“This is no time,” Poole said, “to speculate. He may be saved. If he isn’t, then we shall of course ask ourselves just why. But he was in a bad way, Helena. He’d gone to pieces and he knew it”

“I wasn’t much help,” she said, “was I? Though it’s true to say I did try for quite a long time.”

“Indeed you did. There’s one thing you must be told. If it’s no go with Ben, we’ll have to inform the police.”

She put her hand to her forehead as if puzzled. “The police?” she repeated, and stared at him. “No, darling, no!” she cried, and after a moment whispered: “They might think — oh, darling, darling, darling, the Lord knows what they might think!”

The door up-stage opened and Gay Gainsford came in, followed by Darcey.

She was in her street-clothes, and at some time during the evening had made extensive repairs to her face, which wore, at the moment, an expression oddly compounded of triumph and distraction. Before she could speak she was seized with a paroxysm of coughing.

Darcey said: “Is it all right for Gay to wait here?”

“Yes, of course,” said Helena.

He went out and Poole followed him, saying he would return.

“Darling,” Miss Gainsford gasped, “I knew. I knew as soon as I smelt it. There’s a Thing in this theatre. Everything pointed to it. I just sat there and knew.” She coughed again. “Oh, I do feel so sick,” she said.

“Gay, for pity’s sake, what are you talking about?” Helena said.

“It was Fate, I felt. I wasn’t a bit surprised. I just knew something had to happen to-night.”

“Do you mean to say,” Helena murmured, and the wraith of her gift for irony was on her mouth, “that you just sat in the Greenroom with your finger raised, telling yourself it was Fate?”

“Darling Aunty — I’m sorry. I forgot. Darling Helena, wasn’t it amazing?”

Helena made a little gesture of defeat. Miss Gainsford looked at her for a moment and then, with the prettiest air of compassion, knelt at her feet. “Sweet,” she said, “I’m so terribly, terribly sorry. We’re together in this, aren’t we? He was my uncle and your husband.”

“True enough,” said Helena. She looked at Martyn over the head bent in devoted commiseration, and shook her own helplessly. Gay Gainsford sank into a sitting posture and leant her cheek against Helena’s hand. The hand, after a courteous interval, was withdrawn.

There followed a very long silence. Martyn sat at a distance and wondered if there was anything in the world she could do to help. There was an intermittent murmur of voices somewhere off-stage. Gay Gainsford, feeling perhaps that she had sustained her position long enough, moved by gradual degrees away from her aunt by marriage, rose and, sighing heavily, transferred herself to the sofa.

Time dragged on, mostly in silence. Helena lit one cigarette from the butt of another, Gay sighed with infuriating punctuality and Martyn’s thoughts drifted sadly about the evaporation of her small triumph.

Presently there were sounds of arrival. One or two persons walked round the set from the outside entry to the dock and were evidently admitted into it.

“Who can that be, I wonder?” Helena Hamilton asked idly, and after a moment: “Is Jacko about?”

“I’ll see,” said Martyn.

She found Jacko off-stage with Darcey and Parry Percival. Percival was saying: “Well, naturally, nobody wants to go to the party, but I must say that as one is quite evidently useless here, I don’t see why one can’t go home.”

Jacko said: “You would be recalled by the police, I dare say, if you went.”

He caught sight of Martyn, who went up to him. His face was beaded with sweat. “What is it, my small?” he asked. “This is a sad epilogue to your success story. Never mind. What is it?”

“I think Miss Hamilton would like to see you.”

“Then I come. It is time, in any case.”

He took her by the elbow and they went in together. When Helena saw him she seemed to rouse herself. “Jacko?” she said.

He didn’t answer and she got up quickly and went to him. “Jacko? What is it? Has it happened?”

Jacko’s hands, so refined and delicate that they seemed like those of another woman, touched her hair and her face.

“It has happened,” he said. “We have tried very hard but nothing is any good at all, and there is no more to be done. He has taken wing.”

Gay Gainsford broke into a fit of sobbing, but Helena stooped her head to Jacko’s shoulder and when his arms had closed about her said: “Help me to feel something, Jacko. I’m quite empty of feeling. Help me to be sorry.”

Above her head Jacko’s face, glistening with sweat, grotesque and primitive, had the fixed inscrutability of a classic mask.

Chapter VII

DISASTER

The fact of Bennington’s death had the effect of changing the values of other circumstances in the theatre. One after another the members of the company had said what they could to Helena Hamilton, and she had thanked them. She was very tremulous and uncertain of her voice, but she did not break down at any time and seemed, Martyn thought, to be in a kind of trance. At first they were all uncomfortably silent but, as the minutes slipped by, they fell into muted conversation. Most of what they said was singularly aimless. Matters of normal consequence were forgotten, details of behaviour became ridiculously important.

The question, for instance, of where they should assemble exercised the whole company. It was almost eleven o’clock and the stage was beginning to grow cold.

Clem Smith had rung up the police as soon as Dr. Rutherford said that Bennington was beyond recovery, and within five minutes a constable and sergeant had appeared at the stage-door. They went into the dock with Rutherford and then to Bennington’s dressing-room, where they remained alone for some time. During this period an aimless discussion developed among the members of the company about where they should go. Clem Smith suggested the Greenroom as the warmest place, and added tactlessly that the fumes had probably dispersed and if so there was no reason why they shouldn’t light the fire. Both Parry Percival and Gay Gainsford had made an outcry against this suggestion on the grounds of delicacy and susceptibility. Darcey supported Gay, the A.S.M. suggested the offices and Jacko the auditorium. Dr. Rutherford, who appeared to be less upset than anyone else, merely remarked that “All places that the eye of heaven visits are to a wise man ports and happy havens,” which, as Percival said acidly, got them nowhere.

Finally, Poole asked if the central-heating couldn’t be stoked up and a stage-hand was dispatched to the underworld to find out. Evidently he met with success as presently the air became less chilled.

They waited in the last-act set, much as they had waited when Poole summed up at the dress rehearsal. In this final scene, which was painted on gauze, Jacko had, by the use of grotesque perspective and exaggerated emphases, achieved a distortion of the second set, which itself was a distortion of the first. The walls and staircase seemed to lean over the actors, crushing them into too small a compass. Martyn became very much aware of this and disliked it.

The resemblance to the dress rehearsal was heightened by Jacko, who had fetched Helena’s dressing-case from her room. Again she removed her make-up on the stage, but this time it was Jacko who held the glass for her. He had brought powder and her bag for Martyn and a towel for each of them. With only a spatter of desultory conversation, the players sat about the stage and cleaned their faces. And they listened.

They heard the two men come back along the passage and separate. Then the central door opened and the young constable came in.

He was a tall, good-looking youth with a charming smile.

“The sergeant,” he said, “has asked me to explain that he’s telephoning Scotland Yard. He couldn’t be more sorry, but he’s afraid he’ll have to ask everybody to wait until he gets his instructions. He’s sure you’ll understand that it’s just a matter of routine.”