The seventh shot A detective story
or out at the former would not be visible to any one standing near
one of the rooms, unless he or she turned the corner made by the star
dressing room. This particular point—the turning near Mortimer’s
door—was further masked by the iron skeleton staircase which started
near Sybil’s room and ran upward in a sharp slant to the second tier
of dressing rooms where the small fry of the company and the extras
dressed.
It is rather important to understand this general plan. Make a note,
also, that Mortimer’s big entrance in the “dark scene,” or, rather,
at the close of it, must be made up a short flight of steps; that the
scene was what is called a “box set”—a solid, four-walled inclosure;
that it was but a step from the door of his own dressing room, and that
the spot where he had to stand waiting for his entrance cue was in
direct line, from one angle, with the stage door, and from another with
the door communicating with the front of the house. This wait would
be a fairly long one, since, when the dark scene was on, no lights of
any sort would be permitted save perhaps the merest glimmer to avoid
accidents. The actors were all expected to leave their lighted dressing
rooms and have their doors closed before the melodramatic crash upon
the stage told them that the property lantern had been duly smashed and
that blackness must henceforth prevail until the “rescue.”
“All ready?” came Willie Coster’s anxious voice. “The act is on. Miss
Merivale, don’t stumble on those steps when you are trying to escape.
You nearly twisted your ankle the other night. This is a rotten thing
to stage. Lucky Carlton made it about as short as he possibly could.
Playing a whole act practically in the dark! Fred, put that light out
over there; it might cast a shadow.”
“’Tain’t the dark scene yet!” growled the harassed sceneshifter
addressed. He put it out, however.
“My cue in a moment!” whispered Sybil. “I must run! Where are my two
deep-dyed ruffians who drag me on?”
“Present!” said one of them, Norman Crane, laughing under his breath.
They hurried down to their entrance, where the other “deep-dyed
ruffian” awaited them.
Kitty Legaye, in a vivid scarlet satin evening coat, stole cautiously
out of her dressing room.
“Shut that door!” commanded Willie in a sharp undertone. “No lights,
Miss Legaye!”
Parry closed it immediately.
“And now, Mortimer!” added the stage manager in an exasperated mutter.
“Of course he’ll let it go until the last moment, and then breeze out
like a hurricane with his dressing-room door wide open and enough
light to——What is it?” And he turned to hear a hasty question from his
assistant.
Kitty came close to Barrison and whispered beseechingly:
“Do, please, tell Mr. Dukane that I only went home because I really did
feel ill. It’s—it’s been quite a hard evening for me.” Her brown eyes
looked large and rather piteous.
Barrison was sorry for her. She seemed such a plucky little creature,
and so glitteringly, valiantly gay. Her red wrap all at once struck
him as symbolic of the little woman herself. She was defiantly bright,
like the coat. If her heart ached as well as her head, if she really
was disappointed, hurt, unhappy—why, neither she nor the scarlet coat
proposed to be anything but gay!
She waved her hand and tiptoed lightly away in the direction of the
stage door. Barrison turned to look through a crack onto the stage.
They were almost—yes, they were actually ready for the dark scene.
In another moment the lantern crashed upon the floor. There were shouts
from the performers, and audible gasps from the audience. For a full
half minute not a light showed anywhere in the house.
Barrison felt oddly uncomfortable. The confusion, the noises from the
stage, the inky blackness, all combined to arouse and increase that
troubled, suffocating feeling of which he had been conscious earlier in
the evening. The dark seemed full of curious sounds that were not all
associated with the play. He almost felt his hair rise.
A single one-candle electric bulb was turned on somewhere. Its rays
only made the darkness more visible, rendered it more ghostly.
A hand grasped his arm.
“I thought—I saw a woman pass!” murmured Dukane’s voice. “Hello! There
goes Mortimer to his entrance. He’s all right so far, anyway.” The
actor’s huge bulk and characteristic swagger were just visible in the
dimness as he left his room, closing the door behind him at once.
“Barrison, like a good fellow, go out to Roberts and find out if any
one has tried to come in to-night.”
Dukane’s tone was strangely urgent, and Barrison groped his way to the
stage door.
The old doorkeeper, when questioned, shook his head.
“No one’s passed here since seven o’clock,” he declared emphatically.
“No one except Miss Legaye, just a minute ago.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure!” exclaimed the man, misunderstanding him. “I guess there ain’t
any two ladies with a coat the color of that one! I see it at dress
rehearsal, and it sure woke me up. I like lively things, I does; pity
there ain’t more ladies wears ’em.”
Barrison laughed.
“I didn’t mean that,” he said. “I know Miss Legaye went out; but you’re
sure no one came in?”
“I tell you, no one’s gone by here since——”
Barrison did not wait for a repetition of his asseverations, but went
back toward the stage. The “rescue scene” was just beginning. Willie
Coster, a faint silhouette against the one dim bulb, was conducting the
shots like the leader of an orchestra:
“One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six!”
The six shots rang out with precision and thrilling resonance. And then
Jim Barrison grew icy cold from head to foot.
For there came a seventh shot.
And it was followed by the wild and terrifying sound of a woman’s
scream.
CHAPTER VIII
AWAITING THE POLICE
That scream echoed across the blackness. There was a smell of gunpowder
in the air. It seemed an interminably long time before the lights
flared up, and the big curtain was rung down. At last it formed a wall
between the people on the stage and the people in the audience, all
about equally excited by this time.
“What is it—oh, what is it that’s happened?” gasped Claire McAllister.
Other women in the company echoed the bewildered and frightened cry.
Panic was loose among them—panic and that horror of the unknown and
uncomprehended which is the worst of all horrors. “What is it?” ran the
quivering question from mouth to mouth like wind in the grass.
Barrison and Dukane knew what had happened even before, with one
accord, they dashed to the little flight of steps where Mortimer must
have been waiting for his entrance cue. One look was enough. Then the
manager’s voice, clear and authoritative, rang out:
“Quiet there, every one. Mr. Mortimer has been shot.”
And swiftly upon the startling statement came Barrison’s command,
given with professional sharpness:
“Nobody is to leave the theater, please, until the police have been
here!”
Shuddering and silent now, the men and women drew back as though the
quiet figure upon the floor were a living menace, instead of something
which never again could commit an action of help or of harm.
Alan Mortimer must have died instantly.
He lay at the foot of the steps, with his painted face upturned to
the blaze of the glaring electric lights, and an ugly crimson patch
of moisture upon the front of his khaki uniform. There was something
indescribably ghastly in the sight of the make-up upon that dead
countenance.
Old Wrenn, the valet, was kneeling at the side of his dead master,
trying to close the eyes with his shaking, wrinkled fingers, and making
no attempt to hide the tears that rolled silently down his cheeks. But,
after one look into the stony, painted face of the murdered man, Jim
Barrison turned his attention elsewhere.
At the head of the four little steps stood Sybil Merivale, in the white
costume of _Lucille_, as motionless as if she were frozen, with her
hands locked together. No ice maiden could have been more still, and
there was a chill horror in her look.
“Miss Merivale,” said Barrison quickly, “you were standing there when
he was shot?”
Slowly she bent her head in assent, and seemed to be trying to speak,
but no sound came from her ashen lips.
“Was it you who screamed?”
“I—think so.” She spoke with obvious difficulty. “I was frightened. I
think—I screamed. I don’t know.”
Then every one who was watching started and suppressed the shock they
felt; for she had moved her hands at last—the hands which had been so
convulsively clasped before her. And on her white frock was a long
splash of scarlet. One of the slim hands, as every one could see, was
dyed the same sinister hue.
She raised it, and looked at it, with her eyes dilating strangely.
“His blood!” she murmured, in a barely audible voice.
Dukane had sent Willie Coster out before the curtain to disperse the
audience. The police had been sent for; the doors were guarded. Some of
the girls in the company were sobbing. Only Sybil Merivale preserved
that attitude of awful calm. She seemed unable to move of her own
volition, and remained blind and deaf to every effort to help her down
the four steps.
It was young Norman Crane, finally, who took her hand in both his, and
gently made her descend. Then, as she stood there, looking like a pale
ghost in her white dress with the rather dull make-up that the scene
had demanded, the boy put his arm gently around her.
“It’s all right, dear,” he said tenderly. “Don’t look so wild, Sybil.
Of course, it was a shock to you, but you must rouse yourself now.”
He looked at Barrison as he spoke, and the detective thought that
there was a touch of defiance in his tone as he emphasized the words,
“Of course it was a shock to you.” He seemed anxious to establish
definitely this fact.
Jim quite understood and sympathized with him. That Sybil had had
anything to do with Mortimer’s death the detective did not for a
moment believe, but her position was certainly an equivocal one. This
young actor was clearly in love with her, and the situation must be an
agonizing one for him.
In confirmation of his conclusions, Barrison heard Crane say to Dukane:
“Miss Merivale and I are engaged to be married, sir. She is very much
upset, as you see. Will you let me take her to her dressing room?”
Dukane looked doubtfully at Barrison, who shook his head.
“I shall be very grateful if Miss Merivale will stay where she is until
the police come,” he said courteously, but firmly. “You might see if
you can’t find her a chair.” For he had no desire to let a witness out
of his sight at this stage of the game.
Norman Crane flushed under his make-up. “I think you are going rather
far!” he exclaimed hotly. “Surely you don’t think——”
“I think,” said Barrison, deliberately cutting him short, “that you had
better get the chair, and—has any one any brandy? Miss Merivale looks
very bad indeed.”
Old Wrenn spoke in a tremulous voice. “There is some in his—in the
dressing room, sir.”
He went off and brought it, then stood once more beside the body,
wiping his shriveled old cheeks. Barrison, seeing his evident and
genuine grief, made a mental chalk mark to the credit of Alan Mortimer.
There must have been some good in the man, some element of the kind and
the lovable, to have won the devotion of this old servant.
Crane held the brandy to Sybil’s lips, and she drank a little
mechanically. After a moment or so, her eyes became less strained, her
whole expression more natural, and instead of the frozen blankness
which had been in her face before, there now dawned a more living and
at the same time an inexplicable fear. She looked up at the face of