Legacy of Secrets (50 page)

It was a gambling tour de force and Finn had taken to the concept as naturally as breathing. He could almost smell a new stock with the aroma of success about it, and so far he had never lost his bet. But he couldn’t say he was a happy man and he did not know why.

Corinne yawned lazily. Finn was a prodigiously energetic lover and she would have liked nothing better than to have snuggled up against his lean body and slept the evening away. And then maybe, after a light supper and a glass or two of wine, made some more delightful love. But it was never that way with Finn: he ran several lives and, she suspected, several women on parallel courses, and the “real” Finn was a mystery. But still, he looked so handsome she melted with desire just looking at him. “You are very
elegant, mon cher,
” she said admiringly as he buttoned his jacket.

Finn flung his velvet-collared overcoat over his shoulders and smiled his thanks. “I’m off to the opera,” he said, dropping an affectionate kiss on her tousled blond head. “And thanks to you I’m late.” He wrapped his long white silk scarf around his neck, brushed off his top hat, and quickly made for the door. He paused, smiling at her, naked and pretty in his bed. “Corinne,” he said.

“Hmmm?” She rolled over to smile at him.

“You’re beautiful. Thanks.”

Her pretty laughter trilled after him down the polished brown linoleum stairs and he waved to Eileen Malone, standing by the dining room door.

“Not with us for supper again tonight, Mr. O’Keeffe?” she asked.

“Maybe tomorrow, Mrs. Malone,” he called cheerfully, heading out the door.

As he hailed a cab, Finn remembered that first day in New York, when he had walked to Wall Street, sweating and with his feet on fire from the stiff new boots. No matter how much money he made, or how successful and well dressed he was, he would never forget how cheap he had felt when he heard their mocking laughter. It was more than just that, he told himself as the hansom dropped him at the Metropolitan Opera House. The mark of the slums would never leave him. Poverty and ignorance were like a wound that never healed, and the memory of a thousand humiliations and insults and degradations still festered angrily at the back of his mind. Making money, lots of it, more than he could even imagine, was the only thing that might one day heal that wound. But he would have to be a richer man than Lily’s father for that.

It was his first time at the opera, a performance of Rossini’s
Barber of Seville,
by the Italian company visiting from La Scala in Milan, and the glittering foyer with its sweeping marble staircase brought back memories of festive nights at Ardnavarna. But then, instead of his perfect evening clothes, he had been the footman dressed in his velvet suit and powdered wig, like the flunkies lining the staircase now. He had served glasses of champagne instead of drinking them, and he had watched lovely Lily like a jealous hawk, instead of being surrounded by women, gorgeous in lace and satin and glittering with jewels, who greeted him like a long-lost friend.

They had feathers and flowers in their shining hair and an eager light that he recognized in their eyes, and their perfume was as intoxicating as the champagne. Women would never be a problem for Finn. But he still kept the image of Lily in his mind, as perfect as any photograph, smiling scornfully at him as she prodded him with her whip
and commanded him to dance naked like a bear for her little sister.

“There you are, my boy.” Cornelius James came toward him through the crowd, his wife Beatrice, resplendent in black velvet and a diamond tiara, on his arm. The first-night audience was made up of celebrities and socialites, and plain man though he was, Cornelius James knew most of them.

“A man in a position like mine meets a lot of people,” he told Finn solemnly. “People with family money, and the old guard socialites; people with new money, railroad and steamship tycoons and business entrepreneurs. They all have to invest it, my boy, and they trust a man like me because I never act richer or grander or more important than they are. They bring their money because they know I’m an honest God-fearing man with a nose for a good investment, just the way you are yourself.”

He beckoned Finn into a quiet corner, and said, “There’s something I wanted to say to you, dear boy. Beatrice and I have talked this over and we have both agreed that our ‘little experiment’ has proven more than successful. You are an asset to James and Company and in little more than five years you have transformed yourself from an ignorant lad into a successful and socially acceptable young man. We think you deserve a reward. I have purchased a seat on the New York Stock Exchange for you. After tomorrow you will be a member of one of the most elite business institutions in the country. I have no son to inherit my business and when I retire, if you continue to work hard, I intend for you to take my place as chairman of James and Company.”

Finn stared at him with amazement. He shook his head disbelievingly and said, “Sir, I’m not worthy of such an honor.”

“Not yet, you’re not. You will have to prove it to me first.” Cornelius patted his shoulder paternally. “The seat on the Exchange is just the beginning.”

“I’m deeply grateful, sir,” Finn said. “I’ll try not to let you down.”

The next morning he rented a fabulously expensive one-bedroom apartment on Fifth Avenue at Forty-second Street, which he could not afford, but who cared? One day he would be chairman of James and Company and that was all the reference he needed. He stocked his pantry with champagne and caviar, his closet with more fine clothes, and his bed with beautiful women. Finn O’Keeffe had finally come up in the world, temporarily blocking out the past. But was he a happy man? He shook his head, bewildered. He had no answer to that.

E
IGHT YEARS AFTER HE LEFT
Jacob de Lowry, Ned Sheridan’s was a name to be reckoned with in the theater, though he was as often out of town as in it, traveling the length and breadth of America. There were performances in Canada as well, and half a dozen trips to Europe to play his favorite city, London, where they greeted him almost as rapturously as they did his costar, Viola Allen, a delicate beauty of the type the English adored. He was in demand by all the major producers and a dozen scripts of new plays were sent to him each week.

He rented a palatial apartment on Fifth Avenue at Thirty-eighth Street and filled it with splendid furniture, paintings, and books. He shared it with a sweet and adoring girl named Mary Ann Lee, whom he called “Lucky,” because ever since he had met her one dark, rainy night in Baltimore four years before, he had had a phenomenal run of luck. His career had grown from playing opposite the ingenue to that of star, with his name in lights on theater marquees from New York to San Francisco.

Lucky Lee was twenty-two years old and, like Ned, she had always wanted to be an actress, ever since she was a little girl in Milwaukee. Her uncle had had the theater in his blood: his Argentinian mother had been a dancer, and he took his little niece to see every show that came to town.

Her uncle died when she was thirteen and after that
there was no more theater, but little Mary Ann was already lost in that unreal world. She waited until she was sixteen to run away from home with twenty dollars and change in her purse, and joined up with George Tyler’s Miss Philadelphia Troupe, who were staggering across the country on tour, barely breaking even, sometimes barely even squeaking through, and always a mere step away from financial disaster.

As untrained as the next girl, Mary Ann told Ned she was adopted into the chorus on the strength of her pretty face and even prettier legs, and the fact that she could kick them as well as anybody. Miss Philadelphia was short of money one opening night—there were no funds left, not a single cent—when suddenly it was discovered that someone had forgotten to buy the chorus men their patent-leather dance shoes. George Tyler, never a producer to be daunted by the mere temporary shortage of funds and never lacking for a bright idea, immediately sent across the road to the local undertaker. He made a deal for several pairs in assorted sizes of the patent pumps used in that profession. On opening night the chorus danced in dead men’s shoes.

Show biz was like that, Mary Ann soon discovered, always on the brink of great success or total disaster, with not much in between.

When Miss Philadelphia finally folded, or more properly “collapsed,” Mary Ann found another job in a similar touring company and for a while she was employed on and off.

She was just eighteen when a show she was appearing in folded unexpectedly in Baltimore, and the management promptly left town without paying off their debts and their players. She had five dollars to her name, several pairs of worn dance shoes, and a few clothes. It was not enough to get her to New York and she found a job as a waitress in the city’s grandest hotel, serving breakfast coffee and eggs to prosperous gentlemen travelers. One morning Harrison Robbins had strolled in and ordered two fried eggs over
easy, bacon, and toast and settled himself down to read his newspaper.

Mary Ann recognized him immediately; his photograph had been in all the local journals that week, alongside his client, the handsome and very famous actor Ned Sheridan, and she knew if anybody could get her a job, he could.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said, standing hesitantly by his table, the coffeepot clutched in both hands.

Harrison glanced up from his newspaper, registering the fact that she was pretty, and he smiled. “I’ll have tea, thanks,” he said, thinking that a waitress with cornflower eyes and black hair and a shy smile deserved at least a dollar tip.

“Mr. Robbins, sir,” she said all in a rush. “I’m an actress. Well, just a chorus girl right now. I got stranded here when the show I was in failed and the manager left without paying us.”

“Too bad,” Harry said sympathetically, “but that’s show biz. There’s good, but there’s an awful lot of bad.”

“I need a job, sir, and I was wondering if you might have something? Anything. I mean, I’ll even work backstage, ironing the costumes, or … or anything….”

Her voice faded away and Harrison heaved a sigh, asking himself why young girls would never learn that, even with talent, the world of the theater was a gamble, and more often lost than won. Pretty though she was, he would bet she had no training, no experience, and no talent beyond her looks, which was why she had been working as a chorus girl in a third-rate show that couldn’t even afford to pay. Still, he had been through too many harsh, unpaid years himself to be unkind, and besides, she was pretty and rather sweet.

“Come and see me this afternoon at the theater. Around two-thirty,” he said, turning back to his paper. “I’ll find something for you, though it might not pay as well as waitressing.”

It did not matter: Mary Ann would have gone anywhere,
anytime, just to be near the stage again instead of serving coffee and juice every morning.

It was a day of pouring rain; her shoes leaked and her thin coat was soaked through in the ten minutes it took her to walk to the theater. She told the stage doorman she had an appointment with Mr. Robbins and was sent, hair dripping into her eyes and shoes squishing with every step, to Mr. Sheridan’s dressing room to find him.

She tapped on the door and a wonderful deep voice said, “Come in,” making the mundane words sound profound as a poem. She opened the door and stood dripping onto Ned Sheridan’s plush red carpet, completely tongue-tied as she gazed into the eyes of the most handsome man she had ever seen.

“You look like a drowned kitten,” he said, amused. “Who on earth are you?”

“Mary Ann Lee, sir,” she said, trying desperately to shake the rain from her hair and spraying him with water.

Harrison Robbins rushed into the dressing room just then, waving a cablegram in the air. “We’ve cracked it, Ned,” he yelled jubilantly. “Frohman’s gone for it. The whole Shakespeare tour.
As You Like It, Hamlet,
and
Lear.
Top money, a dozen top-notch theaters across the country, ending up on Broadway. The best set designer, and costumes made in Milan, and you get to choose your own cast.
By God, boy, we’ve gotten everything we wanted. You’ve finally made it all the way.”

Ned stared at Mary Ann and explained, “They always said I couldn’t play Shakespeare. Now I’ve got the chance to prove myself. Maybe it’s because a little half-drowned black-haired kitten just walked across my path and brought me luck.”

“She’s hoping for a job,” Harry said, laughing.

“She’s got one,” Ned retorted, “as my mascot. ‘Lucky’ is on salary from this very moment.
And
she’s going on the Shakespeare tour with us.” He looked at her again, more carefully, and added, thinking of Lily, “Besides, you remind me of a girl I once knew, a long time ago.” With a
sad little shrug, he headed back to his rehearsal as though he had already forgotten about Mary Ann.

So Lucky was adopted by the Sheridan company and given a job as assistant wardrobe mistress and the occasional walk-on part, and gradually, in those long, lonesome nights rehearsing in Philadelphia and later on the road, Ned Sheridan had found himself drawn to her. He told himself it was not just because she reminded him of his Irish Lily, she was also sweet and shy and adoring, and before too long they became lovers.