Page:Phantom-fingers-mearson.pdf/21

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