cliffe.

"I let myself down through a skylight into the bowels of the place:
found, with the help of matches, the operating box and the gallery,
switched on the lights, and shinned down a pillar to the stalls.
After that, to open the Emergency Exit and admit my audience was what
the detective stories call the work of a moment. I re-closed the
door carefully, and climbed back to manipulate the lantern.

"I had helped to work one of these shows once, at a Sunday School
treat--or a Primrose Fete--forget which--down in the country.
It's quite simple when you have the hang of it. . . . I made a mull
with the first reel: got it upside down; and Petunia, from somewhere
deep under the gallery, called up 'Gar'n!' It was a Panorama of
Pekin, anyway, and dull enough whichever way you took it.

"After that we fairly spun through 'The Cowpuncher's Stunt'--a train
robbery--'The Missing Million,' and a man tumbling out of the top
storey of Flat-Iron Building, New York. He went down, storey after
storey, to the motto of 'Keep on Moving,' and just before he hit the
ground he began to tumble up again. On his way up he smacked all the
faces looking out at the windows--I often wonder, Otty, how they get
people to do these things: but I suppose the risk's taken into
account in the pay.

"Farrell took a great fancy to 'Keep on Moving.' Up to this we had
been snug as fleas in a blanket; but now he started to make such a
noise, encoring, that I had to step down to the gallery and lean over
it and request Petunia to take the cover off the piano and play
something, if she could, to deaden the outcries. 'Something domestic
on the loud pedal,' I suggested. 'Create an impression that we're
holding a rehearsal after hours.'

"She came forward, looked up, and said that I reminded her of Romeo
and Juliet upside down.

"'Of course!' I explained. 'We're in Pekin. Get to the piano,
quick.'

"'I've forgotten my scales,' she answered back, between Farrell's
calls of ''Core! 'Core!'--'Will it do if I sit on the keys?'

"She went to the instrument. 'Often, and _con expressione_!'
I shouted; 'and back-pedal for all you are worth!' Then I climbed
down and collared Farrell, for the police had begun to hammer on the
door. I grabbed for his head: but it must have been by the collar I
caught him--that being where he wore most fur. . . . There was a
stairway between the stalls and the gallery. I whirled him up it,
and leaned over the gallery r