“Not for me,” he said, and he started to make his way out. After a moment, two or three of the others started to follow him.
“As you wish, gentlemen,” Whitlock called after them, trying to make the best of this unwelcome response but failing to disguise a growing anxiety at a plan that was falling apart before his eyes. “This prize is not for all.”
“You’re afraid, sir,” one of them shot back. “You’re no advertisement for your own bargain.”
“If damnation’s such a prize,” called another, “how come Irving’s in the Lyceum while you scratch for pennies on the circuit? Who did
Some of them laughed. Another said, “Your gift is no gift, sir, it’s a burden. I’d happily take the lady. But I’ll have none of you.”
By now, the sounds of people rising and leaving were coming from all parts of the stalls. Dark shapes were moving across the rows like ghosts, heading for the aisles and the exits.
Whitlock lost his composure. He took Louise by the arm and roughly thrust her forward to the footlights where, with a savage jerk, he ripped open the front of her new dress. In that one move, he tore open her bodice, her chemise, everything. The force of it almost threw her off her balance. She grasped at the ripped material and held it together. She was embarrassed, but she did not actively resist.
“One man!” Whitlock roared at the departing group. It was a tragedian’s yell, meant to stir and inspire, but it did no more than betray his desperation. “One man with real blood in his veins!”
And from the back of the hall came a voice that said, “May one inspect the merchandise?”
With the sudden focus of a wolf spotting the weakling in the chaos of a panicking flock, Whitlock turned all of his attention to the tall figure that was moving down the center aisle. Or perhaps it was the drowning man’s interest in the one line that he might be able to reach.
Dressed like all the others, no more recognizable in the shadows than any of them, the man was raising a hand to shade his eyes against the footlights’ glare.
“An inspection?” Whitlock said. “But of course.” He pushed Louise, propelling her forward, and she took a couple of stumbling steps toward the runway. It extended out from the footlights and across the orchestra pit to end over the front row of the stalls.
Recovering her balance, holding her ripped bodice together, she walked with some recovered measure of dignity to the end of the runway. There she stood, self-conscious but straight-backed, to present herself for inspection. Alone, with the darkness of the empty orchestra pit to either side of her, she looked ahead and waited. He was interested, or he wasn’t. Whichever it was, she did not care.
From down in the stalls, the man said in a low voice, “Is this what you want, Miss Porter?”
“No, sir,” she said. “But it is what I deserve.”
“Do not believe that,” he said. “And do not dishonor yourself for his purposes. You are worth so much more.”
She looked then. He was standing down there with his face upturned, still using one hand to shade his eyes.
She saw that this gesture was meant as much to conceal his features from the others as anything else. She saw him glance in the direction of the Silent Man, still armed and ready for trouble. Then he held out his other hand toward her, as if she might crouch and take it and so be helped down from the stage.
“Tom?” she said in a small and broken voice.
“Come,” he said, low enough for only her to hear. “You have seen the man’s nature and learned his purpose now. Can’t you see that I spoke the truth?”
For those out in the auditorium and in the wings, she betrayed no sign of having recognized him. She kept her face blank, and barely spoke.
“Leave here,” she said. “Leave while you can, before it is too late. Forget me.”
“How can I?”
“You must. He has me. I am lost. Go, Tom. Save yourself.”
Sayers began to say something more. But at that moment, the shooting began.
Splinters flew. Bullets were thudding into the seats around him. The Silent Man had stepped forward and taken aim, and he was emptying his revolver in Tom Sayers’ direction. Sayers knew that he’d been recognized. He threw himself down.
Up on the stage, Louise did not move. She barely flinched as the theater echoed with a tattoo of pistol shots. Those who’d been halfway out were diving to the floor or scrambling for the exits; those who had not yet left their seats were jumping up out of them now. There was panic, with little sense of how best to achieve safety. Sayers was aware of at least one man clambering onto the stage.
The shooting stopped as suddenly as it had begun, all chambers emptied. None had touched Sayers, but a rising cry from the other side of the stalls suggested that at least one of the bullets had found a living target. Up on the stage, Whitlock had grabbed Louise and was dragging her toward the wings.
There was a rumble from above. Sayers looked up and saw the descending safety curtain; someone backstage had tripped the counterweight release, and the five-ton sheet of asbestos and metal was coming down like a guillotine.
Sayers took a leap at the end of the runway and pulled himself up onto the stage. “Iron flying in!” he roared in warning to anyone within earshot. Once the fire curtain was down, there would be no way to move between the auditorium and the backstage area. And anyone standing in the wrong spot when it fell would be crushed, or worse.
The “iron” hit the stage within a second of his passing under it, the weight of it shaking the boards and sending a booming echo through the cellarage below. Dust rose from the wood as if from a beaten carpet.
If the stage had been boxed in for magic, as Stoker had said, then Whitlock and his cronies would now have only one way out. But where would their exit be located? Sayers had never played the Egyptian Hall or brought a company here, so he could only guess. He guessed stage left, trying to remember the layout of the building as he’d seen it on the way in.
When he reached the back of the wings, it was to find the pass door closed, with the inert body of the Silent Man sprawled before it. Another man was standing over him, looking down at the body while barring any exit from the stage with the Silent Man’s revolver in his hand. Sayers did not recognize him until he looked up and spoke.
“My God, Sayers,” Sebastian Becker said. “Tell me what I’ve walked into.”
Sebastian had entered with the ticket he’d stolen from Whitlock’s rooms, and had taken a seat to one side of the auditorium. He’d had no idea what to expect. When he’d seen Whitlock stepping forward and offering his young ward for immoral purposes like a slave at the block, he’d been dismayed. He’d never known such a thing—at least, not outside the pages of banned fiction. The lower orders might trade their women and slap them around, but these were not brutes. These were men with clean shirts, and fortunes.
He’d hesitated to act until the shooting began. Then his duty became clear. As the others panicked, he moved down the rows and when he saw his chance, he climbed onto the stage. When the safety curtain fell, he was already behind it. His first aim was to surprise and disarm the gunman. The man was looking out for his master and failed to see Sebastian, who took no chances and felled him with a blow.
Now Sayers said to him, “If you were there when Whitlock spoke, then I need tell you nothing more. Did he leave this way?”
“No one has gone by me.”
“Then they have trapped themselves, and are looking for another way out.”
“I believe that’s so.”
Sebastian crouched down, and went through the shaven-headed man’s coat. He was looking for further ammunition; finding none, he got to his feet and stuck the revolver into his waistband.
Sayers hadn’t waited. He was away already, looking for his Louise, the woman who’d once pushed him in front of a train and had since grown indifferent to her own fate. How much more dedicated to his purpose could a man be? Sebastian listened, and could hear him calling her name; he also heard something else, from under his feet…a thump, like a slamming door in some other part of the building, but coming from below.
“Sayers!” he called out. “They are under the stage!” But either Sayers could not hear him or was already on
