Phantom lady Read Free Page A

superimposed one on the other. "I always do that, fidgety habit I've had for years. A variation of doodling, I guess you'd call it. I never know I'm doing it, either."
    The trap under the stage opened and the orchestra started to file back into the pit for the second half. The trap-

    drummer was nearest to them, just across the partition rail. He was a rodentlike individual, who looked as though he hadn't been out in the open air for ten years past. Skin stretched tight over his cheekbones, hair so flattened and glistening it almost looked like a wet bathing cap with a white seam bisecting it. He had a little twig of a mustache that almost seemed like smudge from his nose.
    He didn't look outward into the audience at first; busied himself adjusting his chair and tightening something or other on his instrument. Then, set, he turned idly, and almost at once became aware of her and of the hat.
    It seemed to do something to him. His vapid, unintelligent face froze into an almost hypnotic fascination. His mouth even opened slightly, like a fish's, stayed that way. He would try to stop staring at her every once in a while, but she was on his mind, he couldn't keep his eyes away very long, they would stray back to her each time.
    Henderson took it in for a while, with a sort of detached, humorous curiosity. Then finally, seeing that it was beginning to make her acutely uncomfortable, he put a stop to it in short order, by sending such a sizzling glare at him that he turned back to his music rack forthwith and for good. You could tell, though, even with his head turned the other way, that he was still thinking about her, by the rather conscious, stiff way he held his neck.
    "I seem to have made an impression," she chuckled under her breath.
    "Perfectly good trap-drummer ruined for the evening," he assented.
    The gaps behind them had filled up again now. The house lights dimmed, the foots welled up, and the overture to the second act began. He went ahead moodily pleating the upper corners of his dog-eared program.
    Midway through the second half there was a crescendo build-up, then the American house orchestra laid down its instruments. An exotic thumping of tom-toms and rattling of gourds onstage took its place, and the main attraction of

    the show. Estela Mendoza, the South American sensation, appeared.
    A sharp nudge from his seat mate reached him even before he had had time to make the discovery for himself. He looked at her without understanding, then back to the stage again.
    The two women had already become mutually aware of the fatal fact that was still eluding his slower masculine perceptions. A cryptic whisper reached him. "Just look at her face. I'm glad there are footlights between us. She could kill me."
    There was a distinct glitter of animosity visible in the expressive black eyes of the figure onstage, over and above her toothsome smile, as they rested on the identical replica of her own headgear, flaunted by his companion there in the very first row where it couldn't be missed.
    "Now I understand where they got the inspiration for this particular creation," she murmured ruefully.
    "But why get sore about it? I should think she'd be flattered."
    "It's no use expecting a man to understand. Steal my jewelry, steal the gold fillings from my teeth, but don't steal my hat. And over and above that, in this particular case it's a distinctive part of her act, part of her trademark. It's probably been pirated, I doubt that she'd give permission to—"
    "I suppose it is a form of plagiarism." He watched with slightly heightened interest, if not yet complete self-forget-fulness.
    Her art was a simple thing. As real art always is. And as getting away with something at times is. too. She sang in Spanish, but even in that language there was very little intellect to the lyric. Something like this:
    "Chica chica boom boom Chica chica boom boom"

    Over and over. Meanwhile she kept rolling her eyes from side to side, throwing one hip