"Stout, Rex - The Rope Dance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stout Rex)

by each of the hundreds of diners and drinkers packed in the immense room, the cabaret
performers appear in turn.

It was the height of the dinner hour, a little after seven. A young woman in a low- necked blue
dress with cowlike eyes had finished three verses and choruses of a popular sentimental song,
and the orchestra had rested the usual three minutes. Then they struck up again for the next
"turn," and a girl appeared on the platform, followed by a man.

The girl-- a lively little black- haired creature with sparkling eyes and a saucy, winning smile--was
no stranger to the habitues of the place; she had been dancing there for several months. But
always alone. Who was this fellow with her? They opened their eyes at his strange appearance.

He was a tall, ungainly chap, wearing the costume of a moving picture cowboy, and in his hand
he carried a great coil of rope. There was an expression of painful embarrassment on his brown
face as he glanced from side to side and saw five hundred pairs of eyes looking into his from all
parts of the large, brilliantly lighted room.

The girl began to dance, swinging into the music with a series of simple, tentative steps, and the
man roused himself to action. He loosened the coil of rope and began pulling it through a loop at
one end to form a noose. Then slowly and easily, and gracefully, he began whirling the noose in
the air. It was fifteen feet in diameter, half as wide as the platform.

The girl, quickening her steps with the music, swerved suddenly to one side and leaped into the
center of the whirling coil of rope. Then the music quickened again and the rope whirled faster,
whiIe the dancer circled round and round its circumference in a series of dizzy gyrations.
Suddenly the man twisted to one side, with a quick and powerful turn of the wrist, and the rope

THE ROPE DANCE

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doubled on itself like lightning, forming two circles instead of one. The girl leaped and danced
from one to the other.

The music became more rapid still, and the rope and the dancer, whirling with incredible
swiftness in the most intricate and dazzling combinations, challenged the eye to follow them.
The nooses of the rope, which had again doubled, came closer together, until finally two of them
encircled the girl at once, then three, then all four, still whirling about her swiftly revolving form.

All at once the orchestra, with one tremendous crash, was silent; simultaneously the man gave a
sudden powerful jerk with his arm and the dancer stopped and became rigid, while the four
nooses of the rope tightened themselves about her, pinning her arms to her sides and rendering
her powerless. One more crash from the orchestra, and the man ran forward, picked the girl up in
his arms and ran quickly from the platform.

The applause was deafening. Dickson's had scored another hit. All Broadway asks is something
new.