The Floating Lady Murder Read Online Free PDF Page A

Pittsburgh Post was moved to write—”
    “Harry, for God’s sake!”
    “What is it, Dash? I must say you are in a strange humor today.”
    “Don’t you remember? I wrote those notices! I was the one who reviewed the act in Toledo! I was the one who reviewed the act in Pittsburgh and Chicago! That’s what a publicity man does! Especially when he’s your younger brother!”
    Harry’s eyebrows shot up. “You wrote those notices?”
    “Harry, we’ve been over this a dozen times. I’ve been planting items in the press since you were fourteen years old. Remember the Brooklyn Eagle ?”
    Harry spent a moment or two watching the passing buildings. “Well, in any case, what you wrote was nothing more than the truth. And anyway,” he added, as the cart drew up in front of the theater, “I’m sure that if you hadn’t written in praise of the act, someone else would have done so in equally extravagant terms.”
    “No doubt, Harry.” I said, as we hopped down off the cart. “Just remember what we discussed. Mr. McAdow is a theatricalprofessional. It would be best if you presented the trunk trick without the usual rhetorical flourishes.”
    “Yes,” Bess agreed, perhaps a bit too eagerly, “we don’t want to take up too much of the man’s valuable time.”
    Harry shouldered the heavy trunk and gave her a wink. “I shall be captivating,” he declared, “as always.” With this, he gave a resounding knock on the stage door.
    I should perhaps confess that the Belasco Theater has always held a special significance for me. Its high dome and stately columns had long been a fixture of the New York theater district, and season after season it managed to attract the finest actors and productions. As a boy, I once stuffed myself through the coal chute off the service alley in order to hear Mr. Edwin Booth give one of his final performances of Hamlet. I neither appreciated nor fully grasped the drama, but I understood the event to be of great significance in the theater world. I spent the entire first act and much of the second crouched below the rear stairs. I thrilled to the sudden and mysterious appearance of the ghost of Hamlet’s father—who rose from the floor of the stage as though emerging from the sea—and I later described it breathlessly to my brother as the finest magic trick I had ever seen. It was my hope that the effect might be repeated, but during the third act I was roughly turned out by a ruddy-faced theater warden in a striped vest and bowler.
    I felt a moment’s unease when that same florid-cheeked gentleman answered our knock at the stage door, but I soon recovered myself, confident that he would not recognize me as the youthful Shakespeare enthusiast of the previous decade. The warden showed us through a maze of causeways and past a series of dressing chambers and property lockers while Harry and I maneuvered the ungainly substitution trunk around a number of tight corners. Finally we rounded a battery of curtain cleats and came onto the main stage itself.
    “Mr. McAdow?” the warden called, peering out over the forward lip of the stage.
    Down in the empty house, in the front row of seats, a pair of men were huddled over a sheaf of papers. One of them was tall, slender and fair-complexioned, with ginger hair swept straight back from a strong, heavily lined forehead. The other man was smaller and dark-haired, with a flowing moustache. “Yes, Connell?” the taller man said, looking up from his documents. “What is it?”
    “These gentlemen and the lady to see you, sir.”
    McAdow gave a dismissive wave of the hand. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Wait there. Be with you in a minute.”
    Connell gave a courtly little bow to Bess and withdrew, leaving us standing with the trunk at the center of the stage.
    We were the only people in the entire theater who did not appear to be engaged in some furious activity. All around us the members of Mr. Kellar’s company were busily going about their