“Now, Mr. Mandeville,” said Miss Talbot, tapping him on the arm with animated persistence, “you simply must let us see that rehearsal. We can’t come tonight, and we don’t want to. We want to see all the funny people in the wrong clothes.”
“Of course I can give you a box if you wish it,” said Mandeville hastily. “Perhaps your ladyship would come this way.” And he led them off down another corridor.
“I wonder,” said Jarvis in a meditative manner, “whether even Mandeville prefers that sort of woman.”
“Well,” asked his clerical companion, “have you any reason to suppose that Mandeville does prefer her?”
Jarvis looked at him steadily for an instant before answering.
“Mandeville is a mystery,” he said gravely. “Oh, yes, I know that he looks about as commonplace a cad as ever walked down Piccadilly. But he really is a mystery for all that. There’s something on his conscience. There’s a shadow in his life. And I doubt whether it has anything more to do with a few fashionable flirtations than it has with his poor neglected wife. If it has, there’s something more in them than meets the eye. As a matter of fact, I happen to know rather more about it than anyone else does, merely by accident. But even I can’t make anything of what I know, except a mystery.”
He looked around him in the vestibule to see that they were alone and then added, lowering his voice:
“I don’t mind telling you, because I know you are a tower of silence where secrets are concerned. But I had a curious shock the other day; and it has been repeated several times since. You know that Mandeville always works in that little room at the end of the passage, just under the stage. Well, twice over I happened to pass by there when everyone thought he was alone; and what’s more, when I myself happened to be able to account for all the women in the company, and all the women likely to have to do with him, being absent or at their usual posts.”
“All the women?” remarked Father Brown inquiringly.
“There was a woman with him,” said Jarvis almost in a whisper. “There is some woman who is always visiting him; somebody that none of us knows. I don’t even know how she comes there, since it isn’t down the passage to the door; but I think I once saw a veiled or cloaked figure passing out into the twilight at the back of the theatre, like a ghost. But she can’t be a ghost. And I don’t believe she’s even an ordinary ‘affair.’ I don’t think it’s lovemaking. I think it’s blackmail.”
“What makes you think that?” asked the other.
“Because,” said Jarvis, his face turning from grave to grim, “I once heard sounds like a quarrel; and then the strange woman said in a metallic, menacing voice, four words: ‘I am your wife.’ ”
“You think he’s a bigamist,” said Father Brown reflectively. “Well, bigamy and blackmail often go together, of course. But she may be bluffing as well as blackmailing. She may be mad. These theatrical people often have monomaniacs running after them. You may be right, but I shouldn’t jump to conclusions. … And talking about theatrical people, isn’t the rehearsal going to begin, and aren’t you a theatrical person?”
“I’m not on in this scene,” said Jarvis with a smile. “They’re only doing one act, you know, until your Italian friend comes to her senses.”
“Talking about my Italian friend,” observed the priest, “I should rather like to know whether she has come to her senses.”
“We can go back and see, if you like,” said Jarvis; and they descended again to the basement and the long passage, at one end of which was Mandeville’s study and at the other the closed door of Signora Maroni. The door seemed to be still closed; and Mrs. Sands sat grimly outside it, as motionless as a wooden idol.
Near the other end of the passage they caught a glimpse of some of the other actors in the scene mounting the stairs to the stage just above. Vernon and old Randall went ahead, running rapidly up the stairs; but Mrs. Mandeville went more slowly, in her quietly dignified fashion, and Norman Knight seemed to linger a little to speak to her. A few words fell on the ears of the unintentional eavesdroppers as they passed.
“I tell you a woman visits him,” Knight was saying violently.
“Hush!” said the lady in her voice of silver that still had in it something of steel. “You must not talk like this. Remember, he is my husband.”
“I wish to God I could forget it,” said Knight, and rushed up the stairs to the stage.
The lady followed him, still pale and calm, to take up her own position there.
“Somebody else knows it,” said the priest quietly; “but I doubt whether it is any business of ours.”
“Yes,” muttered Jarvis; “it seems as if everybody knows it and nobody knows anything about it.”
They proceeded along the passage to the other end, where the rigid attendant sat outside the Italian’s door.
“No, she ain’t come out yet,” said the woman in her sullen way; “and she ain’t dead, for I heard her moving about now and then. I dunno what tricks she’s up to.”
“Do you happen to know, ma’am,” said Father Brown with abrupt politeness, “where Mr. Mandeville is just now?”
“Yes,” she replied promptly. “Saw him go into his little room at the end of the passage a minute or two ago; just before the prompter called and the curtain went up. Must be there still, for I ain’t seen him come out.”
“There’s no other door to his office, you mean,” said Father Brown in an offhand way. “Well, I suppose the rehearsal’s going in full swing now, for all the Signora’s sulking.”
“Yes,” said Jarvis after a moment’s silence. “I can just
