CHAPTER III

The apparition advanced a few paces down the centre of the stage. As it stood there in the fainting shimmer of the moonbeams, its head stretched forth as if it scented the dawn, Ned could hear nothing but the tumultuous beating of his own heart.

The figure paused thus only for a moment. Then it leaped into the air and cut a wiry caper.

To people more conversant with the traditional manners and customs of ghosts this might seem so gross a departure from spectral etiquette as to induce doubt of the genuineness of the manifestation. But to the boy the grotesque gesture seemed horribly uncanny. He sprang from his seat--his limbs failed him and he sank back; he sought to scream--not a sound came from his dry and parched lips.

"Ye're too drunk yit fur this biz, pard." A hoarse, half-suppressed voice issued from the wings.

A short, thickset, bow-legged man was emerging thence, and the figure on the stage turned to meet him.

"Pshaw!" said the tall apparition contemptuously. "I'm as sober as the bishop."

And what was this? A familiar voice; and now that Ned looked again, a familiar figure. No ghost,--only the sorry "first player," whom Ned had imagined as lying dead outside on the flagging of the alley.

"I mus' be gittin' weak in the upper story!" the boy said to himself.

He was so rejoiced to be freed from his superstitious terrors, so glad, too, to see the "first player" in full life and to know that no tragedy had that night been enacted under this roof save the tragedy of Hamlet, that he laughed slyly as he rested his chin on the high arm of the chair, and with merry eyes watched the men. He hardly cared to speculate upon the strange fact of their presence here at this hour. He was only waiting for them to be gone that he might make his escape at last.

"I don't want no mo' o' these crazy shines, though, ef ye do be so mighty sober," said the short man sulkily. "Somebody out there--the night watchman, mebbe--will hear ye trampling in 'ere, an' then wher' will we be?"

"A-scootin' up the alley," with a free gesture of his right arm. The "first player" was difficult to repress.

The surly, thickset man--Ned could not see his face, but his slouch, his voice, his manner were full of malignant intimations--evidently thought best to change his tone with his tipsy companion. He put down a five-gallon galvanized iron can that he had been carrying, and stared with an admirable imitation of surprise at the "first player."

"Why,--look-a-here, if ye jes' wanter have a little aggervation with the perlice an' skeer Gorham by lettin' him know that we hev broke into his theatre, _I'm_ with ye every time! He warn't mean enough, nohow, for the way that ye have laid off ter pay him back! He never done nothin' but kick ye like ye were a cur, an' beat ye half blind, an' fling ye out o' the window! 'Twould have been assault with intent ter kill if a pore man had done all that, but rich Gorham,--pshaw! that's nothin'. Jes' let's stir up a little fuss an' fetch the perlice,--ter skeer _him_! Ho! Ho! _We_ ain't afeared of the peelers. 'Ere goes the ballet."

He danced off in the moonlight, shaking his fingers in the air with wild gesticulations and kicking his short bandy legs high, right and left,--but softly, softly, as if he were shod with felt.

The "first player" stood for a moment bewildered by this wild scheme to scare the manager. Its absurdity seemed to sober him. He strode off suddenly after the dancing figure. A clutch stopped it.

"You fool," he said, with an oath, "I mean to burn the house to the ground, and you know it!"

"Well, warn't I agreeable,--if there's no insurance?" replied the bow-legged man.

"I tell you I heard from Gorham's own mouth that the policy expired yesterday at noon. He and the agent had a burst-up, and he wouldn't renew. I heard him tell that deadheaded crony of his; you know Gorham has got a tongue that is set on a pivot and wags at both ends."

The stocky, bandy-legged figure swayed back and forth with extravagant manifestations of delight. "That gets Gorham! I'd have been sorry for the Insurance Company if it wuz ter lose, ye know. Sorry fur true! I always had a soft place in my heart for a corporation--pore motherless thing!"

His prominent teeth gleamed,--it was as much a snarl as a smile.

"We are wastin' time," he said suddenly, with an air of returning to business. "Take this can o' kerosene an' empty it on the floor of the green-room, while I fix the other combustibles."

The "first player" stood amazed. "You blamed idiot!" he exclaimed, "there's oil enough on these canvases to send the whole place a-flaring like perdition."

The thickset man's fierceness returned.

"Who is killin' this cat," he snarled angrily,--"you or me? I had my grudge agin this theatre jes' a-dunnin' night an' day ter be paid, an' I promised ter help ye _ef I bossed the job_; ain't that the trade?"

"The shortest way," muttered the "first player," yielding the point. He caught up the can and disappeared in the direction of the green-room.

The stocky figure on the stage was so suddenly joined by another that Ned rubbed his eyes, thinking he saw two where there was but one.

"I got the star's wardrobe out o' the dressin'-room," the newcomer said in an agitated whisper.

"Keep dark," said the thickset man,--he nodded toward the exit where the "first player" had disappeared. "He don't suspicion nothin'; he thinks there ain't a soul here but him an' me. He bargained that nothing should be took! He said that he ain't a thief, an' the goods would get us found out. But _you_ just make the haul anyhow,--but make it sly, for true."

The two rascals went through the dumb show of much merry scorn of the "first player's" stipulations.

"Our pals have tolled off the night watchman,--an' they're workin' at the safe now. Dynamite is the word,--it's a time lock, they think."

This was overwhelming to Ned, who had not dreamed that the receipts were kept in the theatre over night,--a considerable sum must have been realized from that crowded house.

The newcomer was starting off. The thickset scamp beckoned him back. "Did the star leave anything besides the rich costumes?"

"Left gloves."

The attitude of the stocky figure expressed disappointment.

"Left handkerchief."

The disappointment evidently deepened.

"Left studs on dressing-table--diamonds--very fine!"

The speaker disappeared, with a triumphant wave of the hand.

The bandy-legged rascal, inflated with the pride of the moment, strode down to the dark foot-lamps.

"The keerlessness of one man blesses the keerfullness of another," he declaimed, addressing the empty auditorium.

This was doubtless the finest presentation of a villain ever seen upon these boards, for this was the genuine article.

Whether a light suddenly sprang up in one corner of the building, whether Ned heard the crackling of burning timber and canvas, or whether these impressions were delusions of his own over-excited brain, he could never say. He was possessed by the fear of being burned alive in the intricacies of this place, knowing no door, and no window save the one at which he had entered.

This anxiety dominated even his terror of being discovered by these rascals, although he knew they would have wrung his neck without a moment's compunction to prevent him from blabbing. He sprang up and stole tremulously off through the darkness, striving to rouse his fainting memory and his instinct for locality, and to find the window. How many times he circled around the dusky labyrinth he never knew. All at once he felt a great lightening of his spirits, for he saw suddenly before him a black oblong space which he instantly discerned to be a door. Noiselessly, lightly, he sped to the aperture to find himself in the dark corridor of the building. This passage, of course, followed the direction of the wall of the semicircular auditorium, but this fact was not apparent to Ned, except as revealed gradually by the sense of touch, for no longer did he have even the faint light of the remote windows above the gallery, and the darkness was intense, almost total, indeed. Sometimes a vague glimmer came from doors a bit ajar, and giving upon the dim auditorium within, but these occurred at long intervals, and looking fearfully over his shoulder he could not distinguish the portal by which he had entered. It was gone,--vanished in the gloom! As he stood gazing back for this one landmark, which he had thought he might keep as guide, he heard a sound in the utter silence that made him quail,--a regular throbbing beat which he recognized presently as the plunging of his own heart. He must needs have courage, he reasoned within himself, as he leaned back faint and tremulous against the wall, or he would perish here like a rat in a trap.

He began now to press on swiftly, some orderly instinct of his nature soothed and his spirit quieted by the release from the chaos of unaccustomed objects which had confused him behind the scenes. The smooth corridor, the absence of all obstruction, the sense of progress, as if so conventional a passage must lead to some objective point of exit, some chance of escape, encouraged him. He had known little as to the usual construction of theatres, but rallying his faculties, his memory, his intuition, his observation, he began to appreciate where he was. The wall on his left hand, he reflected, must inclose those stores by which the greater frontage on the street was utilized; in their rear the immense semicircular auditorium of the theatre filled the space, for the shops were of a kind that required no great conveniences of storage,--he remembered them now, a florist's establishment, a tobacconist's stand, a photographer's gallery,--and most of the rooms of the upper stories were occupied as offices. Thus the lofty windows above the gallery gave the auditorium of the theatre its only source of ventilation and of light except, indeed, from artificial means. A door opened on the side street, and some windows were in the rear, and the house was provided with no other exit in front than a great door, at the end of a long, tunnel-like lobby, opening upon the broad avenue, which served for the admission and the dispersal of the audience.

Even while he was mentally recapitulating these points he became suddenly uncertain as to this unique source of light, for as he progressed the darkness about him had become visibly mitigated. It was dimness rather than obscurity now,--a medium dull indeed, but which permitted the discrimination of surrounding objects. Ned paused suspiciously. Silence reigned,--dead silence! No conflagration as yet! He asked himself if he could be approaching some door or window, some opportunity of exit hitherto unknown to him, for the corridor, the periphery, as it were, of the semicircular auditorium, was light enough now for him to distinguish the curving walls on either hand, the terra-cotta tints predominating in their frescoed panels, the darker terra-cotta tone of the carpet beneath his feet,--nay, as he came to the point of intersection with the lobby leading to the street door he saw the gilded frames of the portraits of famous actors on the walls, and recognized Booth, Barrett, McCullough, and Irving! The great door was fast shut--no hope thence. The little wicket of the barricade across the lobby, that served to hold back the press of the people from the ticket-taker, was ajar, and from the box-office, at one side, came a dim suffusion of light. He stood still with a wildly beating heart,--for he heard from an inner room beyond the office the sibilant, cautious tone of a half whisper, and now and again the metallic clink of some instrument dexterously handled. The thieves were still working at the safe,--and as yet it held fast!

It was instinct rather than a realized prudence that set the frightened boy scurrying like a rabbit away from that dangerous zone of light. Miscreants such as these, suddenly discovered in their nefarious job, would not hesitate at murder, more than at larceny and arson, and his bones in the midst of the débris of the great fire would never be found to tell his forlorn fate. But that the wall guided him from the foyer and along the corridor, he could not have regained the stage door; he hardly knew how he had reached it; he realized only that he was once more in the inextricable tangle of flats and wings and ropes and stage furniture behind the scenes, and wildly seeking the window at which he had gained entrance to this troublous episode in his life.

Still the moonbeams streamed through those lofty casements above the gallery and down upon the immaterial audience of thronging shadows in the place of the brilliant assemblage so lately vanished thence. With melancholy intimations, the white sheeny radiance sent vague, phantasmal gleams across the broad spread of the stage and along the dreary vistas of the wings, where the sham misery of imagination is wont to ape the real tragedy of life. Here the contrast with the utter darkness was so sharp, the setting for a single figure so conspicuous, that Ned scuttled hastily across the stage, himself like a wavering shadow, and plunged into the turmoil of confusion beyond, searching here and there and everywhere for the back window at which he had entered.

He had lost in a measure the self-control which he had hitherto staunchly maintained. He was awkward, clumsy, agitated. More than once he tangled his foot in a swaying rope; here and there he ran plumply against the huge canvas-covered frames, and set up a quivering totter along their great heights; he wondered that he did not scream outright when at last he fairly fell, plunging bodily into a mimic boat adjusted on rockers to simulate the tossing of the waves. Nevertheless, hearing the floor resound with the impact of his fall, he had the presence of mind to lie still at the bottom of the craft, listening and fearing that the noise might have roused the thieves to apprehension and a tour of discovery. This would doubtless have ensued, but fortunately for him another sound pervaded the theatre just at that moment, and overpowered the concussion of his fall,--a dull, low roar it was, then utter silence.

Ned knew that the safe had been forced at last, and that the explosion had served to avert the discovery of his presence through the crash of his noisy misadventure. He rose from the boat, trembling, weak, but animated with a new hope. The finding of the craft here intimated that he was near the wall, where it had doubtless been heedlessly thrust aside, for it had naught to do with the play of Hamlet, and the furnishings of the castle of Elsinore filled all the foreground. He must now be near the rear wall, where was the window at which he had entered.

Suddenly he saw before him the dim, wan square in the gloom. The next moment despair fell anew upon him. The sash was down, and secured by some patent device which he had never before seen, and which baffled his trembling fingers.

Then he did scream,--a shrill, muffled cry,--so unlike his sturdy boyish halloo that he hardly recognized his own voice. Somehow it rescued him from the torpor that was stealing over him. He knew that it would rouse those within to a danger of which they had not dreamed. In another moment he might be helpless in their hands.

Instantly he tore off his shoe. One blow with its heel, and the shivered glass was flying in every direction. Through the broken pane he hastily jumped, with the shoe still in his hand. He fell heavily to the ground, and lay crouching in the shadow close in to the wall.

He had indeed given the alarm. There were swift steps within, and then an agitated whispering at the window.

The men were evidently frightened at first, but soon sought to reassure themselves. It was nothing, they said,--the glass was doubtless broken by some accident; a passer-by might have thrown a stone, or perhaps a cracked pane had loosened and fallen out at this crucial moment. "I know that there hollerin' mus' have been a long way off yonder somewhers, anyhow," declared the thickset man. "It sounded sorter muffled an' far-like."

The "first player" seemed to acquiesce, and then silence ensued.

When Ned felt that he could breathe, he gathered up his sore bones and ran down the alley, up the side street, and out upon the broad, deserted avenue. The lamps were all out, municipal thrift trusting for illumination to the wavering moon. A blue light glimmering far up the dusky hill told him that the "owl car" had just passed. An hour or so must elapse before another would appear, for they ran at long intervals. He looked about for a policeman. He saw none. The city seemed dead. He was unfamiliar with this quarter of the town, but as he sped along he came within sight of a city square. There he knew, under the trees, were often tramps, spending the night on the benches,--sometimes loafers of a better class belated and sleeping off the effect of their potations. Doubtless some of them would know where was the nearest police station or fire-alarm. All that he had seen seemed now so like a dream that he wondered whether after all he were not mistaken, whether the "first player" could really intend to burn the theatre.

As he paused for breath he glanced back in the direction of the building and diagonally across the darkly massed trees of the square. The high steeple of the cathedral was purpling slowly in the dun-colored gloom. Its gilded cross sprang suddenly into view, emblazoned upon the night like a sign in the sky. The dense foliage of the square was outlined against an angry crimson glare in the distance, ever widening and ever deepening. Into its midst a yellow pennon of flame flaunted to the breeze. The heavy tones of a fire-bell smote the silence suddenly.

There was a movement under the trees. The loungers on the benches were waking. Far up dark intersecting streets came the swift footfalls of boys, who spring up mysteriously at any hour of the night or day, eager to crowd around a fire. There was too the heavy tread of unseen policemen striding through the gloom. The sharp gong of the hose-carriage clamoring in the distance cleared a pass-way for the swinging gallop of its white horses. As it flashed around the corner and whirled out of sight in a second it looked like the chariot and coursers of Phœbus called out on a false alarm of dawn. Two or three hoarse drunken voices were aimlessly calling "Fi-ah! Fi-ah!" and one small boy, excitedly tangling his suspenders as he sought to adjust them, ran along in the middle of the street ceaselessly vociferating, "Number Six is a-comin'!"

And sure enough here was Number Six cumbrously rocking and swaying up the street, a big, polished, glittering monster, leaving a glowing path of live coals behind it and emitting a cloud of the blackest smoke. The driver of the engine was whipping like mad; its horses were plunging and rearing, and straining every nerve and muscle; its guard of honor, all the boys in the ward, ran admiringly on either side. Ned joined them from force of habit, taking the way back to the burning theatre, dodging at the first crossing the sudden on-rush of the team of the hook-and-ladder truck.

The smoke had hidden the moon and stars. Its murky canopy overhung the massive building and the vast crowd, all illuminated by the angry red flames darting from roof and windows. The jets of water rose high in dusky, half-descried curves, and fell hissing into the conflagration within. There were many of these ill-defined arches spanning the grim panorama, for Number Nine was in the alley, two other engines stood in the side street, two were in front of the building, and still three others guarded the safety of the block above. The firemen in their helmets and uniforms, some enveloped in long rubber coats, were here, there, and everywhere. They might have seemed the weird spirits of the flame, seen through its writhings and contortions as if they were in its very midst. Presently word was passed about the crowd that their efforts were subduing the terrible element. Ned watched with painful anxiety their exertions. He remembered many a scene like this when he had reveled in the noise and excitement, when a fire had seemed only a grand spectacular display, its interest heightened by the commensurate danger and gallant courage of the firemen. Then he had had no thought of the loss which it represented, the distress, the men thrown out of employment, a great financial factor blotted from commercial progress.

Now, how feverishly he hoped that the building might be saved,--that the deep iniquity of which he had gained full knowledge by his own wrong-doing might be thwarted! He felt that he could hardly live carrying this secret, and yet he had already promised himself never to divulge it. He said to himself that he might not always be able to keep the curb on circumstance. His story might be doubted, or only half believed. He might draw suspicion on himself,--implicate himself in the crime of arson. That meant the Penitentiary,--and a long term. His narrative would be in part a confession. He had choused the management out of half a dollar,--and that was stealing! He must first impeach his own honesty, then ask to be believed when he accused others. And what might not these others say in contradiction and recrimination! Were they not as likely to be believed as he? Certainly a boy who stole could scarcely hope he would not be suspected of other crimes if there were any evidence against him. Ned dreaded too the malignity of the men,--if they were capable of firing the theatre they were capable of falsely accusing him. No!--no!--he would never tell that he had witnessed any drama on those boards save the tragedy of Hamlet.

Was the fire less than before? They said so. It seemed to him hotter, redder, fiercer. Before long he knew that the fight was hopeless. The west wall gave way. Through the great gaps the stage became visible. The flames were licking up first one and then another of the many heavy "sets." As the lurid glare was flung upon some representation of Alpine heights or moonlit lake, or grim castle battlements or bosky woodland scene,--idealized infinitely in its unique frame of wreathing flames,--the crowd gave it "hands," as an audience is wont to applaud some fine new manifestation of the scene-painter's art.

It seemed to Ned, knowing what he did, very melancholy. He shook his head, and his heart was heavy.

As he stood there a familiar face attracted his attention.

"Is that you, Tom?" he called out.

"Nothin' shorter," replied a stout, undersized boy, nodding a round bullet head, surmounted by an old gray cap.

"Wher' 's Pete?" demanded Ned, for this was Pete's brother.

"I s'posed he wuz along of you. I seen ye together after dark a-makin' off."

"Naw,--he hain't been with me sence." Ned hesitated.

A look of blank surprise was on Tom's face. "I made sure he wuz with you," he said. "Pete hain't been home this night."