for leaving his post, then saw the afternoon newspaper he was waving.
He took it from the man's hand, glanced at the headlines.
"What!" he gasped. "A man burn up? They're crazy! How could a . . . Varley—biggest man in the city! . . ."
He started toward the comedian.
"My God, could it be the same thing happening here? . . . Croy! Croy—wait"
But the famous comedian was already on the stage, catapulting to the center of it in the ludicrous stumble, barely escaping a fall, that was his specialty.
The manager, clutching the newspaper, stood in the wings with death-white face, and watched.
Croy went into a dance to the rhythm of the theme song of the show. He was terribly pale, and the manager saw him stagger over a difficult step. Then his voice rose with the words of the song:
"Burn me down, baby. Don't say maybe. Put your lips against my lips—and burn me down!"
The audience half rose. Croy had fallen to his knees on a dance turn. The manager saw that the perspiration that had dewed his forehead no longer showed. His skin looked dry, cracked.
Croy got up. The audience settled back again, wondering if the fall had been part of his act. Croy resumed his steps and his singing. But his voice was barely audible beyond the fifth row: "Burn me down, Sadie. Oh-h-h, lady! Look into my eyes and burn me"
Croy stopped. His words ended in a wild high note.
Then he screamed almost like a woman and his hands went to his throat. They tore at his collar and tie.
"Burning!" he screamed. "Burning"
The manager leaned, shaking, against a pillar. The newspaper, with the account in it of what had happened to Varley, rattled to the floor.
It was the same! The same awful thing was happening to Croy!
"Curtain!" he croaked. "Ring down the curtain!"
Now the audience was standing up, some of them indeed climbing to their seats to see what was happening on the stage.
Croy was prone on the boards, writhing, shrieking. The canvas backdrop billowed a little with the heat coming from his body.
"Curtain!" roared the manager. "For God's sake—are you deaf?"
The curtain dropped. Croy's convulsed body was hidden from the sight of the audience. With the curtain's fall, he stopped screaming. It was as though the thing had sliced through the sound like a great descending guillotine. But it was not the curtain that had killed the sound.
Croy was dead. His limbs still jerked and writhed. But it was not the movement of life. It was the movement of a twisted roll of paper that writhes and jerks as it is consumed in flame.
The manager drew a deep breath. Then, with his knees trembling, he walked out onto the stage.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he announced, trying to make his voice sound out over the pandemonium that ruled over the theater. "Mr. Croy has had a heart attack. The show will not go on. You may get your money at the box-office on the way out."
He fairly ran from the stage and back of the curtain, where terrified girls and men were clumped around Croy's body—or what was left of it.
Heart attack! The manager's mouth distorted over that description.
