An usher showed them to their seats. The hall was beginning to fill, and Larry and his companion looked around curiously, not that Larry was not used to the members of “swell” society, for his duties had often taken him among them, and he had come to have rather a common regard for that class of persons.
But to Miss Mason it was a dream of delight, as, on her slender wages, she seldom got a chance to attend expensive amusements, for she had to help support her family. The audience was a rich as well as cultivated one, as Larry soon saw.
“There, I forgot to get programs!” he exclaimed, after he and Molly were comfortably seated. “I’ll go back and get a couple. I won’t be a minute.”
She nodded brightly, and resumed her gaze about the rapidly-filling theater. From the depths back of, and under the stage, could be heard the mysterious, and always thrilling, sounds of the orchestra tuning up.
As Larry picked up two programs from the table in the lobby he saw a tall, large man, conspicuous in a dress suit, with some sort of ribbon decoration pinned to the lapel of his coat, enter the rear of the auditorium. The man stood gazing down over the heads of the audience with sharp and piercing eyes, that seemed to take in every detail. He looked to be a foreigner, an Italian, most likely.
“Some count or marquis,” thought Larry as he looked at the man’s decoration, noting that it was a foreign one. “It’s queer how they like to tog themselves out in ribbons and such things.”
The young reporter was about to return to his seat with the programs when he noticed two young Italians in one of the rear rows of the hall. They had turned, and were gazing at the large man in the dress suit. Most of the men in the audience were similarly attired, but the two Italians in the rear, though well dressed, did not have on the clothes that fashion has decreed for such affairs.
It was, therefore, somewhat to Larry’s surprise, that he saw the evidently titled and cultured foreigner make an unmistakable signal to the two men. The big man raised his right hand to his right cheek, with the fingers and thumb spread out. He held it there a moment, and, taking it away, brought it back again, as though to indicate the numeral ten.
As Larry watched, he saw the taller of the two men hold up one finger. Apparently satisfied, the big man turned aside, and approached an usher.
“At what time does Madame Androletti make her appearance to-night?” he asked, with a foreign accent.