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“Garn, ’e’s going good.”
“So ’e may be going good. And for why? Becos ’e’s squiffy.”
Ten minutes passed. Mike thought: “This affair has definitely not gone according to plan.” He listened. Some kind of tension seemed to be building up on the stage. Ca
Mike’s flesh leapt on his bones and Cumberland went into his dressing-rooms. Mike heard the key turn in the door. The smell of alcohol mingled with the smell of gunpowder. A stage-hand moved to a trestle table and laid a pistol on it. The actor with the eyeglass made an exit. He spoke for a moment to the stage-manager, passed Mike and disappeared in the passage.
Smells. There were all sorts of smells. Subconsciously, still listening to the play, he began to sort them out. Glue. Canvas. Greasepaint. The call-boy tapped on the doors. “Mr. George, please.” “Miss Bourne, please.” They came out, Coralie Bourne with her dresser. Mike heard her turn a door handle and say something. An indistinguishable voice answered her. Then she and her dresser passed him. The others spoke to her and she nodded and then seemed to withdraw into herself, waiting with her head bent, ready to make her entrance. Presently she drew back, walked swiftly to the door in the set; flung it open and swept on, followed a minute later by Barry George.
Smells. Dust, stale paint, cloth. Gas. Increasingly, the smell of gas.
The group of stage-hands moved away behind the set to the side of the stage. Mike edged out of cover. He could see the prompt-corner. The stage-manager stood there with folded arms, watching the action. Behind him were grouped the players who were not on. Two dressers stood apart, watching. The light from the set caught their faces. Coralie Bourne’s voice sent phrases flying like birds into the auditorium.
Mike began peering at the floor. Had he kicked some gas fitting adrift? The call-boy passed him, stared at him over his shoulder and went down the passage, tapping. “Five minutes to the curtain, please. Five minutes.” The actor with the elderly make-up followed the call-boy out. “God, what a stink of gas,” he whispered. “Chronic, ain’t it?” said the call-boy. They stared at Mike and then crossed to the waiting group. The man said something to the stage-manager who tipped his head up, sniffing. He made an impatient gesture and turned back to the prompt-box, reaching over the prompter’s head. A bell rang somewhere up in the flies and Mike saw a stage-hand climb to the curtain platform.
The little group near the prompt corner was agitated. They looked back towards the passage entrance. The call-boy nodded and came ru
Mike ran into the passage. The call-boy coughed retchingly and jerked his hand at the door. “Gas!”
“Break it in.”
“I’ll get Mr. Reynolds.”
He was gone. It was a narrow passage. From halfway across the opposite room Mike took a run, head down, shoulder forward, at the door. It gave a little and a sickening increase in the smell caught him in the lungs. A vast storm of noise had broken out and as he took another run he thought: “It’s hailing outside.”
“Just a minute if you please, sir.”
It was a stage-hand. He’d got a hammer and screwdriver. He wedged the point of the screwdriver between the lock and the doorpost, drove it home and wrenched. The screws squeaked, the wood splintered and gas poured into the passage. “No winders,” coughed the stage-hand.
Mike wound Alleyn’s scarf over his mouth and nose. Half-forgotten instructions from anti-gas drill occurred to him. The room looked queer but he could see the man slumped down in the chair quite clearly. He stooped low and ran in.
He was knocking against things as he backed out, lugging the dead weight. His arms tingled. A high insistent voice hummed in his brain. He floated a short distance and came to earth on a concrete floor among several pairs of legs. A long way off, someone said loudly: “I can only thank you for being so kind to what I know, too well, is a very imperfect play.” Then the sound of hail began again. There was a heavenly stream of clear air flowing into his mouth and nostrils. “I could eat it,” he thought and sat up.
The telephone rang. “Suppose,” Mrs. Alleyn suggested, “that this time you ignore it.”
“It might be the Yard,” Alleyn said, and answered it.
“Is that Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn’s flat? I’m speaking from the Jupiter Theatre. I’ve rung up to say that the Chief Inspector is here and that he’s had a slight mishap. He’s all right, but I think it might be as well for someone to drive him home. No need to worry.”
“What sort of mishap?” Alleyn asked.
“Er—well—er, he’s been a bit gassed.”
“Gassed! All right. Thanks, I’ll come.”
“What a bore for you darling,” said Mrs. Alleyn. “What sort of case is it? Suicide?”
“Masquerading within the meaning of the act, by the sound of it. Mike’s in trouble.”
“What trouble, for Heaven’s sake?”
“Got himself gassed. He’s all right. Good night darling. Don’t wait up.”
When he reached the theatre, the front of the house was in darkness. He made his way down the side alley to the stage-door where he was held up,
“Yard,” he said, and produced his official card.
“ ’Ere,” said the stage-doorkeeper, “ ’ow many more of you?”
“The man inside was working for me,” said Alleyn and walked in. The doorkeeper followed, protesting.
To the right of the entrance was a large scenic dock from which the double doors had been rolled back. Here Mike was sitting in an armchair, very white about the lips. Three men and two women, all with painted faces, stood near him and behind them a group of stage-hands with Reynolds, the stage-manager, and, apart from these, three men in evening dress. The men looked woodenly shocked. The women had been weeping.
“I’m most frightfully sorry, sir,” Mike said. “I’ve tried to explain. This,” he added generally, “is Inspector Alleyn.”
“I can’t understand all this,” said the oldest of the men in evening dress irritably. He turned on the doorkeeper. “You said—”
“I seen ’is card—”
“I know,” said Mike, “but you see—”
“This is Lord Michael Lamprey,” Alleyn said. “A recruit to the Police Department. What’s happened here?”
“Doctor Rankin, would you—?”
The second of the men in evening dress came forward. “All right, Gosset. It’s a bad business, Inspector. I’ve just been saying the police would have to be informed. If you’ll come with me—”
Alleyn followed him through a door onto the stage proper. It was dimly lit. A trestle table had been set up in the centre and on it, covered with a sheet, was an unmistakable shape. The smell of gas, strong everywhere, hung heavily about the table.
“Who is it?”
“Ca
“I’d better look at the room. Anybody been in?”
“God, no. It was a job to clear it. They turned the gas off at the main. There’s no window. They had to open the double doors at the back of the stage and a small outside door at the end of the passage. It may be possible to get in now.”
He led the way to the dressing-room passage. “Pretty thick, still,” he said. “It’s the first room on the right. They burst the lock. You’d better keep down near the floor.”