The seventh shot A detective story
species; he had come up against a goodly number of them, and could
guess what the different sorts would do in given extremities. And
he knew that in the whole wild lot there is none wilder, none more
secret, none more relentless, none more unexpected and inexplicable,
than she who has counted on snatching respectability and domesticity
at the eleventh hour and been disappointed. If Kitty Legaye had really
expected to marry Alan Mortimer, and if he was getting ready to throw
her over for a perfectly new, strange young girl, then one need not be
astonished at anything.
Yet, little Miss Legaye seemed a steady bit of humanity, not emotional
or hysterical in the least.
“Oh, hang it all!” he muttered resentfully, as he turned out his light
at least two hours later than was his habit. “I wish women had never
learned to write—or to talk! It would simplify life greatly.”
Then he fell asleep and dreamed queer dreams in which Grace Templeton,
Kitty Legaye and Sybil Merivale chased each other round and round,
quarreling for possession of the anonymous note which for some reason
the old man Wrenn was holding high above his head in the center of the
group. As the three women chased each other in the dream, Jim grew
dizzier and dizzier, and finally woke up abruptly, feeling breathless
and bewildered, with Tara, the Jap, standing beside him.
“Honorable sir did having extreme bad dreams!” explained Tara, with
some severity of manner.
Barrison answered meekly and lay down again to fall only half asleep
this time and toss restlessly until morning.
He kept his word to Dukane and attended rehearsals with religious
regularity, though what technical use he had was exhausted after
a few days. He found himself becoming more and more interested in
the play—or, rather, in the actors who were appearing in it. Their
personalities became more and more vivid to him; their relations more
and more complex.
Not the least curious of the conditions which he began to note as he
grew to feel more at home behind the scenes was the strange, almost
psychic influence which Mortimer appeared to have over Sybil Merivale.
Almost one might have believed that he hypnotized her; only there was
nothing about him that suggested abnormal spiritual powers, and the
girl herself was neither morbid nor weak.
Barrison, now at liberty to roam about “behind” as he willed, overheard
Miss Merivale one day talking to Claire McAllister, the extra woman.
“Say, I heard him ordering you about to-day as if he had a mortgage on
you,” said Claire, who was practical and pugnacious. “What do you let
him play the grand mogul with you for?”
“I don’t believe I can make you understand,” said Sybil, breathing
quickly, “but I don’t seem able to disobey him. When he looks at me
I—it sometimes seems as if I couldn’t think quite straight.”
“D’you mean,” demanded Claire McAllister sharply, “that you’re in love
with him?”
Sybil flushed indignantly. “That’s just what I do not mean!” she
exclaimed. “Can’t you see the difference? I—I hate him, I tell you!
It’s something outside that, but—but it frightens me. Sometimes it
seems, when I meet his eyes, that I can’t move—that he can make me
do what he likes.” She shivered and hid her face in her hands. “It’s
_that_ which makes me so frightened,” she whispered in a broken way.
The extra girl regarded her curiously, then hunched her shoulders
in the way of extra girls when they wish to indicate a shrug of
indifference.
“Well,” she remarked cheerily, “when little Morty takes the last high
fall, we’ll look round to see if there wasn’t a certain lady handy to
give him the extra shove.”
Sybil turned on her quickly. “What do you mean?” she cried. “What do
you mean by that?”
Miss McAllister stared in surprise. “Sa-ay!” she remonstrated. “I was
just kiddin’! Say, you didn’t suppose I thought you were goin’ to
murder the guy, did you?”
Sybil was rather white. “Awfully silly of me!” she apologized.
“Only—sometimes I’ve felt as though——And it sounded awful, coming from
some one else like that.”
“Sometimes felt—what?”
“As though—I almost—could!” She turned abruptly and walked away.
Barrison, standing leaning against a piece of scenery, felt a hand upon
his arm. He looked around into the agitated face of Norman Crane.
The boy had heard just what he himself had heard, and the effect
thereof was written large upon his handsome, honest young countenance.
“Think of her—think of Sybil up against that!” he whispered huskily.
“And me able to do nothing! Oh, it’s too unspeakably rotten, that’s
what it is! If I could just wring that bounder’s neck, and be done with
it——”
“Look here!” said Jim Barrison, losing his cast-iron, chain-held
patience at last. “There are about a dozen people already who want to
murder Alan Mortimer. I’m getting to want to myself! For the love of
Heaven, give a poor detective a rest and don’t suggest any one else;
I’m getting dizzy!”
Norman stared at him and edged away.
“Does that fellow drink?” he asked Carlton, a few minutes later.
“I hope so,” said the author absently, rumpling his hair with one hand
while he wrote on a scrap of copy paper. “Mortimer has waited until now
to have the last scene lengthened. Maledictions upon him! May his next
reincarnation be that of a humpbacked goat!”
Crane left him still murmuring strange imprecations.
Barrison went home, divided between annoyance and amusement at the
promiscuous hate Mortimer had aroused. He was unquestionably the most
unpopular man he had ever heard of; yet he was sometimes charming,
as Barrison had already seen. Several times at rehearsal, when he
deliberately had chosen to exert his power of magnetism, the detective,
critical observer as he was, could not fail to note how successful he
was. His charm was something radiant and irresistible, and he could
project it at will, just as some women can. A singular and a dangerous
man, Jim decided. Such individuals always made trouble for themselves
and for others. The theater was becoming rather electric in atmosphere,
and Barrison was glad to get home. But his troubles were not over
yet—even for that day!
Just as he was sitting down to dinner Tony Clay appeared, looking hot
and unhappy.
“Hello, Tony! Have you eaten?”
Tony nodded in a most dispirited fashion. His friend watched him a
moment, and then said kindly:
“Go ahead; what’s the trouble?”
The young fellow looked uncomfortable. “Nothing,” he began; “that
is——Oh, hang it all! I can’t lie to you. I’m upset, Jim!”
“No!” said Barrison, with a smile.
“Jim,” Tony went on, rather desperately, “do you believe that there
ever are occasions when it is permissible to give a client away? To a
colleague, I mean. Do you?”
“You just bet your life I do!” said Jim emphatically. He put down his
knife and fork and eyed his young friend with kindling interest. “Go
on, kid, and tell me all about it.”
“Well”—poor Tony looked profoundly miserable—“you know—that is of
course you don’t know—but—Miss Templeton engaged me to shadow Alan
Mortimer.”
“I knew that as soon as you did,” remarked Jim.
Tony opened his round eyes till each of them made a complete O.
“The devil you did!” he ejaculated, somewhat chagrined. “Well, she did
engage me, and I shadowed away to the best of my ability. But now—Jim,
I’m up against something too big for me, and I’ve brought it to you.”
He looked pale and shaken, and Barrison said good-humoredly:
“Go to it, Tony. I’ll help you if I can.”
“Jim!” Tony Clay faced him desperately. “I think you ought to know that
Miss Templeton has it in for Mortimer——”
“I do know it, lad.”
“And that—she bought a revolver to-day at the pawnshop near
Thirty-ninth Street. I saw her. I suppose she got a permit somehow. But
I hope I’ll never again see any one look the way she did when she came
out with the parcel!”
CHAPTER VII
THE DARK SCENE
It was a little after eight in the evening of September the
fifteenth—the opening night of “Boots and Saddles” at the Mirror
Theater.
Already the house was filling up. From his seat on the aisle half a
dozen rows back, Jim Barrison saw that it was going to be a typical
first-night audience. As this was a comparatively early opening, there
were a goodly number of theatrical people present, and practically
every one in the social world who had already returned to town was to
be seen. Max Dukane’s productions were justly celebrated all over the
country, and Carlton was a popular playwright. Then there was much
well-stimulated curiosity in regard to Alan Mortimer. Dukane’s press
agent had done his work admirably, and the mystery surrounding the
handsome new light in the dramatic heavens had been so artistically
exploited as to pique the interest even of jaded theatergoers.
It was an oppressively hot evening, though September was so far
advanced. All the electric fans in the world could not keep the theater
cool and airy. To Barrison the air was suffocating. The gayly dressed
people crowded down into neat rows; the hurrying, perspiring ushers
in overheavy livery; the big asbestos curtain that shut them all
into a simmering inclosure—these things in combination were strangely
oppressive, even in a sense imprisoning. Moreover, he was not free from
a half-sincere, half-humorous sense of apprehension. Hardly anything
so definite, so full-fledged, or so grave; but undoubtedly a mental
tension of sorts which would not readily conform to a perfunctory
festal spirit.
Dukane, for all his coolness and poise, had insisted on taking the
warning letter seriously—at least to the extent of taking every
conceivable precaution against danger, of arranging every possible
protection for Mortimer. It was understood that, while Jim Barrison
had his allotted seat in the front of the house, he would spend most
of the evening back of the scenes. Tony Clay was also on duty. There
was a husky young guard on the communicating door which was back of
the right-hand boxes and opened on the world behind. No one was to be
allowed to pass through that door that night but Dukane, Barrison, and
his assistant. Roberts, at the stage door, had been similarly cautioned
to let no one enter the theater on any pretext whatsoever after the
members of the company had come for the performance.
Barrison thought Dukane’s precautions rather exaggerated. He did not
really think personally that any peril threatened Alan Mortimer that
night. Murderers did not, as a rule, send word in advance what they
mean to do. Still, such things had happened in his experience, and it
was no harm to make sure. As for Miss Templeton and the revolver—well,
that looked a bit more serious. He had not told Dukane of Tony’s
confidential information, but he raked the many-hued audience with his
sharp gaze, trying to see if the erstwhile leading woman was present.
So far there was no sign of her. He was even inclined to treat Tony’s
fears as somewhat hysterical. It will be recalled that Miss Templeton
had made rather a good impression upon the detective, who was only
human, after all, and prone to err like other mortals.
The truth was that the whole situation struck him as a little too
melodramatic to be plausible. He was suffering from the disadvantages
of being a bit too cool and superior in view, a bit too well-balanced,
a bit too much the practical sleuth regarding theatrical heroics
with a pleasantly skeptical eye. Nevertheless, cavalierly as he was
disposed to treat them, he thought that it was possible that these
many concessions to a possible gravity of situation, a more or less
apocryphal danger, did add to the feeling of oppression which held
him. It really seemed hard to breathe, and it was difficult even for