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 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:

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 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.