“Ha! Very good!” cried Creeson, taking up his role as the devious James Larrabee. “Very good indeed! If those things were only true, I’d be wonderfully impressed. It would be absolutely marvelous!”
Gillette regarded him with an expression of weary impatience. “It won’t do, sir,” said he. “I have come to see Miss Alice Faulkner and will not leave until I have done so. I have reason to believe that the young lady is being held against her will. You shall have to give way, sir, or face the consequences.”
Creeson’s hands flew to his chest. “Against her will? This is outrageous! I will not tolerate—”
A high, trilling scream from backstage interrupted the line. Creeson held his expression and attempted to continue. “I will not tolerate such an accusation in my own—”
A second scream issued from backstage. Gillette gave a heavy sigh and rose from his chair as he reached for the prompt book. “Will that woman never learn her cue?” Shielding his eyes against the glare of the footlights, he stepped again to the lip of the stage and sought out Frohman. “This is what comes of engaging the company locally,” he said in an exasperated tone. “We have a mob of players in ill-fitting costumes who don’t know their scripts. We should have brought the New York company across, hang the expense.” He turned to the wings. “Quinn!”
The young actor stepped forward. “Yes, sir?”
“Will you kindly inform—”
Gillette’s instructions were cut short by the sudden appearance of Miss Maude Fenton, the actress playing the role of Alice Faulkner, who rushed from the wings in a state of obvious agitation. Her chestnut hair fell loosely about her shoulders and her velvet shirtwaist was imperfectly buttoned. “Gone!” she cried. “Missing! Taken from me!”
Gillette drummed his fingers across the prompt book. “My dear Miss Fenton,” he said, “you have dropped approximately seventeen pages from the script.”
“Hang the script!” she wailed. “I’m not playing a role! My brooch is missing! My beautiful, beautiful brooch! Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mr. Gillette, someone must have stolen it!”
Selma Kendall, the kindly, auburn-haired actress who had been engaged to play Madge Larrabee, hurried to Miss Fenton’s side. “It can’t be!” she cried. “He only just gave it — that is to say, you’ve only just acquired it! Are you certain you haven’t simply mislaid it?”
Miss Fenton accepted the linen pocket square I offered and dabbed at her streaming eyes. “I couldn’t possibly have mislaid it,” she said between sobs. “One doesn’t mislay something of that sort! How could such a thing have happened?”
Gillette, who had cast an impatient glance at his pocket watch during this exchange, now stepped forward to take command of the situation. “There, there, Miss Fenton,” he said, in the cautious, faltering tone of a man not used to dealing with female emotions. “I’m sure this is all very distressing. As soon as we have completed our run-through, we will conduct a most thorough search of the dressing areas. I’m sure your missing bauble will be discovered presently.”
“Gillette!” I cried. “You don’t mean to continue with the rehearsal? Can’t you see that Miss Fenton is too distraught to carry on?”
“But she must,” the actor declared. “As Mr. Frohman has been at pains to remind us, our little play has its London opening tomorrow evening. We shall complete the rehearsal, and then — after I have given a few notes — we shall locate the missing brooch. Miss Fenton is a fine actress, and I have every confidence in her ability to conceal her distress in the interim.” He patted the weeping actress on the back of her hand. “Will that do, my dear?”
At this, Miss Fenton’s distress appeared to gather momentum by steady degrees. First her lips began to tremble, then her shoulders commenced heaving, and lastly a strange caterwauling sound emerged from behind the handkerchief. After a moment or two of this, she threw herself into Gillette’s arms and began sobbing lustily upon his shoulder.
“Gillette,” called Frohman, straining to make himself heard above the lamentations, “perhaps it would be best to take a short pause.”
Gillette, seemingly unnerved by the wailing figure in his arms, gave a strained assent. “Very well. We shall repair to the dressing area. No doubt the missing object has simply slipped between the cushions of a settee.”
With Mr. Frohman in the lead, our small party made its way through the wings and along the backstage corridors to the ladies’ dressing area. As we wound past the scenery flats and crated property trunks, I found myself reflecting on how little I knew of the other members of our troupe. Although Gillette’s play had been a great success in America, only a handful of actors and crewmen had transferred to the London production. A great many members of the cast and technical staff, myself included, had been engaged locally after a brief open call. Up to this point, the rehearsals and staging had been a rushed affair, allowing for little of the easy camaraderie that usually develops among actors during the rehearsal period.
As a result, I knew little about my fellow players apart from the usual backstage gossip. Miss Fenton, in the role of the young heroine Alice Faulkner, was considered to be a promising ingenue. Reviewers frequently commented on her striking beauty, if not her talent. Selma Kendall, in the role of the conniving Madge Larrabee, had established herself in the provinces as a dependable support player, and was regarded as something of a mother hen by the younger actresses. Arthur Creeson, as the wicked James Larrabee, had been a promising romantic lead in his day, but excessive drink and gambling had marred his looks and scotched his reputation. William Allerford, whose high, domed forehead and startling white hair helped to make him so effective as the nefarious Professor Moriarty, was in fact the most gentle of men, with a great passion for tending the rosebushes at his cottage in Hove. As for myself, I had set out to become an opera singer in my younger days, but my talent had not matched my ambition, and over time I had evolved into a reliable, if unremarkable, second lead.
“Here we are,” Frohman was saying as we arrived at the end of a long corridor. “We shall make a thorough search.” After knocking on the unmarked door, he led us inside.
As was the custom of the day, the female members of the cast shared a communal dressing area in a narrow, sparsely appointed chamber illuminated by a long row of electrical lights. Along one wall was a long mirror with a row of wooden makeup tables before it. A random cluster of coat racks, reclining sofas, and well-worn armchairs were arrayed along the wall opposite. Needless to say, I had never been in a ladies’ dressing room before, and I admit that I felt my cheeks redden at the sight of so many underthings and delicates thrown carelessly over the furniture. I turned to avert my eyes from a cambric corset cover thrown across a ladderback chair, only to find myself gazing upon a startling assortment of hosiery and lace-trimmed drawers laid out upon a nearby ottoman.
“Gracious, Mr. Lyndal,” said Miss Kendall, taking a certain delight in my discomfiture. “One would almost think you’d never seen linens before.”
“Well, I — perhaps not so many at once,” I admitted, gathering my composure. “Dr. Watson is said to have an experience of women which extends over many nations and three separate continents. My own experience, I regret to say, extends no further than Hatton Cross.”
Gillette, it appeared, did not share my sense of consternation. No sooner had we entered the dressing area than he began making an energetic and somewhat indiscriminate examination of the premises, darting from one side of the room to the other, opening drawers and tossing aside cushions and pillows with careless abandon.