Sisters (30 page)

And then a shot rang out.
And then another, and the boy fell against her.

"What!" Sophie
gasped. "What is it? Who's shooting?" She reached out for
the reins and stopped the horse.

The boy started to right
himself, then seemed to think better of it. "Better get down,
ma'am. I don't know who it is, but they're sure enough shootin' at
us."

She felt something damp,
looked down and saw the boy's arm was bleeding. "They've hit
you. Is it bad?"

"Just the arm--"

The sound of another shot
cut off his words.

"We can't stay here,"
Sophie said. "Can you walk? Can you run?"

He nodded, but his face was
pale and clammy-looking, and she wondered just how bad his wound
really was. Another shot rang out. Sophie heard it hit the side of
the carriage, heard the horse whinny, felt the phaeton move as the
animal made frightened sidesteps.

They had to flee. She
jumped out on the far side of the carriage, being careful to favor
her bad ankle, then helped the boy. Where could they run? Where could
they hide? The nearest building was the opera house. It was dark;
there was obviously no play tonight, but it could still provide
shelter. Keeping low, she ran to its huge walnut door and pulled on
it. It was open! She motioned for the boy to follow, and opening the
door as little distance as possible, she urged him in, then went
after.

When she shut the door
behind her, it was very dark. The only light came through the window
from a streetlight outside. Sophie could make out a ticket counter to
her immediate right. Directly ahead was a short flight of stairs
going up to a hallway where a large opening on the right led into the
auditorium.

They had to move on.
Whoever had shot at them might have seen where they had gone, and
follow. She led the boy up the short flight of stairs and down the
hallway past the auditorium entrance. Perhaps the hallway would lead
them to some sort of rear exit. In any case, she liked the closed,
protected feeling of it much more than the idea of the auditorium's
openness.

She gently urged the boy
down the hall. It got darker as they got farther away from the
windows at the front, and Sophie put her left hand on the wall to
feel her way. Suddenly the wall ended, and she saw they they could
turn left down another wide passage. She tried to orient herself with
outside, and decided this passage must be to the opera house's other
main entrance, the one on Seventeenth Street. That would do them no
good. If whoever shot at them was still out there, he might well be
able to use the Seventeenth Street door from his vantage point. It
wasn't that far from the Hill Street entrance.

She put her hands out in
front of her and walked forward until she touched another wall. She
felt along it to the right until she came to an opening, a small back
hallway, she decided, which must lead deeper into the building.
"Here," she whispered to the boy. Her left hand on the wall
again, she led him down the hall--until it ended in a water closet.
"We'll have to go back," she whispered, trying to keep fear
and frustration out of her voice. They had retraced their path only a
short way when she felt a door in the wall on which she now had her
left hand. She opened it quietly, very quietly, and saw that it let
into the stage wings.

She had taken a few steps
toward the stage, when suddenly the lights went on! Bright arc
lights, they blinded her for a moment, stunned her after that, so it
took her a moment to realize the lights must have been turned on from
the front of the opera house. Whoever was after them couldn't have
advanced any farther, and as long as he was at the front, she and the
boy were safe. Standing in the wings as they were, no one in the
front part of the opera house could see them.

But they had to hide.
Someone was in her looking for them, and they couldn't just stand
here waiting to be discovered. She looked around for a place, and saw
the boy's face. He was deathly pale, on the verge of fainting. They
needed a place he could lie down.

Looking to her right, she
saw a box entrance. She put her arm around the boy, and walked him to
it slowly, quietly. Once inside, she helped him lie on the carpeted
floor and knelt beside him. His jacket was soaked with blood. She had
no idea how bad his wound was, but she knew she could not let him to
continue to bleed this way.

"Have you a knife?"
she whispered.

"In my pocket. The
right one."

She reached in and got the
knife, a small two-bladed affair, and started to make a cut in her
petticoat so she could tear off the bottom and bind his arm. But then
she realized the ripping noise would be too much noise. She thought
of her stocking, and as quietly as she could, she took it off and
would it tightly around the boy's arm.

When she had finished, she
shut her eyes and listened hard. Did she hear footsteps? Yes,
definitely footsteps. Someone was walking slowly down the
dress-circle stairs. Or was he closer? She didn't want to risk
looking over the edge of the box, but how else to see who it was,
where he was? She examined the partial wall which surrounded the
front of the box. A wine-colored plush fabric covered it. She pulled
at the fabric and saw it was only loosely attached to a wirework
screen. Working silently, she pulled enough of the fabric aside so
that she had a small opening through which she could see.

Yes, there he was. Rodman.
He had reached the bottom of the dress circle and was stepping onto
the parquet. The muzzle of his rifle glinted in the light from the
arc lamps on the walls. Unfortunate that he had not illuminated the
great overhead chandelier, Sophie found herself thinking. The
refracted light from its crystals would no doubt show off the gun
barrel to even more dramatic effect.

She shook her head. These
were the thoughts of exhaustion, and too much was at stake to let her
mind wander. Rodman was moving slowly up the parquet aisle, turning
his head from side to side, looking behind each row of seats. He
reached the orchestra, scanned the stage, then looked up at the
boxes. Sophie thought his eyes lingered a moment on the box in which
she and the boy were hiding, and her heart pounded so hard she was
sure he could hear it. But then his eyes moved on, and he slowly
turned around. He walked back up the parquet aisle, then up the
dress-circle stairs. She saw him move through the wide opening into
the entry hall. He would search there now. He would go down the hall,
see the small passageway, follow it to the stage wings. And then he'd
surely look in the boxes.

They had to move on! But
where?

She raised her head above
the box rail just enough so she could see the stage. It was set with
a garden scene. They could hide behind one of the pieces of scenery,
she thought, behind the backdrop perhaps, but it would be only a
matter of time until he found them. Then her eyes fastened on the
oblong shape on the left side of the stage floor. A trap! Yes, and
there was another one on the other side. That's what they should do,
go down into the trap room, but they would have to expose themselves
so long to do it, have to walk out on the stage, slide the door to
the trap back, and then climb down into it.

And then she thought: there
must be a center trap. She looked farther back on the stage to where
two cardboard barriers painted to look like marble rails jutted out,
one from each side of the stage. Between the barriers was an opening
meant to represent a gate to the stairway painted on the backdrop.
And on the floor of the opening, she could just make out the outlines
of the center trap. It would be possible to crouch down behind one of
the cardboard barriers and slide the trap open. Getting down into it,
then, would require only a moment's exposure.

She leaned down to the
wounded boy: "Can you walk? Not far, just a little way."

Without opening his eyes,
he nodded.

Sophie took off her other
shoe and stocking, noted how discolored and swollen her ankle was,
and then quickly took off the boy's boots and socks and shoved all
the footgear behind a drapery. It was crucial that their footsteps
make no noise, essential that they not slip on the stage boards. She
helped him up, put one of his arms around her shoulder, and trying to
be quick and yet utterly silent, walked him out of the box and
through the wing until they came to the cardboard rail. She helped
him lie down behind it; then she crawled to the edge. There was the
trap, but the finger groove for opening it was on the far side of the
cover, and she couldn't reach it from where she was hidden.

Then she heard him walking.
Rodman. Where was he? In the narrow hall! He was coming down the back
hallway! She moved out into the opening between the barriers, put her
fingers in the groove, pushed down on the trap cover with the palm of
her hand, and pulled back at the same time, praying it would open
quietly. It slid back noiselessly, and she looked down into it. The
trap mechanism, which could be raised and lowered from the trap
opening to the floor of the trap room below, was only a few feet
below the level of the stage. She roused the boy and got his feet
into the trap opening. The suddenly, unexpectedly, his whole body
slipped forward, and he lay fainted on top of the trap mechanism.
Quickly she got in after him, half-expecting that his weight would
start the mechanism descending. But instead of lowering them to the
floor of the trap room, it stayed in place. Probably locked, Sophie
thought.

Again she heard Rodman,
closer now. She reached up to slide the trap cover shut. It had a
metal handle on the underside, and she grabbed it, pulled on it.
Frantic to shut the clover, she pulled too hard, and it slammed
closed. The noise rang in Sophie's ears, echoed through the opera
house.

Now he'd know where to look
for them! They had to find a way out! And it was almost completely
dark. Some light came from right above them, thin lines of light from
around the center trap opening, and there were similar lines of light
where the left-and right-side traps were. But it was so little! She
could hardly see anything, and she knew she had to climb down from
the trap mechanism and find a door.

She pushed her feet over
the side and found a foothold on a metal support. She made her way
down inch by inch, and it seemed forever before she touched the
floor. Then she put her hands out in front of her until she came to a
wall. Her back against it, she edged her way around, feeling for a
door.

She bumped into something
in the corner. Reaching out, she felt a wooden handle. She took hold
of it and moved the object. It was heavy, very heavy, a long polelike
thing. She felt it, moving it through her hands until she came to the
end, a heavy metal hook. What was it? What was the hook meant to fit
into? And then she realized the instrument was for closing the trap
from the trap-room floor. One could reach the trap cover with it, fit
the hook into the metal handle, and slide the cover shut.

She heard him! He was on
the stage. And then suddenly the side trap directly above her head
slid open. She was standing enough away from the wall so that the
light from above flooded down on her. Rodman was looking down. She
saw his face, saw him put his rifle to his shoulder. She screamed and
plunged into the dark on the other side of the room.

He began to fire wildly,
randomly, into the darkness. The firing stopped for a moment, then
started again. The noise was deafening. Sophie was crouched down
behind the trap mechanism, and she could feel the room vibrate with
the noise from the rifle, rock with the impact of the bullets. He was
mad, she thought, a madman.

She felt fury pour over her
as though a vial had broken, and clutching at the long hook she had
dragged with her, she waited for another break in the shooting. It
came, and she looked at the open trap to see him withdrawing the
rifle. She edged out of her hiding place, waited until she saw him
lower the rifle into the trap again, and then she charged.

She pushed the hook up into
the opening, shoving with all her strength. She felt it hit him,
heard him grunt in surprise. And then she twisted it and pulled down.

Yes! She had him. Where,
she wasn't sure, but she could feel the hook was in his flesh, and
she pulled with all her strength. She heard him cry out in rage, felt
the hook move as he tried to roll away. And then he grabbed the
handle, pulled it out of her grasp. And she knew she had to run
again.

She looked around, and now,
with the light from the open trap, she could see two doors, one very
near her, the other across the trap room. She decided on the far
door. It would put her farther away from where Rodman had last seen
her.

But the boy? What about the
boy? She looked at the trap mechanism. He couldn't be seen from the
floor, and now that Rodman knew where she was, he wouldn't bother
with opening the other traps. No, unless she'd wounded him too badly,
he'd be coming down here after her. Probably there were stairs behind
the stage, and he'd be coming down them into the trap room to find
her. When he did, he wouldn't see the boy.

She threw open the
trap-room door and saw an exit right across the hall. She flung
herself against it, but it was locked, and it was a solid wood door.
There was no glass she could break in it, nor were there any other
windows in this short hallway. Other doors opened off it, but they
were on an inside wall. She was sure they led to dressing rooms,
useless places to hide, because once she was discovered, she would be
cornered.

At the west end of the
hall, a narrow stairway led upward. As she frantically surveyed the
situation, she kept glancing at it anxiously, thinking Rodman might
at any moment appear on those stairs.

But no! He'd been on the
other side of the stage. These stairs were probably one of a pair,
and he'd be coming down the other ones, entering the trap-room door
from the other side, and when he saw she wasn't there, he'd come out
the trap-room door she'd just existed. If only she had something
heavy and could wait for him to open the door and deliver him a blow.
If only she still had the hooked pole! But all she carried was the
boy's pocketknife, and that was useless. Before she could do Rodman
any harm with it, she would she shot dead.