“I’m afraid I don’t either,” Irene confessed. “She wore a black wig in the Mikado and looked quite like a Japanese schoolgirl. She is late, but I’m sure she’ll be here in time to play the part of the Sleeping Beauty. She doesn’t appear until the show is half over. Maybe she planned to be late so she would have the dressing room to herself. We had to rehearse without her this afternoon,” Irene continued, a worried note creeping into her voice, “but she assured me, over the telephone, that she knows the part.”
“The play would be ruined without Sleeping Beauty, wouldn’t it?” Clarissa asked. “I hope I haven’t brought bad luck.”
“Of course you haven’t. That’s just a silly superstition,” Irene declared. “Actually, it makes an actress nervous to have anyone look over her shoulder when she’s applying make-up, so she’s apt to tell you it brings bad luck.”
“I see.”
Judy wondered if she did. “You say this isn’t a dressing room? What is behind this other door?” she asked curiously.
She could hear voices that made her even more curious. “It’s forbidden!” someone was almost shouting. “This thing is still in the experimental stage. It may be as dangerous as an atom bomb!”
“I don’t know what all the excitement is about. This is our film storage room,” Irene explained, tapping on the door before she opened it. “Most of our programs are on film or on kinescope, and they’re kept here. Mine is one of the few live shows that originate in this studio.”
She was calm as she entered the small room that was still charged with emotion. Rows of shelves and pigeonholes lined the walls. Two men were glaring at each other across a high desk.
“You look like a couple of roosters ready for a fight,” Irene told them amiably. “Can you forget your differences long enough to meet some friends of mine? This is Mr. Lenz, our projectionist.”
“How do you do,” the older man said in an agitated voice as he was introduced to the four girls.