  Seated at the desk in her room, Peggy selected a fresh sheet of paper. She was on the fifth page of a letter to her friend Jean Wilson. So you see I was right. There were crooks using the theater all the time. The next day, Amy and I told the police what we had seen in the alley, and I think they were really pleased, even though they did bawl us out for poking around in police affairs. At that, they admitted that if we had come to them the first time with nothing but suspicions, they probably wouldn’t have been able to do anything. Anyway, they put a guard under the stairs and stationed some more policemen around, and two nights later they caught the gang. It seems they were hijackers, which means that they held up trucks on the road and stole valuable cargo from them. They were using the theater as a warehouse for the stolen goods until they could dispose of them in whatever way crooks get rid of stolen goods. When the police searched the place, they found thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of furs and silverware and liquor and appliances and all sorts of things. The cartons that we saw them unload the night we were there turned out to contain nylon stockings, and they were worth about twenty thousand dollars, which is an awful lot of nylon stockings. The police say we’re going to get a big reward from the insurance people. The boys wanted to give it all to me, but I refused it. I’m going to give it to the players’ group, which really means to Randy and Mal, to rent the theater on a long-term lease and to fix it up properly. They said once before that they didn’t want to be in the real estate business, but I think that they’re changing their minds about that. The police got in touch with the owner of the building, who is retired and has been living in Florida for a long time. He didn’t know anything about what was going on in the theater and was quite grateful that we had gotten his crooked tenants out of the place. It seems he has been so long away from the New York real-estate scene, that he didn’t know his property was in demand as a theater. He says it hasn’t been used as one for over fifty years! Of course, he could get more money renting it as a theater than as a warehouse, but he says he doesn’t need more money, and we need a theater. He has offered it to us on a ten-year lease for the same rent he was getting before. Randy says that the rent is so low that even a moderately successful season would give him and Mal enough profit to live on comfortably, so they’re now beginning to talk about becoming managers, doing their own shows and, when they don’t happen to have a show for a particular season, renting the theater to other groups. What’s more, the rent covers the whole building, and the boys are thinking of turning part of it into apartments for themselves, and the rest of it into apartments for other young actors, something like a Gramercy Arms for boys! Incidentally, the theater is beautiful. The police let us in to take a look at it today, and even with all those boxes and crates and fur coats and things stacked around, we could see how nice it is. It’ll need new seats, I’m afraid, and a new lighting system and a switchboard and a curtain and loads of other things, but the reward money will more than cover all that. And we even have a name for it—the Penthouse Theater. How does that strike you? I only hope you can come to New York to see it when it’s all ready. Or, better than that, plan to come to New York next season when, with luck, I might have a part in a play there. One of the things I like best about Randy and Mal is that, even though they’re just bursting with gratitude and they keep calling me a heroine, they haven’t tried to ‘pay me off’ by offering me a part in the play. I’m still going to help just by painting scenery and selling ads in the program and running errands and things like that. This way, I know that if I ever get a part in one of their plays, it will be because I deserve it as an actress. Another thing I like about Randy is that he’s coming to take me out again tonight. Which reminds me—I’d better sign off now, before Irene and Amy install themselves in the bathrooms! Do you suppose that’s what they mean when they say that one of the most important things for an actress to learn is timing? More next time from Peggy |
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