The three who sat in the front row of the stalls—how Leon Gonsalez secured these tickets was one of the minor mysteries of the day—saw her, and one at least felt his heart ache.
Monty beamed his geniality. He had taken sufficient wine to give him a rosy view of the world, and he was even mildly interested in the play, though his chief pleasure was in the girl’s enchantment. He ordered ices for her after the first interval.
“You’re getting quite a theatre fan, kiddie,” he said. “I must take you to some other shows. I had no idea you liked this sort of thing.”
She drew a long breath and smiled at him.
“I like anything when I’m with you,” she said, and they held hands foolishly, till the house lights dimmed and the curtain rose upon a lawyer’s office.
The lawyer was of the underworld: a man everlastingly on the verge of being struck off the rolls. He had betrayed a client with whom he had had dealings, and the man had gone to prison for a long term, but had escaped. Now the news had come that he had left Australia and was in London, waiting his opportunity to destroy the man whose treachery was responsible for his capture.
Here was a note to which the heart of the girl responded. Even Monty found himself leaning forward, as the old familiar cant terms of his trade came across the footlights.
“It is quite all right,” he said at the second interval, “only”—he hesitated—“isn’t it a bit too near the real thing? After all, one doesn’t come to the theatre to see …”
He stopped, realizing that conditions and situations familiar to him were novel enough to a fashionable audience which was learning for the first time that a “busy” was a detective, and that a police informer went by the title of “nose.”
The lights up, he glanced round the house, and suddenly he started and caught her arm.
“Don’t look for a moment,” he said, averting his eyes, “then take a glance at the front row. Do you see anybody you know?”
Presently she looked.
“Yes, that is the fellow you hate so much, isn’t it—Gonsalez?”
“They’re all there—the three of them,” said Monty. “I wonder,”—he was troubled at the thought—“I wonder if they’re looking for you?”
“For me? They’ve nothing on me, Monty.”
He was silent.
“I’m glad you’re not going back to that place tonight. They’ll trail you sure—sure!”
He thought later that it was probably a coincidence that they were there at all. They seemed to show no interest in the box, but were chattering and talking and laughing to one another. Not once did their eyes come up to his level, and after a while he gained in confidence, though he was glad enough when the play was resumed.
There were two scenes in the act: the first was a police station, the second the lawyer’s room. The man was drunk, and the detective had come to warn him that The Ringer was after him. And then suddenly the lights on the stage were extinguished and the whole house was in the dark. It was part of the plot. In this darkness, and in the very presence of the police, the threatened man was to be murdered. They listened in tense silence, the girl craning her head forward, trying to pierce the dark, listening to the lines of intense dialogue that were coming from the blackness of the stage. Somebody was in the room—a woman, and they had found her. She slipped from the stage detective’s grasp and vanished, and when the lights went up she was gone.
“What has happened, Monty?” she whispered.
He did not answer.
“Do you think—”
She looked round at him. His head was resting on the plush-covered ledge of the box. His face, turned towards her, was grey; the eyes were closed, and his teeth showed in a hideous grin.
She screamed.
“Monty! Monty!”
She shook him. Again her scream rang through the house. At first the audience thought that it was a woman driven hysterical by the tenseness of the stage situation, and then one or two people rose from their stalls and looked up.
“Monty! Speak to me! He’s dead, he’s dead!”
Three seats in the front row had emptied. The screams of the hysterical girl made it impossible for the scene to proceed, and the curtain came down quickly.
The house was seething with excitement. Every face was turned towards the box where she knelt by the side of the dead man, clasping him in her arms, and the shrill agony in her voice was unnerving.
The door of the box swung open, and Manfred dashed in. One glance he gave at Monty Newton, and he needed no other.
“Get the girl out,” he said curtly.
Leon tried to draw her from the box, but she was a shrieking fury.
“You did it, you did it! … Let me go to him!”
Leon lifted her from her feet, and, clawing wildly at his face, she was carried from the box.
The manager was running along the passage, and Leon sent him on with a jerk of his head. And then a woman in evening dress came from somewhere.
“May I take her?” she said, and the exhausted girl collapsed into her arms.
Gonsalez flew back to the box. The man was lying on the floor, and the manager, standing at the edge of the box, was addressing the audience.
“The gentleman has fainted, and I’m afraid his friend has become a little hysterical. I must apologize to you, ladies and gentlemen, for this interruption. If you will allow us a minute to clear the box, the play will be resumed. If there is a doctor in the house, I should be glad if he would come.”
There were two doctors within reach, and in the passage, which was now guarded by a commissionaire, a hasty examination was made. They examined the punctured wound
