'We keep our talent pinned on the premises.'
'I know, I know,' said Pinchas, paling. He saw Mrs. Goldwater tripping on saucily as Ophelia.
'But we don't give all our talent to one play,' the manager reminded him.
'No, of course not,' said Pinchas, with a breath of hope.
'We have to use all our people by turns. We divide our forces. With myself as Hamlet you will have a cast that should satisfy any author.'
'Do I not know it?' cried Pinchas. 'Were you but to say your lines, leaving all the others to be read by the prompter, the house would be spellbound, like Moses when he saw the burning bush.'
'That being so,' said Goldwater, 'you couldn't expect to have my wife in the same cast.'
'No, indeed,' said Pinchas enthusiastically. 'Two such tragic geniuses would confuse and distract, like the sun and the moon shining together.'