The House of Fear E-Book

Wadsworht Camp

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Under the circumstances, McHugh would probably have been wiser never to have attempted such a revival. Had he cared to open his ears he might have heard warnings in plenty, for Woodford’s Theater had become a tradition in the profession, an evil one, a menace, in short, for the superstitious.
It is difficult to trace such beliefs to a reasonable source. Few along Broadway attempted it. The stock company, which five years ago had opened the house for a winter’s campaign, offered sufficient testimony. If there was nothing more than rumor behind the theater’s reputation, why, people asked, had that company within a week abandoned its lease and forfeited its guaranty? Why had its leading man on the final night rushed from the stage, his eyes fixed, shaken throughout as if by some experience beyond human comprehension?

Leseprobe

THE HOUSE OF FEAR

BY WADSWORTH CAMP1916

© 2023 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385740313

CONTENTS

1 … “Coward’s Fare”

2 … Limping Footsteps

3 … The Cat

4 … The Influence at Woodford’s

5 … The Tragic Repetition

6 … McHugh Decides to Stick

7 … The Shadow of a Perfume

8 … Warnings from the Air

9 … Barbara Misses an Entrance

10 … The Ghost of the Passage

11 … The Presence in an Empty House

12 … The Antics of a Lamp

13 … Through the Dusk

14 … Woodford’s Laugh

15 … The Sexless Clamour

16 … After Forty Years

17 … McHugh Loses His Temper

18 … The Claws of the Unseen Cat

19 … As Woodford and Carlton

20 … Barbara’s Flight

21 … The Opening

22 … Beyond the Footlights

23 … McHugh Is Discreet

CHAPTER I

“COWARD’S FARE”

Under the circumstances, McHugh would probably have been wiser never to have attempted such a revival. Had he cared to open his ears he might have heard warnings in plenty, for Woodford’s Theater had become a tradition in the profession, an evil one, a menace, in short, for the superstitious.

It is difficult to trace such beliefs to a reasonable source. Few along Broadway attempted it. The stock company, which five years ago had opened the house for a winter’s campaign, offered sufficient testimony. If there was nothing more than rumor behind the theater’s reputation, why, people asked, had that company within a week abandoned its lease and forfeited its guaranty? Why had its leading man on the final night rushed from the stage, his eyes fixed, shaken throughout as if by some experience beyond human comprehension?

Such questions remained unanswered, while other stories persisted, gathering about a black cat which had mysteriously made itself felt and heard, frightening the timid, puzzling the better-controlled, fit ting disturbingly into the sombre history of the place.

So Broadway accepted as fact Woodford’s unhealthy atmosphere, avoiding it discreetly. Arthur McHugh was the logical exception. An aggressive, ambitious Irishman, he had fought his way from the headquarters detective force to a managerial throne from which he wielded a supreme power over many actors and actresses and plays. He went his stubborn and successful way, untrammeled by the gossip of the profession. Therefore, when he conceived the idea of reopening Woodford’s with a revival of “Coward’s Fare,” he remembered only that half a century ago the play had placed the crown of dollars on the theater and had made its old director, Bertrand Woodford, famous. He did not bother to recall that in the end it had caused Woodford’s death, or that, during the forty years since, prosperity had strangely neglected the house.

Richard Quaile, chosen by McHugh to make a modern version of the play, paused opposite the theater one fall afternoon and appraised it curiously. His script was completed. Nothing remained but the arranging of the lease. He was on his way to McHugh’s office now, and that, he understood, was the purpose of his summons.

Quaile was not of a credulous disposition. Successful as a playwright and with a plentiful income, he was too completely interested in the world about him to bother with abstractions. But he had heard the gossip concerning Woodford’s, and, as he stared across the street, he wondered at McHugh’s courage.

Woodford’s blind exterior appeared to repel the thought of intrusion. It had an air of asking to be left alone in its decay. The anxious northward march of theatrical prosperity had long deserted it. On one side it was flanked by a towering loft building. A motion-picture house nestled impudently close on the other. From such surroundings, although it was no more than sixty years old, the structure projected an atmosphere of antiquity as arresting as that which reaches one from a medieval castle in some foreign countryside. From the beginning, indeed, it furnished a plausible setting for the tragedy which, during so long within its dingy walls, was to challenge reason with a serene and provocative assurance.

Quaile could not foresee that, but he could and did look back. It was as if the crumbling facade of the theater had forced the past palpably into his mind. Passers-by jostled him, but he continued to gaze thoughtfully across the street, reconstructing the building into the most famous playhouse in America, fancying its tired eyes sparkling with light, seeing its slender columns divide eager crowds. of men and women in the dress of another period. Then the end of all that and the commencement of Woodford’s evil reputation came back to him — the extraordinary death forty years ago of its director, Bertrand Woodford.

His imagination of an author contrived an active picture. He could see the packed auditorium and the curtain rising on “Coward’s Fare,” revived to show Woodford in his greatest, his favorite rôle. He saw the actor limp on, ill, but too jealous and vindictive to resign his part to an understudy. He watched the man struggle along with the genius of which his disability could not entirely strip him. But it was on that last destructive moment that Quaile’s mind lingered uncomfortably. He experienced almost with the intensity of an actual spectator the clamorous excitement which had filled the house when Woodford, at the height of his most impassioned scene, had toppled to the stage, had lain still, had failed for the first time to respond to the emotions of his audience.

Details scarcely heard, dimly remembered from the mass of gossip, obtruded themselves. The black cat, he recalled, Woodford’s constant companion off stage, had rushed from the wings and curled itself on the motionless body. It had fought and scratched tigerishly when anxious hands had tried to snatch it off. It had remained close to its master until his burial.

Quaile shook his head, turned, and went on to his appointment. His brief view of Woodford’s desolation had reduced his enthusiasm for the plan. The place, even from the outside, was gloomier than he had imagined, probably gloomy enough to account for such stories. But if it had driven into his brain these unpalatable memories, it would almost certainly breed trouble should McHugh select for his cast men or women of a particularly nervous or sensational temperament.

He found the atmosphere of the manager’s office restorative.

He stepped from the elevator into a hallway crowded with the prosperous and the unfortunate, many young and a fraction old: leads,ingénues, character people, comedians — all seekers and all forewarned that in this office success would welcome only a few.

He nodded at those he recognized and passed into the reception-room, whose broader spaces were similarly taxed. He marveled that McHugh could be the lodestone of this expectant multitude. He knew it was only ten years since the man had left the detective bureau for minute beginnings on the Rialto. That had been through the influence of a manager for whom he had ferreted an important case to a successful and profitable conclusion. Since then, because of a natural, if incoherent, instinct for the dramatic, he had discounted his lack of education and had taken his rank with the handful of large producers. Now he sat, czarlike, in a secluded office, forbidden to the many, a privilege for the elect.

Quaile noticed a man who elbowed his way through the crowd toward the door. He was slender and tall, so that above the bobbing heads Quaile could see his face, striking, nearly handsome, yet a trifle too pallid. Moreover, it recorded at this moment a vague dissatisfaction, an uncertainty of purpose.

Quaile nodded pleasantly in that direction and the man altered his course and approached. Quaile stretched out his hand.

“Hello, Carlton,” he said. “You’re in a hurry.”

“I came up to see McHugh,” Carlton answered. “Can’t find out whether he’s in, and I’ve another appointment. He’s offered me a contract for Woodford’s part in this revival of ‘Coward’s Fare’ you’re putting on in the old barn.”

“You’ll do it well,” Quaile said. “Looks like a long winter. Sentiment will draw big audiences.”

He watched the uncertainty in the other’s face increase. Reluctantly he admitted its cause. He guessed that Carlton’s mind harbored the unhealthy gossip which centered about the ancient house. He gathered that to an extent it over shadowed his satisfaction at the prospect of a profitable engagement.

“You don’t look overjoyed,” he added dryly.

“I’m glad of the job,” Carlton answered. “I’m no fool, but it’s curious, Quaile. I ran into a girl only last night who played with that stock company at Woodford’s five or six years ago. Actually, she tried to argue me out of accepting the contract. Talked about Woodford’s influence persisting and resenting the presence of the living in his theater. Uncomfortable feeling about the dressing-rooms and all that. A lot of rot, too, about Woodford’s black cat. She said Bertrand Woodford had worked himself to death rather than let any man play his part, and a lot of people felt he never would let any man play it now that he was dead. You know, she seemed to believe the nonsense. Funny how such stories cling. I suppose it’s because he made such a bad reputation for jealousy and temper. Give you my word, I thought no manager would take another chance with the place.”

Quaile grinned.

“I’d back Arthur McHugh against the meanest-dispositioned spook that ever walked.”

Carlton’s laugh irritated Quaile. It lacked conviction. It was prophetic. It transferred to him some of the other’s uncertainty.

“I’m off,” the actor said. “I’ll see McHugh in the morning. Good luck to the sentimental engagement.”

Quaile turned away, facing the reception-room again. He glanced about. Then his perfunctory interest swayed toward a girl who sat near the inner door. Her back was turned, so that he could see little more than the glow of light hair beneath a hat of pronounced simplicity here. She appeared unaware of those moving nearby. She was bent forward, as if eager to pass the door, which remained closed, a stubborn and provoking barrier.

Quaile watched her for some time while his memory stirred. Her withdrawal sharpened his interest. Surely he had seen the graceful figure before. He must pass that door. If he turned there her face would no longer be hidden.

He stepped forward. He placed his hand on the knob. He opened the door a little and turned. And now he knew that he had seen her, more than once on the stage, and from time to time casually at dinners or in offices like this.

He held out his hand. Recognition drove the lassitude from her eyes.

“You’ve not forgotten me, Miss Morgan?” Her smile was charming.

“I never forget a friend at court. Mr. McHugh sent for me. He said it had something to do with you.”

The announcement reached Quaile pleasantly. He had congenial recollections of her ability. Moreover, her quiet gray eyes indicated a serviceable lack of temperament.

“It’s the lead, then, in rather a unique revival. I’m glad you’ll be with us. How long have you waited?”

“Since four o’clock. It’s inexcusable. Do you think he’s ever coming?”

“Probably here now,” Quaile laughed. “He has as many entrances and exits as a criminal. If he’s inside I’ll tell him how you’ve suffered.”

With his hand on the knob he turned back. He glanced at her quizzically.

“By the way, you’re not afraid of ghosts?”

“It isn’t ‘Hamlet!’” she cried gaily.

Still smiling, he shook his head and went through into the presence of a small, neat young woman who attended to McHugh’s correspondence, and, simultaneously, did her best for the chewing-gum manufacturers.

“Hello, Ethel. Boss here yet? He sent for me.”

Her jaw rested momentarily, permitting her mouth to expand in a grin of fellowship, of perfect understanding. She nodded at the door through which Quaile had just entered.

“That’s what they all say, the poor nuts. And I have to fib until I’m ashamed to go to church on Sundays. Yep. Came in ten minutes ago.”

“Busy?”

“Yep. Just took him the evening paper.”

“Did you tell him how many were waiting?”

“Yep. Said let ’em wait and turn ’em over to Morley when he comes in.”

“Does he know Miss Morgan’s outside?”

“Nope. Didn’t know myself. Say, he’s expecting her.”

“Bring her in here,” Quaile said, “and I’ll tell him. You feel I dare beard the lion?”

“Oh, you go on, Mr. Quaile. He thinks you’re great.”

Quaile crossed the room and knocked at a mahogany door. Always on approaching this presence he experienced an amused humility. The voice that reached him through the heavy panels was querulous, expressive of an outraged solitude.

“What the devil you want, Ethel?”

“Not Ethel,” Quaile answered mildly.

The door was flung open. McHugh stood on the threshold. An unlighted and bitterly used cigar depended from his thin lips. As he motioned him in, his shrewd, narrow eyes fixed Quaile with resentment.

“See here, Quaile. You’re five minutes late.”

“Indulgence,” Quaile begged. “By the way, I’ve just seen Miss Morgan. She tells me you’re an hour late. According to her, you’re not here at all yet.”

“Too bad. Would rather not see her till tomorrow anyway.”

McHugh raised his voice.

“Ethel! Step out and tell Miss Morgan to come back tomorrow.”

Barbara Morgan appeared in the doorway. Her manner was unruffled. Her eyes showed no unusual light. There was a firmness about her manner which pleased Quaile.

“I am not coming back tomorrow,” she said. “An hour already out there! You might at least give us things to read. Even doctors do that.”

“Doctors get your money, young woman, while I give you the money to pay ’em. Never mind, now you’re here. Script will be read day after tomorrow, provided we arrange a lease. Quaile and I are going to see about that now. If we don’t, nothing doing. Met Mr. Quaile, Miss Morgan? He fixed the play up. Thought after you looked her over, Quaile, you’d agree she’ll do.”

“I’ve met Miss Morgan,” Quaile said.

He smiled at her.

“And I agree she’ll do.”

McHugh waved the girl away.

“Rushed now. I know your terms. Contract will be ready if the lease goes through. Looks like all winter unless this pen-pusher’s hypnotized me into throwing my money down a well. So long, Miss Morgan. Go out this way if you like.”

She crossed the room, laughing. “And I’ve waited an hour for this minute!”

“Say, young lady, you’re engaged. What more do you want?”

“Clothes in the contract,” she said seriously, and went out.

McHugh glanced at his haggard cigar.

“Clever girl, that!”

He thrust the cigar again between his teeth. “I’ve seen the agents.”

“There’s no hitch?” Quaile asked anxiously.

“We’re up against a queer proposition,” McHugh answered. “We’ve got to deal with that old scoundrel, Josiah Bunce.”

From his contempt and misgiving he might have been speaking of Nero on one of his less restrained days, but Quaile caught a different menace. The name was eloquent. Bunce’s eccentricities were notorious. He was rich in real estate to which he clung tenaciously. Report credited him with the disposition of a miser, yet he lived in an old house just off Fifth Avenue, and kept next door an empty lot, probably worth half a million, in order, his neighbors said, that he might take convenient strolls, undisturbed by traffic and the populace.

“Owns Woodford’s,” McHugh explained, “jointly with his brother, Robert. You can’t tell what quirks an old fossil like him will have. They say he hasn’t been off his place for fifteen years. Wish we had Robert to dicker with.”

Quaile nodded. The slightly younger brother, who shared the house with Bunce, was less terrifying to his memory. He offered, in fact, a pleasant contrast. He was a successful broker who had added radically to his share of the estate. Moreover, he had never displayed Josiah’s reluctance to amiable spending. For many years he had been a familiar figure in the world and a scourge to ambitious mothers. Like Josiah, he had persisted in the grave indiscretion of celibacy.

“I’ve made an appointment,” McHugh said with disapproval. “We’re to go over there right away.”

“Not often you’re a seeker,” Quaile ventured. McHugh grunted.

“Never do as well with people by going to them. Can’t be helped.”

He raised his voice.

“Ethel! Tell ’em outside I’ve been called to the country.”

He noticed, lying on his desk, the evening newspaper, which he had barely opened. He flung up his hands.

“My God! I never even get a chance to read the noos. Wish I was an author like you. Then I wouldn’t have anything to do except draw royalties.”

He led the way down a rear staircase, avoiding the suppliants without. Stealthily they reached his limousine, drawn up in a side street.

When they had alighted before the Bunce house the manager’s attitude borrowed something of the applicant’s timidity. With Quaile at his side he climbed the steps of the rusty brownstone dwelling and rang the bell. Quaile, himself, felt none too confident of the outcome.

A gray-haired manservant opened the door. Over his shoulder Quaile saw a star of gas light toward the ceiling. It had been reduced with an exceptional skill. It served to show him only the servant’s bent figure, clothed in a livery of remote beginnings.

McHugh pushed past.

“Mr. Bunce is expecting me. I am Arthur McHugh.”

The servant relaxed his attitude of repelling an assault. He conducted them the length of the hall and opened a door. McHugh entered. Quaile paused on the threshold, examining the interior with a pronounced curiosity. One or two bookcases gave the apartment an academic touch. Chairs, a desk, and a sofa — not antique, but melancholy survivals of a bad period — were scattered at haphazard. The light here, too, suggested a sparing disposition. A single oil lamp burned on the desk, radiating a subdued glow on the master of this economical and uncommon establishment.

Bunce sat hunched forward in an elliptical pose. A shawl was draped across his rounded shoulders. His knees were covered with a rug from beneath which his feet, in carpet slippers, protruded. But Quaile’s attention was held chiefly by the face, unkempt, hairy, intricately wrinkled, out of which infused eyes gleamed with a suspicion equal to the servant’s. His voice rose on a whining, nasal note. It carried a perpetual complaint.

“You’re not somebody else?”

McHugh advanced fearlessly.

“Often as I’ve wanted to,” he answered, “I’ve never been able to make a change. Suppose you’re in much the same fix. Mr. Josiah Bunce, I gather.”

He took a fresh cigar from his pocket and tendered it.

“Put some fire to this torch, and we’ll get to cases.”

Bunce, with a gesture of disgust, repelled the gift.

“No smoking here. I have to keep reminding Robert of that.” His voice sharpened. “Think he’d learn in the course of fifty years.”

He drew the shawl tighter about his shoulders. He coughed.

“You made a draft coming in. So you’re McHugh, the show man? People try to get to me on all sorts of pretexts. Agents say you want to rent Woodford’s. If it’s something else, understand I haven’t any money to throw away in your cheap leg shows and plays about fallen women — that’s all I see in the papers nowadays. Sit down.”

Quaile and McHugh obeyed the explosive command. McHugh turned and winked broadly, then faced Bunce again. Bunce leaned forward.

“Watson!” he called.

The serving-man opened the door.

“If my brother hasn’t left,” Bunce directed, “tell him to come down.”

When the serving-man had closed the door, he permitted a little curiosity to slip into his voice.

“What you want Woodford’s for! Robert and I been talking it over. We’d decided there was no income there. Nobody’s made money in the house since Woodford died.”

Suddenly an angry flush swept across his face.

“Look here! You wasting my time to talk about moving pictures?”

McHugh’s jaw protruded, giving his face a belligerent strength of which one would scarcely have thought it capable.

“Naw! How much time you think I got to throw away! Quaile here’s brought ‘Coward’s Fare’ up to date. Maybe you remember that play of Woodford’s. I’m getting an expensive cast together — all the old people I can. Dolly Timken, who played with Woodford, and old Mike Brody, his property man forty years ago — all the sentimental slush I can think of. I’m going to make the old barn what it was, and with its own play, but I got to get good terms. You understand? Fair terms.”

He placed the cigar he had proffered Bunce in his own mouth and bit at it savagely.

Quaile had seen memory stir in the old man’s eyes at the mention of “Coward’s Fare.”

“That’s different,” Bunce said. “That was a first-class play. I used to have a chair at Woodford’s two or three times a week forty years ago.”

This crouched and slovenly figure in a theater was an anomaly before which Quaile’s imagination halted; yet, as he watched a real enthusiasm increase in Bunce’s manner, he became confident that the threatened difficulties would not materialize. McHugh must have caught the same symptoms, for he let Bunce ramble on while it became evident that his remembrance of Woodford’s was one of his choicest inheritances from youth. He had been proud to own a share of the theater in its brilliant period. He had regretted its decline, commencing with Woodford’s death. He had always hoped it might return to its own. He appreciated that McHugh offered fulfillment.

“Might take a seat myself,” he grinned.

The rental he mentioned was voluble proof of his complacence.

“What about your brother?” McHugh asked.

“He leaves such things to me. I told you I’d been talking to him. The boy’ll do what I say.”

The door opened. A new atmosphere, pretentious and incompatible, disturbed the tawdry room. Quaile smiled. The “boy” who stood in the door way was, at a hazard, sixty-five years old. He wore evening clothes. His handsome face, with a grizzled mustache, was distinguished. That the same family should have produced two such divergent specimens was nearly unbelievable.

“There’s no point,” the newcomer said dryly, “in my intruding. Children should be seen and not heard.”

The elder Bunce’s shawl fell, neglected, to the chair arms.

“You come in, Robert. Your parties can wait a minute. These gentlemen have brought a surprise. They’re going to take ‘Coward’s Fare’ back to Woodford’s.”

“Sounds familiar,” Robert mused. “Oh, yes. To be sure. Doubtless I should rejoice. Sorry I must limit my enthusiasm. I have an appointment with some other bald-headed boys. Here, Watson, help me with my overcoat.”

“It’s going to be a fine thing,” McHugh put in. “Full of atmosphere. That pulls everybody if you play it up right.”

“Seems promising,” Robert answered, buttoning his coat. “If I remember, wasn’t there rather too much atmosphere the last time they had it open?”

“What you mean?” McHugh asked.

The general gossip and Carlton’s talk flashed back to Quaile’s mind. He saw the elder Bunce stir uncomfortably. He was surprised at the gravity which entered the nasal voice.

“You mind your own business, Robert. He will have his joke, Mr. McHugh. Don’t you fret about that. It was just some talk among the players about Woodford’s being a little jealous.”

McHugh stared. “Jealous! He’s been dead forty years.” Robert laughed.

“Isn’t that atmosphere? No old building complete without it. See that we get our price for that, Josiah.”

He turned on McHugh with a whimsical smile.

“I’m renting a theater,” McHugh grinned. “The air inside comes free.”

“Arrange it with elder brother,” Robert said. “I’m off.”

He nodded and hurried out briskly. The front door slammed.

“Don’t you worry,” Josiah complained. “Lease will be ready in the morning. You can fix details with the agents.”

He displayed an eagerness to discuss McHugh’s plans. He showed real regret at their departure

“Seems promising,” Robert answered, buttoning his coat. “If I remember, wasn’t there rather too much atmosphere the last time they had it open?”

Once Quaile dreamed he was on the point of asking them to remain for dinner, but probably calculation frowned on such a generous impulse.

Quaile stopped McHugh as he was entering his limousine. He did not like this reinforcement of the gossip. It impelled him to put the manager on his guard.

“Bunce seemed actually frightened at that nonsense,” he said. “You’ve heard superstitious talk about Woodford’s?”

“I daresay. Natural enough — any old place. Nothing to remember.”

“I saw Harvey Carlton this afternoon,” Quaile said, a little abashed at the necessity of repeating such a conversation. “He spread himself on rumors that Woodford’s influence survived down there. Seemed to take it seriously on the whole. It’s worth thinking about. I mean, there’s no use getting trouble makers in the cast. I fancy it will seem pretty desolate at first. There’s a lot of talk about that stock company forfeiting its lease five years ago.”

McHugh placed his hand on Quaile’s arm. He spoke impressively.

“Don’t fool yourself, my boy. Carlton’s right. The old bird with the shawl’s right. A ghost was responsible for that failure. The company did go to smash on account of it. It was terrible. The ghost didn’t walk at all.”

CHAPTER II

LIMPING FOOTSTEPS

McHugh sprang into the limousine and slammed the door. As he drove off he turned back to Quaile his grinning face, which marvelously retained a pendulous cigar.

The next day, nevertheless, the unexpected intruded once or twice, and failed to retreat before it had startled even the matter-of-fact manager.

Quaile spent most of the afternoon in the office, completing with McHugh the casting of the piece. Mike Brody had reported and gone down to Woodford’s with a squad of electricians. He had already sent word that there was little to be done, since the wiring had been modernized five years ago. The manager had promised Quaile they would visit the theater and inspect it for themselves as soon as their task was completed.

It was late when Quaile saw Mike enter and go through to the private office.

More than sentiment had urged McHugh to engage the old man. He had worked for him off and on during many years. He understood and fitted easily into his system. Quaile had frequently heard the manager boast that Mike, in spite of his years, was the most reliable property man in New York. Without initiative, he possessed a useful memory. It was said that he had never forgotten a property or its correct placing.

Within five minutes McHugh was roaring for Ethel. She went in, returned, and nodded to Quaile.

“Boss wants you.”

Quaile opened the door and stepped into a room crowded with discontent, even timidity.

The manager sat back, facing Mike. The square jaw, signal of opposition to be overthrown, was well forward.

The property man leaned against the wall, unwilling to meet McHugh’s tempestuous glance. He looked instead in the direction of his cap, at which he picked with purposeless fingers. The lights had not been turned on, so that it was difficult for Quaile to gather details. The posing itself, however, was declamatory. He was not unprepared for McHugh’s scornful announcement.

“What do you think, Quaile? The old numbskull wants to quit on me. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Haven’t you got a blush left? ’Cause I’m going to give you away to Mr. Quaile.”

Mike made an embarrassed appeal.

“I only told him, sir, that I thought maybe I’d better not take on the job.”

“I understood,” Quaile answered, “that you were pleased at the prospect of going back.”

“Yes, sir, I was. I had some of the best times of my life when I was a kid at Woodford’s, but that’s been forty years, and — and—”

He broke off and returned to the restless fingering of his cap. Quaile hesitated to prompt the man. He guessed that McHugh had had a purpose in summoning him. Through him, unquestionably, McHugh expected to mold Mike to his wishes. No ordinary situation would have urged such a course. He shrank from the possibility that the antiquated and lonesome theater might already have imposed on Mike’s uneducated mind a sense of fear. If that was so, McHugh had assumed a promising attitude. Mike was uncomfortable, perhaps, ashamed. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He cleared his throat, but no defense followed.

“First time anybody ever wanted to resign on me,” McHugh said in a hurt tone. “Fall down on your job once, Mike, and you won’t have to wait to resign. What do you think’s biting him, Quaile?”

“Somebody’s offered him more money.” McHugh shook his head. He burst into unrestrained laughter.

“No. I’m the best pickings in the business. Old fool’s afraid of Bertrand Woodford.”

Quaile joined in the mirth. “Do you know how long he’s been dead, Mike?”

“Hold on,” McHugh gasped. “Not of Woodford. When he’s got me — a real live one — to be scared of, he’s afraid of Woodford’s spook.”

The manager’s antidote was powerful. A reluctant grin appeared on Mike’s face.

“I didn’t say that, Mr. McHugh. Maybe you’re right, though. If you want me, I’ll stay.”

“Go on, Mike,” the manager said good-naturedly. “Wait for us downstairs. Mr. Quaile and I will go to Woodford’s with you in a minute. We want to see what’s been done.”

But when the man had left McHugh turned a puzzled face to Quaile. With a thoughtful air he drew on his unlighted cigar.

“Guess you had the right dope last night after all,” he admitted. “Got to keep our eyes open and make it cheerful at Woodford’s.”

“Surely,” Quaile said, “Mike isn’t such a fool as to think he saw anything?”

“No. But Mike’s pretty old. I guess it took him back to go into that barn after forty years. He didn’t say anything you could put your finger on. Was just frightened. Said it was dark and cold, and he couldn’t help thinking of his old boss. Seemed like he stood by him all the time. Say, I never realized what a disagreeable devil Woodford was. Mike says he used to limp around — seems he had rheumatism a lot toward the last — being as nasty to people as he could. Going there today certainly put him on Mike’s mind. Got to talking about the night he died. Mike says Woodford worked himself to death because he was too jealous to let anybody play his part.”

“That’s about what I hear,” Quaile said. “Did Mike mention anything about a cat — the way he acted the night of Woodford’s death?”

McHugh looked up.

“Mean to say Carlton gave you that, too?”

“Yes — mentioned it. As he said, it’s funny the way these foolish stories cling.”

McHugh arose.

“I’ve laughed Mike out of it, anyway. I may take a shot at Carlton. You know, Mike was honestly afraid something might happen to him down there. Come on. Let’s go.”

They joined Mike on the sidewalk, entered McHugh’s automobile, and drove to Woodford’s.

Quaile had looked forward with something approximating a thrill to his first invasion of the property. The prospect, however, was shadowed by the rumors he had heard, and, particularly, by Mike’s apprehension, which, he noticed, had, to an extent, survived McHugh’s laughter.

The night had descended by the time they arrived at the theater, but the glitter of the street lights was deceptive. It softened the scars of the old building. It penetrated beyond the iron railing which guarded the lobby, long undisturbed. It exposed the display boards at either side, cracked and colored by the weather, to which paper shreds and the stains of paste still adhered.

“Where’s Tommy Ball?” McHugh said. “I told Tommy Ball to meet me here.”

A young man, too sedulously clothed, deserted his contemplation of a shop window and stepped forward. Quaile recognized McHugh’s assistant stage manager — a youth who always amused him with his fervent efforts to copy his employer’s eccentricities.

“Been in yet, Tommy?” McHugh asked.

“Not since noon. But I don’t guess you’ll find a whole lot to do.”

Mike thrust his hand in his pocket, producing a heavy, old-fashioned key.

“Stage entrance is this way, Mr. McHugh.”

He led them, not very eagerly, into a narrow alley which penetrated the block between the theater and the loft building. Within this meager space the thoroughness of the night became apparent. The dingy side of the theater and the towering wall of the loft building gave Quaile an illusion of leaning toward each other perilously. The end of the alley was blocked by a high board fence. Mike turned there and inserted his key in the lock of an iron door.

The thrill Quaile had expected was not lacking, yet its quality scarcely conformed to his fancy.

Because of the unrelieved night he knew that the door was open only through its own voice. The hinges, abandoned until today for so long to the weather, complained shrilly; and, as if from an unexplored and adventurous cavern, arose an echo. The black, empty stage of Woodford’s flung back into the alley the dismay of its opened door. Quaile sniffed. He breathed with distaste, for the alley had filled with a dank, insufferable odor which he could not describe. The air, imprisoned at the last closing of the door, rushed out of Woodford’s with the eagerness of escape.

A match scraped. Its flame flickered on Mike’s wrinkled face, which wore for Quaile an expression of disapproval, of positive disinclination. The property man stooped, fumbled within the doorway, and found a candle to which he applied the match.

“Better not let the fire department catch you at that,” McHugh warned.

Quaile wondered if the manager took in the shaking of the candle in the knotted hand.

“Get in there,” McHugh directed, “and switch on your kitchen border, so we won’t break our necks. Place smells like a one-night stand in the great and glorious provinces.”

Mike’s face set. It was evident that he subordinated his own judgment to a sense of pride. He had the appearance of one who invades a place notorious for some unexplained danger. His candle moved slowly into the cavern and turned to the right.

Quaile’s eyes became a little accustomed to the darkness. He could see that a nebulous reflection from the street entered the alley. It reached him with a sense of companionship. Then light flashed in the cavern, illuminating vast spaces, and Mike’s voice came.

“All right, Mr. McHugh.”

And they entered those spaces, and, oppressed by their emptiness, stood for some time, ill at ease, attentive.

Quaile resented his discomfort. After all, there could be nothing here beyond age, disuse, loneliness — at the most, unpalatable memories. Yet he was honest. With Mike’s misgivings still lively in his mind, he would not deny that weakness, nearly universal, which hesitates, a little overawed, on the threshold of the past whose dead activities often impress one with the imminence of a revival.

He acknowledged, as he glanced around, a stimulus here for the imaginative. The single row of lights, depending from the flies, gave scarcely more than a suggestion of form to the auditorium and the two galleries sloping upward. But he could see that the seats were shrouded with gray cloths. They forced on him a fancy of standing in a huge, improvised mortuary after some intolerable catastrophe.

The stage itself offered more definition. He saw the vast expanse of the brick curtain wall, the circular staircases at either side leading to dressing rooms and fly galleries. To the right there was a small door which almost certainly opened on a passage connecting with the auditorium.

He caught in McHugh’s manner no response to the factors which had depressed him.

“Don’t build stages like this nowadays,” the manager said with admiration. “Could give a three-ring circus here. Tommy, you’ve got the lists. You and Mike run over to the storehouse in the morning and chase that furniture in. company’s called for four o’clock. Mr. Quaile’s going to read the script to ’em right on the stage just like old Woodford done. This engagement’s going to be all-fired artistic.”

His sudden blatant laugh set Quaile’s nerves on edge. It jeered at the empty spaces, the shrouded seats. It did not belong here, nor did McHugh persist in it. He found another cigar and inserted it between his lips. His keen glance took in everything.

“Come through here, Quaile. Let’s have a peep at the auditorium.”

He walked to the little door which Quaile had noticed, and opened it. Quaile saw Mike and Tommy start toward the stage entrance. He under stood, but McHugh pretended not to.

“Where you and Mike going, Tommy?”

“By the stage door, sir. It’s pretty damp in here.”

“All right,” McHugh said, “but I want you within call.”

Quaile followed the manager into the passage. A certain amount of light entered with them, and a little more, diffused from the auditorium, showed at the other end. The passage was surprisingly constricted. It was necessary to go in single file.

He gathered from its length — probably seven or eight paces — that it ran behind the boxes.:

“Wouldn’t be much use,” he commented, “as an exit by way of the stage in case of fire.”

His voice was magnified in the meager space.

“Building meets the fire laws,” McHugh, always practical, answered.

They reached the auditorium whose boundaries appeared to recede before them, demanding an impracticable pursuit. After a glance at the farther shadows, in fact, McHugh contented himself with a casual inspection of the woodwork and the draperies near at hand.

“Agents didn’t lie,” he said with satisfaction, “and my own men gave me the right dope.”

He walked down the aisle, thrust aside one of the gray cloths, and sat in the front row. He looked around.

“Not bad,” he grunted.

Quaile joined him.

“Funny,” McHugh went on, “how a little gold dust thrown in people’s eyes will make them see millions. The place was fixed up five years ago. Now a few new hangings and a little tinsel on the box fronts — it’s a cinch. Why you so talkative, Quaile?”

Quaile had not realized the thoroughness of his silence since entering the theater. He glanced at the manager, questioning if his volubility wasn’t a different response to the same impulse. He saw nothing to be gained by denying that impulse. It was the emptiness and the pervading desolation of Woodford’s. He had never seen a theater in this condition before, its machinery hidden or removed. He had a feeling of having invaded the shell of a thing long dead, quite beyond resurrection. The sepulchral dampness gave the final impetus to his bad humor.

“Frankly, McHugh,” he said, “I begin to understand how these unwholesome stories start. Such an atmosphere as this has things to say to the ignorant and the superstitious. I hope I’m neither, but it does get on my nerves more or less. I mean, I quite understand why Tommy and Mike prefer the alley entrance.”

“They’ll have to get over it. Place feels all right to me.”

McHugh’s voice rose in a gigantic sneer.

“Woodford’s ghost! A fine chance for a ghost around my theater!”

To Quaile it was almost as if a challenge had been accepted. The shadows. might suddenly have gathered strength to smother the row of gleaming lights. Without warning they expired. He could feel the pitlike blackness rush upon him.

McHugh’s hand touched his arm, then was snatched back. The manager’s voice rose angrily.

“What the devil? Mike! Mike! Get in to the switchboard. Switch something on. Don’t bother about your candle.”

As if the darkness had opposed a palpable barrier Tommy’s exclamation and Mike’s response reached them faintly. They heard the old man start on the stage. What followed seemed to Quaile at the moment inevitable, never to have been avoided. Through the black and heavy air Mike’s cry arose, hoarse, difficult, half strangled by an irrational fear. It gathered itself into four words, almost unintelligible:

“My God! Mr. Woodford!”

Quaile shrank back. More than Mike’s terror-drawn cry challenged his reason. Just across the blind footlights, almost within hand’s reach, he heard dragging footsteps and a curious, stealthy padding.

He bent forward, staring impotently at the solid wall of blackness. The talk he had heard, the misgivings he had witnessed, threw upon that wall, as upon a screen for his imagination, an unthinkable picture. For the dragging footsteps continued to stray across the stage the footsteps of one who limped, and in the intervals of their painful progress came that furtive pattering like the noiseless pursuit of a cat.

Quaile remained rigid. He was aware of McHugh’s breathless tensity beside him. Then, as abruptly as they had commenced, the footsteps ceased, and from the wings, where Mike had cried out his impossible fear, came a low sob, choked and formless.