“TO-MORROW’S CHILD”

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 112, 15 May 1939, Page 2

“TO-MORROW’S CHILD”

By Julie Anne Moore

Synopsis of Preceding Instalments: Val Clark, who soon is to marry Robert Greeley, a young New England lawyer, goes to New York from New Manchester on a shopping tour with Mrs. Warren, her Aunt MahaJa’s housekeeper. Val’s cousin, Kate Hollister, editor of a fashion magazine, asks her to a party where she meets Hugh Malcolm, successful young playwright; Bret Gallishaw, a New Manchester boy, who, while doing newspaper work in New York, writes a best seller; Leslie Crawford, Bret’s half-brother, and Winifred Sperry, who are starring in Hugh’s “End of Tears,” and Guy Williams, who inherited millions and has a small part in the play. Bret was engaged to Kate, but married wealthy Evelyn Garfield. There is hard feeling between Bret and Leslie over an inheritance, and Leslie resents Hugh’s attentions to Winifred. Guy asks Val to go to Pete’s place, which she thinks is nearby. At Pete Gaboriau’s, outside Philadelphia, Guy is greeted with kisses by Louise Cameron —“Lecze to you,” Guy says in his introduction. Leeze drags Guy off to dance, leaving Val with Crandall Scott. When they meet later Leeze strikes Val who defends herself so well Guy has to carry Leeze from the room. While waiting for Guy, Cran takes Val to Pete ’b gaming rooms. They are trapped in a raid. Val gives bail for both and Cran drives her back. To please Kate, Val goes with Guy to see Hugh’s play. In a storm scene Leslie is supposed to drop in terror to the floor of a mountain shack, but Val is certain he has in some way been killed.

The audience was startled and a little puzzled but not yet aware that what they had seen was not a part of the play. Val stared at the turned-up seats which less than five minutes ago had been occupied by Kate and Bret Gallishaw. Then she heard Guy saying, “I’m going back to see what it’s all about, Val. You’d better stick here.” Val nodded, vaguely; but no sooner had Guy left than she knew she could not sit here calmly staring at a curtain behind which a man lay dead . . . she knew that Leslie Crawford was dead—and that someone in that little group she had met a Kate’s apartment had killed him. She rose and went to the lobby. She passed through it to the street and as she gained the sidewalk she heard her named called: “Val—don’t tell me you’ve walked out on my play.” Hatless > Hugh Malcolm was approaching not from that side of the theatre by which the stage entrance was reach* ed but from the opposite direction. Even while he grinned down at her, her eyes found that dark, narrow passageway behind him—a space barely wide enough for a man to walk through but which may have provided escape from some little used backstage door bn that side. At last she met his puZzled gaze. “Hugh—where were you?” “Where? Just now you mean?” He laughed—a little uneasily, Val thought. “I went to the corner for a deck of cigarettes. See here—what’s the gag?” She studied his face. “Leslie Crawford ...” Her throat was dry. 11 The audience doesn’t know yet, but—he’s dead, Hugh . . .1 ” A shadow passed over Hugh Malcolm’s features, but his grin remained. Through a little silence he looked down at her, thoughtfully. “Leslie isn’t dead, Val. You’ve let my little stage storm get on your nerves. Leslie was merely playing the part of a timid young man frightened within an inch of his life by e severe electrical display.” Her hand tightened on his sleeve: “You were there, then? You saw what happened?” “Not at this particular performance,” he said, smiling; “but I know the play, child, and when I left ten minutes ago the storm was brewing in the script.” He took her arm. “Come along, we’ll go back and have Leslie’s own assurance that he is far from dead. ’ ’ But Val did not move. “You don’t understand, Hugh ...” Something in her voice touched him, “All right,” he said, quietly. “All right, Val. Where were you going if I hadn’t come along—back to Kate’s?” She shook her head, vaguely. “I don’t know ... I just wanted to get away . . .” She saw him lift a hand, signalling, heard the taxi pull up to the curb behind her. “Go to the apartment and take a shot of ammonia,” he said. “We’ll cut the party short and join you as soon as possible. ’ ’ Then, grinning as he closed the door: “You won't mind if I bring Leslie along to testify to his good health?” Violet, the maid, let Val in, and in* formed her that Mrs. Warron was asleep in Val’s bed. She had made Violet promise to call her tho moment they came in from the theatre. “I’ll sleep on the couch in the library,” Val said. She went directly to the library, closed the door and began to pace the floor. Then confirmation of what she had known with complete certainty from the moment of its happening came from Kate, by telephone: “Val—-it’s all too horrible to talk about. I’m glad you had sense enough to get away. They can’t keop us here much longer, I think. But don’t wait up, darling.” . She returned to the library and lay on her back on the couch with her hands locked under her head. Who killed Leslie Crawford . . .? When she opened her eyes an hour later, the library doop was ajar and she heard voices in the living room— Kate’s, Hugh’s, others. She swung her feet to the floor and sat there for a time wondering why they had come to

Instalment 7.

the apartment at this hour of the nifht. Presently Kate’s voice told her. “Thanks for coming up, everybody. Perhaps we aren’t any better off than before, but at least we’ve had our own little inquest. It wouldn’t have been necessary if they hadn’t insisted on questioning us separately and out of hearing of the others.” When Val was sure they had all gone, she went into the living room. Kate forced a smile as she said, “I’m sorry you had to be here for all this, Val. Perhaps next time you come—” “Been re-enacting the crime?” Val asked quietly. “Sort of,” Kate admitted. She dropped into a chair. “I knew we would all go around suspecting one another of having a hand in it unless we would get together and talk it out.” Her great blue eyes revealed too plainly her uneasiness. Val thought, “You’re trying to convince yourself that none of your crowd killed Leslie—but you can’t quite accept your own conclusions. You’re afraid—for someone. Who is it, Kate . . .?” She said: “Let’s not talk about it, Kate.” But this was lost on Kate who presently began to tell the whole story, talking quietly, proceeding step by step, sometimes hesitantly as if feeling her way, weighing, examining, even questioning some of the things she had witnessed with her own eyos. It was after they were seated in the theatre, Kate said, that Bret Gallishaw told her he had decided to catch the eleven o’clock train to New Manchester. “You’ll forgive me if I run out before the end of this, I hope,” he had said. “I’ve an appointment in New Manchester to-morrow morning and I’d like to get home to-night. You can join your cousin and young Williams in the box.” And Kate had said, “You say when, Bret.” The storm scene was in progress when Bret whispered to Kate and they got up and went out to the lobby where Kate told Bret she was going backstage. “Leslie’s under a strain for some reason, Bret. I think I’ll go back and give him a fight-talk before the third act. She had told him good-bye on the sidewalk and immediately turned into the alley leading to the stage door. Bret, she said, was signalling a taxi when she left him.

Backstage Kate was talking in whispers to the assistant director when the stage storm reached its climax. They were standing at a point that gave them an excellent view of the back window of the cardboard cabin before which Leslie was standing, face to the window, and though she knew what the scene required of him, Leslie’s distorted features sent a chill down her spine . . . “It wasn’t acting, Val. Leslie knew he was about to die. Horror was written in every line of his face ...” Leslie himself gave the signal for the climactic electrical display by putting his spread fingers on the window ledge. It was, as always, perfectly timed. The assistant-director standing beside Kate lifted his arm—when Leslie’s fingers touched the ledge, his arm cut down and the deafening crash followed. Everyone in the cast knew the signal, knew it was timed to the fraction of a second.

“For a moment I was too startled to think,” Kate said, her fingers working nervously. Then the assistant-director put a hand on her arm and she looked up and saw him grinning. When she turned to the window again, tho stage was dark, as it was supposed to be. Then the lights came on and a moment later there was a cry of, 11 Curtain . . .I ” Ad the curtain fell, Kate and the assistant-director moved up to the window and saw Leslie lying in the middle of the stage. “No one seems to know where Winifred came from. She says she had just come from her dressingroom and had seen Leslie through the sied window of the cabin. There were only two windows. The first we knew she was on the stage screaming ...” It had fallen to Hugh to announce to the audience that “an unforeseen circumstance has made it impossible to continue the play. ’ ’ A doctor was called, but Leslie was dead when he arrived. “Death,” the doctor had told them gravely, “Was instantaneous —he was shot through the heart. ’ ’

The preliminary police investigation had been a systematic and tedious affair. They had questioned everyone, individually and out of hearing of the others and had learned exactly nothing ■ —for the reasons, Kate said, that no one was telling the tffith. “Theatre people are clannish, Val, and they’ll protect one another at any cost. That’s why I asked those of our own group to come here. The police took all our names and our addresses and warned us not to leave the city. If we had gone away then—well, I wanted us to get together and have it out. ’ ’ Val said, “And you satisfied yourselves that none of you could have fired the shot?”

Kate nodded. “Winiffed says she was in her dressing-room until a moment before, and that she had come out and stood by the side window to ■wait for her cue when the lights came on and she saw Leslie sprawled on the stage. Hugh had gone for cigarettes and was not even in the theatre, but unfortunately he used his pass-key and went out and returned by a back door without any one’s seeing him.” “I saw him,” Val said evenly.

“Yea, he said you did; but that was after the shooting and the police might say ho had just come around tho building • . . You and Guy and Bret are out of it, of course. Bret was on his way to the Grand Central and you and Guy were in the box.” She looked up quickly. “At least Guy says he was with you until after the curtain fell ...”

Val nodded agreement. She thought, “Guy and I have perfect alibis, certainly, but I’m not so sure about Bret. After all, he may not have gone directly to the Grand Central.” But she didn’t

say anything. “And so,” said Kate, looking down at her open palms, “Leslie is dead—and we don’t know who killed him.” Val rose and stood with her back to the fire. “And to-morrow,” she said, “I do two days’ shopping in one and go back to New Manchester to ponder over the curious ways of life in the big city.” The bitterness in her voice brought Kate around, sharply. “I’m sorry, Val. If I’d known—” But Val asked abruptly: “Had Leslie ever married, Kate?”

“No.” “Did he have any sisters or brothers with children?”

Kate searched her face. “Why, no. Bret was his only close relative and Bret has no children, of course ... Why did you ask that, Val?” Val shrugged. “1 was just interested in his family,” she said. But she was thinking of Leslie Crawford as she had seen him in the mirror in his dressingroom, gazing tenderly on the portrait of a little curly-headed boy. (To be Continued.)