One Remained Seated: A Classic Crime Novel. John Russell Fearn
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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 them even when they call about the fire regulations, and leaves it all to me. If he found I’d been mixed up with them, even for such a trifling offence as a bad bicycle lamp, he’d fire me on the spot. So, if you’ll promise me....”
A faint smile twitched the comers of the stranger’s powerful mouth. “All right,” he said finally. “I’ll not say anything. I was furious at the time, I admit—but I really never had any intention of reporting it.”
“Thanks!” Allerton breathed in relief. “Thanks indeed!”
He opened the door, and the stranger walked out towards the staircase—just as Gerald Lincross came up from the foyer. For a moment he paused and stared fixedly at the stranger. The stranger too paused and looked back at him—just as if he were measuring him—then with a slight shrug of his big shoulders he went on up the stairs.
“What’s the idea, Fred?” Lincross’s voice was acid. “Since when have you taken to inviting outsiders into the projection department?”
“I haven’t, sir,” Allerton answered quickly. “I just asked him in here, at the bottom of the stairs, so I could say a few words to him.”
“What sort of words? What the devil are you talking about?”
“It’s—it’s private, Mr. Lincross.”
“We’ll discuss it later,” Lincross snapped, looking at his wristwatch. “Better get back on your job. Time’s nearly up.”
Fred Allerton watched Lincross’s black-suited figure hurry up the stairs into the Circle, then he turned back again into his own department and closed the door and locked it according to regulations. His emotions exploded in one word,
“Damn!”
* * * *
True to tradition, Gerald Lincross stood just at the top of the Circle steps as the lights in the auditorium began to dim gently. He always did so at this time, with Nancy Crane standing very quietly beside him. She presumed he made his survey to assess takings for the performance and to be sure that everybody was comfortable—but she could not help but notice that this time he did not look around as much as usual. Instead seemed to be looking straight in front of him to where the big man in the grey overcoat was just settling in his seat once more....
Then on the screen the news flashed into being, transforming Lincross’s white shirt front into a dully gleaming shield. The audience was picked out in dim silhouette and the red lights in the ceiling sprang into being together with the clock-light.... That first tension had gone. The performance was on its way.
Lincross turned away and went down the steps from the Circle. Nancy Crane relaxed on to the little stool fitted to the wall and waited for latecomers.
Over in A-11 the man in grey sat watching the screen, but with some boredom. Obviously he waited only for the feature picture. Three rows behind him on the left Maria Black still held her umbrella and watched the parade of daily events....
Up in the projection-room Fred Allerton was checking his power meters and looking more depressed than ever. Dick Alcot stood half leaning on No. l projector, half leaning on it, his pallid face illumined by bright purple light as the glare of the arc light passed through the mauve inspection shield in the lamphouse. The projector whirred steadily, its intermittent sprocket keeping up an incessant staccato. From the monitor speaker in the concrete ceiling came the voice of the commentator recounting the news of the day.
“Something biting you, Fred?” Peter Canfield came out of the record room and looked at Allerton’s troubled face.
“Nothing you can help,” Fred responded. “Get below and fix up those trailers for tomorrow....”
Peter nodded and went out whistling. Allerton stood thinking, then as Alcot glanced at the decreasing film in his top spoolbox. Allerton took up his position beside the second machine and switched on the arc. As the news came to an end he opened up and Love on the Highway flashed on to the screen.
“One thing I don’t understand about this film,” he said, as Alcot methodically threaded up his own now motionless machine. “This Lydia Fane. She doesn’t do half as much as that other girl in it—Betty Joyce—and yet she’s billed as the star on our posters. Seems cock-eyed.”
“Whole