The Final Curtain

by Gilbert, Morris

  Stung, he dropped his hands at once. His vanity was skin deep, and when his ego was touched, even his smooth actor’s facade could not hide his resentment. “You’ll come around, Danielle,” he foresaw finally, then found a smile. “You’ve just never known a man like me.”

  “No, you’ve never known a woman like me, Jonathan,” she stated instantly. “I’d better get back.”

  “I’ll go with you,” he offered. “I suppose Queen Amber LeRoi will condescend to grace our lowly cast with her presence,” his anger flared out.

  As they walked down the hall toward the lobby, Dani asked, “She hates you very much, doesn’t she? I wonder if she’d go far enough to send those letters?”

  “Letters, yes,” Jonathan answered bitterly; then he shrugged. “But the rest of it—no. She hates guns.”

  “But she could have hired someone.”

  “She could, Danielle,” he agreed quietly. “But it’s not her way for one very good reason.” A bitter smile crossed his face as he opened the door for her. “She’s enjoying killing me a little at a time much more than one brief instant of joy that would come with shooting me. She knows I hate her, that I think she’s the most abominable excuse for an actress ever to step on a stage. I’d love to see her dead so that we could get a decent actress to grace this play of mine, and Amber knows it. When we were in love, she learned all my weaknesses. And I learned all of hers.”

  They were almost at the pit now, and he lowered his voice. “So cross Amber off your list of suspects. She’d be miserable if anything happened to end my suffering, Danielle. She enjoys tormenting me as boys love to pull wings off flies! I wish she’d have a coronary!”

  Then he moved up the steps and walked to Nero, who was waiting on stage. “Is she here yet, Simon?”

  Nero shook his head, his face gray with strain. “She called—and she says she’s got a headache, that she can’t rehearse tonight.”

  Jonathan Ainsley lost control. He cursed and ranted and walked the stage, consigning Amber LeRoi to the lowest pits of the inferno. Danielle was taken aback, for she had not known such a depth of hatred lay in the heart of the man. He ended by saying, “I wish the little tramp were dead! I’d put a bullet in her brain tonight, if I could do it without going to jail!”

  The rest of the cast were still, but Dani knew they had witnessed that sort of behavior before. A sort of satisfaction gleamed in Lady Lockridge’s eyes, but the others seemed fearful. Lily spoke for them when she came close to Ainsley and said, “Jonathan, how can we practice without her?”

  “We can’t, of course,” Jonathan answered gloomily. “We might as well go get drunk.”

  “No need of that, Ainsley.” Sir Adrian had a strange smile on his face. When he had everyone’s attention, he explained, “We’ve got a fine stand-in for Amber.”

  “Stand-in?” Jonathan stared at Lockridge as if he’d lost his mind. “What are you babbling about?”

  “Danielle can walk through the play.” Lockridge nodded. “She knows Amber’s role word perfect—not to mention all the rest of them.”

  “Oh, I—I couldn’t! Danielle protested instantly, shaking her head.

  But at once Ainsley picked up the idea. He stared at her, then nodded. “Of course! You do know every line of the play. We’ve all wondered at your ability to learn so quickly.” He suddenly clapped his hands together and shouted, “Well, Nero—you’re the director of this play. We’re all here, so start directing!”

  Dani never clearly remembered what followed. She found herself caught up by Ainsley’s excitement, and the rest of the cast joined in. “You can do it, Danielle!” Lyle Jamison whispered. “Much better than that old witch, Amber!” They all urged her to go on, even Ringo Jordan, who grinned with an unexpected humor. “Go for it, kid,” he said, nudging her with his elbow. “Knock ’em dead!”

  She found herself pushed into place on the stage, and felt Ainsley’s hand on her arm, his face close to hers. “You can do this thing, Danielle!” he whispered. “You’re the sort of woman who can do anything she makes up her mind to do. Now let’s see you perform!”

  When it was time for Dani’s first entrance, she froze, unable to move to save her life! Just as she was about to turn and run, Mickey Trask came up behind her. He whispered, “Break a leg, Danielle!” Then he shoved her forcefully out of the wings onto the stage.

  She almost fell, but came face-to-face with Ainsley, who caught her, pulled her upright, and ad-libbed with perfect timing: “Well, Marian, we’ll have to have that carpet fixed so that you won’t trip over it again, won’t we?”

  Danielle looked into his eyes, which were sparkling with humor, and lost all her gawkish insecurity. She spoke her first line strongly, and it happened again, the near miracle that had always taken place when she had acted in college. Everything except her role seemed to fade away. In college time after time, she had made her entrance on the stage, frightened and uncertain, but as she had forced the audience and everything else from her mind, concentrating on her character, she had moved through the drama as if it were the real world. At the end, with a feeling of abrupt shock, the world of pretense closed, and she jolted back to reality.

  So she moved through the complicated scenes of Out of the Night concentrating on her lines when she was on stage and on the lines of others when she was off. She was even able to prompt Sir Adrian once when she was in a scene with him, but she did it so smoothly that an audience would never have noticed it. Sir Adrian, delighted with her wit, gave her a sly wink.

  When the curtain came down, Dani felt totally exhausted, but ecstatic members of the cast surrounded her, singing her praises. “You were terrific, Danielle!” Trey Miller grinned, and then was shouldered aside as Lyle and Mickey grabbed her with hugs that lifted her from the floor. “Let the witch look to her laurels!” Lyle whispered in sheer delight. Carmen Rio had nothing to say, nor did Lily Aumont, but Ringo gave her what he thought was a gentle squeeze on the arm and murmured, “Hey, I give you odds—the LeRoi dame won’t miss no more practices, Danielle! She’ll turn green when she hears how well we got along without her.”

  Finally Jonathan came and took both her hands in his. He studied her with a level gaze, then shook his head. “You don’t really know what you did tonight, Danielle.”

  Dani shook her head quickly. “I just read the lines, Jonathan.”

  A quick mutter of disagreement ran around the cast, and Ainsley shook his head. “No, that’s not what you did. You became Marian Powers for almost three hours.” Wonder filled his eyes, and he said, “Let’s get out of here. I know you must be tired.”

  He turned, and they moved to leave the stage, when Carmen said, “Jonathan—this is for you.”

  Ainsley turned and took the envelope from her. “What’s this?” he asked.

  Carmen shrugged. “I thought it was yours. It was on the table over there by the couch, and it’s got your name on it.”

  Danielle watched as Jonathan ripped open the sealed envelope, and she saw his face grow suddenly stiff with fear and amazement. He stood there, peering at it, then handed it to her without a word. A tremor shot through his lower lip, and he blinked his eyes more rapidly than usual. Looking down at the paper, she saw that it was another threat, using the same form as the others.

  YOU HAVE CHOSEN TO IGNORE MY WARNINGS. NOW IT IS PUT OUT THE LIGHT, AND THEN PUT OUT THE LIGHT. YOU OWE GOD A DEATH. YOU HAVE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS TO LIVE.

  Danielle looked up quickly and said, “Jonathan, we’ve got to have help.”

  “Is it another threat?” Simon Nero asked quickly. “If so, Danielle is right. We’ve got to call the police.”

  “No!” Jonathan shook his head violently. “We’ll handle this ourselves. I’ll take every precaution—and all of you keep alert. We keep a tight ship, and this maniac won’t be able to do a thing.”

  “One thing, Jonathan,” Danielle said slowly. “How did the letter get on that table? It wasn’t there when we started rehearsal.”

&nbs
p; “It must have been!” he contradicted her quickly.

  “No, I cleaned everything off,” Trey Miller admitted.

  “It wasn’t there after the end of the first act,” Sir Adrian spoke up. “I set my glass down there, as I always do. There was nothing on that table.”

  A silence ran around the room. Then Jonathan commented, “So, it looks like we have a family problem, doesn’t it? Well, well, to paraphrase Hamlet, there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark—or more accurately, there’s something rotten in the cast of my little play!”

  Dani said, “I was too nervous to see anything. But that table is right by the wing. Anyone could have slipped it there during the set changes, couldn’t they?”

  “It’s possible, Danielle,” Trey Miller agreed slowly. “There’s so much going on, and it’s pretty dark. If someone were backstage, it wouldn’t have been much of a trick to drop an envelope on a table.”

  “He’d have been noticed,” Jonathan stated flatly. “It had to be someone nobody would notice—and that’s the cast and the crew.”

  “Wait until the papers get this one!” Ringo grunted. “It’ll make page one!”

  “They’re not going to get it,” Jonathan insisted angrily. “We’ve got to keep our mouths shut!”

  But the next day, a story spread the word that “The Phantom of the Theater” had called his shot and would strike again within twenty-four hours.

  At rehearsal, Jonathan produced a tall, thin man with a hatchet chin and a pair of indolent black eyes. “This is Charlie Allgood,” he announced angrily. “He’s my good friend—and he’s also putting the garbage in the papers—this Phantom of the Theater business. I brought him along to see that it’s all nonsense. Some actor I turned down for a part is getting his jollies—that’s all! It’s a nuisance, but we can weather it.”

  “How did you get your information about what happened last night, Mr. Allgood?” Sir Adrian demanded.

  “Got a call last night at midnight. Guy wouldn’t give his name, but he told me the whole thing.”

  “What did he sound like?” Jamison asked.

  “Sounded British,” Allgood answered.

  “Anybody can do an English accent,” Jonathan admitted disgustedly. “Well, I’m inviting Charlie to all rehearsals. Nothing is going to happen, but if it does, I don’t want any rumors. Charlie, you let me down by printing what I told you in confidence—but you can make it up by playing fair with us.”

  “Sure, Jonathan. I’ll try not to get in the way, and you’ll get nothing but the truth in our sheet.”

  “All right, that’s it.” Ainsley nodded. He looked around and smiled slightly. “Well, Amber, I see you feel well enough to be on your feet.” He paused, then added, “If you don’t feel up to it, I’m sure we can muddle along again. I suppose you heard how well Danielle did last night.”

  Amber LeRoi gave him a killing glance and stared at Danielle. “I can’t stand amateurs!” she bit out. “Let’s get to work.”

  Danielle found Amber’s obvious animosity juvenile, but rather unpleasant. She put it from her mind and took her place as the curtain went up.

  It was a good performance, so good that she lost track of the speeches. She moved around watching Trey and his helpers, a small Mexican named Julio and a strongly built black man named Earl, as they moved the stages around. She had been fascinated from the first by Miller’s genius, and with the intricate design of the staging. The play called for a number of settings—an ornate sitting room, a bedroom, a library, an outside patio among them.

  Trey Miller had designed a stage in two sections, one behind the other. Somehow he had mounted them on silent rubber wheels so that they could move either forward or sideways. He had made each stage in two sections, so that they could separate exactly down the center. When the stage closest to the footlights needed to be replaced, it was pulled apart and each half moved into the wings. Once it was separated and out of the way, stage number two was drawn forward into place. The two halves of the first stage, being out of sight, could be rearranged or completely changed. When the next setting was required, the other stage was pulled to one side.

  Moreover, the stages were so exquisitely and carefully designed that it took only a few seconds to replace stage one with stage two. Sometimes the lights were turned down for a few seconds—and when they came up the audience would be amazed at how the setting had changed instantaneously.

  Trey and Julio had to work frantically to make the set changes, and Danielle felt that the others were right when they said that the set would carry off all the awards. “I won’t be able to hire Trey next year,” Simon said ruefully to Dani. “He’ll be the most sought-after stage designer in America!”

  The change from the ballroom to the bedroom, in act three, was particularly difficult. Though the tense scene between Jonathan and Lyle lasted only five minutes, it was a key part of the play. Danielle watched as the three set men set up the bedroom stage, then, when the lights went down, rolled the ballroom set offstage and quickly slid the other into place. It took no more than thirty seconds, and when the lights came up, Jonathan was leaning back in a recliner, with Lyle standing directly in front of him.

  It was, Dani thought, Lyle’s best scene, and she watched carefully. He had asked her to do so, inviting her to make suggestions on his performance. She kept her eyes fixed on him and was pleased with what he did. Jonathan had only five lines in the entire scene. He lay back with his face turned up. The scene called for him to do so, for it was the point in the play in which Lyle’s character was to be totally ruined by King, the character played by Jonathan.

  “It’s my lazy scene,” Jonathan had commented once to Dani. “All I have to do is lie there, looking up at the ceiling—and let the fellow go to the devil. I do it rather well—having had considerable practice at such things.”

  Dani was waiting for Lyle’s last cue from Jonathan, when suddenly everything seemed to fall apart. Jonathan leaped up out of the chair and, to Dani’s astonishment, tackled Lyle, knocking him across the room and falling on top of him!

  At the same time, a tremendous crash shook the stage, and the air seemed full of flying glass.

  “Jonathan!” she cried and ran out of the wings. One glance at the broken glass and twisted brass on the floor revealed that the huge chandelier used for the ballroom scene had somehow fallen! It had landed exactly on the spot in front of Jonathan’s chair—precisely on the spot where Lyle Jamison had been standing!

  “Are you hurt?” Dani gasped, bending over the two men. Others were running toward them, and she saw that Ainsley had blood on his brow.

  “I—I guess not,” Jonathan admitted faintly. He rolled off Jamison, asking, “Are you all right, Lyle?”

  Lyle pulled himself to his feet, and when he looked at the massive, twisted form of the chandelier, he paled. “That thing would have—” He broke off and said, “I’d like to sit down, I think.”

  Ringo grabbed Lyle’s arm and steered him to a chair. Jonathan took a deep breath. “I don’t feel so good myself.” Then he forced himself to straighten up and grew angry. “How in heaven’s name could this thing happen?”

  “Better ask the set manager,” Amber suggested.

  All eyes turned to Trey Miller, who had come out from the wings. He quickly insisted, “Why, I don’t—”

  “This is your responsibility, Miller,” Jonathan snapped. “Explain it!”

  Miller stood there with his lips suddenly dry. He shook his head. “The cable must have broken.” Turning quickly, he ran to where the ropes for the overhead items were anchored. He looked down at the floor, at the nylon rope that held the chandelier. Jonathan followed his gaze, picked up the rope, and pulled it to the end. He stared at it, then exclaimed, “It’s been cut!”

  Trey cried, “It can’t be!”

  “See for yourself.”

  Ainsley held out the end of the rope, and they all pressed closer. Dani saw clearly that the rope was not frayed, but sliced throug
h half its width. She wanted to examine the scene more carefully, but did not dare do more than look closely. On the scuffed floor, the finish had worn off in several spots, but then the entire area was worn. A few old programs lay off to her left, and an old glass pop bottle. But nothing looked out of place. Fingerprints would be useless, for they all had passed by the same spot time after time.

  “It’s been cut, there’s no doubt about that,” Jonathan proclaimed. “But who did it?”

  Suddenly Charlie Allgood was there, and he suggested laconically, “Why, Jonathan, you know the answer to that.”

  “What are you talking about, Charlie?” Ainsley demanded.

  Allgood pulled a Nikon from his overcoat pocket and began taking a careful shot of the wreckage. After he snapped the shutter, he looked around and added with a shrug, “Plain as day. It’s the Phantom of the Theater—right on schedule!”

  “That’s—that’s absurd!” Jonathan broke in angrily. His face was pale, and Dani saw that his hands trembled.

  “I think so, too,” Dani advised him. “But that rope was cut, and a man was nearly killed. That’s attempted murder. The police will have to be informed, Jonathan.”

  Ainsley bit his lip, then nodded abruptly. “I suppose so. That’s all we need—a thing like this spread all over the front page.”

  Amber laughed shortly, her lips curling upward. “Oh, come on, Jonathan! You’re thinking right now how this is going to be good for the box office. You’d strangle your own mother to sell a few tickets.”

  Jonathan stared at her, then turned away abruptly. “I’ll call the police. We’d all better stay right here—and don’t touch anything.”

  “Just like on TV,” Trey Miller voiced bitterly. His mouth set angrily, and he glared around at the other members of the cast. “Now, the next thing is a little racial discrimination. It’d be a good chance to pin this on me.”

  “It won’t be like that, Trey,” Danielle said, offended at the mere idea of it.