The Trufflers: A Story

by Samuel Merwin

Outside there, the traffic was heavy. Street-cars and motors filled the street from curb to curb. Women and their escorts were passing out of and into the famous restaurant that is next door but one to the Astoria. The sidewalk was crowded as always in the theater district on a fine September evening.

MacMerry, dramatic critic of The Standard, was the one closest to it. He had stepped outside to smoke his cigarette, found himself at the playwright's elbow, and spoke pleasantly to him of the play. He noted at the time, as he explained later at his club, that Mann was oblivious. He was very pale, stared straight ahead, and appeared to be drifting with the crowd.

The stage entrance to the Astoria is not around the corner, but is a narrow passage leading back from the street on the farther side of the restaurant. It was at this point, said MacMerry, that Mann came to a stop. He seemed dazed. Which was not unnatural, considering the occasion.

As he stood there, a young woman rushed forward. She was of an Italian cast of countenance, not bad-looking, but evidently in a state of extreme excitement. Apparently she had been standing close to the building, watching the crowd. She had a knife in her hand.

This knife she wielded on the playwright. Three or four separate times she stabbed at his chest, evidently striking for the heart. Trying to seize her hand, Mann received a slight cut on the fingers. MacMerry himself finally caught her forearm, threw her back against the building, and took the knife away from her. By this time, of course, a dense crowd had pressed about them. And Mann, without a word, had slipped into the passage leading to the stage. Certainly, when the policeman got through to the critic's side, Mann was not there.

They talked it over in the lobby. There the Worm, catching an inkling of the catastrophe, took a hand. Learning from MacMerry that the girl was evidently an Italian, he put forth the theory that she had probably mistaken Pete for a man of her own blood. Peter was dark of hair and skin. Considering this, MacMerry recalled that Peter had given no sign of knowing the woman. And he could not recall that she had spoken his name. He and the Worm then talked this over with the newspaper men that came rushing to the scene. The theory-found its acceptors. The Worm pointed out that Peter was a man of quiet manners and of considerable dignity. He was never a roysterer. His ideas were serious. It was not likely that the woman had any claim upon him.

Perhaps the strongest influence working in Peter's interest was the fact that he was actually, at the moment, bursting into a big success. Every one, newspaper workers among the others, was glad to help him along. It was the thing to do. So by midnight all had agreed that it was a case of mistaken identity. Peter's luck held.

Meantime a little drama more real than any Peter had yet been credited with writing was taking place behind the scenes.

Act four was short; and from curtain to curtain Miss Derring held the stage. Therefore she had no knowledge of what was taking place in her dressing-room. Whether Peter came back with any coherent intention of finding Grace. I can not say. It is not likely. The most intensely exciting evening of his life had reached its climax in a short scene in which a young woman had stabbed him. Immediately preceding this event, he had encountered the astounding fact that the girl it seemed to him he had always loved more than any one else in the world was married—married to his old chum.

As he ran through the dark passage from the street to the stage door, his hand still clutched the paper on which he had written the sonnet that was to touch her heart. You are to remember that this bit of verse had considerable emotional quality and more than a touch of grace. He had written it on an old envelope, seated in a crowded theater; but then, Schubert wrote wonderful songs on restaurant menus. It is so that things are done in the world of temperament.... I don't believe he knew what he was doing, then or later; perhaps, until the next morning. If Peter ever knew what he was doing!