Page:Christopher Morley--Tales from a rolltop desk.djvu/257

stage a workman was hammering on a piece of metal. Fagan pulled his legs off the rail and climbed halfway up the little steps leading from the orchestra pit to the proscenium.

"Mr. Edwards!" he shouted, "you're letting it drop. It's dead. Give it to Mr. Brooks so he can pick it up and do something with it. You've got to lift it into the domain of comedy! My God!" he cried, throwing his cigar stub into the orchestra well, "that whole act is terrible. Take it again from Miss Llewellyn's entrance. Mr. Edwards, try to put a little more stuff into it. This isn't amateur theatricals."

Edwards turned as though about to speak, but he clenched his fist and kept silent. Brooks, however, was less patient.

"Pardon me, Mr. Fagan," he said, in a clear, ironical tone. "But I should like to ask a question, if you will allow me. You speak, very forcibly, of lifting it into the domain of comedy. That seems a curious phrase for this scene. Is it intended to be comic? If so, I must have misconstrued the author's directions in the script."

Brooks was too well-known a performer for Fagan to bully. Brooks was "on the lights"—in other words, when the show's electric signboard went up, it would carry his name. Around his