In went Clannery and Nolan, happy as boys.
"Make an aisle, now. Yank, you and Snell and Orkney over here with me!"
We rushed to form an aisle between the two closed main entrance-exit doors.
"Fogarty, lay your ear to the door!"
This Fogarty did. His eyes widened.
"The d.a.m.n music is extra loud!"
One of the Kelly boys nudged his brother. "It will be over soon. Whoever is to die is dying this moment. Whoever is to live is bending over him."
"Louder still!" announced Fogarty, head to the door panel, hands twitching as if he were adjusting a radio. "There! That"s the grand ta-ta that comes just as THE END jumps on the screen."
"They"re off!" I murmured.
"Hush!" said Timulty. "There"s the anthem! Tenshun!"
We all stood erect. Someone saluted.
But still we stared at the door.
"I hear feet running," said Fogarty.
"Whoever it is had a good start before the anthem-"
The door burst wide.
Hoolihan plunged to view, smiling such a smile as only breathless victors know.
"Hoolihan!" cried the winners.
"Doone!" cried the losers, myself and Snell-Orkney. "Where"s Doone?"
For, while Hoolihan was first, a compet.i.tor was lacking.
"The idiot didn"t come out the wrong door?"
We waited. The audience shuffled off and was gone.
Timulty ventured first into the empty lobby.
"Doone?" he called.
Silence.
"Could it be he"s in there!"
Someone flung the Gents" door wide. "Doone?"
No echo.
"Good grief," cried Timulty. "It can"t be he"s broken a leg and lies on the aisle slope with the mortal agonies?"
"That"s it!"
The island of men, heaving one way, changed gravities and heaved the other, toward the inner door, through it, and down the aisle, Snell-Orkney, chums, and myself in hot pursuit.
"Doone!"
Clannery and Nolan were there to meet us and pointed silently down. I jumped in the air twice to see over the mob"s head. It was dark in the vast theater. I saw nothing.
"Doone!"
Then at last the mob bunched near the fourth row on the aisle. I heard their boggled exclamations, staring at Doone.
He was still seated in the fourth row, his hands folded, eyes shut.
Dead?
None of that.
A tear, large, luminous, and beautiful, fell on his cheek. Another tear, larger and more l.u.s.trous, emerged from his other eye. His chin was wet. It was certain he had been crying for some while.
We peered into his face, circling, leaning.
"Doone, are ya sick?"
"Is it fearful news?"
"Ah, G.o.d," cried Doone. He shook himself to find the strength, somehow, to speak.
"Ah, G.o.d," he said at last, "she has a voice of an angel."
"Angel?"
"That one up there." He nodded.
We turned to stare at the empty silver screen.
"Is it Deanna Durbin?"
Doone sobbed. "The dear dead voice of me grandmother come back-"
"Your grandma"s behind!" exclaimed Timulty. "She had no such voice!"
"And who"s to know, save me?" Doone blew his nose, dabbed at his eyes.
"You mean to say it was just the Durbin la.s.s kept you from the sprint?"
"Just!" cried Doone. "Just! Why, it would be sacrilege to bound from a cinema after a recital like that. You might as well jump across the altar during a wedding, or waltz about at a funeral."
"You could"ve at least warned us it was no contest." Timulty glared.
"How could I? It just crept over me in a divine sickness. That last bit she sang-"The Lovely Isle of Innisfree," was it not, Clannery?"
"What else did she sing?" asked Fogarty.
"What else did she sing?" cried Timulty. "He"s just lost us half our day"s wages and you ask what else she sang! Gadz!"
"Sure, it"s money runs the world," Doone agreed, seated there. "But it is music that holds down the friction."
"What"s going on there?" cried someone above.
A man leaned down from the balcony, puffing a cigarette. "What"s all the rouse?"
"It"s the projectionist," whispered Timulty. Aloud: "h.e.l.lo, Phil, darling! It"s only the Team! We"ve a bit of a problem here, Phil, in ethics, not to say aesthetics. Now, we wonder if, well, could it be possible to run the anthem over?"
"Run it over?"
There was a rumble from the winners, a mixing and shoving of elbows.
"A lovely idea," said Doone.
"It is." Timulty, all guile, called up, "An act of G.o.d incapaci-1 tated Doone."
"A tenth-run flicker from the year 1937 caught him by the short hairs is all," said Fogarty.
"So the fair thing is"-here Timulty, unperturbed, looked to heaven-"Phil, dear boy, also is the entire last reel of the Deanna Durbin fillum still there?"
"It ain"t in the ladies" room," admitted Phil, smoking steadily.
"What a wit the boy has. Now, Phil, do you think you could just thread it back through the machine there and give us the finis again?"
"Is that what you all want?" cried Phil.
There was a hard moment of indecision. But the thought of another contest was too good to be pa.s.sed, even though already-won money was at stake. Slowly everyone nodded.
"I"ll bet myself, then," Phil called down. "A shilling on Hoolihan!"
The winners laughed and hooted; they looked to win again. Hoolihan waved graciously. The losers turned to their man.
"Do you hear the insult, Doone? Stay awake, man!"
"When the girl sings, d.a.m.n it, go deaf!"
"Places, everyone!" Timulty jostled about.
"There"s no audience," said Hoolihan. "And without them there"s no obstacles, no real contest."
"Why"-Snell-Orkney blinked around-"let"s all of us be the audience."
"Snell-and-Orkney," said Timulty, "you"re a genius!"
Beaming, everyone threw himself into a seat.
"Better yet," announced Timulty, up front, "why not make it teams? Doone and Hoolihan, sure, but for every Doone man or Hoolihan man that makes it out before the anthem freezes him on his hobnails, an extra point, right?"
"Done!" cried everyone.
"Pardon," I said. "There"s no one outside to judge."
Everyone turned to look at me.
"Ah," said Timulty. "Well. Nolan, outside!"
Nolan trudged up the aisle, cursing.
Phil stuck his head from the projection booth above.
"Are ya clods down there ready?"
"If the girl is and the anthem is!"
And the lights went out.
I found myself seated next in from Doone, who whispered fervently, "Poke me, lad, keep me alert to practicalities instead of ornamentation, eh?"
"Shut up!" said someone. "There"s the mystery."
And there indeed it was, the mystery of song and art and life, if you will, the young girl singing on the time-haunted screen.
"We lean on you, Doone," I whispered.
"Eh?" he replied. He smiled ahead. "Ah, look, ain"t she lovely? Do you hear?"
"The bet, Doone," I said. "Get ready."
"All right," he groused. "Let me stir my bones. Oh, no! Jesus save me."
"What?"
"I never thought to test. My right leg. Feel. Naw, you can"t. It"s dead, it is!"
"Asleep, you mean?" I said, appalled.
"Dead or asleep, h.e.l.l, I"m sunk! Lad, lad, you must run for me! Here"s my cap and scarf!"