So he mused (being slightly pagan and pantheist as well as Christian, and slightly agnostic about all of it) as he turned the angle whence Shawgate makes its steeper aim direct to the Cathedral towers. And because he was tired and a little breathless from climbing against the gale, he halted a moment by a street lamp; and again because there was a playbill of the local theatre in a shop window near by, he crossed the pavement to give it a second’s glance.

It advertised a show called Les Nuit [sic] de Paris, which it described as “A Riot of Mirth-Provoking Naughtiness, Direct from the Gay Capital, with a Galaxy of Continental Stars.”

The Theatre Royal in Calderbury dated from the fifties and had been modernized at various times to conform with fashions that afterwards made it seem more outmoded than ever; in structure it was the type that Crummies had played in, with horseshoe auditorium and a long-disused and very lofty “gods.” In its day it had ministered to the cream as well as to the milk of Calderbury society — even clerics had occupied its uncomfortable red plush seats to watch Mrs. Ebbsmith push her Bible into the fire, or to see Boucicault’s Colleen Bawn dive into a tank of real water and come up dripping to take a curtain call. Which, of course, was somewhat before the little doctor came to Calderbury, and a good deal before the first picture camera flickered in a converted mission hall off Briargate. By the time of Les Nuit [sic] de Paris the theatre had sunk to a level from which not even clerical visitation could or would effect a rescue. Stucco had peeled off the outside walls, the words “Theatre Royal” were spelt in empty sockets for which nobody could afford lights, moth and fleas inhabited the plush-hung boxes that nobody ever entered. The very boards of the stage sagged with dry rot, which was, indeed, the cause of mishap during the third act of one of those Parisian nights.

That third and last act was nearly over when David arrived. He found nobody on duty to admit or question him. Entering by the stage door, he made his way along a dimly lit corridor echoing with the sound of excessively nasal singing. Then he pushed through another door and found himself stumbling against a heap of bright-colored dresses. Here a stout man in shirt sleeves seemed to be manipulating scenery.

“I’ve been sent for —” began David.

“Just a minute,” answered the stout man, suddenly hauling till the veins of his forehead stood out; whereat the singing swelled into climactic frenzy, whistling and shouting answered it, and a moment later an avalanche of girls swept past the little doctor as he waited, bag in hand. They chattered together, some rough-voiced and crudely spoken, a few round-shouldered and flat-chested; one girl coughed and clung momentarily to an iron pillar; another stopped to scratch herself. It was a new atmosphere for him, but full of pathological landmarks, signals of flesh and blood which stood, so many of them, at danger. The girls shed their skirts to make another heap of clothes, and from this, as from some multi-petaled flower, there rose a mingled smell of dust, cheap perfume, old wood, and human bodies.