# Phantom Fingers (Mearson)/Chapter 2

Chapter II
In appearance, the first night seemed to be going off as usual. The usual bored looking critics were in the aisle seats, the usual enthusiastic crowd of relatives and friends of the cast and of the author were there, highly pleased with everything beginning with the setting for the first act, which they applauded on the rise of the curtain without knowing anything about it, to the appearance of the second maid and butler, who had tremendously small parts and tremendously noisy and enthusiastic followers in the orchestra and balcony of the theater.
As is usual at first nights, there were small hitches. The lines were forgotten once or twice by nervous actors, and were supplied in loud, hoarse whispers from a prompter in the wings, whose red face was occasionally visible when he got too agitated and leaned out a little too far. At the end of the first act the curtain stuck and did not come down for a full thirty seconds, making it difficult for the actors on the stage to hold the tableau, as they had, unfortunately, no more lines to speak and dared not call on their imagination in the way of collaboration with an author who ​had, unaccountably, failed to supply sufficient witty speeches to cover such an emergency.
All these things, and more, were happening, as is usual and customary at first nights, but the fact remained that the piece was going very well indeed. From the rise of the curtain it gave promise of being the success that Ike Humbert had prophesied for it; though this prophecy had rather lost its effect from the fact that Ike prophesied the same thing of every one of his pieces. This one, however, looked good. There is an air about a success that falls about it at the beginning of its first night . . . an unmistakable feeling that every theatrical man knows . . . and this piece had it.
The second act went smoothly. I was in the wings, looking on interestedly, and talking to such members of the cast as were not too nervous to talk when they happened to be standing beside me. Ike Humbert was there, too, back stage, walking nervously about, talking disconnectedly to everybody, being every place, and once or twice nearly having his skull cracked when he got in the way of the impassive and unexcited scene shifters.
He had introduced me to Betty Sargent, a pretty girl with dark hair and flashing, good-humored black eyes, with a lively sense of humor and no fear at all, although it was the first night of the first piece in which she had ever been featured. I had said nothing ​to her about the mysterious notes that had been received, for fear of throwing her off her game, so to speak, but I could see that it would have done no harm, for there seemed to be no fear of any kind in her.
She chatted with me for awhile, on one of the occasions when she had a short wait in the wings, and I found her very interesting. In fact, I will be quite frank with you and state that I found her more than interesting. I found her absorbing, and I could scarcely take my eyes off her face. I was almost in a daze as she stood near me, and her eyes held mine like a magnet. I could see, easily, the fascination she had for an audience. She spoke her lines easily and naturally, as though she were indeed in a drawing room of her own, and she moved with a freedom and grace such as I have seldom seen equaled either on or off the stage.
The second act, as I have said, went smoothly, until toward the end. At the end there was a love scene between Betty Sargent and the star, Augustin Arnold, an impassioned scene that began with talk and ended with a prolonged embrace, as such scenes do. I was not paying too much attention, for Ike Humbert was standing beside me, and we were engaged in an interesting line of talk, but I knew without looking just about what was going on on the stage.
The audience, I realized subconsciously, was in a deep silence, as is the way of audiences during a con​vincing love passage. The first thing that called my attention to what was going on on the stage was a sudden realization that the silence had become even deeper, impregnated with a horror that it had not had before, a quality of amazed terror that was compounded of surprise and of lack of understanding as to just what was going on.
No sooner had I realized this than there came the terrified scream of a woman in the first row, and as my look flashed back to the stage, bedlam broke loose in the house.
We stood rooted to the spot, Ike Humbert, I, and everybody else in the wings, paralyzed with the drama that was taking place before our eyes. I will never forget the tableau that greeted my eyes as I looked on the stage, which had nobody on it but Betty Sargent and Augustin Arnold. Betty was rooted to her spot, her black eyes gone dead with unnameable horror.
Arnold was reeling about the stage, his eyes popping out of his head, his tongue protruding, his black hair tumbled down, his head thrown back in a gasp for air. Both his hands were clutching desperately at something in front of his throat, something that we could not see; something that was not there. It was the action of a man who was being choked to death by some giant hand of terrific power.
For an instant, I say, we stood rooted to the spot. I guess I recovered myself more quickly than anybody ​back stage, and I dashed out, but Betty Sargent, who was right on the spot, was quicker. She came out of her horrific daze and leaped to the rescue, trying to drag something away from the throat of the horrified actor.
“What is it, Augustin?” she shrieked. “What is it?”
He flashed her a look of despair and of agony, his face turning blue even in that moment. By that time I was there, too, and Ike Humbert and several members of the cast were on our heels.
I could see nothing, and yet this man was being choked to death before our eyes.
Just before I reached his side he collapsed in a heap on the stage and out of the corner of my eye I could see the curtain descending rapidly, shutting out from the terrified audience the rest of what happened.
I bent over Arnold and tried to help him, though I did not know in just what way he could be helped, or what invisible thing was attacking him. With a last gasp, his tongue hanging out, his head fell back, and he was still. I tugged at something that was at his throat, and felt a solid substance, a substance of warm flesh and bone and muscle.
At his throat was a magnificently strong hand, though I could not see it!
It was like a bar of iron, and I could not budge it from its position. I pulled, and around me resounded ​the shrieks of the cast, and through the curtain came the uproar of the audience. Suddenly the breath went out of Arnold, and I felt his body grow limp under me.
And suddenly I found I was struggling and pulling at the air, and that there was nothing for my hand to take hold of.
I bent over his body. His head was lying limply back in a peculiar position, as though its supports had been removed . . . I had never seen a head lie in just that fashion except once, the head of a man who had been hanged, after he was cut down with a broken neck—lifeless.
I took one look at him, and straightened up, meeting the agitated gaze of Ike Humbert.
“He’s dead,” I said.
“That’s impossible!” he almost yelled. “Why, he was alive a minute ago . . . right before our eyes . . . it could not be, no?” He looked at me for confirmation, and around at the circle of cast and stage hands who bent over the body in wonder and fear, their voices hushed and their eyes wild with a light that death only can put into the human eye.
I looked again.
“He’s dead,” I said again.
Humbert recovered himself. He was first of all a showman, and his audience was ever present in his mind. No matter what happened to his puppets, his ​audience had to be pacified, calmed, paid back. With a backward look he went before the curtain through the aperture at the right of the proscenium.
It was high time, too, I judged . . . a moment or two later and we would have had a riot on our hands . . . a riot composed of fifteen hundred terrified human beings fighting their way out of the building. Hundreds would undoubtedly have been killed.
I could hear Humbert’s calm, measured voice. The man had taken marvelous control of himself. He explained that Mr. Arnold had suddenly been taken ill, and that the performance could not go on. If they would stop at the box office tonight, or any time tomorrow—if they did not care to wait tonight—they could get their money back.
“Is there a doctor in the house?” he asked.
There was a silence, and then a middle-aged man arose about half way back.
“Shall I come back stage?” he asked.
“Please,” said Humbert.
In the meantime the audience was already moving toward the exits, excited, talking loudly and speculating, nerves shaken, and above all came the hysterical laughter of some woman whose nerves had finally given way.
Humbert stayed on the stage until order had finally been restored and the audience was on its way to the exits, which had been thrown wide open and yawned ​out into the street and into the alleys on both sides of the theater.
Then he came back stage again, joining the group of us who bent around the doctor, who was on his knees making an examination of the terribly still form of the fine actor who had been Augustin Arnold.
He had stripped away Arnold’s collar and tie, and was examining his neck closely. In a moment or two he rose and dusted the knees of his trousers, and anybody who had ever seen a doctor’s face when he turned away from a patient who has just breathed his last knew that all hope was gone for Augustin Arnold.
“Is he—is he . . . gone, doctor?” trembled the voice of Ike Humbert.
The doctor nodded.
“He is dead,” he said.
“Dead!” echoed the voices of most of us. “Dead!” echoed the voice of Humbert again.
“Yes,” nodded the doctor.
“But, doctor, how can that be?”’ persisted Humbert. “We were all here—you saw it yourself . . . there was nobody near him . . . how can it be that . . .?” his voice trailed away in a whine in his throat. He had lost control of himself, now that he had performed his duty to the audience. In the background I saw the straight figure of Betty Sargent stand, face white as chalk, black eyes almost lifeless, her body immovable as a statue.
​The doctor nodded again.
“He has been choked to death, and his neck was broken. Whoever did that has a grip that is stronger than anything I have ever known,” said the doctor. “He broke his neck with the pressure of his fingers.”
“Who?” came from my amazed lips.
The doctor looked at me frankly. “I don’t know that, any more than any of you seem to know. All I know is that he has been strangled, and his neck broken. It could not have taken more than a few seconds—in fact, it didn’t as we all saw. By the time he dropped down he was practically dead. Look!”
He bent down to the dead man and bared his neck.
On the neck were the marks of four fingers, red and angry on the bloodless skin, sunk deep into the flesh.
“That’s who,” he said, looking up at us.
We turned to each other as though our minds could not grasp what our eyes saw and our ears heard. Here was this man who, a moment or two before, had been full of life and vitality, in the height of his artistic powers, and before our eyes that life had been taken away from him by something we had not been able to see, something we could neither understand nor prevent. It was utterly unbelievable, in spite of the fact that the white, crumpled, and still form of the dead actor lay on the floor of the stage before us, head cruelly and curiously twisted to one side, eyes still open and protruding, and tongue hanging out of his ​open mouth bluishly, his open mouth, which still seemed grotesquely to be gasping for air for his tortured lungs . . . air which he was now never more to receive, throughout eternity.
I repeat, it was unbelievable. And yet, it had happened. Later, I was to wonder whether, if I had been quicker, I could have prevented it. I was to wonder and speculate about the phantom hand I had felt in my fingers, which I had vainly tried to tear away from the throat of its prey. I was to wonder whether I had really seen all this and it was to be some time before I found an answer to it.
“But how could this be, no?” asked Humbert, looking up at the doctor who seemed to him for the moment to represent constituted authority and might, therefore, be able to answer questions that puzzled us.
The doctor shook his head. “You saw as much as I did . . . perhaps more. I could see from my seat that the man was being strangled, but I was so surprised, thinking, on the instant, that perhaps it was part of the action of the piece, that it was all over before anyone really had a chance to do anything about it. And even if somebody had jumped to the rescue instantly, it would probably have been too late, because I think his neck was snapped almost in an instant, and after that the rest was just a reflex struggle which ​only lasted a few seconds. Those finger marks are puzzling and peculiar, however,” he confessed. He looked around at us.
“Of course, I could see nothing from where I sat, but are all of you here sure that you saw absolutely nothing?”
“Nothing,” came the answer from everybody.
“He seemed to be struggling in the air,” I said. “I saw nothing, but I felt something,” I added.
“Why, what do you mean?” asked the doctor. “I saw you, and you seemed also to be tugging at a piece of thin air . . . it would have looked a little ludicrous and grotesque if it had not palpably been so tragic.”
The white faces of the cast, men and women, crowded around me as I spoke, and I could, out of the corners of my eyes, which were fixed on the doctor’s, see the uncomprehending stare in their faces and the nervous twitching of their muscles.
“Well,” I said, “‘you all saw me pulling at something . . . or seeming to pull at something. The fact is, I really was tugging at something. It seemed to be a hand and wrist—or rather, a hand, wrist and forearm, I think. I know this sounds mad,” I said, “and, to tell the truth, I feel a little mad myself, at this moment as I say this, but that is just the way it was. It felt like flesh and blood to me—and you can see by the effect on poor Arnold there, and the marks on ​his throat—that it really had substance. It was a forearm and hand . . . a hand composed of terribly strong fingers, and muscles like iron. . . .”
“Weren’t you able to hold on to it?” asked the doctor, flashing me a keen glance.
“Just about,” I said. “But at the moment when I got a really good grip on it, it dissolved.”
There was a silence for a moment, then the faint, but clear voice of Betty Sargent cut in on the stillness.
“It dissolved?” her voice asked, and I did not have to look to see how bloodless and drawn her face looked.
“How can flesh and blood dissolve?” came the impetuous, excited voice of Ike Humbert.
“If I could tell you that . . .” I said, and there was a silence again, until I broke it. “If I could tell you that, I probably would be able to tell you a great deal more. The fact is that it actually faded away into the air, as though it were nothing but a wisp of smoke or mist. I found myself pulling at the unresisting air. All of this you know, because you saw me at it. The rest also you know,” I said, glancing down at the drawn-up form of Augustin Arnold.
A shudder went through the group, and some of the strained, white faces turned away. Some one threw a table cloth over the figure—a stage hand, I think it was—the cloth was from the third act property and ​hid the figure and the face, and so it lay, an uncertain, shapeless blob of white in the middle of a fine drawing room set.
The group dissolved in pairs and threes, everybody evidently feeling unequal to solitude and loneliness at that moment. The doctor turned to me, seeming to sense that I was a representative of the law.
“If there is nothing else at this moment,” he said, “I think I will go. There is a lady waiting for me. . . .”
“Nothing, I think,” I said. ‘Thanks awfully for your trouble, doctor. I hope that we will meet some time under rather more auspicious circumstances. You will give me your address, won’t you?” I added. “I hate to bother you further, but you will undoubtedly be called at the coroner’s inquest.”
He nodded. “Of course. Not at all. I don’t mind. I realize these things are necessary.” He handed me a card neatly engraved with his name, which I put into my wallet. “Glad to have been of service.”
We shook hands and he made his way off the stage. I sent for one of the policemen stationed in the lobby, and had him stay with the body. All the others had gone off to their dressing rooms, and some one—a stage hand, or the stage manager—had switched off most of the lights, leaving just one unshaded light burning at the side of the stage, in the wings. The body of the house and corners of the stage were ​shrouded in a tenebrous darkness full of jumping and evilly shifting shadows.
I stood in silence for a while, meditating upon what had come to pass before my eyes—in my hands, to be exact—and I wondered whether, if I had been quicker, something could not have been done to save the unfortunate actor who had so swiftly, and with so little prevision, gone to his long rest. I remembered what the doctor had said about that, and it comforted me a little, but still, I was not quite sure. Perhaps . . . perhaps. . . . And yet, it had all happened so swiftly, so terribly swiftly, that it was over in the space of six or seven seconds. I doubted whether anyone at all could have acted as speedily as that.
While I was in the midst of my thoughts, standing over the sheeted heap on the stage, next to which a policeman was seated stolidly, I felt a slight tug at my sleeve. So unsettled were my nerves by the unwonted occurrences, that I started violently at this sudden interruption to my thoughts. I whirled instantly, and relaxed at the same moment when I found that I was confronted by the white but composed face of Betty Sargent.
She had felt my trepidation in the sudden start I had given. “Sorry to have startled you,” she said. “Won’t you come to my dressing room?” She looked up at me quite frankly.
​“Yes, of course,” I answered. “Just what is it—?”
“I have something to say to you . . . and to show you, I think,” she said. “Something that happened that might interest you.”
“Of course,” I said, following her rapidly as she threaded her way off stage to the Number Two dressing room, next to the star dressing room that would now never be occupied by Augustin Arnold.
She sat down before her mirror when she entered, and motioned me to a seat at the side. Her negro maid was hovering around at one end of the room where, behind a curtain, hung the wardrobe of the actress. Betty Sargent turned to her.
“Delphine,” she said.
“Ma’am?”
“I shan’t need you any more tonight. You must be tired . . . you can go now.” The maid willingly took herself off.
We waited for her to go, talking of one or two trivialities, the nature of which I have forgotten, so enchanted was I with her low-pitched musical voice, the grace and naturalness of her motions, the elusive evanescence of her beauty. I know I seem to be growing lyric about Betty Sargent—but really, you ought to have seen her. It would happen to anybody, I am sure. To me, even from that first moment, she made ​all other women seem as shadows. among whom she stood out as the only reality. And this, remember, was in the face of such a tragedy as we had just witnessed—in fact, in our case, it might be said that we had both taken part in it.
When the maid had gone she turned to me with a sigh.
“I thought I'd better tell you this alone,” she said. “I haven’t said anything about it to anyone—perhaps I was wrong, but it was before a first night and I didn’t want to worry anyone. I paid no particular attention to them, myself, because there are all sorts of cranks and nuts in the world, and in this business we see more than the usual assortment, you know.”
“Didn’t pay any particular attention to what, Miss Sargent?” I asked.
She laughed shortly. “Oh, I forgot, of course,” she colored a little, because the fact of the matter was that while she was speaking I could not take my eyes off hers and she, on her part, I was impelled to believe, had let hers rest on mine just a trifle longer than is customary under such circumstances. Of course, I might have been mistaken . . . but it was a marvelous moment, just the same, despite the gruesome business that drew us together.
“I forgot,” she repeated, and opening up a drawer of her dressing table she took out several sheets of paper. These she handed to me, and I knew what they were ​instantly, even before I had them in my hand, before I looked at them.
“I got these four notes during the course of rehearsals,” she said. “Of course, you get all kinds of mash notes just as soon as you appear before the public—in fact, your success can sometimes be measured by the number of notes you receive from people who call themselves ‘Unknown Admirer,’ or other names of that kind—and sometimes they threaten all sorts of things if you do not respond to their affection. These things never come to pass, you know, so we seldom pay much attention to the notes. These notes, however, are sort of peculiar, and once or twice I was on the point of mentioning them to Ike Humbert, but we were so busy that I let the matter slip up. Read them, and see if you can make anything out of them.”
I glanced at the notes and recognized them instantly, of course. They were the same as the others —from the same hand, rather. They were written by the same typewriter, on half sheets of the same paper, and the phraseology bore a sort of family resemblance to the notes with which I was already familiar. The first one read:
Unknown Admirer.
“Of course, I paid no particular notice to that,” said Miss Sargent when she saw that I had finished reading it. “Now, the next one. . . .” The next one read:
Your indifference is driving me mad. When I think of you in the arms of another I could commit murder. And I will, if it becomes necessary. Do not neglect this notice.
Constant Admirer.
“That one came two days after the first,” said Miss Sargent. “Two days later I got the third, and last night I got the last one. The last one alarmed me a little, but in the excitement of preparation for a first night I rather forgot it for the moment. I suppose I should have done something about it, but if we got scared or panicky at everything of that kind that happens, we'd never have the courage or inclination to open a show.”
I read the letters. The third one read:
Your Respectful Friend.
And the last one:
If you appear on the stage tomorrow night the blood that flows will be upon your own head. You will know then that I am not a man to be trifled with. I love you, and you had better get used to the idea that you will belong to me, for it is going to happen. Do not think you can hide from me—I know your every movement. I am always with you. I will come, and death will follow in my wake.
Yours Faithfully.
“Must be rather embarrassing, I should think,” I said, “having him aware of your every movement, as he says.”
She blushed. “I never thought of it,” she said.
“Sorry,” I returned. “I should not have mentioned it. Have you the slightest sort of an idea as to who might be behind this?”
She shook her head. “Not the slightest,” she said. “If I had, I would have done something to stop his annoying letters, I think. I have racked my brain ​to think of who it might be in my list of acquaintances, but without success. He himself says that I have never seen him.”
I rose. “You'll let me keep these letters, of course?”
“Certainly. And if there is anything else I can do to help you, Mr. Muirhead, you must be sure to call on me. . . .”
“You bet I will. In the meantime, just keep me informed if you get any more notes, or in any other way get word from him, won't you?”
“Yes. Now, I’m tired, and I want to go home,” she smiled at me wearily, like a little child, and I, who should have been full of the thought of what had occurred here tonight was, for that moment, full only of this appealing and charming little girl who seemed to be playing at being grown up.
I took my leave a moment or two later, and went about my investigations.
I worked hard the rest of that evening, and all the next morning, but could make no headway, for the very plain reason that I had absolutely nothing to start with. The first thing I did, of course, was to compare the postmark on the envelopes of these sinister notices, but that did no good for the reason that every one of them was posted from a different section of the city. The paper and envelopes were of the most ordinary kind, such as can be bought in a thou​sand stationery stores in New York, and these gave no clue. I took the letters down to a prominent firm of typewriter manufacturers, in the hope that in some way they might be able to identify the machine that had written them, but although they found it was one of their machines, they told me they had no way of telling which one of them it was, as there were several million of them in use. Once we found the machine we suspected of writing the notes, we would have no trouble identifying it, as most typewriting machines have a character of their own. No two write exactly alike, nor do any two typists type exactly alike, but until we found some machine we could fasten a suspicion on, it was absolutely useless.
The newspapers, of course, were full of the mystery, and I spent some of the morning talking to reporters at the theater. Finally they were convinced that they had been told everything that I or anyone else knew. They played up the news gorgeously, crowding the League of Nations into the second page and France’s cries of anguish about the fact that she was expected to pay her just debts into the page of shipping news.
But there was absolutely no forward movement in the case. We were blocked at every side by a wall of lack of knowledge. I wandered around the stage of the theater, snooped into all the dressing rooms, not quite knowing just what it was I expected to find. After lunch Ike Humbert came in, and im​mediately after, to my surprise, came the whole cast of “The Leopard’s Spots.”
I looked my astonishment at Ike.
“Just what do you think you’re going to do, Ike?” I asked, and he smiled at me a trifle wryly.
“I think I’m going to rehearse ‘The Leopard’s Spots,’” he offered. “Have you any objections?”
“Me?” I said. “No . . . but there’s some one else who may have, don’t you think?”
He took me over to one side of the stage.
“Listen, Steve,” he said. “It’s like this; I have a lease on this theater, and whether I have a play in it or not, she costs me four thousand each and every week. I’d put another play into it, if I had one ready . . . but I haven’t. ‘The Leopard’s Spots’ looks like a big success, and with—”
“I know, Ike,” I remonstrated. “But who do you think would play Arnold’s part, after what happened last night?”
“Well, that’s the funny part, you know,” he said. “You know, Arnold had an understudy . . . every star has, of course. Wallace Cunningham . . . a good actor, too. He’s had the part of the butler, and been understudy to Arnold. Well, he came to me this morning, and made the proposition. I’ve spoken to every member of the cast, and they like the play, and are willing to take a chance. We can get ready to open tomorrow night, and with the publicity we’ve ​received, we should pack them in. Imagine the newspaper stuff—brave Betty Sargent, going ahead with her art in spite of everything . . . intrepid Wallace Cunningham . . . no? It’s worth a million dollars, and we're going to take a chance. We'll have the place guarded by a cordon of police, and you and a couple of other detectives can be in the wings, ready to dash out at a minute’s notice. Not so?”
“I think it’s bad business, Ike,” I said, but I was unable to budge him from his stand. And indeed, it seemed very unlikely that the happenings of last night would be repeated.
A little later I spoke to Wallace Cunningham, and he pooh-poohed my ideas. He was strong and sturdy, and he felt himself able to cope with any man’s hand, visible or invisible.
“Look here,” he said, “for years I’ve waited for a real chance on Broadway. You know how often an understudy gets a chance. Damned seldom. Well, here’s the chance of a lifetime, with the newspapers playing it up to beat the band. Why, man, it will be the making of me. And I won't be taking any real chance—with everybody on the lookout tomorrow night, it’s not likely that it will happen again—and if it does, I’m watching for it and I'll break the hand in two. Here, give me your hand. . . .”
I gave him my hand, mystified, and regretted it a moment later, for he squeezed it until I thought that ​every bone in my fingers—and I am very strong—was broken. It was as though my hand were in a vise.
“You see, I can take care of myself . . . and Betty’s willing to take the chance, too. I tell you, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime, and we’re all going to jump into it.”
That’s all there was to that. When I spoke to Betty Sargent, she was of the same opinion, so I kept my doubts to myself, but I resolved to be pretty well prepared on the opening night.
There was a record house the next night, to see the second first night of “The Leopard’s Spots.” Seats could not be bought. Those who had them held on to them, regardless of offers, and I could not blame them for it. Seldom has a first night been played up in the newspapers the way this was, and the crowded house was in a thrill of expectant horror . . . a delicious thrill given only to those who feel themselves safe.
I stationed myself in the wings, and had another man stationed on the other side. The play started auspiciously, and as the first act and most of the second went by without any untoward happening, the audience settled into its seats and enjoyed the play, which was a triumph for the author and for Betty Sargent ​and Wallace Cunningham, the young understudy who resolved to take a chance.
I myself, however, was on tiptoes. My right hand was in the side pocket of my coat, and I never took my eyes from the characters on the stage. I was not to be caught napping this time.
And it was well that this was so, for, at the beginning of the same scene that had proved so fatal for poor Arnold, I saw Wallace Cunningham suddenly clutch at his throat. His strong hands seemed to be tearing at something that had him in an awful grip, and his eyes seemed to be popping out.
There was a shriek from a nervous woman in the audience, but by this time I was already alongside of Cunningham, and clutching at the same thing that he was clutching at, a little more weakly and feebly, for the strength was going out of him alarmingly and practically instantly.
I clutched a strong, a terribly strong hand and wrist, strong and inflexible as iron, but flesh and blood. The dagger that I had been keeping my hand on in my pocket flashed in the air, and I brought it down with all my force into the invisible hand that was choking the life out of Cunningham. I felt it sink into flesh and blood, and in an instant I found we were tearing at the air, and the hand that had been there had, in some way, dissolved.
Cunningham fell to the floor with a gasping, tearing ​sigh, trying to force air into his tortured lungs, and the curtain went down with a crash on a scene of pandemonium in the audience.
I bent over Cunningham. There were red, angry marks on his throat, and he was gasping painfully, his face pale as death, but he was alive and breathing, and in a few moments he looked up at me and the rest of the circle that bent over him.
“How goes it?” I asked.
“All right,” he said feebly. “I’m all right—just a little . . . out of . . . breath. Thanks,” he smiled his gratitude.
“Damn quick work,” said some member of the cast, and at that moment there came a shriek of surprise from some woman in the circle.
“Look!” she ejaculated, her eyes popping out. “Your knife!”
I looked at the dagger which was still grasped in my hand.
It was red and dripping with blood!