The blond man ignored her. “Marshal! See you a sec?” He was tense, keyed up.
“Hate to give up this reserved seat,” Pedley excused himself to Doranne, “Might not get it back after intermission.” He followed Fehlman to the cramped hallway.
“Want to show you something.” The treasurer took Pedley’s arm. “After you threw a scare into me, hour or so ago, I took a tour around the theatre.” He urged haste. “It’s on the west aisle — and the curtain’ll go up in a minute.”
The orchestra swept into the strains of the hit tune, Story at Bedtime. The house lights dimmed. The hive-like buzz which rose from the audience began to quiet.
“Here!” Fehlman led the marshal to one of the big, steel escape doors. “See this?”
Around the push-bar which opened the panic-lock was a double loop of galvanized wire, preventing the bar from being shoved inward. Wired so no amount of frenzied pressure on the door could force it open.
Pedley said, “This the only one?” The wire hadn’t been there when he’d made his examination; he was sure about that.
“They were all the same way.” Fehlman wiped sweat off his forehead. “I got some pliers from the electrician and twisted the others off, but I wanted you to see this one.” He produced the pliers.
The marshal used them.
A wave of clapping surged across the footlights as the curtain went up on a row of nightgowned chorines doing a kind of combination conga-hula.
Pedley got the wire free. He strode up the carpeted slope of the side aisle to the curtained partition behind the last row of seats. “Nobody could’ve done a job like that after the customers began to come in, Fehlman.”
“I know it,” the treasurer admitted. “But before that the house was dark, anyone could have come in from backstage. The cast, stagehands, dressers, costume people, visitors — anyone of a hundred people.”
“Any wire like this around the theatre?”
“House carpenter says it’s the kind of stuff they use to hang ventilating ducts. There’ve been some men working down cellar replacing some that’d rusted out. But why would anyone do a thing like that! Unless—”
“Yair.” Pedley moved down the aisle to gaze up at the electricians’ booth high above the second balcony. In the funneling cones from the spotlights, dust quivered in the hot air like heat waves above desert sand. Accumulated heat of the crow’d might raise the temperature enough to cause that distortion, still...
He moved quietly along the steps leading backstage.
In the wings, a brick-faced uniformed man, with a maltese cross on the visor of his cap, lounged against a property trunk, eyeing with pretended boredom the scanty-panties doing a shuffle-off to brassy music.
“Dickson,” Pedley kept his voice low.
“Something, Marshal?”
“Let’s give ’em a quick feel.”
Chapter Three
Fire! Help! Fire!
They ran their hands along the side walls, patted the flimsy partition which separated the dressing rooms from the property man’s cubicle and the costume mistress’s rack-room. Damply warm, but no suggestive heat.
Above them, the thudding cadence of the soft shoe number paced the hit song:
Dickson muttered, “They pour on that steam, night like this, Marshal, so th’ house’ll be good ’n warm when th’ show starts. Y’ can’t have a socko smash like this, with people sittin’ on their mitts.”
“Feel the floor along that side wall,” Pedley said.
“Yes, sir. Them cuties get goose-pimples any time they get th’ temperature below seventy.”
“You been around while that outfit was working on the vents?” Pedley climbed a bench to stroke the ceiling plaster in the prop room.
“No, sir. Management won’t let ’em work on matinee pee-ems. Hammer on those pipes down cellar, voom! You can hear it all over th’ house like a bass drum.”
“Yair.” What Pedley could hear was the silent alarm of those wired escape-doors; they made a noise like fear-crazed panic. “You keep givin’ em the pat. I’m going up, phone in a Stand By.”
“Jeeze.” Dickson’s eyes bulged. “You got a tipoff they’s a pyro in th’ house, Marshal?”
“You keep your eyes open. And not on those babes. I’ll be back, few minutes.”
The chorus was doing precision steps to Lily Lacazette’s introduction to the Twoette when he came out into the side aisle. A rainbow of negligees swirled around long-stemmed lovelies while Doranne and Val Kreston, her leading man, crooned to a spotlighted cage of ivory-white love birds:
When he came back from the phone booth, he watched her a minute. She gets ’em excited, all right, he thought. Half the guys in the audience looked as if they’d like to climb up on the stage and put the slug on that hunk of he-man who was nuzzling Doranne’s throat in the final clinch. And the dames seemed to get a belt out of her sexiness, too.
The encore was the payoff to the Twoette. When she came back to let the white parakeets out of their cage to take the bows with her, the birds went to work on the bows that held her dress, her slip, her underthings. The music quickened, mounted. The lights dimmed until the strip tease was focused in one huge amber spotlight.
Doranne pretended to fight off the pecking birds and fled to the wings in feigned embarrassment. The applause thundered. She had to beg-off after the ninth bow.
Val Kreston came on for a burlesque of the strip, the love birds stopping at loosening his bow tie. The chorus returned in Bikinis for the sun-bath number.
Pedley scanned the center bank of seats; no one resembling Wilter. He went to the balconies. No sign of the firebug there, either.
He stopped at the box-office. George wasn’t around.
“Maybe he’s backstage,” the ticket-seller suggested. “He got the house count about five minutes—” He stopped, his mouth open.
The scream was muffled, but it could be heard indistinctly over the fast tempo of the beach number.
“Fire! Help! Help! F-i-r-e!” It was Doranne’s voice, somewhere backstage.
Pedley said, “Phone Fire Department Emergency! Jump!”
The man jumped.
Pedley grabbed the nearest usher. “Yank these lobby doors open. Fast! Now!”
“Y... yessir.”
The marshal beckoned another usher. “Get the people in those rear seats up and out. Pronto. Don’t let ’em mill around at th’ coat check. Hop to it!”
There was no need for a cry of fire, now. The smoke oozed out from the right wings like a misshapen cauliflower. The orchestra leader kept his men playing at top pitch but looked around nervously at the stampede in the aisles. Val Kreston stood front and center with both hands raised in a placating gesture.
“Take it easy, take it easy — everybody! This is a fireproof theatre! That’s just a lot of smoke back there! They’ll have it out in a minute! Nobody’s going to get hurt! Don’t rush! Don’t push! Take your time folks.”
Good boy, Pedley cheered him, wordlessly. You don’t know whether it’s just a lot of smoke or a barbecue coming up, but you’re playing it right. He went down the side aisle, shoving open the escape doors as he went. Cold air blasted in from the alley.
The pandemonium was backstage. The smoke was thick, nauseous. The dense fog was pierced only by hoarse shouts, frantic cries.