plumped her down beside the plate.
Then the black dog nipped back to his box and sat, angelic—just in time, for his master came storming back in. When he saw the Pekinese at the half-eaten plate, Juddy lost his temper, scolding it in a torrent of hideous triple-speed curses, stamping his feet in a rage, then drawing a pistol and training it on the poor pup.
Clover was frightened. She thought Juddy truly was mad, and was going to kill his own dog like that, shoot him right there on the stage, for having ruined his number. The gun was very black and real. The substitute thief shrank, cowering, a masterpiece of abject apology, as Juddy cocked the pistol and prepared to execute the poor little creature.
But the black dog leaped up from his box and jumped onto the table between the gun and the Peke, begging piteously for his master to spare its life. Juddy dragged him off the table onto the floor, and instead—oh no! He shot the black dog!
The dog rocked back on his hind legs as if he were a man, and staggered about the stage, one paw over the wound, the other across his eyes. His whimpering was loud above the suddenly hushed music, and then—he died.
Appalled by what he had done, Juddy fell to his knees weeping. A huge dog—the biggest dog Clover had ever seen, in a police jacket and helmet—came in and grabbed Juddy from behind, nipping him on the seat of the pants, and dragged him offstage, straight to pokey where he belonged for killing his clever little dog. From the wings Clover could see how Juddy looked like he was being dragged when he was actually pushing himself along; he was very convincing even so. She was so sorry for the dead black dog—until, after a long funereal trombone blast, he jumped up onto the table and coolly finished his dinner.
‘Right!’ called Mendel. ‘Out of time for you, Juddy—we’ll wing it with part two.’ He turned back to his band. ‘Minou’s up next, vamp sixty-four bars while they strike the dogs.’
The curtains swirled shut, and the stage was a welter of hands shifting stools and plinths in the blue working lamp, silent under a winding French café tune from the band.
Out of the darkness close beside Clover, a man said softly, ‘Fresh blood?’
She jumped, then stood very still.
‘New to this the-ayter, I mean to say? Humbug?’ He proffered a paper bag to entice her. He had reddish hair and bright eyes that looked blue in the bluish light.
Another man emerged from the velvet curtain’s shadow. ‘Now, East, don’t tease the lady.’
‘This is no lady, she’s a soubrette,’ said East. They stood very near.
‘Oh, I think not, I think she is not—I’d lay you odds she’s as prim as you please.’
‘Verrall, you back away slow and you won’t get hurt. I’ve got dibs on this young miss.’ East ran his arm behind Clover and pulled her quite close, but not close enough to be serious. There was a joke in everything he said, you could not be cross with him—besides, Clover was never subjected to this kind of attention, standing beside Aurora as she always did, and she found it interesting.
Verrall extended one long thin finger at East and twitched it side to side like Papa’s metronome. ‘Mrs. C. is watching. You’ll find yourself in hot water with the management, my dear old East,’ he said.
‘D’you think? When he needs us ever so desperately?’ East squeezed Clover’s waist, measuringly, and then used both his hands to set her a little apart, like a doll he was putting back in the toy box. ‘But perhaps he don’t need you so desperately, my tidy tenderfoot, and it would never do to get you canned.’
Still Clover had not spoken a word. She could not say anything at all witty, so she tore herself away from watching Madame Minou’s Statuary and trotted down the stairs to the dressing room as if she were quite confident and pert. Only her legs, trembling slightly, showed the lie.
The Doorstep
Aurora watched the Soubrettes running out as Clover ran in, and shortly back again, their call brief because they’d been with Cleveland’s so long.
The Italian Boys had the last band call, coming next-to-close, before the pictures. Here at the Empress those were little more than a magic lantern show to harry the audience out of their seats, Cleveland saying that if the Keith–Albee circuit didn’t bother with them he didn’t see why