Scarhaven Keep | Page 2

that rehearsal, but the great man himself had not arrived. Now
Mr. Bassett Oliver, as every man well knew who ever had dealings
with him, was not one of the irregular and unpunctual order; on the
contrary, he was a very martinet as regarded rule, precision and system;
moreover, he always did what he expected each member of his
company to do. Therefore his non-arrival, his half hour of irregularity,
seemed all the more extraordinary.
"Never knew him to be late before--never!" exclaimed the business
manager, impatiently pulling out his watch for the twentieth time. "Not
in all my ten years' experience of him--not once."
"I suppose you've seen him this morning, Mr. Stafford?" inquired
Jerramy. "He's in the town, of course?"
"I suppose he's in the town," answered Mr. Stafford. "I suppose he's at
his old quarters--the 'Angel.' But I haven't seen him; neither had
Rothwell--we've both been too busy to call there. I expect he came on
to the 'Angel' from Northborough yesterday."
Jerramy opened the half-door, and going out to the end of the passage,
looked up and down the street.
"There's a taxi-cab coming round the corner now," he announced
presently. "Coming quick, too--I should think he's in it."

The business manager bustled out to the pavement as the cab came to a
halt. But instead of the fine face and distinguished presence of Mr.
Bassett Oliver, he found himself confronting a young man who looked
like a well-set-up subaltern, or a cricket-and-football loving
undergraduate; a somewhat shy, rather nervous young man,
scrupulously groomed, and neatly attired in tweeds, who, at sight of the
two men on the pavement, immediately produced a card-case.
"Mr. Bassett Oliver?" he said inquiringly. "Is he here? I--I've got an
appointment with him for one o'clock, and I'm sorry I'm late--my
train--"
"Mr. Oliver is not here yet," broke in Stafford. "He's late,
too--unaccountably late, for him. An appointment, you say?"
He was looking the stranger over as he spoke, taking him for some
stage-struck youth who had probably persuaded the good-natured actor
to give him an interview. His expression changed, however; as he
glanced at the card which the young man handed over, and he started a
little and held out his hand with a smile.
"Oh!--Mr. Copplestone?" he exclaimed. "How do you do? My name's
Stafford--I'm Mr. Oliver's business manager. So he made an
appointment with you, did he--here, today? Wants to see you about
your play, of course."
Again he looked at the newcomer with a smiling interest, thinking
secretly that he was a very youthful and ingenuous being to have
written a play which Bassett Oliver, a shrewd critic, and by no means
easy to please, had been eager to accept, and was about to produce. Mr.
Richard Copplestone, seen in the flesh, looked very young indeed, and
very unlike anything in the shape of a professional author. In fact he
very much reminded Stafford of the fine and healthy young man whom
one sees on the playing fields, and certainly does not associate with pen
and ink. That he was not much used to the world on whose edge he just
then stood Stafford gathered from a boyish trick of blushing through
the tan of his cheeks.

"I got a wire from Mr. Oliver yesterday--Sunday," replied Mr.
Copplestone. "I ought to have had it in the morning, I suppose, but I'd
gone out for the day, you know--gone out early. So I didn't find it until
I got back to my rooms late at night. I got the next train I could from
King's Cross, and it was late getting in here."
"Then you've practically been travelling all night?" remarked Stafford.
"Well, Mr. Oliver hasn't turned up--most unusual for him. I don't know
where--" Just then another man came hurrying down the passage from
the dressing-rooms, calling the business manager by name.
"I say, Stafford!" he exclaimed, as he emerged on the street. "This is a
queer thing!--I'm sure there's something wrong. I've just rung up the
'Angel' hotel. Oliver hasn't turned up there! His rooms were all ready
for him as usual yesterday, but he never came. They've neither seen nor
heard of him. Did you see him yesterday?"
"No!" replied Stafford. "I didn't. Never seen him since last thing
Saturday night at Northborough. He ordered this rehearsal for one--no,
a quarter to one, here, today. But somebody must have seen him
yesterday. Where's his dresser--where's Hackett?"
"Hackett's inside," said the other man. "He hasn't seen him either, since
Saturday night. Hackett has friends living in these parts--he went off to
see them early yesterday morning, from Northborough, and he's only
just come. So he hasn't seen Oliver, and doesn't know anything about
him; he expected, of course, to find him here."
Stafford turned with a wave