E Phillips Oppenheim

The Seven Conundrums E Phillips Oppenheim

Rose always insisted that she was psychic, and I have some faith myself in presentiments. At any rate, we both declared, on that Monday night before the curtain went up, thatsomething was going to happen. Leonard had no convictions of the sort himself but he wasfavourably disposed towards our attitude. He put the matter succinctly."Here we are," he pointed out, "sold to the devil, body and soul, and if the old boy doesn'tmake some use of us, I shall begin to be afraid the whole thing's coming to an end. Fivepounds a week, and a reserve fund for costumes and posters suits me very nicely, thankyou.""I don't think you need worry," I told him. "It doesn't seem reasonable to imagine thatwe've been sent to the slums of Liverpool for nothing.""Then there are those posters," Rose put in, "offering prizes to amateurs. I'm quite certainthere's some method in that. Besides--"She hesitated. We both pressed her to go on."You'll think this silly, but for the last three nights I've had a queer sort of feeling that Mr. Thomson was somewhere in the audience. I can't explain it. I looked everywhere for him. Ieven tried looking at the people one by one, all down the rows. I never saw any one in theleast like him. All the same, I expected to hear his voice at any moment."