Tracked by Terror Read Online Free PDF

not even blink. Jarvey gulped and thought back to the rehearsal, remembering one of the many unfunny jokes. He gave the actress her cue: “Oh, Yolanda! Your father is a hard man!”
    Immediately her dead face came to life in a simpering smile, and in exactly the same tone she had used earlier onstage, she said, “No wonder, for in his youth he was a stone mason.” That said, she froze again, placidly staring at her own face in the mirror.
    Close up, Jarvey could see there was something not right about her. Her skin was too smooth, too pink at the cheeks. She looked more like a life-sized doll than a person. She was like a newer version of the terrible crumbling, creeping thing that he had mistaken for Betsy. “Are you some kind of robot?” Jarvey asked.
    The actress did not answer.
    Jarvey backed away. He checked to make sure the coast was clear and slipped into the next dressing room, where half a dozen men sat staring into their own mirror. Jarvey could recognize them from the rehearsal. One was young Isidor, the sweetheart of Mariane. Another was old Bellibone, Yolanda’s father. They were just as lifeless as Yolanda had been.
    But in the last dressing room, matters were different. Jarvey didn’t dare get close enough to peek in, but the door stood ajar and he could hear voices.
    â€œExcellent sandwiches, Mrs. Midion.”
    â€œThank you, Mr. Midion.”
    â€œI wish Augustus would come with the tea!”
    â€œPatience, my dove. Your brother will be back soon.”
    â€œHe’s always such a slowpoke, Father. I don’t see why we can’t have a nice little place for making tea right here in our dressing room.”
    â€œHonoria, you know quite well that a home is a home,” the woman who had played the countess said in a firm voice, “and the theater is the theater. We do not perform in our living room, and so we shall not cook in our dressing room.”
    Honoria grumbled that tea wasn’t really cooking, but Jarvey heard only a little of her complaint, because he had retreated into the men’s dressing room, where he could peek out from reasonably good concealment, and before long he saw the younger man returning, carrying a teapot and a basket. “Father,” he said as he entered the last dressing room, “I have the strangest feeling that someone has been in our kitchen.”
    The older man’s voice broke into a laugh. “Hardly any chance of that, Augustus! Now, boy, you can get a much bigger laugh on your exit line—yes, pour the tea, do.”
    Jarvey bit his lip to keep himself from laughing in relief. He could guess who had been in their kitchen, all right. Someone who was an expert at snitching food right out from under the noses of its proper owner.
    It had to be Betsy.

5
    Master of the World
    B etsy slipped out of the cupboard where she had folded herself up into an astonishingly small space, getting her breath back again. The boy had almost caught her.
    She had been munching a slice of bread spread with a little honey, and she finished her sticky meal as she made her way out of the apartment. For about the hundredth time she wondered how she was going to find Jarvey again. Ever since she had discovered the secret doorway in the corridor wall, she had been moving through this endless building. Strange, she had been sure that Jarvey was right behind her at first. She had heard his footsteps following her when she first came out into the darkness that filled the backstage of a huge theater, but when she turned, he wasn’t there at all. Worse, she’d heard people approaching, and before she’d found her bearings, she’d had to scuttle away, hiding from them. Now she had no idea of where the doorway back to the marble corridor was, just that it must be one of the dozens in the backstage part of the theater.
    â€œDoesn’t matter,” she told herself, wiping her sticky fingers on the hem of her dress.