Doranne lifted her head high. “George! Are you going to let him stand there and tell these hideous lies!”
“Yair, he is,” Pedley answered. “He’s able to figure that you’d have his piece of Bedtime Story if he hadn’t been dragged out of that dressing room. He may even be able to reason out that you were one of the people who could’ve gotten around the theatre before the show began, to wire up those escape doors.”
Doranne cried, “George! He’s trying to crucify me!”
Pedley laughed disagreeably. “You qualify as an expert on that, arranging to roast a thousand people alive. You said something about exciting people. You’d have had enough to last you a dozen lifetimes if George hadn’t noticed those panic-bolts were mucked up.”
George blubbered like a baby.
Doranne ran to him. “He’s trying to throw a scare into you, that’s all, darling.”
“Ask me, there’s no more room for scare in George.” Pedley took her arm. “Besides, right about now he’s realizing you didn’t have any business down in your dressing room when the fire broke out, anyhow. You didn’t have to change costumes during the act, or your dresser’d have been down there waiting for you. You didn’t want something you’d left down there, or you’d have sent George for it. He doesn’t have to have it spelled out.”
Wilter said between his teeth: “That business about always liking to get men lathered up, you got her right on that, fire-laddie. She’s a ball of fire, all right, but she always wants to be rolling along to something new.”
The chimes Hail-Hail-ed.
Pedley said, “George. Go let the Doc in, will you? I have to hang onto the hot number!”