Todd puts the key to a safe deposit box into a Federal Express envelope. He completes two airbills - one addressed to Francesca, the other to Jane. He sets the envelope and the two airbills aside.
Jane closes her deal with the insurance company. She has a certified check in the amount of half of the death benefit. Todd's life insurance policy is canceled.
The fateful enactment begins. The sets are fully built out, fine replicas of a 1930's showboat. The large cast and extras are in full costume. A pianist provides ragtime music.
The mechanism for the accident is set. Todd has arranged it to coincide with the climax of a black minstrel performer's delivery of the tale of a steamboat race and boiler explosion.
Todd's plan immediately goes awry as one by one Jane, Francesca, Dad, and Daniel arrive and take seats in the auditorium. If they're killed in the explosion, all of Todd's post-mortem plans for them are moot. He has a moment of indecision, then grits his teeth and goes on with it.
As the climax of the minstrel's steamboat race performance approaches, the doctor appears in the theatre. He is very agitated. Crew members restrain him.
Just as the climax - and the catastrophe - approach, the doctor breaks free and shouts out that the biopsy results show Todd's biopsy finding was positive: he is going to die after all.
Todd is stunned, glances at his watch, realizes the catastrophe is seconds away and there's no time to stop it.
But the catastrophe never happens. The minstrel's vocalized explosion does, augmented by the pianist's wild playing, the scripted shouts and screams of cast and extras, and the genuine shouts and screams of Jane, Francesca, Daniel, Dad, Todd and the doctor.
In the chaos, Todd works his way to the mechanism of the intended catastrophe and discovers the strange reason it didn't happen. He races to find and confront the doctor - but the doctor has vanished. Nobody recalls having seen him at all, even the crew who'd earlier restrained him.
Todd races to the doctor's house - but there is no house, only a deserted, overgrown lot.
Next. in Act Ten: The stunning finale.
