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:
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
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.