"Frank!" she whispered, looking abashed. "I know I told you so! I meant it, but I must use it just once more--just to-night. I am not feeling at my best. I'm dull and heavy. You know how much depends on me. If I don't do well I shall ruin everything. It won't hurt me to use it just this once. The success of 'True Blue' may depend on it!"

"If the success of 'True Blue' depended on it beyond the shadow of a doubt, I would not let you use it, Ca.s.sie! Great heavens! girl, you are mad! If you fall again into the clutches of that fiend nothing can save you!"

"But the play----"

"Do you think I would win success with my play at the price of your soul! No, Ca.s.sie Lee! If I knew it meant failure I would forbid you to use the stuff in that syringe. Here, give it to me!"

He took it from her and put it into his pocket.

"Now," he said, "it is out of your reach. You must play without it.

There goes the overture. The curtain will go up in a few minutes. All I ask of you is to do your best, Ca.s.sie, let it mean success or failure."

CHAPTER XXII.

THE END OF THE ROPE.

The theater was packed. Under no circ.u.mstances had Frank antic.i.p.ated such an audience on the opening night. He felt sure that the advertising given him through the effort of his enemies to injure him had done much to bring people out. Another thing had brought them there. Curiosity led many of them to the theater. They remembered Merriwell's first appearance in Puelbo and its outcome, and they had not forgotten how, in a speech from the stage, he had vowed that he would bring the play back there and give a successful performance. He had rewritten the piece, and it had been played in Denver to an invited audience, every member of which went away highly pleased. The Denver papers had p.r.o.nounced in favor of it.

Puelbo people admired pluck and determination. They could not help feeling admiration for the dogged persistency of Frank Merriwell. And they really hoped he would make good his promise to give a successful performance.

Frank's first entrance was carefully worked up to in the play, and he was astounded when he came laughing and singing onto the stage, to be greeted by a perfect whirlwind of applause. Nor did the applause cease till he had recognized it by bowing.

Then, as everything quieted down and the play was about to move on again, there came a terrible cry that rang through the house:

"Fire!"

Frank understood in a twinkling that it was a false alarm, given for the purpose of producing a stampede and raising the performance.

After that cry for a moment everybody sat as if turned to stone. It was the calm before the panic.

Then Frank's voice rang out clear as a bell:

"There is no fire! Keep your seats!"

Some had sprung up, but his clear voice reached every part of the house, and it checked the movement.

"Fire! fire!"

Shrill and piercing was the cry, in the voice of a woman.

"Arrest that woman!" cried Frank. "She is trying to ruin this performance! She is the one who circulated a lying and malicious circular charging me with the crime of murder. It was a part of a plot to ruin me!"

Frank confessed afterward that he did not understand why the audience remained without stampeding after that second alarm. It must have been that there was a magic something in his voice and manner that convinced them and held them. At any rate, there was no rush for the doors.

All at once there was a commotion in the first balcony, from which the cries had come. Two policemen had seized a man and a woman, and the arrested pair were taken from the theater.

Quiet was restored, and Frank made a few soothing remarks to the audience, after which the play proceeded.

And now he had the sympathy of every person in the great audience. When an actor has once fairly won the sympathy of his audience, he is almost sure of success.

The first act went off beautifully. The storm and shipwreck at the close of the act took with the spectators. There was hearty applause when the curtain fell.

Frank had arranged that things should be rushed in making ready for the second act. He wanted no long waits between acts, for long waits weary the patience of the best audiences.

The second act seemed to go even better than the first, if such a thing were possible. The singing of the "Yale Quartet" proved a great hit, and they were obliged to respond to encore after encore. Ca.s.sie's dancing and singing were well appreciated, and Frank, who was watching her, decided that she could not have done better under any circ.u.mstances. He did not know how hard she was working for success. He did not know that she had actually prayed that she might do better than she had ever done before in all her life.

The discomfiture of _Spike Dubad_ at the close of the second act was relished by all.

At last the curtain rose on the third act, round which the whole plot of the play revolved. Now, the interest of the audience was keyed up to the right pitch, and the anxiety of the actors was intense.

The first scene went off all right, and then came the change to the scene where the boat race was shown on the river. Everything worked perfectly, and there was a tumult in that theater when the stage suddenly grew dark, just as the Yale boat was seen to forge into the lead.

And then, in a few moments, the distant sounds of cheering and the screaming of steam whistles seemed to burst out close at hand, filling the theater with an uproar of sound. Then up flashed the lights, and the open boathouse was shown, with the river beyond. The boats flashed in at the finish, the Yale cheer drowned everything else, and Frank Merriwell was brought onto the stage in the arms of his college friends.

The curtain came down, but the audience was standing and cheering like mad, as if it had just witnessed the success of its favorite in a real college race. The curtain went up for the tableau again and again, but that audience would not be satisfied till Frank Merriwell came out and said something.

Frank came at last, and such an ovation as he received it brought a happy mist to his eyes.

"There he is!" somebody cried. "He said he would come back here with his play and do the trick!"

"Well, he has done it!" cried another. "And he is the real Frank Merriwell, who has shown us the kind of never-say-die pluck that has made Yale famous the world over. Three cheers for Frank Merriwell!"

They were given. Then all Frank could say was a few choking words:

"My friends, I thank you from the bottom of my heart! You cannot know how much was depending on the success or failure of this play. Perhaps all my future career depended on it. I vowed I would win----"

"And you have!" shouted a voice.

"It seems so. Again, I thank you. I am too happy to say more. Words are idle now."

He retired.

Frank Merriwell had won with his play; "True Blue" was a success. In his happiness he forgot his enemies, he forgot that two persons had been arrested in the balcony. It was not till the next morning when he was invited by a detective to come to the jail to see the prisoners that he thought of them.

The detective accompanied him.

"I have been on this fellow's track for a long time," he explained.

"Spotted him in the theater last night, but was not going to arrest him till the show was over. The woman with him created the disturbance, and two policemen took them both in. I don't want her for anything, but I shall take the man back to Chicago, to answer to the charge of forgery.

I shall hold him here for requisition papers."

The jail was reached, and first Frank took a look at the woman. He felt that she would prove to be the mysterious woman of the veil, and he was right. She looked up at him, and laughed.