..."

But you never know. Call no evening dull till it is over. However
uninteresting its early stages may have been that night was to be as
animated and exciting as any audience could desire--a night to be
looked back to and talked about, for just as the critic of _London
Gossip_ wrote those damning words on his programme, guiding his pencil
uncertainly in the dark, a curious yet familiar odour stole over the
house.

The stalls got it first, and sniffed. It rose to the dress-circle, and
the dress-circle sniffed. Floating up, it smote the silent gallery.
And, suddenly, coming to life with a single-minded abruptness, the
gallery ceased to be silent.

"Fire!"

Sir Chester Portwood, ploughing his way through a long speech, stopped
and looked apprehensively over his shoulder. The girl with the lisp,
who had been listening in a perfunctory manner to the long speech,
screamed loudly. The voice of an unseen stage-hand called thunderously
to an invisible "Bill" to commere quick. And from the scenery on the
prompt side there curled lazily across the stage a black wisp of
smoke.

"Fire! Fire! Fire!"

"Just," said a voice at Jill's elbow, "what the play needed!" The
mysterious author was back in his seat again.

CHAPTER III

JILL AND THE UNKNOWN ESCAPE

I

In these days when the authorities who watch over the welfare of the
community have taken the trouble to reiterate encouragingly in printed
notices that a full house can be emptied in three minutes and that all
an audience has to do in an emergency is to walk, not run, to the
nearest exit, fire in the theatre has lost a good deal of its old-time
terror. Yet it would be paltering with the truth to say that the
audience which had assembled to witness the opening performance of the
new play at the Leicester was entirely at its ease. The asbestos
curtain was already on its way down, which should have been
reassuring: but then asbestos curtains never look the part. To the lay
eye they seem just the sort of thing that will blaze quickest.
Moreover, it had not yet occurred to the man at the switchboard to
turn up the house-lights, and the darkness was disconcerting.

Portions of the house were taking the thing better than other
portions. Up in the gallery a vast activity was going on. The clatter
of feet almost drowned the shouting. A moment before it would have
seemed incredible that anything could have made the occupants of the
gallery animated, but the insti