Lennox sprinted up the center aisle, knocking aside the vague figures that blundered into his path. He cut around the glass corner of the control booth and headed for the bronze doors that led out to the theater lobby. At that moment, the doors opened and the studio audience poured into the theater in a solid mass, fighting and elbowing for the best seats.
Lennox was slammed back against the control booth. He lowered his head and tried to charge through that unyielding wave. He could hear Fink and Salerno struggling near him and shouting orders to the network pages, the house manager, the theater fireman. Lennox was carried back again and shunted to the right where the broad stairs led up to the balcony. He started up the stairs. The fireman appeared above him and came down after him. Lennox turned and ran around the foot of the stairs to the right aisle, searching for fire exits.
He went down the steep slope of the aisle toward the stage. There were no exits he could reach through the crowd. Fink and Salerno were calling to each other. The studio audience was in an uproar. Lennox leaped up on the orchestra platform at the foot of the aisle, battered his way through musicians, stands and chairs, and vaulted onto the stage. Gabby began screaming.
Lennox started across the stage to the right wings. He tripped on the No. 3 Camera cables, fell, rolled over and was on his feet again. Salerno appeared in the right wings. Lennox stopped short and turned downstage. Fink was coming at him up the No. 2 Camera dolly-track. Lennox turned to the left wings. The fireman was advancing on him from that side. He backed up, panting, trapped. As Fink came onto the stage, the curtains swept in from either side, narrowly missing him.
Lennox looked around wildly, searching the stage for a loop-hole ... left, right, back, up. Suddenly he was transfixed. Still staring up into the flies, he screamed: "Sam! Sam!"
Every eye on the stage looked up. Fifty feet overhead, a figure in a red and white blazer balanced precariously on the criss-cross bars of the iron grid. Cooper teetered and sat down on a bar, his feet dangling through the opening of the three foot square. Then he thrust himself off and came plummeting down, feet first, arms outstretched. There was a sharp crack and his body was jerked up in mid-flight. His shoes flew off and clattered down. The arms flailed, the body shuddered once as though the bones were trying to burst out of the skin; and then it was still, swinging gently, the feet just a yard above the edge of the teaser that masked the top of the stage from the audience.
Lennox sank to his knees and began to sob. The appalled silence was jarred by a fanfare from the orchestra on the other side of the curtain. Oliver Stacy, in dinner jacket, paused long enough to vomit in the wings, then slipped through the curtain, white-faced and smiling. There was a burst of applause. His voice rang out in cheerful greeting, and the warm-up for the New Year's Day "Who He?" show began.
CHAPTER XV
THE BODY CAME DOWN AND JERKED THE BODY CAME DOWN AND JERKED THE BODY CAME down and jerked the body came down and jerked thebodycamedownandjerkedthebodycamedown andjerked THE. BODY. CAME. DOWN. AND. JERKED.
Lennox rolled out of the bed and knelt on the floor. He leaned his elbows against the iron bedstead, pressed his palms together and pressed his lips against his hands.