Maguire, because he had produced Belasco’s play of “La Belle Russe” at the Baldwin and had thereby profited, appears to have considered that also he had thereby acquired a property in it. To this claim the necessitous dramatist assented (making, I suppose, a virtue of necessity), giving Maguire a half-interest. Maguire then decreed that they should go to New York together, in order to place the play with Wallack, if that should prove the most expedient arrangement, or to place it with any other manager from whom it might be possible to exact higher payment. Belasco consented to negotiate with other managers and ascertain what terms might be offered, “even though,” he said, “I had determined that none but Wallack should produce it.” On September 25, 1881, they left San Francisco together and came to New York. According to Belasco’s statement to me, Augustin Daly wanted the play of “La Belle Russe” for Ada Rehan (to whom the central part would have been peculiarly unfitted), while A. M. Palmer wanted it for Miss Jeffreys-Lewis, at the Union Square, and John Stetson wanted it for Marie Prescott. Belasco had interviews with all of them, and with Wallack. His determination that Wallack should produce his play, if he possibly could arrange to have him do so, was intensified by the kindness of Wallack’s manner toward the young author and by the strong impression made upon him by that actor’s pictorial and winning personality. Maguire, meantime, consorted with Stetson, a person naturally congenial to him, and presently became insistent that the play should be intrusted to that manager. “After I had read the play to Stetson in his office (which I did very unwillingly),” Belasco told me, “the two of them threatened me with all sorts of consequences if I did not turn the manuscript over to Stetson, and I really believe they would have taken it from me by force if I had not buttoned it under my coat and bolted out of the office!” This pair of pilgrims had then been for some time in New York, and Maguire, by agreement, had been paying Belasco’s living expenses; now, by way of practical intimation that his will must prevail and the play be relinquished to Stetson, he stopped doing so. This left Belasco in a familiar but not the less painful plight--stranded--and it also incensed him against Maguire.