to raise a heavily-built man in a grey overcoat and slouch hat.
“Idiot!” the man repeated, rubbing his leg. “You might have broken it.”
“Evidently I didn’t, though,” Allerton said cheerfully. “You see, my dynamo doesn’t always work as it should. I never even saw you....”
“It comes to something when a man can’t step off the pavement without a blasted cyclist knocking him flying. No light—no bell. I’ve a good mind to tell the police about this.”
“All right, if you want to get awkward about it!” Allerton could be very short-tempered sometimes. “You can find me at the Langhorn Cinema. I’m the chief projectionist.”
The man in the grey overcoat looked at him for a moment; then without another word to signify his intentions, he walked off towards the pavement, heading in the direction of the ‘Golden Saddle’ hotel. Allerton watched him, then after a guilty look about him he trundled his somewhat lopsided machine towards the cinema, raising the cycle on his shoulder as he walked up the steps.
“Who were you rowing with?” asked Bradshaw.
Bradshaw was the doorman, though there had been occasions when the more select patrons had called him a commissionaire. It was left to the insensitive cinema staff to tell him what he really was. To the public he was merely a big, six-foot man with shoulders widened by the epaulettes on his bottle-green uniform. His face, red by nature, had an almost fiery tint through constant exposure to the winds that chose the High Street as their sporting ground. Blue eyes, inflamed round the edges with grit, gazed with disconcerting fixity from under the gleaming peak of his cap.
“I was rowing with an idiot,” Allerton answered briefly, pushing through the little assembly of people awaiting the cinema’s opening. “Anyway, how did you know?”
“I ’eard you shouting, of course. Wind’s that way tonight.”
Allerton grunted, eased the bicycle from his shoulder, then entered the foyer. Mary Saunders looked round the door of her cage and called a greeting. But Allerton ignored her. He was in a bad temper and his knee hurt. And that nosy-parker doorman would have to be outside four minutes before his usual time....
Allerton dumped his bicycle in the disused sweet-stall near the stairway leading to the Circle and closed the imitation bronze door upon it. He tugged off his overcoat and hat, releasing an untidy mop of brown hair that had become wiry through the influence of static electricity—then he headed for the manager’s office. But the manager had not yet arrived. The door marked PRIVATE was firmly locked.
With a shrug Allerton turned back to the Circle staircase with its soft, luxurious carpet—then he paused as Nancy Crane came hurrying down with her black silk frock billowing a little from her shapely legs. Allerton admired them silently as she came down to his level.
“Where’s the boss, Nan?” he asked her.
“How should I know if he isn’t there?” Nancy Crane had the oddest way of mixing her words, but she did it so disarmingly that nobody objected. She was small, dainty, with blonde hair and delicately reddened lips. Her very blue eyes made Allerton’s young heart skip a beat every time she looked at him.
“I only asked,” he said defensively.
Nancy felt the golden curls at the back of her head with a slender hand. “Anyhow, is that any way to greet your fiancée?”
“Sorry, Nan.... I’m having a bad evening.”
Nancy’s blue eyes regarded him. He certainly looked morose, more so by reason of his rather high cheekbones, sombre dark eyes, and drooping comers to a large mouth.
“Oh? What’s caused it?” she asked.
“I knocked a man down with my bike. If he reports it, the police will summon me or something. You know how the boss is about things like that. Smears the reputation of the cinema. I might get fired!”
“With labour so short it isn’t plentiful? Not a bit of it! You didn’t give your name to the man you knocked down, did you?”
“No. But I told him my job and where to find me.”
“The things you worry over!” Nancy murmured, inspecting herself in the bevelled mirror embedded in the wall by the staircase. “I wouldn’t!”
Nancy Crane had no need to expect trouble anywhere. She was pretty enough to get whatever she wanted from almost any young man—and what was more, she knew it. But she had plenty of sense as well as above average looks, which was one reason why she looked forward to becoming Allerton’s wife. Better than anybody, except his parents, she knew his worth.
“Tell the boss I was going to ask him about tomorrow’s programme,” Allerton said, starting up the stairs. “It’s Wednesday night, remember, and if the film transport doesn’t come within the next hour, he’ll have to ring the renters.”
“Okay, I’ll tell him,” Nancy promised, and devoted herself to getting her hair to her liking....
* * * *
Within the disciplined quiet of Roseway College for Young Ladies, Miss Maria Black, M.A., the Principal, sat studying the evening paper. Her pupils, had they been able to look over her shoulder, would have been surprised to find the Langhorn Times open at the amusement section.
“Love on the Highway.... Hmmm!”
Maria Black put the paper down and fingered the slender gold watch-chain gleaming against the black satin of her dress. Her strongly cut, expressive face was pensive—yet somehow irritated.
“Just where are all the gangster films these days?” she mused presently. “I could have sworn that Death Strikes Tomorrow was showing at the Langhorn. Maybe I confused it with another cinema. Love on the Highway indeed! Lydia Fane? Never heard of her.... Yet one must do something for a change, and no other cinema seems to have anything appealing.”
She rose and began to pace the warm study slowly. To Maria Black the problem of finding the right picture to visit was just as intricate a business as solving a mystery; and at both she could claim distinction. It annoyed her, though, to find that her love for a crime picture was unrequited this Wednesday night.
Coming to a decision, she pressed the bell-push. By the time the bloodless housemistress, Eunice Tanby, had come into the study, Maria Black was dressed in a severe but smart hat, a heavy camelhair coat, and was putting her umbrella on her arm.
“Ah, Miss Tanby! You will be good enough to take over for a couple of hours. I have decided that I shall relax at the Langhorn Cinema. It’s my last opportunity to see Love on the Highway.”
“Yes, Miss Black,” Tanby assented colourlessly.
“Say it,” Maria invited dryly. “What do I want to see such a picture for? Frankly, I don’t—but one must have a change. And you know my private passion....”
“Yes, Miss Black. Crime—crime films—or just films.”
“A very apt summing up,” Maria approved; then she swept out of her study and up the corridor to the outdoors. In five minutes she boarded the Langhorn bus that rattled its way between Roseway College and Langhorn Square.
The
