“Well, I may not know much——” began Parthy.
Down the aisle skimmed Magnolia, shouting as she came, her child’s voice high and sharp with excitement. “Mom! Mom! Look. What do you think! Julie’s picture’s been stolen again right out of the front of the lobby. Julie, they’ve taken your picture again. Somebody took one and Schultzy put another in and now it’s been stolen too.”
She was delighted with her news; radiant with it. Her face fell a little at the sight of the figure on the bed, the serious group about the doorway that received her news with much gravity. She flew to the bed then, all contrition. “Oh, Julie darling, I’m so sorry you’re sick.” Julie turned her face away from the child, toward the wall.
Captain Andy, simulating fury, capered a threatening step toward the doorway crowd now increased by the deprecating figure of Mr. Means and Ralph’s tall shambling bulk. “Will you folks clear out of here or will I have to use force! A body’d think a girl didn’t have the right to feel sick. Doc, you get down and ’tend to that ticket window, or Parthy. If we can’t show to-night we got to leave ’em know. Ralph, you write out a sign and get it pasted up at the post office. . . . Sure you won’t be feeling better by night time, are you, Julie?” He looked doubtfully down at the girl on the bed.
With a sudden lithe movement Julie flung herself into Steve’s arms, clung to him, weeping. “No!” she cried, her voice high, hysterical. “No! No! No! Leave me alone, can’t you! Leave me alone!”
“Sure,” Andy motioned, then, fiercely to the company. “Sure we’ll leave you alone, Julie.”
But Tragedy, having stalked her victim surely, relentlessly, all the morning, now was about to close in upon her. She had sent emissary after emissary down the show-boat aisle, and each had helped to deepen the look of terror in Julie’s eyes. Now sounded the slow shambling heavy tread of Windy the pilot, bearded, sombre, ominous as the figure of fate itself. The little group turned toward him automatically, almost absurdly, like a badly directed mob scene in one of their own improbable plays.
He clumped up the little flight of steps that led from the lower left-hand box to the stage. Clump, clump, clump. Irresistibly Parthy’s eyes peered sharply in pursuit of the muddy tracks that followed each step. She snorted indignantly. Across the stage, his beard waggling up and down as his jaws worked slowly, rhythmically on a wedge of Honest Scrap. As he approached Julie’s doorway he took off his cap and rubbed his pate with his palm, sure sign of great mental perturbation in this monumental old leviathan. The yellow skin of his knobby bald dome-like head shone gold in the rays of the late morning sun that came in through the high windows at the side of the stage.
He stood a moment, chewing, and peering mildly into the dimness of the bedroom, Sphinx-like, it seemed that he never would speak. He stood, champing. The Cotton Blossom troupe waited. They had not played melodrama for years without being able to sense it when they saw it. He spoke. “Seems that skunk Pete’s up to something.” They waited. The long tobacco-stained beard moved up and down, up and down. “Skinned out half an hour back streaking toward town like possessed. He yanked that picture of Julie out of the hall there. Seen him. I see good deal goes on around here.”
Steve sprang to his feet with a great ripping river oath. “I’ll kill him this time, the ——”