The apparition advanced a few paces down the centre of the stage. As
it stood there in the fainting shimmer of the moonbeams, its head
stretched forth as if it scented the dawn, Ned could hear nothing but
the tumultuous beating of his own heart.
The figure paused thus only for a moment. Then it leaped into the air
and cut a wiry caper.
To people more conversant with the traditional manners and customs of
ghosts this might seem so gross a departure from spectral etiquette as
to induce doubt of the genuineness of the manifestation. But to the
boy the grotesque gesture seemed horribly uncanny. He sprang from his
seat--his limbs failed him and he sank back; he sought to scream--not a
sound came from his dry and parched lips.
"Ye're too drunk yit fur this biz, pard." A hoarse, half-suppressed
voice issued from the wings.
A short, thickset, bow-legged man was emerging thence, and the figure
on the stage turned to meet him.
"Pshaw!" said the tall apparition contemptuously. "I'm as sober as the
bishop."
And what was this? A familiar voice; and now that Ned looked again, a
familiar figure. No ghost,--only the sorry "first player," whom Ned had
imagined as lying dead outside on the flagging of the alley.
"I mus' be gittin' weak in the upper story!" the boy said to himself.
He was so rejoiced to be freed from his superstitious terrors, so
glad, too, to see the "first player" in full life and to know that no
tragedy had that night been enacted under this roof save the tragedy
of Hamlet, that he laughed slyly as he rested his chin on the high arm
of the chair, and with merry eyes watched the men. He hardly cared to
speculate upon the strange fact of their presence here at this hour.
He was only waiting for them to be gone that he might make his escape
at last.
"I don't want no mo' o' these crazy shines, though, ef ye do be so
mighty sober," said the short man sulkily. "Somebody out there--the
night watchman, mebbe--will hear ye trampling in 'ere, an' then wher'
will we be?"
"A-scootin' up the alley," with a free gesture of his right arm. The
"first player" was difficult to repress.
The surly, thickset man--Ned could not see his face, but his slouch,
his voice, his manner were full of malignant intimations--evidently
thought best to change his tone with his tipsy companion. He put down a
five-gallon galvanized iron can that he had been carrying, and stared
with an admirable imitation of surprise at the "first player."
"Why,--look-a-here, if ye jes' wanter have a little aggervation with
the perlice an' skeer Gorham by lettin' him know that we hev broke into
his theatre, _I'm_ with ye every time! He warn't mean enough, nohow,
for the way that ye have laid off ter pay him back! He never done
nothin' but kick ye like ye were a cur, an' beat ye half blind, an'
fling ye out o' the window! 'Twould have been assault with intent ter
kill if a pore man had done all that, but rich Gorham,--pshaw! that's
nothin'. Jes' let's stir up a little fuss an' fetch the perlice,--ter
skeer _him_! Ho! Ho! _We_ ain't afeared of the peelers. 'Ere goes the
ballet."
He danced off in the moonlight, shaking his fingers in the air with
wild gesticulations and kicking his short bandy legs high, right and
left,--but softly, softly, as if he were shod with felt.
The "first player" stood for a moment bewildered by this wild scheme
to scare the manager. Its absurdity seemed to sober him. He strode off
suddenly after the dancing figure. A clutch stopped it.
"You fool," he said, with an oath, "I mean to burn the house to the
ground, and you know it!"
"Well, warn't I agreeable,--if there's no insurance?" replied the
bow-legged man.
"I tell you I heard from Gorham's own mouth that the policy expired
yesterday at noon. He and the agent had a burst-up, and he wouldn't
renew. I heard him tell that deadheaded crony of his; you know Gorham
has got a tongue that is set on a pivot and wags at both ends."
The stocky, bandy-legged figure swayed back and forth with extravagant
manifestations of delight. "That gets Gorham! I'd have been sorry for
the Insurance Company if it wuz ter lose, ye know. Sorry fur true! I
always had a soft place in my heart for a corporation--pore motherless
thing!"
His prominent teeth gleamed,--it was as much a snarl as a smile.
"We are wastin' time," he said suddenly, with an air of returning to
business. "Take this can o' kerosene an' empty it on the floor of the
green-room, while I fix the other combustibles."
The "first player" stood amazed. "You blamed idiot!" he exclaimed,
"there's oil enough on these canvases to send the whole place a-flaring
like perdition."
The thickset man's fierceness returned.
"Who is killin' this cat," he snarled angrily,--"you or me? I had my
grudge agin this theatre jes' a-dunnin' night an' day ter be paid, an'
I promised ter help ye _ef I bossed the job_; ain't that the trade?"
"The shortest way," muttered the "first player," yielding the point. He
caught up the can and disappeared in the direction of the green-room.
The stocky figure on the stage was so suddenly joined by another that
Ned rubbed his eyes, thinking he saw two where there was but one.
"I got the star's wardrobe out o' the dressin'-room," the newcomer said
in an agitated whisper.
"Keep dark," said the thickset man,--he nodded toward the exit where
the "first player" had disappeared. "He don't suspicion nothin'; he
thinks there ain't a soul here but him an' me. He bargained that
nothing should be took! He said that he ain't a thief, an' the goods
would get us found out. But _you_ just make the haul anyhow,--but make
it sly, for true."
The two rascals went through the dumb show of much merry scorn of the
"first player's" stipulations.
"Our pals have tolled off the night watchman,--an' they're workin' at
the safe now. Dynamite is the word,--it's a time lock, they think."
This was overwhelming to Ned, who had not dreamed that the receipts
were kept in the theatre over night,--a considerable sum must have been
realized from that crowded house.
The newcomer was starting off. The thickset scamp beckoned him back.
"Did the star leave anything besides the rich costumes?"
"Left gloves."
The attitude of the stocky figure expressed disappointment.
"Left handkerchief."
The disappointment evidently deepened.
"Left studs on dressing-table--diamonds--very fine!"
The speaker disappeared, with a triumphant wave of the hand.
The bandy-legged rascal, inflated with the pride of the moment, strode
down to the dark foot-lamps.
"The keerlessness of one man blesses the keerfullness of another," he
declaimed, addressing the empty auditorium.
This was doubtless the finest presentation of a villain ever seen upon
these boards, for this was the genuine article.
Whether a light suddenly sprang up in one corner of the building,
whether Ned heard the crackling of burning timber and canvas, or
whether these impressions were delusions of his own over-excited brain,
he could never say. He was possessed by the fear of being burned alive
in the intricacies of this place, knowing no door, and no window save
the one at which he had entered.
This anxiety dominated even his terror of being discovered by these
rascals, although he knew they would have wrung his neck without a
moment's compunction to prevent him from blabbing. He sprang up and
stole tremulously off through the darkness, striving to rouse his
fainting memory and his instinct for locality, and to find the window.
How many times he circled around the dusky labyrinth he never knew.
All at once he felt a great lightening of his spirits, for he saw
suddenly before him a black oblong space which he instantly discerned
to be a door. Noiselessly, lightly, he sped to the aperture to find
himself in the dark corridor of the building. This passage, of course,
followed the direction of the wall of the semicircular auditorium, but
this fact was not apparent to Ned, except as revealed gradually by
the sense of touch, for no longer did he have even the faint light of
the remote windows above the gallery, and the darkness was intense,
almost total, indeed. Sometimes a vague glimmer came from doors a bit
ajar, and giving upon the dim auditorium within, but these occurred at
long intervals, and looking fearfully over his shoulder he could not
distinguish the portal by which he had entered. It was gone,--vanished
in the gloom! As he stood gazing back for this one landmark, which he
had thought he might keep as guide, he heard a sound in the utter
silence that made him quail,--a regular throbbing beat which he
recognized presently as the plunging of his own heart. He must needs
have courage, he reasoned within himself, as he leaned back faint and
tremulous against the wall, or he would perish here like a rat in a
trap.
He began now to press on swiftly, some orderly instinct of his nature
soothed and his spirit quieted by the release from the chaos of
unaccustomed objects which had confused him behind the scenes. The
smooth corridor, the absence of all obstruction, the sense of progress,
as if so conventional a passage must lead to some objective point of
exit, some chance of escape, encouraged him. He had known little as to
the usual construction of theatres, but rallying his faculties, his
memory, his intuition, his observation, he began to appreciate where he
was. The wall on his left hand, he reflected, must inclose those stores
by which the greater frontage on the street was utilized; in their
rear the immense semicircular auditorium of the theatre filled the
space, for the shops were of a kind that required no great conveniences
of storage,--he remembered them now, a florist's establishment, a
tobacconist's stand, a photographer's gallery,--and most of the rooms
of the upper stories were occupied as offices. Thus the lofty windows
above the gallery gave the auditorium of the theatre its only source of
ventilation and of light except, indeed, from artificial means. A door
opened on the side street, and some windows were in the rear, and the
house was provided with no other exit in front than a great door, at
the end of a long, tunnel-like lobby, opening upon the broad avenue,
which served for the admission and the dispersal of the audience.
Even while he was mentally recapitulating these points he became
suddenly uncertain as to this unique source of light, for as he
progressed the darkness about him had become visibly mitigated. It
was dimness rather than obscurity now,--a medium dull indeed, but
which permitted the discrimination of surrounding objects. Ned paused
suspiciously. Silence reigned,--dead silence! No conflagration as
yet! He asked himself if he could be approaching some door or window,
some opportunity of exit hitherto unknown to him, for the corridor,
the periphery, as it were, of the semicircular auditorium, was light
enough now for him to distinguish the curving walls on either hand, the
terra-cotta tints predominating in their frescoed panels, the darker
terra-cotta tone of the carpet beneath his feet,--nay, as he came to
the point of intersection with the lobby leading to the street door he
saw the gilded frames of the portraits of famous actors on the walls,
and recognized Booth, Barrett, McCullough, and Irving! The great door
was fast shut--no hope thence. The little wicket of the barricade
across the lobby, that served to hold back the press of the people
from the ticket-taker, was ajar, and from the box-office, at one side,
came a dim suffusion of light. He stood still with a wildly beating
heart,--for he heard from an inner room beyond the office the sibilant,
cautious tone of a half whisper, and now and again the metallic clink
of some instrument dexterously handled. The thieves were still working
at the safe,--and as yet it held fast!
It was instinct rather than a realized prudence that set the frightened
boy scurrying like a rabbit away from that dangerous zone of light.
Miscreants such as these, suddenly discovered in their nefarious job,
would not hesitate at murder, more than at larceny and arson, and his
bones in the midst of the débris of the great fire would never be found
to tell his forlorn fate. But that the wall guided him from the foyer
and along the corridor, he could not have regained the stage door; he
hardly knew how he had reached it; he realized only that he was once
more in the inextricable tangle of flats and wings and ropes and stage
furniture behind the scenes, and wildly seeking the window at which he
had gained entrance to this troublous episode in his life.
Still the moonbeams streamed through those lofty casements above the
gallery and down upon the immaterial audience of thronging shadows
in the place of the brilliant assemblage so lately vanished thence.
With melancholy intimations, the white sheeny radiance sent vague,
phantasmal gleams across the broad spread of the stage and along the
dreary vistas of the wings, where the sham misery of imagination is
wont to ape the real tragedy of life. Here the contrast with the utter
darkness was so sharp, the setting for a single figure so conspicuous,
that Ned scuttled hastily across the stage, himself like a wavering
shadow, and plunged into the turmoil of confusion beyond, searching
here and there and everywhere for the back window at which he had
entered.
He had lost in a measure the self-control which he had hitherto
staunchly maintained. He was awkward, clumsy, agitated. More than
once he tangled his foot in a swaying rope; here and there he ran
plumply against the huge canvas-covered frames, and set up a quivering
totter along their great heights; he wondered that he did not scream
outright when at last he fairly fell, plunging bodily into a mimic
boat adjusted on rockers to simulate the tossing of the waves.
Nevertheless, hearing the floor resound with the impact of his fall,
he had the presence of mind to lie still at the bottom of the craft,
listening and fearing that the noise might have roused the thieves to
apprehension and a tour of discovery. This would doubtless have ensued,
but fortunately for him another sound pervaded the theatre just at that
moment, and overpowered the concussion of his fall,--a dull, low roar
it was, then utter silence.
Ned knew that the safe had been forced at last, and that the explosion
had served to avert the discovery of his presence through the crash
of his noisy misadventure. He rose from the boat, trembling, weak,
but animated with a new hope. The finding of the craft here intimated
that he was near the wall, where it had doubtless been heedlessly
thrust aside, for it had naught to do with the play of Hamlet, and the
furnishings of the castle of Elsinore filled all the foreground. He
must now be near the rear wall, where was the window at which he had
entered.
Suddenly he saw before him the dim, wan square in the gloom. The next
moment despair fell anew upon him. The sash was down, and secured by
some patent device which he had never before seen, and which baffled
his trembling fingers.
Then he did scream,--a shrill, muffled cry,--so unlike his sturdy
boyish halloo that he hardly recognized his own voice. Somehow it
rescued him from the torpor that was stealing over him. He knew that it
would rouse those within to a danger of which they had not dreamed. In
another moment he might be helpless in their hands.
Instantly he tore off his shoe. One blow with its heel, and the
shivered glass was flying in every direction. Through the broken pane
he hastily jumped, with the shoe still in his hand. He fell heavily to
the ground, and lay crouching in the shadow close in to the wall.
He had indeed given the alarm. There were swift steps within, and then
an agitated whispering at the window.
The men were evidently frightened at first, but soon sought to reassure
themselves. It was nothing, they said,--the glass was doubtless broken
by some accident; a passer-by might have thrown a stone, or perhaps
a cracked pane had loosened and fallen out at this crucial moment.
"I know that there hollerin' mus' have been a long way off yonder
somewhers, anyhow," declared the thickset man. "It sounded sorter
muffled an' far-like."
The "first player" seemed to acquiesce, and then silence ensued.
When Ned felt that he could breathe, he gathered up his sore bones
and ran down the alley, up the side street, and out upon the broad,
deserted avenue. The lamps were all out, municipal thrift trusting
for illumination to the wavering moon. A blue light glimmering far
up the dusky hill told him that the "owl car" had just passed. An
hour or so must elapse before another would appear, for they ran at
long intervals. He looked about for a policeman. He saw none. The
city seemed dead. He was unfamiliar with this quarter of the town,
but as he sped along he came within sight of a city square. There he
knew, under the trees, were often tramps, spending the night on the
benches,--sometimes loafers of a better class belated and sleeping off
the effect of their potations. Doubtless some of them would know where
was the nearest police station or fire-alarm. All that he had seen
seemed now so like a dream that he wondered whether after all he were
not mistaken, whether the "first player" could really intend to burn
the theatre.
As he paused for breath he glanced back in the direction of the
building and diagonally across the darkly massed trees of the
square. The high steeple of the cathedral was purpling slowly in
the dun-colored gloom. Its gilded cross sprang suddenly into view,
emblazoned upon the night like a sign in the sky. The dense foliage of
the square was outlined against an angry crimson glare in the distance,
ever widening and ever deepening. Into its midst a yellow pennon of
flame flaunted to the breeze. The heavy tones of a fire-bell smote the
silence suddenly.
There was a movement under the trees. The loungers on the benches were
waking. Far up dark intersecting streets came the swift footfalls
of boys, who spring up mysteriously at any hour of the night or
day, eager to crowd around a fire. There was too the heavy tread of
unseen policemen striding through the gloom. The sharp gong of the
hose-carriage clamoring in the distance cleared a pass-way for the
swinging gallop of its white horses. As it flashed around the corner
and whirled out of sight in a second it looked like the chariot and
coursers of Phœbus called out on a false alarm of dawn. Two or three
hoarse drunken voices were aimlessly calling "Fi-ah! Fi-ah!" and one
small boy, excitedly tangling his suspenders as he sought to adjust
them, ran along in the middle of the street ceaselessly vociferating,
"Number Six is a-comin'!"
And sure enough here was Number Six cumbrously rocking and swaying up
the street, a big, polished, glittering monster, leaving a glowing
path of live coals behind it and emitting a cloud of the blackest
smoke. The driver of the engine was whipping like mad; its horses were
plunging and rearing, and straining every nerve and muscle; its guard
of honor, all the boys in the ward, ran admiringly on either side. Ned
joined them from force of habit, taking the way back to the burning
theatre, dodging at the first crossing the sudden on-rush of the team
of the hook-and-ladder truck.
The smoke had hidden the moon and stars. Its murky canopy overhung the
massive building and the vast crowd, all illuminated by the angry red
flames darting from roof and windows. The jets of water rose high in
dusky, half-descried curves, and fell hissing into the conflagration
within. There were many of these ill-defined arches spanning the grim
panorama, for Number Nine was in the alley, two other engines stood in
the side street, two were in front of the building, and still three
others guarded the safety of the block above. The firemen in their
helmets and uniforms, some enveloped in long rubber coats, were here,
there, and everywhere. They might have seemed the weird spirits of the
flame, seen through its writhings and contortions as if they were in
its very midst. Presently word was passed about the crowd that their
efforts were subduing the terrible element. Ned watched with painful
anxiety their exertions. He remembered many a scene like this when he
had reveled in the noise and excitement, when a fire had seemed only a
grand spectacular display, its interest heightened by the commensurate
danger and gallant courage of the firemen. Then he had had no thought
of the loss which it represented, the distress, the men thrown out of
employment, a great financial factor blotted from commercial progress.
Now, how feverishly he hoped that the building might be saved,--that
the deep iniquity of which he had gained full knowledge by his own
wrong-doing might be thwarted! He felt that he could hardly live
carrying this secret, and yet he had already promised himself never
to divulge it. He said to himself that he might not always be able to
keep the curb on circumstance. His story might be doubted, or only half
believed. He might draw suspicion on himself,--implicate himself in
the crime of arson. That meant the Penitentiary,--and a long term. His
narrative would be in part a confession. He had choused the management
out of half a dollar,--and that was stealing! He must first impeach
his own honesty, then ask to be believed when he accused others. And
what might not these others say in contradiction and recrimination!
Were they not as likely to be believed as he? Certainly a boy who stole
could scarcely hope he would not be suspected of other crimes if there
were any evidence against him. Ned dreaded too the malignity of the
men,--if they were capable of firing the theatre they were capable
of falsely accusing him. No!--no!--he would never tell that he had
witnessed any drama on those boards save the tragedy of Hamlet.
Was the fire less than before? They said so. It seemed to him hotter,
redder, fiercer. Before long he knew that the fight was hopeless. The
west wall gave way. Through the great gaps the stage became visible.
The flames were licking up first one and then another of the many
heavy "sets." As the lurid glare was flung upon some representation of
Alpine heights or moonlit lake, or grim castle battlements or bosky
woodland scene,--idealized infinitely in its unique frame of wreathing
flames,--the crowd gave it "hands," as an audience is wont to applaud
some fine new manifestation of the scene-painter's art.
It seemed to Ned, knowing what he did, very melancholy. He shook his
head, and his heart was heavy.
As he stood there a familiar face attracted his attention.
"Is that you, Tom?" he called out.
"Nothin' shorter," replied a stout, undersized boy, nodding a round
bullet head, surmounted by an old gray cap.
"Wher' 's Pete?" demanded Ned, for this was Pete's brother.
"I s'posed he wuz along of you. I seen ye together after dark a-makin'
off."
"Naw,--he hain't been with me sence." Ned hesitated.
A look of blank surprise was on Tom's face. "I made sure he wuz with
you," he said. "Pete hain't been home this night."