Mr. Campion's Lucky Day & Other Stories by Margery Allingham Read Free Book Online

delicious gags, they slipped to his tongue and he let himself go.
    The irony of the situation as he knew it he found exquisite and all the more so since he had an appreciative audience in Miss Dilling. He made covert references to the truth, fooled about and behaved generally like an irresponsible child, while Chrissie Dilling played up to him, and the sparkle returned to her eyes.
    Neither of them so much as thought of Mr. Lewis, which was perhaps fortunate. Breathless, laughing, and twenty years younger, Sir Geoffrey knocked off for lunch. He and Miss Dilling ate sausages and drank beer at the Red Lion and reminisced. Tadema put the world of reality into the back of his mind. He felt reckless and somehow slightly truculent. If the world combined to mock and frustrate him, at least he was a fine old trouper still. Yes, by God he was! And secretly he longed for the show.
    There was an electric atmosphere in the Theatre Royal that night. The whole company was in a state of whispering hysteria. The only two innocent participants in the comedy were frankly and engagingly happy. The first act went with a bang. Tadema was aware of a large and appreciative audience and gave his best. The personality revived in all its early splendour. Miss Dilling was carried away.
    No curtain calls till the end of the show; that was the rule of the house and it was observed.
    Tadema climbed happily out of mess jacket into hunting pink and from hunting pink to naval uniform without a dresser or a qualm. He romped and gagged and threw his weight about atrociously, while the provincial audience rejoiced with him. It was a glorious night.
    When the final moment came on the steps of the castle and the lovers were reunited with the immortal line, “Marry me, Mary. I’m a man again”, Sir Geoffrey swung Miss Dilling into his arms and kissed her in the style of his predecessors with a sound that was heard at the back of the gallery.
    The gallery rose and the grand, glorious sound of applause poured sweetly on his head. Tadema, gallantly leading Miss Dilling, took the curtain. Not once or twice, but again and again they came forward. At last Miss Dilling fled and Tadema took the final call alone.
    As he stood before the curtain the light shot up in the theatre and he looked around. The crowd was still applauding and Tadema bowed. He was superbly happy.
    As he raised his head again, however, he stiffened. Directly in front of him, in the middle of the first row, was a boiled shirt, and above that shirt sat the smug face of Evans of The Trumpeter.
    Tadema, grown old again, glanced sharply down the line, his blood chilled. There they were, all of them: Richardson, Playfair, Jones—the whole gang.
    He walked back through the curtains, his head held stiffly but his eyes unfocused, strode through the sniggering throng behind the scenes and entered the dressing room at the end of the corridor.
    Miss Dilling paled before his expression. He told her what he thought coldly and all the more bitterly because of his great humiliation. Miss Dilling wept.
    “I didn’t—oh, Geoff, I didn’t.”
    “Nobody else knew,” said Tadema. “Do you realise,” he went on with sudden heat, “that to get a little publicity for your paltry little company you’ve sacrificed and made a fool of me? Publicity!”
    He laughed rather theatrically and would have made his exit on that word but they were upon him like a pack of dogs. They all swarmed in through the door, jostling, laughing, eager and content that the chase was yielding a kill.
    They were all there, the half-dozen that he had seen in the stalls and more that he had missed. Even Evans in his affected boiled shirt was condescending to hurry like a mere reporter, since duty and the story demanded it.
    Tadema, obscuring the tragic Miss Dilling, faced them.
    “Let’s have the story, Sir Geoffrey—the whole story. It’ll take a bit of explaining, you know.”
    That was Richardson, grinning away like a Barbary