by John Brunner
He flipped a single penny through the air toward the burly man. It landed on the carpet between his feet. Murray turned his back and walked slowly toward the door, aware that every customer in the place was watching him. This time nobody was asking who that might be.
The best exit I've made for a long while, he thought bitterly.
"Murray!"
He paused and glanced around. At a table near the door he saw Fleet Dickinson, who was more on top than anybody and never likely to be anywhere else. Fleet's full charm was turned on high.
"Murray, I'm damned glad to see you back in the land of the living, and congratulations on what you just did to Patsy-boy. What are you doing at the moment? Hardly heard a word of you since -- well, you know." A twist of a graceful hand in the air.
"Since they wrung the gin out," Murray said flatly. "Why, I've been resting. On doorsteps, mainly. I tried to get in to see you, too, and one of the doorsteps I rested on was yours."
A flicker of well-controlled embarrassment. "Well, Murray, you know how it is when something like this happens."
"I know only too well how it is. Don't let me spoil your lunch, will you? So long."
"Just a moment -- uh -- Murray!"
Murray paused and looked back.
"Look, if you're really in difficulties -- "
"Not anymore, thanks. Blizzard picked me for this gang of no-goods, deadbeats, and has-beens he's collecting for the new Delgado play, so I'm provided for. See you in the stalls when we open."
That was a childish sort of jab to end with, Murray told himself as he went back to the street. The damnable thing was, of course, that he was just as suspicious as Burnett of the whole Delgado project, and if his agent had been able to find him anything else -- anything at all -- he wouldn't have considered it even though the pay was fantastic.
II
His mind clouded by what had happened, Murray drove north through London toward the southern end of the M1 highway. He pulled up once in order to take the top of the car down -- he felt that he needed some fresh air to blow Burnett out of his memory -- and to buy a sandwich to replace the good lunch he'd left behind at the Proscenium.
So far, he'd been driving cautiously; he hadn't touched the wheel of anything but a slowpoke family sedan since his breakdown. Once he hit the highway, however, he deliberately let the car out to the maximum, holding third gear until one hundred and ten showed on the speedometer, then shifting to top and letting her roll.
Murray was grateful to Manuel Delgado, if only for advancing him the cash to ransom the car from storage.
He hadn't disposed of the Daimler because in the end it had come to be a potent symbol to him. The registration plates said 1 MQD for Murray Quest Douglas; people recognized it on the street, the white SP 250 with the black flashes down the sides -- "There's Murray Douglas in that car! I saw a shot of it on TV last week!"
Once, as he was held up in a traffic jam, a taxi driver had passed a sheet of paper over from his cab to get an autograph.
Maybe he'd been stubborn-minded about it. He could have raised seven or eight hundred on it, even though, as the mechanic had said, it had been driven hard. He wouldn't have had to eat so many meals out of cans or switch to a brand of cigarettes that tasted of horsedung or wear an unpressed suit to useless interviews. Roger Grady had told him often enough he was a fool to let the car sit in storage with the charges mounting week by week; Roger had still been going on about it even when he broke the incredible news -- that Sam Blizzard was putting together a cast for Delgado and wanted Murray Douglas if he'd accept.
His mind roamed back over that curious talk with Roger.
Murray had heard of Delgado, naturally. The playwright was of Argentine origin. There had been a film at a time when the only South American name known to the cognoscenti had been Leopoldo Torre-Nilsson. Murray hadn't seen it -- it had only been screened at a film festival, and no circuit would book it for general showing -- but he knew people who had, and those people said it was phenomenal. A comédie noire to end comédies noires.
Delgado had come to Europe on the strength of his reputation from that film, and last year Jean-Paul Garrigue, one of the finest young actors in Paris, had taken the leading role in the experimental production which Burnett and Heston-Wood had been talking about. Again, Murray hadn't seen it; he'd already been in the sanatorium by then. But he'd read the notices, and some of them had been raves.
Then there was Garrigue's suicide, and a sensation, and for months on end, silence. As though Garrigue's depression had been contagious, Delgado no longer seemed to enthuse anyone.
And then came Roger's news.
"Will I accept?" Murray echoed, looking around at the sleek furniture of the agent's office as though it might disappear. "Blizzard asks for me personally and I should hesitate? Are you crazy, Roger?"
"Well, I know some people who would," Roger said after a pause.
"Why? For heaven's sake, they were raving about Delgado in Paris last year!"
"Yes, they were." Roger looked down at the end of his cigar with intense concentration. "You've been pretty well out of the swim since then, of course. Sort of not plugged into the grapevine, I mean. I'm not saying I'm not delighted, mark you, and if the project's a success no one could possibly deserve it more than you after the way you've pulled yourself together. But I wouldn't be honest if I didn't warn you that there are people around -- I could name them -- who wouldn't take a part in a Delgado play if you paid them a thousand pounds a day."
"Why on earth not?"
"Because Garrigue killed himself. Because Léa Martinez went into an asylum. Because Claudette Myrin tried to murder her baby daughter." Roger wasn't kidding. His voice was level and his face was straight.
"I didn't know about the girls," Murray said. "They were in the Paris production, weren't they? But look, if I get you right, you're saying that there are some superstitious folk in the business who think there's a jinx on Delgado."
"More or less."
"Did you ever know me to be superstitious, Roger?"
"No." Roger sighed. "Still, I had to warn you. Matter of fact, I was talking about this project with someone only yesterday and got a flat no before I made any offer at all. I wasn't going to make an offer -- Blizzard has some screwball idea of who he does and doesn't want -- "
"Meaning me, Roger?" Murray cut in.
"No. To be honest, no. Did you ever know me to lend four hundred pounds to someone I thought was really washed up? My business instinct wouldn't permit it. No, I'm sure you have it in you to get back in the game -- and maybe do even better because you won't have your handsome juvenile face to cover your failings." Roger could speak more frankly to Murray than anyone else in the world. "But you're the only one of the bunch so far who strikes me as being on the credit side. However, I'm not in charge, and Blizzard has a head as hard as anyone I know. Besides, even if the damn thing comes to town and folds after four nights, it's giving you a chance to turn in something the critics will notice."
"What you really mean is it'll stop me pestering you for a few weeks," Murray said sourly.
"You've been a damn nuisance, Murray, and you've run up a sizable debt with me. More than once, you've accused me of not doing my best for you, and I'd have kicked you down the stairs if I hadn't known -- well, what I do know. You don't enjoy struggling, boy, and you certainly let other people see it!"
"All right, can it," Murray said. It was true, what Roger was saying, and despite the agent's light tone it hurt. "Give me the details. And the pay doesn't matter. Right now, I'll take a second standard-bearer at minimum rate."
"You'll get a bit more than that. There's money in this, boy. Blizzard's taken over a bankrupt country club called Fieldfare House, up Bedford way, and he's planning to have the cast there -- all expenses paid -- until he brings the show into London. The idea is for it to follow Amaranth into the Margrave; you know Amaranth is getting pretty rocky. If there's time, there'll be a week's pre-London tryout,
probably at the New Brecht, but more than likely you'll be at the Margrave four weeks from now."
"Did you say four weeks?"
"No, Blizzard said it. You take it up with him, boy. You'll have plenty of opportunity -- you're going to this club of his on Friday."
Friday, an hour earlier than expected because he had gone without his lunch, Murray swung the nose of the car past the faded sign indicating Fieldfare House.
III
A winding gravel drive led from the narrow hedge-lined road up to the house. The grounds must have played a part in reducing the club to bankruptcy, Murray guessed. They were extremely elaborate, and even before he stopped at the front entrance he had seen a maze of carefully tended box, magnificent ranks of rhododendrons, and beds of what looked like peonies set among lush lawns. Around the corner of the house he glimpsed the high board of a swimming pool.
The house was a rambling structure of gray stone and old brick, with dark red creepers reaching to the roof. It had an empty look; the windows were dirty, and one of the ground-floor rooms was shuttered. There was a place for cars at the left of the front door. In front of the house was a pillared porch with no less than seven stone steps of decreasing width.
He pulled up, switched off the engine, and in the sudden silence had to repress a wild thought -- that this was an alcoholic delusion. Blizzard had never asked for him at all, and he had come to a deserted house to find nobody waiting and no hope for the future.
He snatched the key from the ignition and jumped out. With as much noise as possible he slammed the car's door and opened the trunk. He reached inside for his traveling bag.
"You must be Mr. Murray Douglas."
The voice was soft and unexpected. It was as if the trees had spoken to him. He started violently and let the lid of the trunk fall with a crash. At his elbow a man of indeterminate age and nationality, wearing a black suit and a black tie, had appeared. The man hadn't even made a crunching sound in the gravel as he approached.
Conscious of prickly sweat on his spine, Murray said, "Yes, that's my name. You seem to be expecting me."
"Yes, sir. My name is Valentine, and I am the head steward here. May I take your bag and show you to your accommodations?"
The extraordinary Victorian phrase heightened instead of dispelled Murray's sense of unreality. He stared at Valentine, taking in the pale, unlined, ageless face, the dark eyes, the immaculate suit that looked like a funeral mute's, and the high-sided black leather boots.
"Your bag, sir?"
"Oh -- here you are. Has Mr. Blizzard arrived yet?"
"No, sir. You are the first. I expect Mr. Blizzard at six o'clock and Mr. Delgado with him. The rest of the company will be arriving at various times this afternoon or this evening. Please come this way."
Valentine turned. Even the weight of the bag didn't make his footsteps sound in the gravel. Feeling as though he were walking beside a ghost, Murray accompanied him up the steps, through a small vestibule just beyond the front door, and into an enormous hall. The hall extended to an arched ceiling and a domed skylight, and a gallery serving the upper rooms ran around the second story from a curving staircase with a polished mahogany balustrade. The country club's ornaments and decorations were everywhere: old sporting prints, horse brasses, foxes' masks and brushes, a pair of eighteenth-century fowling pieces with the barrels polished like silver, a tiger skin in front of the roast-an-ox fireplace.
Valentine led Murray upstairs, but instead of turning along the gallery, he opened a green baize door at the head of the staircase and went through it. Beyond the door was a long light corridor with panels of fluted glass in the ceiling and numbered doors on either side. Murray thought it must be a new wing jutting from the back of the house, which he hadn't seen as he drove up.
"Your room, sir," Valentine said, putting a key in the furthest door. "Number fourteen."
There was a room thirteen adjacent, Murray noticed. He wondered idly whether it was going to be left vacant, because of the number of theatrical people who were superstitious, or whether he was going to find himself with a doggedly skeptical neighbor for the duration of his stay. Then, as he followed the steward into his own room, he forgot the question. He couldn't keep himself from whistling.
Plain, square, low ceilinged, the room was paneled with maple and raw yellow pine. A low double bed with a smoke gray candlewick cover was flanked by twin bedside tables, one of which held a phone, the other a huge vase of flowers. A Picasso reproduction was centered over the head of the bed. The windows, curtained with dark green burlap, extended the width of the outside wall and gave a view of the lawn behind the house and dark woods beyond. The corner of the swimming pool was just visible. There was a TV set on a white iron stand, an easy chair, a shelf of Readers' Union editions and a stack of back numbers of Acting.
Add one to the list of reasons why the club went broke. Murray gave an impressed nod and wandered over to peer out of the window. At a half-seen movement behind him, he turned; Valentine was opening his bag, which Murray hadn't locked, and had started to unpack his belongings.
"No, leave that, Valentine," Murray said. "I prefer to sort out my own stuff. Here." He felt for a tip, but Valentine raised a pale hand to stop him.
"That's not necessary, sir. Mr. Blizzard is giving me a very generous retainer.
"Oh. I see." Murray shrugged and dropped the coins back in his pocket. "Say, what's the routine going to be -- have you a timetable of some sort?" He took the first few items from his bag and began to sort them into groups on the bed.
"I understand that it will be up to Mr. Delgado and the progress made with the play, sir. Tonight there is to be dinner at seven-thirty, after which Mr. Delgado wishes to make the acquaintance of everyone present, and there will be some kind of an introductory discussion."
"I see. Are you left over from the country club they used to have here, by the way?" Murray put socks and shirts into a handy drawer, picked up a spare suit on its hanger and went to the tall built-in wardrobe.
"No, sir. I am specially retained by Mr. Blizzard. I'm as much a stranger as yourself."
"Doing things in style, isn't he -- old Blizzard?" Murray started to close the wardrobe door. Then he froze, staring down at something half seen on the lowest shelf. He barely caught Valentine's reply.
"I wouldn't know, sir. I'm not acquainted with the world of the theater. Is something wrong, sir?"
Murray forced himself out of his trance. "Yes," he confirmed grimly. "This is wrong." He tugged open the other door of the wardrobe and picked up what had caught his eye. He handed it to Valentine -- a full, unopened bottle of White Horse.
"And this! And this! And this!" One after the other, he snatched up bottles -- Booth's Dry London gin, Lemon Hart rum, Cognac Hennessy. There were glasses there, too, a bottle of soda and bottles of lime and orange squash -- but those were safe. Murray was sweating as he faced Valentine, whose arms cradled the liquor and whose features were carefully composed into an expression of polite inquiry.
"Get rid of them," Murray instructed curtly. "Is that part of Blizzard's orders -- laying in that stock for me?"
"Mr. Blizzard did require me to provide suitable refreshment in the visitors' rooms, yes."
"All right, forget it. Just get rid of the, stuff. Suitable refreshment for me is -- oh, damnation! Get me a dozen cans of fruit juice."
"Very good, sir." If Valentine understood why he was being snapped at, he didn't let it show. "Will that be all for the moment?"
"Yes. Definitely all."
It was going to be tough. But he'd always known that. At the sanatorium they'd told him sympathetically, but without sentimental pity, that it might be years before he dared take even a glass of beer; that he'd have to achieve a plateau of emotional stability from which he couldn't slip back into his personal slough of despair. They'd said, that if he took a drop of alcohol before he'd put five years of professional success and personal adjustment behind him, he would go to the gutter and stay t
here.
Murray Douglas didn't like Murray Douglas very much. But in the gutter, he'd hate him.
He had not yet exhausted the store of tranquilizers they'd given him at the sanatorium. He dug the packet out from the bottom of his bag and looked around for water. In the corner of the room was a washbasin with a mirrored cupboard over it. Cupping his hand under the cold tap, he collected enough water to rinse down the pill and in a few minutes felt much better.
The rest of his belongings could wait till later. For the moment, he wanted to get acquainted with the setup in which he'd landed.
Valentine, he found, had left the key in the outside of his door. He locked the door and set off on his tour of inspection.
The interior of the house didn't detain him long. The big hall he had come through opened onto a dining room, a lounge with a bar in one corner, a reading room, and several other rooms whose doors were locked. He judged that one of the locked doors must give access to kitchens and storerooms. He left the door which led back into the new wing until last; it opened easily. Beyond it was not the corridor he had expected, but a complete small theater with about sixty seats, a projection booth with a pair of Bell and Howells, and a very decent-sized stage.
