The House of Fear

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER IILIMPING FOOTSTEPS

McHugh sprang into the limousine and slammed the door. As he drove off he turned back to Quaile his grinning face, which marvelously retained a pendulous cigar.

The next day, nevertheless, the unexpected intruded once or twice, and failed to retreat before it had startled even the matter-of-fact manager.

Quaile spent most of the afternoon in the office, completing with McHugh the casting of the piece. Mike Brody had reported and gone down to Woodford’s with a squad of electricians. He had already sent word that there was little to be done, since the wiring had been modernized five years ago. The manager had promised Quaile they would visit the theater and inspect it for themselves as soon as their task was completed.

It was late when Quaile saw Mike enter and go through to the private office.

More than sentiment had urged McHugh to engage the old man. He had worked for him off and on during many years. He understood and fitted easily into his system. Quaile had frequently heard the manager boast that Mike, in spite of his years, was the most reliable property man in New York. Without initiative, he possessed a useful memory. It was said that he had never forgotten a property or its correct placing.

Within five minutes McHugh was roaring for Ethel. She went in, returned, and nodded to Quaile.

“Boss wants you.”

Quaile opened the door and stepped into a room crowded with discontent, even timidity.

The manager sat back, facing Mike. The square jaw, signal of opposition to be overthrown, was well forward.

The property man leaned against the wall, unwilling to meet McHugh’s tempestuous glance. He looked instead in the direction of his cap, at which he picked with purposeless fingers. The lights had not been turned on, so that it was difficult for Quaile to gather details. The posing itself, however, was declamatory. He was not unprepared for McHugh’s scornful announcement.

“What do you think, Quaile? The old numbskull wants to quit on me. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Haven’t you got a blush left? ’Cause I’m going to give you away to Mr. Quaile.”

Mike made an embarrassed appeal.

“I only told him, sir, that I thought maybe I’d better not take on the job.”

“I understood,” Quaile answered, “that you were pleased at the prospect of going back.”

“Yes, sir, I was. I had some of the best times of my life when I was a kid at Woodford’s, but that’s been forty years, and — and—”

He broke off and returned to the restless fingering of his cap. Quaile hesitated to prompt the man. He guessed that McHugh had had a purpose in summoning him. Through him, unquestionably, McHugh expected to mold Mike to his wishes. No ordinary situation would have urged such a course. He shrank from the possibility that the antiquated and lonesome theater might already have imposed on Mike’s uneducated mind a sense of fear. If that was so, McHugh had assumed a promising attitude. Mike was uncomfortable, perhaps, ashamed. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He cleared his throat, but no defense followed.

“First time anybody ever wanted to resign on me,” McHugh said in a hurt tone. “Fall down on your job once, Mike, and you won’t have to wait to resign. What do you think’s biting him, Quaile?”

“Somebody’s offered him more money.” McHugh shook his head. He burst into unrestrained laughter.

“No. I’m the best pickings in the business. Old fool’s afraid of Bertrand Woodford.”

Quaile joined in the mirth. “Do you know how long he’s been dead, Mike?”

“Hold on,” McHugh gasped. “Not of Woodford. When he’s got me — a real live one — to be scared of, he’s afraid of Woodford’s spook.”

The manager’s antidote was powerful. A reluctant grin appeared on Mike’s face.

“I didn’t say that, Mr. McHugh. Maybe you’re right, though. If you want me, I’ll stay.”

“Go on, Mike,” the manager said good-naturedly. “Wait for us downstairs. Mr. Quaile and I will go to Woodford’s with you in a minute. We want to see what’s been done.”

But when the man had left McHugh turned a puzzled face to Quaile. With a thoughtful air he drew on his unlighted cigar.

“Guess you had the right dope last night after all,” he admitted. “Got to keep our eyes open and make it cheerful at Woodford’s.”

“Surely,” Quaile said, “Mike isn’t such a fool as to think he saw anything?”

“No. But Mike’s pretty old. I guess it took him back to go into that barn after forty years. He didn’t say anything you could put your finger on. Was just frightened. Said it was dark and cold, and he couldn’t help thinking of his old boss. Seemed like he stood by him all the time. Say, I never realized what a disagreeable devil Woodford was. Mike says he used to limp around — seems he had rheumatism a lot toward the last — being as nasty to people as he could. Going there today certainly put him on Mike’s mind. Got to talking about the night he died. Mike says Woodford worked himself to death because he was too jealous to let anybody play his part.”

“That’s about what I hear,” Quaile said. “Did Mike mention anything about a cat — the way he acted the night of Woodford’s death?”

McHugh looked up.

“Mean to say Carlton gave you that, too?”

“Yes — mentioned it. As he said, it’s funny the way these foolish stories cling.”

McHugh arose.

“I’ve laughed Mike out of it, anyway. I may take a shot at Carlton. You know, Mike was honestly afraid something might happen to him down there. Come on. Let’s go.”

They joined Mike on the sidewalk, entered McHugh’s automobile, and drove to Woodford’s.

Quaile had looked forward with something approximating a thrill to his first invasion of the property. The prospect, however, was shadowed by the rumors he had heard, and, particularly, by Mike’s apprehension, which, he noticed, had, to an extent, survived McHugh’s laughter.

The night had descended by the time they arrived at the theater, but the glitter of the street lights was deceptive. It softened the scars of the old building. It penetrated beyond the iron railing which guarded the lobby, long undisturbed. It exposed the display boards at either side, cracked and colored by the weather, to which paper shreds and the stains of paste still adhered.

“Where’s Tommy Ball?” McHugh said. “I told Tommy Ball to meet me here.”

A young man, too sedulously clothed, deserted his contemplation of a shop window and stepped forward. Quaile recognized McHugh’s assistant stage manager — a youth who always amused him with his fervent efforts to copy his employer’s eccentricities.

“Been in yet, Tommy?” McHugh asked.

“Not since noon. But I don’t guess you’ll find a whole lot to do.”

Mike thrust his hand in his pocket, producing a heavy, old-fashioned key.

“Stage entrance is this way, Mr. McHugh.”

He led them, not very eagerly, into a narrow alley which penetrated the block between the theater and the loft building. Within this meager space the thoroughness of the night became apparent. The dingy side of the theater and the towering wall of the loft building gave Quaile an illusion of leaning toward each other perilously. The end of the alley was blocked by a high board fence. Mike turned there and inserted his key in the lock of an iron door.

The thrill Quaile had expected was not lacking, yet its quality scarcely conformed to his fancy.

Because of the unrelieved night he knew that the door was open only through its own voice. The hinges, abandoned until today for so long to the weather, complained shrilly; and, as if from an unexplored and adventurous cavern, arose an echo. The black, empty stage of Woodford’s flung back into the alley the dismay of its opened door. Quaile sniffed. He breathed with distaste, for the alley had filled with a dank, insufferable odor which he could not describe. The air, imprisoned at the last closing of the door, rushed out of Woodford’s with the eagerness of escape.

A match scraped. Its flame flickered on Mike’s wrinkled face, which wore for Quaile an expression of disapproval, of positive disinclination. The property man stooped, fumbled within the doorway, and found a candle to which he applied the match.

“Better not let the fire department catch you at that,” McHugh warned.

Quaile wondered if the manager took in the shaking of the candle in the knotted hand.

“Get in there,” McHugh directed, “and switch on your kitchen border, so we won’t break our necks. Place smells like a one-night stand in the great and glorious provinces.”

Mike’s face set. It was evident that he subordinated his own judgment to a sense of pride. He had the appearance of one who invades a place notorious for some unexplained danger. His candle moved slowly into the cavern and turned to the right.

Quaile’s eyes became a little accustomed to the darkness. He could see that a nebulous reflection from the street entered the alley. It reached him with a sense of companionship. Then light flashed in the cavern, illuminating vast spaces, and Mike’s voice came.

“All right, Mr. McHugh.”

And they entered those spaces, and, oppressed by their emptiness, stood for some time, ill at ease, attentive.

Quaile resented his discomfort. After all, there could be nothing here beyond age, disuse, loneliness — at the most, unpalatable memories. Yet he was honest. With Mike’s misgivings still lively in his mind, he would not deny that weakness, nearly universal, which hesitates, a little overawed, on the threshold of the past whose dead activities often impress one with the imminence of a revival.

He acknowledged, as he glanced around, a stimulus here for the imaginative. The single row of lights, depending from the flies, gave scarcely more than a suggestion of form to the auditorium and the two galleries sloping upward. But he could see that the seats were shrouded with gray cloths. They forced on him a fancy of standing in a huge, improvised mortuary after some intolerable catastrophe.

The stage itself offered more definition. He saw the vast expanse of the brick curtain wall, the circular staircases at either side leading to dressing rooms and fly galleries. To the right there was a small door which almost certainly opened on a passage connecting with the auditorium.

He caught in McHugh’s manner no response to the factors which had depressed him.

“Don’t build stages like this nowadays,” the manager said with admiration. “Could give a three-ring circus here. Tommy, you’ve got the lists. You and Mike run over to the storehouse in the morning and chase that furniture in. company’s called for four o’clock. Mr. Quaile’s going to read the script to ’em right on the stage just like old Woodford done. This engagement’s going to be all-fired artistic.”

His sudden blatant laugh set Quaile’s nerves on edge. It jeered at the empty spaces, the shrouded seats. It did not belong here, nor did McHugh persist in it. He found another cigar and inserted it between his lips. His keen glance took in everything.

“Come through here, Quaile. Let’s have a peep at the auditorium.”

He walked to the little door which Quaile had noticed, and opened it. Quaile saw Mike and Tommy start toward the stage entrance. He under stood, but McHugh pretended not to.

“Where you and Mike going, Tommy?”

“By the stage door, sir. It’s pretty damp in here.”

“All right,” McHugh said, “but I want you within call.”

Quaile followed the manager into the passage. A certain amount of light entered with them, and a little more, diffused from the auditorium, showed at the other end. The passage was surprisingly constricted. It was necessary to go in single file.

He gathered from its length — probably seven or eight paces — that it ran behind the boxes.:

“Wouldn’t be much use,” he commented, “as an exit by way of the stage in case of fire.”

His voice was magnified in the meager space.

“Building meets the fire laws,” McHugh, always practical, answered.

They reached the auditorium whose boundaries appeared to recede before them, demanding an impracticable pursuit. After a glance at the farther shadows, in fact, McHugh contented himself with a casual inspection of the woodwork and the draperies near at hand.

“Agents didn’t lie,” he said with satisfaction, “and my own men gave me the right dope.”

He walked down the aisle, thrust aside one of the gray cloths, and sat in the front row. He looked around.

“Not bad,” he grunted.

Quaile joined him.

“Funny,” McHugh went on, “how a little gold dust thrown in people’s eyes will make them see millions. The place was fixed up five years ago. Now a few new hangings and a little tinsel on the box fronts — it’s a cinch. Why you so talkative, Quaile?”

Quaile had not realized the thoroughness of his silence since entering the theater. He glanced at the manager, questioning if his volubility wasn’t a different response to the same impulse. He saw nothing to be gained by denying that impulse. It was the emptiness and the pervading desolation of Woodford’s. He had never seen a theater in this condition before, its machinery hidden or removed. He had a feeling of having invaded the shell of a thing long dead, quite beyond resurrection. The sepulchral dampness gave the final impetus to his bad humor.

“Frankly, McHugh,” he said, “I begin to understand how these unwholesome stories start. Such an atmosphere as this has things to say to the ignorant and the superstitious. I hope I’m neither, but it does get on my nerves more or less. I mean, I quite understand why Tommy and Mike prefer the alley entrance.”

“They’ll have to get over it. Place feels all right to me.”

McHugh’s voice rose in a gigantic sneer.

“Woodford’s ghost! A fine chance for a ghost around my theater!”

To Quaile it was almost as if a challenge had been accepted. The shadows. might suddenly have gathered strength to smother the row of gleaming lights. Without warning they expired. He could feel the pitlike blackness rush upon him.

McHugh’s hand touched his arm, then was snatched back. The manager’s voice rose angrily.

“What the devil? Mike! Mike! Get in to the switchboard. Switch something on. Don’t bother about your candle.”

As if the darkness had opposed a palpable barrier Tommy’s exclamation and Mike’s response reached them faintly. They heard the old man start on the stage. What followed seemed to Quaile at the moment inevitable, never to have been avoided. Through the black and heavy air Mike’s cry arose, hoarse, difficult, half strangled by an irrational fear. It gathered itself into four words, almost unintelligible:

“My God! Mr. Woodford!”

Quaile shrank back. More than Mike’s terror-drawn cry challenged his reason. Just across the blind footlights, almost within hand’s reach, he heard dragging footsteps and a curious, stealthy padding.

He bent forward, staring impotently at the solid wall of blackness. The talk he had heard, the misgivings he had witnessed, threw upon that wall, as upon a screen for his imagination, an unthinkable picture. For the dragging footsteps continued to stray across the stage the footsteps of one who limped, and in the intervals of their painful progress came that furtive pattering like the noiseless pursuit of a cat.

Quaile remained rigid. He was aware of McHugh’s breathless tensity beside him. Then, as abruptly as they had commenced, the footsteps ceased, and from the wings, where Mike had cried out his impossible fear, came a low sob, choked and formless.