"Get that coat off." Lennox jerked the coat off, spun Cooper around and put him into the red and white blazer. He cocked the straw hat on his head, tapped it into a rakish tilt and shoved him out of the dressing room. Cooper trudged to the stairs like a sleepwalker. The stage manager below beckoned frantically and he increased his pace going down the stairs. Lennox nodded and picked Cooper's jacket up to hang it away. Three slips of paper had fallen out of the pocket in the tussle. He was about to return them; then he stopped short as his eye caught the familiar hysterical writing. He smoothed the slips out and examined them fearfully. His heart began to pound. There were fragments, phrases, names, numbers; all scrawled in that sick hand: SUIDI ... $$$ ... MOST ... MERRY XMAS ... AMPMAMPM ... ROX ... §§§3 ... ¶7 ... MY HEART & ... BLOOD. SWEAT. TEARS ... WHO WHO WHO WHO HE? Lennox went black with rage. He placed the slips in his pocket and burst out of the dressing room. Down on the main floor he left the stage, leaped down the short flight of steps to the empty green room and called Sergeant Fink on the pay phone. "Bob? Jake Lennox." "Yeah. Hello. We'll be over in time for the program." "Get over now. I've found out who's writing the letters." "You don't say?" "I do say. And I've got proof." Lennox hung up. He glanced at the green room monitor. Cooper and one of the dancers had started their duet. Lennox turned up the speaker volume and watched, his face drawn and savage. The spot started badly. Cooper and the dancer missed their cue, the orchestra had to wait for them, they came in off beat. Their singing was inaudible and ragged. Cooper moved like a St. Vitus dancer. Even on the monitor his shaking was obvious. "Varsity show talent," Lennox snarled. After two agonizing minutes, the voice of Avery Borden cut through the orchestra and singing with the clarity of exasperation: "No! No! No! This is impossible." Cooper and the dancer stopped and peered out into the theater. "Get them out of here!" Borden shouted. "What is this? Amateur Night?" "So they stink," Grabinett's voice came faintly from another part of the theater. "What can we do? We got three Almighty minutes to fill." "I'd rather fill three minutes with dead air than that no-talent. Sweep 'em off the stage." "This is a dress rehearsal!" Sachs roared on the P.A. "This is a goddam trappisty!" Grabinett answered. The dancer began to weep. Cooper left her and staggered off camera. Lennox ran up the steps from the green room to the stage and met him as he came into the wings. There was a confused uproar in the theater punctuated by Raeburn Sachs' repeated commands to the staff to stop their clocks. Lennox took Cooper by the scruff of the neck and dragged him back to the green room. He flung him into a chair and stood over him. Cooper shook and gasped for air. "You son of a bitch!" Lennox shouted. "Stand by me, Jake. I'm in a bad way."