Strictly Business | Page 6

couldn't fix themselves for the wet days to come if they'd save
their money instead of blowing it. I'm glad you've got the correct
business idea of it, Miss Cherry. I think the same way; and I believe
this sketch will more than double what both of us earn now when we
get it shaped up."
The subsequent history of "Mice Will Play" is the history of all
successful writings for the stage. Hart & Cherry cut it, pieced it,
remodeled it, performed surgical operations on the dialogue and
business, changed the lines, restored 'em, added more, cut 'em out,
renamed it, gave it back the old name, rewrote it, substituted a dagger
for the pistol, restored the pistol--put the sketch through all the known
processes of condensation and improvement.
They rehearsed it by the old-fashioned boardinghouse clock in the
rarely used parlor until its warning click at five minutes to the hour
would occur every time exactly half a second before the click of the
unloaded revolver that Helen Grimes used in rehearsing the thrilling
climax of the sketch.
Yes, that was a thriller and a piece of excellent work. In the act a real
32-caliber revolver was used loaded with a real cartridge. Helen Grimes,
who is a Western girl of decidedly Buffalo Billish skill and daring, is
tempestuously in love with Frank Desmond, the private secretary and
confidential prospective son-in-law of her father, "Arapahoe" Grimes,
quarter-million-dollar cattle king, owning a ranch that, judging by the
scenery, is in either the Bad Lands or Amagensett, L. I. Desmond (in
private life Mr. Bob Hart) wears puttees and Meadow Brook Hunt
riding trousers, and gives his address as New York, leaving you to
wonder why he comes to the Bad Lands or Amagansett (as the case
may be) and at the same time to conjecture mildly why a cattleman

should want puttees about his ranch with a secretary in 'em.
Well, anyhow, you know as well as I do that we all like that kind of
play, whether we admit it or not--something along in between
"Bluebeard, Jr.," and "Cymbeline" played in the Russian.
There were only two parts and a half in "Mice Will Play." Hart and
Cherry were the two, of course; and the half was a minor part always
played by a stage hand, who merely came in once in a Tuxedo coat and
a panic to announce that the house was surrounded by Indians, and to
turn down the gas fire in the grate by the manager's orders.
There was another girl in the sketch--a Fifth Avenue society
swelless--who was visiting the ranch and who had sirened Jack
Valentine when he was a wealthy club-man on lower Third Avenue
before he lost his money. This girl appeared on the stage only in the
photographic state--Jack had her Sarony stuck up on the mantel of the
Amagan--of the Bad Lands droring room. Helen was jealous, of course.
And now for the thriller. Old "Arapahoe" Grimes dies of angina
pectoris one night--so Helen informs us in a stage-ferryboat whisper
over the footlights--while only his secretary was present. And that same
day he was known to have had $647,000 in cash in his (ranch) library
just received for the sale of a drove of beeves in the East (that accounts
for the price we pay for steak!). The cash disappears at the same time.
Jack Valentine was the only person with the ranchman when he made
his (alleged) croak.
"Gawd knows I love him; but if he has done this deed--" you sabe, don't
you? And then there are some mean things said about the Fifth Avenue
Girl--who doesn't come on the stage--and can we blame her, with the
vaudeville trust holding down prices until one actually must be
buttoned in the back by a call boy, maids cost so much?
But, wait. Here's the climax. Helen Grimes, chaparralish as she can be,
is goaded beyond imprudence. She convinces herself that Jack
Valentine is not only a falsetto, but a financier. To lose at one fell
swoop $647,000 and a lover in riding trousers with angles in the sides
like the variations on the chart of a typhoid-fever patient is enough to
make any perfect lady mad. So, then!
They stand in the (ranch) library, which is furnished with mounted elk
heads (didn't the Elks have a fish fry in Amagensett once?), and the
d'enouement begins. I know of no more interesting time in the run of a

play unless it be when the prologue ends.
Helen thinks Jack has taken the money. Who else was there to take it?
The box-office manager was at the front on his job; the orchestra hadn't
left their seats; and no man could get past "Old Jimmy," the stage
door-man, unless he could