THE DARK-STREET MYSTERY.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 5022, 1 June 1889, Page 4

THE DARK-STREET MYSTERY.

LITERATURE

A DOCTOR’S STORY. CHAPTER 111. The entertainment had commenced—the preliminary stage-worn, ghastly farce of “ The Spectre Bridegroom ” was being performed as I, startled by my sudden advent into the theatre, subsided into one of the empty seats which constituted the back row, and which, I ascertained later on, formed the ‘ upper boxes,’ the dress-circle being the row immediately in front of ' them. As there were only four persons in both these aristocratic portions of the house —and they all turned round to inspect me as I entered —I felt that I was taking a prominent part in the evening’s proceedings; and I am much mistaken if the actors on the stage did not glance towards me grate fully and curiously before I had sat down. It was a shabby theatre in real earnest; it was a playhouse that long ago had seen its best days. Why Mr Kench, sole lessee and manager, had taken the trouble to raise funds to pay his gas bill, have the gas relaid, and start afresh already, puzzled me exceedingly. I knew afterwards that he was, at anv pecuniary sacrifice, hanging on till Eaa’ter. The dramatic mind is preternaturally sanguine, and Mr .Kench had great hopes in Bank Holiday week and in the festive proclivities of Breymouth, when shops were shut and work was nowhere. He was making enormous preparations for Easter —at least, he stated that to be the case at the bottom of his playbill—and there were always dark days and ‘ hard lines’ before the holiday times came round ; no one knew that, possibly, better than Kench and his company. It was a theatre that made me shudder, not alone for the result of Mr Noah Nash’s benefit night, but by itself and for itself. It was so horrible a place; it bad the stamp of poverty and misery impressed upon it as forcibly as though it had been a workhouse. It was hard to imagine how these actors lived, and why they considered it worth their while to try to live, by such means. It was a damp, cold, draughty, ill-lighted, hungry place ; the scene was rotting as it stood there, and must have been as old as the establishment ; there were two violinists and one red-nosed flautist to compose the orchestra; over the gallery rails leaned about two dozen sailors and women, the sailors coolly smoking short pipes in defiance of all by-laws, and expectorating into the pit, a free-and-easy process that did not matter so much on that occasion, as there were not half-a-dozen persons down there, and they had got under the shelter of the boxes out of the shower. When I saw all this I wished I had taken the advice of Mrs Higginson and stayed at home at the Crescent ; I had already resolved that no power on earth should see me here again on the night of Mr Nash’s benefit, and it was only curiosity to see Mr Nash perform —now that I had braved the storm to get to him—that prevented me taking to immediate flight, with a howl of dismay and disappointment. “ The Spectre Bridegroom,” as many of my readers may be aware, is not a lively, genial, happy production under the best of circumstances ; under these it was blood curdling. The acting of one man was so forced and unnatural and inane that I turned to the playbill pasted on the back of the boxes—the management had not ventured on programmes for this occasion—with an instinctive knowledge of the actor. Yes, it was Kench—John Kench (by particular desire). Mr Noah Nash was not libellous or jealous when he had asserted that very morning that his manager could not act. Kench was‘simply dreadful,’ as my visitor had remarked ; even the expectorative, law-breaking fishermen in the gallery were aware of it, and made derisive and even profane remarks as the farce proceeded. When the piece was at an end, there were a few more persons in the house, and they and I were left to stare at the drop-curtain. Still, we got tired of surveying the curtain, and when I had fallen into a reverie, and had forgotten where I was, and wondering how Fairfax was getting on at Newington with ray patients, and why Fairfax had not written lately, I was aroused from meditation by several angry oaths from the gallery at the dilatoriuess of proceedings behind the footlights, I looked at my watch. Yes. They had been a clear half-hour and five minutes fiddling away below there. On the stage I could hear more than one voice murmuring, as though a strike were impending, or an accident had happened. An accident ! Yes ; that was it. Something had occurred on the stage, very much out of the common way, for here was Mr Kench, in his costume for the next piece, suddenly darting before the curtain with a red, excited face, and holding up his hands to allay the small tumult which had arisen in our midst.

‘Ladies and gentlemen—ladies and gentlemen, I beg your polite attention for one minute only. For one minute, please; if you have a spark of consideration for me, you will surely listen. Won’t you, you brutes ? ’ he added, in a burst of passion that was very natural, and which silenced the auditorium at last. ‘I am sorry to say—l deeply regret to say,’ he stammered iorth, ‘ that Mr Nash, your favourite comedian, has been taken suddenly ill—suddenly and seriously ill—and that it is impossible to go on with the performance this evening. We have sent for a surgeon—but —but it there is one in the house’—and hero he looked at me appealingly, to my astonishment—--11 should take it 'as a great favour if he will step round to us, at once.’ , ‘1 will come,’ I cried out, as though I had been in a room ; and the j manager said across the• footlights to * pie, and to my surprise again :

‘Thank you, Mr Lissamer; if you will, I shtould be so much obliged. Passes will be given for another evening, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, addressing his audience again; ‘ tonight we know not what to do.’ And he certainly looked as if he did not.

The house was empty of its occupants iu a few more minutes. The money-taker was at my side, with my hat and coat in her hands, before the audience was noisily clumpeting out of the place. ‘ Will you come with me; please P Oh ! isn’t it dreadful, sir ? So sudden too ! ’ And I saw the woman was crying as she spoke. ‘ Is it so very serious, do you think ? ’ I asked, as I followed her along the dress-circle towards another door at the end of the row.

‘ He’s dead, sir—dead and gone I This way.’ She opened the door with a key, and I immediately fell down two rickety steps on to the stage, where were huddled together the actors and actresses, and Mr Kench, the manager, and where, lying on the dust of the floor, at the feet of all his companions, was Noah Nash, the comedian. I leant over him and felt his heart. It only required one look at him, however, to guess the truth, which had been already told . me. Noah Nash was ‘ dead and gone ’ indeed, and required no benefit on the fourth. There was a scrap of paper in his fingers, and I gently detached it from his hold. It was a fragment of a letter which had been torn up, I heard afterwards, at the side-wings, and this one piece retained. I looked at it, and read it by the flickering gas-jets. There was only an address hastily scrawled in a female handwriting ; but it was a clue, if it were any one’s interest to require one presently. ‘ Ninety-nine, Dark Street,’ the letter had begun. (To be Continued .]