phytes at rehearsals. He helped to
number the stalls. He showed a passionate interest in the tessellated
pavement of the entrance. He taught the managerial typewriting girl
how to make afternoon tea. He went to Hitchin to find a mediaeval
chair required for the third act, and found it. In a word, he was
fully equal to the post of acting manager. He managed! He managed
everything and everybody except Edward Henry, and except
the press-agent, a functionary whose conviction of his own
indispensability and importance was so sincere that even Marrier
shared it and left him alone in his Bismarckian operations. The
press-agent, who sang in musical comedy chorus at night, knew that if
the Regent Theatre succeeded it would be his doing and his alone.

And yet Edward Henry, though he had delegated everything, had yet
found a vast amount of work to do; and was thereby exhausted. That was
why he was drumming on the pane. That was why he was conscious of
a foolish desire to shove his fist through the pane. During the
afternoon he had had two scenes with two representatives of the
Libraries (so called because they deal in theatre-tickets and not in
books) who had declined to take up any of his tickets in advance. He
had commenced an action against a firm of bill-posters. He had settled
an incipient strike in the 'limes' departments, originated by Mr.
Cosmo Clark's views about lighting. He had dictated answers to
seventy-nine letters of complaint from unknown people concerning the
supply of free seats for the first night. He had responded in the
negative to a request from a newspaper critic who, on the score that
he was deaf, wanted a copy of the play. He had replied finally to an
official of the County Council about the smoke-trap over the stage.
He had replied finally to another official of the County Council about
the electric sign. He had attended to a new curiosity on the part of
another official of the County Council about the iron curtain. But he
had been almost rude to still another official of the County Council
about the wiring of the electric light in the dressing-rooms. He had
been unmistakably and pleasurably rude in writing to Slossons about
their criticisms of the lock on the door of Lord Woldo's private
entrance to the theatre. Also he had arranged with the representative
of the Chief Commissioner of Police concerning the carriage
regulations for "setting-down and taking-up."

And he had indeed had more than enough.