The Grub-And-Stakers Pinch a Poke (10 page)

“Come on, it’s almost a quarter to seven. We’ve got to get cracking.

Archie, why don’t you and Daniel 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 the 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 a 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 ThorbisherFreep collection for Andy to use.

In fact, Roger hadn’t had to wangle hard, even though the .38 had allegedly been carried in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show and had certainly been used by Jenson himself when he’d made his big hit as Jack Ranee in The Girl of the Golden West during his little theater days. Jenson was only too pleased, he’d assured Roger, to put another notch in the sixshooter’s barrel by letting the man in the title role tote it during the premiere of Dangerous Dan meGrew.

There’d been four blank cartridges left in the gun when Roger got hold of it. Jenson ThorbisherFreep had not only donated these to the Traveling Thespians but volunteered his technical expertise in teaching Andy how to shoot them. They’d used three of the four getting the range and making sure Andy and Carolus could shoot each other with no risk to themselves or anybody else.

That was easy enough. The only conceivable danger might be from the thin cardboard wads that covered the powder, and these wouldn’t do any damage unless one happened to strike somebody in the eye. The simple solution was for the men to stand only about five feet apart, aim point-blank at the adversary’s chest, and fire with their eyes shut. Dot Coskoffs grandfather’s second wife had made them pads of quilt batting to wear under their shirts. These had proved in dress rehearsal to be a needless precaution but Andy and Carolus were going to wear them anyway so Mrs. CoskofiPs feelings wouldn’t be hurt.

The first three blank cartridges in the .38 had gone off with satisfactory bangs. If the last one didn’t, that was the working of fate and no fault of Roger Munson’s. If some smart aleck got hold of the loaded revolver and wasted that sole remaining bang by an unauthorized pull of the trigger, that would be a far, far different matter.

Carolus Bledsoe had so far assumed full responsibility for the .32

Colt; Roger hadn’t had to worry about that. Until today, Jenson ThorbisherFreep had likewise kept the Smith & Wesson in his possession. He’d meant to drop it off at the Scottsbeck opera house an hour or so before curtain time, then go home and gargle to prime his throat for the curtain speech he expected to make later on. But the opera house was five minutes from his home, and Lobelia Falls a good half hour away. He couldn’t be expected to make that run twice in one evening, so he’d brought the gun with him on his earlier visit and given it then into Roger’s keeping.

Jenson might as well have slung an albatross around Roger’s neck and been done with it. Roger could probably have coped better with an albatross.

He did know better than to leave a loaded gun around unguarded, especially one loaded with the only blank .38 cartridge in Lobelia Falls. Roger’s first impulse was to take it home with him when he went to supper. However, Canada has a strict and firmly enforced firearms control law. Should Roger Munson, hitherto a model citizen, get caught in possession of a handgun not licensed to him, Sergeant Mac Vicar, the law in Lobelia Falls, would have no alternative but to exact the due penalty.

Roger had almost decided not to go home at all, but Hazel put a damper on that notion. He’d been working hard all day, she’d pointed out. He must be hungrier than a she-bear in cubbing time, and he’d be a darn sight hungrier, eh, if he had to stay here till eleven o’clock or maybe even midnight with nothing but lemonade and Girl Guide cookies to sustain him.

After much soul-searching and some frantic thought, Roger had unscrewed the cover to one of the gym’s ventilating ducts. He’d unloaded the gun, laid it inside the duct, and screwed the cover back on. He’d wrapped the blank .38 cartridge in tissues, opened the stranger’s poke, and pushed the cartridge down into the rock salt that was supposed to be gold dust. And he’d laid the poke right here on the prop table next to the feedbag, and where the heck was it now?

That was the trouble with having an organized mind. While Roger stood there clutching the gun, which he’d retrieved from the ventilator duct with little effort, Dittany picked up the feedbag and shook out the poke, complete with unexploded blank cartridge.

“There you are, Roger. You just hid the poke better than you thought you did.”

“Ungh,” was Roger’s ungrateful reply. “I wonder if I ought to load the gun now or wait till during the intermission? Of course I’ll have to help set up the barroom scene then and make sure Bill has his bar rags, but if I got the gun ready now, somebody might get to playing with it and then where’d we be?”

“You do know how to load it, I suppose?” Dittany asked him.

“Oh yes, I think so. You push this little thing here. Or do you spin that other thing first? Or-“

Carolus Bledsoe had been standing near, looking a bit strained, as well he might, but taking no part in the discussion. Now he reached over and grabbed the gun.

“Do me a favor, Roger. Since I’m the one this gun’s going to be pointed at, let me load it myself, will you? I’d just as soon not have the damned thing blow up in my face.”

Seeing the force of Carolus’s argument, Roger handed him the blank cartridge. Carolus slapped it into the chamber, made sure the safety catch was on, and laid the Smith $% Wesson on the prop table.

“Now for the love of heaven leave it alone, will you? Nobody’s going to mess around with the props at this stage of the game.

Here’s my .32, all loaded and ready to use, if it makes you feel any better.”

He dragged the smaller gun from his pocket with a hand that shook slightly, laid it on the table beside the larger, and went to get dressed as the feedbag man. It was high time Dittany got dressed, too. Being a tiny tot took longer to achieve these days than when she’d been six years old.

At the opera house, they’d had proper dressing rooms. Here in the high school gym, arrangements were communal, to use no more pejorative term. Women changed in the girls’ locker room, men in the boys’. Folding tables to hold the greasepaint, benches dragged up to them, and a few illuminated mirrors borrowed under protest from teenage daughters were the amenities. There was one fulllength mirror for the women, unscrewed by Zilla Trott from the back of her own bathroom door and transported in the Monks’ new ranch wagon. Privacy was obtainable only in the lavatory stalls.

The whole setup was a nuisance. Nobody had anywhere to put anything. Early arrivers who had nothing whatever to do with the play kept wandering backstage out of curiosity. There was no way to keep them out,- nothing separated the stage and wings from the part of the gym where the audience would sit except a row of green curtains hung clothesline fashion across the room. Anybody who wasn’t Umber enough or insouciant enough to duck under the curtains could easily find an opening to slip through, or else walk down the corridor and in the back way.

Most of the interlopers were locals who felt that the school was as much theirs as anybody’s anyway. Everybody had a relative or a neighbor in the cast. That the relative or neighbor might not care much for being burst in on while clad in half a costume and a basic coat of greasepaint had not occurred to them. Nor did most of the uninvited visitors realize that the relative or neighbor could only be found in a locker room full of other people’s relatives and neighbors in similar states of undress. There were a lot of “Oops, excuse me’s”

floating around.

One such stammered apology came from a tallish woman in a padded storm coat who claimed to be looking for the ladies’ room.

She had her hood drawn down over her forehead, which might have meant that she preferred not to show her hair in public before she’d had a chance to comb it in private. The dark glasses could have indicated an eye ailment and the scarf pulled up around her chin a toothache. Taken all together, they presented a small puzzle to the inquiring mind, particularly as Desdemona Portley’s husband, in his zeal to cooperate, had jacked up the gym thermostat to a degree where most people were shedding their outer wraps as fast as they could find places to park them.

Dittany, who happened to be sitting at one of the makeup mirrors, caught the woman’s reflection in the glass and paused in the act of tying her blue hair ribbon. There was something familiar in the woman’s gait as she walked quickly away. Dittany gave a final tweak to her bow, slipped out of the locker room, and watched the intruder go not toward the ladies’ room but out through the curtain into the audience. If that wasn’t Carolus Bledsoe’s ex-wife, she’d be a ring-tailed monkey with the chicken pox. What had happened to that policeman who was supposed to be standing guard?

Dittany tiptoed over to the curtains and peeked through a slit.

The Thespians were well on the way to a full house, she noted with momentary elation. Sergeant Mac Vicar was there, eighth row center, out of uniform and looking even more Presbyterian than usual in his Sunday suit. Mrs. Mac Vicar had on that lovely cherry-colored wool dress she’d bought a year ago at the January sales. Mrs. MacVicar always dressed well, though never extravagantly. She knew what was due her husband’s position.

It couldn’t possibly have been Sergeant MacVicar who’d accepted an off-duty assignment. It probably wasn’t Bob or Ray, they’d be minding the station. That left only-yes, there he was. A rotund, elderly man also in mufti-blue trousers, green shirt, and yellow cardigan-was standing up by the main entrance with a cup of lemonade, a handful of Girl Guide cookies, and an expression of gentle bemusement. She might have known.

One of the volunteer stagehands happened to wander by, bent on nothing in particular that Dittany could think of. She beckoned him over.

“Sammy, see that woman with the hood and scarf over her face, and the sunglasses? She’s just sitting down, third row from the front on the left, beside the fire exit”

“In the brown coat?”

Dittany would have called the coat burgundy, but she let it pass.

There wasn’t another woman in the audience wearing a hood, a scarf, and sunglasses anyway. “Yes, that’s the one. And do you see Ormerod Burlson up by the back door? With the yellow sweater.”

“Yup.”

“Could you go very quietly and casually up to Ormerod and tell him that’s the woman he’s supposed to be keeping an eye on?”

“Huh? What for?”

“Because she’s the one who threw the tomato at Carolus Bledsoe last night. Ormerod’s been hired to keep her from pulling any tricks tonight and he’s asleep at the switch as usual. Tell him to come down front and sit in that empty seat just behind her.”

“Too late. Some other woman’s taking it.”

“Wouldn’t you know! Then tell Ormerod to lurk just outside the exit door.”

“He won’t be able to see the stage from there.”

“Who cares? He’s not getting paid to watch the show. Go ahead, Sammy, quick. I have to start the overture in a minute.”

She probably ought to be at the piano already, waiting for Osbert to give her the signal. Still, Dittany lingered at the slit in the curtain.

She saw Sammy approach Ormerod. She saw Ormerod look annoyed and make a gesture toward the lemonade stand. She saw Sammy grab Ormerod by the sweater and speak in a forceful manner.

She saw Sammy walk Ormerod down the side aisle and park him at the fire exit. There was more to that kid than met the eye, by gum.

She absolutely must get to her post. Still, Dittany turned back for one more peek. The ex-Mrs. Bledsoe was unbuttoning her storm coat. The person who’d taken that seat behind her was leaning forward, perhaps asking her to drop her hood and quit blocking the view.

It was not a woman, it was a man, almost handsome in a cadaverous sort of way. Sammy must have been deceived by the flowing black cloak and the silky white shirt. What role was Leander Hellespont playing now?

Almost before the curtain went up, the Traveling Thespians had the audience in their collective pocket. The people out front, and particularly those in the bleachers, applauded Dittany’s overture. They applauded the makeshift set, they applauded the feedbag man, they went crazy over Dan McGrew in his top hat and waxed mustache.