Beloved Scoundrel Read online

“Thank you,” Fanny said in friendly fashion. “We are strangers to America. Many of the customs here will be new to us.”

  “Not all that different,” Mrs. Larkins assured her. “I have had English theatre people here before. And I like them. Their manners are better than most and they speak so nicely.”

  David smiled. “Do you have many theatre people among your lodgers now?”

  “Most of them are show folk though in different branches of the profession,” the pleasant landlady told them. “There will be only a few in the dining room for lunch since many of the regulars are rehearsing or having a lunch somewhere else.”

  “It is like that in the lodging houses in London,” Fanny agreed.

  “You’re a true beauty!” Mrs. Larkins said with admiration. “You’ve got the even sort of features that last! And your hair, a lovely shade of red! I can tell from the way you speak and conduct yourself you are a real lady!”

  “She is that,” David said good-humoredly as he placed an arm about Fanny’s waist. “Hob-nobbed with the gentry, she has. But she’s an actor’s daughter and she’s never forgotten she is one of us.”

  “I should hope not!” Fanny said.

  “Well, good luck to you,” their landlady said. “It is not an easy life. I’ve found that out after catering to theatricals these last twenty years!” And she went on her way.

  They went down the two flights of stairs and ventured rather timidly into the communal dining room. A maid moved about busily serving the various tables and there was the strong aroma of good beef stew in the air. Only a few of the places at the various tables were occupied. As they hesitated in the doorway a figure suddenly bobbed up from the nearest table.

  “Do come join I us,” the man said. Fanny thought he was the tallest, most slender man she had ever met. He was balding and had a white chin-whisker.

  “Thank you,” David said, leading her forward.

  “I am Ernest Sherman and this is my wife, ‘Little Emmie,’ “ The thin man said with pleasure.

  Fanny tried without too much success to hide her shock. For seated at the table with the incredibly thin man was one of the fattest human beings she had ever seen. ‘Little Emmie’ as her husband had termed her was enormous. She wore a cotton print dress with a round neck and her brass-colored hair was curly and arranged in an upsweep. She had a pretty face for all her fat and was much younger than her husband. Perhaps only in her twenties.

  She smiled warmly at David and Fanny and in a shrill voice said, “A great pleasure! You will forgive my not rising. I have so much to move!” And then both she and her husband laughed.

  David and Fanny seated themselves opposite the husband and wife so unalike in appearance. And David said, “I’m David Cornish and this is my wife Fanny. We’re here to open in a play.”

  “Most interesting,” Ernest Sherman said. “May I ask under whose management you are appearing?”

  “Desmond Dempsey,” David replied promptly as the maid served him and Fanny with ample dishes of the beef stew.

  The thin man’s face shadowed. “Desmond Dempsey! The name has a familiar ring but I do not know him.”

  Fanny smiled. “He seems a true gentleman. He is going to allow us to form our own company.”

  “Unusual,” the thin man said. “The big names in New York at the moment are Forrest and Booth. That is Edwin Booth I mean, the father has been dead for several years.”

  “l’m familiar with the work of Forrest and I have heard of Booth,” David said. “I would say New York theatre goers have sound fare.”

  “Much of it is good,” Ernest Sherman said. “My wife and I are employed by the greatest of them all, P.T. Barnum!

  “Well!” Fanny exclaimed. “May I ask what so famous a man is like when you know him?”

  “His heart is as large as his body and he’s a big man,” Emest Sherman said. And he turned to his mammoth wife, “Isn’t that so, my dear?”

  “Oh, it is!” Little Emmie agreed seriously. “He won’t let me overdo myself for fear my heart may suffer.”

  The thin man said, “My wife and I are employed in Mr. Barnum’s Freak Museum. But every second day we have the lunch hour free. We are not due at the museum until this evening.”

  Fanny gazed at the huge woman. “Of course! You are one of the attractions!”

  Ernest Sherman spoke up at once, “My wife and I are both featured at the museum. Little Emmie weighs more than three hundred pounds and claims to be the fattest woman in the world, while I am a sword-swallower and fire eater!”

  “How interesting!” Fanny exclaimed.

  “And a bit dangerous?” David suggested politely.

  The thin man looked at him happily. “You have an astute mind, sir. And you are right. I have quite ruined my digestive organs with my weird diet! I have very little appetite for ordinary food. But my dear wife makes up for us both!”

  Little Emmie said shyly, “I’m continually in need of a snack.”

  Fanny smiled, “Well, we mustn’t allow you to get thin. I was in a museum of novelties in London.” And she told them all about her experiences as a mermaid in Gilbert Tingley’s freak show.

  Ernest Sherman was delighted by her account as was Little Emmie. “What luck!” the thin man said. “You are one of us! I must tell Mr. Barnum we have a mermaid at our table at home. He is one to enjoy a joke!”

  “David and I will attend the museum as soon as we can,” she promised. “I do not want to miss it!”

  Little Emmie’s broad face was wreathed in smiles and double chins. “Ernest and I will look forward to it. And I’m sure you’ll have a chance to meet Mr. Barnum. He spends much of his time right at the museum.”

  David Cornish said, “As soon as I’ve settled our affairs with Mr. Desmond Dempsey we’ll take a look around the city.”

  After they had lunch they consulted Mrs. Larkins as to the address which Desmond Dempsey had sent them. She studied the slip of paper with a brow wrinkled and told them, “That will be up Broadway a few blocks and on this side of the street.”

  David thanked her. Then dressed in their best, he and Fanny walked to Broadway and up the several blocks which Mrs. Larkin had indicated. They finally reached an ugly, red brick building with a sign on it, “Godhunter & Godhunter, Theatrical Printing.” David consulted the paper again and found this was the address they wanted.

  He glanced at her, “This must be the place. No doubt Mr. Dempsey has his office inside.”

  Fanny said, “He may not consider it dignified to have a sign.”

  “Still people have to be able to find him,” her handsome husband worried.

  He led the way inside and they found themselves standing at a counter behind which were a number of printing presses, and ink-stained operators working at them or running about with proofs in their hands. There was no sign of an office of any sort.

  She whispered, “He must be upstairs.”

  “I don’t see any stairs,” David said, looking troubled.

  At this moment a chubby, elderly man wearing a shade over his brow and chewing tobacco vigorously so that tiny dribbles steamed out of the corner of his lips, advanced to the counter to study them with grim interest.

  His nose was flat, as if it had been broken in some fight, and his eyes were small and mean. He asked, “What do you want?”

  David, tophat in hand, said politely, “We’re looking for Mr. Desmond Dempsey.”

  The flat-nosed man gave him a look of utter disgust and then spat into a battered brass bowl a distance from him, finding his mark with amazing accuracy. He told David, “So am I looking for him!”

  David continued to be polite though he was now also looking worried. He asked, “Is this not his office?”

  The man behind the counter grinned nastily. “I used to let him use a desk in here and he had mail sent here. But I wouldn’t say he had an office.”

  Fanny could keep quiet no longer. She asked the man, “Are you telling us that his Desmond Dempsey doesn’t hav
e any office?”

  “Not that I know of, ma’am,” the flat-nosed man drawled. “What do you folks want of him?”

  Now upset, David said, “We are actors from England. We have come here at his request to form a theatre company under his banner.”

  The man behind the counter stopped chewing and stared at them incredulously. “You mean to say you people came all the way from England to work for Dempsey?”

  “Yes,” Fanny said. “We’re very anxious to find him.”

  “So are a lot of other people,” the flat-nosed man said significantly.

  “What are you hinting at?” David said somewhat angrily. “I do not like your manner and I want to know the truth about all this.”

  The flat-nosed one grinned. “Getting real upset, ain’t you? Well, you got reason to be. Your friend Desmond Dempsey is a bankrupt! He left town owing everyone, including me!”

  “Bankrupt!” Fanny gasped, seeing their dream about to become a nightmare.

  “Yep,” the man said, chewing happily. “I gave him credit on his printing for “The American Fireman” and he paid me back part for that. Then he decided to do “The Road To Ruin” and that was ruin for everybody. No one came to see it and he went broke!”

  “Bankrupt and vanished!” David said with consternation. “What about our contract?”

  “Not worth the paper it’s written on,” the man behind the counter said. “Dempsey won’t dare come back here for a year or two. Not until he thinks all this is forgotten.”

  Fanny felt physically ill. She told the man, “We came all the way across the Atlantic on his word.”

  “More’s the pity,” the man said. “But that’s how it is. Maybe you’d like to form a company to take out. “The Road to Ruin.” If you want to, I can supply you with plenty of posters at less than half-price.”

  “Thanks,” David said grimly. “I don’t think we are ready to set up for ourselves.”

  “Mr. Cornish had his own company back in London.” Fanny said. “But over here it is rather different.”

  “Well, don’t count on Dempsey,” was the printer’s final word. Then he left them to give his attention to his printers and the noisy presses. David was pale. He took her arm. “Let us get out of here,” he said tautly.

  On the street they stood staring at each other and not knowing what move to make next. He said, “The fellow used good references to fool me. No doubt they were all faked. I can’t think why I didn’t guess.”

  “You were anxious to leave London,” she said. “And you wanted to help me.”

  “I have us both in a fine fix,” he said gloomily. “l can pay our expenses for a few weeks but after that I’ll be lucky to be able to scrape together enough money for our passage back to London.”

  “Back to London!” she said with dismay.

  “At least I know I can find work there where I’m known,” he told her.

  “But I can’t go back!” she protested. “It would start the talk all over again.”

  “It seems we’ll have to risk that,” her husband said. “You needn’t return to the stage. You can live quietly without anyone knowing you’ve returned.”

  “No!” she protested. “Let us find work here. There must be other opportunities.”

  “Remember,” he said, “this country is in the process of recovering from a recession. There is bound to be a shortage of jobs.”

  “We must not give up,” Fanny said with determination. “We must find something.”

  “How?” her husband asked.

  “By using the same methods as we would in London,” she told him. “Use our contacts.”

  “That is the whole point,” David argued. “We have no contacts here!”

  “Wrong!” she said. “We have two friends in the profession who have offered us an introduction to a reputable manager, P.T. Barnum.”

  David showed surprise. “You’re right! I’d forgotten! When shall we visit them?”

  “They’ll be working this evening,” she said. “That might be the best time to visit them. It is likely Mr. Barnum will be at his museum then.”

  So they strolled back to the boarding house paying no attention to the many pedestrians and heavy vehicular traffic. At last they reached the boarding house to find that the fat Mrs. Sherman and her husband had already left for the museum. Fanny and David had dinner and continued making plans for approaching Mr. Barnum.

  The museum building was of stone with some ornamental design. They had passed the Theatre Comique in which a team named Harrigan and Hart were playing in a vehicle called, “Mulligan’s Silver Wedding.” Now they reached the American Museum with the name Barnum’s prominently above the entrance. Below was a sign: Headquarters. At the top of the building there were three flags flying and the name Barnum’s again prominently displayed along with paintings of great whales and other freaks.

  David studied the big colored canvas at the roof of the building and said, “Flamboyant!”

  Fanny pressed his arm. “Don’t condemn him for that! You know it is needed in show business.”

  “I’m not a freak!” David said, almost angrily. “I’m a dramatic actor who has proven his worth.”

  “Of course you are!”

  He at once relented and apologized, “My dearest Fanny, I meant no offense. You have reached the same eminence as myself in London. So it is of no importance that you began in a freak show. But here in New York we are without friends or reputation!”

  “We will change that,” she said stalwartly. “Let us go in to the show.”

  David and she joined the line and paid their entrance fee. Soon they were in the great hall with its many wonders. Because of their state of mind they ignored the huge, stuffed whale, and other interesting freaks to hurry to the stand where the fat woman, Little Emmie, was finishing her spiel to about a dozen gawking men and women. She had postcards with drawings of herself which she peddled to them. Several bought a card and then they all moved on.

  It was Fanny’s chance to approach the platform and address the fat woman, “Mrs. Sherman, do you remember our talk this afternoon?”

  The fat woman was putting some coins in her purse and she closed the purse and stared at her for a moment then she burst into one of her amiable smiles. “Of course! You’re’ the two from England!”

  “Yes,” David said sadly. “All the way from England! And for nothing, I fear!”

  The fat lady leaned forward. “For nothing?”

  “We have been led astray by a bankrupt manager,” Fanny told the woman and went on to quickly explain the details.

  Little Emmie was all sympathy. She made clucking sounds and gasped alternately. Then she held out her pudgy hands to ask, “What will you do?”

  “I don’t know,” Fanny said with a wan smile. “Maybe Mr. Barnum will hire me as a mermaid.”

  “We must do better than that for you,” the fat woman said. Then she pointed, “Here comes Mr. Sherman! He will know what to do.”

  The thin man came up to them in a state of anger. He didn’t even look at them but told his wife, “I have just been most royally insulted. Some lad told me I didn’t swallow the sword at all. That it was collapsible! After all the time I’ve taken to stretch my throat! I let him have it, I tell you. And when he felt the point of that weapon he knew it was genuine!”

  “Ernest!” the fat woman moaned. “You haven’t been fighting with the customers again. You mustn’t mind what they say. We aren’t supposed to hear it! They call me the most dreadful names like Mother Mutton and Fat Fanny! I just pay no attention to them!”

  The thin man sighed. “I suppose you are right, my dear.”

  “You haven’t even noticed our friends,” she reproached him.

  He now turned to David and Fanny and gazed at them rather blankly, “Friends?” he said.

  “Table acquaintances would be more accurate,” David spoke up quickly. “We met at lunch at Mrs. Larkins.”

  “Of course!” The tall, thin man said of
fering David a bony hand. “You must forgive me. I’m a little upset.”

  “We understand,” Fanny said. “It so happens we are also upset. We can sympathize with you.”

  Then Little Emmie told her husband what had happened and the thin man was equally sympathetic in his reaction to the bad news.

  He frowned, “Managers like that should be jailed. The great trouble is that it is always impossible to catch up with them.”

  David nodded. “Desmond Dempsey vanished in the night and left a host of creditors behind. His last play was aptly named, ‘The Road to Ruin.’ And I fear he has brought us to the same end.”