grey hair and a face, in profile, of uncommon strength, Maria paid no more attention to him, though back of her mind she remembered that she had seen him coming in at the foyer doorway. Not that it signified, only...well, he was different, somehow, and possessed such an air of power and sombre purpose.
CHAPTER TWO
When Fred Allerton entered the winding-room at the top of the stone steps leading to the projection-room itself, he was still on edge. He came into the wide, stonewalled room filled with its electrical equipment and transit cases with the corners of his mouth dragged down.
He glanced about him to satisfy himself that the electricity rectifier for the arc lamps was working normally, and that the switch controlling the big fan in the auditorium ceiling was in the ‘On’ position. Then he looked to the far end of the room where, under a bright lamp, Dick Alcot was winding film from spool to spool with the tired air habitual to him.
“Everything okay, Dick?” Allerton asked; then he frowned as he looked at the workbench. “Say, where’s that old house telephone I had lying about here? Seen it?”
“Not for some time....” Dick Alcot turned and clamped lean hands down on each of the spools to stop them rotating. The film tightened between them and lay like a band of glass under the light.
“Funny,” Allerton mused. “Maybe I put it in the cupboard or somewhere....”
Alcot wiped his hands on a rag and then lounged forward. He was a fellow of average height, twenty years old, prided himself that he was devoid of emotion, and admitted his regret that he had married at nineteen. In appearance he was nondescript, with lank black hair which insisted on dropping a forelock over his left ear, rather prominent grey eyes, and a face deathly pale either from constant indoor work or incipient anaemia. As the second projectionist most of the work fell on him, but believing it was a sign of a weak mind to show annoyance, he never complained. Anyway, he and Fred Allerton were the best of friends.
“You don’t look too happy, Fred,” he commented. “That telephone will be knocking around somewhere....”
“’Tisn’t that,” Fred interrupted. “I’m afraid of some trouble that may bring in the police....”
“Hell! The police? Why? I thought our fire regulations had been approved.”
“Not that,” Allerton growled. “Something else.”
Without explaining further, he left the winding-room and slowly mounted the four stone steps into the projection-room itself. As usual it was gleaming cheerily, the concrete floor stained deep red and highly polished. It had a friendliness all its own. Valves glowed brightly on the sound-reproducing equipment, meter needles quivered on their graded scales. On the wall were two notices—one ordering NO SMOKING, and the other exhorting operators to save their carbon stub-sheathing for salvage.
Allerton looked about him absently, mechanically checked the silent projectors already threaded for the evening performance; then he walked the five-yard distance to the separate steel-lined enclosure where lay the record cabinets, slide-lantern, and floodlight controls.
In here sat Peter Canfield, his fingers playing over a small switchboard. At each movement the lights on the curtains in the auditorium changed colour. Peter Canfield had done this job for a year now, and being a youth of sixteen without any real ambition whatever, would probably go on doing it until the crack of doom.... Big for his age, his fresh-complexioned face covered in adolescent spots, he sat now controlling the floods with one hand and the reproduction equipment with the other. As the record of Sousa’s Il Capitan came to an end, he swung round the tuner to the twin turntable and faded in to the Blue Danube when he caught sight of Allerton looking at him.
“Hello, chief,” he said briefly.
Allerton nodded but did not speak. He was looking beyond Peter into the Circle, through the wide porthole. Down the white-edged steps a big man in a grey overcoat was descending. Presently he took his ticket from Nancy Crane and sat down in A-11.
“Same man!” Allerton whistled.
“Who?” Peter Canfield looked through the window. “Say, Nan Crane looks like a million tonight! If she wasn’t twenty years old, I could fall for her myself.”
“Shut up,” Allerton ordered, then he peered at the hall clock. “Half-past seven,” he murmured. “I might just be able to manage it.... You look after these records, Peter. I’ll be back in a minute or two.”
Allerton hurried across the projection-room, slapped open the swing door and fled down the flight of steps to the bottom. He stepped through the private doorway on to the Circle staircase angle halfway up to the Circle itself. People were flowing past him from below, toiling up the steps.
He went down the stairs until he came within view of the main foyer. Gerald Lincross was there in his usual place by his office door, his head and shoulders moving back and forth in perpetual greeting.
This was all Allerton wanted to see. Turning, he followed the people up the stairs and so into the Circle. When he got to the head of the stairs, he stepped aside and touched Nancy Crane on the arm.
“You’re on strange ground, Fred,” she murmured, taking tickets mechanically. “Better not let the boss see you here!”
“Do me a favour, Nan! You see that fellow over there in the front row? One with the grey overcoat? Ask him to come here a moment. It’s very important I see him. If I don’t it may cost me my job.... Be a sweetheart and help me out. I’ll take the tickets while you go.”
Nancy looked at his uncommonly earnest face, then she hurried down the steps to the front row. Allerton could not hear what she said, but at last the big man got up, snatched up his hat, and wormed his way out of the row while the remaining tenants of Row A stood at indifferent attention to let him pass.
Allerton took tickets mechanically as he watched the big man climb the steps with Nancy bobbing urgently behind him.
“This—this gentleman wants to see you,” Nancy explained hastily, nodding to Allerton.
He handed the ticket-string back to the girl and looked at the big man a little uncertainly. “Sorry to bother you, sir—but I’d like a word with you. If you’d come this way....”
“I came here to see a picture, not you,” the man growled.
“I know—but this won’t take a moment. There’s time.” Insistently Allerton caught hold of the big fellow’s arm and led him down the steps until they came to the private door at the base of the projection-room staircase. Allerton opened it and motioned the stranger inside—then he closed the door again. Between the cool stonewalls under the single electric light they stood facing each other.
“I’m the man who knocked you down tonight in the High Street,” Allerton said abruptly. “I’m—”
“I know who you are—the chief projectionist here. You told me that. What do you want?”
“I want to appeal to your sense of decency. Don’t report me to the police.”
The big man looked surprised. “And you have raked me out of my seat just to ask me that?”
“I’m scared of losing this job. You see, I’ve got a boss who at the mere mention of police goes off in a tantrum. He always avoids
