Chapter 71
A girl took their message. After a while she returned and piloted them out, and up a wide flight of stairs to a door marked, "No admittance."
Here she knocked, and Puma's voice bade them enter.
Angelo Puma was standing by a desk when they trooped in, keeping their hats on. The room was ventilated and illumined in the daytime only by a very dirty transom giving on a shaft. Otherwise, there were no windows, no outlet to any outer light and air.
Two gas jets caged in wire--obsolete stage dressing-room effects--lighted the room and glimmered on Puma's polished top-hat and the gold k.n.o.b of his walking-stick.
As for Puma himself, he glanced up stealthily from the scenario he was reading as he stood by the big desk, but dropped his eyes again, and, opening a drawer, laid away the typed ma.n.u.script. Then he pulled out the revolving desk chair and sat down.
"Well?" he inquired, lighting a cigar.
There was an ominous silence among the three men for another moment.
Then Puma looked up, puffing his cigar, and Sondheim stepped forward from the group and shook his finger in his face.
"What yah got planted around here for us? Hey?" he demanded in a low, hoa.r.s.e voice. "Come on now, Puma! What yeh think yeh got on us?" And to Kastner and Bromberg: "Go ahead, boys, look for a dictaphone and them kind of things. And if this wop hollers I'll do him."
A ruddy light flickered in Puma's eyes, but the cool smile lay smoothly on his lips, and he did not even turn his head to watch them as they pa.s.sed along the walls, sounding, peering, prying, and jerking open the door of the cupboard--the only furniture there except the desk and the chair on which Puma sat.
"What the h.e.l.l's the matter with yeh?" snarled Sondheim, suddenly stooping to catch Puma's eye, which had wandered as though bored by the proceedings.
"Nothing," said Puma, coolly; "what's the matter with you, Max?"
Kastner came around beside him and said in his thin, sinister tone:
"You know it vat I got on you, Angelo?"
"I do."
"So? Also! Vas iss it you do about doze vimmen?"
"They won't go."
In Bromberg's voice sounded an ominous roar: "Don't hand us nothing like that!
Puma shrugged: "I hand you what I have to hand you. They have the lease. What is there for me to do?"
"Buy 'em off!"
"I try. They will not."
"You offer 'em enough and they'll quit!"
"No. They will not. They say they are here to fight you. They laugh at my money. What shall I do?"
"I'll tell you one thing you'll do, and do it d.a.m.n quick!" roared Bromberg. "Hand over that money we need!"
"If you bellow in so loud a manner," said Puma, "they could hear you in the studio.... How much do you ask for?"
"Two thousand."
"No."
"What yeh mean by 'No'?"
"What I say to you, that I have not two thousand."
"You lying greaser----"
"I do not lie. I have paid my people and there remains but six hundred dollars in my bank."
"When do we get the rest?" asked Sondheim, as Puma tossed the packet of bills onto the desk.
"When I make it," replied Puma tranquilly. "You will understand my receipts are my capital at present. What else I have is engaged already in my new theatre. If you will be patient you shall have what I can spare."
Bromberg rested both hairy fists on the desk and glared down at Puma.
"Who's this new guy you got to go in with you? What's the matter with our getting a jag of his coin?"
"You mean Mr. Pawling?"
"Yeh. Who the h.e.l.l is that duck what inks his whiskers?"
"A partner."
"Well, let him shove us ours then."
"You wish to ruin me?" inquired Puma placidly.
"Not while you're milkin'," said Sondheim, showing every yellow fang in a grin.
"Then do not frighten Mr. Pawling out. Already you have scared my other partner, Mr. Skidder, like there never was any rabbits scared.
You are foolish. If you are reasonable, I shall make money and you shall have your share. If you are not, then there is no money to give you."
Sondheim said: "Take a slant at them yellow-backs, Karl." And Kastner screwed a powerful jeweller's gla.s.s into his eye and began a minute examination of the orange-coloured treasury notes, to find out whether they were marked bills.
Bromberg said heavily: "See here, Angelo, you gotta quit this d.a.m.ned stalling! You gotta get them women out, and do it quick or we'll blow your dirty barracks into the North River!"
Sondheim began to wag his soiled forefinger again.
"Yeh quit us cold when things was on the fritz. Now, yeh gotta pay. If you wasn't nothing but a wop skunk yeh'd stand in with us. The way you're fixed would help us all. But now yeh makin' money and yeh scared o' yeh shadow!----"
Bromberg cut in: "And you'll be outside when the band starts playing.
Look what's doing all over the world! Every country is starting something! You watch Berlin and Rosa Luxemburg and her bunch. Keep your eye peeled, Angy, and see what we and the I. W. W. start in every city of the country!"
Kastner, having satisfied himself that the bills had not been marked, and pocketed his jeweller's gla.s.s, pushed back his lank blond hair.
"Yess," he said in his icy, incisive voice, "yoost vatch out already!
Dot crimson tide it iss rising the vorld all ofer! It shall drown effery aristocrat, effery bourgeois, effery intellectual. It shall be but a red flood ofer all the vorld vere noddings shall live only our peoble off the proletariat!"