The Destroying Angel Part 13

In the hush Max cried impatiently: "What the devil!" The words broke the spell of amazement upon the actress. In a twinkling the pitiful counterfeit of the shop-girl was rent and torn away; it hung only in shreds and tatters upon an individuality wholly strange to Whitaker: a larger, stronger woman seemed to have started out of the mask.

She turned, calling imperatively into the wings: "_Ring down!_"

Followed a pause of dumb amazement. In all the house, during the s.p.a.ce of thirty pulse-beats, no one moved. Then Max rapped out an oath and slipped like quicksilver from the box.

Simultaneously the woman's foot stamped an echo from the boards.

"Ring down!" she cried. "Do you hear? Ring down!"

With a rush the curtain descended as pandemonium broke out on both sides of it.

VII

THE LATE EXTRA

Impulsively Whitaker got up to follow Max, then hesitated and sank back in doubt, his head awhirl. He was for the time being shocked out of all capacity for clear reasoning or right thinking. Uppermost in his consciousness he had a half-formed notion that it wouldn't help matters if he were to force himself in upon the crisis behind the scenes.

Beyond all question his wife had recognized in him the man whom she had been given every reason to believe dead: a discovery so unnerving as to render her temporarily unable to continue. But if theatrical precedent were a reliable guide, she would presently pull herself together and go on; people of the stage seldom forget that their first duty is to the audience. If he sat tight and waited, all might yet be well--as well as any such hideous coil could be hoped ever to be....

As has been indicated, he arrived at his conclusion through no such detailed argument; his mind leaped to it, and he rested upon it while still beset by a half-score of tormenting considerations.

This, then, explained Drummond's reluctance to have him bidden to the supper party; whatever ultimate course of action he planned to pursue, Drummond had been unwilling, perhaps pardonably so, to have his romance overthrown and altogether shattered in a single day.

And Drummond, too, must have known who Sara Law was, even while denying knowledge of the existence of Mary Ladislas Whitaker. He had lied, lied desperately, doubtless meaning to encompa.s.s a marriage before Whitaker could find his wife, and so furnish him with every reason that could influence an honourable man to disappear a second time.

Herein, moreover, lay the reason for the lawyer's failure to occupy his stall on that farewell night. It was just possible that Whitaker would not recognize his wife; and _vice versa_; but it was a chance that Drummond hadn't the courage to face. Even so, he might have hidden himself somewhere in the house, waiting and watching to see what would happen.

On the other hand, Max to a certainty was ignorant of the relations.h.i.+p between his star and his old-time friend, just as he must have been ignorant of her ident.i.ty with the one-time Mary Ladislas. For that matter, Whitaker had to admit that, d.a.m.ning as was the evidence to controvert the theory, Drummond might be just as much in the dark as Max was. There was always the chance that the girl had kept her secret to herself, inviolate, informing neither her manager nor the man she had covenanted to wed. Drummond's absence from the house might be due to any one of a hundred reasons other than that to which Whitaker inclined to a.s.sign it. It was only fair to suspend judgment. In the meantime....

The audience was getting beyond control. The clamour of comment and questioning which had broken loose when the curtain fell was waxing and gaining a high querulous note of impatience. In the gallery the G.o.ds were beginning to testify to their normal intolerance with shrill whistles, cat-calls, sporadic bursts of hand-clapping and a steady, sinister rumble of stamping feet. In the orchestra and dress-circle people were moving about restlessly and talking at the top of their voices in order to make themselves heard above the growing din. Had there been music to fill the interval, they might have been more calm; but Max had fallen in with the theatrical _dernier cri_ and had eliminated orchestras from his houses, employing only a peal of gongs to insure silence and attention before each curtain.

Abruptly Max himself appeared at one side of the proscenium arch. It was plain to those nearest the stage that he was seriously disturbed. There was a noticeable hesitancy in his manner, a pathetic frenzy in his habitually mild and l.u.s.trous eyes. Advancing halfway to the middle of the ap.r.o.n, he paused, begging attention with a pudgy hand. It was a full minute before the gallery would let him be heard.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he announced plaintively, "I much regret to inform you that Miss Law has suffered a severe nervous shock"--his gaze wandered in perplexed inquiry toward the right-hand stage-box, then was hastily averted--"and will not be able to continue for a few moments. If you will kindly grant us your patience for a very few minutes...." He backed precipitately from view, hounded by mocking applause.

A lull fell, but only temporarily. As the minutes lengthened, the gallery grew more and more obstreperous and turbulent. Wave upon wave of sound swept through the auditorium to break, roaring, against the obdurate curtain. When eventually a second figure appeared before the footlights, the audience seemed to understand that Max dared not show himself again, and why. It was with difficulty that the man--evidently the stage-manager--contrived to make himself disconnectedly audible.

"Ladies and ..." he shouted, sweat beading his perturbed forehead ...

"regret ... impossible to continue ... money ... box-office...."

An angry howl drowned him out. He retreated at accelerated discretion.

Whitaker, slipping through the stage-door behind the boxes, ran into the last speaker standing beside the first entrance, heatedly explaining to any one who would listen the utter futility of offering box-office prices in return for seat checks which in the majority of instances had cost their holders top-notch speculator prices.

"They'll wreck the theatre," he shouted excitedly, mopping his brow with his coat sleeve, "and d.a.m.ned if I blame 'em! What t'ell'd she wana pull a raw one like this for?"

Whitaker caught his arm in a grasp compelling attention.

"Where's Miss Law?" he asked.

"You tell me and I'll make you a handsome present," retorted the man.

"What's happened to her? Can't you find her?"

"I dunno--go ask Max."

"Where is _he_?"

"You can search me; last I saw of him he was tearing the star dressin'-room up by the roots."

Whitaker hurried on just in time to see Max disappearing in the direction of the stage-door, at which point he caught up with him, and from the manager's disjointed catechism of the doorkeeper garnered the information that the star had hurried out of the building while Max was making his announcement before the curtain.

Max swung angrily upon Whitaker.

"Oh, it's you, is it? Perhaps you can explain what this means? She was looking straight at you when she dried up! I saw her--"

"Perhaps you'd better find Miss Law and ask her," Whitaker interrupted.

"Have you any idea where she's gone?"

"Home, probably," Max snapped in return.

"Where's that?"

"Fifty-seventh Street--house of her own--just bought it."

"Come on, then." Pa.s.sing his arm through the manager's, Whitaker drew him out into the alley. "We'll get a taxi before this mob--"

"But, look here--what business've _you_ got mixing in?"

"Ask Miss Law," said Whitaker, shortly. It had been on the tip of his tongue to tell the man flatly: "I'm her husband." But he retained wit enough to deny himself the satisfaction of this shattering rejoinder. "I know her," he added; "that's enough for the present."

"If you knew her all the time, why didn't you say so?" Max expostulated with pa.s.sion.

"I didn't know I knew her--by that name," said Whitaker lamely.

At the entrance to the alley Max paused to listen to the uproar within his well-beloved theatre.

"I'd give five thousand gold dollars if I hadn't met you this afternoon!" he groaned.

"It's too late, now," Whitaker mentioned the obvious. "But if I'd understood, I promise you I wouldn't have come--at least to sit where she could see me."

He began gently to urge Max toward Broadway, but the manager hung back like a sulky child.

"h.e.l.l!" he grumbled. "I always knew that woman was a Jonah!"