A few hours ago it had been all lights and bustle. Now the work light—a single bald bulb dangling from a wire in the roof—made a patch of sickly white light in the shadowy stillness. A sudden flutter startled him. Again the canary flew across the patch of light and perched on a rope attached to a pulley overhead. Eyes like black pinheads shone in the faint light.
The murmur of traffic from the world outside only seemed to underscore the silence here. There was something disturbing about that silence—a sense of something beyond it, listening and waiting and watching. No wonder the haunted house is always the empty house he thought, as he left the patch of light and stepped into the deep shadow of the wings.
The double doors leading to the bedroom alcove stood open, as they had stood to-night when the curtain fell, but now the curtain was raised. A faint glow from stars and lighted buildings seeped through a small window in the lobby back of the topmost balcony. In that diluted darkness, Basil faced row upon row of empty seats rising in tiers toward the domed ceiling like something vast and dim in a nightmare. He stood listening to the stillness. There was something else. The sound of a footfall on the other side of the backdrop. He was not alone.
He crossed the stage to the wings at left. He saw only darkness, but he heard footsteps receding. He snapped on his flashlight. The small beam painted monstrous shadows on the dusty tangle of wires and ropes flanking the stage. One of the looped wires was swinging gently to and fro as if someone had brushed it in passing. Underneath it something like a bundle of clothes lay on the floor. He hurried forward and found Pauline.
Forgetting his own danger, he knelt beside her. Dark in the faint light, a thin stream of blood trickled across her wrist. Basil laid his flashlight on the floor and searched for the source of the hemorrhage. To his relief he found it was only a flesh wound in the upper part of the right arm. With a penknife he cut away the sleeve and improvised a dressing with a clean handkerchief of his own. As he worked, he was conscious of a faint odor, familiar yet elusive. He noticed something white on the floor. It was a large white handkerchief, damp and sticky to the touch. When he picked it up the faint odor grew a little stronger. It came from the handkerchief—evanescent and rather sweet like a breath of wind from an orchard. He thrust it in his pocket.
Pauline stirred and opened her eyes. “W-what?”
“You’re all right,” Basil reassured her. “Just a flesh wound that nicked a vein. How did it happen?”
“Someone jumped at me in the darkness. I couldn’t see who it was. I lifted my arm to shield my head. There was a sharp pain in my arm. I don’t remember anything after that.”
“Why did you come back here?”
“To warn you. It was the red curtain—the one with the gold fringe—I mean when I screamed. I couldn’t explain before him, but I saw—”
“Yes. I know. It’s all right.”
“I should have thought of it sooner. After all it’s my job to know about colors.”
“How did you get in?”
“I was going to pound on the door until you heard me. But then I saw the fire door at the top of the fire escape was open.”
“I’m going to find him.” Basil handed her his flashlight. “Keep this on, and if you see anyone, yell.”
Basil crossed the stage to the door at left and passed through to the region backstage. Out here on bare boards his footfalls were hollow and echoing through the auditorium. Would there be an echo in a theater building designed with special attention to acoustics? He stopped walking. The echo went on. It was not an echo at all. Someone else was walking toward the fire escape on the other side of the stage set—someone who must have been crouching in the wings listening to his talk with Pauline. Basil might be able to reach the fire escape ahead of this other person if he turned back and crossed the stage.
Moving as quietly as possible, he returned and through the door at left crossed the stage to the right wing. On the stage itself there was still the vague light from the window behind the top balcony. Beyond the wings there was still that one patch of light cast by a single electric bulb. But in the maze of wings just beyond the wall of
As he stepped into that margin of darkness, a slight sound startled him. He turned his head. He had a fleeting impression of a shadow moving among the other shadows that were still. The image had hardly registered on his retina when something heavy collided with his shoulder. He struck out at it, and his knuckles grazed rough cloth. It pulled away from him with such a violent wrench that he was thrown against a flimsy wall of lath and canvas. Again he was conscious of that vague, sweetish odor. Someone was breathing hard quite near him in the darkness. Then footfalls clattered on the boards, receding again. Someone was running away.
