CHAPTER XII

PORTRAIT OF A CELEBRITY

Leaving the hopeful young musicians to that uninspired method of travel peculiar to small cars, let us flash quickly across country to the Long Island home of the gentleman upon whom their aspirations centered.

Ted Grant was a short, stout, belligerent, rather pompous little man given to a Napoleonic egotism. Nervous of voice and temperament, his face showed the strain of his manner of life coupled with a naturally choleric disposition. Perhaps thirty years old, given to well-fitting Timesquarish clothes, he was sharply typical of the traditional jazz performer lifted to eminence by the sudden and overwhelming popularity of syncopation.

Strutting up and down the floor of his Longport home, belaboring a large, heavy-set man, he had the appearance of a particularly impudent poodle attacking a bewildered mastiff. "----and when I say you're dumb, Connors, I mean dumb!" he concluded a vituperative monologue. "You're wasting your talents managing me. You ought to be managing a war!"

The big man raised protesting hands. "Now see here, Ted--you haven't any right to talk to me like that. You don't appreciate the management I give you--doubling in two shows, with your radio dates and night club work and now the best money-making proposition that we've had yet--the correspondence school of music."

"Yes!" Grant cried. "The correspondence school of music! And what is driving me mad? The correspondence school of music! Me, the greatest living band leader--me, the man that made America jazz-minded--the man that discovered Ben Bernie, Ted Lewis, the Six Brown Brothers, and--and----"

"Don't forget Sousa," the manager said wearily. Ted Grant was a good money-maker, and that solely was why Connors allowed himself to be the butt of his tremendous egotism. He had no affection for the lofty little man; no one had. But there was no denying the fact that except for a little looseness with the names of people whom he claimed to have discovered, he was just about as good as he said he was. As much as any other man, he had, actually, made America jazz-minded.

"I'm too tired to think," he answered Connors' rather unsubtle dig. "Besides, why should a man of my ability have to remember all the musicians he's discovered?"

Connors shrugged, raising his eyes ceilingward. "No reason at all," he admitted.

But Grant was not to be placated. "Don't you think an artist needs any rest at all?" he demanded petulantly. "Answer me that! What do you think I moved down here for--the view?"

"I want you to get a rest," the manager insisted.

"Sure!" Grant crowed. "So you put out a lot of bum newspaper publicity about this Longport house that's caused me more annoyance in twenty-four hours than I'd get from a whole season in town. Phone calls, telegrams from nut amateurs in every part of the country----"

Connors moved his hands soothingly. "Yes, but don't you see that's advertising the correspondence course of music? You get ten per cent of the returns from it; and I think if we insisted, those people would give us more, seeing that it has gone over so well."

"Ten per cent of the money--and one hundred per cent of the troubles!" Grant barked. "I wish I'd never lent my name to it. Since I moved in yesterday, I'll bet I answered that phone forty times before I had the service cut off. They even come in person."

"Oh, be reasonable! So far there's only been one of them showed up in person."

"And he's equal to forty himself!"

"Well, just keep on refusing to see him," the manager counseled. "He'll soon wear himself out."

"Yeah, either himself or me. And I think it's liable to be me." He strode gloomily to the window and gave a morose inspection to the outlines of the house next door. "And that Mrs. Whitehall over there, I suppose she'll wear herself out, too!"

"She hasn't been around personally, Ted."

"No, but she called up three times and sent two messages. 'Will I play at her musicale to-night out of neighborliness?' Imagine me at a hick musical!" he snorted. "Imagine it!"

Connors again moved his heavy shoulders. "It might be a lot of laughs, at that. What you ought to have is more relaxation, Ted. And I don't mean the kind you get in a speak-easy." He hitched his chair forward insinuatingly. "I inquired about this Mrs. Whitehall. It seems that she's a big bug on celebrities. She and her niece, who is just home from college, are trying to crash the society gates around here. Say, Ted, she nearly went nuts when she heard that you had moved in next door to her yesterday."

"She's not the only one who's going nuts around here," Grant informed him shortly. "I can stand just so much, and then----"

His words were cut short by a strident and prolonged ringing of the door bell. "What's that?" Grant demanded.

"Yogi'll get it," the manager said. "It's probably just that kid from the village again."

"Ye gods! Well, if it is tell him I'm in bed with the smallpox, that I don't live here anyway--anything!"

In the hall there was a muffled scuffle. Yogi, opening the door a trifle, had been confronted by a local youth of persistent musical ambitions. The Japanese had attempted to shut the door in his face, but the youth had succeeded in pushing past it and into the house.

"I _will_ see him!" he cried. "You won't keep me from him this time. I _will_ see him."

"No, no, no, sir, no," Yogi persisted, ineffectually. The boy strode on into the living room. As he entered, Connors got quickly to his feet, and Ted Grant eyed him nervously. "Well, what the devil is this?"

"You don't know me, sir," the youth informed him, coming a step forward. "I'm----"

"Oh, yes I do," Grant interrupted him. "You're the guy I've refused to see five times already to-day, and right now makes it an even dozen!"

"But I want you to listen to me. I've something of importance to bring to your attention. You see, I----"

Connors shouldered forward. "Now see here, kid; you can't expect Mr. Grant to match his time, which is worth about a thousand bucks an hour, against yours, which I judge possibly to be worth about two bits a month----"

But the determined youth refused to be put aside. He brushed past the manager's burly form and again confronted the music master himself. "Now, Mr. Grant, as one artist to another----"

Grant's patience had reached the snapping point. But from some unknown source he brought up a kindly attitude and attempted to make an explanation of the difficulties which beset him. "Now listen, son, it's no use. I'm not looking for any more musicians, and I wouldn't listen to another amateur performer if he came from Texas Guinan herself. There are thousands of men trying to crash in on me all the time, attracted by the big money I get, and I'm getting mighty sick of it."

"But you don't understand," the boy protested. "I'm a graduate of the Ted Grant Correspondence School of Music!"

At the mention of the venture which had caused him so much trouble, the last vestige of Grant's self-control deserted him. "Get out!" he roared, shaking his hands wildly in front of the boy's amazed face. "If I hear that school mentioned again, I'm going nuts! Get out, I say--out!"

But rather than being overwhelmed by the attack, the boy's attitude stiffened. His jaw shot out, and an ugly look of determination came into his eyes. "Now listen, fella! If you think you can pull anything like that on me----"

Grant now was dancing with rage and exasperation. "Out!" he barked. "Throw him out! Out!"

Connors and Yogi grasped the prospective bandsman roughly by the arms and conveyed him, fighting and kicking, to the front door. Between wrenches and twistings, he gasped: "This isn't fair; I'm a graduate of the Ted Grant Correspondence School----"

The manager got the door open, and with a last shove the boy went through it and rolled down the steps. "And now that you're out, you stay out, hear?" Connors called somewhat breathlessly after him. When he returned to the living room he found Grant, purple of face, pacing the floor.

"And what a fine exhibition that was!" the little man exclaimed. "Here I am, the greatest saxophonist in the world--and have to be forced into scenes like that. Well, I won't stand it! Do you hear? With your dumbness in giving that story to the papers, we're liable to have dozens like that running down here, wanting to get into my orchestras!"

He peeked carefully through the window. "And he hasn't gone yet. He's down there by the gate, looking at the house. I tell you, fellows like that are dangerous! Did you see the look in his eye? He's bad. And I'm going back to town--where it's safe!"

"But we've got this place rented! You're here to take a rest," Connors exclaimed.

"Rest! And how much resting will I be able to do with savages like that popping in on me every time I turn around?"

"Well," Connors pointed out, "that just gives you an idea as to how widely read that publicity is. Why, you ought to be thankful----"

"Thankful? Thankful that my life is endangered for a measly ten per cent of what those grafters are making out of that course? Thankful, my eye!" He turned to Yogi. "Get my hat, I'm going back to town before one of them rams a trombone down my throat!"

"But, Ted----"

"And if you're wise you'll come with me. You engineered this thing; you better hike back to Times Square where the cops grow thick. This bucolic stuff sounds all right on paper--but it doesn't look so good, close up."

Connors grasped his lapels desperately. "Now be reasonable, Ted. Here we've come all this distance, and we no sooner get here than you want to turn around and head back. Be reasonable."

"You bet I'll be reasonable," Grant assured him. "So reasonable that I'm going back to Broadway--where they don't read the other fellow's publicity. If anybody calls, Yogi, tell them I've gone back to the city."

"But, Ted--" Connors began a fresh argument.

"Aw shut up, who's running this. Get your hat."

The manager saw the futility of further protest. "All right," he said, "but I think you're making a mistake."

"Mistake nothing! We'll drive back where there aren't any amateurs or neighbors or musicales or anything like them." He went rapidly out the front door and down the steps to his waiting car. Climbing beneath the wheel, he switched the huge motor into life and roared for the front gate.

With Connors holding his hat, they passed through the aperture in the surrounding wall at full speed, narrowly escaping the figure of the aspiring young musician who had come running forward as soon as they appeared from the house.

In a few flashing instants, the large car had disappeared down the highway. Sighing disconsolately, the youth turned back in the direction of the village and the steady if somewhat unromantic profession of mechanic. Never again would he believe in advertising matter. He had heeded that of Ted Grant's Correspondence School not wisely but too well.