Martyn saw Poole coming towards her and stood aside. He seemed to tower over her as he took her hand. “Come along,” he said. Darcey and Percival and the group off-stage began to clap.

Poole led her on. She felt herself resisting and heard him say: “Yes, it’s all right.”

So bereft was Martyn of her normal stage-wiseness that he had to tell her to bow. She did so, and wondered why there was a warm sound of laughter in the applause. She looked at Poole, found he was bowing to her and bent her head under his smile. He returned her to the wings.

They were all on again. Dr. Rutherford came out from the O.P. corner. The cast joined in the applause. Martyn’s heart had begun to sing so loudly that it was like to deafen every emotion but a universal gratitude. She thought Rutherford looked like an old lion standing there in his out-of-date evening clothes, his hair ruffled, his gloved hand touching his bulging shirt, bowing in an unwieldy manner to the audience and to the cast. He moved forward and the theatre was abruptly silent — silent, but for an obscure and intermittent thudding in the dressing-room passage. Clem Smith said something to the A.S.M. and rushed away, jingling keys.

“Hah,” said Dr. Rutherford with a preliminary bellow. “Hah — thankee. I’m much obliged to you, ladies and gentlemen, and to the actors. The actors are much obliged, no doubt, to you, but not necessarily to me.” Here the audience laughed and the actors smiled. “I am not able to judge,” the Doctor continued with a rich roll in his voice, “whether you have extracted from this play the substance of its argument. If you have done so, we may all felicitate each other with the indiscriminate enthusiasm characteristic of these occasions: if you have not, I for my part am not prepared to say where the blame should rest.”

A solitary man laughed in the audience. The Doctor rolled an eye at him and, with this clownish trick, brought the house down. “The prettiest epilogue to a play that I am acquainted with,” he went on, “is (as I need perhaps hardly mention to so intelligent an audience) that written for a boy actor by William Shakespeare. I am neither a boy nor an actor, but I beg leave to end by quoting it to you. ‘If it be true that good wine needs no bush—’ ”

“Gas!” Parry Percival said under his breath. Martyn, who thought the Doctor was going well, glanced indignantly at Parry and was astonished to see that he looked frightened. “ ‘—therefore,’ ” the Doctor was saying arrogantly, “ ‘to beg will not become me—’ ”

“Gas!” said an imperative voice off-stage and someone else ran noisily round the back of the set

And then Martyn smelt it. Gas.

To the actors, it seemed afterwards as if they had been fantastically slow to understand that disaster had come upon the theatre. The curtain went down on Dr. Rutherford’s last word. There was a further outbreak of applause. Someone off-stage shouted: “The King, for God’s sake!” and at once the anthem rolled out disinterestedly in the well. Poole ran off the stage and was met by Clem Smith, who had a bunch of keys in his hand. The rest followed him.

The area back-stage reeked of gas.

It was extraordinary how little was said. The players stood together and looked about them with the question in their faces that they were unable to ask.

Poole said: “Keep all visitors out, Clem. Send them to the foyer.” And at once the A.S.M. spoke into the Prompt telephone. Bob Grantley burst through the pass-door, beaming from ear to ear.

“Stupendous!” he shouted. “John! Helena! Adam! My God, chaps, you’ve done it—”

He stood, stock-still, his arms extended, the smile drying on his face.

“Go back, Bob,” Poole said. “Cope with the people. Ask our guests to go on and not wait for us. Ben’s ill. Clem, get all available doors open. We want air.”

Grantley said: “Gas?”

“Quick,” Poole said. “Take them with you. Settle them down and explain. He’s ill. Then ring me here. But quickly, Bob. Quickly.”

Grantley went out without another word.

“Where is he?” Dr. Rutherford demanded.

Helena Hamilton suddenly said: “Adam?”

“Go on to the stage, Helena. It’s better you shouldn’t be here, believe me. Kate will stay with you. I’ll come in a moment.”

“Here you are, Doctor,” said Clem Smith.

There was a blundering sound in the direction of the passage. Rutherford said “Open the dock-doors,” and went behind the set.

Poole thrust Helena through the Prompt entry and shut the door behind her. Draughts of cold air came through the side entrances.

“Kate,” Poole said, “go in and keep her there if you can. Will you? And, Kate—”

Rutherford reappeared and with him four stagehands, bearing with difficulty the inert body of Clark Bennington. The head hung swinging upside down between the two leaders, its mouth wide open.

Poole moved quickly, but he was too late to shield Martyn.

“Never mind,” he said. “Go in with Helena.”

“Anyone here done respiration for gassed cases?” Dr. Rutherford demanded. “I can start but I’m not good for long.”

“I can,” said the A.S.M. “I was a warden.”

“I can,” said Jacko.

“And I,” said Poole.

“In the dock, then. Shut these doors and open the outer ones.”

Kneeling by Helena Hamilton and holding her hand, Martyn heard the doors roll back and the shambling steps go into the dock. The doors crashed behind them.

Martyn said: “They’re giving him respiration. Dr. Rutherford’s there.”

Helena nodded with an air of sagacity. Her face was quite without expression and she was shivering.

“I’ll get your coat,” Martyn said. It was in the improvised dressing-room on the O.P. side. She was back in a moment and put Helena into it as if she were a child, guiding her arms and wrapping the fur about her.

A voice off-stage — J. G. Darcey’s — said: “Where’s Gay? Is Gay still in the Greenroom?”

Martyn was astonished when Helena, behind that mask that had become her face, said loudly: “Yes. She’s there. In the Greenroom.”

There was a moment’s silence and then J.G. said: “She mustn’t stay there. Good God—”

They heard him go away.

Parry Percival’s voice announced abruptly that he was going to be sick. “But where?” he cried distractedly. “Where?”

“In your dressing-room, for Pete’s sake,” Clem Smith said.

“It’ll be full of gas. Oh, really! There was an agonized and not quite silent interval. “I couldn’t be more sorry,” Percival said weakly.

“I want,” Helena said, “to know what happened. I want to see Adam. Ask him to come, please.”

Martyn made for the door, but before she reached it Dr. Rutherford came in, followed by Poole. Rutherford had taken off his coat and was a fantastic sight in boiled shirt, black trousers and red braces.

“Well, Helena,” he said, “this is not a nice business. We’re doing everything that can be done. I’m getting a new oxygen thing in as quickly as possible. There have been some remarkable saves in these cases. But I think you ought to know it’s a thinnish chance. There’s no pulse and so on.”

“I want,” she said, holding out her hand to Poole, “to know what happened.”

Poole said gently: “All right, Helena, you shall. It looks as if Ben locked himself in after his exit, and then turned the gas fire off — and on again. When Clem unlocked the door and went in he found Ben on the floor. His head was near the fire and a coat over both. He could only have been like that for quite a short time.”

“This theatre,” she said. “This awful theatre.”

Poole looked as if he would make some kind of protest, but after a moment’s hesitation he said: “All right, Helena. Perhaps it did suggest the means, but if he had made up his mind he would, in any case, have found the means.”

“Why?” she said. “Why has he done it?”

Dr. Rutherford growled inarticulately and went out. They heard him open and shut the dock-doors. Poole sat down by Helena and took her hands in his. Martyn was going, but he looked up at her and said: “No, don’t. Don’t go, Kate,” and she waited near the door.