“‘And what can I do for you, sir?’ he said.

“‘Do you want any actors, Mr. Florance?’ I said.

“‘Are you an actor?’ he said.

“‘I want to be one,’ I said.

“‘Well,’ he said, ‘there’s a school round the corner.’

“‘Well,’ I said, ’you might give me a card of introduction, Mr. Florance.’

“He gave me the card.  I didn’t take it to the school.  I went straight back to the theatre with it, and had it sent up to Wunch.  It just said, ‘Introducing Mr. Sachs, a young man anxious to get on.’  Wunch took it for a positive order to find me a place.  The company was full, so he threw out one poor devil of a super to make room for me.  Curious thing—­old Wunchy got it into his head that I was a protege of Archibald’s, and he always looked after me.  What d’ye think about that?”

“Brilliant!” said Edward Henry.  And it was!  The simplicity of the thing was what impressed him.  Since winning a scholarship at school by altering the number of marks opposite his name on a paper lying on the master’s desk, Edward Henry had never achieved advancement by a device so simple.  And he thought:  “I am nothing!  The Five Towns is nothing!  All that one hears about Americans and the United States is true.  As far as getting on goes, they can make rings round us.  Still, I shall tell him about the Countess and the mule—­”

“Yes,” continued Mr. Seven Sachs, “Wunch was very kind to me.  But he was pretty well down and out, and he left, and Archibald got a new stage-manager, and I was promoted to do a bit of assistant stage-managing.  But I got no increase of salary.  There were two women stars in the play Archibald was doing then—­’The Forty-Niners.’  Romantic drama, you know!  Melodrama you’d call it over here.  He never did any other sort of play.  Well, these two women stars were about equal, and when the curtain fell on the first act they’d both make a bee line for Archibald to see who’d get to him first and engage him in talk.  They were jealous enough of each other to kill.  Anybody could see that Archibald was frightfully bored, but he couldn’t escape.  They got him on both sides, you see, and he just had to talk to ’em, both at once.  I used to be fussing around fixing the properties for the next act.  Well, one night he comes up to me, Archibald does, and he says: 

“‘Mr.—­what’s your name?’

“‘Sachs, sir,’ I says.

“’You notice when those two ladies come up to me after the first act.  Well, when you see them talking to me, I want you to come right along and interrupt,’ he says.

“‘What shall I say, sir?’

“’Tap me on the shoulder and say I’m wanted about something very urgent.  You see?’

“So the next night when those women got hold of him, sure enough I went up between them and tapped him on the shoulder.  ‘Mr. Florance,’ I said.  ‘Something very urgent.’  He turned on me and scowled:  ’What is it?’ he said, and he looked very angry.  It was a bit of the best acting the old man ever did in his life.  It was so good that at first I thought it was real.  He said again louder, ‘What is it?’ So I said, ’Well, Mr. Florance, the most urgent thing in this theatre is that I should have an increase of salary!’ I guess I licked the stuffing out of him that time.”