CHAPTER XXII

“RITA THE DAREDEVIL”

PROMPTLY at eight o’clock, Barrison presented himself at the entrance to Coyne’s Theater, where he had agreed to meet Teddy Lucas, of the Blaze.

The house was of the flagrantly cheap variety, to judge by the people then going in. On either side of the glaringly illuminated doorway were vivid lithographs of ladies with extremely pink cheeks and tights, and gorgeously yellow hair and jewelry; also, of prodigiously muscled acrobats, performing miraculous feats in impossible positions.

Barrison found his own eyes attracted, almost at once, by something which stood out, oasislike, among the more lurid and obvious sheets; a large frame containing three photographs, under the plainly printed title: “Rita the Daredevil! Late of the World-famous Blankley Daredevils!”

Then this was the girl who had been playing in the riding act with Mortimer when Dukane came upon him first. Now, if by any chance Jim could connect that girl with Wrenn’s disagreeable daughter, whom Miss Templeton remembered! He was eager for a sight of her. Would that rather dim snapshot he had seen prove sufficient to identify her? He wondered! None of these pictures looked particularly like that nondescript smudge of a woman in the corner of the kodak picture which had been shown him that day.

He examined them with close interest. One was of Rita the Daredevil, sitting a vicious-looking, rearing broncho, with a nonchalant air, and huge, ornamental spurs; another was of Rita the Daredevil firing with a rifle at an apple held up by a fat man in evening clothes. The third was, presumably, a likeness of Rita the Daredevil herself, doing nothing in particular but scowl at the world from beneath a picturesque sombrero.

She certainly looked disagreeable enough to justify Grace Templeton’s unpleasant recollection of her. Of a markedly Spanish type, with the faint Indian cast which is so prevalent in South America, she was in no sense beguiling or prepossessing. It would be hard to vision those glowering black eyes soft with any tender emotion; her mouth was as hard and as bitter in line as that of some fierce yet stoical young savage, brooding over a darkly glorious nightmare of revenge.

Fascinated, even while repelled, by the odd, forbidding face, Barrison started as he was roused from his momentary trance by the cool, rapid tones of Teddy Lucas:

“Awfully sorry if you’ve been waiting. I don’t imagine we’re late for our act, though. Have you a cigarette? We can smoke here. Righto! Come along!”

They went in and took the places reserved for them in a stage box. Jim was glad to be so close to the stage; he wanted to study this woman as minutely as he could. As they settled themselves, an attendant changed the cards giving the names of the acts. With a real thrill Barrison saw that they read:

“Rita the Daredevil.”

“Good stuff,” murmured Lucas critically. “They don’t say what she does, nor what makes her a daredevil. They just say it, and wait for her to make good. Of course, she probably won’t.”

He took the evening newspaper from under his arm, and on the margin of the first page scribbled a short enigmatic note in pencil. On the stage was a small table decorated with a .44 rifle and several small weapons, a target painted in red and gold instead of black and white, and a large mirror. Almost immediately Rita the Daredevil made her entrance.

She was dressed in the regulation “cowgirl’s” outfit—short skirt of khaki, sombrero, heavy leather belt, high-laced brown boots, embroidered gauntlets. As though to give a touch of daintiness to her costume, she wore a thin white shirtwaist, and a scarlet tie. Also, the buckle on her belt was of gold, and there was a golden ornament in the band of her broad felt hat.

Daintiness, however, seemed out of place. There was about the young woman an absence of feminine coquetry that set her apart from most vaudeville performers. Sometimes she forced a smile, and made a little bow to the house, but conciliatory measures were plainly foreign to this woman’s temperament. She was there to do certain things; one would be safe to wager that she would do them well.

And she did. She was a marvelous shot, cool, and steady; and the men in her audience were genuinely enthusiastic. A good many of them could appreciate straight and clever shooting when they saw it.

She shot bull’s-eyes, tossed glass balls, shot apples on the head of her meek partner, the smiling man of the photograph; she shot over her shoulder, looking in a mirror; she shot, after sighting carefully, with her eyes blindfolded; she shot with guns of every size and caliber. In everything she did was apparent the same crisp, grim efficiency. She did not do her work at all gayly, nor as if she enjoyed it. There was something resentful about her whole personality. Doubtless she grudged the entertainment she gave and would have preferred to earn her salary, if possible, by making herself unpleasant to people, instead of diverting them!

Barrison gave many glances to the man who so patiently and self-effacingly assisted her. He was, in spite of the professional smile, not a happy-looking man. There were moments when, for all his creases of flesh, he looked positively haggard, and his eyes were very tired. He was a man who for some reason lived under a shadow or a burden of some sort; and—this belief came suddenly to Barrison—she herself suffered from the same handicap. These two people were the victims either of a heavy trouble, a grievous disappointment, or a gnawing wrong. You could see the pinches and rakings of suffering in both faces.

The climax of Rita’s act was now pending. The partner came down to the footlights, and explained that “The Daredevil, whose life had been one hourly challenge to such dangers as lesser mortals hold in justifiable dread,” would now show the ladies and gentlemen how little she cared for common risks or common caution. It appeared that she wished any one who liked to come and examine the pistols she was going to use. It was necessary for the audience to understand that they were all loaded. Did any one care to examine them?

Yes; to Teddy Lucas’ surprise, Barrison did. He leaned over the side of the box, and had the satisfaction not only of noting that they were all loaded, six chambers each, but that each one of the three that she intended to use was marked in precisely the same way as the one which was now locked up in his safe at home.

“I thought she did the stunt with four,” said Ted, arching his eyebrows. “She was advertised to.”

Another point. Until recently, she had done her trick with four pistols, all exactly alike. Where was the fourth? Jim knew where the fourth was. Naturally, there had not been time to have another made and marked in precisely the same way.

He handed back the weapons, saw them examined by several other curious people, and settled back to see what she was going to do with them.

The stunt itself turned out to be disappointing. It was a mere juggling trick, the old three-ball affair, done with loaded pistols; that was all. To be sure, there was a certain amount of risk about it, since even a clever shot cannot always be responsible for what will happen to a trigger when it is caught in the lightning manipulation of juggling. But it was not nearly so dangerous as it was advertised to be.

“Now, it’s safe to assume,” remarked Teddy languidly, in Barrison’s ear, “that she never fired one of those things off yet, in that stunt, and never will!”

And then two things happened. It was difficult even for Jim Barrison’s trained mind to tell him which had happened first. His eyes caught sight of some one in the box opposite, a gray-haired, dignified figure of middle height, not sitting, but standing with his look fixed sternly upon the stage. It was Max Dukane, the great manager, and Barrison, in a great flash of intuition, knew why he was there. He had come either to warn or threaten these people who knew him since the days when he had discovered Mortimer in the show known as Blankley’s Daredevils.

And at the selfsame instant, it seemed, the pistols which Rita was tossing so composedly and surely, experienced a hitch in their methodical orbits. One, two, three, they rose and fell, and she caught them neatly each time, and sent them whirling as though they were tennis balls, instead of loaded guns. But something had happened. There was a faint cry, Barrison was near enough to hear it. And then a shot.

The detective’s hair seemed to rise. It was so soon after that other tragedy! Was it possible? But nothing had happened, it seemed, except a flesh wound for Rita herself. She was holding her hand against her arm, and staring in front of her in a dazed and frightened way. Her partner was tearing away her sleeve to investigate, and the house was wildly excited. It was superb advertising, of course; only, Barrison knew that it was not advertising. She had been frightened by Dukane’s sudden appearance, and even her sure hand had lost its cunning for a second.

He looked toward the other box sharply, at the very moment, as he thought, when Rita had sunk down wounded. But even so, he was too late. Dukane had gone.

“Shall we go behind now, and have a talk with her?” suggested Teddy Lucas, rising. “Really, that was quite well staged. Every one will be twice as ready to believe her a daredevil after they have seen her wounded. Ready?”

They made their way behind.

Barrison’s blood was thrilling with that excitement of the chase which keeps a good detective alive on this earth, and without which one can scarcely imagine him contented.