The Trufflers

“Well,” he said – “good-by.”

“Good-by.”

That was all. Peter ate alone, still overstrung but gloomy now, in the glittering hotel.

The dinner, however, was both well-cooked and hot. It tended to soothe and soften him. Finally, expansive again, he leaned hack, fingered his coffee cup, smoked a twenty-cent cigar and observed the life about him.

There, were many large dressy women, escorted by sharp-looking men of two races. There were also small dressy women, some mere girls and pretty, but nearly all wearing make-up on cheeks and lips and quite all with extreme, sophistication in their eyes. There was shining silver and much white linen. Chafing dishes blazed. French and Austrian waiters moved swiftly about under the commanding eye of a stern captain. Uniformed but pocketless hat boys slipped it and out, pouncing on every loose article of apparel… It was a gay scene; and Peter found himself in it, of it, for it. With rising exultation in his heart he reflected that he was back on Broadway, where (after all) he belonged.

His manager of the afternoon came in now, who believed, with Peter, that woman’s place was the home. He was in evening dress – a fat man. At his side tripped a very young-appearing girl indeed – the youngest and prettiest in the room, but with the make-up and sophistication of the others. Men (and women) stared at them as they passed. There was whispering; for this was the successful Max Neuerman, and the girl was the lucky Eileen O’Rourke.

Neuerrman sighted Peter, greeted him boisterously, himself drew up an unoccupied chair. Peter was made acquainted with Miss O’Rourke. “This is the man, Eileen,” said Neuerman, breathing confidences, “Wrote The Trufiler. Big thing! Absolutely a new note on Broadway! Eric here has caught the new bachelor woman, shown her up and put a tag on her. After this she’ll be called a truffler everywhere… By the way, Eric, I sent the contract down to you to-night by messenger. And the check.”

Miss Eileen O’Rourke smiled indulgently and a thought absently. While Peter lighted, thanks to Neuermnn, a thirty-cent cigar and impulsively told Miss O’Rourke (who continued to smile indulgently and absently) just how he had come to hit on that remarkable tag.

It was nearly nine o’clock when he left and walked, very erect, from the restaurant, conscious of a hundred eyes on his back. He gave the hat boy a quarter.

Out on Forty-second Street he paused to clear his exuberant but confused mind. He couldn’t go back to the rooms; not as he felt now. Cabarets bored him. It was too early for dancing. Irresolute, he strolled over toward Fifth Avenue, crossed it, turned south. A north-bound automobile bus stopped just ahead of him. He glanced up at the roof. There appeared to be a vacant seat or two. In front was the illuminated sign that meant Riverside Drive. It was warm for February.

He decided to take the ride.

Just in front of him, however, also moving toward the bus, was a young couple. There was something familiar about them. The girl – he could see by a corner light – was wearing a boyish coat, a plaid coat. Also she wore a tam o’shanter. She partly turned her head… his pulse started racing, and he felt the colour rushing into his face. It was Sue Wilde, no other!

But the man? No overcoat. That soft black hat! A glimpse of a flowing tie of black silk! The odd trick of throwing his right leg out and around as he walked and toeing in with the right foot!

It was the Worm.

Peter turned sharply away, crossed the street and caught a south-bound bus. Wavering between irritation, elation and chagrin, he walked in and out among the twisted old streets of Greenwich Village. Four distinct times – and for no clear reason – he passed the dingy apartment building where Sue and Betty lived.

Later he found himself standing motionless on a curb by a battered lamp-post, peering through his large horn-rimmed eye-glasses at a bill-board across the street on which his name did not appear. He studied the twenty-four-sheet poster of a cut plug tobacco that now occupied the space. There was light enough in the street to read it by.

Suddenly he turned and looked to the right. Then he looked to the left. Fumbling for a pencil, he moved swiftly and resolutely across the street. Very small, down in the right-hand corner of the tobacco advertisement, he wrote his name – his pen name – “Eric Mann.”

Then, more nearly at peace with himself, he went to the moving pictures.

Entering the rooms later, he found the Worm settled, in pajamas as usual, with a book in the Morris chair. He also found a big envelope from Neuerman with the contract in it and a check for a thousand dollars, advanced against royalties.

It was a brown check. He fingered it for a moment, while his spirits recorded their highest mark for the day. Then, outwardly calm, he put it in an inside coat pocket and with a fine air of carelessness tossed the contract to the desk.

The Worm put down his book and studied Peter rather thoughtfully.

“Pete,” he finally said, “I’ve got a message for you, and I’ve been sitting here debating whether to deliver it or not.”

“Let’s have it!” replied the Eric Mann shortly.

The Worm produced a folded envelope from the pocket of his pajamas and handed it ever. “I haven’t been told what’s in it,” he said.

Peter, with a tremor, unfolded the envelope and peered inside. There were two enclosures – one plainly his scribbled note to Sue; the other (he had to draw it partly out and examine it) – yes – no – yes, his anonymous letter, much crumpled.

Deliberately, rather white about the mouth, Peter moved to the fireplace, touched a match to the papers and watched them burn. That done, he turned and queried:

“Well? That all?”

The Worm shook his head. “Not quite all, Pete.”

Words suddenly came from Peter. “What do I care for that girl! A creative artist has his reactions, of course. He even does foolish things. Look at Wagner, Burns, Cellini, Michael Angelo – look at the things they used to do!..”

The words stopped.

“Her message is,” continued the Worm, “the suggestion that next time you write one of them with your left hand.”

Peter thought this over. The check glowed next to his heart. It thrilled him. “You tell your friend Sue Wilde,” he replied then, with dignity, “that my message to her – and to you – will be delivered next September across the footlights of the Astoria Theater.” And he strode into the bedroom.

The Worm looked after him with quizzical eyes, smiled a little and resumed his book.

CHAPTER VI – THE WORM POURS OIL ON A FIRE

PETER came stealthily into the rooms on the seventh floor of the old bachelor apartment building in Washington Square. His right hand, deep in a pocket of his spring overcoat, clutched a thin, very new book bound in pasteboard. It was late on a Friday afternoon, near the lamb-like close of March.

The rooms were empty. Which fact brought relief to Peter.

He crossed the studio to the decrepit flat-top desk between the two windows. With an expression of gravity, almost of solemnity, on his long face, lie unlocked the middle drawer on the end next the wail. Within, on a heap of manuscripts, letters and contracts, lay five other thin little books in gray, buff and pink. He spread these in a row on the desk and added the new one. On each was the name of a savings bank, printed, and his own name, written. They represented savings aggregating now nearly seven thousand dollars.

Seven thousand dollars, for a bachelor of thirty-three may seem enough to you. It did not seem enough to Peter. In fact he was now studying the six little books through his big horn-rimmed glasses (not spectacles) with more than a suggestion of anxiety. Peter was no financier; and the thought of adventuring his savings on the turbulent uncharted seas of finance filled his mind with terrors. Savings banks appealed to him because they were built solidly, of stone, and had immense iron gratings at windows and doors. And, too, you couldn’t draw money without going to some definite personal trouble… It is only fair to add that the books represented all he had or would ever have unless he could get more. Nobody paid Peter a salary. No banker or attorney had a hand in taxing his income at the source. The Truffler might succeed and make him mildly rich. Or it might die in a night, leaving the thousand-dollar “advance against royalties” as his entire income from more than a year of work. His last two plays had failed, you know. Plays usually failed. Eighty or ninety per cent, of them – yes, a good ninety!

Theoretically, the seven thousand dollars should carry him two or three years. Practically, they might not carry him one. For he couldn’t possibly know in advance what he would do with them. Genius laughs at savings banks.

Peter sighed, put the six little books away and locked the drawer.

Locked it with sudden swiftness and caution, for Hy Lowe just then burst in the outer door and dove, humming a one-step, into the bedroom.

Peter, pocketing the keys carefully so that they would not jingle, put on a casual front and followed him there.

Hy, still in overcoat and hat, was gazing with rapt eyes at a snap-shot of two girls. He laughed a little, self-consciously, at the sight of Peter and set the picture against the mirror on his side of the bureau.

There were other pictures stuck about Hy’s end of the mirror; all of girls and not all discreet. One of these, pushed aside to make room for the new one, fell to the floor. Hy let it lie.

Peter leaned ever and peered at the snap-shot. He recognized the two girls as Betty Deane and Sue Wilde.

“Look here,” said Peter, “where have you been?”

“Having a dish of tea.”

“Don’t you ever work?”

“Since friend Betty turned up, my son, I’m wondering if I ever shall.”

Peter grunted. His gaze was centered not on Hy’s friend Betty, but on the slim familiar figure at the right.

“Just you two?”

“Sue came in. Look here, Pete, I’m generous. We’re going to cut it in half. I get Betty, you get Sue.”

Peter, deepening gloom on his face, sat down abruptly on the bed.

“Easy, my son,” observed Hy sagely, “or that girl will be going to your head. That’s your trouble, Pete; you take ‘em seriously. And believe me, it won’t do!”

“It isn’t that, Hy – I’m not in love with her.”

There was a silence while Hy removed garments.

“It isn’t that,” protested Peter again. “No, it isn’t that. She irritates me.”

Hy took off his collar.

“Any – anybody else there?” asked Peter.

“Only that fellow Zanin. He came in with Sue. By the way, he wants to see you. Seems to have an idea he can interest you in a scheme he’s got. Talked quite a lot about it.”

Peter did not hear all of this. At the mention of Zanin he got up suddenly and rushed off into the studio.

Hy glanced after him; then hummed (more softly, out of a new respect for Peter) a hesitation waltz as he cut the new picture in half with the manicure scissors and put Sue on Peter’s side of the bureau.

The Worm came in, dropped coat and hat on a chair and settled himself to his pipe and the evening paper. Peter, stretched on the couch, greeted him with a grunt. Hy appeared, in undress, and attacked the piano with half-suppressed exuberance.

It was the Worm’s settled habit to read straight through the paper without a word; then to stroll out to dinner, alone or with the other two, as it happened, either silent or making quietly casual remarks that you didn’t particularly need to answer if you didn’t feel like it. He made no demands on you, the Worm. He wasn’t trivial and gay, like Hy; or burning with inner ambitions and desires, like Peter.

On this occasion, however, he broke bounds. Slowly the paper, not half read, sank to his knees. He smoked up a pipeful thus. His sandy thoughtful face was sober.

Finally he spoke.

“Saw Sue Wilde to-day. Met her outside the Parisian, and we had lunch together.”

Peter shot a glance at him.

The Worm, oblivious to Peter, tamped his pipe with a pencil and spoke again.

“Been trying to make her out. She and I have had several talks. I can’t place her.”

This was so unusual – from the Worm it amounted to an outburst! – that even Hy, swinging around from the yellow keyboard, waited in silence.

“You fellows know Greenwich Village,” the musing one went on, puffing slowly and following with his eyes the curling smoke. “You know the dope – ’Oats for Women!’ somebody called it – that a woman must be free as a man, free to go to the devil if she chooses. You know, so often, when these feminine professors of freedom talk to you how they over-emphasize the sex business – by the second quarter-hour you find yourself solemnly talking woman’s complete life, rights of the unmarried mother, birth control; and after you’ve got away from the lady you can’t for the life of you figure out how those topics ever got started, when likely as not you were thinking about your job or the war or Honus Wagner’s batting slump. You know.”

Hy nodded, with a quizzical look. Peter was motionless and silent.

“You know – I don’t want to knock; got too much respect for the real idealists here in the Village – but you fellows do know how you get to anticipating that stuff and discounting it before it comes; and you can’t help seeing that the woman is more often than not just dressing up ungoverned desires in sociological language, that she’s leaping at the chance to experiment with emotions that women have had to suppress for ages. Back of it is the new Russianism they live and breathe – to know no right or wrong, trust your instincts, respond to your emotions, bow to your desires… Well, now, here’s Sue Wilde. She looks like a regular little radical. And acts it. Breaks away from her folks – lives with the regular bunch in the Village – takes up public dancing and acting – smokes her cigarettes – knows her Strindberg and Freud – yet… well, I’ve dined with her once, lunched with her once, spent five hours in her apartment talking Isadora Duncan as against Pavlowa, even walked the streets half a night arguing about what she calls the Truth… and we haven’t got around to ‘the complete life’ yet.”

“How do you dope it out?” asked Hy.

“Well” – the Worm deliberately thought out his reply – “I think she’s so. Most of ‘em aren’t so. She’s a real natural oasis in a desert of poseurs. Probably that’s why I worry about her.”

“Why worry?” From Hy.

“True enough. But I do. It’s the situation she has drifted into, I suppose. If she was really mature you’d let her look out for herself. It’s the old he protective instinct in me, I suppose. The one thing on earth she would resent more than anything else. But this fellow Zanin…”

He painstakingly made a smoke ring and sent it toward the tarnished brass hook on the window-frame. It missed. He tried again.

Peter stirred uncomfortably, there on the couch. “What has she told you about Zanin?” he asked, desperately controlling his voice.

“She doesn’t know that she has told me much of anything. But she has talked her work and prospects. And the real story comes through. Just this afternoon since I left her, it has been piecing itself together. She is frank, you know.”

Peter suppressed a groan. She was frank! “Zanin is in love with her. He has been for a year or more. He wrote Any Street for her, incorporated some of her own ideas in it. He has been tireless at helping her work up her dancing and pantomime. Why, as near as I can see, the man has been downright devoting his life to her, all this time. It’s rather impressive. But then, Zanin is impressive.”

Peter broke out now. “Does he expect to marry her – Zanin?”

“Marry her? Oh, no.”

“‘Oh, no!’ Good God then – ”

“Oh, come, Pete, you surely know Zanin’s attitude toward marriage. He has written enough on the subject. And lectured – and put it in those little plays of his.”

“What is his attitude?”

“That marriage is immoral. Worse than immoral – vicious. He has expounded that stuff for years.”

“And what does she say to all this?” This question came from Hy, for Peter was speechless.

“Simply that he doesn’t rouse any emotional response in her. I’m not sure that she isn’t a little sorry he doesn’t. She would be honest you know. And that’s the thing about Sue – my guess about her, at least – that she won’t approach love as an experiment or an experience. It will have to be the real thing.”

He tried again, in his slow calm way, to hang a smoke ring on the brass hook.

“Proceed,” said Hy. “Your narrative interests me strangely.”

“Well,” said the Worm slowly, “Zanin is about ready to put over his big scheme. He has contrived at last to get one of the managers interested. And it hangs on Sue’s personality. The way he has worked it out with her, planning it as a concrete expression of that half wild, natural self of hers, I doubt if it, this particular thing, could be done without her. It is Sue – an expressed, interpreted Sue.”

“This must be the thing he is trying to get Pete in on.”

“The same. Zanin knows that where he fails is on the side of popularity. He has intelligence, but he hasn’t the trick of reaching the crowd. And he is smart enough to see what he needs and go after it.”

“He is going after the crowd, then?”

“Absolutely.”

“And what becomes of the noble artistic standards he’s been bleeding and dying for?”

“I don’t know. He really has been bleeding and dying. You have to admit that. He lives in one mean room, over there in Fourth Street. A good deal of the little he eats he cooks with his own hands on a kerosene stove. Those girls are always taking him in and feeding him up. He works twenty and thirty hours at a stretch over his productions at the Crossroads. Must have the constitution of a bull elephant. If it was just a matter of picking up money, he could easily go back into newspaper work or the press-agent game… I’m not sure that the man isn’t full of a struggling genius that hasn’t really begun to find expression. If he is, it will drive him into bigger and bigger things. He won’t worry about consistency – he’ll just do what every genius does. he’ll fight his way through to complete self-expression, blindly, madly, using everything that comes in his way, trampling on everything that he can’t use.”

Peter, twitching with irritation, sat up and snorted out:

“For God’s sake, what’s the scheme!”

The Worm regarded Peter thoughtfully and not unhumorously, as if reflecting further over his observations on genius. Then he explained:

“He’s going to preach the Greenwich Village freedom on every little moving-picture screen in America – shout the new naturalism to a hypocritical world.”

“Has he worked out his story?” asked Hy.

“In the rough, I think. But he wants a practical theatrical man to give it form and put it over. That’s where Pete comes in… Get it? It’s during stuff. He’ll use Sue’s finest quality, her faith, as well as her grace of body. What I could get out of it sounds a good deal like the Garden of Eden story without the moral. An Artzibasheff paradise. Sue says that she’ll have to wear a pretty primitive costume.”

“Which doesn’t bother her, I imagine,” said Hy.

“Not a bit.”

Peter, leaning back on stiff arms, staring at the opposite wall, suddenly found repictured to his mind’s eye a dramatic little scene: In the Crossroads Theater, out by the ticket entrance; the audience in their seats, old Wilde, the Walrus himself, in his oddly primitive’, early Methodist dress – long black coat, white bow tie, narrow strip of whisker on each grim cheek; Sue in her newsboy costume, hair cut short under the ragged felt hat, face painted for the stage, her deep-green eyes blazing. The father had said: “You have no shame, then – appearing like this?” To which the daughter had replied: “No – none!”

Hy was speaking again. “You don’t mean to say that Zanin will be able to put this scheme over on Sue?”

The Worm nodded, very thoughtful. “Yes, she is going into it, I think.”

Peter broke cut again: “But – but – but – but…

“You fellows want to get this thing straight in your heads,” the Worm continued, ignoring Peter. “Her reasons aren’t by any means so weak. In the first place the thing comes to her as a real chance to express in the widest possible way her own protest against conventionality. As Zanin has told her, she will be able to express naturalness and honesty of life to millions where Isadora Duncan, with all her perfect art, can only reach thousands. Yes, Zanin is appealing to her best qualities. And, at that, I’m not at all sure that he isn’t honest in it.’

“Honest!” snorted Peter.

“Yes, honest. I don’t say he is. I say I’m not sure… Then another argument with her is that he has really been helping her to grow. He has given her a lot – and without making any crude demands. Obligations have grown up there, you see. She knows that his whole heart is in it, that it’s probably his big chance; and while the girl is modest enough she can see how dependent the whole plan is on her.”

“But – but – but” – Peter again! – “think what she’ll find herself up against – the people she’ll have to work with – the vulgarity.

“I don’t know,” mused the Worm. “I’m not sure it would bother her much. Those things don’t seem to touch her. And she isn’t the sort to be stopped by conventional warnings, anyway. She’ll have to find it out all for herself.”

The Worm gave himself up again to the experiment with smoke rings. He blew one – another – a third – at the curtain hook..The fourth wavered down over the hook, hung a second, broke and trailed off into the atmosphere. “.Got it!” said the Worm, to himself.

“Who’s the manager he’s picked up?” asked Hy.

“Fellow named Silverstone. Head of a movie producing company.”

Peter, to whom this name was, apparently, the last straw, shivered a little, sprang to his feet, and for the second time within the hour rushed blindly off into solitude.

CHAPTER VII – PETER THINKS ABOUT THE PICTURES

WHEN Hy set out for dinner, a little later, he found Peter sitting on a bench in the Square.

“Go in and get your overcoat,” said Hy. “Unless you’re out for pneumonia.”

“Hy,” said Peter, his color vivid, his eyes wild, “we can’t let those brutes play with Sue; like that. We’ve got to save her.”

Hy squinted down at his bamboo stick. “Very good, my son. But just how?”

“If I could talk with her, Hy!.. I know that game so well!”

“You could call her up – ”

“Call her up nothing! I can’t ask to see her and start cold.” He gestured vehemently. “Look here, you’re seeing Betty every day – you fix it.”

Hy mused. “They’re great hands to take tramps in the country, those two. Most every Sunday… If I could arrange a little party of four… See here! Betty’s going to have dinner with me to-morrow night.”

“For God’s sake, Hy, get me in on it!”

“Now you just wait! Sue’ll be playing to-morrow night at the Crossroads, It’s Saturday, you know.”

Peter’s face fell.

“But it gives me the chance to talk it over with friend Betty and perhaps plan for Sunday. If Zanin’ll just leave her alone that long.”

“It isn’t as if I were thinking of myself, Hy…”

“Of course not, Pete.”

“The girl’s in danger. We’ve got to save her.”

“What if she won’t listen! She’s high-strung.”

“Then,” said Peter, flaring up with a righteous passion that made him feel suddenly like the hero of his own new play – “then I’ll go straight to Zanin and force him to declare himself! I will face him, as man to man!”

Thus the two Seventh-Story Men!

At moments, during the few weeks just past, thoughts of his anonymous letter had risen to disturb Peter; on each occasion, until to-night, to be instantly overwhelmed by the buoyant egotism that always justified Peter to himself. But the thoughts had been there. They had kept him from attempts to see Sue, had even restrained him from appearing where there was likelihood of her seeing him; and they had kept him excited about her. Now they rose again in unsuspected strength. Of course she would refuse to see him! He slept hardly at all that night. The next day he was unstrung. And Saturday night (or early Sunday morning) when Hy crept in, Peter, in pajamas, all lights out, was sitting by the window nursing a headache, staring out with smarting eyeballs at the empty Square.