jutting out on to the pavement to snare the unwary.
Here and there, however, modernism had arrived. It showed itself in a closed snack bar sandwiched between two old buildings; it was revealed again in the façade of a cinema. The stranger noticed that the hotel he sought was anything but modern, even though it had a clean, inviting aspect. His attention swung back to the cinema directly facing it across the narrow street.
The cinema’s entrance way was marked by two rotund pillars of white tiling supporting a red canopy. The place called itself LANGHORN CINEMA in red stone cubist letters over the entrance. Postwar fuel regulations forbade neon outside, but beyond the glass doorway in the foyer, lilac tubes flickered in and out attractively and spasmodically illuminated the placarded features of Hedy Lamarr.
As yet it was only half-past six and the cinema was not open to the public. It possessed no sign of life at all except for the ginger head of a girl just visible through the grille of the advance-booking office. It was cunningly imbedded in one the huge side pillars, and so was set beyond the doors and almost on the street itself.
The stranger hesitated. For some reason the place had an uncommon fascination for him, so much so he walked up the four pseudo-marble steps and looked into the foyer intently through the glass barrier.
Looking out onto the chilly night from the warmth of her cashier’s box, Mary Saunders saw the stranger’s dogged, putty-grey face in profile, illuminated ever and anon by the neon. He looked forbidding, and she decided he looked as though he had walked out of the thriller serial that the cinema screened every Saturday afternoon.
The stranger stood peering, gripping his cheap suitcase. Though the foyer was empty, he seemed to be looking longingly for somebody or something.
At last Mary Saunders could stand it no longer. She raised the glass slide before the grille bars and peered out into the draughty street.
“Anything I can do for you, sir?” she asked politely.
The man descended two of the steps and stooped to look to look at her through the gold-painted filigree. “What time do you open, miss?”
“Half-past seven, sir—and the performance starts at quarter to eight, finishing at ten o’clock....”
“It doesn’t matter when it’s over.... Look, that poster on the foyer there—next to the picture of Hedy Lamarr. It is advertising Lydia Fane in Love on the Highway. Is that on now?”
Mary pointed up through the bars of her cage to the underside of the canopy. “It’s advertised up there, sir, on the streamer....”
The stranger looked above him at a lengthy oblong board painted green along its borders and suspended by chains. It swung to and fro in the cold wind, and a long paper sheet within it advertised Lydia Fane in gigantic letters with Love on the Highway in a small scroll beneath it. As yet, with the canopy lights off, it was not immediately visible from below.
“Starting tonight, sir,” Mary explained. “Runs tonight, Tuesday, and Wednesday.”
“Can I book?”
“Certainly, sir—Circle only, though. We block-book the Stalls for regular patrons....” Her slim arm went up to the charts out of the stranger’s view.
“Circle will do,” he decided. “I want the best seat in the front row for tonight, tomorrow, and Wednesday night....”
Mary Saunders blinked. Then she drove the point of her blue crayon through seat A-11 on the charts for that night, the next, and Wednesday. Skilfully she thumbed the ticket-blocks and then handed three tickets under the goldwork.
“Seven-and-six, sir, please.”
Without a word the stranger planked down three half-crowns. “Do you have matinées?” he asked, as he took up the tickets and prepared to go.
“Every day except Monday, sir.”
“Thank you, miss.”
He picked up his case, looked once more at the streamer under the canopy, then began to walk across the road towards the ‘Golden Saddle’.
That same evening, still in his grey coat but with his hat resting on the plush balustrade in front of him, he watched the programme through with that immovable fixity which seemed to be a habit with him....
And the following evening at precisely the same time, he was once more in A-11 in the centre of the row. This time the usherette in charge of the Circle remembered him from the previous night, and wondered to herself what anybody could wish to see twice in such an indifferent programme.
* * * *
Frederick Allerton always left home for duty at the Langhorn Cinema with a profound sense of the responsibility ahead of him. Maybe his comparative youth—he was twenty-one—caused him to magnify his position out of all normalcy, but it did at least make him extremely conscientious. As the chief projectionist of the cinema, he took pride in the fact that everything depended on him, that the smiles or curses of the patrons would in the main be the outcome of his control. And in his five years of employment, creeping up from lowly rewind-boy to chief, he had shown himself ambitious, a clever electrical engineer, and at times an excellent showman. His key-job and low medical grade had kept him at his post, a diligent controller of the whirring, hot machines that plough through miles of celluloid, different and indifferent.
At six-forty-five precisely on this Wednesday evening he took his usual farewell of his parents, buttoned up his overcoat, and went out through the kitchen into the back garden. Cold wind under icy December stars smarted his cheeks as he tugged his bicycle from the outside shed. He threw one long leg over the saddle and rested his foot on the pedal. With the other foot he pushed himself along until free of the pathway up the side of the house—then he went sailing illegally down the pavement to his favourite dip in the kerb and so out into the road.
With a whirr his homemade dynamo came into being and cast a fan of radiance on the asphalt of the quiet suburban road ahead of him. To his rear the red companion light glowed in baleful warning. He was rather proud of his dynamo, as he was of all his electrical handiwork, but it troubled him that the damned thing had developed an obstinate flicker. Now and again it would go out and leave him pressing against searing wind and darkness—then back the light would come with exasperating brilliance. Still, he knew the way blindfolded: the only worry was the possibility of the police happening on him at the wrong moment.
To reach the centre of Langhorn he had two miles to cover, and he usually reckoned to do it in exactly ten minutes—longer if the wind was against him. Tonight it was against him all the way, and he pedalled with his head down against it, cursing under his breath.
Eleven minutes after leaving home he reached Langhorn High Street, but beyond a brief glance ahead he did not bother to survey it thoroughly. It was dark now, anyway, as far as the shops were concerned. The only light came from the lamps edging the kerb at needlessly wide intervals and the canopy globes of his destination.
Stubbornly he pedalled onwards, preparing for a sharp right turn when he neared the cinema.... Then the dynamo went off again. He threatened it savagely, reached down with one hand to bang the dynamo against his front wheel—then all of a sudden he was knocked off his saddle and landed somehow with the bicycle round his legs. Near him somebody was floundering in the road and cursing him fiercely.
“You—you damned idiot! Why didn’t you have a light on...?
