at time is it?"

"Eight fifty-five. The first act is just over. They can hold the curtain
twenty-five minutes."

Thea did not move. "Twenty-five and thirty-five makes sixty," she
muttered. "Tell them I'll come if they hold the curtain till I am in the
dressing-room. Say I'll have to wear her costumes, and the dresser must
have everything ready. Then call a taxi, please."

Thea had not changed her position since he first interrupted her, but
she had grown pale and was opening and shutting her hands rapidly. She
looked, Fred thought, terrified. He half turned toward the telephone,
but hung on one foot.

"Have you ever sung the part?" he asked.

"No, but I've rehearsed it. That's all right. Get the cab." Still she
made no move. She merely turned perfectly blank eyes to Dr. Archie and
said absently, "It's curious, but just at this minute I can't remember a
bar of 'Walkure' after the first act. And I let my maid go out." She
sprang up and beckoned Archie without so much, he felt sure, as knowing
who he was. "Come with me." She went quickly into her sleeping-chamber
and threw open a door into a trunk-room. "See that white trunk? It's not
locked. It's full of wigs, in boxes. Look until you find one marked
'Ring 2.' Bring it quick!" While she directed him, she threw open a
square trunk and began tossing out shoes of every shape and color.

Ottenburg appeared at the door. "Can I help you?"

She threw him some white sandals with long laces and silk stockings
pinned to them. "Put those in something, and then go to the piano and
give me a few measures in there--you know." She was behaving somewhat
like a cyclone now, and while she wrenched open drawers and closet
doors, Ottenburg got to the piano as quickly as possible and began to
herald the reappearance of the Volsung pair, trusting to memory.

In a few moments Thea came out enveloped in her long fur coat with a
scarf over her head and knitted woolen gloves on her hands. Her glassy
eye took in the fact that Fred was playing from memory, and even in her
distracted state, a faint smile flickered over her colorless lips. She
stretched out a woolly hand, "The score, please. Behind you, there."

Dr. Archie followed with a canvas box and a satchel. As they went
through the hall, the men caught up their hats and coats. They left the
music-room, Fred noticed, just seven minutes after he got the telephone
message. In the elevator Thea said in that husky whisper which had so
perp