The policeman seemed relieved. “Then you know Mr. Armour?”
“Oh, yes—” Katherine Nelson paused, and then said, in a voice that was barely audible to Peggy, “You see, Mr.—Armour is—is my husband.”
XV
“Curtain Going Up!”
“... It isn’t a very pretty story,” Katherine Nelson was saying. It was a little after ten the following morning. Members of the cast, Oscar Stalkey, Craig Claiborne, Peter Grey, and Pam Mundy were all sitting on stage. They had reported, expecting a rehearsal, but had been met instead by the producer who told them that Katherine Nelson had an announcement to make. Peggy, who had slipped out of the theater the night before without being seen, was curled up in a chair on the side of the stage, waiting breathlessly for what she knew was coming.
“You see,” Katherine Nelson went on with a curious half-smile, “Tom Agate and I were married.” She waited patiently for the buzz of excitement to die down. “As a matter of fact,” she added, “we still are. But we’ve been separated for many years now. And I’m afraid it’s been my fault.”
“Now wait a minute,” Tom interrupted, reaching out for her hand. He was sitting beside her, looking younger and fresher than Peggy had ever seen him. “It’s no good your taking all the blame.” He turned to his fellow cast members and began speaking in a low tone.
“When Katherine and I were married,” he said, “we were very young—Katherine was only sixteen—very much in love and very happy. The whole world seemed to be made especially for us. I was doing well as a star in vaudeville and the future looked good.
“Eventually,” he went on, “we had a little girl. She went wherever we did. You’ve all read stories about how, in the days of vaudeville, people used to play one-night stands across the country. Well, it’s perfectly true. That’s exactly what we did. And we took our little girl—Kathy, we called her—everywhere we went.”
He paused, cleared his throat and went on:
“I guess Kathy wasn’t too strong, and that kind of life was bad for her. In any event, she died when she was two years old.” He said this last quickly, as if he didn’t want to dwell on it. “We were both pretty upset,” he said, staring fixedly at the row of darkened footlights in front of him, “and I suppose we both lost our heads.”