Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 21, No. 115, June 1953

A Night at the Theater by Ben Ray Redman

I can’t pretend to explain how it happened, but I can swear that I saw it happen — just two weeks ago this evening, beginning at exactly 9 p.m. Since then I have talked to scientists and television engineers, telling them something of the story, and those who didn’t laugh in disbelief could do no better than to remind me of the old theory that no light-wave ever ceases and no sound-wave ever dies. Perhaps they should not be asked to do better, perhaps that is explanation enough. In any case, this is what happened:

It was, as I have said, exactly two weeks ago this evening. I was alone in the house because my wife was on night duty at the local filter-board center, where she is working in connection with the national air-defense program. I had eaten a cold supper and was planning to get into bed early and read myself to sleep. But before doing that I decided to watch a half-hour television program that promised to be better than average. I did watch it, sitting in a comfortable chair, with a drink that I could easily replenish on the table beside me, in a room that was completely dark except for the light from the television screen. And the program was really quite good; at least, it seemed so with the help of the drinks. When it was finished I got up to turn off the set — but before I could reach the dial I saw something on the screen that didn’t look like a closing commercial. Nor did it sound like one.

What I could see and hear was a play that was already in progress. Judging by the costumes of the man and woman who were on the stage, of which the television camera was giving me a close view, it was a costume piece, and, judging by the accents of the actors, it was an English comedy. In fact, the man was obviously an Englishman of the Lord Dundreary type. At that precise moment he was cackling, “Ha! ha! ha!” In the face of this highly intelligent utterance his pretty companion asked: “What’s the matter?” And he replied: “That wath a joke, that wath.”

As he spoke these words, the camera — or probably one of a battery of cameras — cut from the stage to what looked like a real audience in a real theatre. I barely had time to calculate that the theatre probably held a thousand people, and to note with surprise that all the spectators seemed to be dressed for a costume party, when the entire audience rose to its feet and began to applaud vigorously, with a few cheers sounding above the handclapping. But the faces were not turned towards the stage. They were turned toward the rear of the theatre.

To the back of the theatre the television camera took me, and I saw that the cause of the demonstration was a party of four persons who had just arrived. Two men and two women were in the party. The younger man was wearing an old-fashioned uniform of an American army officer, with what I managed to recognize as a major’s epaulets. He had thick hair, a high forehead, heavy sideburns, and a military mustache, and he looked as if he might be in his late twenties. The younger woman had a rather plain but intelligent face, and I noticed that she was wearing a heavy, elaborate necklace. The older woman was a plump, apparently placid middle-aged person, in an evening dress that revealed her full, smooth shoulders and short, fat arms. There were — rather coquettishly, I thought — flowers in her hair.

But it was the fourth member of the party, the second and older man, who instantly caught my eye and held it fascinated. He was tall and gaunt and stooped and homely. There were deep furrows in his lean cheeks, and his great eyes looked as if they had brooded over all the sorrows of mankind. His hair was shaggy, his upper lip clean-shaven, his beard close-cropped. He was wearing a dark suit, with a black tie folded across the front of his white shirt.

While I stared at him in amazement, the party of four began to move, guided by an usher and another man, a nondescript fellow — possibly some sort of attendant — bringing up the rear. The camera followed the group, and so did I.

I watched them go up a short stairway, pass through what I took to be a side aisle of the dress circle, go through a door into a narrow hallway, and from the hallway enter a stage box. (To be completely accurate, they did not all enter the box. The nondescript man stopped outside the door that led into the hallway.) The young officer and the young woman took the seats nearest the front of the box. The older woman chose to sit a little farther back. The older man lowered himself into a large rocking-chair that was placed in the rear of the box. From this comfortable position he could see the stage, but only a small portion of the audience — and only a few of the audience could see him.

As soon as the party was seated, the camera panned over the audience, showing their glances upturned towards the box, and their momentary indifference to what was happening on the stage. And then the camera swung round again to move in on the box from the audience’s point of view. I saw that the double box in which the party of four sat was decorated with draped Union flags, and I saw that the flags framed a picture of George Washington. But I did not need this view to tell me what I was watching or where I was. I had known for some time. I was, by the grace of my television screen, in Ford’s Opera House, on Tenth Street, between E Street and F Street, in the city of Washington, D. C. — and the time was the night of April 14, 1865.

I was also sitting in an armchair in the living-room of my own house, and I had a drink in my hand. But I had no idea of how I had got back to my chair, after being checked in the act of switching off the TV set, or of when I had mixed the new drink.

Moment followed moment now, with relentless fatality, as I watched the great drama unroll, while the little play upon the stage claimed, from time to time, my fleeting attention. The television cameras gave me complete freedom of vision. They enabled me to study the President’s worn, kindly face in all the intimacy of a close-up. They made it possible for me to sit beside the President’s wife, and to marvel that so placid an exterior could conceal the mad jealousies that I knew were there. I looked with interest at the young officer whom I now remembered to be Major Henry Reed Rathbone, attached to the War Office. I even managed to work up some interest in his fiancée, Miss Clara Harris, who previously had been only a printed name to me. She was not my type, but I found her pleasant enough.

From the TV screen came the voice of the actor who was playing the absurdly exaggerated role of “Our American Cousin” — and adding exaggerations of his own to the written part. Through the camera’s eye I could see the peephole that had been bored, only that afternoon, in the door of the President’s box; and I could see the wooden bar that had been so placed that the door from the dress circle into the little hallway could be barricaded from within. Through the camera’s eye I could see the nondescript man — now known to me as John F. Parker, bodyguard — desert his post by that same door, desert the man in the big rocking-chair, and stroll downstairs and out into the street in search of a drink.

The scenes came and went, on stage and off. My tension grew. I looked at the luminous dial of my wrist watch. It was 10 o’clock. I realized that the second scene of the third act was drawing to a close. I sat there as if hypnotized, but at the same time with a passionate feeling that I should, be able to do something. After all, I thought wildly, I was the only person present — the only person in Ford’s Opera House — who knew what was about to happen. Surely there must be some way for me to stop it, some way for me to give a warning in time!

Then, suddenly, I saw what I had been waiting for. I saw the dark, slim man, with the black mustache, with the actor’s face and the actor’s walk, stroll into the theatre. For a moment the camera brought me so close to him that I fancied I could smell the liquor that I knew he had been drinking. I followed him as he climbed the stairs to the dress circle. I followed him as he went through the unguarded door — the door that should have been guarded — into the little hallway. I saw him put the wooden bar in place, securing himself against surprise from without. I stood at his side — and thought I could hear the beating of his heart — as he looked through the peephole at the President. And then I saw him take out the little brass derringer and hold it in his right hand, take out the steel dagger and clutch it in his left hand, silently open the door, and enter the box: I watched him as he paused for at least two full seconds — and let me assure you that two seconds can be a long, long time. The seconds passed. He pointed the pistol. I saw the flash and I heard the shot. And I saw the shot go home.

After that all was confusion and uproar. Rathbone sprang at the assassin, grappled with him, and was stabbed in the arm. Waving his dagger, the slim dark man with the actor’s face — flushed now with drink and hate and triumph — jumped onto the railing of the box and leaped from it to the stage, catching his spur in one of the flags as he leaped, and landing with a leg crumpled under him. Loud above the uproar, the cries of the President’s wife were horrible to hear. The man with the dagger struggled to his feet. Hands clutched to hold him, but he evaded them all — and just before he vanished in the wings he paused dramatically, flourished his dagger aloft, and shouted three words defiantly. Men swarmed onto the stage. One man, yelling that he was a surgeon, climbed from the stage into the Presidential box. The President’s wife had to be pulled away forcibly from the slumped figure of her husband. The surgeon leaned above the President. And then—

Then the television screen went dark.

It stayed dark, because — as I learned later — it had blown out all its tubes simultaneously. And I stayed in my chair, motionless in the blackness, marveling at what I had seen. But most marvelous of all, most unbelievable, was what I had seen during those two long seconds when the man with the derringer and the dagger had paused. I had seen something then that is not in any of the history books.

Even now, in this year of 1953, I am not sure whether or not it would be right for me to make public what I saw. I have submitted that question, along with my story, to the highest governmental authorities; and I am still awaiting their decision.

But, in the meantime, I can tell you one thing. I can tell you, with all the certainty of an eye-witness, that it was not John Wilkes Booth who killed Abraham Lincoln.