“Were you speaking to me?” she asked.
“Yes, lady.”
“I’m glad to know. Don’t let it become a habit, will you?”
“Young gentleman,” Tiger Mike said to the lad, “you must ask your lady to go outside to smoke, or take her from here.”
At this point, Miss Adobe came out with Eldrida, whose excitements always went straight to her liver and was now beginning to feel their onslaught. They went out hurriedly.
“Do you hear?” the young woman said. “We’re absooty chucked out, on our ears; absooty marvous. Get my wrap. We’ll leave this and see the church. We can smoke there.”
She moved to the outer door, and continued to smoke there, while her young man fetched the wraps from the hall. Mike turned to Frampton.
“I put it to them, Sorr,” he said. “The five here on this sheet will thank you kindly, Sorr.”
He took the sheet, without looking at it.
“Is there a telephone here?” he asked.
“No, Sorr, this place is not on.”
“I must get through to my housekeeper. I’ll go telephone. The show won’t be beginning?”
“You’ll have lashings of time, Sorr,” Mike said.
He had seen enough on his trip to make him sure of that.
Frampton went out into the rain. When he had gone a few yards up the road, he looked at the precious list, carefully screening it from the rain. It was written or scrawled with eyebrow-stick or some dark kind of grease-paint on the packing-paper which had covered the supply of tickets. It bore the names of five persons: Sorya, Marianela, Aranowski, Godelof, Zapritska. Sorya was the first of them; she was to be there, and she wasn’t married. His luck was in.
He telephoned at a little tavern; he got through to Mrs. Haulover and gave his orders, that there would be five strange young women at Mullples for the week-end; that their rooms were to be made ready at once, with fires lighted, and that she was to come down at once in the big car to welcome them. It was somewhat of a blow to Mrs. Haulover, who guessed that something unusual had occurred. He told her to get through to a Stanchester firm, which knew him and happened to be open on Saturdays, to insist that any extra stores needed should be sent by road at once.
“That’s that, then,” he concluded. “The sooner the quicker.”
He judged that Mrs. Haulover had guessed that a staggering chance had fallen. He went back to his place as the curtain rose upon the Toltecs.
It falls to few to see their late espoused Saints brought to them like Alkestis from the grave. For all the longing that goes up to Heaven, that mercy is seldom granted. When the life of the heart dies, the soul is all unlit and unhelped, so that it broods and sickens. He had been unlit and unhelped since Margaret’s death; nothing had been happy for him. Now, suddenly, Margaret was dancing before him; the lost chance of life was restored. This was Margaret given back by life; there could be no disloyalty to the dead in turning to her.
Yet, suppose she were already engaged? Suppose it? Why, it was pretty certain that a woman of such beauty and cleverness would have lovers by the dozen. And what would she think of a bachelor, who asked five strange women to stay for the week-end? She would have met plenty of pretty queer bachelors of all ages, touring in the provinces, and this sort among them.
He longed to speak to her and hear her voice. She held her head exactly as Margaret had done; surely her voice would be the same. Would she speak English? Would she prove to be Circassian? Was she in some strange way related to Margaret? Suppose she told him that she was so sick of the attentions of men that she wanted to be left alone?
After the curtain fell, he went out into the rain, to try to quiet his thoughts. In the Market Place he bought a box of cigarettes for Tiger. He found the Tiger sitting at the table in the passage.
“I’ve brought you a few cigarettes,” he said.
“Indeed, Sorr, that’s kind of you. I smoke a lot of them things, now that I do not have to mind meself.”
“It’s a bad day for business.”
“Ye’d not get many worse. This has been a bad tour. Run by bad men and rotten.”
“Are your people, the dancers, Circassians?”
“There’s all sorts, the same as in Noah’s Ark. There’s many of ’em might be anything, they’ve just traipsed about touring with dancers all over the place. They’d be hard put to it to say what they are, if pressed. But they’ve been every place, and know nothing of any, except they danced there one time.”
“That was a great night at the club,” Frampton said, “when you put it all over the Mill Wheel.”
“It was a great night for me,” Mike said. “But ye said you backed me?”
“I did,” Frampton said.
“Indeed, there’s not many did. Me manager said: ‘Now, Mike, they’ve offered me five hundred quid for you to lose. I’ve told ’em that if they talked like that to me, I’d turn you loose on ’em.’ They said: ‘Well, tell your lad he’ll get no more jobs here nor any place, if he puts the Mill Wheel out. Let him just chew on that and give me a hint in the morning.’”
“Was that the Mill Wheel’s set?”
“No, Sorr, it was just a set that fixed things. Me manager said to me: ‘Mike, we got a tough bunch against us. They got a lot of dough and want to get the Mill Wheel right up in Gee. But you’re a straight lad, Mike, and I believe you can put the Mill Wheel out. If you can’t, you do your damnedest, and you’ll make your name, at least.”
“I remember the betting was ten to one on the Mill Wheel,” Frampton said.
“What made ye back me, Sorr?” the Tiger asked.
“I liked the look of you. I saw you weigh in in the morning. I thought you looked just a shade the better man.”
“And indeed I was,” Mike said, “but only just a shade. He nearly got me in the first round. He caught me a welt on the jaw that made me think I was gone. He learned me sense with that welt, not to come so near asking for trouble. I was a glad lad, I tell you, Sorr, when I got my chance in the seventh round.”
“I used to see the Mill Wheel later, in the halls,” Frampton said. “What became of him?”
“He’s in Hollywood, Sorr, where all the lads go now. He trains tigers for the films. He calls himself Zendavesta, the Brahman Tiger King.”
“About these ladies on your list?” Frampton asked, “can you tell me if any of them talk English?”
“Miss Sorya’s English; her mother was English, at least, I believe. Miss Marianela’s French; she talks a fair whack of English. The Aranowski, I don’t know what she is; nor the other two. Zapritska sounds like something to eat in one of these foreign joints. They don’t talk much English, those last three, but you may make your meaning clear to them. They’re not what they call temperamental, them three birds. We’ve some in this outfit are. They’re the lads to lie down and scream on you, if you ask them to be ready for the train by noon. But you’ll have no trouble, Sorr, with your lot. They’ll be on their company manners.”
“When my housekeeper comes, I’ll get you to introduce me,” Frampton said.
They talked for a while of the whirling Mill Wheel, now Zendavesta, whom Mike had laid on the mat. Mike loved to talk of the days of his fame; few folk remembered Tiger Mike. Suddenly from one of the dressing-rooms came a wild and angry outburst, followed by screaming.
“For the love of me,” Mike said, “there’s that Tzigajzwsky again. She’s jealous of the Trojan king, the long bird who necks the rum. She’ll have his eyes out, if I don’t watch it.”
He was off to the battlefield, but the Trojan king came out bleeding before he reached the door. He was the tall drunken man who had called for Tomás. Blood was running down his cheek from scratches, and Tzigajzwsky followed up her foe with a volley of old dancing shoes.