Barrison thought Dukane’s precautions rather exaggerated. He did not really think personally that any peril threatened Alan Mortimer that night. Murderers did not, as a rule, send word in advance what they mean to do. Still, such things had happened in his experience, and it was no harm to make sure. As for Miss Templeton and the revolver—well, that looked a bit more serious. He had not told Dukane of Tony’s confidential information, but he raked the many-hued audience with his sharp gaze, trying to see if the erstwhile leading woman was present. So far there was no sign of her. He was even inclined to treat Tony’s fears as somewhat hysterical. It will be recalled that Miss Templeton had made rather a good impression upon the detective, who was only human, after all, and prone to err like other mortals. The truth was that the whole situation struck him as a little too melodramatic to be plausible. He was suffering from the disadvantages of being a bit too cool and superior in view, a bit too well-balanced, a bit too much the practical sleuth regarding theatrical heroics with a pleasantly skeptical eye. Nevertheless, cavalierly as he was disposed to treat them, he thought that it was possible that these many concessions to a possible gravity of situation, a more or less apocryphal danger, did add to the feeling of oppression which held him. It really seemed hard to breathe, and it was difficult even for his trained judgment to determine just how much of the sensation was physical and how much psychological. At all events it was a very close, sultry night. As people came in and took their seats there were constant comments on the weather. “Humidity—just humidity!” pompously declared a man next Jim, one of those most trying wiseacres who know everything. “You’ll see it will rain before the evening is over.” “There’s not a breath stirring outside,” said the girl who was with him, fanning herself. “I wish we were sitting near an electric fan.” The asbestos drop had gone up, and the orchestra began to play music specially written for the piece. It drowned the chatter of the well-dressed, expectant crowd. But the overture was short, and the lights all over the house soon began to go down in the almost imperceptibly gradual fashion affected by Max Dukane in his big productions. When the other instruments had dwindled to a mere mist of retreating sound, one high, silver-clear bugle played the regimental call, “Boots and Saddles,” as a cue for the rise of the curtain upon the first act. But Barrison was not looking at the stage. Before the last lights had gone out in the front of the house he had caught sight of a woman who had just entered the right-hand stage box. She stood for a moment looking out over the audience before she slipped out of her gorgeous gold-embroidered evening cloak and took her seat.