Overcoat in June

New York, early Tuesday morning, June 26, 1906, 12:30 am. In the summer theater on the roof of the Gramercy Pavilion, the glasses are still half full, and an unlit paper lantern rolls near the stage.

At 11 pm, in the finale of the revue "The Bride of Coney Island," came the lantern ballet: forty seconds of darkness, with only the chorus girls' lanterns, the drums and the sparklers.

When the lights came back, the architect Garrick Corliss, 52, designer of the pavilion, was dead at his reserved table by the stage, shot three times. Nobody heard a thing over the drums.

The police sealed the roof. Three people had scores to settle with that man, and one of them sat facing him in the dark.

Summer theatre on a Manhattan pavilion terrace in 1906, paper lanterns fallen on the floor.