You Scared Me

"Telephone for you, Mr. Bell," the secretary at Van Dorn Detective Agency's Knickerbocker Hotel headquarters stuck his head in the room where the tall blond detective was pouring over the latest reports of serial bank robberies that he was investigating, "Its your fiancée, sir."

Chief Investigator Isaac Bell grabbed the phone-Marion was in New York to hold auditions for a movie, and he hoped that she wasn't about to cancel their dinner plans. She'd been quite busy the last few days and Bell was starting to get a little jealous of her crew and the actors and actresses. They were seeing more of her than he was. To top it all off, the auditions were in Hammerstein's Victoria Theatre, just across the street!

"Don't tell me you're cancelling dinner, my dear-I simply won't allow it this time-I'm too jealous of your crew to allow them to spend another night with you!"

Marion Morgan giggled,"Not at all, darling. I told the crew that I've spent quite enough time with them this past week, and not nearly enough time time with the man I love so much-I just wondered if you wanted to drop in to watch a dance number-it's the waltz you promised to teach me for our first dance as a married couple."

Bell scowled at the reports in front of him-he really needed to finish looking through them, but he was half-crazy to see Marion. He didn't reply for just long enough.

"Oh, I'm sorry my darling-you're busy with the bank robberies case, aren't you? I should have known, I'll just-AHHH"

Isaac Bell heard the telephone fall to the ground with a clunk.

"Marion? Marion?" His eyes went wide and for a half-second he was frozen with shock, and then he exploded out of the door and flew down the Knickerbocker grand staircase, taking the stairs three steps at a time, and unholstering his Browning as he ran.

Horses reared, car horns blared, and people shouted as the tall detective charged across the street, Browning in hand, but all got out of his way. The theatre door was unlocked, and a tall man with Browning in hand, startled the theatre hands that were milling about.

"Where's Marion?"

"Now, just a minute, you-." A theatre security officer came forward. Bell flipped his Browning to his left hand and crumpled the man with his hard right fist.

"Where's my fiancée?"

Several hands pointed up the staircase.

Her dressing room is room 48, sir."

Isaac Bell charged up the stairs, his heart in his throat.

He threw open the door as he cocked his gun.

Marion spun around and just managed to recognize her fiancé before she let out a scream. She clamped her hands over her mouth, and in so doing, she let a lace napkin fall to the carpeted floor. Bell dropped his Browning, stunned to find her alive and well.

"What happened?"

Marion looked confused.

Bell crossed the room in three steps and pulled her into his arms. He noticed that her right eye was teary, but not her left.

He thought Marion's coral-sea green eyes were her most striking feature-if he were forced to choose only one-"What happened to your eye?"

Marion giggled, "Oh! Now I understand." She giggled again, "You heard me scream on the phone, didn't you?"

"It scared me to death."

Marion covered her mouth this time-Poor Isaac, she really shouldn't laugh.

Bell cocked his brow.

"I'm sorry, my darling, I didn't mean to scare you," Marion picked up a bottle of perfume off her vanity and held it up, "I was trying to put this on as I was talking to you, and well, I sprayed my eye with it."

Bell cocked brow again

"So you're okay?"

"Never better, my dear-you're being here is the best part, of course! My makeup is running because of these tears, but I don't suppose there's much to do about that."

Bell pulled his linen handkerchief out of his coat pocket and got it wet in the bowl of water on Marion's vanity.

"We'll see. Sit down."

As he began to wipe her face, they noticed that they had a rather large audience of theatre hands that had followed Bell up the stairs earlier.

Isaac Bell scowled at them and they practically fell over each other getting away.


Author's note: I thought of this story after hearing of an incident on my favorite radio station, The Joy FM. Morning Curise co-host Carman Brown sprayed herself in the eye with purfume while on the phone with one of her co-hosts (pardon the fact that I don't recall which one). Anyway, it was dubbed Carman's "Lucy" (from I Love Lucy) moment and I couldn't get it out of my head till I put it to a story! Thanks Carman!