“There’s no Mauclair and no assistants! No one at the lights, I tell you! You can imagine,” roared the stage-manager, “that that little girl must have been carried off by somebody else: she didn’t run away by herself! It was a calculated stroke and we have to find out about it.⁠ ⁠… And what are the managers doing all this time?⁠ ⁠… I gave orders that no one was to go down to the lights and I posted a fireman in front of the gasman’s box beside the organ. Wasn’t that right?”

“Yes, yes, quite right, quite right. And now let’s wait for the commissary.”

The stage-manager walked away, shrugging his shoulders, fuming, muttering insults at those milksops who remained quietly squatting in a corner while the whole theater was topsy-turvy.

Gabriel and Mercier were not so quiet as all that. Only they had received an order that paralyzed them. The managers were not to be disturbed on any account. Rémy had violated that order and met with no success.