The Grub-and-Stakers Pinch a Poke

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “What we’ll have to do,” Osbert decided, “is bring the hoedown to the audience. Stagehands, you’d better move this first row of chairs back so there’ll be a little extra space to maneuver in. Girls, when you finish your cancan, you each turn around and grab yourselves a partner.”

  “Who takes which?” Hazel Munson wanted to know.

  “It doesn’t matter, you all know the dance. Take whoever’s nearest. Mr. Portley, could we have those two little sets of steps over here that the kids march up for graduation? That’s right, one on each side of the stage.”

  Osbert pranced up and down them himself a couple of times to make sure they were safe. “Okay, now as you pair off, go down whichever steps are handiest and begin jigging around the floor in front of the stage. Don’t crowd and don’t march off like wooden soldiers. Keep it casual. The last couple or two can stay onstage if you want. If any of the audience want to get up and join in, let them. Switch partners, dance up the aisle, do whatever you feel like. Whoop it up in grand style.”

  “How long should I play?” asked Dittany.

  “That depends on how well it’s going. I’ll stand in the wings and signal. When you see me raise my hand, play a few bars of ‘Abide with Me’ or something so the cast will know it’s quitting time and come back onstage.”

  “How about ‘I’m Heading for the Last Roundup’?”

  “Great, just the ticket. Then gradually you slow down into the sentimental stuff while they come onstage and settle down for the climax. All right, let’s try it. Line up and do the last few bars of the cancan, girls. Then take your partners and sort of spill down the stairs one after the other.”

  “And afterward we spill up again?” Dot Coskoff liked to get her directions straight.

  “Yep. Ready, Dittany?”

  They tried the routine once or twice. Choosing partners and dancing in the aisles worked just fine once everybody’d got the knack of negotiating the none too adequate steps. The trouble started when they all crowded back onstage. There simply wasn’t room enough left for the stranger and Dan McGrew to shoot it out the way it ought to be shot. Osbert Monk remained undaunted.

  “Never mind. What we’ll do is this. Dittany still plays the signal but nobody comes back onstage except Samantha and Ellie. Then three or four of you, whoever’s closest, climb up and sit on the steps, as if you’re worn out from the dancing.”

  “Which we are,” said Therese Boulanger, suiting the action to the word.

  “Good. Go ahead, a few more sit down. The rest of you cluster around in front of the stage and look up. Bill, you start pouring drinks. Ellie and Samantha, take the drinks as Bill pours them out and hand them down to the men. You fellows reach out and try to attract their attention, as if you’re grabbing for the drinks. Don’t shove or anything, but horse around a bit if you want. Tickle the girls in a playful sort of way.”

  “Not my wife you don’t tickle,” shouted Roger Munson.

  “Oh, shush up, Roger,” Hazel snapped back.

  It took them a while to get the bugs out, but the scene worked beautifully. The girls in their bright red skirts and the miners in their blue shirts made a living frame for the stranger’s entrance. They held the tableau, some pretending to sip their drinks, others listening quietly as the kid at the piano strummed her sentimental melodies.

  Then Dittany wiggled her fingers, took a final swig of her sarsaparilla, and thundered into “The Maple Leaf Rag.” The stranger blew in with his poke. The lady known as Lou started exercising her perplexity. Dangerous Dan McGrew put a red deuce on a black trey, got excited because his solitaire was working out, remembered he was supposed to be acting, and went back to looking mean. The stranger ordered his drink, then played his solo; or rather pretended to since Roger hadn’t yet rigged up the tape recorder.

  Roger had brought the guns, but he only had one blank cartridge left for the gun Dan was going to fire which they had to save for the actual performance. Yelling “Bang, bang” didn’t have the same dramatic impact, but that didn’t matter. Both victims had plenty of room to expire in a convincing and reasonably dignified manner. The lady known as Lou didn’t have to fight her way across the stage to clasp the miner to her bosom with one hand and pinch his poke with the other. That was all Osbert needed to know. Shortly after half past five, he dismissed his company.

  “That wraps it up for now. Thanks, everybody. Go home and get your suppers. I’d like you back here by a quarter to seven, please.”

  He hadn’t left them much time, but nobody grumbled. Nor did they dawdle. The gym was soon empty except for the three Monks, Andrew McNaster, and Carolus Bledsoe. Jenson Thorbisher-Freep had brought Arethusa to the school at about half past one and hung around for a while in case they might be looking for some technical expertise of a general nature. At last he’d said he might as well make himself scarce as he obviously wasn’t needed here, and several people had assured him he wasn’t. Jenson hadn’t been seen since but no doubt he’d show up for the performance.

  Dittany was gripped by a sudden awful thought. “Carolus”—they’d all been on first-name terms for quite a while by now—“not to bring up an unpleasant subject, but had we better rig up the volleyball net in front of the stage to ward off flying objects?”

  The lawyer flushed, but didn’t evade her question. “I understand your concern, Dittany, and I share it. I took the precaution this morning of having my attorney warn my ex-wife’s attorney that she’ll be under close surveillance if she attends tonight’s performance and that if she causes any disruption, she’ll be instantly apprehended and charged with a disturbance of the peace.”

  “Whom were you planning to have apprehend her?”

  “I’ve arranged with an off-duty Lobelia Falls policeman to stand at the entrance and track her if she comes in. He’ll be on the qui vive all evening, so don’t worry your pretty little head for one moment. Now let’s see what we can do about getting you ladies fed.”

  “Leaping lariats,” Osbert broke in, “I plumb forgot about Archie and the producer. Come on, darling, we’d better stop at the inn and see how they’re making out.”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Andrew McNaster. “You’ll want to eat with them, naturally, so be my guests. You too, Miss Monk, of course.” Andy still couldn’t bring himself to say Arethusa right out in front of everybody though she’d confided to Dittany that he sometimes managed it during their tête-à-têtes. “And I guess we can find a spare pot roast or something for the faithful friend here. What do you say, Ethel?”

  That clinched it for Dittany. “Ethel says thanks and so do we. Only you’ll have to put up with us in our rehearsal clothes.”

  “I can’t stop to change, either,” Andy replied gaily. “Not till I get into my villain suit. We’re all in the same boat, eh?”

  He thought he had hold of the oars, but Carolus Bledsoe committed an act of piracy. “We’ll all come to the inn. Only you must be my guest, Arethusa darling.”

  Darling, forsooth! Dittany and Osbert exchanged covert glances. Andrew McNaster came right out and glared, but there wasn’t a thing he could do. His was a public hostelry; Carolus Bledsoe had as much right as anybody else to walk in there and order two of his Cordon Bleu dinners. When one of these was being served to the woman of the innkeeper’s dreams, however, and another man was sitting across from her as she prepared to eat it, that innkeeper’s uncontrollable urge to gnash his teeth as he passed their table a little while after this scene in the gymnasium could well be understood.

  Arethusa at least appeared to understand. She reached out and grabbed him by his coattails. “Stand, sirrah! Methought you were going to eat with us. Have your minions bring another knife and fork.”

  “Sorry, I have urgent business in the kitchen,” Andy snarled.

  It was the snarl of a soul in torment, and Dittany, now seated at the next table, felt sorry for him. She had no chance to express her sympathy, however. She was having to make polite conversation with the big-shot producer,
whose name turned out to be Daniel something, while Osbert and Archie thrashed out a few details relating to the movie contract.

  Daniel didn’t look much like a big shot, Dittany thought. He looked pretty much like anybody else except for his eyes. These were dark and small and never still, like a hawk’s; and they didn’t appear to miss much. He’d noticed that small incident across the way and been fully as interested as Dittany.

  “Magnificent,” he murmured when Andy had disappeared behind the swinging door to the kitchen. “Who is he?”

  “That’s Andrew McNaster, the innkeeper,” Dittany explained. “He’s also a building contractor.”

  “Too bad he’s not an actor in your husband’s play.”

  “Oh, but he is. You’ll see him tonight as Dan McGrew.”

  “You don’t say! With a beard, I suppose?”

  “No, just that nasty little mustache. Andy grew it specially. It’s how he interprets the role.”

  “By George.” Those relentless black eyes flickered back to Dittany. “Any of the other principals here?”

  “All of us, except the landlady and the bartender. That’s Osbert’s Aunt Arethusa over there eating olives. She’s the lady known as Lou. Andy’s stuck on her, that’s why he’s so mad. And the man with her is the miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty and loaded for bear.”

  “He looks clean enough to me,” said Daniel.

  “He has to be clean for the first act,” Dittany explained. “We dirty him up during the intermission.”

  “I see. But you said we. What’s your role?”

  “Oh, I’m the tiny tot.”

  Regrettably, Daniel had just taken a spoonful of his onion soup. Archie looked at him in some alarm.

  “Are you all right, Dan?”

  “Osbert’s wife just told me she’s the tiny tot.”

  “Well, yes,” said Osbert. “Dittany’s always been the tiny tot. It’s a tradition among the Traveling Thespians.”

  Daniel, who had by now stopped choking, nodded his unimpressive head. “I see. That explains it, of course. I must say I’m beginning to look forward to this evening. And that’s your aunt over there, eh? Striking woman. I suppose she always plays the tragedienne.”

  Right now she’s playing the field, Osbert replied gloomily. “Oh, gosh, here comes another morph to the flame. Who the heck is he, I wonder?”

  “The second gravedigger, I should say,” Daniel replied with mild distaste.

  The man making a beeline for the table where Arethusa and Carolus sat was tall, dark, and almost but not quite handsome in a cadaverous sort of way. He had on a black suit of exaggerated cut, a floppy black tie, a flowing black cape like Jenson Thorbisher-Freep’s, and a silky white shirt that made Dittany wonder for a moment whether he might perhaps be a flamenco dancer wanting to borrow Arethusa’s Spanish shawl.

  No, he wasn’t. She recognized him now, he always played the leading male roles in the Scottsbeck Salute to Shakespeare. Her mother had dragged her along a few times when she was a teenager, to broaden her cultural horizons. She’d sat through Macbeth in an agony of suppressed giggles, she recalled, because he’d looked so darn silly in the kilt. He had a silly name, too, Leander something.

  “Leander Hellespont,” she said aloud. “He’s with the Scottsbeck Players. How did Arethusa—”

  She stopped. Leander wasn’t paying any attention to Arethusa. It was at Carolus Bledsoe that he was pointing the finger of accusation; Carolus Bledsoe whom he addressed in words of scorn and vituperation.

  “So, false one! You rive me of my beloved, then you cast her aside like a faded rose and turn to a gaudier blossom. You shall pay for this, Carolus Bledsoe!”

  “Bravo,” murmured Daniel. Dittany was beginning to like the big-shot producer.

  Carolus Bledsoe laid down his knife and fork and gave his accuser a cool and haughty glance. “Oh, dry up and blow away, Hellespont. You’re making a jackass of yourself.”

  “You defy me, ruffian? My adored Wilhedra shall learn that she has a dauntless champion. Stand and face me, Bledsoe!”

  “Not here he won’t.” Andy McNaster was back in the room with blood in his eye. “This is a respectable inn, mister. Either sit down and order or get the hell—I mean, betake yourself elsewhere.”

  “And refrain from bandying the name of a lady in public, you mannerless jackanapes,” added Arethusa. “Aroint. Shoo. Scat.”

  “Poltroon!” Leander really did have a lovely sneer, Dittany thought. “Go ahead, summon your henchman. Hide behind a woman’s skirts. But beware, Carolus Bledsoe. You cannot escape the wrath of Leander Hellespont!”

  “Bravissimo!”

  Daniel was on his feet, applauding. However towering his wrath, Leander Hellespont was too seasoned a trouper to spoil such a glorious exit line. He flung his cloak about his lanky frame, distributed sneers all around, and stalked from the inn. Andrew McNaster went back to the kitchen. Carolus Bledsoe picked up his fork. Arethusa ate another olive.

  Chapter 8

  “I’LL BET HE’S THE one who stink-bombed the opera house.”

  Dittany hadn’t expected such a reaction from what she herself had considered a rather commonplace remark. Osbert, Archie, and Daniel all gaped at her as though she’d produced a live panther from inside her cream puff.

  “Well, it’s obvious enough, isn’t it?” She scooped up the last of her fudge sauce but refrained from licking her fork because she was out in company. “The Scottsbeck Players got first crack at the competition. Desdemona Portley says they put on a thing about Lord Selkirk and the Hudson’s Bay Company that their leading man wrote, directed, and acted the part of Selkirk in. She must have meant Hellespont because she said all His Lordship did was stalk around in one fancy suit after another, ranting about the massacre at Seven Oaks and the high cost of beaver skins. Dessie said the best part of the whole show was when one of the trappers pretending to make a portage got his head caught inside a birchbark canoe.”

  “Too bad I missed it,” said Daniel.

  “Doesn’t sound to me as if you missed much,” Archie grunted. “I see Dittany’s point, though. That gink’s a sore loser if ever I saw one. So your theory, Dittany, is that Hellespont bombed the opera house to keep you from putting on Osbert’s play and winning the competition. That didn’t work so he decided to pick a fight with your leading man and put him out of business. He must be a bit strange.”

  “All actors are strange,” said Daniel. “I ought to know, I used to be one myself.”

  “I’m not so sure Hellespont was really out to disable Carolus,” Osbert demured. “I’d say he was trying to make up some lost ground with Wilhedra Thorbisher-Freep. I wish Aunt Arethusa would quit this Cleopatra stuff.”

  “I wish we’d gone ahead and rigged that volleyball net in front of the stage,” Dittany netted.

  Generally speaking, people who spend their days trying to wring bigger authors’ royalty percentages out of publishers are optimists but not visionaries. Archie was therefore nonplussed by Dittany’s remark.

  “I don’t see how a volleyball net would fit in with the concept of Osbert’s play.”

  “It wouldn’t,” Dittany replied, “but it might save Carolus Bledsoe’s beard. Last night at dress rehearsal, his ex-wife beaned him with a semi-ripe tomato. Tonight, Leander Hellespont will probably sic a beaver on him.”

  “I hardly think Hellespont would be able to locate a trained attack beaver on such short notice, darling,” Osbert assured her. “Come on, it’s almost a quarter to seven. We’ve got to get cracking. Archie, why don’t you and Darnel stay here and finish your coffee? We’ll save you two front-row seats. Andy McNaster said he’d get somebody to drive you over to the gym before curtain time.”

  “Osbert, let’s ask Andy to ride back with us,” said Dittany. “He’s been so nice, it’s the least we can do.”

  But Mr. McNaster, their waitress informed them, had already gone on ahead. They left Archie and Daniel aiding digestion with a brandy apiece
, spoke to the receptionist about transportation for their guests, were told Mr. McNaster had it all arranged, and left the inn.

  It was as well they did. The troops were already beginning to gather and Roger Munson was in a most uncharacteristic tizzy.

  “I can’t find the poke!”

  “Well, that’s no major crisis,” said Dittany. “It’s only a dirty little old bag. We can easily rig up another.”

  “But it’s got the .38 blank cartridge in it.”

  “Well, for Pete’s sake, your own son works at the sporting goods store in Scottsbeck. Why can’t he nip over and buy some more?”

  “Because the store doesn’t have blanks. That is”—Roger couldn’t help being precise even in a crisis—“they do have .32 caliber blanks because customers use those in starting pistols for races, but there’s no real demand for .38’s so the store has to send away for them on order. That’s why we decided to make do with the few Jenson gave us instead of having to order to whole box and get stuck with the leftovers.”

  Roger’s decision might not have made much sense to some people, but it did to Dittany. Guns of any kind were rare in Lobelia Falls because everybody used bows and arrows instead. Roger had experienced difficulty trying to scare up two authentic-looking revolvers for Dan McGrew and the stranger to shoot each other with. Carolus Bledsoe had finally managed to supply himself with a Colt .32 and some blanks that he claimed to have borrowed from a friend. Dittany didn’t believe him, of course, but couldn’t very well say so.

  Andrew McNaster was either more sneaky, more reformed, or more committed to the Male Archers’ Target and Game Shooting Association than Dittany had given him credit for being. In any event, he’d professed total ignorance of firearms big or little. Roger had wound up having to wangle the short-term loan of a .38 Smith & Wesson from the Thorbisher-Freep collection for Andy to use.