In a few moments Thea came out enveloped in her long fur coat with a scarf over her head and knitted woolen gloves on her hands. Her glassy eye took in the fact that Fred was playing from memory, and even in her distracted state, a faint smile flickered over her colorless lips. She stretched out a woolly hand, “The score, please. Behind you, there.”
Dr. Archie followed with a canvas box and a satchel. As they went through the hall, the men caught up their hats and coats. They left the music-room, Fred noticed, just seven minutes after he got the telephone message. In the elevator Thea said in that husky whisper which had so perplexed Dr. Archie when he first heard it, “Tell the driver he must do it in twenty minutes, less if he can. He must leave the light on in the cab. I can do a good deal in twenty minutes. If only you hadn’t made me eat—Damn that duck!” she broke out bitterly; “why did you?”
“Wish I had it back! But it won’t bother you, to-night. You need strength,” he pleaded consolingly.
But she only muttered angrily under her breath, “Idiot, idiot!”
Ottenburg shot ahead and instructed the driver, while the doctor put Thea into the cab and shut the door. She did not speak to either of them again. As the driver scrambled into his seat she opened the score and fixed her eyes upon it. Her face, in the white light, looked as bleak as a stone quarry.
As her cab slid away, Ottenburg shoved Archie into a second taxi that waited by the curb. “We’d better trail her,” he explained. “There might be a hold-up of some kind.” As the cab whizzed off he broke into an eruption of profanity.
“What’s the matter, Fred?” the doctor asked. He was a good deal dazed by the rapid evolutions of the last ten minutes.
“Matter enough!” Fred growled, buttoning his overcoat with a shiver. “What a way to sing a part for the first time! That duck really is on my conscience. It will be a wonder if she can do anything but quack! Scrambling on in the middle of a performance like this, with no rehearsal! The stuff she has to sing in there is a fright—rhythm, pitch,—and terribly difficult intervals.”
“She looked frightened,” Dr. Archie said thoughtfully, “but I thought she looked—determined.”
Fred sniffed. “Oh, determined! That’s the kind of rough deal that makes savages of singers. Here’s a part she’s worked on and got ready for for years, and now they give her a chance to go on and butcher it. Goodness knows when she’s looked at the score last, or whether she can use the business she’s studied with this cast. Necker’s singing Brünnhilde; she may help her, if it’s not one of her sore nights.”