(All this, I should say, happened before the War. I am reminded of it
to-day by the circumstance that I have just heard of the death of the agent
whom I then met.)
The impact of the lady on this gentleman was terrific.
"Look, look!" he said. "That's Ella Reeve, one of my discoveries. She was
principal boy at Blackpool two years ago. I put her there. She got fifteen
pounds a week, and to-day she gets two hundred. I spotted her in a chorus,
asked her to call and see me, and this is the result. I made her. There's
nothing she wouldn't do for me, she's so grateful. If she knew I was in the
room she'd be over here in a jiffy."
Having told us all this, he, being a very normal man, told it again, all
the while craning his neck in the hope that his old client (she had now, it
seemed, passed out of his hands, having forsaken panto for London and
revue) might catch sight of his dear face. But she was far too much
occupied either with the lobster on her plate or with the yellow fluid,
strange to me, that moved restlessly in a long-stemmed shallow glass at her
side.
And then, being, as I say, not in any way an eccentric or exorbitant
character, the agent told it us a third time, with a digression here and
there as to the deep friendships that members of his profession could form
and cement if only they were decent fellows and not mere money-grubbing
machines out for nothing but their commission.
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