Chapter Twenty-three

“So glad you could make it,” Greg Hudson said as Spraggue sat down to apply his greasepaint. “It is seven o’clock; Arthur expects us in the green room at seven-fifteen, so you’d better step on it.”

Spraggue ignored him, opened his makeup kit, laid out pencils and brushes in a neat row. Hudson didn’t want an elaborate explanation of his sporadic rehearsal attendance any more than he wanted to know the exact number of laboratory-animal-supply houses in Boston. He just had a case of pre-performance jitters.

“Do you think my base is too pale?” Greg asked petulantly.

“Light’s bad down here.” Spraggue stared at Hudson critically. “Looks okay. If Darien throws up, you can change it for opening night.”

“Not before some press creep writes that I look like a pasty-faced turkey.”

“You don’t like the critics?”

“Love ’em, love ’em all.” Hudson posed in front of the mirror, adjusted his cravat, ruffled his hair. “You should have been here earlier. Fur’s been flying. The great Gustave doesn’t like his program credit. Wants his name up with the immortal Langford and Our Lady of the Orchids.”

“Gus?” Spraggue checked his base. Good color. He hoped he’d have enough time for the spirit gum on his chin to set properly. It itched.

“I’ve worked with Gus before,” said Hudson with a sigh. “This is general procedure. He mouses around all rehearsal, just begging you to step on him. And then when you finally do, he throws a tantrum. Much too late to do any good. Stalked right out of his dressing room. Called it ‘a dim and nasty closet’ unsuited to his position in the company.”

“Where’d he go?”

“He grabbed Eddie’s room. The kid was late. And when Eddie finally does walk in, he’s not wearing his glasses. Method acting, you know. He sees there’s someone else in his dressing room, so he figures he counted wrong. Goes on to the next room and blunders into Lady Caroline in the raw. Poor jerk couldn’t even see!”

Spraggue chuckled. “Did she send him scurrying or attack him?”

“You should have heard the screams! I thought one of last night’s rats was chomping on her toes. Karen came down and smoothed everything out. Eddie’s sharing his room with Gus, poor slob.”

“Should we invite Gus in here?” Spraggue asked reluctantly. “It is bigger.”

“No way. Let the lunatics stay together. He’d just take it as an insult, Spraggue.”

“An insult?”

“Believe me. When he’s like this, if you say hello to him, it’s an insult.” Greg paused for breath. “That beard makes you look older. I like it.”

Spraggue changed the subject. “Time?”

“Four minutes to company call. Far as I can tell, Langford hasn’t even shown up yet.”

Spraggue grunted, concentrated on lining his forehead.

“And Emma is here, so it’s not that. She didn’t happen to come with you, did she?”

Spraggue glanced up. It had been Greg in that car last night. “No,” he said evenly.

Footsteps echoed down the stone passageway, quick, loud, and angry. A door banged shut, swung open, and was firmly reclosed. Greg leaned out acrobatically into the hallway, turned back to Spraggue, and giggled.

“Judging,” he said, eyebrows elevated, “by the dramatic entrance, the majestic footsteps, the lateness of the hour, I would say that the great Langford has arrived. And it sounds like he’s throwing a fit of his own!”

Emma Healey, lovely in innocent Lucy’s pale blue, hurried past the doorway.

“Ah, love,” murmured Greg Hudson, “or should I say ‘Ah, lust’? Wonderful how these womenfolk do rush to their afflicted menfolk. No sooner had Grayling exited stage right in a huff, than little Georgina ran off to join him in his exile. Think I’ll throw a tantrum and see who I get.… Deirdre’s much too tall and grim.… Eddie, now, he’s a dear, but so isolated, so lonely. And the stage manager’s got a thing for him, don’t you think? I don’t suppose you’d come to my aid. I’m not particular. I’d take comfort from anyone, except, I think, Caroline. One has to draw the line somewhere.”

The whistling started down the corridor—low, mournful notes, no familiar tune.

“Who is doing that?” Caroline demanded, voice shrill through her closed dressing-room door. “Stop it at once!”

“Bad luck.” Hudson’s face was grave. “Bad luck. Just what we need tonight.”

“You believe that?”

“Well, I don’t whistle in my dressing room and I don’t quote the goddamned Scottish play. And I wish to hell somebody’d stop that whistling!” He raised his voice on the last phrase and hollered it down the hallway.

The whistling ceased.

Greg took a deep breath. “See? That episode upset Caroline. But does anyone go off to soothe Our Lady? Not our boy Eddie. He finds her a predatory old hag. Not you. Not me. Now, if our great director were here, or our rotund house manager, you’d see another story entirely. They care: If this weren’t Arthur’s play, that woman wouldn’t be near a starring role. You can see it, can’t you? She’s not that good. She lets them all take it away from her—Langford, Emma—hell, she just about asks you politely to please steal the damn scene—”

Karen Snow’s clear voice interrupted Hudson’s outburst. “Green room in two minutes, please! Two minutes!”

Plenty of time. Dracula didn’t make his entrance until the middle of Act One. Langford could dress after the meeting. Spraggue zipped his striped medico trousers and pulled on his jacket as he strode down the hall.

Despite their paint and powder, the actors looked unnaturally pale. Deirdre’s lips moved silently; she had trouble remembering lines. Georgina and Gus Grayling stood off to one side, whispering united against the world. Hudson looked even paler than he had in the dressing room. Last night’s drinking bout, or a more recent affliction?-He was none too steady on his feet.

Darien arrived, to the actors’ polite applause. Caroline, entrance neatly timed to follow the director’s, came in and kissed Darien warmly. She squeezed his hand while he spoke.

Standard director’s speech number two: thank you for your hard labor; give your all tonight.

Spraggue hardly listened. He kept his eye on his fellow actors. Emma Healey came in late. John Langford never showed.

The gathering was brief. Spraggue hurried back to his dressing room, knotted his tie, and powdered off his makeup.

The performance elapsed with all the sequenceless urgency of a nightmare. Scenes shot by, punctuated by applause. Lights dimmed, blackened, sparkled, dimmed again.

“It’s not going too badly.” Standing in the wings, Spraggue felt Karen’s presence before he heard her whisper and only then realized, how keyed up he was, every nerve primed for some new disaster.

“Did you notice the blooper Langford pulled?” she went on. “Must have skipped six deathless pages. Emma brought him right back, spoon-fed him the lines, while Caroline looked on with great cow eyes.”

“Wish I’d seen it,” Spraggue said.

“They’ll razz him forever. The infallible British actor!”

Blackout. Karen disappeared. Spraggue flexed the tense muscles in his shoulders, took three deep breaths, walked onstage.

The curtain rose in darkness. Spraggue froze in his final scene position, stage right. Lights flared, glowing like a galaxy of sudden stars.

Greg Hudson spoke first, darting angrily around the set, searching the rocky crypt for the casket of the Vampire King.

HARKER: The Slovaks brought the coffin in here! I swear they did!

VAN HELSING: No exit.

HARKER: We’ll catch them! Make them talk!

SEWARD: No time, Harker. The sun’s almost down.

VAN HELSING: Come, if the coffin was brought in here, it must be here. Perhaps a secret panel? A hidden room?

SEWARD: A trapdoor?

HARKER: Take that wall, Doctor. I’ll try this one. Professor, tap on the floor. Mina, help me.

VAN HELSING: She’s weak, Jonathan. I doubt she can aid us.

SEWARD: Stay with her then, Professor. Jon and I will search.

Search they did. Forty-five seconds of busy silence with all the classic elements: life-and-death conflict, good colliding with evil, and a time limit—urgency. Spraggue and Hudson pounded the set, stirring up clouds of dust, listening frantically, intensely, for a hollow sound. They strained to lift papier-mâché rocks, felt in crannies for secret levers.

HARKER: How can we get in?

SEWARD: There must be a way—something—to—

Caroline laughed, a low, cunning growl.

VAN HELSING: She knows.

HARKER: Mina.

SEWARD: Help us, Mina.

MINA: You poor petty fools! You think you can defeat him? Here, in his own land?

SEWARD: Jon, take the pick. We’ll break the wall down!

MINA: Fools!

HARKER: I felt something give! Keep working! The crack’s widening!

With a snarl, Caroline threw herself on Hudson, tearing the pick from his hands. The fight was on.

All Hudson’s careful choreography paid off. Caroline fought like a madwoman, shrieking abuse at the three men, determined to protect her Vampire Lord. Seward twisted the weapon from her grasp. Van Helsing caught her arms, pinned them behind her. The men carried her, kicking and screaming, downstage, away from Dracula’s hidden lair.

Even the slap worked. Caroline turned with it, just at the crucial second. Great sound, no pain. She opened her eyes wide for one instant, sank to the ground sobbing.

HARKER: Mina! Darling!

SEWARD: She’ll be all right.

VAN HELSING: Quickly!

SEWARD: The stake!

HARKER: No time! The sun! The sun!

Feverishly, the three men broke down the jagged wall, exposing the secret cavern. Stage center—a platform. On it, raked so that the audience could see the ornate carving, the elaborate scrollwork—the coffin.

Spraggue and Hudson sprang on top of the dais, shifted the lid off the coffin, staggering with its supposed weight. The Vampire King lay exposed to the audience, majestic, forbidding. Spraggue noticed beads of sweat on Langford’s brow and upper lip.

The Vampire King opened his eyes.

VAN HELSING: Don’t look at him!

Hudson’s knife flashed in the spotlight. Spraggue drew his, pressed its blunt edge against Langford’s neck. The chicken-blood pouch was in place; a crimson ribbon soaked through Langford’s starched white collar.

Greg brandished his blade, grasping it in both hands. With a cry, he plunged it down into the Vampire King’s chest. Blood welled up from the wound. Langford’s scream changed to a moan, bubbled in his throat, and stopped abruptly. A gout of dark blood gushed from a corner of his slack mouth.

The actors froze. Spraggue’s eyes met Hudson’s, his hand reached for the stained knife.

The curtain fell.

Pandemonium!