The Destroying Angel

by Louis Joseph Vance

  XXI

  BLACK OUT

  Toward eight in the evening, after a day-long search through all hisaccustomed haunts, Ember ran Whitaker to earth in the dining-room of thePrimordial. The young man, alone at table, was in the act of topping offan excellent dinner with a still more excellent cordial and asuper-excellent cigar. His person seemed to diffuse a generousatmosphere of contentment and satisfaction, no less mental than physicaland singularly at variance with his appearance, which, moreover, wassingularly out of keeping not only with his surroundings but also withhis normal aspect.

  He wore rough tweeds, and they were damp and baggy; his boots weremuddy; his hair was a trifle disorderly. The ensemble made a figurewildly incongruous to the soberly splendid and stately dining-hall ofthe Primordial Club, with its sparse patronage of members inevening-dress.

  Ember, himself as severely beautiful in black and white as theceremonious livery of to-day permits a man to be, was wonder-struck atsight of Whitaker in such unconventional guise, at such a time, in sucha place. With neither invitation nor salutation, he slipped into a chairon the other side of the table, and stared.

  Whitaker smiled benignantly upon him, and called a waiter.

  Ember, always abstemious, lifted his hand and smiled a negative smile.

  Whitaker dismissed the waiter.

  "Well...?" he inquired cheerfully.

  "What right have you got to look like that?" Ember demanded.

  "The right of every free-born American citizen to make an ass of himselfaccording to the dictates of his conscience. I've been exploring thedark backwards and abysm of the Bronx--afoot. Got caught in the rain onthe way home. Was late getting back, and dropped in here to celebrate."

  "I've been looking for you everywhere, since morning."

  "I suspected you would be. That's why I went walking--to be lonesome andthoughtful for once in a way."

  Ember stroked his chin with thoughtful fingers.

  "You've heard the news, then?"

  "In three ways," Whitaker returned, with calm.

  "How's that--three ways?"

  "Through the newspapers, the billboards, and--from the lips of my wife."

  Ember opened his eyes wide.

  "You've been to see her?"

  "On the contrary."

  "The devil you say!"

  "She called this morning--"

  But Ember interrupted, thrusting a ready and generous hand across thetable:

  "My dear man, I _am_ glad!"

  Whitaker took the proffered hand readily and firmly. "Thank you.... Iwas saying: she called this morning to inform me that, though weddedonce, we must be strangers now--and evermore!"

  "But you--of course--you argued that nonsense out of her head."

  "To the contrary--again."

  "But--my dear man!--you said you were celebrating; you permitted me tocongratulate you just now--"

  "The point is," said Whitaker, with a bland and confident grin; "I'vesucceeded in arguing that nonsense out of my head--not hers--_mine_."

  Ember gave a helpless gesture. "I'm afraid this is one of my stupidnights...."

  "I mean that, though Mary ran away from me, wouldn't listen to reason, Ihave, in the course of an afternoon's hard tramping, come to theconclusion that there is nothing under the sun which binds me to sitback and accept whatever treatment she purposes according me by courtesyof Jules Max."

  Whitaker bent forward, his countenance discovering a phase ofseriousness hitherto masked by his twisted smile. He emphasized hispoints with a stiff, tapping forefinger on the cloth.

  "I mean, I'm tired of all this poppycock. Unless I'm an infatuated ass,Mary loves me with all her heart. She has made up her mind to renounceme partly because Max has worked upon her feelings by painting somelurid picture of his imminent artistic and financial damnation if sheleaves him, partly because she believes, or has been led to believe, inthis 'destroying angel' moonshine. Now she's got to listen to reason.So, likewise, Max."

  "You're becoming more human word by word," commented Ember with openapproval. "Continue; elucidate; I can understand how a fairly resolutelover with the gift of gab can talk a weak-minded, fond female intodenying her pet superstition; but how you're going to get round Maxpasses my comprehension. The man unquestionably has her undercontract--"

  "But you forgot his god is Mammon," Whitaker put in. "Max will doanything in the world for money. Therein resides the kernel of my plan.It's simplicity itself: I'm going to buy him."

  "Buy Max!"

  "Body--artistic soul--and breeches," Whitaker affirmed confidently.

  "Impossible!"

  "You forget how well fixed I am. What's the use of my owning half thegold in New Guinea if it won't buy me what I already own by every moraland legal right?"

  "He won't listen to you; you don't know Max."

  "I'm willing to lay you a small bet that there will be no firstperformance at the Theatre Max to-morrow night."

  "You'll never persuade him--"

  "I'll buy the show outright and my wife's freedom to boot--or else Maxwill begin to accumulate the local colour of a hospital ward."

  Ember smiled grimly. "You're beginning to convince even me. When, may Iask, do you propose to pull off this sporting proposition?"

  "Do you know where Max can be found to-night?"

  "At the theatre--"

  "Then the matter will be arranged at the theatre between this hour andmidnight."

  "I doubt if you succeed in getting the ear of the great man beforemidnight; however, I'm not disposed to quibble about a few hours."

  "But why shouldn't I?"

  "Because Max is going to be the busiest young person in town to-night.And that is why I've been looking for you.... Conforming to his custom,he's giving an advance glimpse of the production to the critics and afew friends in the form of a final grand dress-rehearsal to-night.Again, in conformance with his custom, he has honoured me with a bid.I've been chasing you all day to find out if you'd care to go--"

  "Eight o'clock and a bit after," Whitaker interrupted briskly,consulting his watch. "Here, boy," he hailed a passing page; "call ataxicab for me." And then, rising alertly: "Come along; I've got tohustle home and make myself look respectable enough for the occasion;but at that, with luck, I fancy we'll be there before the firstcurtain."

  This mood of faith, of self-reliance and assured optimism held unruffledthroughout the dash homewards, his hurried change of clothing and theride to the theatre. Nothing that Ember, purposely pessimistic, couldsay or do availed to diminish the high buoyancy of his humour. Hemaintained a serene faith in his star, a spirited temper that refused torecognize obstacles in the way of his desire.

  In the taxicab, en route to the Theatre Max, he contrived even to distila good omen from the driving autumnal downpour itself.... The rain-sweptpavements, their polished blackness shot with a thousand strands ofgolden brilliance; the painted bosom of the lowering, heavy sky; thetear-drenched window-panes; even the incessant crepitation on the roofof the scurrying, skidding cab seemed to lend a colour of assurance tohis thoughts.

  "On such a day as this," he told his doubting friend, "I won her first;on such a day I shall win her anew, finally and for all time!..."

  From Broadway to Sixth Avenue, Forty-sixth Street was bright with theyellow glare of the huge sign in front of the Theatre Max. But thisnight, unlike that other night when he had approached the stage of hiswife's triumphs, there was no crawling rank of cabs, no eager andcurious press of people in the street; but few vehicles disputed theirway; otherwise the rain and the hurrying, rain-coated wayfarers had thethoroughfare to themselves.... And even this he chose to consider afavourable omen: there was not now a public to come between him and hislove--only Max and her frightened fancies.

  The man at the door recognized Ember with a cheerful nod; Whitaker hedid not know.

  "Just in time, Mr. Ember; curtain's been up about ten minutes...."

  The auditorium was in almost total darkness. A single voice was a
udiblefrom the stage that confronted it like some tremendous, moonlight canvasin a huge frame of tarnished gold. They stole silently round theorchestra seats to the stage-box--the same box that Whitaker had on theformer occasion occupied in company with Max.

  They succeeded in taking possession without attracting attention, eitherfrom the owners of that scanty scattering of shirt-bosoms in theorchestra--the critical fraternity and those intimates bidden by themanager to the first glimpse of his new revelation in stage-craft--orfrom those occupying the stage.

  The latter were but two. Evidently, though the curtain had been up forsome minutes, the action of the piece had not yet been permitted tobegin to unfold. Whitaker inferred that Max had been dissatisfied withsomething about the lighting of the scene. The manager was standing inmid-stage, staring up at the borders: a stout and pompous figure,tenacious to every detail of that public self which he had striven sosuccessfully to make unforgettably individual; a figure quaintlyincongruous in his impeccable morning-coat and striped trousers andflat-brimmed silk hat, perched well back on his head, with his malaccastick and lemon-coloured gloves and small and excessively glossypatent-leather shoes, posed against the counterfeit of a moonlit formalgarden.

  Aside from him, the only other occupant of the stage was Sara Law. Shesat on a stone bench with her profile to the audience, her back to theright of the proscenium arch; so that she could not, without turning,have noticed the entrance of Ember and her husband. A shy, slight,deathlessly youthful figure in pale and flowing garments that mouldedthemselves fluently to her sweet and girlish body, in a posture ofpensive meditation: she was nothing less than adorable. Whitaker couldnot take his eyes from her, for sheer wonder and delight.

  He was only vaguely conscious that Max, at length satisfied, barked aword to that effect to an unseen electrician off to the left, and wavinghis hand with a gesture indelibly associated with his personality,dragged a light cane-seated chair to the left of the proscenium and sathimself down.

  "All ready?" he demanded in a sharp and irritable voice.

  The woman on the marble seat nodded imperceptibly.

  "Go ahead," snapped the manager....

  An actor advanced from the wings, paused and addressed the seated woman.His lines were brief. She lifted her head with a startled air,listening. He ceased to speak, and her voice of golden velvet filled thehouse with the flowing beauty of its unforgettably sweet modulations.Beyond the footlights a handful of sophisticated and sceptical habituesof the theatre forgot for the moment their ingrained incredulity andthrilled in sympathy with the wonderful rapture of that voice of eternalYouth. Whitaker himself for the time forgot that he was the husband ofthis woman and her lover; she moved before his vision in the guise ofsome divine creature, divinely unattainable, a dream woman divorcedutterly from any semblance of reality.

  That opening scene was one perhaps unique in the history of the stage.Composed by Max in some mad, poetical moment of inspired plagiarism, itnot only owned a poignant and enthralling beauty of imagery, but itmoved with an almost Grecian certitude, with a significanceextraordinarily direct and devoid of circumlocution, seeming to lay barethe living tissue of immortal drama.

  But with the appearance of other characters, there came a change: therare atmosphere of the opening began to dissipate perceptibly. Theaction clouded and grew vague. The auditors began to feel theflutterings of uncertainty in the air. Something was failing to crossthe footlights. The sweeping and assured gesture of the accomplishedplaywright faltered: a clumsy bit of construction was damningly exposed;faults of characterization multiplied depressingly. Sara Law herselflost an indefinable proportion of her rare and provoking charm; thestrangeness of failing to hold her audience in an ineluctable graspseemed at once to nettle and distress her. Max himself seemed suddenlyto wake to the amazing fact that there was something enormously andirremediably wrong; he began with exasperating frequency to halt theaction, to interrupt scenes with advice and demands for repetition. Hefound it impossible to be still, to keep his seat or control hisrasping, irritable voice. Subordinate characters on the stage lost theirheads and either forgot to act or overacted. And then--intolerableclimax!--of a sudden somebody in the orchestra chairs laughed inoutright derision in the middle of a passage meant to be tenderlyemotional.

  The voice of Sara Law broke and fell. She stood trembling and unstrung.Max without a word turned on his heel and swung out of sight into thewings. Four other actors on the stage, aside from Sara Law, hesitatedand drew together in doubt and bewilderment. And then abruptly, with nowarning whatever, the illusion of gloom in the auditorium and moonlightin the postscenium was rent away by the glare of the full complement ofelectric lights installed in the house.

  A thought later, while still all were blinking and gasping withsurprise, Max strode into view just behind the footlights. Halting, heswept the array of auditors with an ominous and truculent stare.

  So quickly was this startling change consummated that Whitaker had nomore than time to realize the reappearance of the manager before hecaught his wrathful and venomous glance fixed to his own bewilderedface. And something in the light that flickered wildly behind Max's eyesreminded him so strongly of a similar expression he had remarked in theeyes of Drummond, the night the latter had been captured by Ember andSum Fat, that in alarm he half rose from his seat.

  Simultaneously he saw Max spring toward the box, with a distorted andsnarling countenance. He was tugging at something in his pocket. Itappeared in the shape of a heavy pistol.

  Instantly Whitaker was caught and tripped by Ember and sent sprawling onthe floor of the box. As this happened, he heard the voice of thefirearm, sharp and vicious--a single report.

  Unhurt, he picked himself up in time to catch a glimpse of Max, on thestage, momentarily helpless in the embrace of a desperate and franticwoman who had caught his arms from behind and, presumably, had sodeflected his arm. In the same breath Ember, who had leaped to therailing round the box, threw himself across the footlights with thelithe certainty of a beast of prey and, seemingly in as many deftmotions, knocked the pistol from the manager's hand, wrested him fromthe arms of the actress, laid him flat and knelt upon him.

  With a single bound Whitaker followed him to the stage; in another hehad his wife in his arms and was soothing her first transports ofsemi-hysterical terror....

  * * * * *

  It was possibly a quarter of an hour later when Ember paused before adoor in the ground floor dressing-room gangway of the Theatre Max--adoor distinguished by the initials "S L" in the centre of a golden star.With some hesitation, with even a little diffidence, he lifted a handand knocked.

  At once the door was opened by the maid, Elise. Recognizing Ember, shesmiled and stood aside, making way for him to enter the small, curtainedlobby.

  "Madam--and Monsieur," she said with smiling significance, "told me toshow you in at once, Monsieur Ember."

  From beyond the curtains, Whitaker's voice lifted up impatiently: "Thatyou, old man? Come right in!"

  Nodding to the maid, Ember thrust aside the portieres and stepped intothe brightly-lighted dressing-room, then paused, bowing and smiling hisself-contained, tolerant smile: in appearance as imperturbable andwell-groomed as though he had just escaped from the attentions of avalet, rather than from a furious hand-to-hand tussle with a viciousmonomaniac.

  Mary Whitaker, as yet a little pale and distrait and still in costume,was reclining on a chaise-longue. Whitaker was standing close beside hiswife; his face the theatre of conflicting emotions; Ember, at least,thought with a shrewd glance to recognize a pulsating light of joybeneath a mask of interest and distress and a flush of embarrassment.

  "I am intruding?" he suggested gravely, with a slight turn as ifoffering to withdraw.

  "No."

  The word faltering on the lips of Mary Whitaker was lost in an emphaticiteration by Whitaker.

  "Sit down!" he insisted. "As if we'd let you escape, now, after you'dkept us here in suspens
e!"

  He offered a chair, but Ember first advanced to take the hand held outto him by the woman on the chaise-longue.

  "You are feeling--more composed?" he inquired.

  Her gaze met his bravely. "I am--troubled, perhaps--but happy," shesaid.

  "Then I am very glad," he said, smiling at the delicate colour thatenhanced her exquisite beauty as she made the confession. "I had hopedas much." He looked from the one to the other. "You ... have made upyour minds?"

  The wife answered for both: "It is settled, dear friend: I can struggleno longer. I thought myself a strong woman; I have tried to believemyself a genius bound upon the wheel of an ill-starred destiny; but Ifind I am"--the glorious voice trembled slightly--"only a woman in loveand no stronger than her love."

  "I am very glad," Ember repeated, "for both your sakes. It's a happyconsummation of my dearest wishes."

  "We owe you everything," Whitaker said with feeling, dropping an awkwardhand on the other's shoulder. "It was you who threw us together, downthere on the Great West Bay, so that we learned to know one another...."

  "I plead guilty to that little plot--yes," Ember laughed. "But, best ofall, this comes at just the right time--the rightest time, when therecan no longer be any doubts or questions or misunderstandings, no groundfor further fears and apprehensions, when 'the destroying angel' of your'ill-starred destiny,' my dear"--he turned to the woman--"isexorcised--banished--proscribed--"

  "Max--!" Whitaker struck in explosively.

  "--is on his way to the police-station, well guarded," Ember affirmedwith a nod and a grim smile. "I have his confession, roughly jotted downbut signed, and attested by several witnesses.... I'm glad you were outof the way; it was rather a painful scene, and disorderly; it wouldn'thave been pleasant for Mrs. Whitaker.... We had the deuce of a timeclearing the theatre: human curiosity is a tremendously persistent andresistant force. And then I had some trouble dealing with the misplacedloyalty of the staff of the house.... However, eventually I got Max tomyself--alone, that is, with several men I could depend on. And then Iheartlessly put him through the third degree--forestalling my friends,the police. By dint of asserting as truths and personal discoveries whatI merely suspected, I broke down his denials. He owned up, doggedlyenough, and yet with that singular pride which I have learned toassociate with some phases of homicidal mania.... I won't distress youwith details: the truth is that Max was quite mad on the subject of hisluck; he considered it, as I suspected, indissolubly associated withSara Law. When poor Custer committed suicide, he saved Max from ruin andinnocently showed him the way to save himself thereafter, when he feltin peril, by assassinating Hamilton and, later, Thurston. Drummond onlycheated a like fate, and you"--turning to Whitaker--"escaped by thenarrowest shave. Max hadn't meant to run the risk of putting you out ofthe way unless he thought it absolutely necessary, but the failure ofhis silly play in rehearsal to-night, coupled with the discovery thatyou were in the theatre, drove him temporarily insane with hate, chagrinand jealousy."

  Concluding, Ember rose. "I must follow him now to the police-station....I shall see you both soon again--?"

  The woman gave him both her hands. "There's no way to thank you," shesaid--"our dear, dear friend!"

  "No way," Whitaker echoed regretfully.

  "No way?" Ember laughed quietly, holding her hands tightly clasped. "ButI see you together--happy--Oh, believe me, I am fully thanked!"

  Bowing, he touched his lips gently to both hands, released them with alittle sigh that ended in a contented chuckle, exchanged a short, firmgrasp with Whitaker, and left them....

  Whitaker, following almost immediately to the gangway, found that Emberhad already left the theatre.

  For some minutes he wandered to and fro in the gangway, pausing now andagain on the borders of the deserted stage. There were but few of thehouse staff visible, and those few were methodically busy withpreparations to close up. Beyond the dismal gutter of the footlights theauditorium yawned cavernous and shadowy, peopled only by low rows ofchairs ghostly in their dust-cloths. The street entrances were alreadyclosed, locked and dark. On the stage a single cluster-stand of electricbulbs made visible the vast, gloomy dome of the flies and thewhitewashed walls against which sections of scenery were stacked likecards. An electrician in his street clothes lounged beside thedoor-keeper's cubicle, at the stage entrance, smoking a cigarette andconferring with the doorman while subjecting Whitaker to a curious andantagonistic stare. The muffled rumble of their voices were the onlysounds audible, aside from an occasional racket of boot-heels in thegangways as one actor after another left his dressing-room and hastenedto the street, keen-set for the clash of gossiping tongues in theatricalclubs and restaurants.

  Gradually the building grew more and more empty and silent, until atlength Whitaker was left alone with the shadows and the two employees.These last betrayed signs of impatience. He himself felt a littlesympathy for their temper. Women certainly did take an unconscionabletime to dress!...

  At length he heard them hurrying along the lower gangway, and turned tojoin his wife at the stage-entrance. Elise passed on, burdened with twoheavy hand-bags, and disappeared into the rain-washed alleyway. Theelectrician detached his shoulders from the wall, ground his cigaretteunder heel and lounged over to the switchboard.

  Mary Whitaker turned her face, shadowy and mystical, touched with herfaint and inscrutable smile, up to her husband's.

  "Wait," she begged in a whisper. "I want to see"--her breathchecked--"the end of it all."

  They heard hissings and clickings at the switchboard. The gangway lightsvanished in a breath. The single cluster-stand on the stagedisappeared--and the house disappeared utterly with its extinguishment.There remained alight only the single dull bulb in the doorman'scubicle.

  Whitaker slipped an arm round his wife. She trembled within his embrace.

  "Black out," she said in a gentle and regretful voice: "the last exit:Curtain--End of the Play!"

  "No," he said in a voice of sublime confidence--"no; it's onlythe prologue curtain. Now for the play, dear heart ... the realplay ... life ... love...."