he does, only his bullet is silver. Your gun is just like his, even the ramrod bit. Your whole trick is like his, only he’s a headliner and you aren’t. He has an agreement with the Cadwallader Syndicate and you don’t.”
“Faber?” Nutall bristled. “That nonentity is no more noble than I am. Less so.”
“Your parents are your business. The only big difference is, he catches the bullet with a priceless Limoges dessert plate and never even chips it.”
“Priceless Limoges poppycock.” Nutall sniffed. “The man’s a complete bounder.”
“Could be, but he packs the Imperial solid every night.” To Thalia, Manfred added, “I knew there would be trouble when Mr. Lake here called out bullets instead of perils. Only with you in that white gown, I didn’t have the heart to give you the hook. If I may be so bold, Miss Cutler, you made a beautiful Lady of the Lake.”
Thalia forced herself to smile at him. She’d had a lucky escape. Fascinating Manfred would have been all too easy. “What if we dropped the Bullet Catch from the act, Mr. Manfred? What would the syndicate lawyers say then?”
“The lawyers were very specific.” Manfred looked almost sad. “The wire came fifteen minutes ago, so someone in the audience or crew has tipped them off. Neither you nor your partner here are to work the Majestic, nor any other Cadwallader Syndicate theater. Which I wish you both very good luck finding a decent theater that isn’t. I risked my job just letting you stay onstage tonight.”
“Sensible of you to let us proceed,” Nutall observed. “I hate to think what the audience might have done to your theater if you’d deprived them of this evening’s star attraction.” His tone suggested uprisings and riots.
“They’re not so bad,” said Manfred. “The Majestic might not be in the same league as the Imperial, but we get a decent crowd here. They almost never rip the seat cushions or set anything on fire. They don’t even throw much rotten produce. Well, not very often. Not very rotten.”
Nutall held his line. “Yet you willingly conspire to deprive them of the very act that filled your seats to overflowing tonight.”
Manfred helped himself to another fennel seed. “My seats are filled every night.”
“Are they indeed?” Nutall lifted one eyebrow. “That’s not what the chap in the box office told me.”
Manfred’s eyes narrowed. “You calling me a liar?”
“If the shoe fits,” Nutall agreed.
“That’s it.” Manfred threw a handful of coins and crumpled bills down on the open ledger. “There’s your kill fee. Take it and get out of here. As of now, you belong elsewhere. Get gone.”
“What about our props?” Thalia gave him a long reproachful look and added the Lillian Russell lift to her chin for good measure.
After a moment, Manfred relented. “You can pick them up in the morning.”
Nutall finished counting the money and put it neatly back on the ledger. “Five dollars? Don’t be ridiculous. Our kill fee was negotiated for cancellation without performance. We’ve performed. That doubles the fee.”
Thalia took care to show no surprise. For a kill fee, five dollars was generous. Ten dollars was absurd.
“Limeys! Think you own the world.” Manfred opened a desk drawer and produced a tin cashbox. “Seven dollars.”
“Ten.” Nutall was firm.
Manfred glared at him. “Eight.”
Nutall glared back. “Ten.”
“Nine and that’s it.” Manfred added money to the heap of coins, then locked the cashbox away. “Take it or leave it.”
Nothing in Nutall’s outward appearance changed, but Thalia felt certain he would have settled for eight. She assumed holding out for nine had been what Nutall sometimes referred to as an experiment in Solitaire behavior.
Nutall’s martyred sigh was a masterpiece. “Oh, very well. We accept your terms. But we shall take all our props with us tonight, so we’ll need a drayman.”
“So get a drayman.”
Nutall wasn’t the only one who could experiment with Solitaire behavior, Thalia decided. She gazed sadly at Manfred while Nutall pocketed their kill fee.
After an uncomfortable pause, Manfred extricated himself from his chair and crossed to the door. “Oh, all right. I’ll tell Andy to find you somebody.”
* * *
Nutall asked nicely, so the drayman let him and Thalia ride alongside him for the journey west from the Majestic Theater’s stage door to their boardinghouse. Although the April night was chilly, the ride was short and easy, for the street sloped gently downhill. Professionally speaking, however, Thalia could not help but reflect that their journey might as well have been a hundred miles straight down.
That morning, Thalia had been at