CHAPTER XX.

THE SECOND ACT.

Klein went on with the business of his part, poking at the property fire—a bunch of red globes buried in a grate of coke. Other characters made their appearance, and the dialogue opened briskly.

Miss Lindner, first to pick up the silver frame, frowned as she delivered her lines. In an undertone, aside to Klein, who was busily engaged in dusting an already spotless piece of china, she said:

“According to the property man, I’ve got a new lover to-day. Did you notice the change?”

She laughed—her back was to the audience—and as Dodge, the character man, entered noisily, she made a face at him. Dodge took his art seriously, and would not “clown” on a scene. Others of the cast, aware of it, “kidded” him at every possible opportunity.

When Dodge stood in front of the picture, addressing it in thunderous rage—as the play demanded he should—Klein watched him narrowly. Nothing happened, and Klein decided mentally that the character man had not noticed the difference between to-day’s photograph and the one used in the previous performances.

By this time Tanner was on the scene, and for possibly ten minutes the dialogue and the action did not concern the photograph. Then Miss Lindner made a hurried exit, and Tanner began a soliloquy.

This was one of the longest speeches in the piece, and the best, and Tanner delivered it with all the power and passion he could command. At the finish, Klein, as the butler, was supposed to enter and announce a visitor, who happened to be Metcalfe.

Just before Klein’s entrance Tanner strode across the floor and picked up the frame. To this he was supposed to deliver the final line, which at the same time supplied the butler’s cue.

“And as for Lord Wellingmay,” he dramatically recited, “let him beware. I am not the man to——” He stopped so abruptly as to cause a titter to run through the audience, who, up to this point had listened, spellbound.

Tanner had picked up the frame at this critical moment and noticed the photograph.

Klein, waiting in the doorway for his cue, felt his pulse quicken. The sight of the photograph—Delmar’s photograph—had caused Tanner to hesitate!

The wait grew longer. Fearful of the delay, and aware that his entrance might set the dialogue moving once more, Klein stepped through the door.

“A visitor, Mr. Lemly!” he announced stiffly.

Klein’s line apparently brought Tanner back to earth again, and with a peculiar frown he turned and took up his cue.

While they were waiting for Metcalfe to enter, Klein spoke aside to Tanner in the way that is quite common on the stage, and which is often done, although the audience has no idea how much private conversation goes on among the actors during a play.

“What made you go up in the air?” he asked—and all the time a voice whispered in his ear: “Tanner’s the man! Tanner’s the man! His actions have proved it!”

Tanner, meanwhile, was fumbling nervously at his collar.

“I guess it—it was my nerves,” he answered. “I’ve been pounding too hard on the next week’s part. It’s frightfully warm here, isn’t it?”

The entrance of Metcalfe interrupted the conversation. The juvenile man dashed in and addressed his opening line to Tanner. Klein withdrew to the background, where he arranged the decanter and the glasses on a tray, preparatory to the next piece of business.

The dialogue between the other men continued. Both poured out their drinks. Metcalfe, posing dramatically before the table, proposed a toast.

But the toast was never drunk. Hardly had the words left Metcalfe’s lips when he reeled slightly; the muscles in his throat contracted violently. The glass slipped from his fingers and crashed upon the surface of the polished table.

A strange hush fell upon the scene, and in the silence the steady hum of the calciums came like the droning of a million bees.

It seemed an age must have elapsed before the strain was broken, but in reality it could not have been more than a few seconds. Yet in that time, swift as it was, and unexpected, too, Klein had discovered the reason for the interruption.

Metcalfe’s eyes, at the moment of the toast, had fallen upon Delmar’s photograph. And the sight of it had robbed him of all speech! He had betrayed even greater agitation than had Tanner. What did it mean? What could it mean, other than——

Like a snapping of a taut thread the tension was broken. Metcalfe, as if suddenly aroused from a stupor, broke into a hard and forced laugh, and he took up the regular lines of the play.

Passing close to him, bearing the tray, Klein noticed that the juvenile man’s fingers were clenched and that he was breathing a trifle faster than normal.

Klein was off the scene before the curtain of the act, and was touching up his eyes when Metcalfe came into the dressing room.

In a calm and matter-of-fact way Klein sought to bring out the truth of the affair by referring to the incident casually.

“Were you trying to reconstruct the second act?” he asked.

Metcalfe sank down into his chair and removed his wig.

“What are you getting at?” he asked curtly.

“Why, that impromptu scene over the toast,” Klein explained. “It was good as far as it went.”

The juvenile man’s hands were still trembling as he squared himself in his chair preparatory to removing his make-up. “I—I don’t know what—what came over me. My nerves, I guess.”

“You looked as if you’d seen a ghost,” Klein ventured to suggest.

Metcalfe flashed him a quick glance, but Klein, bending over his mirror, pretended not to notice it.

“I—I guess I did see a ghost,” he wavered. “Maybe I am a fool, and all of that, but if——” He hesitated, daubing his cheeks. “Klein,” he began once more, as if determined to relieve his mind of some weight, “I’ve been upset ever since I joined this company. There is something—something I’d like to talk over with you.”

“Fire away,” Klein told him, treating the statement with assumed indifference. “I’m all ears. I suppose one of your mash notes——”

“It is nothing like that, Klein,” Metcalfe interrupted gravely. “I’m serious for once.”

He paused, slowly unbuttoning his waistcoat. Klein waited expectantly for him to continue, confident that whatever was troubling the juvenile man would have a direct bearing upon Delmar’s photograph. That the photograph had temporarily upset and confused Tanner was not to be questioned. The excuse he had given Klein was obviously a lie. Then, following this, had come Metcalfe’s dramatic scene, which beyond any doubt had been prompted by the same photograph.

Yet both men avoided the real issue, and both attributed their lack of self-control to a case of “nerves.”

“In the first place,” Metcalfe said, “on the very day I left New York——”

The door of the dressing room was at this present moment thrown open, and Dodge stepped inside. He stood before the occupants with folded arms, glaring from one to another.

“What’s the trouble, Dodge?” Metcalfe asked, sinking back in his chair, plainly annoyed at the interruption.

“Matter? Matter?” Dodge burst out indignantly. “I should think you gentlemen would be ashamed of yourselves!”

“Ashamed?” echoed Klein. “What have we—-”

“I’d like to be stage manager of this company for about five minutes,” the character man interrupted. “That’s what I would! Such outrageous actions as I witnessed this afternoon would not be tolerated for an instant. You gentlemen have absolutely no respect for your profession—none at all. To clown on a scene deliberately is beneath the dignity of a conscientious artist.”

“He’s off,” muttered Metcalfe; then louder: “I suppose when you were with Booth and Barrett——”

“When I was with Booth, young man,” thundered Dodge, his deep voice rolling impressively, “we looked upon our art as a most serious matter. In those palmy days, sir, an actor held himself above such shameful proceedings as clowning. Mr. Booth would no more have allowed it than——”

“When I was playing the leads with ‘Too Proud to Beg,’” mocked the juvenile man, burlesquing the other, “in the palmy days of the melodrama, we were——”

“Say no more,” interrupted Dodge, lifting a hand. “It is not a thing to jest over. An artistic performance should never be marred by impromptu speeches.”

Metcalfe puckered his lips and started to whistle. Dodge glared at him for a second, then almost turned pale under his make-up.

Metcalfe laughed. “Still superstitious, Dodge? Well, don’t take it too hard. Let’s see; to whistle in a dressing room is a sign that the man nearest the door will be whistled out of the company. Isn’t that it?”

But the character man stalked out, slamming the door behind him.

“I guess he took the hint,” Klein said. “To my mind, he is the one bore in the company.”

The call boy’s voice came echoing through the hall:

“Third act! Third act!”

Klein, who was on near the opening of the act, rose to his feet.

“That’s me! I almost missed my entrance last night. If I get in late this afternoon, Bond will fine me. I’ll talk with you later, Metcalfe.”

He hurried out of the room and down the hall to the stage.