Publicity

“Benedick,” murmured Tadema, just loudly enough for the cadence of his fine voice to be audible all round the dressing room. The intonation did not quite satisfy his fastidious ear.

“Benedick,” he repeated, giving the word this time a sadness and a certain pride.

Then, with an assumption of carelessness which could have been only for his personal benefit, since he was entirely without other audience, he took up the copy of the illustrated weekly once more and studied afresh the full-page snapshot of himself and Chloe standing on the steps of her mother’s house in Brook Street.

Her new make-up looked very well, he thought. She was youthful yet sophisticated and arresting without being actually vulgar. A dear girl.

Of himself he was not so sure. Photographs were notoriously unkind. Yet it was certainly like him and he peered affectionately at the gallant and romantic figure which the London public knew so well. He re-read the paragraph slowly:

“The surprise of the little season has been the engagement of Lady Chloe Staratt, beautiful daughter of the Earl of Scaresfield, to Sir Geoffrey Tadema the bachelor actor knight. Lady Chloe, besides being an acknowledged leader of her set, is thought by many people to be the smartest woman in town. Sir Geoffrey is the great lover of the stage, but until now he has proved himself impervious to Cupid’s darts. Their many friends have been surprised and delighted by this romantic love match.”

Tadema threw down the paper and smiled. The Press had been magnificent. The dailies had been generous with space and there had been several long interviews in the cheaper Sundays. But the old Telltale had come up to scratch. They had done the thing with the right delicacy. Some of the dailies had mentioned the discrepancy in age, he had been sorry to see.

At fifty-one Tadema looked, from the stage at least, sixteen or seventeen years younger. His figure was as good, or nearly as good, as ever it had been, and he had changed hardly at all in the past ten years.

His astonishing success was all the more extraordinary in view of his limitations, histrionically speaking. In addition to his face, which had a propensity for expressing passionate emotion decently repressed, he had a natural charm of manner and two endearing mannerisms.

His nervous shake of the head when addressing the beloved kept his feminine gallery in ecstasy, and his sudden smile, so disarming in its warmth, moved the same body to audible quavers of delight.

Obviously it was not these alone which had kept the name of Tadema in foot-high letters on the board outside the Gresham for nearly fourteen years. He had other assets.

An excellent business man, he had a gift for finding the right sort of play and, of course, he had his instinct.

In what circumstances an instinct becomes genius and when genius is transmuted into art it is difficult to say, but with Tadema publicity was all these three. His public, who very properly believed what it inferred, read, or saw with its own eyes, knew that Sir Geoffrey Tadema was romance made carnate.

It also knew that his conquests were myriad and that his life was the constant pursuit of the one woman of the perfect heart, a vaguely defined lady, but easily identifiable by every woman in his audience.

Since in private life Sir Geoffrey was a normal bachelor of somewhat fixed habits this public facade of his was no mean achievement. Publicity was his hobby and he worked at it with diligence and delicacy.

Jealous colleagues spoke bitterly of vast sums spent in bribes, betraying that they knew nothing of the art and of newspapers less. Wishart, of the Telegram, once looked down from his eminence of forty years of journalism to observe that old Tadema got away with it by being so damned topical, but even he had only a germ of the truth.

Sir Geoffrey himself honestly believed that he represented the secret soul-mate of all unloved women in London, but he overestimated himself, as he began to find out when TV became popular.

It was this discovery that was ultimately responsible for Chloe. On the “box” Tadema’s years were irritatingly apparent and his famous personality curiously artificial. On the stage he was still a force, but his last play had run only fourteen months instead of the customary eighteen and he felt himself slipping. It was not a landslide yet by any means but the sands were stirring beneath his feet.

He had been considering a happy and romantic marriage for some time as a new medium for the Personality when he first met Chloe, then on the crest of her first wave of public interest. She was the most photographed young woman of the season and he admired the way she worked at it.

The thought of marrying her did not then occur to him, but now, when he realised she was not out for money and titled obscurity but was preparing for a career as a public person, the beautiful idea had come to him. The hour was propitious. Chloe’s adventure with masked bandits, who had chivalrously restored her possessions because of her charming face and endearing manner alone, had just come out.

Chloe had been too much of a sport to prefer a charge against the criminals and had only confessed the story to a newspaper man after pressure. This risky business had come off very well considering, although Tadema had felt it dangerously crude at the time. He felt instinctively that an engagement would be a sound move for both of them.

Chloe saw it, of course. Tadema warmed to her with real affection when he saw her grave eyes when he proposed. He was a little in love even. It was typical of him that he should have done the thing so thoroughly once the ulterior motive had been faced and shelved in the back of his mind.

He was hurt when she used the twenty-four hours which she demanded before giving him an answer to allow a pet paragraphist to get into print with the rumour, but he was mollified by the Press reception.

“Our great lover.” “The man who understands women.” “Real romance at last.”

The epithets were most gratifying.

“The old hound!” said Wishart, grunting through his ragged moustache when he saw the middle page headlines. “He’s done it again—right on the dot. It’s second nature with him.”

At the moment Tadema was very pleased.

He was so happy, even, that when a total stranger walked in upon him—an unheard-of thing at any time and almost sacrilegious before a matinee—his smile did not fade.

The newcomer paused in the doorway and stared at him disconcertingly. No expression at all passed over his youthful and vaguely familiar face. After a moment or two of this stern scrutiny Tadema’s good humour wavered. He rose to his feet and was about to make the obvious inquiry when he suddenly recognised this thick-featured boy. Quite apart from any little professional feeling which an old public favourite may experience when faced with a new, Tadema conceived an instant dislike of Gyp Rains, the young flier with the cold blue eyes who stood in his dressing room doorway and regarded him so uncompromisingly.

The aviator’s first remark did not help to dispel his animosity.

“I’ve come to see you, sir, because I felt it was my duty,” he said.

The stereotyped but unexpected words were not aided by the curiously expressionless tone in which they were uttered and Tadema’s irritation increased. He loathed young men who had the impudence to address him as “sir” anyway. He fell back upon the particular brand of sarcasm of which he was master.

“How very nice of you,” he said. “Perhaps you would sit down and be as decent and as dutiful as you can in the few moments which I have at my disposal.”

Had he said nothing at all he could hardly have made less impression upon Mr. Rains’s stolid and bony countenance. The young man advanced into the room, placed himself within a foot of its owner, and recited, still in the same monotone: “Chloe did not want me to tell you, sir, but I realised that even a man of your age has his feelings and I thought it was the only right thing to do, so I’ve come to warn you. I always do what I think right,” he added with unexpected naivete, and Tadema, who had the uncomfortable impression that he was back on the stage with the stock company of his early youth, caught a glimpse of something glazed in the blue eyes and realised that he was dealing with a man labouring under intense excitement.

But he had no time for any feelings Gyp Rains might have been imperfectly concealing. He had heard the name “Chloe” and a great fear had descended upon him. He was about to subside stiffly into his chair, but subconsciously recognised it as the movement of an ageing man, and checked it hastily.

“Perhaps you’d better explain a little more fully,” he said easily. “What’s all this about?”

“It’s a secret. Chloe and I are to be married. We’ve fallen in love and we’re going to elope. I start on my big flight tomorrow night and she’s coming with me. They’ll find her in Athens, of course, and I don’t suppose they’ll let her go on but we’re getting married late tomorrow.”

“Are you talking about Chloe Staratt?”

“Of course.” Mr. Gyp Rains seemed to regard the question as surprisingly unnecessary.

“I see,” said Tadema with awful solemnity. “I see. And what do you intend me to do about it?”

For the first time during the interview Gyp Rains’s face changed. His eyebrows rose. His eyes became round and foolish.

“What can you do?” he said. “I only came to tell you.”

It has been said that the chance answer of a half-wit can confound a brilliant counsel by its very simplicity and it was so in this case. Tadema’s mouth opened but no sound came. Mr. Rains continued: “I’ve only told you,” he said gently, “because I did not think it was the decent thing not to. You can’t do anything. You see that, don’t you?”

The final question was put gently.

“Look here, my boy—” Tadema was clutching wildly at straws, “—I don’t want to appear offensive, but you don’t think that something Lady Chloe may have said may have given you a wrong impression? I mean—”

“Oh no.” The shining countenance was blank as ever. I brought this along. She couldn’t keep it very well, could she? She saw that as soon as I put it to her.”

And, advancing towards the dressing table, he set down amongst the grease paint the very large and expensive diamond-and-platinum ring which Sir Geoffrey had chosen only a few weeks before and had paid for but a few days previously.

There was a long and difficult pause. Gyp Rains braced himself for the final effort.

“Both Chloe and I rely upon your decency, sir. We know you won’t give us away. Chloe’s afraid of trouble with her father, you see, and so far you are the only person in the know. You won’t let us down, will you? I know that.”

And, having dropped his bombshell, Mr. Rains, latest darling of an air-minded British public, smiled kindly at Sir Geoffrey Tadema and walked stolidly out of the dressing room, a ridiculous, humourless and unconquerable figure.

Tadema acted the big scene silently by himself for perhaps two minutes. He paced the floor, he looked at the ring, he peered at himself in the mirror, he threw the ring away, picked it up again, put it in his pocket, shrugged his shoulders, wiped his eyes, and went through every pantomime which the most exacting producer could have desired.

And then, having reacted in this perfectly normal way, he pulled himself up abruptly and began to think. There were many words which fitly described Chloe, but he was not the man to fall to cursing. Behind his fury there was a quiet part of his mind which could almost admire her. As a piece of publicity it was superb—the discovery in Athens, the secret marriage and that stolid, love-besotted boy to back her up. There was a story to delight the most blasé of journalists!

It was while he was visualising this flux of newsprint that he suddenly saw his own name. A wave of hot blood rose up in his throat and passed over his head, so that his hairs tingled. He saw himself deflated, saw his carefully built up personality blown away in idle sheets down a dusty road. This would be the end of him. This would be disaster. The beautiful romantic figure drowned in tears of pity, if not derision.

He bounded to his feet again. Something had got to be done. Yes, by God, something had got to be done and how much time had he? When had the lunatic said he was flying? How much time?

The callboy knocked at his door.

“Five minutes, Sir Geoffrey. Curtain’s up.”

There are times when the mind panics, moments when the imagination takes the bit between its teeth and carries a man headlong through vast avenues of nightmare much more vivid than actual experience can ever hope to be.

In the intervals of the worst performance of his life Tadema lived through the whole gamut of human humiliation. He heard himself pitied and derided, heard his age discussed and fixed at an erroneous sixty-five, saw his perennial youth withered and his beautiful facade torn down to reveal a travesty of himself, ten times more false than any illusion of the past.

Even in his saner moments, when he regarded the situation coldly, the prospect of being publicly jilted by Chloe for a younger, wider-known man was not inviting, to say the least of it.

To do him justice, he had very little thought of retaliation as such. His mind was completely taken up with self-protective projects.

Even so, his immediate plan of campaign was most difficult to decide, and there was the vital question of time. When had the insufferable young lout said they intended to elope? Tomorrow night? Tadema paused in the middle of the repudiation scene in the second act and stared glassily at Miss Miller, who played the girl. She gave him his cue and an apprehensive glance under her lashes. It was not like the old man to lunch unwisely. She hoped devoutly that he was not going to have a stroke.

By the middle of the third act Tadema had it all worked out. If Chloe was going to elope the following day she would be discovered in Athens the next morning and would make the evening papers of the same day. That gave him only until tomorrow to set up a counter-blast, only until tomorrow to get into print himself with a sensation which would make her effort an anticlimax.

His mind revolved feverishly. Today was Tuesday. Therefore it could be done. It was just possible if he acted promptly.

There was only one vital question to be settled: what on earth could he do? It is one thing to have an instinct, or even a genius, for getting oneself into the news in the right context but quite another to evolve a safe, yet sensational, stunt and carry it out in less than twelve hours. Tadema was desperate.

He dismissed his dresser and stood staring through the minute window of his dressing room at the roofs and spires of London, deep blue in the evening light.

At length he turned slowly away and switched on the light. A flood of hard white radiance disclosed a stocky, yet by no means graceless, figure. The adjective now was, perhaps, purposeful rather than romantic, but an attractive personality all the same: a gallant, middle-aged gentleman preparing to defend himself.

He had decided on the first step. Where it was going to lead him he had no idea, but, like all true artists, he trusted to his instincts and prepared for action.

The inspiration for the second move would come, he did not doubt. Necessity, the proverbial mother, should provide.

Having committed himself to the undertaking, he went about his preparations with artistry and dispatch. The nondescript grey suit taken down from the peg in the big store where no one recognised him, since no one expected him, fitted well enough to look comfortable.

The soft shirt was equally unarresting, as were the brown shoes, socks, tie and underwear—Tadema was justly famous in theatrical circles for his passion for detail—which he collected on his journey round the shop.

At a minute before the store closed he walked out with half a dozen or so packages stowed away in a new suitcase.

Fifteen minutes later the cloakroom of Tottenham Court Road tube station received the case, and Tadema taxied home to his Mayfair flat to bathe and dine before returning to the theatre for the evening performance. He was not exactly happy, but he experienced that curious sense of elation which comes to those about to take a desperate plunge.

The discovery that Sharper, his old-maidish and inappropriately named man, had let Lessington into the study to wait for him was an unexpected blow.

Lessington was a plump, bald, fortyish person whose early effeminacy had grown up into effeteness. If his plays had not been so competent Tadema could not have tolerated him. As it was, he fraternised with him but grudgingly.

Lessington was in form. Aperitif in hand, he posed before the fire, and just had to tell old Taddy the perfectly marvellous notion he had had for the new show. He launched into a tedious recital of a plot in which a middle-aged man falls in love with a young girl, undergoes the usual misgivings, and is at last convinced that his love is reciprocated and his duty is to marry.

“Of course I shall put it over,” said Lessington. He spoke with assurance, and Tadema reflected bitterly that he would. Lessington had a knack of serving up the coldest of cold mutton on a salver worthy of better things.

“It’s just a weeny bit topical,” Lessington continued archly. “You’re not very grateful, Taddy.”

“Splendid, my dear fellow, splendid!” said Tadema with great heartiness, since a warning voice in the back of his mind bade him behave normally. If anyone should guess there was anything unusual afoot the whole strength of his project would be ruined.

He got rid of Lessington only when he was departing for the theatre. Conversation had been a great strain but he had weathered it. Lessington, he knew, would now be prepared to swear that dear old Taddy had been completely himself, and to report that they had spent a very happy hour discussing a new play.

Back at the theatre Tadema put on a very careful performance. The relieved Miss Miller found the Old Man in the best of humours. He accepted a supper invitation for midnight and agreed to give a magazine correspondent an interview after the show.

As the time wore on he was conscious of a growing nervousness, but he had made up his mind, and in the interval before the third act he wandered into De Lara’s room and stood chatting for a minute or so.

Paul Ritchie, his own understudy, who shared the dressing room, was lounging disconsolately in his corner, he saw, but the young actor said afterwards that the Old Man never once looked in his direction after the first affable nod.

After leaving De Lara, Tadema, who was wearing the striking pin stripe suit in which he appeared in the third act, was seen by Lottie Queen on the staircase leading up to the roof. He smiled at her, graciously congratulated her on her performance, and passed on.

It went through that lady’s mind that it was odd that he should be wandering about the theatre when time was getting on, but it was a habit of the company to go up to the flat roof when the weather was close, and she thought no more of the incident just then.

An electrician observed him higher up on the staircase immediately below the roof, but the man said no word passed, and that was all the evidence the united company could supply when the inquiry was instituted.

At the moment when Tadema stepped out upon the dark roof, the dizzy lights of the city below him, he was trembling with excitement, but he realised that he had very little time and moved swiftly, stepping daintily across the leads to the desolate collection of builders’ debris which he had observed there earlier in the week and the recollection of which had given him his idea.

The Gresham Theatre was an old-fashioned building whose rococo parapet was barely four feet away from its nearest neighbour, the Ever Safe Insurance Company’s premises.

At one particular point a younger man might have sprung from one roof to the other, but Tadema preferred the plank. Pulling it out from beneath the folded sacks, he pushed it into position and prepared to climb across.

It was a risky proceeding for a man of his years and unathletic habits, and it is possible that had he seriously considered the physical side of the venture his nerve might have failed him. As it was, however, his thoughts were occupied only by the other aspect of the plan, the enormity of it, the courage, the complete ruthlessness.

It took his breath away. To walk out of the theatre in costume in the midst of the play! To go on to the roof and thence to—disappear!

Told of any man it would be a piquant story, like the beginning of a mystery yarn, but when the man was Tadema—oh, the headlines would be large and the wind would seep out of Chloe’s sails! Would she start, even? Sir Geoffrey doubted it.

He stepped out on to the insurance company’s leads and thrust the plank back sharply. It clattered on to the theatre roof so noisily that for a moment he was afraid. Discovery at this juncture would be disastrous. But there was no untoward sound from below and he went on.

The fire escape descended into a narrow alley behind the building. As Tadema went down the spidery stair a new cause for alarm confronted him. London is a crowded city and the ever-watchful police are suspicious of shadowy figures on the fire escapes of dark buildings. An arrest or even an inquiry would be too embarrassing even to contemplate.

Sir Geoffrey reached the pavement white with apprehension. He went unchallenged, however, and sped through the darker streets towards Tottenham Court Road.

For the next half hour his mind was taken up completely with technical details. It is a simple thing to plan to change all one’s clothes, and with them one’s personality, in the toilet room of a large and crowded station, but it is a surprisingly complicated project to carry through. Sir Geoffrey had completely overlooked the hampering qualities of a sense of guilt.

In spite of these unexpected difficulties, however, his metamorphosis was remarkably successful. One does not dress up and pretend to be somebody else practically every night of one’s professional life without becoming an adept at the art. At twenty minutes to eleven, when Paul Ritchie was ploughing through the last act at the Gresham, a mild looking provincial gentleman walked on to Liverpool Street station, a newish suitcase in his hand.

This stranger bore a superficial resemblance to the debonair Sir Geoffrey, it is true, but, since it is a curious fact that the actual face and figure of the normal man contribute but three points out of ten to his appearance, clothes, context and colouring making up the other seven, none of the weary passengers glanced at the grey-suited figure with any sort of recognition.

Tadema himself was gradually getting the feel of his part. As he became increasingly aware of his safety he experienced a new sensation. He felt free. He had ninety pounds in cash on him in an envelope, all he had dared to collect without leaving traces of flight. His watch, studs, wallet and a letter or two were still in the clothes he had worn on leaving the theatre, and which were now stowed away in the case in his hand. He felt light and irresponsible, almost as though he had really walked out of life as cleanly and as mysteriously as the world must soon believe.

He glanced at the station clock. His train, the Yarborough mail, left in thirty-five minutes. Why he had chosen Yarborough he did not know, save that it was at a fair distance from London and was on the coast.

He had no definite plan in his head as yet, but he relied upon the long, slow journey to bring counsel. The first and most important step had been taken, and Chloe had been passed at the post. That was the main thing, and the rest, he thought superbly, would come.

The suitcase, and/or its contents, must be disposed of to the best possible advantage. Obviousness dictated the coast. Hence Yarborough, since Brighton would have been ridiculous. But all that was yet to be arranged. Inspiration would arrive.

Tadema smiled and the man who had been watching him so intently for the past ten minutes from the other side of the platform moved a little nearer.

Duds Wallace walked round Tadema, eyeing him covertly. The height was okay, he decided. So were the shoulders. And there was about the same room round the waist. But, above all, the style was right and in Duds’ opinion, style was what mattered.

With a certain section of the Railway police Duds Wallace was something of a pet and a curiosity. He was unique. His long criminal record, which comprised some sixteen convictions, related an odd history of misdemeanour and proved conclusively that whatever other qualities Mr. Wallace might have possessed the gods had not made him versatile. His programme was always the same. Whenever his somewhat finicky taste dictated that he required a new outfit he stole a suitcase.

This in itself was sufficiently unenterprising but he carried his orthodoxy a step further. Invariably he stole a suitcase from a railway station and—invariably this was the hallmark of a Wallace activity—his victim was a man who closely resembled himself in build, colouring and a quiet, inexpensive taste.

The obvious disadvantages of his unoriginal methods never seemed to dawn on him, with the result that any slightly stocky complainant of medium height who reported the loss of a good-sized suitcase was instantly handed over to Sergeant Buller, who would grant his visitor one glance and reach for the telephone.

Two or three hours later Mr. Wallace, in private life a comparatively respectable bookmaker’s clerk, would be pulled in, always astonished and explanatory, but more often than not actually clad in his victim’s missing garments.

It was typical of Duds’ mentality that he complained bitterly in court that the police would pick on him.

Buller, who was a logical-minded man, had explained the whole business to Duds over and over again, but Mr. Wallace continued to be repetitive and remained astonished.

At the moment Mr. Wallace, whose sartorial ambitions alone seemed to lead him into wrong-doing, was downright ashamed of his appearance.

He was dead shabby about the elbows and his suit had that skinny appearance which comes with age. It looked as if he and the garment had been immersed in water for some time and had dried without being separated.

His shirt was not good either. There was a long thin hole where the cuffs had frayed. Duds’ sharp brown eyes rested on Tadema’s portmanteau. There was a suit in that, he would bet on it; a suit, shirts, pyjamas and with luck a pair of shoes.

He glanced at the actor manager’s feet and those decent brown shoes with the round toes swept away his last remnants of doubt.

Having made up his mind, Duds followed his routine closely. When the train came into the main platform Tadema selected an empty second class compartment, placed his bag on the corner seat to reserve it, and, as his watcher confidendy expected, stepped out on the platform again and wandered off to look for a paper.

As soon as he was lost to sight Duds entered another empty second a little lower down the train. Instead of sitting down he passed on into the corridor and wandered up to Tadema’s compartment. His casual manner was excellent. He gripped the suitcase with just the right familiarity and carried it out into the corridor.

As he passed on down the train he glanced into each carriage inquiringly as he went by. Tadema was nowhere to be seen. It was really very simple.

When Mr. Wallace reached the end of the train, which had pulled into the shadow of the passenger bridge, he walked out of the last compartment, passed through the main booking hall and, turning up the dark hill, melted quietly into the street.

Tadema discovered his loss when it was too late to do anything about it. When he returned to his compartment the train was on the point of starting and, missing his case, he came to the conclusion that he was in the wrong carriage and walked out into the corridor to locate his property.

They had passed Ilford, at the beginning of a long non-stop run, before he was convinced that his bag was not on the train. Irritated and disconsolate, he threw himself down in a corner seat and glowered.

Apart from the normal sense of insult which invariably comes to one on discovering that the misfortunes which seem so natural in others should have overtaken oneself, Tadema felt he had a special grievance. Without his clothes there was really no point in him going to the coast at all, yet here he was, entrained for Yarborough of all places. The very foundation of the plan he had intended to evolve upon this journey was removed. Moreover, he could have no redress for the loss of his property. In the circumstances he could hardly go to the police. It was all very exasperating and augured, he could not help feeling, bad luck to the venture.

He reviewed his position gloomily. If things were not going to go right they were going to go very badly indeed. However, he comforted himself with the thought of the sensation in the morrow’s papers and, after some moments of happy contemplation, some of his old confidence returned and he leant back, content to wait for inspiration to arrive. Something, no doubt, would turn up. He slept.

He woke with a start at one minute to four in the morning to find himself bundled out on to a dark and clammily cold railway station, without overcoat or luggage. His first thought was that he was by some monstrous injustice or mistake in hell, but afterwards, when the kaleidoscopic events of the previous afternoon and evening returned to him, he reconsidered his decision and concluded he was mad.

But in ten minutes or so his indomitable faith in himself had returned. He had been forced into a delicate situation, compelled to take an unconventional line. A regrettable but minor mishap had deprived him of his bag, but he was still the captain of his press, still the keeper of the personality.

He looked about him. No provincial town is at its best at four o’clock on an autumn morning. Tadema did not know the place and did not particularly want to. His best plan, he decided, was to leave Yarborough. He consulted a weary porter.

“First train, sir? Where for, sir?”

“Anywhere,” said Tadema recklessly. “The first train to leave this station.”

The man looked at him curiously and replied that there was a slow branch line train leaving in an hour.

“Take you to Ebury, Lessing and Saffronden,” he concluded.

Saffronden. The name struck a familiar note in Tadema’s memory. There was a theatre in Saffronden, or rather there had once been a theatre there; the Theatre Royal, a little dark house with a smell. Through the years that smell crept back and assailed again the nostrils of Tadema, a camphory, dampish odour with a bite in it, unique and unforgettable.

The old “Hearts Afire” company under Benny Fancy had played there for a week way back in 19… Tadema forgot the year.

Another memory returned to him. It was very vague but it conjured up a sensation of warmth and stuffiness and amusement. It was a joke, he fancied, and something to do with cocoa of all things; something excruciatingly funny. He brightened up.

“I’ll go on to Saffronden,” he said, adding abruptly as he returned to the temporarily forgotten porter, “There’s a bookstall there, isn’t there? What time do the morning papers arrive?”

Both bewildered replies having proved satisfactory, Tadema, the fugitive, entered the Saffronden train.

He was waiting on Saffronden station when the papers arrived and he pounced upon a copy of the Trumpeter and turned the pages over feverishly. At first he thought he was not mentioned at all and a feeling of bewilderment passed over him. It was not until the third time that he searched the paper that he found the small paragraph tucked away at the bottom of a page:

“Sir Geoffrey Tadema, the well-known actor manager, was forced by indisposition to retire from the cast of ‘Lovers’ Meeting”, now enjoying a successful run at the Gresham. Sir Geoffrey’s part in the third act was played by his understudy, Paul Ritchie. Sir Geoffrey is confidently expected to return to his role at this evening’s performance.”

Tadema swore softly under his breath. What an idiot Wentworth was! As a business manager he was intelligent and economical, but in an emergency he always did the wrong thing. If only the fool knew it he was wasting precious time. Oh, well, he’d have to rely on the evening papers. The lunatic would be sure to do something by that time. Doubtless he had the wind up properly. Tadema could not repress a chuckle at the spectacle. “Dashing about like a demented hen,” he said to himself as he walked down the winding hill from the station into the main road of the town, which had miraculously become much smaller and sleepier than he remembered it.

By the time he was breakfasting in the commercial room of the Red Lion his trepidation had returned. Time was so very short. By this time tomorrow Chloe would be well on her way to Athens and a short time later the wires would be buzzing.

He was beside himself with impatience and a growing sense of impotence in the matter. There was nothing he could possibly-do to speed things up. A wire to Wentworth saying “I’ve disappeared you fool” would be ludicrous and quite horribly disastrous if it fell into the wrong hands.

Moreover, this temporary setback was taking his attention from the plan he had to evolve. He had relied upon the morning newspapers to give him a lead. Whatever he did, it had got to be good. Tadema did not shut his eyes to the danger of the whole thing fizzling out into an incident that had to be explained away: “Temporary amnesia”, “actor finds strain too great”, “betrothed’s flight breaks up elderly fiance”. That was the sort of thing which had to be avoided at all costs.

By the end of breakfast he had decided to wait. Nothing could be done at the moment, so much was painfully obvious.

By paying in advance and sending out for some pyjamas Tadema dispelled any doubts which the clerk at the Red Lion might have entertained concerning him and, having bathed and shaved, he retired to bed, leaving instructions that he was to be called with a cup of tea and an evening paper as soon as that sheet should have arrived.

He lay awake for some time, fuming at Wentworth and worrying over his predicament, but his night’s journey had been long and uncomfortable and he dropped off into a fitful and uneasy sleep.

However, he was awake and pacing up and down the room in pyjamas and a bed quilt when the chambermaid arrived. The girl set down the tea, and would have spoken, but Tadema had pounced upon the folded paper and she went out again huffily.

For a moment Tadema’s eyes refused to focus, and he was conscious of a thrill of pure apprehension as he shook out the paper. The next moment, however, he was staring, his pale eyes starting out of his head.

Right across the front page and surmounting a large photograph of himself were the words:

“TRAGIC DEATH OF FAMOUS ACTOR. Dies in Stage Clothes. Early this morning a man was knocked down and terribly mutilated in the Gray’s Inn Road. From papers in his pocket the police discovered him to be the famous stage actor Sir Geoffrey Tadema. The actor manager had not been seen by any of his associates since the interval after the second act of ‘Lovers’ Meeting” at the Gresham Theatre last night.

“When Sir Geoffrey’s body was found it was clad in the clothes which he wore in the play. His friends can give no explanation for the tragedy.

“Mr. Henry Sharper, Sir Geoffrey’s valet, broke down at the mortuary when he identified the body, and has been taken home to relatives, suffering from shock.”

Tadema let the paper drop from his hand. His eyes were glazed and the expression upon his face was mainly pathetic.

“Well—I’m damned,” he said aloud, and added as a gleam ol intelligence returned to his blue eyes, “I am, too.”

“Tragic death”. Tadema sat on the edge of his bed in his new pyjamas and re-read the words until they became meaningless and afterwards horribly clear again. He was, of course, completely unaware of the existence, or rather the pre-existence, of Duds Wallace, that luckless seeker after sartorial correctness, who, clad in his new glory, had blundered blindly into a car when on his way to air his plumage.

But it was obvious that some such disaster must have occurred. Tadema read every word the paper had printed about himself and then, with disaster weighing numbingly upon him, he dressed carefully and went downstairs.

He collected the other papers and carried them off to his room. They had the same story, of course, but with a few added details.

There was only one mention of Chloe. The Trumpeter observed that Sir Geoffrey’s fiancee, Lady Chloe Staratt, was out of London.

“Thinking of some way of cashing in on the story,” thought Tadema grimly. “Or, more likely, trying to prevent the young lout from blethering his side of the affair.”

For the first time a faint smile passed over the actor’s lips. Chloe was frustrated all right: temporarily rendered speechless, it seemed. His enjoyment in this aspect of the affair was short-lived as his own position became painfully apparent. As far as publicity was concerned, he had certainly scored heavily. His name and prowess filled all three papers, but what of the future? There was an ancient jest concerning the young man who, on being promised a legacy if he got his name in the news, cut his throat to achieve it. The similarity of his own story made Tadema squirm. What could he do? What on earth could he do? How could he return without providing the greatest anticlimax of all time?

He toyed with the idea of simply walking back into his part and meeting the subsequent inquiry with a more or less plausible story. That would be a sensational course in all conscience and would serve his purpose very well unless Chloe eloped. And she would; he knew it instinctively. Chloe would elope and people would draw the inevitable and unfortunately true conclusions.

The only way to prevent her going off and marrying someone else immediately was for him to remain dead. If he remained dead, how could he ever resurrect himself? How could he ever explain why he had allowed some unknown man to be buried in his stead?

Thinking of burial, Tadema returned to the newspapers. “The funeral arrangements will be published later.” This was a dreadful side of the farce. In his mind’s eye he saw old Wentworth flying about in a panic, poor Sharper prostrate in the house of inquisitive relations, the company, the wretched author, the flowers, the solemn ceremony and the grief of the few people who were fond of him; Ma Biggs, his housekeeper and old Wally Bell, the comedian.

No, it was horrible. It was dreadful. It had got to stop. But what could he do?

He wandered out into the town. Some of the passers-by glanced at the stranger in their midst with the mild interest of country folk and Tadema might have been alarmed for the safety of his incognito had he cared about it.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, he was perfectly safe. The carefully taken studio portraits reproduced in the newspapers showed a man twenty years younger, with darker eyes and deeper and more interesting shadows than this pale, worried-looking, middle-aged man who hurried along so fast and yet, had they known it, so aimlessly. As far as the man in the street was concerned Sir Geoffrey Tadema was dead.

The queue outside the pit impeded his progress and finally pulled him up. He stood staring at the shabby old theatre for a moment with the first interest he had shown in externals since the advent of the evening papers.

The Theatre Royal was on its last legs, or at least its plaster pillars were crumbling. Tadema was shocked. A genteel shabbi-ness it had always possessed, besides its characteristic smell, but in the old days it had never looked like this. The meanest cinema in the meanest street had not this dreadful decayed poverty. To Tadema the Theatre Royal Saffronden looked like some depraved and leering old harridan clad in filthy finery, all the more depressing because he had known her in her better days.

The Chasberg Stock Company was playing there, he gathered from the bills. The piece that week was “Beggar’s Choice”. Tadema took a box.

He remembered the play as soon as the curtain rose. It was an ancient melodrama about a racehorse, an impoverished lord and the inevitable Lady Mary. He had played in it himself many times in his old rep days.

He almost enjoyed it. The contemplation of the past at least took his mind off the horror of the present. Seated well back among the crimson curtains, the pungent camphory smell tingling in his nostrils, he looked down at the old stage and remembered with a hint of sadness something he had long forgotten, the excitement of those early days.

His job had kept him busy then. Plays had followed so fast upon one another in those days that no one was ever word perfect. The underpaid stage managers were always unreliable. No one knew if the props would turn up in their right places, or even if the curtain would descend at the end of the act. It would be nerve-racking and terrible now, but in those days it had been rather fun.

Tadema, already extremely sorry for himself, nearly wept when he remembered how long ago it all was.

He had been watching the Lady Mary for some minutes before he recognised her. It was a trick of her voice which finally caught his attention, and made him lean forward in the box and peer more closely at her face. She was older, of course—far too old for the part. Tadema could not remember her name but her voice was familiar and she had a way of smiling that came back to him.

He could not see his programme and relied upon his memory. What was the woman’s name? Chrissie something, he was inclined to think, and they had travelled together. It must have been in the old rep days.

She had improved, he thought suddenly. That was it; in the old days she had been appalling. Appalling and rather sweet. His mind, anxious to escape from the world of reality outside the theatre, seized avidly on the problem within. Tadema closed his eyes and delved back into the past. The voices on the stage helped him considerably. He remembered whole sequences and there was one scene on the steps of a hotel just off the racecourse which returned so vividly to his mind that he sat up abruptly. That was it! Her name was Chrissie and they must have played this part together.

It wasn’t such a coincidence, if one thought of it. He had played in the provinces for fifteen years and there must have been a great many actresses who claimed to have played with Tadema. Some of them Sir Geoffrey could remember much more clearly.

This woman was only a vague memory. But he knew her. Her name was Chrissie something and she had been rather sweet. It had been very long ago, he decided; in his early days. He didn’t think there had been a ghost of an affair. If there had he would have remembered. He turned his attention to the stage. Whole scenes, he realised, were modern interpolations. Much of the bravura had been dropped. It was all very interesting.

When the lights of the first interval went up he looked at the programme. “Lady Mary… Miss Chrissie Dilling.” Chrissie Dilling; that was the name. How could a woman have gone through a lifetime of leading ladyship with a name like that?

He was debating whether to send his card round and had indeed half decided to when he remembered his predicament with a start and the whole dreadful business poured back into his mind. He did not go out of the theatre, however, but sat there till the curtain rose again. At least he was hidden and inspiration must surely come in time.

Fortunately for him the second act opened with a scene in an attic room which he remembered. It was a tragic parting in which the impoverished lord refused for his honour’s sake to accept the overtures of the infatuated Lady Mary. The words came back to him so clearly that he was irritated by the rather hopeless boy playing the part when his inflections and interpretations were unfamiliar.

Chrissie had improved. She was almost good in an old-fashioned way. Not West End standard, of course, but first class for the provinces. She held the audience, too. They loved her.

Something else returned to Tadema’s memory. He seemed to hear Chrissie complaining that someone always struck a match in her big scenes and it put her off. Always at the most dramatic part that little pin point of light out in the dark audience would catch her eye, telling her that there was someone whose attention she was not holding.

Softly and feeling indescribably guilty, Tadema drew a box from his pocket. He waited for the right moment and struck the match. He was leaning forward and the flickering light caught his face, accentuating the hollows and darkening eyes.

Miss Dilling wavered, her glance rested on the box, and then, with a little shrill cry, she clasped her hand over her heart.

Tadema started back in his box. He did not see her gallant recovery, did not see her struggling on with the scene. The only thought in his mind was one of intense excitement, and, curiously enough, of relief. He was alive. The secret was out; whatever disaster might accompany the revelation he was alive again. Somebody knew it. He slipped out of the box and hurried round to the stage door.

He was sitting in the dressing room when she came in from the stage, still a little pale under her make-up. Tadema rose and gallantly held out his hands.

“Why, Chrissie!” he said.

The woman stared at him and for an uncomfortable moment he thought that she was going to faint. Stock company actresses are more or less inured to shock, however, and Miss Dilling revived. She came into the room, shutting the door carefully behind her.

“Well, Geoff,” she said, and added awkwardly after a pause, “I was only thinking of you this evening.”

As soon as the words left her mouth she bit her lower lip sharply and regarded him apologetically with round eyes. Tadema remembered the trick. He remembered the eyes, too, and it must have been some sort of little romance here; nothing serious; just a boy and girl flirtation perhaps. She was several years younger than himself; ten, perhaps; he was not sure.

Miss Dilling continued to stare.

“Well, I don’t know what to say, I’m sure,” she said at last. “The papers are wrong, of course.”

The morning papers published a fresh Tadema sensation. Lady Chloe Staratt had been led by an apparently friendly Trumpeter reporter into an admission that her engagement to Sir Geoffrey had been broken off on the morning of his disappearance. Whereas the weeping, broken-hearted Chloe might have made a pretty enough picture to grace any suburban breakfast table, it was considerably marred by an independent statement by Mr. Gyp Rains in the same paper to the effect that his own marriage to Lady Chloe had been fixed for the morrow, this announcement being backed up by the evidence of a special licence.

The Trumpeter, never famed for its delicacy, published the two stories one after the other and the report of the inquest in the next column. Since the coroner’s jury brought in a verdict of “death by misadventure” and vetoed absolutely any question of deliberation, the combined effect of the three stories was unfortunate as far as Chloe was concerned. Tadema, reading the paper over his breakfast in the hotel lounge, was almost sorry for her.

Most of his sympathy, however, he reserved for himself. The morning’s news had brought him no respite. He was still a dead man and to revive with honour looked like proving an impossibility.

He was still faced with the problem of finding the means of returning to life without appearing either a petulant and jilted lover or the victim of a sudden fit of mental aberration, or, of course, both. For a time he let his mind dwell sadly on what might have been, but sighed and put the vain imaginings from him. It had happened. He was in the devil of a mess.

He had just decided to lie low for another forty-eight hours at least until opportunity, if not sheer necessity, drove him to action, when Miss Dilling arrived. Tadema was pleased to see her, but only mildly so. By morning light she looked most of her age and her clothes were painfully provincial. However, her smile was friendly and admiring.

She came out with her request immediately, her eyes meeting his anxiously. She hardly dared to suggest it, but Derek Fayre, her leading man, was really too ill to play and Mr. Lewis was so worried. The incognito would be preserved, of course. No one knew. She had simply spoken of him as an actor friend and that had given Mr. Lewis the idea. After all, they had done the show so many times in the past. It would be like old times. Would he? Would he? Dare she ask?

The idea appealed to Tadema from the moment it was presented to him. It is possible, of course, that he might have smelt a rat if anyone but Chrissie Dilling had put the thing up to him. But she was so patently without second motive, so obviously anxious only to play at old times again. All women were sentimental, Tadema thought privately; all except that hussy Chloe.

Over supper the previous evening he had asked Chrissie why she had never married. Her reply had been heart-breaking.

“Oh, you know how it is,” she had said, wrinkling her nose at him. “First it’s a career. Afterwards there’s no one around the theatre quite good enough. And then—you just don’t.”

Poor old Chrissie, her old-fashioned sophistication that was sophistication no more. She just hadn’t.

Tadema smiled at her. She had a gift for making people feel pleasantly condescending.

“My dear girl, I’m too old,” he said.

“Geoff, don’t be ridiculous.” Her sincerity did him good.

He went to rehearsal with her like a lamb. He had a glorious time. Every nervous criticism put in by the breathless Mr. Katz for verisimilitude’s sweet sake amused and delighted him. Things which would have rendered him speechless in his own theatre here struck him as being funny, and the old play came back easily. Right words, wrong words, delicious gags, they slipped to his tongue and he let himself go.

The irony of the situation as he knew it he found exquisite and all the more so since he had an appreciative audience in Miss Dilling. He made covert references to the truth, fooled about and behaved generally like an irresponsible child, while Chrissie Dilling played up to him, and the sparkle returned to her eyes.

Neither of them so much as thought of Mr. Lewis, which was perhaps fortunate. Breathless, laughing, and twenty years younger, Sir Geoffrey knocked off for lunch. He and Miss Dilling ate sausages and drank beer at the Red Lion and reminisced. Tadema put the world of reality into the back of his mind. He felt reckless and somehow slightly truculent. If the world combined to mock and frustrate him, at least he was a fine old trouper still. Yes, by God he was! And secretly he longed for the show.

There was an electric atmosphere in the Theatre Royal that night. The whole company was in a state of whispering hysteria. The only two innocent participants in the comedy were frankly and engagingly happy. The first act went with a bang. Tadema was aware of a large and appreciative audience and gave his best. The personality revived in all its early splendour. Miss Dilling was carried away.

No curtain calls till the end of the show; that was the rule of the house and it was observed.

Tadema climbed happily out of mess jacket into hunting pink and from hunting pink to naval uniform without a dresser or a qualm. He romped and gagged and threw his weight about atrociously, while the provincial audience rejoiced with him. It was a glorious night.

When the final moment came on the steps of the castle and the lovers were reunited with the immortal line, “Marry me, Mary. I’m a man again”, Sir Geoffrey swung Miss Dilling into his arms and kissed her in the style of his predecessors with a sound that was heard at the back of the gallery.

The gallery rose and the grand, glorious sound of applause poured sweetly on his head. Tadema, gallantly leading Miss Dilling, took the curtain. Not once or twice, but again and again they came forward. At last Miss Dilling fled and Tadema took the final call alone.

As he stood before the curtain the light shot up in the theatre and he looked around. The crowd was still applauding and Tadema bowed. He was superbly happy.

As he raised his head again, however, he stiffened. Directly in front of him, in the middle of the first row, was a boiled shirt, and above that shirt sat the smug face of Evans of The Trumpeter.

Tadema, grown old again, glanced sharply down the line, his blood chilled. There they were, all of them: Richardson, Playfair, Jones—the whole gang.

He walked back through the curtains, his head held stiffly but his eyes unfocused, strode through the sniggering throng behind the scenes and entered the dressing room at the end of the corridor.

Miss Dilling paled before his expression. He told her what he thought coldly and all the more bitterly because of his great humiliation. Miss Dilling wept.

“I didn’t—oh, Geoff, I didn’t.”

“Nobody else knew,” said Tadema. “Do you realise,” he went on with sudden heat, “that to get a little publicity for your paltry little company you’ve sacrificed and made a fool of me? Publicity!”

He laughed rather theatrically and would have made his exit on that word but they were upon him like a pack of dogs. They all swarmed in through the door, jostling, laughing, eager and content that the chase was yielding a kill.

They were all there, the half-dozen that he had seen in the stalls and more that he had missed. Even Evans in his affected boiled shirt was condescending to hurry like a mere reporter, since duty and the story demanded it.

Tadema, obscuring the tragic Miss Dilling, faced them.

“Let’s have the story, Sir Geoffrey—the whole story. It’ll take a bit of explaining, you know.”

That was Richardson, grinning away like a Barbary ape.

“A remarkable performance, Tadema. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

Sir Geoffrey had often wanted to kick Evans but never more than now.

“Come, Tadema, was it because of Lady Chloe? You’ve seen the papers, of course. What poor devil did you lend your clothes to?”

They were jostling him; hectoring him. His mind shuttered.

“We’ll let you down lightly. It was the engagement, of course?”

“Gentlemen?” Tadema raised a protesting hand, “—just a moment. Just a moment, please.”

The sound of his own voice gave him confidence. It always did; it was so absolutely right.

“Since you’ve hunted me out—I almost said hounded me down—” the easy, rounded phrases slipped out softly, “—I suppose I must tell you the truth.”

“I should say so. I’m holding a line,” muttered someone and was instantly suppressed.

Tadema went smoothly on.

“Lady Chloe Staratt has said that our engagement was broken off the day before yesterday. Lady Chloe is a very sweet and charming girl but she is not quite accurate. Our engagement was broken off last Sunday—”

“Why? The whole story. We must have the whole story.”

Tadema shrugged his shoulders and threw out his hands. A faint smile which was not wholly assumed played round his lips.

“Even an actor has private affairs, gentlemen,” he murmured. “And yet—well—since you’ve come for the truth—”

Turning swiftly like a conjurer he took Miss Dilling’s quivering hand.

“This is Miss Chrissie Dilling,” he said simply. “My first love and my last. This evening she has honoured me by accepting the proposal I made her when I first arrived in this town yesterday morning.”

He paused for the announcement to sink in and then, when he was sure he had all their attention, added superbly and with great dignity: “Even at my age, gentlemen, romance is not wholly dead. There is always one woman—somewhere.”

He watched them scribbling and his smile widened. Inspiration had arrived.

Chrissie Dilling, that rare woman, did not speak.

Some days later Sir Geoffrey Tadema turned away from the contemplation of his wedding presents to glance at the proofs of an interview which his fiancée had granted to a woman’s magazine. Chrissie had brought it to him and now stood at his side while he ran a pencil along the lines.

“Christiana Dilling glanced at me and I thought I saw something very charming in her wistful blue eyes. ‘Of course, I always hoped he’d come back,” she confessed.” Tadema lifted the pencil.

“We’ll take out that ‘hoped”, my dear,” he said, “and put ‘knew”. It’s better publicity.”