I fought my way around to the steps at one side of the proscenium. I ran up them and through dusty curtains into the hush of a backstage world. The playing of the fiddler seemed to be thrown outward, as was intended by the acoustics, and while I could hear and see from the wings, some of the tumult quieted. I found a stool that had been left near the curtain pulleys, and sat down to put my hands over my ears and close my eyes, to let a semblance of quiet flow through me.

Where was Jon? I hadn't seen him since we danced. I didn't know until later that he was no longer in the building.

Voices reached me from overhead, and I realized that someone else had found the stairs to the old dressing room loft. I hated that place after what had happened to me up there, but it was anyone's privilege to explore. Though perhaps I'd better warn whoever it was about the splintered catwalk, in case it hadn't been blocked off.

I stepped to the foot of the stairs to call out, and then, abruptly, as if at a signal-which Ingram had indeed giventhe fiddling stopped. My attention was distracted to the stage. When the crowd paused in the middle of a promenade to look 3*9.

up toward the footlights, Mark Ingram strode out from the opposite wings, carrying a microphone in his hand. He walked with scarcely a limp tonight, handsome and powerful of build, his gray hair growing thickly back from his forehead and an air of command in every line of his body.

I stepped into the nearest wing, where I could better see and hear him. My heart began to beat rapidly, as if with some dreadful antic.i.p.ation. The sense of danger had quickened in me. What, exactly, he meant to do I wasn't sure, but I had a feeling that it would be outrageous and dramatic, and that it would be intended to crush and defeat my grandmother. I must try to get back to her as soon as I could, but for now I could only stand arrested, along with all the others who stared at the man on the stage.

As I looked across the boards-empty now except for the current fiddler on his stool, and for Ingram standing before the footlights-I saw that Gail Cullen had come into the opposite wing, resplendent in her rodeo outfit, all her attention upon the man who occupied stage center.

The theater quieted, all the myriad faces upturned toward Ingram as he began to speak. When I glanced across the stage again, Gail had disappeared. Perhaps she had stepped out of sight behind another wing.

At first Ingram's words were quiet-a welcome to his guests, a promise of more festivity to come. Then he went on.

"I have an announcement to make that may interest a number of you. Some of you already know about my plans for Jasper. It will be opened to the public about a year from now, and it is going to be one of the finest year-round resorts in the Rockies. I can promise you that the skiing will be superb and that the town will have a great deal to offer to those who want to visit us and see what the old West was like.

The crowd cheered. No one contradicted him. No one spoke up to say that he didn't own the valley, that he didn't own all 320.

of Domino, or all of Jasper, for that matter. I edged forward in the wings. Someone had to answer him. He was marking something come about through his sheer, overpowering arrogance and the conviction that he could make happen whatever he willed. I was growing angry now, and anger overcame my fears. I ceased to dread the thunderbolt. He had to be stopped, and I moved toward the stage.

He must have caught movement from the corner of his eye, for he turned his head and looked at me.

"Ah," he said, "here is Laurie Morgan now. I'd like to introduce her to you. And I want to introduce her grandmother, Persis Morgan, as well, since she is part of Jasper's history."

There was scattered applause from the crowd, and Ingram beckoned to me. "Won't you come out, Miss Morgan?"

What plan he might be concocting to embarra.s.s me and humiliate Persis, I would never know. At just that moment a ringing cry of terror stopped him. The sound came from the back of the stage, high above it. Ingram turned to stare upward, and a sigh of horror whispered through the crowd.

Over our heads Belle Durant clung with both hands to the rail of the catwalk that led across the stage above the flats. A hush fell over the entire theater, and with the strange fatality of slow movement we watched as the railing began to crumble in her grasp, breaking away. Then the action speeded up dreadfully, and she fell through the broken boards of the catwalk, crashing to the stage.

The sound of her fall echoed sickly for a moment in the crowd's stunned silence. I rushed toward her, reaching her before Ingram could recover, since he moved less easily than I. Belle's satin dress made a pool of green on the floor of the stage, and I dropped to my knees beside her.

She opened her eyes and looked up at me. "See-Tully," she said, and closed them again.

Then Ingram was there, pushing me aside. He knelt, check- 321.

ing for a pulse in her neck, shouting for medical help. I got to my feet, stunned and helpless, making no sense of her last whispered words.

A woman dressed incongruously as a dance hall girl came out of the crowd in response to Ingram's call for a doctor and mounted the steps to the stage. There were others crowding around now-Caleb and Gail and Hillary, among all the strangers.

My grandmother would be alone, I thought. I must go to her at once, but I found it hard to move in my state of shock. The thunderbolt had indeed fallen from the sky.

It was Hillary who drew me away gently and took me through the crowd to where Persis sat alone near the lobby entrance. Her face was white, her mouth drawn and grim, but when she held out her hand to me it did not tremble.

"It was Belle, wasn't it? Is she-do you know?"

I shook my head, still feeling numb. "A doctor is with her.

id Mr. Ingram."

"Him! Why was she up there? How did it happen?"

"I don't know. That catwalk was already splintered. Why she would go out on it-" I broke off, afraid to think about possibilities.

"She wouldn't," Persis said. "She didn't like that gallery. I doubt that her fall was an accident."

Caleb had fought his way through the crowd to Persis' side, and he spoke sharply. "You don't know that it wasn't an accident."

"Belle spoke to me," I said. "She told me to see Tully. He's the caretaker in Domino, isn't he? But why would she tell me to see him?"

No one answered me.

"Go and find out how she is," Persis said to Caleb.

He hurried away, and she sat with her eyes closed. I shook my head at Hillary when he would have spoken. I wished that Jon were here, wished for his capability and good sense. We needed him badly now, and where was he?

By this time much of the crowd was spilling out of the theater, chattering excitedly, speculating. The floor was less crowded than before, and Caleb came back to us quickly.

"I'm afraid she's dying. It will take too long for an ambulance to get here and move her to a hospital. Ingram's talking about flying her out by helicopter. But he can't do that until daylight."

"Here they come," Hillary said.

Ingram himself was carrying her, and when I saw his stricken face I knew how much that hard man cared about Belle Durant.

Her red wig had fallen off, and her own vividly tinted hair hung loose. I could see blood streaking her face, see how pale she looked above the green decolletage. The doctor walked beside her, spangles glittering, but no longer seeming incongruous. I felt rea.s.sured by the look of concern on the woman's face.

"Will you go with them, Hillary?" I pleaded. "Maybe he'll let you be there."

Hillary pressed my shoulder and went away.

It was Caleb who took charge. He gave Persis his arm to lean on, and I walked on her other side. We forced our way through the foyer and onto the street, crowded now with all those costurned visitors, looking strangely as though they belonged. As though they had all been here before on the streets of Jasper.

"We'll never get a car through this jam," Caleb said.

Persis ceased to lean so heavily on my arm and drew herself tall. "I can walk. Just help me a little."

Somehow we got her through. Before we turned our back on the Opera House, I looked again toward the Timberline, where Ingram was carrying Belle into the lobby. Gail Cullen stood near the entrance. She had lost or discarded her hat, and she was staring wide-eyed at the woman in Ingram's arms, the sequins glittering on her jacket in the Timberline's lights. Hillary ran up the steps behind them as I watched. Then Caleb pushed a way along the street for us, and we walked on toward Morgan House.

I thought of that moment v, hen I'd heard voices in the dressing room loft. The words had been soft, whispered, and I couldn't tell whether they had belonged to a man or woman, or both. If only I had-but that sort of regret was a waste. The thing was done.

Sharp in my memory, nevertheless, was the sight of Mark Ingram standing arrogantly on the stage, ready to can}- out some dreadful plan that would have humiliated my grandmother. His ingenuity would have taken care of that, I knew, and only Belle's fall had stopped him. Now we might never know what he intended, and that was certainly just as well.

Away from the glare of light and the sound there were few stragglers. My long skirts hampered me on the rough walk, and once when I stepped on the hem I heard a rip. Persis moved slowly, but steadily and surely, pausing now and then to lean on Caleb's arm and rest. I still wondered where Jon could be and why he wasn't with us. A high, full moon lighted our way to Morgan House.

When we reached it, the porch light was on, and there was Jon, sitting comfortably on the steps, with a beer can in his hand.

"Why didn't you stay?" I cried. "We needed you!"

"You're home early," he said. "I was going to join you again in a little while. It sounds as though the festivities have moved outdoors. What do you mean-you needed me?"

"It's too late now," I told him. "Belle-" But I couldn't get the words past the choke in my throat.

Caleb helped Persis up the steps to where she could sit in the swing. Then in dry, unemotional terms he explained what had happened, and Jon listened grimly.

"Belle was pushed out on that catwalk," Persis said when Caleb finished. "She must have been pushed."

"You can't say that," Caleb reproached her. "We don't know any such thing."

I broke in to tell Jon what Belle had whispered to me.

"Tully?" he said. "I wonder why Tully. Maybe I'd better ride over to Domino in the morning and see what I can find out from the old man. I came back to the house so I could have it to myself and make a search that I've wanted to make for a long time. You'd better come inside and see what I've done, Mrs. Morgan. You won't like it, but I had to try, and I wasn't sure you'd agree if I asked permission."

She let Caleb help her up from the swing. "First I want to know how Belle is. Laurie, will you call the hotel?"

I went into the hall to the telephone, and a stranger answered. "Belle is dead," he said shortly. I hung up, feeling ill. Ill and surrounded by evil, by the constant threat of an evil that could strike any of us down at any time. Belle, so warmly outspoken, had drawn fire. We would all miss her terribly.

The others saw my face when I came back.

"She's gone?" Persis said.

I nodded, and Caleb bent toward her.

She pushed him away. "I'm all right. Just angry for now. I'll cry later. Belle was my friend, and this has happened because of me. We've got to fight that man, punish whoever did this. You must go to Domino as soon as you can, Jon."

"I'll go," he said. "But right now come into the back parlor, Mrs. Morgan, so you can see the mess I've made."

He led the way to the open door and reached in to turn on lights. Persis closed her eyes, and I remembered that she hadn't set foot in this room for twenty years. Lights flashed on, and she opened her eyes and looked about the room. It had obvi- 1.ously been searched, for old dust and cobwebs had been disturbed, a rug thrown back at one comer, furniture moved about, one of the draperies down in a heap by the window. Persis said nothing, her eyes searching, remembering.

"What were you looking for?" Caleb asked, his voice oddly harsh.

"For something I didn't find," Jon said. "Though I think someone else did. Not the police, or it would have come out in the papers. I always wondered about that missing deringer."

"Let it go, Jon," Caleb said. "Just let it all go. It can't possibly matter now."

"It can matter a lot if we find a way to prove that Laurie never killed her father."

The hush was suddenly intense, and I found that my knees wouldn't hold me. I went shakily to the old horsehair sofa and sat down on its slippery surface. Persis followed me carefully into the room, ignoring Caleb's offer of his arm, and sat in a chair. How strange we all looked in our costumes for the ball. Strange and somehow appropriate in this old room.

"Go on," Persis said. "What are you talking about?"

"One of those guns was missing, wasn't it? So it might have been fired when the other one was fired. Perhaps at the same time, so that only one shot seemed to be heard. In that case there ought to be another .4i-gauge bullet around somewhere. There were no traces of blood found at the time to show that Noah might have been wounded when he left. So the second bullet, if there was one, should be here in this room. But no one ever reported finding such a bullet, though I understand the police went over the room thoroughly."

Both Persis and Caleb were staring fixedly, and he went on.

"Tonight I decided to come in here while you were all away and make a real search myself. Of course I didn't find anything. But I think the second gun was fired-not the one that killed Richard Morgan, but a second deringer in Laurie's I.

hands. The bullet could have gone astray-and I'm pretty sure that's what happened. I think it must have struck up there near the corner of the ceiling, so that it cut the wallpaper and cracked the plaster, but its force must have been spent, so that it ricocheted to the carpet, or some other part of the room."

I found myself shaken by a mingling of hope and anxiety and disbelief. "But-but then who-"

"Found the bullet? That's what I'd like to know. Was it you, Mrs. Morgan?"

She looked both shocked and confused, and her face told us the truth. "No, of course not, Jon," she said. "I never thought of such a thing. What are you getting at?"

"Mr. Hawes?" Jon questioned.

The creases that ran down Caleb Hawes' cheeks looked deeper than ever, and his color was a pasty gray. He came to stand beside Persis' chair, beseeching her.

"Yes, I found the bullet. It's with those jewels that were hidden away. I searched before the police came and I found it, just as Jon has said." He broke off for a moment, seeking control, then went on. "Will }< p="">

"I? Kill my son?"

He stumbled on, all his careful control crumbling. "I thought you'd picked up the second gun that Laurie had loaded and you'd tried to shoot Noah Armand. But in the struggle Richard must have stepped in the way and you shot him instead. I always thought that was why you concocted the story of an intruder, faked the theft of the jewelry. I thought you had hidden the gun, and all I wanted was to see that your secret was kept."

For a long moment no one said anything. Then Persis spoke sadly. "My old friend' But what a fool you've been. Of course it was Laurie. She was the one I was protecting. And her 1.mother. From all the scandal that would have made the newspapers and the investigation a circus."

But Jon was already contradicting her. "No-I doubt that it was Laurie. The spent bullet must have come from Laurie's wildly fired gun. But it would have been Noah Armand who shot and killed your son, Mrs. Morgan. Then it was he who took away the second deringer that he had used."

I still couldn't believe or understand, and I was shaking my head. "Even if what you say is true, Jon, how can we ever know which gun killed my father?"

"Noah wouldn't have missed. Not when they were so close."

"But then my mother must have seen it all. My mother was here in this room, and she would have known that Noah killed my father. Yet she never said anything." Tears carne into my eyes, and I looked at my grandmother. "She let me believe-"

"Stop that!" Persis said. "You didn't believe anything. You didn't remember, and you can't start judging her now. Love does crazy things to people. I know. I loved that man once, and it took a long while for rne to come to my senses and face my mistake. Just be glad. Be grateful to Jon for working this out, and let everything else go-including any blame you may want to heap on Caleb."

I roused myself to stare at Caleb Hawes. "That was why you hated to have me come here, wasn't it? Because you wanted to protect my grandmother."

His look was still unforgiving-of me. "I owe Mrs. Morgan a great deal. She was kinder to me than my own family. I -wanted to do what I did."

Jon came to sit on the sofa beside me, taking my hand. "Just hang in there, Laurie. Don't try to sort it all out right away. Just try to believe. That's all you need to do."

"I wish I could," I said. "But I don't think we'll ever really know."

Grudgingly Caleb had arrived at a moment of total confes- sion. "There's more. Mrs. Morgan, I was the one who put the sleeping capsules in your milk."

"You?" Persis made a despairing gesture. "But why-why?"

He stumbled on desperately-a man I could hardly recognize. "I thought if I could stop you from making a new willjust for a little while-you might fall out with Laurie. Or she might leave. That was why I hung that wreath on her door." He turned to me. "And that's why I opened your door the first night you were here. I wanted to frighten you so that you wouldn't stay. I hoped you'd go back to New York before you could further damage your grandmother. I knew you would think it the sort of trick that Gail would play. You'd never have blamed me."

To my surprise, Persis had recovered from her first astonishment and was nodding her head thoughtfully. "Yes. Perhaps I can understand-a little. None of us ever gave you a chance to use your own talents, did we, Caleb? And desperation always gives bad advice."

I wished that I could be as generous, but there was nothing I could say to this man now. Perhaps I would never really know the truth about Caleb Hawes. Whether it was my grandmother's well-being he protected or his own interest in her will -how could anyone tell? Perhaps he didn't know himself by this time.

"At least this would explain Noah Armand's disappearance," Jon said. "He knew he'd murdered Richard Morgan, and he took himself off as fast as he could, and was never heard from again."