CHAPTER VIII

AWAITING THE POLICE

THAT scream echoed across the blackness. There was a smell of gunpowder in the air. It seemed an interminably long time before the lights flared up, and the big curtain was rung down. At last it formed a wall between the people on the stage and the people in the audience, all about equally excited by this time.

“What is it—oh, what is it that’s happened?” gasped Claire McAllister.

Other women in the company echoed the bewildered and frightened cry. Panic was loose among them—panic and that horror of the unknown and uncomprehended which is the worst of all horrors. “What is it?” ran the quivering question from mouth to mouth like wind in the grass.

Barrison and Dukane knew what had happened even before, with one accord, they dashed to the little flight of steps where Mortimer must have been waiting for his entrance cue. One look was enough. Then the manager’s voice, clear and authoritative, rang out:

“Quiet there, every one. Mr. Mortimer has been shot.”

And swiftly upon the startling statement came Barrison’s command, given with professional sharpness:

“Nobody is to leave the theater, please, until the police have been here!”

Shuddering and silent now, the men and women drew back as though the quiet figure upon the floor were a living menace, instead of something which never again could commit an action of help or of harm.

Alan Mortimer must have died instantly.

He lay at the foot of the steps, with his painted face upturned to the blaze of the glaring electric lights, and an ugly crimson patch of moisture upon the front of his khaki uniform. There was something indescribably ghastly in the sight of the make-up upon that dead countenance.

Old Wrenn, the valet, was kneeling at the side of his dead master, trying to close the eyes with his shaking, wrinkled fingers, and making no attempt to hide the tears that rolled silently down his cheeks. But, after one look into the stony, painted face of the murdered man, Jim Barrison turned his attention elsewhere.

At the head of the four little steps stood Sybil Merivale, in the white costume of Lucille, as motionless as if she were frozen, with her hands locked together. No ice maiden could have been more still, and there was a chill horror in her look.

“Miss Merivale,” said Barrison quickly, “you were standing there when he was shot?”

Slowly she bent her head in assent, and seemed to be trying to speak, but no sound came from her ashen lips.

“Was it you who screamed?”

“I—think so.” She spoke with obvious difficulty. “I was frightened. I think—I screamed. I don’t know.”

Then every one who was watching started and suppressed the shock they felt; for she had moved her hands at last—the hands which had been so convulsively clasped before her. And on her white frock was a long splash of scarlet. One of the slim hands, as every one could see, was dyed the same sinister hue.

She raised it, and looked at it, with her eyes dilating strangely.

“His blood!” she murmured, in a barely audible voice.

Dukane had sent Willie Coster out before the curtain to disperse the audience. The police had been sent for; the doors were guarded. Some of the girls in the company were sobbing. Only Sybil Merivale preserved that attitude of awful calm. She seemed unable to move of her own volition, and remained blind and deaf to every effort to help her down the four steps.

It was young Norman Crane, finally, who took her hand in both his, and gently made her descend. Then, as she stood there, looking like a pale ghost in her white dress with the rather dull make-up that the scene had demanded, the boy put his arm gently around her.

“It’s all right, dear,” he said tenderly. “Don’t look so wild, Sybil. Of course, it was a shock to you, but you must rouse yourself now.” He looked at Barrison as he spoke, and the detective thought that there was a touch of defiance in his tone as he emphasized the words, “Of course it was a shock to you.” He seemed anxious to establish definitely this fact.

Jim quite understood and sympathized with him. That Sybil had had anything to do with Mortimer’s death the detective did not for a moment believe, but her position was certainly an equivocal one. This young actor was clearly in love with her, and the situation must be an agonizing one for him.

In confirmation of his conclusions, Barrison heard Crane say to Dukane:

“Miss Merivale and I are engaged to be married, sir. She is very much upset, as you see. Will you let me take her to her dressing room?”

Dukane looked doubtfully at Barrison, who shook his head.

“I shall be very grateful if Miss Merivale will stay where she is until the police come,” he said courteously, but firmly. “You might see if you can’t find her a chair.” For he had no desire to let a witness out of his sight at this stage of the game.

Norman Crane flushed under his make-up. “I think you are going rather far!” he exclaimed hotly. “Surely you don’t think——”

“I think,” said Barrison, deliberately cutting him short, “that you had better get the chair, and—has any one any brandy? Miss Merivale looks very bad indeed.”

Old Wrenn spoke in a tremulous voice. “There is some in his—in the dressing room, sir.”

He went off and brought it, then stood once more beside the body, wiping his shriveled old cheeks. Barrison, seeing his evident and genuine grief, made a mental chalk mark to the credit of Alan Mortimer. There must have been some good in the man, some element of the kind and the lovable, to have won the devotion of this old servant.

Crane held the brandy to Sybil’s lips, and she drank a little mechanically. After a moment or so, her eyes became less strained, her whole expression more natural, and instead of the frozen blankness which had been in her face before, there now dawned a more living and at the same time an inexplicable fear. She looked up at the face of her young lover with a sort of sharp question in her blue eyes, a look which puzzled Jim Barrison as he caught it. What was it that she was mutely asking him? What was it that she was afraid of?

It had been scarcely five minutes since Mortimer’s murder, yet already it seemed a long time. They all felt as though that still figure on the floor had been there for hours. Dukane would have had the dead man moved to his dressing room, but Barrison insisted that everything should be left as it was. It was just then that he espied a small object glittering on the floor just beyond the steps. He stooped, picked it up, and put it in his pocket. As he turned he saw, to his surprise, Tony Clay approaching.

The older detective stared and frowned.

“Where is Miss Templeton?” he demanded sharply. “I told you to stay with her whatever happened. Where is she?”

“That’s what I want to know,” said Tony. “She’s gone!”

“Gone! When did she go?”

“Just before the dark scene. She felt faint and sent me for a glass of water. Before I got back, all that row on the stage started, and when the lights were turned on again, she’d gone; that’s all.”

“All!” groaned Barrison despairingly. “Tony, you fool! You fool! Well, it’s too late to mend matters now.”

“Did anything happen, after all?” asked Tony, with round eyes.

Barrison stood aside and let him see Mortimer’s dead body, which had been hidden from his view by the little group around Sybil.

“Oh, Heaven!” gasped Tony, horror-stricken. “Then you don’t think she—Miss Templeton—did it? Why, Jim, she couldn’t—there wasn’t time!”

“I don’t think so myself. But it’s not our business to do any thinking at all—just yet. This can be a lesson to you, Tony. When you’re watching a person, watch ’em!”

“Well, I think it can be a lesson to you, too!” said Tony unexpectedly. “You’ve been acting all along as though this affair were a movie scenario, that you thought was entertaining, but not a bit serious, and——”

Jim Barrison flushed deeply and miserably. “I know it, Tony,” he said, in a very grave voice. “Don’t make any mistake about it; I’m getting mine! I’ll never forgive myself as long as I live.”

Willie Coster came up to them. He was paler and wilder-eyed than ever, and his scant red hair stood stiffly erect. Poor Willie! In all his long years of nightmarish first nights, this was the worst. Any one who knew him could read in his eyes the agonized determination to go and get drunk as soon as he possibly could.

“The police inspector has come,” he said, in a low tone. “And, say, when you get to sifting things down, I’ve something to say myself.”

“You have! You know who fired the seventh shot?”

“I didn’t say that. But if you’ll ask me some questions by and by, I may have something to tell you.”