Chapter 101: Counting the Stores

The next day.

Caleb went down to the headquarters of the Rising Sun Fruit Co.

Things were running smoothly there, with Tom Tate in overall charge.

On paper Tom was deputy general manager of Rising Sun, but in practice he filled the general manager’s chair as well.

Ever since they’d been forced to call off the prepaid scrip book sale last October, Rising Sun had settled into a steady, solid way of doing business.

At present, two sets of figures were especially worth noting.

First, the net profit of the big Rising Sun fruit emporiums generally held between eight and twelve percent.

That might not sound like much, but bear in mind that a single fruit emporium could easily take in better than sixty dollars a day.

As for the smaller Rising Sun neighborhood stores, their net profit usually ran around ten percent.

From last year to this, Rising Sun had opened sixty-eight stores in all.

Monthly takings came to around a hundred thousand dollars.

That was a mighty impressive figure.

This year the plan was to open another sixty to a hundred and twenty stores.

The goal wasn’t overreaching; they had the means to do it right now.

Rising Sun ran on a shareholding system, with at least three working shareholders on the floor of every store.

That was enough to keep each store steady.

And by the bookkeepers’ reckoning, it generally took between twenty-four hundred and three thousand dollars to set up a fruit emporium, depending on what it cost to buy out the old lease and what the storefront rented for.

That was the biggest expense.

Without any scrip book sales, a single store paid for itself in eight to twelve months.

In other words, it broke even inside a year, which counted as a very sound investment.

Dividends were still paid out on the fifteenth of every month, and that was set in stone.

Rising Sun was flush with ready cash. If he’d wanted to, he could have drawn out tens of thousands of dollars without the least trouble.

That was both a strength and a temptation.

Countless businesses that had otherwise been doing fine had ridden themselves into the ground by dipping into the till for other ventures.

He warned himself constantly never to start down that road.

He’d rather make a little less than take a big risk.

By the end of this year, Rising Sun had an excellent chance of standing among the five biggest fruit concerns in Sterling City.

Once this year’s store openings were done, they would have over a hundred large fruit emporiums in the city.

Monthly sales would top two hundred thousand dollars, no doubt a very impressive sum.

Unfortunately, the fruit trade had no fence around it. Every town had its own strong local chain of fruit stores, and pushing out from Sterling City into other territories meant butting heads with those homegrown outfits the moment you arrived.

Without some real advantage of its own, living on low prices alone, Rising Sun most likely would never spread beyond Sterling City.

Owning the fruit trade in one place was far better than sprawling all over creation without turning a profit.

That was all Caleb wanted for Rising Sun. The very lowness of the fence around the fruit trade was the biggest fence of all.

Anybody could open a store, which meant the fruit market in every town was bound to fill up.

It was nothing unusual for a neighborhood to have three or four fruit stands clustered at the corner.

Better to earn steady, safe money in Sterling City than to go roaming.

The fruit trade wasn’t like the eating-house trade, especially chains of eating houses, where the fence stood a good deal higher.

Take the chain chophouses around nowadays: if a cook opened one of the company’s agency houses with backing from headquarters, chances were good he could make that one place pay.

But if an outsider, a man who wasn’t in the trade, tried to take an agency chophouse, and he didn’t have much money to begin with,

out of ten such men, at least nine and a half would likely lose their shirts.

Unless it was a firm like Mother Kelly’s Fried Chicken, where headquarters ran nearly everything for you.

Caleb had learned this by poring over all sorts of account books.

There truly was no special secret to selling fruit.

Success came down to a few plain things.

Wide choice, low prices, fresh stock.

Do those three things well, find a decent location, and you’d hardly ever fail.

A fruit outfit that took off in its home town was sure to excel at all three.

That being so, marching into somebody else’s territory to fight them was a good way to make yourself a target.

The main reason not to leave Sterling City was that the fruit trade filled up too easily.

Frankly, a fruit store was a bloody pond of a market, bound to be packed to the banks.

And once the market was packed, price wars and every other kind of scrap broke out.

Holding the home ground in Sterling City was without a doubt the best choice for the Rising Sun Fruit Co.

After this year’s growth, it could count on a steady yearly income of tens of thousands of dollars.

And not just for him. Tom Tate and Luke Jenkins could each clear ten or twelve thousand dollars a year from Rising Sun.

As for shares, whether a man held few or many, the old pards who’d started the business together were now getting rich together.

In truth, going into business with your friends wasn’t impossible, but it was best done after everyone involved had passed thirty.

Only after thirty did a man’s mind season enough to handle things with a cool head.

If a fellow was thirty and still green in the head, Caleb wouldn’t take him on as a partner, however close they were.

Caleb hadn’t yet let on his own plans. He’d rather fill up Sterling City first.

Tom, however, suggested they rent a new headquarters for Rising Sun. After all, it was a concern with nearly two million dollars a year in sales, far stronger than many a company with shares on the Exchange.

The real problem was that there was no room to park the freight wagons here, so Tom wanted to move headquarters out to the edge of town, where there was yard room for the teams and the rent was cheaper.

A whole building on the outskirts beat being crammed into a downtown office block.

Caleb thought it sensible. The fruit trade was no high-toned business; there was no call to put on airs the way the land-and-lot men did.

Convenience came first in everything.

But with so many clerks already working here, any new headquarters had to take them into account.

They should try not to move too far.

Caleb felt that this year, whatever it cost, he had to get a business building of his own in Sterling City.

Otherwise it would be a nuisance, all his companies forever packing up and moving about.

What sizable company didn’t have a headquarters building of its own?

It was a badge and a hallmark both, and he meant to have one this year.

He reckoned his plans for the year weren’t bad. The Rising Sun Fruit Co. would provide steady earnings, and he meant to leave it to Annie one day.

The Fat Lamb was moving toward listing its shares, and once that was done he would seize the chance to push into the whole eating-house trade.

As for Cloudwater, that was the Golden Ledger’s real treasure trove.

As long as he ran Cloudwater well, the prepaid treatment books would bring him a steady stream of money.

The Rising Star Theatrical Company was where he drew the crowds; it served as a pump that sent a stream of public attention out to help all his other businesses.

His targets were clear, and his plans laid out plain.

Buying a headquarters building of six stories or more inside the Second Ward this year shouldn’t be too hard, should it?

So Caleb thought to himself.

After spending a day at the Rising Sun fruit emporiums, he stayed on at Cloudwater headquarters for a few days of training.

The place was mostly young ladies, and he, as the boss, was naturally popular.

At their strong urging, he submitted to a course of kidney tonics and treatments for his shoulders and neck.

This was after being looked over by one of their health attendants.

He’d been running a little hot lately, and needed regular treatment for his kidneys.

Once a week, that sort of thing.

From working long hours in his early years, he’d also picked up a small trouble in the shoulders and neck.

Sitting too long easily brought on an ache in the small of his back and a touch of dizziness.

All of it came from congestion, which regular treatment over a few months could put right.

When it came to his own health, he meant to stick with it.

He didn’t care to be under forty and already dosing himself with liver pills and sleeping on a hot-water bottle.

It wasn’t until the other Fat Lamb branches were about to open that he finally went round to his own Rising Star Theatrical Company.

Chapter 102: The Gossip Man

The Rising Star Theatrical Company had been in business for nearly half a year.

So far it had only put money into a handful of stage productions and had pushed Lily Hayes up into the second rank of stars.

Its achievements in the theater world couldn’t be called great, but it had made something of a name.

The truly famous companies were still the ones that held the top stars.

Like Mae Darling’s Jubilee Theatrical Company, the Tanager Company of the matinee idol Hollis Grey, the Mountain Eagle Company, and a few others.

Those were all first-rank theatrical houses.

His Rising Star counted as second-rank at best, so it was no wonder Mae Darling had shut him out.

That woman. Sooner or later, he’d lure her back to be the exclusive face of his bust care.

After more than a month away, he found the Rising Star headquarters still kept spotless by Blanche Whitney.

Still, he definitely needed to expand this year. A space of just over three hundred square yards was too small.

“Blanche, have you found that publicity man you were looking for?”

Blanche was forever mingling in theater circles, and she knew more of the trade’s gossip than he did, boss or not.

In fact, every top star’s company usually kept someone skilled at working the newspapers.

His job was mostly getting the star’s name into print, drawing a crowd, and steering what the papers and the letter-writers said, among other things.

Caleb needed a crew like that now.

The reason was simple. It wasn’t only that Lily Hayes had eaten at the Fat Lamb and drawn a great crowd of attention.

It was that, after her visit, some team at the company had to work the story and steer it until it blew up into the talk of the town.

“I’ve found one.”

When Blanche wasn’t rehearsing, she was here, mostly receiving visiting theater troupes on his behalf.

“Uncle, I’ve gotten hold of a professional gossip-sheet crew. They’ve cooked up plenty of sensations before, and being the sort who sneak pictures of folks, they’re good at working the papers and just as good at the tricks of the gossip trade.”

Candid pictures were good. He had real need of that kind of talent right now.

Caleb said, “Tell them to come round when they’ve got time.”

“Uncle, I have to warn you, a crew like that asks for a mighty high salary.”

Blanche said, “If it’s only to handle publicity for the Fat Lamb Stew House, won’t that cost too much?”

“Of course it won’t just be for the Fat Lamb.”

Caleb said, “They’ll also be in charge of steering the papers and doing the publicity for the players under Rising Star. We only have Lily Hayes now, but who knows, we may sign a few more down the road.”

Blanche understood, and sent a boy round to have someone come in for an interview.

Gossip-sheet work, done well, could make a man rich and prosperous.

Done badly, it could land him in jail or in the infirmary.

Why jail? Anyone who knew the trade could guess.

If you actually caught hold of some juicy secret about a great star, rather than printing it, you did better to sell it to the star in question.

That way, the price was obviously much higher.

Most scandals involving top stars ended one of two ways.

One, the price couldn’t be agreed on.

Two, it had been arranged by rivals to draw attention away.

The first was easy enough to understand. The second meant that when your own star was mixed up in a big scandal, you let loose an even bigger story, turning the public’s eyes elsewhere to protect your player.

The big theatrical companies did that sort of thing all the time.

The man Blanche had called in was Tim Langston, a fellow in his early thirties, about Caleb’s own age.

He had been a gossip-sheet man and an editor on the theatrical beat, and had once handled newspaper publicity for a third-rank actress.

He knew the rules of the theater world through and through, and knew how to whip up all sorts of sensations in the papers.

He asked for a yearly salary of twenty-four hundred dollars, but that was no problem.

All talk and no results wouldn’t convince Caleb, though.

“Here’s the thing. I’ve got a few eating houses about to open, and before they do, Lily Hayes is going to dine at them a few times. If you can make that the talk of the town, I’ll give you twenty-eight hundred a year.”

If Tim said it could be done, fine. If it couldn’t, that was simple too.

Next.

For anybody asking over two thousand dollars a year, there was nothing to discuss. Just show me what you can do.

Lily Hayes was a big star. Whenever she dined out and got sketched or photographed on the sly, it stirred up a little gossip.

But not much.

Turning that little bit of gossip into a sensation depended on the publicity man’s tricks.

Caleb had just set him a simple test, as plain as could be.

Tim Langston had come to him, naturally, because he knew a few things about Rising Star, the least theatrical of all the theatrical companies.

Apart from one director, one second-rank star, and one secretary, it had hardly any other people on the payroll.

Most of the work was farmed out to hired professional crews, and the boss had no hand in it at all.

Even with a temptation as rich as casting, that hotbed of back-room understandings, the boss was nowhere to be seen.

Here came the test: second-rank star Lily Hayes goes out to eat.

How do you make a sensation of that?

After thinking it over quickly, Tim Langston said,

“Mr. Walker, to turn any story into a sensation, you’ve got to leave the readers and the onlookers some room to imagine.”

“Look, I’ve got a few rough plans here. You can pick one.”

“First, Lily Hayes is suspected of dining with a gentleman friend. Using a star’s romances to stir up talk draws the biggest crowd, no doubt about it.”

“Stop,” said Caleb. “She’s a player under my company and my partner besides. No story is to be built on damaging her good name.”

That put a fence around it.

Tim Langston thought again, and ideas like admirers running into her, or her paying an admirer’s supper bill, and other small tales that could be worked, came to mind.

After all, any crowd needs something hot to draw it; otherwise a picture of a star simply going out to supper wouldn’t catch much notice.

Caleb found his ideas a bit stale, and his suggestions no better.

There wasn’t a single one he liked.

The papers were where young people loved to gather and trade talk.

The ideas he’d put forward, a man in his early thirties like Caleb could think up without straining his brain. What did they need him for?

Good day, then. Next!

The boss’s test was just that plain. Twenty-odd hundred a year wasn’t that easy to come by.

After sending him off without ceremony, Caleb called Blanche over.

“That won’t do. The ideas are too worn out, completely out of touch with how young folks think nowadays.”

“So, Uncle, what exactly are you looking for?”

“Someone bursting with invention, who knows how to stage clever pictures and tableaux, and who’s good at stirring up little stories,” said Caleb.

“The ideas he just gave me, I could have thought of without using my head. Besides, he never even asked why I wanted pictures of Lily Hayes going out to eat. He didn’t find out what I actually need before tossing me ideas for two thousand a year. He must figure us bosses aren’t very bright.”

Blanche nodded; she felt the same.

The old man looked plain and homespun, but he was plenty sharp.

Otherwise he couldn’t have run so many companies by himself.

Someone bursting with invention, good at staging all sorts of little tableaux and pictures, good at writing little stories.

Hadn’t there been exactly such a person in her old boardinghouse room?

That woman was truly beautiful, but forever strange; you never knew what was on her mind.

She’d lock the door and come up with notions like setting off a firecracker inside an inkwell.

Even in the middle of the night she’d get up to practice some queer toad-squatting calisthenics.

She also loved sending peculiar essays to the student broadsheets and the debating-society papers.

The key thing was, every time she did, she drew a big following.

Wasn’t she exactly what the old man was looking for?

Time to wire that crazy woman.

Chapter 103: The Two-Cent Bun

Back at the Conservatory, Blanche’s boardinghouse room had included a girl who studied stage directing.

Apart from being unable to direct a serious play, she could come up with every kind of crooked notion.

At their age, fresh out of school, it was nearly impossible for young folks to do all that well in the world.

Blanche wired her first. The girl signed her telegrams the same way she’d signed her notes at school: “Clown Girl Who Loves to Make Pictures.”

“Are you out of your head, clowning around for some boss?”

“What are you babbling about?”

The reply came back quick, a sure sign she was loafing on the job. “As if the boss would let me clown around. I’m busy sketching her walking out of the privy without washing her hands.”

“Tsk. The fact your boss hasn’t fired you defies all reason.”

“Shut your crow’s beak. The office manager just told me I’ve been canned again.”

“Fine. Then come work where I am. My boss needs a goddess as free-spirited and unprofessional as you.”

“Who’s this boss of yours, saying such unprofessional things right out loud? Does he feed you?”

“He does.”

“What about lodging?”

“That too.”

“Is it roomy? I like to let off a little wind in my sleep, you know that. No more than ten to a room, that sort of thing.”

“Think bigger. A six-hundred-square-yard mansion in Sterling City, all for you.”

Blanche didn’t rent a room anymore. She had moved into the two-hundred-square-yard fine house in the Eastside, near the Second Ward, that Clara had bought last year.

She had also borrowed a flat in Stonewell, so that after tutoring Annie she wouldn’t have to run back and forth.

The family’s houses were never rented to strangers, only lent to their own people.

“Are you serious?”

“Dead serious. Roll on over here, quick.”

“You got it.”

Ellie Jarvis grabbed her carpetbag and hit the road. That heartless outfit hadn’t even bothered to say goodbye to her.

Just wait till I’m doing well. First I’ll clean out all you demons and monsters, then I’ll fire the boss.

She wasn’t in Sterling City but in Bay City.

But as long as a young person had a good place to work, what was to stop her from catching the express?

Caleb met this odd little creature in the afternoon. She was young, and looked a little like a certain young actress.

Her hair was a mess and her features were fine and delicate, and above all, she talked a blue streak.

“Boss, I hear you’re hiring? Do I look like a fit to you?”

She didn’t have the stale air of the fellow before her; she was plainly a young person of the new age.

Blanche had briefed him before she came. Suitable or not, just give her the test.

The same test: Lily Hayes goes out to eat.

Ellie glanced at it and asked curiously, “Boss, are you trying to promote the place she ate at?”

“That’s right.”

Not bad. At least she’d found out what he needed first.

Ellie took out a pencil and quickly wrote one line in her notebook.

“MISS LILY HAYES CAUGHT EATING A TWO-CENT BUN!”

Caleb was a little behind the times when it came to young people. Could a headline like that really draw a crowd?

He turned it over and still couldn’t figure it, so he just asked straight out, “Isn’t this the most ordinary story there is?”

“Yes, very ordinary.”

“Then how’s it going to catch fire?”

“Boss, what’s the first thing you think when you see that headline?”

“I’d want to read on and see what a two-cent bun looks like?”

“That’s exactly it.”

Ellie smiled. “Curiosity is the first thing any sensation needs. Once folks are curious, they’ll read on to see the bun, and your eating house gets promoted.”

Caleb was astonished. The woman was a real talent!

She truly had a knack. With a mind like hers, it would be a waste for her not to work the newspapers.

“What salary do you want?”

Ellie brightened. “Does that mean I passed?”

Caleb nodded. “You passed.”

Ellie thought a moment. “My last boss paid me sixteen dollars a month.”

She had tacked six dollars onto her old wage, to raise the stakes for the haggling.

It also left the boss some room to beat her down.

After all, she’d come by the express, and she needed to earn back her train fare.

“I’ll give you sixty dollars a month, plus a bonus of four hundred at the end of the year if you do well.”

Ellie didn’t hesitate. She shot to her feet and thanked him.

Sixty dollars a month came to better than seven hundred a year, before the bonus even. So tempting.

Caleb gave her an office of her own, a big desk, and a boy to run her copy to every newspaper office in town.

Lily Hayes’s pictures at the Fat Lamb had already been taken on his end. What had been missing was someone who knew how to make the story explode in the papers.

Ellie even asked curiously, “Boss, how many admirers’ societies does Lily Hayes have?”

“Admirers’ societies?” Caleb shook his head. His Rising Star was an empty shell. There was nobody to manage any admirers’ societies.

A star’s most valuable asset was her admirers. Without admirers, could you even call her a star?

That they didn’t even have anyone looking after that most precious thing struck Ellie as mighty odd.

After all, whether a star was opening a new play or trying to get herself into the gossip columns,

the first wave of attention had to come from her own loyal admirers.

Only then could you steer public talk and draw in the passersby.

No matter. The boss not knowing the trade only showed how valuable she was.

Otherwise, how could she earn sixty a month?

Ellie was a born newspaper hand. With one hand she wrote pieces about Lily Hayes eating a two-cent bun; with the other, she built Lily an admirers’ society out of the sacks of letters that came to Lily at the company.

Lily herself never bothered much with her admirers’ letters. The company answered them for her.

Unfortunately, Caleb had never taken any of it seriously before.

Once Ellie had finished the piece about the two-cent bun, she showed it to Caleb.

“Boss, don’t take this piece lightly. The key to working the papers is never to let anybody see we’re selling something. Only then can we push it up the columns and set the town talking.”

“Makes sense.”

Since Caleb had paid dear to hire her, naturally she would take charge.

On their end, they sent the story of Lily Hayes being caught on the sly to the papers under a borrowed name, a letter from “An Observant Diner,” which was really a piece she’d written herself.

Along with the pictures that had already been taken.

Meanwhile, through Lily’s own correspondence, they built an admirers’ society. Lily was, after all, a star who had only recently shot to fame.

Her popularity hadn’t cooled yet, and anything about her naturally drew a crowd.

As the society grew and more and more people joined,

Ellie sent out its very first mission: get the piece she’d written into the gossip columns.

Everyone was to write letters to the editors and pass the clipping along. First they would use her own big crowd of admirers to charge straight into the little papers.

Then on to the biggest papers, the ones every ordinary reader saw.

To go viral, a story had to become news.

Ellie worked it hard, building up the story from the eating itself: Lily Hayes’s hard beginnings, the self-made idol of the stage, still frugal after all her fame, and so on.

Then, with the help of the great crowd of admirers, she drove those stories forward.

She pushed her sensational little piece into the gossip columns.

It didn’t reach the top right away.

It still took the admirers’ ceaseless letters and passing-around for it to stand out in the Sterling Gazette’s weekly “Talk of the Town” tally.

But very soon the letters to the editors swelled past a thousand, then ten thousand, then came by the sackful, until the papers could hardly count them.

Reprints followed right behind, from one paper to the next across the territories.

She was a talent, no doubt about it.

The more the piece was seen, the more the Fat Lamb’s name was worth.

Later there would be plenty more little tales about Lily Hayes and the Fat Lamb to add.

That depended on Ellie’s knack for writing copy.

He felt sure her salary was money well spent.

By nightfall, the story was still heating up.

Blanche took her home to live with her in a place that was far too big, a house with four bedrooms and two parlors.

With only the two of them living there, the young women had all the room in the world.

Ellie had never dreamed a company boardinghouse in Sterling City could be so fine.

“It all belongs to the boss, so we’ve got to take good care of it.”

“Of course. I’ll have a nice bath, then I’ll join you for a few hands of high-low-jack.”

It was supposed to be company and chatter, but when Ellie came out of the bath, she went straight back to working the story without a break.

It wasn’t that she wanted to be so hardworking.

It was that the boss paid too much, and she had to work hard.

If she got fired again, where would she find such a generous employer?

Employees dared to walk out on their bosses at the drop of a hat mainly because they weren’t paid enough.

Pay her several times what she expected, and see if she dared to quit.

Or dared to slack off on the job.

Wages, after all, drove everything.

Ellie forced herself to stay up until three in the morning, writing note after note to fire up the members of the admirers’ society, until the story had climbed into the top twenty items of the theatrical gossip. Only then did she go to bed.

Chapter 104: Sunburst Capital

“Boss, look, we made the gossip columns!”

At the Fat Lamb Stew House, Saturdays were always buzzing.

All day long, the thirty-eight tables and seven private dining rooms never stopped bustling.

Outside, a long line was still waiting, and every seat inside was filled to the brim.

Hugh Gordon took the head cook’s post himself on weekends. Ordinarily he was at headquarters, in charge of training and working out new dishes.

He turned his head and saw that it was indeed Lily Hayes’s visit to the stew house that had made the columns.

It ranked nineteenth in the Gazette’s theatrical tally, and there was even an engraving of the Fat Lamb’s front door.

“This has got our chairman’s hand behind it for sure. Boys, let’s get to work!”

As Hugh cooked, his every movement was full of fire.

The flames roared up high with the spitting fat.

In two more days, four new branches would open in the market arcades on the same day, and Lily Hayes would come in person to cut the ribbon and help promote them.

The momentum was tremendous, nothing like anything he’d done before.

Once those four branches were open, the Fat Lamb would officially announce the founding of the Fat Lamb Dining Company, Limited.

Then the newly founded Sunburst Capital would announce an investment of two hundred thousand dollars, completing the Fat Lamb’s first round of outside investment.

Its valuation would jump straight to four hundred thousand.

Sunburst Capital’s registered capital was only twenty thousand dollars, and naturally it had been founded by Caleb as well.

It was also the signal of his formal entry into the world of big money.

At first, his investments would focus only on the few companies under his own umbrella.

Whether the Fat Lamb, Cloudwater, or the Rising Sun Fruit Co.

From now on, all his personal investments would be channeled through Sunburst Capital.

It was worth noting that newly founded companies that met the requirements generally enjoyed three years’ exemption from the territorial license taxes.

Apart from Rising Star, all his current companies were in the old, traditional trades and naturally qualified.

And trades as old as ladies’ beauty parlors had never been made to pay such taxes anyway.

Once their shares were listed on the Exchange, however, they would definitely have to pay the tax on company earnings.

Hugh was very excited, and so were the waiters under him.

They even told some of the customers that their stew house had made the gossip columns. That was the benefit of having a star involved.

The notice it drew, compared to small chains or single eating houses, wasn’t even in the same league.

…

“Uncle, did we just open another investment company?”

Sunburst Capital’s full name was the Sunburst Investment Management Company, Limited.

It was the fifth company Caleb had formally registered, and his gateway to the world of big money.

They didn’t rent a new headquarters. They just hung a sign at the door of the Rising Star Theatrical Company.

On the left, the Rising Star Theatrical Company; on the right, Sunburst Capital.

“That’s right. From now on we’re not just a theatrical company, but a high-toned theatrical company that reaches into high finance.”

Just adding the word “capital” made all the difference, and Blanche felt honored.

Counting her, the official staff had risen to two.

Ellie Jarvis was earning her sixty a month, working the papers diligently and working hard.

On Sunburst’s very first day in business, it even drew an unexpected visitor.

The persistent Walter Yancey of the Falcon Theatrical Company happened to be passing by. He was mixed up in a much-trumpeted scheme in the theater world known as the “Grand Bonanza Plan.”

It was famous and much talked about, but essentially useless.

“Mr. Walker, you open a new company and don’t even have somebody to cut the ribbon?”

“Does a good company need somebody to cut a ribbon?”

Caleb didn’t even bother to invite him in for tea.

Walter Yancey still felt rather proud in his presence, with the strong sense of superiority typical of a rich man’s son, especially since his father was a land baron.

Looking down on a fellow who sold fruit and stew was only natural, wasn’t it?

“Mr. Walker, like I said before, if you’re willing to hand over half your stake in ‘Flora of the Crimson Peaks,’ we can still be friends,” he said.

“Is your face bigger than your backside?”

Caleb was furious; there was only so much a man could take.

“Look at you, thinking everybody ought to bow and scrape just because you’ve got a powerful daddy?”

“Why, damn you…”

Walter Yancey almost started a fight on the spot. He hadn’t come over on purpose for this; he’d just happened on Caleb while the new company sign was going up.

A fruit peddler setting up an investment firm was just like a sodbuster with a golden broom. However clean he swept, he was still a sodbuster.

After pointing at him with contempt, Walter Yancey left with his men.

They were both bosses, after all. Shouldn’t they have a little common decency?

Only a nobody like Caleb Walker would dare to give him that kind of lip.

Back in his Hooper state landau, Walter Yancey pounded on the carriage window.

He didn’t hit it hard; it was nothing much.

“Mr. Yancey, take a look at today’s gossip columns.”

George Mingus, the Falcon’s strategist, who was also his father’s man and had been assigned to Walter Yancey, said, “The Fat Lamb is all over them.”

Walter Yancey wasn’t truly a fool; he just couldn’t always hold his temper.

“What’s so strange about that? Isn’t it just Lily Hayes eating a meal?”

“Mr. Yancey, you ought to look beneath the surface.”

George Mingus explained, “The Fat Lamb is about to open four houses on a single day, and they’ve set the town talking right away. Then the Rising Star follows up by setting up Sunburst Capital. It looks like this new Sunburst Capital will soon announce an investment in the Fat Lamb. They’ve been planning this stir from the start.”

“What does he want with all this stir? I’ve been to his Fat Lamb. It’s dirt cheap and frightfully bad. I’m afraid I’d get sick eating there.”

His face was full of contempt.

Walter Yancey had never cared for cheap eating houses. He always felt they were all work and no profit.

Unlike his father.

His father could just sit on a piece of land. Without building so much as a shed on it, he could easily turn a small fortune in a couple of years.

“Young sir, you can’t look at it that way. The eating-house trade is enormous.”

George Mingus said patiently, “From the Fat Lamb Stew House onward, everything’s been planned out. They use low prices to build a name, then pair it with publicity from the theatrical company to spread that name, and finally they set up an investment firm to lift the whole thing up to the level of high finance.”

“The way it stands, Sunburst will surely handle the most profitable first stake and first round for the Fat Lamb. Once they join hands with other big money, the Fat Lamb will go straight onto the Exchange. This isn’t just an eating house; he’s plainly invented a machine for taking eating houses public.”

“If this model really works, considering how vast the eating-house trade is, with countless branches of it, both the Rising Star and Sunburst Capital could become top concerns in their trades, and it’s even conceivable they could split off into great combines of their own.”

The strategist truly lived up to his title.

Knowing his son was no great achiever, old Mr. Yancey had sent over the family firm’s longtime adviser on company growth to help him.

For the sons of rich men starting out in business, family connections were just that strong.

“You think it’s got that much promise?”

Walter Yancey was a little surprised. He’d always thought the most valuable thing in Caleb Walker’s hands was “Flora of the Crimson Peaks,” now in rehearsal.

A forbidden love between a mentor and his pupil. His advisers believed the play could be a huge hit.

After all, nobody had ever seen a subject like that on the stage before.

“It’s not just promising. It’s extremely promising.”

George Mingus said, “Think about it. We set up the Falcon Theatrical Company to make money mainly by backing plays and touring shows. It’s terribly risky and the profits aren’t that high. Clearing two million dollars in a year counts as an excellent showing.”

“But his way is different. Backing plays is just a sideline for him. The main purpose is to help the companies the Rising Star props up get their shares listed. Once that’s done, in three years at the shortest and five at the longest, the profits could run to millions at the very least, maybe even tens of millions.”

“Imagine it. Once the money men see that this model works, if he then dresses up the Rising Star a little and folds it into some company already listed on the Exchange, that’s tens or even hundreds of millions more in potential.”

“With profits from those two sides, he’d already far outstrip the whole trade.”

“Compared to those fellows who only know how to put on plays, this is a far cleverer game, played at a far higher level of the theater business.”

“Next to him, our Falcon is like a boy fumbling for crawdads in a creek, while he’s draining the whole river to catch the fish.”

Walter Yancey gasped. Could that fruit peddler really have such a head for business?

Chapter 105: The Strategist’s Reckoning

After returning to the Falcon Theatrical Company’s Sterling City headquarters,

Walter Yancey paid special attention to every bit of news about the Rising Star and the Fat Lamb.

He couldn’t believe a fruit peddler could have such a sharp head for business.

Even he, a land baron’s son, hadn’t thought of it. How could some street-corner fruit peddler have thought of it?

By the end of February,

the biggest painted hoarding on Royal Row, where the crowds of the capital thronged, showed Mae Darling putting her name to Cloudwater.

It carried a single line: “Cloudwater: a lady’s private retreat of the first refinement.”

There was no need to explain who Mae Darling was.

Cloudwater had one branch in Stonewell, and quite a spacious one.

Walter didn’t know much about such places where ladies spent their money. He only knew his own mother spent tens of thousands of dollars on them every year.

A mighty profitable trade, truly.

At the same time, all manner of notices about Cloudwater appeared in the papers.

Such as “the private club of wealthy ladies, the first choice of women of taste.”

“A luxury every lady of quality must visit once in her life.”

Wealthy, tasteful, quality. Just look at those words.

Weren’t they aimed squarely at rich women?

That scoundrel could not only run a cheap eating house, he could cross right over into high-toned health and beauty.

Walter didn’t pay Cloudwater much mind. After all, there were only a few branches; nothing much to watch.

Early March.

Four Fat Lamb branches opened on the same day.

Lily Hayes cut the ribbons herself, exactly as his strategist had predicted.

That same day, the Fat Lamb formally founded the Fat Lamb Dining Company, Limited.

And announced Lily Hayes as its honorary hostess and patroness in the papers.

That same day, a great flurry of stories appeared in the gossip columns, and it was plain someone on their side was deliberately steering the talk.

Working the crowd.

The next day, the Rising Star Theatrical Company announced the founding of the Sunburst Capital Investment Company, Limited.

And publicly declared its first investment.

It had single-handedly completed a two-hundred-thousand-dollar first round of investment in the Fat Lamb.

Lily Hayes also formally became one of the Fat Lamb’s original major shareholders.

One move after another, all just as predicted.

If Walter hadn’t caught on by now, he really would be a fool.

The Rising Star had suddenly stepped into both finance and the eating-house trade, the real, bricks-and-mortar business.

The theater was only the lesser business after all.

Using the crowds the theater drew to play a game of big money was Caleb Walker’s real plan.

“Mr. Yancey, have you seen the news?”

George Mingus, in his fifties, had served Walter’s father for over a decade and was now assigned to back the son.

He had published many important essays on political economy and was a man of real renown in the field.

“I have.”

Walter was no longer as offhand as usual. He said seriously, “The financial pages, the theatrical pages, the gossip columns, all of a sudden they’re full of the Rising Star and the Fat Lamb. It’s hard not to take notice. Professor, it’s just as you predicted.”

“Yes.” George Mingus said, “Sunburst announced two hundred thousand into the Fat Lamb, to be paid over ten months. The first twenty thousand goes into the Second Ward, and they expect to fit out and open about five houses there at once.”

“How are the money men taking it?”

“Not much reaction yet.”

George Mingus sat down. “In recent years big money has mostly been chasing the railroads and the telegraph. Eating houses haven’t drawn much attention from the money men, chiefly because they’re hard to prop up. They need a whole string of professional backing, and each house ties up a good deal of property.”

“Two hundred thousand is just enough for the Fat Lamb to open fifty houses in Sterling City.”

“Then he’s hardly got any future, has he?”

“There you’re mistaken.”

George Mingus said, “Of the four great needs of every nation, clothing comes first and food second. Big money never paid food much attention in the past, because nobody could find a shortcut in that line.

“Most of the railroad and telegraph men who’ve tried going into eating houses, thinking to remake them the railroad way, have failed every one, which shows how hard it is.”

“But look at the Fat Lamb’s business. If these four new houses can do as well as the first one, it’ll prove Caleb Walker truly understands eating houses and can copy the Fat Lamb fast.”

“That’s the crux, and it also decides whether the Fat Lamb can truly win over the money men.”

It was rare to hear his teacher praise a new venture so highly.

Just as his teacher said, many railroad and telegraph men had gone into the eating-house trade, but only a handful had truly succeeded.

The old trades and the new companies were fenced off from one another by very high walls.

It wasn’t enough just to think like a railroad man to do well.

But Caleb Walker was different. He had started out in the old trades.

He already had a great deal of skill at running ordinary businesses and understood agency stores and chains very well.

Just look how well the Rising Sun Fruit Co. was doing, thriving wherever it opened.

Now he was running the new-fashioned thinking backward, using it to boost an old trade.

Simply put, the heart of it was still running the Fat Lamb well, then adding the crowds from the theater and the funds from the money men.

To build a colossal eating-house combine in short order.

“There’s a good chance that once the Fat Lamb succeeds, he’ll move into soda fountains, late-night oyster suppers, and chophouses like Hardy’s.”

“Professor, if he really can copy the Fat Lamb and business booms, what happens next?”

“What happens?”

George Mingus took his time. He lit a stogie and crossed his legs:

“If he succeeds, the next step naturally will be a second round of outside investment. I’d guess the valuation would come to about a million dollars. The first dilution won’t be much, thirty percent at most.”

“With the money from the second round, it’s very likely he’ll expand from Sterling City to the Gulf Coast or Bay City. Once the Fat Lamb succeeds across territorial lines, its valuation will shoot sky-high.”

“Pushing the third round to four million dollars would be easy. No trouble at all.”

That was how valuation worked. It wasn’t about what the assets were worth, but what you believed they were worth.

Of course, a price only counted if somebody took it.

The Fat Lamb genuinely had more than two hundred thousand invested in it, and it had the patronage of big stars like Lily Hayes.

Plus, the Rising Star kept sending it crowds.

A million for the second round was a cautious guess.

If it were a telegraph company, it would shoot straight to sixty or a hundred million.

The third round was the real key. The Fat Lamb had to prove it could do well not only in Sterling City but in other territories too.

Only if it wasn’t tied to one place could it truly prove it could spread across the whole country.

By then, four million was sure to be a cautious guess.

Plenty of people would be scrambling to buy in.

By the time it neared listing on the Exchange, two hundred million might not be a dream.

That was how the money men were. If you could help them make money, they’d carry you soaring into the highest heavens.

George Mingus felt this was still the most cautious reckoning.

Compared to Walter Yancey, who had started out with a million dollars of his father’s money handed over from home, Caleb’s methods were many times more sophisticated.

Backing money-burning spectacles like “The Great Divide” was something George simply didn’t agree with.

Walter Yancey, however, set great store by the Lark & Echo Company, whose shares were soaring; even if the shows didn’t make money, breaking even was fine.

For sheer nerve, that way of thinking was unmatched.

The Rising Star was entirely different. It was simply writing the playbook that suited itself best.

As long as they pulled off this one deal with the Fat Lamb, the Falcon could race to catch up and still wouldn’t stand a chance.

The difference in level was plain.

Chapter 106: The Fashion Gala

Over at the Fat Lamb,

everything was going smoothly.

Caleb had thrown another twenty thousand into it, leaving him less than forty thousand in his pocket.

The advertisements for Cloudwater had already gone out.

The new parlors in the Second Ward weren’t expected to open officially until May.

The returns on “Flora of the Crimson Peaks” would have to wait for the second half of the year.

The Rising Sun Fruit Co. could pay him two or four thousand a month, but that was nowhere near enough to keep up with his spending.

Every day he missed the days when Mae Darling had put her name to bust care.

If he could get her again to draw more customers, Stonewell could sell another round of treatment books.

He hadn’t meant to go to the theater world’s fashion gala at first, but now he had no choice but to show his face.

He still drove his own gilded Concord coach. He had to say, it rode beautifully.

Far more comfortable than any racing rig.

The so-called fashion gala was really just a stage where the actresses of the theater world competed for the dressmakers’ favors and tried to outshine one another.

Like the grand promenade of the Paris Salon, it drew an enormous amount of notice.

The actresses who attended had all prepared with great care.

It was all about catching the eyes of the newspaper sketch artists and the photographers with their big box cameras.

The contest was who could show the most.

He attended as proprietor of the Rising Star Theatrical Company, one of the moneyed men, and naturally dressed quite plainly.

The Rising Star didn’t yet cut much of a figure in the theater world, so they were seated in the second row.

Right at the very end.

Representing the Lark & Echo Company, Mrs. Genevieve Jarrett was there in all her glory.

This year her husband had gone into racing stables, telegraph instruments, and steam carriages.

Lark & Echo’s shares had soared past two hundred million dollars in value, putting him on the papers’ list of America’s richest men and lifting her standing sky-high in splendid fashion.

Caleb didn’t envy her.

He always felt Lark & Echo’s way of expanding carried too much risk.

If its ready money ever dried up, it would be a textbook case of total collapse.

His way was different. He earned less, but he slept soundly.

The actresses arrived.

It nearly blinded his poor eyes, and they were tough as gunmetal.

Each neckline plunged lower than the last.

Those with nothing to show still squeezed and pushed to show as much as they could.

As for those as naturally blessed as Lulu Yarrow,

three quarters of it was on display, with only a quarter covering the vital points.

If the vital points were on display too, the show would probably be for the private enjoyment of the big men only.

Dozens of actresses swept down the carpet, and Mae Darling made her entrance last.

That was only fitting for her standing. Mae Darling wore a gown painted like an ink-wash picture, slit all the way up the middle.

The back was bare as well.

She still carried herself with elegance, unlike Delphine Rabaut beside her, who, though dressed even more daringly, kept covering herself with her hands.

When she saw certain important gentlemen, she would let her hands drop.

Mae Darling sat in the middle of the front row, while Delphine should only have sat in the third row, but Mae pulled her down to sit beside her anyway.

You had to hand it to the woman; she really looked after the newcomers.

Caleb wasn’t there to admire bosoms. He only wanted to find Mae Darling again and get her to draw big customers to Cloudwater.

He slipped quietly up behind her and tapped her on the shoulder.

“Mae, hello.”

What are you calling me “Mae” for? Do I know you that well?

Mae Darling turned her head and gave him one glance. She remembered him perfectly well: the only man in all the papers who’d dared to advertise her bosom so shamelessly.

With a look both seductive and merciless, she brushed him off with her eyes. “What are you calling me ‘Mae’ for? I’m a great deal younger than you.”

Caleb was absolutely first-rate at sweet-talking girls, or at least he believed so.

“I hear you’re refusing my letters?”

Hearsay? It was plain fact.

Mae Darling could refuse his letters in private, but to his face, it wouldn’t do to admit it.

This thickheaded man, knowing you’d shut him out and still pushing himself forward.

What, still want to make money off my bosom, do you?

The shamelessness!

Delphine Rabaut, however, looked at him curiously. To talk to her senior like that, he must hold some important place in the theater world.

Caleb looked at her too, sizing her up. “I know you. Fine figure. Just the other day my secretary was telling me your backside is especially handsome. Seeing it today, it’s true.”

Whoosh. Delphine’s face went red in an instant.

She had never met any great man who complimented her backside to her face. This was a first.

Caleb’s next words made Mae Darling furious all over again.

“Prettier than your senior’s. Here’s my card. I don’t usually give it to actresses, but today I’ll make an exception for you. If you have time, come see me at my company.”

With that, since the ceremony was about to begin, Caleb had to go back to his seat.

Then wait for it to end to find Mae Darling again.

Delphine was a bit bewildered. It felt as though someone had set his sights on her pert little behind. Could it be dangerous? Would he be rough? Could she hold out?

In despair, she looked to Mae Darling beside her. “Senior sister, I, I…”

Mae Darling looked at the whole business with scorn. “Don’t overthink it. That shameless man has just taken a fancy to your backside, but it’s actually a good thing.”

“Ah?” Delphine couldn’t understand. Didn’t her senior sister despise the theater world’s back-room understandings above all?

Why would she think of handing her over so willingly today?

Mae Darling explained, “Don’t get the wrong idea. The man’s a small boss. The Rising Star doesn’t back many plays, but most of them make money. He’s taken an interest in your backside because he thinks it can help him draw customers.”

Ah? That was even worse.

Not just one, then, but a whole crowd of them.

Drawing in customers? Like a madam.

Using her backside.

This was far too much.

Mae Darling didn’t explain further. Mainly, it was rare for anyone to praise another woman’s backside in front of her.

Only Caleb Walker, of everyone in the whole country.

He was shameless on top of shameless, a low-down scoundrel to the bone.

When the gala was over, plenty of big men wanted to invite Mae Darling to a party.

The line was so long Caleb wouldn’t get his turn in three days.

But Mae Darling was holding in her temper. She just wanted to ask him what kind of rotten taste that was.

What was wrong with her own pert behind?

To actually tell her face to face that Delphine’s was better!

Caleb was waiting outside for her. Mae Darling had come in her own Brewster brougham, and Delphine had come in the same carriage with her.

When the gala let out, the street outside was jammed with carriages.

Caleb’s gilded Concord coach didn’t even stand out. What star in the theater world didn’t have a rig worth thousands?

“Mae Darling, I just knew you’d get in my coach.”

On leaving the hall, Mae Darling had put on a cloak and changed from her gown into a smart walking dress.

Delphine had done the same.

“Please, get in!”

Once the two women were settled in back, Blanche, on the front seat, gazed at Mae Darling with open admiration.

Her delight was plain to see.

Caleb took them back to the modest Rising Star headquarters, where Blanche made some tea.

Mae Darling was still furious and quite cold toward him.

“You’ve brought us here. What exactly do you want to talk about? Out with it!”

“A partnership, naturally.”

Caleb asked, “By the way, have you eaten yet? That three-cent beef-and-rice plate from the lunch counter yesterday was pretty good. Blanche, send out for a few more.”

Delphine was completely flabbergasted. Could a man really do such a thing…?

He’d invited two supremely beautiful women and was asking them to eat a cheap plate of beef and rice.

They’d eaten every fine dish there was. What man who invited Mae Darling wouldn’t practically empty a gold mine to show off his wealth?

This… just a cheap lunch-counter plate?

And fast food at that?

Mister, are you serious?

The corners of Mae Darling’s mouth twitched too. She was already a little hungry, but she gritted her teeth and said, “No need. We’ve already eaten. Get to the point!”

“All right, then.”

Caleb turned to his assistant. “Blanche, just order for the two of us. They’ve already eaten.”

Mae Darling: “…”

Delphine: “…”

You know perfectly well whether we’ve eaten or not!

We were all at the same gala!

“Just one thing.”

Caleb said, “I hear the backers have pulled out of ‘The Sweetheart of the Sierra,’ the play your junior is in. I can cover the thirty thousand, but I have just one condition.”

He had looked over “The Sweetheart of the Sierra,” and it wouldn’t make a great deal of money.

Only two hundred percent: put in thirty thousand and get back sixty thousand.

A moneymaker, then.

Mae Darling said straight out, “Name your condition.”

Caleb pointed at Delphine. “She puts her name to Cloudwater for three years, attends at least one Cloudwater annual gathering each year, and poses for a series of advertising pictures without pay.”

“Aren’t your terms a little much?” Mae Darling frowned.

But Caleb replied, “Big sister, can’t you see where she stands now? Apart from being a little pretty and having a fine behind, she’s a third-rank actress at best. You, Mae Darling, are first rank; I wouldn’t blink at putting a hundred thousand into you. Do you think the Rising Star is short of actresses at her level?”

His words were very blunt, and though Mae Darling was annoyed, she was secretly a little pleased.

That was the gap their standing made.

Heaven knew whether Delphine would ever make it big. If she didn’t, his thirty thousand would count for next to nothing.

As he’d said, the Rising Star was a theatrical company, after all.

It had backed several hit plays, and it had even put two hundred thousand of its own into staging “Flora of the Crimson Peaks.”

A third-rank actress?

If they wanted one, they only had to holler, and they’d grab a handful.

Backing Delphine was probably just for Mae’s sake.

At the thought, Mae Darling suddenly felt thrilled.

“This has to be talked over back at the company before anything’s decided. If there’s nothing else, let’s not meet again.”

“Don’t speak too soon.”

Caleb handed her a slip of paper. “At the end of March, I’m planning a grand affair at Cloudwater called ‘A Date with Darling.’ Please come for one day.”

“Don’t even think about it!”

Mae Darling didn’t want anything more to do with him and turned to leave.

With a mysterious smile, Caleb said, “I think you ought to open it before you decide.”

Mae Darling stopped at the door and actually unfolded the little slip of paper.

It held nothing but a number.

Sixteen thousand dollars. One day.

“Are you out of your mind?” Mae Darling turned around and walked back. “Sixteen thousand for one day? Does Cloudwater even make that much money?”

“That’s my business. If you agree, please help us make an advertising picture.”

Sixteen thousand for a day. That was no longer a first-rank fee.

It was the kind of fee only the great divas of the Paris Opera commanded.

Chapter 107: Sixteen Thousand for a Day

Mae Darling didn’t agree right away.

On the way back, she still had her maid send for her own carriage.

After all, she had her own company too, and whether it was lending her name or taking on a play, everything had to be decided in consultation with the company.

Of course, at her level she could make her own decisions; the consultation was just a courtesy.

The streets inside the Second Ward were choked with carriages, especially at the hour when the offices let out, so the Brewster brougham could only creep along.

“Big sister,” Delphine couldn’t hide her discontent. “How could he be like that? He just sat there eating his supper, happy as you please, and made the two of us watch.”

Mae Darling shot her a glance. “That’s because we said we’d already eaten.”

Mae tapped on the panel, signaling the driver to pull over and buy some bread.

The plain kind, with little sugar or butter.

“He’s such a thickheaded man. He never even considered that we’re peerless beauties, after all. He didn’t show us one bit of care.”

“You’re overthinking it.”

Mae Darling said, “Shameless as he is, he’s truly good to his own wife, and that I do admire.”

“Ah?” Delphine wondered whether the company would agree to his demands.

Otherwise, wouldn’t she be working three years for him for nothing?

If she suddenly became famous, she’d really lose out.

Of course, if she didn’t become famous, he’d be the one losing.

No, that wasn’t right. He was backing a play; he couldn’t possibly lose.

He’d even get three years of her name for free.

Seeing her not-so-clever expression, Mae Darling knew she’d probably worked it out.

“He took advantage of me before too. The company will most likely agree to his terms. After all, you don’t count for much yet. Thirty thousand is already enough to sell you off,” she said.

With that, she closed her eyes to sleep.

The shameless never do business at a loss, that was for sure.

Lily Hayes alone had already made the Rising Star’s name, and now they were working on Sunburst Capital and the Fat Lamb Stew House.

Plainly they were blossoming on every front.

Not like their Jubilee, which just honestly made its money putting on plays.

A theatrical company whose headquarters was a three-hundred-square-yard office: the Rising Star was the only one in the whole trade.

Small as it was, that didn’t seem to hurt its money-making one bit.

The Jubilee was big, with a whole building of its own for headquarters.

Inside there were not only its own acting classes but also more than a dozen well-known players under contract.

It was surely one of the leading companies on the stage.

But what of it? When the Rising Star offered sixteen thousand for one day of Mae Darling, the Jubilee’s managers still agreed eagerly.

As for Delphine, just as Mae Darling had thought, thirty thousand was enough to sell her off three times over.

Poor Delphine had no room to resist.

Cloudwater already had Mae Darling’s name, so adding Delphine was like getting one thrown in free.

The key was that he offered too much.

In 1874, the stage hadn’t yet been glutted with investment, and all the famous theatrical companies were still in their early days.

The grand opera didn’t count. That was a higher and entirely different circle.

A little later,

Caleb received a letter of agreement from the Jubilee’s vice president.

Mae Darling’s day was set for the last day of March, though the sixteen thousand had to be paid in advance.

Caleb had no objection. It was only early March now; he had a month, more than enough to prepare the grand “A Date with Darling” affair.

The target wasn’t high. Even without Mae Darling there in person, they’d taken in more than sixty thousand last time.

Now Cloudwater had gathered a great many high-toned customers, and Mae Darling would appear in person.

They could surely take in a hundred or a hundred and twenty thousand.

With a random multiplier on top, it would certainly fill the hole in his pocket.

…

The next day.

Mae Darling took a morning off and went to the Rising Star to pose for Cloudwater’s advertising picture.

She had thought they’d at least put on a grand show. After all, they’d paid sixteen thousand for a day; hiring a first-rate photographer would be nothing.

But as it turned out…

Caleb was directing Blanche and Ellie. “Can you two be a little more professional?”

“Boss, we’ve never taken a picture of a star as big as Mae Darling. It’s only natural our hands shake a little, isn’t it?”

Late the night before,

he’d had Ellie write the advertising copy, and had even entrusted her with the lofty task of photographing Mae Darling.

With only three of them in the company, it was only natural for one person to do the work of several, wasn’t it?

“Don’t be nervous. Mae Darling is only human, one nose, two eyes, one mouth, and not as good-looking as you. What’s there to be nervous about!”

Ellie was near tears. “Boss, you can’t blame me for this. I didn’t exactly shine in my directing studies, and Mae Darling is my idol. The fact that I can still stand here is already something to be proud of.”

Mae Darling would swear this was the most humiliating sitting she’d ever had since becoming a first-rank star.

What sort of people were these? Having some company scribbler take her picture?

And the things he said, was that even human speech?

“Caleb Walker, I swear, this is the last time we work together,” Mae Darling fumed.

Caleb hurriedly explained, “Be understanding. I thought you’d bring your own photographer.”

Mae Darling: “…”

If I’d known what your theatrical company was like, I’d have brought a whole crew today.

“Never mind. I’ll take the picture myself. Just say this line with some feeling while I make the exposure, all right? It’ll go under the picture.”

Caleb took the borrowed box camera himself. The plate came out a little soft, but it was enough for anyone to see that it was Mae Darling in the flesh.

“Life is busy; a woman must love herself all the more. On the thirtieth of March, meet Mae Darling at Cloudwater. Be your own queen, and shine with confidence.”

A true first-rank actress, beyond a doubt; her presence was overpowering.

Caleb looked over the developed plate and was quite satisfied.

Mae Darling found everything about it disagreeable.

Whenever she went to a sitting, the photographer and the equipment were always the finest.

This time, the picture had been taken by a fruit peddler with a borrowed camera.

Such a disgrace to the profession.

“All right, not bad.”

Mae Darling turned and left, and while she was at it, she resolved to refuse every note that brute sent her from now on.

She’d deal with it before the event.

Caleb didn’t care what she did. As long as she helped him make money, that was fine.

After she left, he talked it over with Ellie.

“We’ve got the picture. The success of this affair depends on your work in the papers.”

“No problem.”

Ellie took on the task and immediately set about her newspaper campaign.

It was worth mentioning that Cloudwater’s clientele could only be truly high-toned, wealthy women.

The advertising had to take the high road as well.

Then he sent word to Cloudwater’s management to throw their full weight behind the affair.

“On the thirtieth of March, Cloudwater will close for the day and halt all training at headquarters. Everyone is to prepare to support the great affair ‘A Date with Darling,’ at which the first-rank star Mae Darling will appear in person.”

Clara was planting flowers at home when the messenger boy knocked with the note. She was stunned herself; her husband hadn’t said a word to her about it.

“Mae Darling is coming? Are you sure?”

April Chandler’s note came back within the hour: “Mae Darling is actually coming?”

Katie’s followed: “Brother, you got Mae Darling to come again?”

Caleb wrote back to all of them: “Not just her. Delphine Rabaut is coming too, and I’m in touch with the ageless beauty of Empire City. Fenton Graves, the ageless heartthrob, is within reach as well. You all plan it out. We’re aiming for two million dollars in treatment books sold that day.”

Mae Darling’s personal pull was powerful indeed.

But she had already put her name to bust care, while the ageless beauty of Empire City could stand for turning back the years.

Turning back the years was the very leading edge of the high-toned beauty trade, the kind where money was no object.

If they meant to hit two million in treatment books, they had to have someone with enough authority on staying young.

He already had someone in mind.

As for Fenton Graves, he was the dream of many a middle-aged lady.

With him on board, what couldn’t be sold?

He reckoned that if they made it a little more thrilling, two million was well within reach.

Chapter 108: Society Belles’ Night

When they heard that Mae Darling would appear in person to support the affair at Cloudwater,

the staff were beside themselves with excitement.

Cloudwater truly deserved to be the standard of the whole trade; it only ever invited the very top stars to its affairs.

When Hugh Gordon heard Mae Darling was coming,

he even took the day off on purpose. He simply had to see the idol he’d adored so long, on the thirtieth.

For a man who had grown up watching “The Wandering Swordsman” from the gallery, Mae Darling truly was the idol of countless people.

To call her the woman of their dreams was no exaggeration.

Caleb had decided to go all out on this affair: first, to turn a handsome profit, and second, to promote and stir up talk for the four new Cloudwater parlors about to open.

To widen its influence.

Putting on a successful large affair was clearly no easy task. It took long preparation in advance.

Especially what treatment books would be sold on the day and which services would be pushed; all of it had to be planned ahead.

Caleb made a special trip to Cloudwater headquarters to talk it over with the management.

His wife, Clara, was there too.

“Boss, Mae Darling will stay for the whole affair, won’t she? Will she sing?”

“Counting on her to sing? That’ll probably depend on her mood.”

Caleb hadn’t put singing in the agreement, so naturally it was up to her mood.

“I’m in touch with Evelyn Hart of Empire City and Fenton Graves from New Orleans for the singing. We can leave that to them.”

Evelyn Hart was known as the beauty of three generations; grandfathers, fathers, and grandsons all adored her.

Not to mention Fenton Graves, whose fiery songs had captured the hearts of countless women.

The women who loved him had all reached a certain age, and they had money besides.

They were exactly the customers Cloudwater wanted.

April Chandler was utterly shocked by now.

To put on an affair like this, inviting three top stars from three different eras, wouldn’t it cost at least twenty thousand dollars?

The pressure was enormous.

If they spent that huge a sum on advertising and stir and then couldn’t take in tens of thousands at the reception, it would be a terrible loss.

“Brother, beauty parlors usually hold a prize drawing at their receptions. What were you thinking of using for prizes?”

A high-toned beauty parlor that could offer a buggy worth over two hundred dollars as first prize was already considered impressive.

But Caleb reckoned that since Cloudwater meant to be the standard of the trade, and its customers were all rich or wellborn,

who would give a second glance to a buggy worth a little over two hundred dollars?

“I haven’t been using my racing sulky and its matched Arabians much. Let’s make that the first prize.”

“Besides, each service ought to have its own first prize. This time we’re not only selling bust care, but hip care and youth-restoring treatments too.”

“Start selling the bust-care books right after Mae Darling’s turn. The moment they sell out, draw the prize at once; the first prize is the racing sulky and nothing else.”

“The hip-care books go on sale after Fenton Graves’s performance, with Delphine Rabaut there to support it. There’s a first prize for that one too. Let’s use a fiery Arabian stallion with a lacquered road cart.”

“As for the most expensive, the youth-restoring treatments, if we’re giving a prize, it has to be tempting. Either a Hooper state landau or no prize at all.”

Numb.

Nearly every woman in the room was struck numb.

Were these even prizes you could win in a beauty-parlor raffle?

Together, those rigs were already worth tens of thousands of dollars.

You can’t snare the wolf if you won’t risk the calf.

Selling on the spot was the easiest way to get customers to sign up, since the presence of great stars easily drove the mood to its peak.

In a room like that, making sales was the easiest thing in the world.

Katie asked curiously, “Brother, what do you think the prices should be?”

“Same as before. Each service offered in three tiers, high, middle and low.”

Caleb said, “The lowest tier can’t be less than two hundred fifty-six dollars for ten treatments, and the highest tier for the youth-restoring service can be a year pass with unlimited visits all year round: three thousand nine hundred sixty dollars for the ‘Eternal Goddess.’”

“Sell that after Evelyn Hart’s turn.”

With so grand an affair, so many great stars, and a fiery Arabian, a racing sulky and a Hooper state landau for prizes,

there was no fear that nobody would come.

If even a small share sold on the night, it would surely top two hundred thousand dollars.

One roll of the dice, and riches on the spot.

Once he’d given his instructions, every Cloudwater parlor began to prepare.

The portrait Mae Darling had sat for stood in every parlor window all day long, her line printed beneath it.

Banners were strung up all over the parlors: “the ageless beauty,” “the ageless heartthrob,” and Mae Darling, the reigning star of the day.

All of them would appear at the affair.

The Rising Star even brought in a celebrated stage director to make a magic-lantern show about the culture of Cloudwater.

The four new parlors appeared in the slides as well.

Their fitting-out was nearly finished; now they were just airing out.

More than a hundred beauty attendants in training at headquarters had to perform a dance unique to the company’s culture.

They had to start practicing now.

It was also a full display of Cloudwater’s establishment and its company culture.

Clara was listed as chairman.

She was also given a special introduction of her own.

Meanwhile, Ellie Jarvis of the Rising Star was already working the newspapers.

In the papers they even christened the reception “Cloudwater’s Sterling City Society Belles’ Night.”

Every ten days, another distinguished guest would be announced.

The prestige was cranked as high as it would go.

On the fifteenth of March,

Cloudwater published the list of guests for Society Belles’ Night in all the papers at once.

The first was Fenton Graves, the man who sang “Winter Fire.”

Then on the twentieth, they put out an advertising bill showing the beauties of three generations.

It was practically on a par with a grand gala concert.

Every guest was a genuine, long-established star.

Caleb had also sunk a fortune into the affair, and in the last three days before it he even announced the three first prizes.

A racing sulky with matched Arabians, a fiery Arabian stallion with a lacquered road cart, and a Hooper state landau.

That sent the talk sky-high.

Countless readers wrote in to the papers asking what company Cloudwater belonged to.

And how they could take part in Society Belles’ Night.

Newspaper notices, printed bills, and advertisements posted near the finest residential streets all laid the groundwork for the affair.

Mae Darling was already a top star, and on top of her they’d brought in two legendary stars, a gentleman and a lady.

Cloudwater set a new standard for the trade’s receptions right out of the gate. There was no competition.

On the day, Mae Darling came in full regalia.

The affair was held at the Grand Imperial Hotel, where the society belles gathered.

The hall was full of display boards for the night’s affair.

The hotel’s general manager came out personally to greet the guests.

Having three such great stars at an affair did the hotel itself a world of good.

As guests holding Cloudwater’s invitations kept arriving in droves,

at six o’clock sharp, the affair officially began.

Daisy Jones and a few of Clara’s other former colleagues had also received invitations she’d sent.

Who wouldn’t want to come and feel a great star’s charm up close?

“Clara’s family really does things on a grand scale. Now they can even put on a show like this,” one of them remarked.

Daisy Jones warned her two younger colleagues, “In a little while, you’d better keep a tight hold on your purses. Her husband never makes a losing deal. With an expense this huge, he’ll certainly win it back from these customers.”

“How much does she need to sell to break even?”

“Not much. A dozen or so Eternal Goddess year passes will do it.”

“Only a dozen or so will do it? How much do they mean to sell one for?”

“Four thousand, less forty.”

Tsk… three thousand nine hundred sixty dollars.

No wonder it was called Society Belles’ Night. It wasn’t the sort of affair a pack of office girls like them could make sense of.

It was like plain folks stumbling onto a whole row of Fifth Avenue mansions.

“The ones who can afford these passes were either born rich or married well. If you’re neither, then you’re just like us, here to watch the fun,” Daisy added.

Just as Daisy finished speaking, the great lantern screen at the front began to glow.

A ringing voice echoed through the hall.

Chapter 109: The Golden Dice

The evening opened with a stirring introduction to the culture of Cloudwater.

The staff lodging, a mansion of better than a thousand square yards worth tens of thousands of dollars, had to be shown off.

They also showed off the tea-table arts, the pianoforte, chess, penmanship and watercolors the girls had been trained in these past months.

The four other parlors each had their own little show on the slides as well.

The point was to display the solid, real strength Cloudwater already had.

When the lantern show was over,

twenty-eight young and beautiful beauty attendants, dressed in white silk gowns, performed a dance on the theme of Cloudwater, every step in perfect unison.

It felt very fine, the sort of thing a great company would do.

Then the master of ceremonies came on stage for a brief introduction, and, like a fire lit in the dead of winter, Fenton Graves burst straight into song.

The high point mustn’t be interrupted; the mood mustn’t be let to cool.

Those were the basics of selling at a reception. After Fenton Graves sang five songs in a row, the whole hall rang with thunderous applause.

Next, a gold-medal pitchman Cloudwater had hired took the stage to introduce the treatments, followed by Delphine Rabaut parading down the runway in a fitted riding habit.

She wasn’t famous yet, but once she became a star, she’d likely count today the most embarrassing day of her life.

As she made her rounds of the hall, showing off her pert behind was a must.

The pitchman on stage had only five minutes, five minutes for each treatment.

First came the luxurious ladies’ hip care, two hundred fifty-six dollars for ten treatments.

Down on the floor, dozens of beauty attendants helped the customers sign their order books.

Meanwhile, the master of ceremonies kept calling out congratulations to one lady after another on her two-hundred-fifty-six-dollar purchase.

Oh, yes.

The point was to stir up the mood and set off a race to outdo one another.

The two-hundred-fifty-six-dollar treatment was just to get things going. There were also the seven-hundred-seventy-six-dollar and the thirteen-hundred-ninety-six-dollar ones.

Everyone who bought received a numbered ticket.

After three treatments had been introduced, the raffle came round.

The first prize, the fiery Arabian stallion with its lacquered road cart, flashed up on the lantern screen.

To make sure it was fair, Fenton Graves himself drew the winner.

A wealthy young lady sitting in the middle struck the jackpot. She had bought the middle tier, at seven hundred seventy-six dollars.

She had been to plenty of raffles like this and mostly assumed they were a sham, just humbug cooked up by the company.

Mainly because she had never won a thing herself in all her tries.

Today, out of the blue, it was her turn to win a prize as fine as a fiery Arabian.

“Congratulations to this young lady on winning the Arabian stallion! The rig is waiting at the curb for you to drive home.”

The master of ceremonies’ fervor was sky-high. A man without a decade on the revival-tent circuit could hardly have drawn such perfectly timed applause.

“Thank you, thank you.”

It was a moment of thrill and joy.

Clara handed her the reins herself. Having spent not quite eight hundred dollars, she took home an Arabian and rig worth better than eight thousand.

When she got home, who wouldn’t praise her for a sharp one with money?

After that, Mae Darling took the stage.

With the affair already so heated before her turn, she couldn’t very well hold back.

She sang several songs from her plays.

It wasn’t as polished as a real singer’s, but it was certainly better than an amateur’s.

Mae Darling even offered to go down and pose for pictures with the lady customers at their tables, and put in a few good words for Cloudwater.

She herself could hardly believe that a beauty parlor in Sterling City would use a mansion worth tens of thousands to lodge its staff.

What’s more, they spent better than twenty thousand dollars on training the staff, just to give the customers well-bred, cultivated attendants.

That was worthy of praise.

She was willing to say more for a good company. Saying more for the kind that just swindled people out of money would be a waste.

The bust care that followed also sold well.

The drawing for the racing sulky and its matched Arabians, conducted by Mae Darling herself, set off shriek after shriek of excitement.

Mae Darling found it rather amusing. After all, who wouldn’t want to own a racing rig worth over eight thousand dollars?

As for the final act, the Eternal Goddess Evelyn Hart, she was a great draw, and they’d spent a great deal to get her.

The one and only idol of three generations across the country.

However radiant and peerless a star, once she was past her prime, most couldn’t sway the generations that came after.

She was the exception.

A woman three generations all wanted to marry: truly amazing.

It showed plainly the undying, legendary charm of Evelyn Hart.

She had so many good songs, like “Drifting Snow,” “My Dearest,” “Love Came Too Late,” and others.

The beauty of three generations, the memory of two.

She hadn’t come West for an engagement in a long time, and she had come this time solely because the fee was too high to refuse.

Even higher than Mae Darling’s.

The reason was that simple and plain.

The youth-restoring treatments that followed her performance were an even bigger triumph.

Not only did the three-thousand-nine-hundred-sixty-dollar “Eternal Goddess” pass sell like hotcakes, but even the nineteen-hundred-sixty-dollar “Preserve Your Youth” package a tier below sold extremely well.

The ladies of Sterling City were not short of money.

With Evelyn Hart singing and dancing, the Eternal Goddess pass alone sold twenty-one, and together with the rest, the takings topped a hundred twenty thousand dollars.

One woman had brought in nearly half the evening’s receipts.

Even more ferocious than Mae Darling.

The raffle prize this time was a Hooper state landau worth better than ten thousand dollars on the road.

Evelyn Hart drew this one too, and it was won by a lady of enormous wealth.

A woman who already had three state landaus at home.

She, too, had bought the Eternal Goddess year pass, and she was just as delighted.

It wasn’t about the money; it was the luck that pleased her, that in a hall with so many people buying, hers was the ticket drawn.

This year, once again, she’d easily make a few more of her “first hundred thousands.”

Everyone there, apart from the former colleagues Clara had invited personally, was truly not short of money.

At the end, it was Clara who announced a great piece of news from Cloudwater.

Considering that wealthy customers kept busy schedules, and that a lady’s beauty care could not be done without,

Cloudwater was officially launching house calls.

After all, it was women attending women, and it was also for the customers’ convenience.