"I am intruding?" he suggested gravely, with a slight turn as if offering to withdraw.
"No."
The word faltering on the lips of Mary Whitaker was lost in an emphatic iteration by Whitaker.
"Sit down!" he insisted. "As if we"d let you escape, now, after you"d kept us here in suspense!"
He offered a chair, but Ember first advanced to take the hand held out to him by the woman on the chaise-longue.
"You are feeling--more composed?" he inquired.
Her gaze met his bravely. "I am--troubled, perhaps--but happy," she said.
"Then I am very glad," he said, smiling at the delicate colour that enhanced her exquisite beauty as she made the confession. "I had hoped as much." He looked from the one to the other. "You ... have made up your minds?"
The wife answered for both: "It is settled, dear friend: I can struggle no longer. I thought myself a strong woman; I have tried to believe myself a genius bound upon the wheel of an ill-starred destiny; but I find I am"--the glorious voice trembled slightly--"only a woman in love and no stronger than her love."
"I am very glad," Ember repeated, "for both your sakes. It"s a happy consummation of my dearest wishes."
"We owe you everything," Whitaker said with feeling, dropping an awkward hand on the other"s shoulder. "It was you who threw us together, down there on the Great West Bay, so that we learned to know one another...."
"I plead guilty to that little plot--yes," Ember laughed. "But, best of all, this comes at just the right time--the rightest time, when there can no longer be any doubts or questions or misunderstandings, no ground for further fears and apprehensions, when "the destroying angel" of your "ill-starred destiny," my dear"--he turned to the woman--"is exorcised--banished--proscribed--"
"Max--!" Whitaker struck in explosively.
"--is on his way to the police-station, well guarded," Ember affirmed with a nod and a grim smile. "I have his confession, roughly jotted down but signed, and attested by several witnesses.... I"m glad you were out of the way; it was rather a painful scene, and disorderly; it wouldn"t have been pleasant for Mrs. Whitaker.... We had the deuce of a time clearing the theatre: human curiosity is a tremendously persistent and resistant force. And then I had some trouble dealing with the misplaced loyalty of the staff of the house.... However, eventually I got Max to myself--alone, that is, with several men I could depend on. And then I heartlessly put him through the third degree--forestalling my friends, the police. By dint of a.s.serting as truths and personal discoveries what I merely suspected, I broke down his denials. He owned up, doggedly enough, and yet with that singular pride which I have learned to a.s.sociate with some phases of homicidal mania.... I won"t distress you with details: the truth is that Max was quite mad on the subject of his luck; he considered it, as I suspected, indissolubly a.s.sociated with Sara Law. When poor Custer committed suicide, he saved Max from ruin and innocently showed him the way to save himself thereafter, when he felt in peril, by a.s.sa.s.sinating Hamilton and, later, Thurston. Drummond only cheated a like fate, and you"--turning to Whitaker--"escaped by the narrowest shave. Max hadn"t meant to run the risk of putting you out of the way unless he thought it absolutely necessary, but the failure of his silly play in rehearsal to-night, coupled with the discovery that you were in the theatre, drove him temporarily insane with hate, chagrin and jealousy."
Concluding, Ember rose. "I must follow him now to the police-station....
I shall see you both soon again--?"
The woman gave him both her hands. "There"s no way to thank you," she said--"our dear, dear friend!"
"No way," Whitaker echoed regretfully.
"No way?" Ember laughed quietly, holding her hands tightly clasped. "But I see you together--happy--Oh, believe me, I am fully thanked!"
Bowing, he touched his lips gently to both hands, released them with a little sigh that ended in a contented chuckle, exchanged a short, firm grasp with Whitaker, and left them....
Whitaker, following almost immediately to the gangway, found that Ember had already left the theatre.
For some minutes he wandered to and fro in the gangway, pausing now and again on the borders of the deserted stage. There were but few of the house staff visible, and those few were methodically busy with preparations to close up. Beyond the dismal gutter of the footlights the auditorium yawned cavernous and shadowy, peopled only by low rows of chairs ghostly in their dust-cloths. The street entrances were already closed, locked and dark. On the stage a single cl.u.s.ter-stand of electric bulbs made visible the vast, gloomy dome of the flies and the whitewashed walls against which sections of scenery were stacked like cards. An electrician in his street clothes lounged beside the door-keeper"s cubicle, at the stage entrance, smoking a cigarette and conferring with the doorman while subjecting Whitaker to a curious and antagonistic stare. The m.u.f.fled rumble of their voices were the only sounds audible, aside from an occasional racket of boot-heels in the gangways as one actor after another left his dressing-room and hastened to the street, keen-set for the clash of gossiping tongues in theatrical clubs and restaurants.
Gradually the building grew more and more empty and silent, until at length Whitaker was left alone with the shadows and the two employees.
These last betrayed signs of impatience. He himself felt a little sympathy for their temper. Women certainly did take an unconscionable time to dress!...
At length he heard them hurrying along the lower gangway, and turned to join his wife at the stage-entrance. Elise pa.s.sed on, burdened with two heavy hand-bags, and disappeared into the rain-washed alleyway. The electrician detached his shoulders from the wall, ground his cigarette under heel and lounged over to the switchboard.
Mary Whitaker turned her face, shadowy and mystical, touched with her faint and inscrutable smile, up to her husband"s.
"Wait," she begged in a whisper. "I want to see"--her breath checked--"the end of it all."
They heard hissings and clickings at the switchboard. The gangway lights vanished in a breath. The single cl.u.s.ter-stand on the stage disappeared--and the house disappeared utterly with its extinguishment.
There remained alight only the single dull bulb in the doorman"s cubicle.
Whitaker slipped an arm round his wife. She trembled within his embrace.
"Black out," she said in a gentle and regretful voice: "the last exit: Curtain--End of the Play!"
"No," he said in a voice of sublime confidence--"no; it"s only the prologue curtain. Now for the play, dear heart ... the real play ... life ... love...."