The seventh shot A detective story
his trained judgment to determine just how much of the sensation was
physical and how much psychological.
At all events it was a very close, sultry night. As people came in and
took their seats there were constant comments on the weather.
“Humidity—just humidity!” pompously declared a man next Jim, one of
those most trying wiseacres who know everything. “You’ll see it will
rain before the evening is over.”
“There’s not a breath stirring outside,” said the girl who was with
him, fanning herself. “I wish we were sitting near an electric fan.”
The asbestos drop had gone up, and the orchestra began to play
music specially written for the piece. It drowned the chatter of
the well-dressed, expectant crowd. But the overture was short, and
the lights all over the house soon began to go down in the almost
imperceptibly gradual fashion affected by Max Dukane in his big
productions. When the other instruments had dwindled to a mere mist of
retreating sound, one high, silver-clear bugle played the regimental
call, “Boots and Saddles,” as a cue for the rise of the curtain upon
the first act.
But Barrison was not looking at the stage. Before the last lights had
gone out in the front of the house he had caught sight of a woman who
had just entered the right-hand stage box. She stood for a moment
looking out over the audience before she slipped out of her gorgeous
gold-embroidered evening cloak and took her seat.
“Look!” exclaimed the girl to the pompous man—and, though she spoke in
an undertone, it was an undertone pregnant with sharp interest, almost
excitement. “Look! There’s Gracie Templeton, who started rehearsing
with this show and got fired. They say she had quite an affair with
Mortimer.”
“Not much distinction in that,” remarked the man. “He’s crazy about
women.”
“Not much distinction either way,” said the woman lightly and
heartlessly. “Grace has played about with ever so many men. But she
isn’t altogether a bad sort, you know, and this Mortimer man seems to
have the power to make women care for him awfully.”
“Do you know him?” demanded her escort jealously.
“Not I!” She laughed. “But seriously, Dicky, I shouldn’t think she’d
want to come to-night and see him playing with another woman.”
“Maybe she means to pull a Booth-and-Lincoln stunt,” suggested the
pompous man. “She’s fixed just right for it if she does.”
“Oh, don’t! It’s horrible just to think of! You’re so cold-blooded,
Dicky! Hush! The play’s beginning. I do like military shows, don’t you?”
Barrison did not wait to see the opening of the piece. He had seen it
once at dress rehearsal, and, anyway, he had other fish to fry. He
slid out of his seat swiftly and almost unnoticeably and made his way
without waste of time up the aisle and around in discreetly tempered
darkness to the stage box which held Miss Grace Templeton.
As he passed between the box curtains and came up behind her, she did
not hear him, and he stood still for a moment before making any move
which would reveal his presence. In that moment he had noticed that she
was dressed entirely in black, that melancholy rather than passion was
the mood which held her, and that she was watching the stage less with
eagerness than with a wistful, weary sort of attention. She leaned back
in her chair, and her hands lay loosely folded in her lap. There was
about her none of the tension, none of the excitement, either manifest
or suppressed, that accompanies a desperate resolve.
Barrison felt the momentary chill of foreboding, which certainly had
crept up his spine, pass into a warmer and more peaceful sentiment
of pity. He slipped into a chair just behind her without her having
detected him. This, too, was reassuring. People with guilt, even
prospective guilt, upon their consciences were always alert to
interruption and possible suspicion. She was looking fixedly at the
stage where Mortimer was now making his first entrance.
He was a splendid-looking creature behind the footlights. Barrison had
been obliged to admit it at dress rehearsal; he admitted it once more
unreservedly now. Whatever there was in his composition of coarseness
or ugliness, of cruelty, unscrupulousness, or violence, was somehow
softened—no, softened was not quite the word, since his stage presence
was consistently and notably virile; but certainly uplifted and tinged
with glamour and colorful charm. Every one else in the company paled
and thinned before him.
“A great performance, is it not?”
Jim spoke the words very gently into her ear, and then waited for the
inevitable start. Strangely enough, in spite of the suddenness of
the remark, she barely stirred from the still pose she had adopted.
Dreamily she answered him, though without pause:
“There is no one like him.”
Then all at once she seemed to wake, to grow alive again, and to
realize that she was actually talking to a real person and not to a
visionary companion. She turned, with a startled face.
“Mr. Barrison! I thought I was quite alone, and—what did I say, I
wonder? I felt as though I were half asleep!”
“You voiced my thoughts; Mortimer is in splendid form, isn’t he?”
She nodded. “I never saw him to better advantage,” she said, speaking
slowly and evidently weighing each word. “Watch him now, Mr. Barrison,
in his scene with _Lucille_. So much restraint, yet so much feeling!
Yes, a superb impersonation!”
Barrison looked curiously at the woman who spoke with so much
discrimination. Was she really capable of being impersonal,
disinterested? Yes, he believed that she was. A certain glow of
returning confidence swept his heart; it was surely not she whom he
had to fear—if, indeed, there were any one. He made up his mind to take
a look at what was taking place behind the scenes, and rose to his
feet, resting his hand lightly, almost caressingly, on the back of Miss
Templeton’s chair.
“Good-by, until later,” he murmured. “I am going back to pay my
respects to Dukane.”
And as he spoke, his fingers closed upon the beaded satin bag which
she had hung upon the back of her chair. Something uncompromisingly
hard met his sensitive and intelligent touch. Instantly he withdrew his
hand as though it had met with fire. There was a pistol in that pretty
reticule; so much he was sure of.
A moment later he tapped lightly on the communicating door, and,
meeting the eyes of the suspicious young giant on guard there, and
speedily satisfying him as to his reliability, passed through into the
strange, bizarre world of scenery and grease paint and spotlights with
which he had lately become so familiar.
“Remember,” he said to the blue-capped lad with the six inches of
muscle and the truculent tendency, who stood as sentinel at that most
critical passageway, “no one—no one, Lynch—is to go through this door
to-night. Understand?”
“Right, sir!”
Barrison made his way through a labyrinth of sets to where Dukane,
against all precedent, was standing watching the performance from the
wings.
“You ought to be in front,” the detective told him reprovingly.
“Indeed!” Dukane looked at him with tired scorn. Then he fished a paper
out of his waistcoat pocket. “Read this. It came this afternoon.”
The new letter of warning ran:
No man can run more than a certain course. When you look with love at
the woman who claims your attention to-night, do you not think what
might happen if a ghost appeared at your feast? You have called me
wild and visionary in the past. Will you call me that when this night
is over?
Having read it and noted that the writing was the same as the previous
one, Jim asked: “Have you shown this to Mortimer?”
“Am I an idiot?” demanded Dukane pertinently. “No, my prince of
detectives, I have not. I have troubles enough without putting my star
on the rampage. Just the same, I think it is as well to be prepared for
anything and everything. What do you think?”
Unwillingly Barrison told him that he was not entirely happy in his
mind concerning Miss Templeton. He asked minutely as to where Mortimer
was going to stand during various parts of the play, notably during
the dark scene in the last act. That, to his mind, offered rather too
tempting a field for uncontrolled temperaments.
“Ah!” said Dukane once more, looking at him. “You have found out
something, eh? Well, no matter. Whether you suspect something or not,
you are going to help, you are going to be on guard. Miss Templeton,
now—do you think it would be a good thing for you to go and spend the
evening with her in her box?”
Barrison did not think quite that, but he consented to retire to Miss
Templeton’s box for at least two acts. The which he did, feeling most
nervous all the time, as though he ought to be somewhere else. Miss
Templeton was most agreeable as a companion, and most calm. Once in a
while his eyes would become glued to the beaded bag hanging on the back
of her chair. Just before the last act he fled, and sent Tony Clay to
take his place on a pretext. He did not think he could stand it any
longer.
Behind, he found a curious excitement prevailing. No one had been told
anything or warned in any way, yet a subtle undercurrent of suspense
was strongly to be felt. There is no stranger phenomenon than this
psychic transmission of emotion without speech. To-night, behind the
scenes at the Mirror Theater, the whole company seemed waiting for
something.
Sybil Merivale seemed particularly nervous.
“I can’t think what has got into me!” she said with rather a shaky
little laugh. “I wasn’t nearly so upset at the beginning of the play,
and usually one gets steadier toward the end of a first night. I’m
doing all right, am I not?”
“You’re splendid!” Kitty Legaye said cordially. “I’m proud of you! You
have no change here, have you?”
“No; I’m supposed to be still in this white frock, locked up in the
power of the border desperadoes.”
“And I, praise Heaven, am through!”
Kitty did sound profoundly grateful for the fact. Barrison thought
she looked very tired and that her eyes were rather unhappy. She had
played her part brilliantly and gayly, appearing, as usual, a fresh and
adorable young girl. Now, seen at close range, she looked both weary
and dispirited under the powder and grease paint.
“I’m awfully fagged!” she confessed. “And my head is splitting. I think
I’ll just sneak home.”
“Oh, but Mr. Dukane will be wild!” exclaimed Sybil in protest. “Isn’t
it a fad of his always to have the principals wait for the curtain
calls, no matter when they’ve finished?”
“Oh, stuff! We’re through with the regulation business, all of us
bowing prettily after the third act, and Jack Carlton trying to make a
speech that isn’t unintelligible with slang! That’s enough and to spare
for one night. And I really feel wretched. Like the Snark, I shall
slowly and silently vanish away! I call upon you, good people, to cover
my exit.”
She slipped into her dressing room, and a moment later the dresser,
Parry, whose services were shared by her and Sybil, came out. She
was a fat, pasty woman whose long life spent in the wardrobe rooms
and dressing rooms of theaters seemed to have made her pallid with a
cellarlike pallor.
She disappeared around the corner that led to the stage door, and in a
minute or so returned. As she opened Kitty’s door and entered, Barrison
heard her say:
“All right, Miss Legaye; Roberts is sending for a taxi.”
Of the dressing rooms Kitty’s was the farthest back, Sybil’s next, and
Mortimer’s—the star room—so far down as to be adjoining the property
room, which was close to what is professionally known as “the first
entrance.” There Willie Coster and his assistant ruled, supreme gods,
over the electric switchboard. The passage to the stage door ran at
right angles to the row of dressing rooms, so that any one coming in