“If that’s the case,” Amy said reasonably, “why did the janitor act so suspiciously? If he had just said that the theater’s been converted to some other use and isn’t for rent, we would have gone away and not thought a thing about it.”
“That’s true,” Peggy agreed, “but I think we caught him off guard. After all, it’s undoubtedly the first time anyone’s come around to ask him about the theater, and he just didn’t know what to say. Besides, I don’t think he’s very smart. He’s certainly not the man in charge of whatever crooked business is going on in there.”
“If you’re sure it’s something crooked, why don’t we just report it to the police?” Amy asked.
“We can’t go to the police with just our suspicions,” Peggy replied. “They want some kind of indication that there’s something illegal before they can investigate. In fact, I know they can’t even get a search warrant without evidence. No, I’m afraid we’ll have to look into this on our own.”
“But, Peggy,” Amy protested, “we’re supposed to be looking for a theater, not playing cops and robbers!”
“This is looking for a theater,” Peggy said intently. “If we uncover something crooked going on in there, and if we can convince the police of it, that building’s going to be vacant pretty soon. Come on! Let’s dig up the plans for this place before the Bureau closes for the night! I want to see what kind of stage the group is going to have to play on!”
XV
The Stage Door
This time, knowing the name and address of the theater, and knowing exactly what they were looking for, the girls had little trouble finding the file set of plans for the theater, kept with the Fire Department as a record of the seating plan, capacity, and exits.
Mason’s Starlight Theater, as the place had originally been called, had a good working stage plan, not too wide, but with extraordinarily good depth. It accommodated four hundred seats, which was a small auditorium by Broadway standards, but larger than most of the off-Broadway houses. Wing and fly space was generous, to allow for easy movement of scenery off to the sides (or wings) or up on ropes and pulleys to the flies. The dressing rooms were small, but they were well located. It seemed to Amy and Peggy like the perfect jewelbox of a theater that they had dreamed of since they had started their search.
The entrance to the theater, they found, was not through the street door of the loft building, but down an L-shaped alley that ran alongside the building and, when it turned, opened into a sort of courtyard. Playgoers had been taken up to the top floor on an oversized freight elevator which also had served for bringing in scenery and props, and which was rated to carry fifty passengers at once. Two additional exits were provided by fire-escapes outside the building. There was no way to enter or leave the theater from the rest of the building, and the elevator stopped only at the theater level. The loft floors were served by a regular-sized passenger elevator reached through the front hall.