CHAPTER II

THE WOMAN IN PURPLE

MORTIMER had been drinking, else he would never have assumed the entire responsibility of engaging Sybil Merivale for the leading part in his play. When sober, he had a very wholesome respect for Dukane, the producing manager who had discovered him and who was “backing him blind” to the tune of many thousands of dollars. But when he had even a little too much to drink, the man’s whole personality and viewpoint underwent a metamorphosis. He became arrogant, self-assertive, unmanageable. Eventually it was this, as even his friends and adherents were wont to prophesy, which would be the means of his downfall.

Now, though Dukane himself stood at his elbow, the actor, with a swagger which he had too much sense to use on the stage or when he was entirely himself, cried:

“Let us sit down here with you, Kitty, and we’ll drink the health of the new Lucille.” Kitty smiled indulgently as she watched him seat himself and give a whispered order to the waiter which presently resulted in the party being served with high balls. Meanwhile, as Dukane also sat down, Kitty introduced him to Sybil.

Dukane was short and squarely built, with gray hair and steely eyes, a face as smooth and bland as a baby’s, and an air so gentle and unassuming that his occasional bursts of biting sarcasm came upon his victims as a shock. His gaze, clear yet inscrutable, swept Sybil Merivale in the moment taken up by his introduction to her. He was used to thus rapidly appraising the material presented him.

He was inclined to approve of her appearance. She was not startlingly beautiful, but the hair was unusual and would light up well. She carried her head properly, too, and her low-voiced “How do you do, Mr. Dukane!” was quite nicely pitched. It would be worth while hearing her read the part, at any rate. For once Mortimer had not too crassly put his foot in it, as he was apt to do after four or five high balls.

That the actor had taken a good deal too much upon himself in practically engaging Miss Merivale without even consulting his superior troubled Dukane not a whit. He was not a little man, and he did not have to bluster in order to assert his authority. His actors and actresses were to him so many indifferently controlled children. When they said or did absurd things, he usually let them rave. If they really became troublesome or impertinent—as Miss Templeton had been that morning—he discharged them with the utmost urbanity and firmness.

He sat down and quietly told the waiter to bring him cold meat and coffee, while Mortimer ordered more high balls. “Miss Merivale can come back with us and read the part in the last act,” Dukane said, sipping his coffee. “I shan’t ask the company to go through the early part of the play again to-day. In any case”—and he smiled at the girl pleasantly—“in any case, Miss Merivale will look the part.”

“That’s more than Templeton ever did!” exclaimed Kitty Legaye, with open spite.

Dukane smiled once more. “Miss Templeton,” he said, “is rather too—er—sophisticated to play Lucille. She is growing out of those very girlish leading parts.”

“Why don’t you say,” interposed Kitty sharply, “that she’s too old? She is—and, what’s more, she looks it!”

“She’s a ripping handsome woman, all the same,” declared Alan Mortimer, scowling into his half-emptied glass.

Kitty bit her lip. “Of course you would be sorry to see her go!” she began.

“Who said I was sorry?” demanded the actor rather rudely. “I am not; I’m glad. She was getting to be a nuisance——” He checked himself, a glimmer of something like shame saving him in time. He turned to Sybil Merivale, and there was a warm light in his black eyes as he added: “I’m growing more glad every minute.”

Sybil was uncomfortable. She hated this man and feared him; she hated the tone of the talk, the atmosphere of the table. She had a violent instinct of repugnance when she thought of joining the company. And yet—and yet a leading part, and on Broadway, and under Dukane! She could not, she dared not lose so wonderful a chance. Her big blue eyes were eager and troubled both at once.

Dukane watched the play of expression in her sensitive face. “Mobile mouth—quick emotions—excellent eyes.” He went over these assets mentally. Aloud he said, in the nice, impersonally friendly tone with which he won people whenever he had the fancy: “You need only read the part, you know, Miss Merivale. You’re not committed to anything.”

Sybil looked at him gratefully; he seemed to read her thoughts. All at once, with a surge back of her usual gay courage, she cried, laughing:

“Committed! I only wish I were—or, rather, that you were, Mr. Dukane!”

“What’s that?” exclaimed Mortimer, a little thickly. “’Course he’s committed! You’re under contract, Miss—Miss M-Merivale. Word as good as his bond—eh, Dukane?”

He was deeply flushed and his eyes glittered. In his excitement Sybil found him detestable. Fancy having to play opposite that!

“Suppose you eat something,” suggested Dukane, pushing a plate with a piece of cold beef on it in his direction. “Oh, yes, you do want it; you’ve had a hard morning. Eat it, there’s a good fellow.”

“A-all right,” muttered Mortimer, attacking the beef somewhat unsteadily. “Must keep up m’ strength, I s’pose.”

A waiter leaned down to him and murmured something in French.

“Eh?” said Mortimer. “Come again, George. Try Spanish; I know the greaser lingo a bit.”

The waiter spoke again in halting English. The others could hardly help hearing part of what he said. It concerned a “lady in mauve—table by the window—just a minute, monsieur.”

“Oh, damn!” ejaculated Alan Mortimer, and immediately directed an apologetic murmur toward Sybil. He got up, and walking with surprising steadiness and that lithe, animal grace so characteristic of him, made his way toward a table where a woman sat waiting with an expectant face.

“Grace Templeton!” exclaimed Kitty under her breath. Her brown eyes snapped angrily. “I didn’t see her before—did you, Mr. Dukane?”

“I saw her when I first came in,” answered the manager quietly. “That hair is so conspicuous. Really I think she should begin to confine herself to adventuress parts. She is no longer the romantic type.”

“And the dress!” Kitty shivered with a delicate suggestion of jarred nerves or outraged taste.

Dukane dropped his eyes to hide the twinkle in them. It was true that even in that lunch-time Broadway assemblage, in which brilliant color combinations in the way both of hair and of garments proclaimed right and left the daring and the resourcefulness of womankind, Miss Templeton was a unique figure. Her hair was of a magnificent metallic gold, and a certain smoldering fire in her black-fringed gray eyes and a general impression she gave of violent and but half-controlled emotions saved her beauty from being merely cheap and artificial and made it vivid and compelling. A passionate, unforgettable woman, and her gown, sensational as it was, somehow expressed her.

The French waiter had drawn upon his fund of native tact in calling it mauve. It was, as a matter of fact, a sharp and thunderous purple—the sort of color which is only permissible in stained glass or an illuminated tenth century missal. It was a superb shade, but utterly impossible for any sort of modern clothes. It blazed insolently against the massed greenery of the restaurant window. A persistent ray of yellow August sunshine, pushing its way past the cunningly contrived leafy screen, fell full upon it and upon the burnished golden hair above it. In that celestial spotlight Miss Templeton was almost too dazzling for unshaded mortal eyes.

Now, as she sat looking up at Mortimer, who stood beside her table, her expression was in keeping with the gown and the hair. It was violent, conspicuous, crudely intense. Alan Mortimer’s expression, in its way, was as violent as hers. They looked, the two of them, as though they could have torn each other’s eyes out with fierce and complete satisfaction.

“Am I very late, Mr. Dukane?” said an agreeably pitched voice just behind Sybil.

Dukane started and raised his eyes. His face brightened.

“Barrison, my dear fellow, I am glad you came! Do you know, you were so late that I had almost forgotten you! Miss Legaye, let me present Mr. Barrison; Miss Merivale, Mr. Barrison.”

The newcomer smiled and sat down at the already crowded little table.

“If you say you had forgotten me,” he protested, “I shall think you did not really need me at all, and that would be a hard blow to my vanity.”

“Nonsense!” said Dukane. “Nothing could touch the vanity of a dyed-in-the-wool detective. What are you going to have, Barrison?”

“I have lunched, thanks. If that is coffee—yes, I will have a demi-tasse. I thought Mr. Mortimer was to be with you, Mr. Dukane.”

“He is talking to Miss Templeton over there.”

Barrison’s eyes darted quickly to the other table. “Your leading woman, is she not?”

“She was,” said Dukane calmly. “At present we are not sure whether we have any leading woman or not—are we, Miss Merivale?” And he looked at her kindly.

“And, what is more,” said Kitty Legaye irritably, “we shall never find out at this rate. Do you people realize”—she glanced at a tiny gold wrist watch—“that it is nearly two, and that our rehearsal——”

“Nearly two!” Sybil’s exclamation was one of real dismay. “And my engagement with Mr. Altheimer——Oh!”

“Altheimer, eh?” Dukane looked at her with fresh interest. Whether a manager wants an actress or not, it always makes him prick up his ears to hear of another who may want her. “Telephone him that you have been asked to rehearse for me to-day, and that”—he paused, considering—“that you personally look upon your contract as very nearly signed.”

“Oh, Mr. Dukane!” Sybil flushed brilliantly. At that moment she forgot her dread of being in Mortimer’s company; she was conscious of pure joy and of nothing else.

“There—run along and phone him. You understand,” he added cautiously, “I’m not really dependable. If you are very bad, I shall say I never thought of engaging you.”

“I won’t be,” she laughed valiantly, and sped away in the direction of the telephone booths.

Dukane turned to watch the way she walked. In a second he nodded. “Can hurry without scampering,” he murmured critically, “and doesn’t swing her arms about. H’m! Yes, yes; very good.”

“What do you really think of her?” asked Kitty, leaning forward. “You know she is my discovery.”

“My dear girl, who am I, a mere worm of a manager, to say? I haven’t seen her work yet. She has carriage and a voice, but she may lose her head on the stage and she may read Lucille as though she were reciting the multiplication table. I should say she was intelligent, but one never knows. I engaged a woman once who was all dignity and fine forehead and bumps of perception and the manner born and all the rest of it; and when it came to her big scene, she chewed gum and giggled. I am too old ever to know anything definitely. We must wait and see.”

“She is charming to look at,” Barrison ventured.

“Ah, you think so?” said the manager quickly. “I am inclined to like her looks myself. And she has youth—youth!” He shook his head half wistfully. “Here comes Mortimer back again, and in a worse temper, by the powers, than when he went!”

The actor was evidently in a black mood. He made no reference to the woman he had just left, but stood like an incarnate thundercloud beside his empty chair and addressed the others in a voice that was distinctly surly in spite of its naturally melodious inflections:

“What are we waiting for, anyway? Hello, Barrison! Let’s get back to rehearsal.”

“My own idea exactly,” said Dukane. “As soon as Miss Merivale returns——Ah, here she comes! Waiter——”

“This is my party,” remonstrated Kitty.

“Rubbish! I feed my flock. Barrison, you are of the flock, too, for the occasion. How do you like being associated with the profession?”

The young detective laughed. Dukane looked at him with friendliness. The manager was a man who liked excellence of all kinds, even when it was out of his line. Barrison’s connection with the forthcoming play, “Boots and Saddles,” was a purely technical one. A vital point in the drama was the identification of a young soldier by his finger prints. Dukane never permitted the critics, professional or amateur, to catch him at a disadvantage in details of this kind. He knew Barrison slightly, having met him at the Lambs’ Club, and found him an agreeable fellow and a gentleman, as well as an acknowledged expert in his profession. So he had asked him to show the exact Bertillon procedure, that there might be no awkwardness or crudity in the development of the stage situation.

Barrison himself was much entertained by this fleeting association with the seductive and mysterious world “behind the scenes.” His busy life left him small time for amusement, and for that reason he was the more interested when he came upon a bit of professional work which was two thirds play.

He was a quiet-seeming chap, with innocent blue eyes, a lazy, pleasant manner, and a very disconcerting speed of action on occasion. His superiors said that half of his undoubted success came from his unexpectedness. It is certain that no one, on meeting him casually and socially, would ever have suspected that he was one of the most redoubtable, keen-brained, and steel-nerved detectives in all New York.

The bill was paid, and every one was standing as Sybil came back. She was a little breathless and flushed, and Dukane, with a new note of approbation on his mental tablets, got a very good idea of what she would look like with a bit of make-up.

“I told Mr. Altheimer,” she cried eagerly. “And he was quite cross—yes, really quite cross! I was ever so flattered. I don’t believe he wanted me one bit till he thought there was a chance of Mr. Dukane’s wanting me.” She laughed joyously.

“Very likely, very likely,” Dukane murmured. “Why—what is the matter, Miss Merivale?”

For the pretty color had faded from Sybil’s sensitive face. Her big blue eyes looked suddenly dark and distressed. “What is the matter?” the manager repeated, watching her closely.

She pulled herself together and managed a tremulous smile.

“Some one is walking over my grave,” she said lightly.

But as she turned to leave the dining room with the rest, she could not help another backward glance at the brilliant figure in purple with the golden sunbeam across her golden hair, and the odd look which had just terrified her.

Barrison, accustomed to noticing everything, followed her gaze, and, seeing the expression on Miss Templeton’s face, drew his lips into a noiseless whistle. For there was murder in that look; Jim Barrison had seen it before on other faces, and he knew it by sight.

As for Sybil, the memory of the woman in purple haunted her all the way to the theater—the woman in purple with the black-fringed eyes full of living, blazing, elemental hate.