“Vile incendiaries,” Jack offers, and Anderson shoots him a look.
“He means Negroes, I presume?” says Ritchie.
Anderson says yes, and Jack says no at exactly the same time.
Ritchie asks, “Which is it?”
“Negroes,” says Anderson. “Most certainly.”
Ritchie looks at Jack, and asks, “Why did you say they weren’t?”
Jack goes to speak, but Anderson cuts him off. “Jack just got confused by the question. He’s not terribly quick.”
Ritchie eyes Jack over his spectacles. “A shame. His father was quite sharp.”
Jack’s cheeks burn.
“This is a big claim Mr. Placide is making. Does he have the evidence to support it?” Ritchie asks, and Jack defers to Anderson, who clearly wants to do all the talking.
“Mountains of it.”
“It would have been nice if he’d included it here,” says Ritchie, reading through the letter once more.
“I think he tried,” says Jack, who is unable to think of the last lines of the letter without cringing.
“An attempted box office break-in, back in October, hardly qualifies as proof that someone wanted to burn down the building.”
Ritchie isn’t wrong, but Jack doesn’t dare admit it with Anderson standing just a few feet away.
“What kind of proof do you need?” Anderson asks. “We can get it.”
Ritchie lets out a low laugh. He looks every bit as exhausted as Jack feels. “Tell me, Mr. Gibson. Doyouthink I should publish this letter?”
Jack looks at Anderson, who nods at him.
“Do you need permission to speak freely?” Ritchie asks.
“No, sir,” says Jack. “I just, well, I can’t really say…”
Ritchie leans forward. “It’s funny. Several of the people I spoke with seem convinced the fire started backstage. They said it was an actor who first made the announcement.” He flips the pages of his notebook, looking for the exact quote, but he needn’t have bothered. Robertson’s words will be with Jack forever. #8220;?‘The house is on fire.’ Did I get that right, Mr. Gibson?”
Jack whispers, “That sounds right.”
Anderson is quick to explain. “We did make the announcement. But that’s just because the fire started out back, and to our knowledge, we were the first to notice it.”
“Out back?”
“Near the stage door,” says Anderson.
“It’s a brick building,” says Ritchie. “How did these incendiaries of yours manage to get the thing to catch?”
Anderson is drowning, Jack can tell, so he tries to throw him a rope. “I’d left a few hay bales near the door. We needed them during the second half of the pantomime, and there was nowhere to store them inside.”
Ritchie glances at Anderson. “Is that true?”
Anderson gives them both an enthusiastic nod.
Jack expects to feel terrible, lying about something this important, and there’s a part of him that does. But there’s another part of him that feels elated to have come through with a logical explanation that Ritchie appears to be buying.
