AT THE PLAY.

"The Mystery of the Yellow Room."

Gentlemen of the Press having been tactfully requested not to give away this awesome mystery, I am barred by the fastidious sense of honour which distinguishes our profession from spoiling your pleasure in this matter—a course which otherwise I should naturally have preferred.

Not that I have any too clear idea of what it was all about or why an innocent gentleman should be apparently going to be guillotined for it. For there was no question of anyone having been murdered, the only tangible crime before the Court that I could see being the abstraction of some scientific papers. However don't imagine that this vagueness will deprive you of the pleasures of shock. Only don't go thinking about it. Remember Rosamund and her Purple Jar.

I think I am free to tell you that a young journalist possessing (characteristically) "fantastic humour and exuberant gaiety," a famous amateur detective to boot, outwits all the official police, robs the law of its prey and finds a long-lost mother for himself.

If this doesn't excite you sufficiently you can extract fun from subsidiary details. It is always diverting to the unspoilt soul when the principal lady goes to turn up one lamp and the other promptly glows instead; or when, a particularly obvious and commonplace knock assaulting the ear, she exclaims in tragic accents, "There's someone at the door;" or when the detective drags from the bottom of the lake a pair of the driest of dry old boots.

Joseph Rouletabille (Mr. Arthur Pusey) to Frederic Larsan (Mr. Franklin Dyall). "Father, I am a journalist; I cannot tell a lie. You did it!"

Or, if you are superior to this kind of thing, you can amuse yourself by deducing from the practice before you the famous Rules for Revolvers, which, mutatis mutandis, are as old as the Aristotelian unities and, for all I (or, probably, you) know to the contrary, were laid down at the same time by the same hand.

Rule 1. "All Innocent Characters expecting murderous assault from Particularly Desperate Villains will provide themselves with revolvers. Before retiring for the tragic night they will, grasping the revolver firmly in the right hand, place it carefully (as Professor Leacock would direct) on the revolver-stand. The P.D.V. will then know what to do about it. (Note: P.D.V.'s do not carry revolvers. They don't need to.)

Rule 2. "I.C.'s actually attacking P.D.V.'s will on no account fire, but, advancing stealthily, will offer their pistol-wrist to the enemy, who will at once lock it in a deathly grip. After a brief struggle, swaying this way and that, the P.D.V. will, on the word 'Four,' put on another beard and have the I.C. thrown into prison." And so forth.

I have no serious fault to find with these tactics. On the contrary. But I rather think that in the first Act an incident was introduced (no doubt in the spirit of the little girl's explanation à propos of her riddle, "That was just put in to make it more difficult"), which was not quite cricket as it is played by the best people in these stage shockers.

But I am on dangerous grounds. Let me say that Mr. Hannaford Bennett has been distinctly ingenious in his adaptation from M. Gaston Leroux's hectic feuilleton; that Miss Sybil Thorndike put in a much finer quality of work than is usually supplied with this kind of heroine; that Miss Daisy Markham as her friend played very gaily and prettily as long as the situation allowed it, and that Messrs. Franklin Dyall, Lewis Casson, Nicholas Hannen, Arthur Pusey, Major Jones, Colston Mansell and the Prompter all did notable work.