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Show The DESTROYING ANGEL By Louis Joseph Vance ::o::o::o:vo::o:: Can you imagine yourself dead for five years? Suppose at the end of that time you turned up suddenly : y, among old friends in New York city, asked for an accounting of your estate and announced your intention of ; V finding the girl you had married under pressure before you disappeared much to their shocked surprise! That's H the position in which we find Hugh Whitaker in this installment. How his plans ruin the important plans of ; !? others about him, how he creates a furore at a big theatrical performance and how he finds his wife, is told with 11 dramatic effect. CHAPTER V Continued. 6 Whitaker laughed quietly and turned the conversation, accepling tin- manager's mana-ger's pseudo-confidences at their face Value that is. as pure bluff, quite con-Bisleiit con-Bisleiit with flu.' managerial pose. They rose presently and made their way out Info the crowded, blatant night of Broadway. "We'll walk, If you don't mind," Mux suggested. "It Isn't far, and I'd like to get a line on the house as It goes Jn." He sighed affectedly. "Heaven knows when I'll see another swell audience au-dience mobbing one of my attractions !" They pushed forward slowly through ,tbe eddying tides, elbowed by a niatch-less niatch-less motley of humanity, deafened by lis thousand tongues, dazzled to blind-Tiess blind-Tiess by walls of living light. Whitaker experienced a sensation of participating participat-ing in a royal progress: Max was plainly plain-ly a man of mark ; he left a wake of irippling Interest. At every third step .somebody hailed him, as n rule by his Ifirst name; generally he responded by in curt nod and a tightening of his teeth upon his cigar. They turned east through Forty-sixth Forty-sixth street, shouldered by a denser rabble whose faces, all turned In one direction, shone livid with the glare of n gigantic electric sign, midway down the block : THEATER MAX SAItA LAW'S FAREWELL. It was nearly half-past eight ; the house had been open since seven ; and still a queue ran from the gallery doors to Broadway. The lobby itself was crowded to suffocation with an occidental occi-dental durbar of barbaric magnificence, the city's supreme manifestation of Its religion, the ultimate rite in the worship o the pomps of the flesh. "Looiat that," Max grumbled through "Ts cigar. "Ain't it a shame?" "What?" Whitaker had to lift his voice to make it carry above the buz-Elng buz-Elng of the throng. "The money I'm losing," returned the manager, vividly disgusted. "I Could've tilled the Metropolitan, opera (house three times over!" He swung on his heel and began to .push his way out of the lobby. "Come jnlong no use trying to get in this nay." Whitaker followed, to be led down a Mind alley between the theater and the adjoining hotel. An illuminated sign advertised the stage door, through fwhich, via a brief hallway, they entered en-tered the postscenlum and Max drng- i;iug him by the arm passed through i small door Into the gangway behind he boxes. "Curtain's just up," Max told him ; "Sara doesn't come on till near the middle of the act. Make yourself comfortable; com-fortable; I'll be back before long." He drew aside n curtain and ushered his guest into the right-hand stage-box, then vanished. The few empty stalls 'were rapidly filling up. There was a fluent movement through the aisles. A subdued hum and rustle rose from that portion of the audience which was already al-ready seated. The business going on upon the stage was receiving little attention at-tention from Whitaker as little as from anyone. The opening scene in the development of the drama inter- ested the gathering little or not at all; it was hanging in suspense upon the unfolding of some extraordinary development, devel-opment, something unprecedented and extraneous, foreign to the play. Max slipped quietly into the box and handed his guest a program. "Better get over here," he suggested in a hoarse whisper, indicating a chair near the rail. "You may never have another an-other chance to see the greatest living actress. Wonderful house," he whispered, whis-pered, sitting down behind Whitaker. "Drummond hasn't shown up yet, though." "That so?" Whitaker returned over his shoulder. "Yes; it's funny; never knew him to be so late. He always has the aisle seat, fourth row, center. But he'll be along presently." ne glanced idly at his program, Indifferently In-differently nosorblng the information that "Jules Max has the honor to present pre-sent Miss Sara Law in her first and greatest success entitled Joan Thursday Thurs-day a play in three acts" The audience stirred expectantly; a movement ran through it like the movement of waters, murmurous, upon up-on a shore. Whltaker's gaze was drawn to the stage as if by an implacable im-placable force. Max shifted on the chair behind him and said something Indistinguishable, In an unnatural tone. A woman had come upon the stage, (uddenly and tempestuously, banging a door behind her. The audience got the barest glimpse of her profile as, pausing momentarily, she eyed the other actors. Then, without speaking, (he turned and walked up-stage, her back to the footlights. Applause broke out like a thunderclap, thunder-clap, pealing heavily through the big luditorium, but the actress showed no tonsclousness of it. She was standing before a cheap mirror, removing her hat, arranging her hair with the typical, unconscious gestures of a ireary shopgirl ; she was acting living the scene, with no time to waste in pandering to her popularity by bows and set smiles; she remained before the glass, prolonging the business, until un-til the applause subsided. Whitaker received an impression as of a tremendous force at work across the footlights. The woman diffused an effect as of a terrible and boundless energy under positive control. She was not merely an actress, not even merely a great actress; she was the very soul of the drama of today. Beyond this he knew In his heart that she was his wife. Sara Law was the woman he had married in that sleepy Connecticut town, six years before be-fore that night. He had not yet seen her face clearly, but he knew. To find himself mistaken would have shaken the foundations of his understanding. Under cover of the applause, he turned to Max. "Who is that? What is her name?" "The divine Sara," Max answered, his eyes shining. "I mean, what is her name off the stage, In private life?" "The same," Max nodded with conviction con-viction ; "Sara Law's the only name she's ever worn in my acquaintance with her." At that moment, the applause having hav-ing subsided to such an extent that it was possible for her to make herself heard, the actress swung round from the mirror and addressed one of the other players. Pier voice was clear, strong and vibrant, yet sweet ; but Whitaker paid no heed to the lines she spoke. He was staring, fascinated, at her face. Sight of it set the seal of certainty upon conviction : She was one "with Mary Ladislas. He had forgotten hei so completely in the lapse of years as to have been unable to recall her features fea-tures and coloring, yet he had needec only to see to recognize her beyoncj any possibility of doubt. Those big He Knew in His Heart That She Was His Wife. Intensely burning eyes, that drawn anc pallid face, the quick, nervous movements move-ments of her thin white hands, the slenderness of her tall, awkward, im mature figure in every line and contour, con-tour, in every gesture and inflection she reproduced the Mary Ladislas whom he had married. And yet . . . Max was whispering whisper-ing over his shoulder: "Wonderful make-up what?" "Make-up !" Whitaker retorted "She's not made up she's herself tc the last detail." Amusement glimmered in the manager's mana-ger's round little eyes: "You don'l know her. Wait till you get a pipe al her off the stage." Then he checked the reply that was shaping on Whltaker's Whlt-aker's lips, with a warning lift of his hand and brows: "Ssh! Catch this, now. She's a wonder in this scene." The superb actress behind the counterfeit coun-terfeit of the hunted and huugry shopgirl shop-girl was holding spellbound with her Inevitable witchery the most sophisticated sophisti-cated audience in the world ; like wheat in a windstorm it swayed to the modulations modu-lations of her marvelous voice as it ran through a passage-at-arms with the termagant. Suddenly ceasing to speak, she turned down to a chair near the footlights, followed by a torrent of shrill vituperation under the lush of which she quivered like a whipped thoroughbred. Abruptly, pausing with her hands on the back of the chair, there cume a change. The actress had glanced across the footlights; Whitaker could not but follow the direction of her gaze; the eyes of both focussed for a brief instant in-stant on the empty aisle-seat in the fourth row. A shade of additional pallor pal-lor showed on the woman's face. She looked quickly, questioningly, toward the box of her manager. ' Seated as he was so near the stage, i Whitaker's face stood out in rugged relief, "illumined by the glow reflected from the footlights. It was inevitable that she should see him. Her eyes fastened, dilating, upon his. The scene faltered perceptibly. She stood transfixed. trans-fixed. . . . In the hush Max cried impatiently: "What the devil!" The words broke the spell of amazement upon the actress. In a twinkling the pitiful counterfeit of the shopgirl was rent and torn away; it hung only in shreds and tatters upon an individuality wholly strange to Whitaker: a larger, stronger woman seemed to have started start-ed out of the mask. She turned, calling imperatively into the wings: "Ring down!" With a rush the curtain descended as pandemouiuiu broke out on both sides of it. CHAPTER VI. The Late Extra. Impulsively Whitaker got up to follow fol-low Max, then hesitated and sank back in doubt, his head awhirl. He was for the time being shocked out of all capacity ca-pacity for clear reasoning or right thinking. Uppermost in his consciousness conscious-ness he had a half-formed notion that ; it wouldn't help matters if he were to force himself in upon the crisis behind the scenes. Beyond all question his wife had recognized in him the man whom she had been given every reason to believe dead : a discovery so unnerving as tc ' render her temporarily unable to continue. con-tinue. t This, then, explained Drummond's . reluctance to have him bidden to th f supper party; whatever ultimate course of action he planned to pursue I Drummond had been unwilling, per-I per-I haps pardonably so, to have his romance ro-mance overthrown and altogether shat-' shat-' tered in a single day. He had lied, lied desperately, doubtless meaning to encompass a marriage before Whitaker could find his wife, and so furnish him with every reason that could influence an honorable man to disappear a second sec-ond time'; On the other hand, Max to a certainty certain-ty was ignorant of the relationship between be-tween his star and his old time friend, just as he must have been ignorant of her identity with the one time Mary Ladislas. For that matter, Whitaker had to admit that, damning as was the evidence to controvert the theory, Drummond might be just as much in the dark as Max was. It was only fair to suspend judgment. In the meantime mean-time . . . The audience was getting beyond control. In the gallery the gods wrere beginning to testify to their normal intolerance in-tolerance with shrill whistles, cat-calls, sporadic bursts of hand-clapping and a steady, sinister rumble of stamping feet. In the orchestra and dress circle people were moving about restlessly and talking at the top of their voices in order to make themselves heard above the growing din. Abruptly Max himself appeared at one side of the proscenium arch. It was plain to those nearest the stage that he was seriously disturbed. There was a noticer.ble hesitancy in his manner, man-ner, a pathetic frenzy in his habitually ' mild and lustrous eyes. Advancing halfway to the middle of the apron, he I paused, begging attention with a pudgy . hand. It was a full minute before the , gallery would let him be heard. "Ladies and gentlemen," he an- . nounced plaintively, "I much regret to inform you that Miss Law has suf- s fered a severe nervous shock" his gaze wandered in perplexed inquiry to- . ward the right-hand stagebox, then was hastily averted "and will not be able to continue." Wave upon wave of sound swept , through the auditorium to break, roaring, roar-ing, against the obdurate curtain. Max with difficulty contrived to make him- . self disconnectedly audible. "Ladies and . . ." he shouted, I sweat beading his perturbed forehead . . . "regret . . . impossible to . continue . . . money . . . box office . . ." An angry howl drowned him out. He retrented at accelerated discretion. Whitaker, slipping through the stage . door behind the boxes, ran into the . stage manager standing beside the first entrance, heatedly explaining to any-one any-one who would listen the utter futility of offering box-office prices In return , for sent checks which in the majority of Instances had cost their holders top- notch speculator prices. "They'll wreck the theater," he - shouted excitedly, mopping his brow with his coat sleeve, "what t'ell'd she wana pull a raw one like this for?" Whitaker caught his arm in a grasp compelling attention. :":::::::::::::::::::::""": v - ; Well, what's your guess? Will A Whitaker's wife receive him with ; ; gratitude and open arms be-cause be-cause he saved her honor long ; ago or will she look him over : calmly and chase him off the !: : place? $ : wv:: :::::;;;:! (TO BE CONTINUED.) |