I looked, but there was no one there.
She shook her head violently and gasped, one hand at the wattle of her throat. “That way!”
At the far end of the row of stalls a panel was missing from the ceiling: a ventilation shaft. I bounded over and looked up. There was a broad corrugated duct that turned in on itself. I couldn’t see round the bend, but it was certainly wide enough for a man to climb through, and now that I was directly beneath it, I could hear the unmistakable sounds of effort.
He was still in there.
As the dowager coughed and sobbed, I stepped onto the toilet seat, cursing my voluminous skirts and the absurd bonnet, and tried boosting myself into the ceiling opening, but it was impossible. I tore off the bonnet and shrugged my way roughly out of the dress, leaving it where it fell. The action had cost me valuable seconds, but it felt good to feel the air on my arms. Clad only in my chemise, drawers, stockings, and those infernal high-heeled shoes, I hoisted myself into the vent.
It smelled faintly of rust, and as I pulled myself inside, it shook, scattering black-and-orange flakes of old metal and dried insect parts. I spat, clawed my way around the corner, and crawled till the tube opened into a dark shaft, which went straight up. There were ladder rungs set into the wall, so I began to climb. I don’t believe I had had an actual thought since I heard the dowager’s strangled cry from the stairwell.
I could see him above me. A man in close-fitting dark gray clothes with a bag slung across his chest. I could not see his face, and my sense that it was a man came solely from the speed and strength of his ascent.
Though my heart was pounding, this was the first moment since arriving at the opera house that I did not feel alien and inadequate. The shaft was brick, not sooty like chimneys, but scarred, dusty, and irregular: my environment, even if these weren’t my clothes. I didn’t know what I would do if I caught up with him, but I felt no fear, no uncertainty as I snatched rung after rung, pulling myself up.
When you are used to ladders, they provide a kind of rhythm, your body becoming a machine swinging from side to side like a swimmer. I felt rather than saw my quarry pause for a fraction of a second, looking down at me, and I could almost smell his surprise. I was gaining on him.
The shaft went far higher than I had expected, and it occurred to me as I powered on that we must be moving up through the concert hall’s external walls. The higher I climbed, the more I became aware of music, distant at first, but swelling strangely as I neared the top. Another twenty or thirty feet and I was out, standing on a narrow metal gantry, the music from the opera stage below, all around me. I peered into the gloom, my hair falling in my face. There was no sign of the thief, but there were lots of places he could have hid. Ropes and pulleys and great wood-framed canvas flats were suspended in front of me. I was in the rigging for the scenery. Below the gantry I could see nothing but the front lip of the stage and the first rows of orchestra seating, fifty feet below. I took a steadying breath and grabbed hold of a cool brass pipe.
The action saved my life because I didn’t see the kick arcing out of the darkness till it made contact with my jaw.
My legs gave, and I sagged, head spinning, but somehow my right hand remembered to hold on as I began to fall. For a moment, the world swam, the darkness above the stage switching places with the brightness and color below. My attacker moved toward me, but all I could do, hanging by one hand, was watch with horror as he turned and looked down into my face.
He wore slim-fitting gloves and was—I was chilled to see—masked. His head was wrapped with dark fabric, but the centerpiece was rigid, shaped out of what looked like gray leather and molded so closely to the face that I could see nothing of its features. The eyes looked hard and dark, but I could not be sure of their color, and my head was full of what he might do as he reached me.
I hung there, dimly aware that the music below had sputtered to a halt and there were cries of consternation from the actors, the only people who could see me clearly. I did not look down. I had seconds of strength left. The masked figure above me paused, staring into my desperate face, and raised a single index finger.
One chance.
Then he was gone, moving along the gantry and farther upstage.
I snatched a breath, flung my other hand up, and caught desperately at the pipe. For a moment, I just hung there, taking the weight off my exhausted right arm, and then I hauled myself up, panting like the dowager I had left on the bathroom floor.