The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion Read Online Free

of the others leaving.
    Vermillion smiled. “Do you understand repertory, Mr. Fletcher?”
    â€œMarshal. I think I do. You shuffle yourselves like cards and play each other’s parts.”
    â€œAnd whatever parts are called for beyond the first and second leads: grooms, nurses, Lord High Mayors, lunatics—spear-carriers, we call them. Most plays have five or six such characters, nonspeaking usually, but essential to the business onstage. Some have dozens. We play them all. There isn’t time to step outside for a smoke, much less rob a bank.”
    Fletcher struggled upright. “Who said anything about robbing a bank?”
    â€œA theater is a leaky old barn, Marshal. Rumors fly in and out like sparrows.”
    Ragland, too, knew Fletcher’s purpose; the audience had been lined up as far back as the stage, waiting to give the head usher the information he wanted and get out. He’d overheard them talking on his way there from the dressing room.
    Asked if he also was aware of the situation, Major Davies thumped his stick and demanded to know if his wife was to be subjected to this infernal inquisition.
    Miss Clay resembled a little girl with her makeup scrubbed off and a silk scarf over her head, a smart coat covering her robe. She was sweet and answered questions readily. Mme. Mort-Davies, who had had time to fix her face and hair and put on street clothes, provided direct responses, offering no details beyond those requested. Their sessions went swiftly.
    At the end, the marshal felt he had a clear picture of what each player had been doing at the time of the robbery. A score of interviews conducted at random over Sunday convinced him that none of the players had been outside the view of six hundred witnesseslong enough to have committed it; but lazy men, once they’ve overcome inertia, are thorough. Before he led a posse out of town in pursuit of a lone fugitive, he directed three full-time deputies to search the theater, the company’s rooms at the Railway Arms, and their many trunks and bags for the missing money, which contained too much gold to conceal on the person. The Prairie Rose arsenal of fencing foils and stage pistols was impressive but hardly conclusive, as everyone owned firearms. Their props were numerous and varied and included a bicycle. The bandit’s attire, so vaguely described by Mr. Geary, might have been anywhere among the dozens of costumes and accessories so tightly packed in pasteboard drawers and placed upon thin wooden hangers, or nowhere at all.
    Neither the search nor the posse was successful. On Monday morning, butt-sore and lighter by several inconsequential pounds, Marshal Fletcher apologized to the players for their inconvenience and escorted them to the depot. As the train pulled away, he saw his employment future leave with it. For once, the swarm of flies that overhung Tannery had given way to a cloud of doubt concerning the local system of law enforcement. Every merchant in town had lost some portion of his profits while the Count of Monte Cristo was busy settling old scores, and all Fletcher had managed to do was discourage him and his party from ever coming back to free the town from its travails.
    Eight miles due west of Tannery and a brief, kidney-rattling buckboard ride north of the U.P. tracks lay the hamlet of New Hope, now entering the late stages of dissolution. An establishing shot lingers significantly on a plank sign with a black X painted through “NEW” and “NO” lettered above in the same dismalshade. The town’s founder had undertaken to swindle E. H. Harriman in a business transaction, and without pause to reflect, the dyspeptic force behind the Transcontinental Railroad had altered the construction by a quarter-inch on the surveyors’ map. New Hope withered.
    As their transportation slowed to negotiate the prairie-dog town that had taken up residence on the broad single street, April Clay frowned