Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

Oil lamps and candles guttered in front of smeared looking glasses, and men and women were taking off their makeup and costumes with no regard to the proprieties of gender. I averted my eyes. My friend seemed unperturbed. “Might I talk to Mr. Vernet?” he asked, loudly.

A young woman who had played the heroine’s best friend in the first play, and the saucy innkeeper’s daughter in the last, pointed us to the end of the room. “Sherry! Sherry Vernet!” she called.

The young man who stood up in response was lean; less conventionally handsome than he had seemed from the other side of the footlights. He peered at us quizzically. “I do not believe I have had the pleasure…?”

“My name is Henry Camberley,” said my friend, drawling his speech somewhat. “You may have heard of me.”

“I must confess that I have not had that privilege,” said Vernet.

My friend presented the actor with an engraved card.

The man looked at the card with unfeigned interest. “A theatrical promoter? From the New World? My, my. And this is…?” He smiled at me.

“This is a friend of mine, Mister Sebastian. He is not of the profession.”

I muttered something about having enjoyed the performance enormously, and shook hands with the actor.

My friend said, “Have you ever visited the New World?”

“I have not yet had that honor,” admitted Vernet, “although it has always been my dearest wish.”

“Well, my good man,” said my friend, with the easy informality of a New Worlder. “Maybe you’ll get your wish. That last play. I’ve never seen anything like it. Did you write it?”

“Alas, no. The playwright is a good friend of mine. Although I devised the mechanism of the magic-lantern shadow show. You’ll not see finer on the stage today.”

“Would you give me the playwright’s name? Perhaps I should speak to him directly, this friend of yours.”

Vernet shook his head. “That will not be possible, I am afraid. He is a professional man, and does not wish his connection with the stage publicly to be known.”

“I see.” My friend pulled a pipe from his pocket and put it in his mouth. Then he patted his pockets. “I am sorry,” he began. “I have forgotten to bring my tobacco pouch.”

“I smoke a strong black shag,” said the actor, “but if you have no objection-”

“None!” said my friend, heartily. “Why, I smoke a strong shag myself,” and he filled his pipe with the actor’s tobacco, and the two men puffed away, while my friend described a vision he had for a play that could tour the cities of the New World, from Manhattan Island all the way to the furthest tip of the continent in the distant south. The first act would be the last play we had seen. The rest of the play might perhaps tell of the dominion of the Old Ones over humanity and its gods, perhaps telling what might have happened if people had had no Royal Families to look up to-a world of barbarism and darkness-“But your mysterious professional man would be the play’s author, and what occurs would be his alone to decide,” interjected my friend. “Our drama would be his. But I can guarantee you audiences beyond your imaginings, and a significant share of the takings at the door. Let us say fifty percent!”

“This is most exciting,” said Vernet. “I hope it will not turn out to have been a pipe-dream!”

“No sir, it shall not!” said my friend, puffing on his own pipe, chuckling at the man’s joke. “Come to my rooms in Baker Street tomorrow morning, after breakfast-time, say at ten, in company with your author friend, and I shall have the contracts drawn up and waiting.”

With that the actor clambered up onto his chair and clapped his hands for silence. “Ladies and gentlemen of the company, I have an announcement to make,” he said, his resonant voice filling the room. “This gentleman is Henry Camberley, the theatrical promoter, and he is proposing to take us across the Atlantic Ocean, and on to fame and fortune.”

There were several cheers, and the comedian said, “Well, it’ll make a change from herrings and pickled-cabbage,” and the company laughed.

And it was to the smiles of all of them that we walked out of the theater and onto the fog-wreathed streets.

“My dear fellow,” I said. “Whatever was-”

“Not another word,” said my friend. “There are many ears in the city.”

And not another word was spoken until we had hailed a cab, and clambered inside, and were rattling up the Charing Cross Road.

And even then, before he said anything, my friend took his pipe from his mouth, and emptied the half-smoked contents of the bowl into a small tin. He pressed the lid onto the tin, and placed it in his pocket.

“There,” he said. “That’s the Tall Man found, or I’m a Dutchman. Now, we just have to hope that the cupidity and the curiosity of the Limping Doctor proves enough to bring him to us tomorrow morning.”

“The Limping Doctor?”