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We stared at the dagger in an amazed silence, hardly knowing what to say or what to feel. No one here had seen anything, and yet here was the dagger wet with human blood, just as though it had been plunged into visible flesh and bone. Ike Humbert found his voice first. He turned to the business manager, and told him crisply to go before the curtain and dismiss the audience which, we could hear, was in a turmoil. The manager went at once, and in a few moments we could hear his calm, steady voice quieting them and sending them away. Then Ike turned to me.

“What for a trick is that you play there, no?” he asked in his incredulous little treble. ‘‘You’re playing jokes, hey?”

“If it’s a joke, it’s on me,” I said.

“And on me,” said Cunningham, who was getting up off the floor, seeming little the worse for his unusual and ghastly experience. “Whoever it is, he has some sense of humor, that’s all I have to say. I'll never be able to breathe again.”

“How do you feel, Wallace?” asked Ike Humbert, turning his concerned eyes upon his actor.