“Hi! You dropped something!”
No answer. Had the wind carried his voice away?
He picked up the booklet. It was a typewritten manuscript bound in paper with brass staples. When he lifted his eyes again, the figure was moving.
Like most theater fire escapes this one was substantial—an outside stairway built of flat iron bars with its first flight anchored securely to the ground. On impulse Basil stuffed the manuscript in his overcoat pocket and started up the stairs. The wind met him half-way, howling and dancing like a dervish over the roofs of the city. The higher he went, the more urgent the blast. He clutched his hat with one hand and clung to the iron railing with the other, while his overcoat flapped about his knees. Through the bars overhead he saw the dark figure move again. It seemed to melt into the wall of the theater. When Basil reached the top landing there was no one there.
At this height, the red glow he had seen from below was flickering all around him, and he could see over the roofs of lower buildings to its source—letters of fire, flashing and fading their message with the regular beat of a pendulum:
Time For Tilbury’s Tea!
Other tubes of neon gas shone uninterruptedly, outlining the hands and numerals of a great clock. At first glance it seemed suspended between heaven and earth without means of support. Then as his eyes grew used to the uncertain light, he saw that the figures of the clock were merely unframed and uncovered, set flush with a block of stone in the darkened tower of a skyscraper that blended with the night sky. It was just eight twenty-five. He glanced at his own watch and found it ten minutes slow. Automatically, he set it right.
Beside him in the theater wall, a fire door stood open. Someone passing through the doorway in a hurry had not given the door a hard enough tug from within to counteract the pull of the wind and catch the snap lock. Basil stepped inside and drew the door after him. He had a brief tug of war with the wind before he got it closed.
He was standing on the top landing of another iron stairway—the sort you see in factory lofts, composing rooms, and other places where durability comes before comfort or beauty. Below, four stories deep, lay the fascinating confusion of a theater backstage on the eve of an important opening. There was no one else on the stairs now, but there were a hundred places in that huge windowless barn where a dark figure might have hidden: the dressing rooms opening onto the staircase; the maze of flies and catwalks overhead; and the wings far below where a mixed crowd of actors, stagehands, firemen, dressers, press agents and men from the producer’s office pullulated like ants around an ant heap. None of them noticed Basil as he stood looking down at them. Like him, none thought to look above eye-level without provocation. Any one of them might have been the dark figure he had seen. Or had the whole thing been an illusion born of the shifting shadows? His hand went to his pocket. The manuscript was still there. That much at least was solid and real.
He took it out and leaned forward to catch the light from below. The cover was made of coarse blue paper. It was labeled:
FEDORA, A Drama in three acts
By Victorien Sardou
He turned the pages. It was an English translation of the old French play, revised and modernized. All Desiré’s lines were crossed out, and all Fedora’s lines were checked with blue pencil. This must be Wanda’s script—the one she had used in learning the part of Fedora. At first he thought there were no other marks. Then he saw that one line spoken by another character had been heavily underscored in lead penciclass="underline"
SIREX: He cannot escape now, every hand is against him!
II
Basil went down the stairs. On each landing he passed a door. On the floor level he saw one embellished with a silver star. He rapped lightly.
The door flew open. “Oh, you’re late. I—Oh . . .”
It was Wanda herself. Dark hair streamed loosely across her shoulders. There was something snakelike about the small, flat head, the long neck, the lithe body and tilted jewel-bright eyes. Sulphurous yellow satin billowed around her—the color of a canary’s plumage. From throat to hem it was fastened with tiny buttons and loops of the same material. There must be at least twenty or thirty of them. Could she have fastened so many tricky little loops in the two or three minutes since he had seen a dark figure on the fire escape?
As she recognized Basil, her smile went out as if someone had snapped off a switch. For a moment her face was a cold, clay mask, painted rather garishly. Then she assumed artificial animation. “Dr. Willing!” This time her smile was a muscular effort. “Will you excuse me? I’m on in the first act, and I must dress now. I do hope you’ll enjoy the play!”
“I’m beginning to enjoy it already.”
Her eyes opened wide. “What do you mean?”
“Hasn’t the play begun already? Or, at least, a play?” He held out the manuscript. “I believe this is yours.” He showed her the first page with all Fedora’s lines checked.
“Why, yes.” But she wasn’t looking at the manuscript. She was looking at the hand that held it. “What have you been doing to your gloves?”
He looked down. The palm of his white glove was streaked with black dust. He laughed. “Your fire escape needs a spring cleaning. I was in the alley just now when you dropped this, and I followed you up the fire escape.”
“Are you crazy? I was never on the fire escape! What would I be doing there?”
“I don’t know, but I couldn’t help wondering. And I couldn’t help thinking it odd that you marked one line spoken by one of the other characters. A rather sinister line.” Basil read it aloud: “He cannot escape now, every hand is against him!”
Wanda’s pupils dilated until her eyes looked almost black. “I never marked that line!”
“Then who did?”
“I don’t know. Why should anyone else mark a line in my script?” Her gaze went beyond him.
He turned. There was no one there, but he had an impression she was waiting for someone.
“You really must excuse me,” she said hurriedly. ‘I’ll see you after the play, I hope.” She stepped backward, closing the door. She had forgotten all about her script.
With something like a shrug, Basil put it back in his overcoat pocket and wandered off in search of a door to the front of the theater.
The stage was already set for the first act. Every way he turned, he was blocked by a frail wall of muslin canvas stretched on frames of lathe, held upright by wooden braces nailed to the floor, and ropes running through pulleys anchored to the roof. It seemed to be the wrong side of a box set enclosing the stage completely on three sides. In the rear wall there was a small three-sided projection—apparently the obverse side of an alcove opening into the set. Beyond this alcove in the right wall of the set there was an open window. Outside the window, a backdrop was painted to represent snow-covered roofs against a starry sky—the view from the window. An electrician was just placing a blue-shaded lamp so that it would shine on the snow to simulate moonlight. A formidable tangle of wires filled the small space beyond, so Basil turned and went around to the opposite side of the set. There he found a door in the canvas wall. Facing it was another backdrop painted to represent a marble wall. In front of the wall stood a small table supporting a bowl of beaten brass. Apparently this was the segment of hallway beyond the door that would be visible to the audience when the door was opened during the action of the play. To an audience under the spell of a dramatic scene, that door would seem to lead to a whole houseful of rooms and beyond to a street and a city full of people. Actually it led to a few inches of backdrop with nothing beyond but the brick wall of the theater.