The Grub-And-Stakers Pinch a Poke (7 page)

She also had the woolly cap and mittens she was to put on before she, her sorrowing mother, and their faithful canine friend forsook their once-happy home and headed for the Yukon with falsehearted Dan McGrew. Dan, in the person of Andrew McNaster, would be wearing the traditional villain suit: a black frock coat, a fancy waistcoat, and a high silk hat. Andy had even grown a black mustache, so great was his dedication to his role, and learned how to wax the ends into despicable little spit curls.

That was the marvelous thing about the casting. Zilla Trott had remarked on it only yesterday. Andrew McNaster was totally convincing as the bad guy because everybody knew he had a heart as black as his mustache even though the rogue was putting on a show of repentance to impress Arethusa Monk. Carolus Bledsoe, on the other hand, made the perfect hero because he was such an honorable, upstanding gentleman in real life.

Suppose word leaked out that the honorable Charlie was not only every bit as roguish as Andy ever was but also a former accomplice to Andy’s roguery? Suppose Jenson ThorbisherFreep found out the man on whom he’d been prepared to bestow his daughter’s hand was a double-dyed dastard? Suppose Wilhedra found out? More to the point, suppose they all found out and then Charlie found out it was Dittany Monk who’d scraped the scales from their eyes?

Being a closet rotter didn’t appear to bother Carolus Bledsoe much. The possibility that people like the ThorbisherFreeps and Arethusa Monk, not to mention the audience who’d be watching him act the hero and the judge who’d be trying that lawsuit might find out must cause him the odd moment’s perturbation now and then, though. It wouldn’t perturb Dittany a bit, provided he could keep the lid on until after Saturday night’s performance was safely past. She could see all too clearly what would happen if the story popped.

To begin with, the play would flop. Even if Carolus Bledsoe had the face to go on (and who could replace him at this late date?) the dramatic tension that had been working so magnificently up to now would be shattered. Arethusa was no trained actress. Once she realized who her stage husband really was, she’d be able to work up about as much semblance of wifely affection for him as she had for that reviewer who referred to her books as lowgrade tripe.

Nor would Arethusa be the only one affected. Exposed, Carolus could act the hero in front of a Lobelia Falls audience till his eyes bugged out and his toes fell off, and nobody would swallow one word he said. As for Andy McNaster, he’d be so anxious to show how reformed he’d become in contrast to his unrepentant former henchman that he’d turn Dan McGrew into a cross between Santa Glaus and Mother Teresa.

If the play flopped, what of the Architrave? Dittany reminded herself that it was she who’d goaded the Grub-and-Stakers into helping the Traveling Thespians so that they could acquire the Thorbisher-Preep Collection for their museum. She’d got Mr.

Glunck all charged up about filling that back bedroom, though she still wasn’t sure whether it was the memorabilia or the display cases he coveted.

What it boiled down to was that she had nobody but herself to blame for this dilemma. She’d talked Osbert into writing the play.

She’d lined up the Girl Guides to sell cookies and lemonade during the intermission. She’d strong-armed Minerva Oakes into being wardrobe mistress.

Minerva had in turn organized a posse to sew all those red skirts and foaming petticoats for the dance hall girls. The foamy effect was achieved by yards and yards and yards of ruffles, every inch of them stitched by Therese Boulanger, the club president. Therese was the only member who not only possessed a ruffling attachment for her sewing machine but was also able to make it ruffle. All that flouncing had set Therese back at least a week on the crib quilt she was piecing for her new granddaughter. Her sacrifice must not be in vain.

There was also the matter of how actively vengeful Carolus might become toward the woman who blew the whistle on him if he found out who she was. Dittany thrust speculation from her mind and began rolling out cookies.

It was as well she did. The pressure was building. Osbert and the many cast members and backstage helpers who kept dropping in to pour out their anxieties about one thing and another turned to compulsive cookie gobbling as a temporary palliative. Dittany had been through so many dress rehearsals as a tiny tot that she herself wasn’t nervous, or wouldn’t have been if panic weren’t so catching.

At least she had her piano to bang on when the atmosphere got too tense.

Since Carolus Bledsoe didn’t know one note from another, that heart-wrenching music the miner was required to play just before the shootout could have posed a problem. Osbert had coped easily enough by having Dittany play a medley of appropriate selections and recording them on tape. Carolus had only to sit down on the rickety-looking but actually quite sturdy piano stool Dittany would by then have vacated, and twiddle his fingers over the keyboard while the prop crew played the tape.

Dittany’s personal worry was that her music might not be quite what Robert W. Service had had in mind when he wrote the poem.

“I don’t know, dear,” she fretted. “Do you really think “There Is a Tavern in the Town’ fills the bills as the crowning cry of a heart’s despair?”

“It’s appropriate to the setting, darling,” Osbert consoled her.

“And that snatch of ‘Just Before the Battle, Mother’ at the end ought to rock their socks all right, eh. How about a cup of tea and a cookie?”

One way and another, they got through the time. About half past five Friday afternoon, because they couldn’t stand it any longer, Dittany and Osbert bundled their properties into the ranch wagon, stowed Ethel-or Fido, a Faithful Dog, as she would appear on the programs-in the back seat, and headed for Scottsbeck. They didn’t stop for Arethusa because Andy McNaster, Carolus Bledsoe, and Jenson ThorbisherFreep had all offered her rides.

How the leading lady had settled the matter they didn’t know, nor did they care. Osbert was running through his many checklists while Dittany tried to concentrate on driving. She wasn’t too concerned about forgetting her lines, but she did wonder a bit about the elastic in her pantalettes. Well, she’d know by the end of the evening and there’d still be time to fix it tomorrow if necessary. This was only the dress rehearsal, after all. And everybody knew a bad rehearsal meant a fine performance. Softly, so as not to distract Osbert from his lists, she began to sing “Just before the battle, Mother.”

When they reached the opera house, they were surprised to find Arethusa there ahead of them. “I decided to come with Jenson,” she explained, “because he has a key to the stage door.”

For one who most often had her feet planted firmly on a rose-pink cloud, Arethusa was showing an unexpected grasp of practicalities these days. At least Dittany was thinking so until her aunt-in-law demanded, “What have you done with my costumes?”

“I haven’t done anything with your costumes,” Dittany retorted.

“Why should I? I’m not the wardrobe mistress.”

“Nonsense, of course you are.”

“I am not. I’m the kid that handles the music box. Arethusa, try to think. Did Minerva Oakes bring anything to your house during the past week?”

Dutifully, Arethusa thought. At last she nodded. “Yes, she did.”

“What did you do with it?”

“I ate it.”

“Arethusa, you can’t have!”

“Why not, forsooth? What else does one do with a plate of fudge?”

Dittany persevered with such patience as she could muster. “Arethusa, did Minerva bring anything else besides the plate of fudge?

Anything of a textile nature, for instance?”

“Gadzooks, yes, she’d covered the fudge with a linen tea towel. It had birds on it. Whooping cranes, I believe, or robins. Some endangered species.”

“Robins aren’t an endangered species.”

“They are when Minerva gets after them with a slingshot for pecking her cherries.”

This unrewarding discussion might have gone on for some time if Minerva herself hadn’t arrived with a huge armload of costumes, followed by Zilla and a couple more, all afoam with petticoats. “Oh, Arethusa,” panted Minerva, “I was hoping you’d be here. We’ve sewn the red skirt to that black lace corset so you won’t bunch up around the waist, but I’m not sure about the hem. You’d better try this on, just in case. And the housedress for the first act, too.”

Both costumes were fine. Everything was fine. Everybody could smell success from the moment when the curtain went up and Carolus, lugging a feedbag as the badge of his calling, burst into the cozy flat where Arethusa, in a long rose-print cotton gown and a frilly pink apron, was pretending to stir something in a bowl. Ethel lay under the table, the picture of canine contentment. Dittany, in her tiny tot garb and blue hair ribbon, tinkled, “Call me pet names, dearest, call me a bird” on the piano, which was placed on a slant at the rear of the stage.

Positioning the piano had been a tricky business. Osbert was too devoted a husband to make Dittany sit with her back to the audience all evening. However, she had to be out where people could see her. Minerva had sacrificed one of her late Aunt Bessie’s handcrocheted pillowcases to make those lace-trimmed pantalettes and it would be wicked to hide them.

After a good deal of shoving and panting, the stage crew had got the piano just right. Everybody could see as much of Dittany as was proper but not too much; since hers was, after all, only a supporting role. Better still, Dittany could see everybody. She didn’t get to move around a lot but had to be onstage throughout the play, so sitting at the piano could otherwise have become a bore.

She hadn’t expected there’d be any sort of audience tonight. As things turned out, though, she had quite a decent gathering to observe. The stagehands, the makeup and costume teams, the scene painters, the ushers and ticket takers, and even the Girl Guide mistress were all out front, along with miscellaneous spouses and offspring who’d come along to help carry things. The miners and dance hall girls, already in costume, had sat down to watch the first act in comfort since they wouldn’t be going onstage themselves until after the intermission.

Wilhedra ThorbisherFreep, wearing all her minks because the 1 old opera house was none too warm this time of year, had joined her | father in the front row. Two rows back, directly behind them, sat an even more lavishly minked woman who Dittany had never laid eyes on before. Who could she be, and what was she doing here? Fur: thermore, what was she looking so cross about? Maybe she was some connection of the ThorbisherFreeps whom they’d dragged along against her will. Then why wasn’t she sitting with them?

Halfway through “Home Sweet Home,” Dittany had a better idea. The woman must be a spy from one of the rival companies.

Performances were being given according to the order in which entries had been filed. Because Desdemona Portley had taken so long to get her act together, the Traveling Thespians would be the last to perform, and because they’d been pressed for time, they’d had to rehearse instead of attending the other plays. Dessie had sent her husband to scout them all, though. He’d reported that none was anything much to write home about and their competitors were all worried sick over what the Lobelia Falls company was going to come up with. Mr. Portley, of course, was not without prejudice.

Obviously that woman in the third row was prejudiced, too. She must be looking so sour because she already sensed the Traveling Thespians had the competition in the bag. Her scowl only grew blacker as the rest of the onlookers sat rapt and breathless, absorbing every move, every word, every gesture. Dittany could see a number of the more tender-hearted ones dabbing at their eyes while the deposed feedbag man emptied his pockets of their meager store and delivered his farewell soliloquy to the mournfully attentive Fido before going forth into the night on his ill-starred adventure.

By the time the SOLD sign had been hung on the piano and the cruel landlady had delivered her ultimatum to the impoverished mother and daughter, there was hardly a dry eye in the house. Even Wilhedra looked a trifle blurred around the mascara. Dittany watched eagerly to see whether she was going to haul out a minkbordered handkerchief. However, Wilhedra appeared to brighten up when Arethusa yielded at last to the lascivious importunings of Dan McGrew. At that point, Dittany had to put on her cap and mittens and go to the Yukon, so she never did get to find out about the handkerchief.

The curtain went down in a puff of dust. Osbert made a clever little speech about how well it was going and would all the miners and dance hall girls please go fix their makeup, eh, and get onstage for the second act. Dittany changed to her red hair ribbon, rearranged her curls, and went back to the piano. As the curtain went up again, she was thumping out “Whoa, Emma!” for the miners to roar forth while they pounded their whiskey tumblers on the bar, on the tables, and occasionally on each other’s heads to demonstrate what an uncouth lot they were.

After that she played a cancan so the dance hall girls could show off their petticoats and black net stockings, then a hoedown so they and the miners could all stamp around together amid raucous laughter and a certain amount of rude horseplay. Then she played a medley of sentimental airs to quiet them down and let them arrange themselves for the denouement. Finally she swung into “The Maple Leaf Rag.”

This was the signal for the miner’s entrance. Samantha Burberry’s husband, Joshua, who knew all sorts of scientific tricks, had contrived a wonderful howling gust of wind to herald the stranger’s arrival. Joshua had also powdered him with some stuff that looked for all the world like snow but would conveniently disappear without leaving a mess on the stage for somebody to slip in while he tilted his poke of dust on the bar and called for drinks for the house.

The bartender began setting them up. Dan McGrew went on playing solitaire. Standing behind him, the lady now known as Lou eyed the newcomer with an artistic mixture of perturbation and puzzlement. He’d changed a lot from his feedbag days, of course. As the miner watered the green stuff in his glass and the drops fell one by one, Dittany tripped over to the bar, corkscrew curls aswing, and lisped her request for a tharthaparilla. This move left the piano stool free for the miner to take her place, which he stumblingly did.