Chapter 2
AN IMPORTANT ENGAGEMENT
Historians, when they come to deal with the opening years of the twentieth century, will probably call this the Music-Hall Age. At the time of the great invasion the music-halls dominated England. Every town and every suburb had its Hall, most of them more than one. The public appet.i.te for sight-seeing had to be satisfied somehow, and the music-hall provided the easiest way of doing it. The Halls formed a common place on which the celebrity and the ordinary man could meet. If an impulsive gentleman slew his grandmother with a coal-hammer, only a small portion of the public could gaze upon his pleasing features at the Old Bailey. To enable the rest to enjoy the intellectual treat, it was necessary to engage him, at enormous expense, to appear at a music-hall. There, if he happened to be acquitted, he would come on the stage, preceded by an asthmatic introducer, and beam affably at the public for ten minutes, speaking at intervals in a totally inaudible voice, and then retire; to be followed by some enterprising lady who had endeavoured, unsuccessfully, to solve the problem of living at the rate of ten thousand a year on an income of nothing, or who had performed some other similarly brainy feat.
It was not till the middle of September that anyone conceived what one would have thought the obvious idea of offering music-hall engagements to the invading generals.
The first man to think of it was Solly Quhayne, the rising young agent. Solly was the son of Abraham Cohen, an eminent agent of the Victorian era. His brothers, Abe Kern, Benjamin Colquhoun, Jack Coyne, and Barney Cowan had gravitated to the City; but Solly had carried on the old business, and was making a big name for himself. It was Solly who had met Blinky Bill Mullins, the prominent sand-bagger, as he emerged from his twenty years" retirement at Dartmoor, and booked him solid for a thirty-six months" lecturing tour on the McGinnis circuit. It was to him, too, that Joe Brown, who could eat eight pounds of raw meat in seven and a quarter minutes, owed his first chance of displaying his gifts to the wider public of the vaudeville stage.
The idea of securing the services of the invading generals came to him in a flash.
"S"elp me!" he cried. "I believe they"d go big; put "em on where you like."
Solly was a man of action. Within a minute he was talking to the managing director of the Mammoth Syndicate Halls on the telephone. In five minutes the managing director had agreed to pay Prince Otto of Saxe-Pfennig five hundred pounds a week, if he could be prevailed upon to appear. In ten minutes the Grand Duke Vodkakoff had been engaged, subject to his approval, at a weekly four hundred and fifty by the Stone-Rafferty circuit. And in a quarter of an hour Solly Quhayne, having pushed his way through a mixed crowd of Tricky Serios and Versatile Comedians and Patterers who had been waiting to see him for the last hour and a half, was bowling off in a taximeter-cab to the Russian lines at Hampstead.
General Vodkakoff received his visitor civilly, but at first without enthusiasm. There were, it seemed, objections to his becoming an artiste. Would he have to wear a properly bald head and sing songs about wanting people to see his girl? He didn"t think he could. He had only sung once in his life, and that was twenty years ago at a b.u.mp-supper at Moscow University. And even then, he confided to Mr. Quhayne, it had taken a decanter and a-half of neat vodka to bring him up to the scratch.
The agent ridiculed the idea.
"Why, your Grand Grace," he cried, "there won"t be anything of that sort. You ain"t going to be starred as a comic. You"re a Refined Lecturer and Society Monologue Artist. "How I Invaded England," with lights down and the cinematograph going. We can easily fake the pictures."
The Grand Duke made another objection.
"I understand," he said, "it is etiquette for music-hall artists in their spare time to eat-er-fried fish with their fingers. Must I do that? I doubt if I could manage it."
Mr Quhayne once more became the human semaph.o.r.e.
"S"elp me! Of course you needn"t! All the leading pros, eat it with a spoon. Bless you, you can be the refined gentleman on the Halls same as anywhere else. Come now, your Grand Grace, is it a deal? Four hundred and fifty c.h.i.n.king o"Goblins a week for one hall a night, and press-agented at eight hundred and seventy-five. S"elp me! Lauder doesn"t get it, not in England."
The Grand Duke reflected. The invasion has proved more expensive than he had foreseen. The English are proverbially a nation of shopkeepers, and they had put up their prices in all the shops for his special benefit. And he was expected to do such a lot of tipping. Four hundred and fifty a week would come in uncommonly useful.
"Where do I sign?" he asked, extending his hand for the agreement.
Five minutes later Mr. Quhayne was urging his taxidriver to exceed the speed-limit in the direction of Tottenham.
Chapter 3
A BIRD"S-EYE VIEW OF THE SITUATION
Clarence read the news of the two engagements on the tape at the office of his paper, but the first intimation the general public had of it was through the medium of headlines:-
MUSIC-HALL SENSATION INVADING GENERALS" GIGANTIC SALARIES RUMOURED RESENTMENT OF V.A.F. WHAT WILL WATER-RATS DO? INTERVIEW WITH MR. HARRY LAUDER
Clarence chuckled grimly as the tape clicked out the news. The end had begun. To sow jealousy between the rival generals would have been easy. To sow it between two rival music-hall artistes would be among the world"s softest jobs.
Among the general public, of course, the announcement created a profound sensation. Nothing else was talked about in train and omnibus. The papers had leaders on the subject. At first the popular impression was that the generals were going to do a comedy duo act of the Who-Was-It-I-Seen-You-Coming-Down-the-Street-With? type, and there was disappointment when it was found that the engagements were for different halls. Rumours sprang up. It was said that the Grand Duke had for years been an enthusiastic amateur sword-swallower, and had, indeed, come to England mainly for the purpose of getting bookings; that the Prince had a secure reputation in Potsdam as a singer of songs in the George Robey style; that both were expert trick-cyclists.
Then the truth came out. Neither had any specialities; they would simply appear and deliver lectures.
The feeling in the music-hall world was strong. The Variety Artists" Federation debated the advisability of another strike. The Water Rats, meeting in mystic secrecy in a Maiden Lane public-house, pa.s.sed fifteen resolutions in an hour and a quarter. Sir Harry Lauder, interviewed by the Era, gave it as his opinion that both the Grand Duke and the Prince were gowks, who would do well to haud their blether. He himself proposed to go straight to America, where genuine artists were cheered in the streets and entertained at haggis dinners, and not forced to compete with amateur sumphs and gonuphs from other countries.
Clarence, brooding over the situation like a Providence, was glad to see that already the new move had weakened the invaders" power. The day after the announcement in the press of the approaching debut of the other generals, the leader of the army of Monaco had hurried to the agents to secure an engagement for himself. He held out the special inducement of card-tricks, at which he was highly skilled. The agents had received him coldly. Brown and Day had asked him to call again. Foster had sent out a message regretting that he was too busy to see him. At de Freece"s he had been kept waiting in the ante-room for two hours in the midst of a bevy of Sparkling Comediennes of p.r.o.nounced peroxidity and blue-chinned men in dusty bowler-hats, who told each other how they had gone with a bang at Oakham and John o"Groats, and had then gone away in despair.
On the following day, deeply offended, he had withdrawn his troops from the country.
The strength of the invaders was melting away little by little.
"How long?" murmured Clarence Chugwater, as he worked at the tape-machine. "How long?"
Chapter 4
CLARENCE HEARS IMPORTANT NEWS
It was Clarence"s custom to leave the office of his newspaper at one o"clock each day, and lunch at a neighbouring Aerated Bread shop. He did this on the day following the first appearance of the two generals at their respective halls. He had brought an early edition of the paper with him, and in the intervals of dealing with his gla.s.s of milk and scone and b.u.t.ter, he read the report of the performances.
Both, it seemed, had met with flattering receptions, though they had appeared nervous. The Russian general especially, whose style, said the critic, was somewhat reminiscent of Mr. T. E. Dunville, had made himself a great favourite with the gallery. The report concluded by calling attention once more to the fact that the salaries paid to the two-eight hundred and seventy-five pounds a week each-established a record in music-hall history on this side of the Atlantic.
Clarence had just finished this when there came to his ear the faint note of a tarantula singing to its young.
He looked up. Opposite him, at the next table, was seated a youth of fifteen, of a slightly grubby aspect. He was eyeing Clarence closely.
Clarence took off his spectacles, polished them, and replaced them on his nose. As he did so, the thin gruffle of the tarantula sounded once more. Without changing his expression, Clarence cautiously uttered the deep snarl of a sand-eel surprised while bathing.
It was sufficient. The other rose to his feet, holding his right hand on a line with his shoulder, palm to the front, thumb resting on the nail of the little finger, and the other three fingers upright.
Clarence seized his hat by the brim at the back, and moved it swiftly twice up and down.
The other, hesitating no longer, came over to his table.
"Pip-pip!" he said, in an undertone.
"Toodleoo and G.o.d save the King!" whispered Clarence.
The mystic ceremony which always takes place when two Boy Scouts meet in public was complete.
"Private Biggs of the Eighteenth Tarantulas, sir," said the boy respectfully, for he had recognised Clarence.
Clarence inclined his head.
"You may sit, Private Biggs," he said graciously. "You have news to impart?"