"We do," said Barnes, and started downstairs with him.
Half an hour later Barnes succeeded in striking a bargain with Putnam Jones. He got the two rooms at the end of the hall at half price, insisting that it was customary for every hotel to give actors a substantial reduction in rates.
"You shall be treasurer and business-manager in my reorganized company," said Rushcroft. "With your acumen and my eccentricity united in a common cause we will stagger the universe."
Despite his rehabilitation as a gentleman of means and independence, Mr. Rushcroft could not forego the pleasure of staggering a small section of the world that very night. He was giving Hamlet's address to the players in the tap-room when Barnes came downstairs at nine o'clock. Bacon and Dillingford having returned earlier in the evening with the trunks, bags and other portable chattels of the defunct "troupe," Mr. Rushcroft was performing in a sadly wrinkled Norfolk suit of grey which Dillingford was under solemn injunction to press before breakfast the next morning.
"I know I don't have to do it," said the star, catching the surprised look in Barnes's eye and pausing to explain, sotto voce, "but I hadn't the heart to refuse. They're eating it up, my dear fellow. Up to this instant they've been sitting with their mouths wide open while I hurled it, word after word, into their very vitals. "Whereupon he resumed the sonorous monologue, glowering balefully upon his transfixed hearers.
Barnes, leaning against the door-jamb, listened with an amused smile on his lips. His gaze swept the rapt faces of the dozen or more customers seated at the tables, and he found himself wondering if one of these men was the father of the little girl whose mother had described Hart's Tavern as a "shindy." Was it only yesterday that he had spoken with the barefoot child? An age seemed to have passed since that brief encounter.
Rushcroft ended Hamlet's speech in fine style, and almost instantly a mild voice from the crowd asked if he knew "Casey at the Bat." Not in the least distressed by this woeful commentary, Mr. Rushcroft cheerfully, obligingly tackled the tragic fizzle of the immortal Casey.
A small, dark man who sat alone at a table in the corner, caught Barnes's eye and smiled almost mournfully. He was undoubtedly a stranger; his action was meant to convey to Barnes the information that he too was from a distant and sophisticated community, and that a bond of sympathy existed between them.
Putnam Jones spoke suddenly at Barnes's shoulder. He started involuntarily. The man was beginning to get on his nerves. He seemed to be dogging his footsteps with ceaseless persistency.