While I was writing that, I suppose I should have been conscious of someone standing behind me, reading over my shoulder. But I hadn’t the slightest sensation of not being alone until a voice said:
“Read that, Peter.”
I started. I glanced up to see Iris with her Persian lamb looking Park Avenue and very determined—a sort of over-privileged Joan of Arc. She was holding out a piece of paper.
“Read that,” she said again.
I took the paper. I read: “Dear Sir, With regard to your shipment of electrical…”
‘The other side,” said Iris.
I turned the thing over. The back was covered in Iris’s round, school-girlish script
She had written:
REASONS WHY TROUBLED WATERS CAN’T
CONCEIVABLY FAIL TO SEE THE LIGHT OF
DAY
(1) Dr. Lenz
(2) Iris Pattison
(3) Iris Pattison
(4) Iris Pattison
(5) Iris Pattison
(6) Iris Pattison
(7) Iris Pattison
(8) Iris Pattison
(9) Iris Pattison
(10) Iris Pattison
(11) Iris Pattison
(12) Iris Pattison
(13) The marriage of Peter Duluth to Iris Pattison, preferably in the State of Maryland.
I folded both pieces of paper and put them in my pocket. I got up. I kissed Iris. She smelt of something very faraway and nice.
“Do you know who you are, darling?” I asked.
Iris said: “No.”
“Pollyanna of Sunnybrook farm,” I said.
She disengaged herself from my arms, looking at me from purposeful eyes. She said: “Darling, the theater’s being fumigated. There won’t be any rehearsal till tomorrow. Now that we’ve got the time, let’s hire a car, drive south, cross the Maryland state line and…”
“No,” I said.
“Why not? Why the heU not?”
“Because I know myself,” I said, meaning it more than I’d ever meant anything. “I’m not just stalling, because of Lenz. That’s not it. You’re something I’m making myself work for. It’s only because there’s you at the end that I can get through this bedlam and make Troubled Waters a success. If I got you before I rated you, I’d be sunk.”
“I see, Peter.” Iris was watching me from quiet, thoughtful eyes. “Okay. Cut Maryland. We’ll do something else—something gay.”
“Such as?”
“We’ll go to the movies,” said Iris.
We did. We went to the Astor and the Paramount and then to the Music Hall, plunging headlong from one movie to another. A sort of harmless jag. But it didn’t work. The Dagonet stayed at the back of my mind. After the third show, we staggered into the Pennsylvania Drug Store for a sandwich. We didn’t discuss our next move, but instinctively, when we left the place, we headed for Forty-fourth Street.
I guess it was sheer morbidity that took us past the theater that night. But we happened to strike it just as the men from the fumigating squad were arriving. Eddie Troth, very sulky and curt, was supervising the proceedings with Mac hovering in the background, peering at the hermetically sealed cylinders of hydrocyanic gas discoids with a sort of wary anxiety as if he, along with the rats, was scheduled for immediate annihilation.
While the squad took the theater over, shutting all windows and vents, the chief fumigator was chatty with Eddie and me. He explained how the discoids were spread over the floor space and how the gas, slowly vaporizing, impregnated the air and left a harmless residue behind. He told us cheerfully that every living thing in the theater would be destroyed Even a human being, exposed to that insidious, odorless gas, would lose consciousness in thirty seconds and die in less than five minutes. Although his squad wore gas masks, they had to work in quarter-hour shifts only, otherwise the gas would seep through their clothing, get under their skins and poison them that way. Hydrocyanic gas seemed the most efficient of exterminators.
I hoped it would remove, equally efficiently, all ghostly faces in mirrors, women with light tan furs and men with masks of modeling clay.
Just after the auditorium itself had been shut off and the laying of the discoids had begun, Mac injected drama into the situation by reporting the loss of Lillian. Despite a warning from the chief fumigator, the old doorman rushed crazily up to the first-floor dressing-rooms, which were still uncontaminated, calling: “Lillian, Lillian.”
Eventually he returned, the Siamese cat clasped under one arm, beads of sweat standing out on his forehead.
“I got her,” he said. “I got my girl. I saved her.”
I couldn’t work up a great deal of enthusiasm. So far as I was concerned, Lillian could very easily have been spared from my cast.
Iris and I left then, just as the men had started pasting paper over the cracks around the doors. They said we would be able to rehearse again at noon the next day and I told Eddie to call the company for twelve-thirty.
When we reached my apartment, we discovered Lenz seated in the largest and most comfortable arm-chair. Beside him, on a table, was a glass of soda-water.
He looked up. “Since you were not here, Mr. Duluth, I took the liberty of making myself at home and taking a little refreshment.”
“Grand,” I said.
His eyes were fixed intently on my face. “My main object in returning, Mr. Duluth, was to inquire whether there have been additional disturbances at the Dagonet today.”
I dropped into a chair, letting myself sag. “Yes,” I said, “there’ve been infinite additional disturbances. The whole
Dagonet Theater is one gargantuan, diabolical disturbance.” Gloomily I added: “I wish I was alone on a desert island with three coconut palms, the Encyclopedia Britan-nica and a camel.”
I could see from Dr. Lenz’s expression that he was recording that remark as definite evidence of a manic depressive psychosis. He made no reference to it, however. He merely said: “Perhaps you will tell me everything that happened.”
I did. It made as sorry a tale of woe as I had ever heard.
Lenz did not speak right away and Iris broke in brightly: “In any case, what happened today proves Dr. Lenz’s reconstruction one hundred per cent right—I mean about the man making a mask of clay and hiding in that closet. I think it’s amazing the way Dr. Lenz figured that out.”
“More amazing the way you can hear through key holes,” I said. Iris waved away this malicious interruption with an impatient shrug.
I continued: “If he could just explain the difference between the woman with the fur- and the man with the clay mask, he’d go to the top of the form.”
We both waited for Lenz to speak. Finally, after his fingers had traveled up and down his imperial, he said: “I must confess that the situation is becoming considerably confused. Unquestionably there have been reactions to the ‘provocative dose’. But they have not been at all the reactions 1 anticipated.” He paused. “If you remember, Mr. Duluth, I suggested that there was more than one thread of mystery at the Dagonet. Now I’m beginning to feel there must be several—several, perhaps, which have no immediate connection with each other.”
That was the last straw. “Several threads!” I repeated. “We’ve got a notion counter full of them. There’s—”
Iris broke in: “Show Dr. Lenz your list, darling. It would be far less painful that way.”
Obediently I produced my list of the thirteen disasters and handed them to Dr. Lenz. As he read it, his expression remained serene and Olympian. He passed me back the list.
“That is very interesting, Mr. Duluth. But I think you exaggerate a trifle. Tomorrow I will give the matter some serious thought. I have every hope that we will be able to formulate an adequate explanation. Meanwhile, it is late.”
That, of course, was one of Lenz’s typical don’t-get-worried-little boy edicts. But, almost for the first time since I’d known him, he didn’t carry conviction. In spite of his supernormal placidity, I knew damn well th
at he had no more hope of formulating an adequate explanation than I had.
When I’d finished kissing Iris good-bye, Dr. Lenz had retired to a bathroom from which issued the vigorous sound of teeth being brushed. Eventually he emerged, resplendent in the gray woolen nightshirt.
I had never seen him so imposing.
He stared at me gravely and said: “Last night, Mr. Duluth, I found my room slightly restricted for my evening exercises. Perhaps you will permit me to perform them in here?”
I permitted him, of course. As I went off to my own room, I caught a last glimpse of him lying on his back on the floor, his legs weaving solemnly to and fro in the air with a rhythmic motion reminiscent of a six-day bicycle ride.
I have no idea how long he kept it up. But I do know that even in a nightshirt with his legs in the air Dr. Lenz had no difficulty whatsoever in preserving his dignity.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
NEXT morning, when Iris and I went down to the dever-minized Dagonet for rehearsal, we ran into Gerald Gwynne at the stage door. My juvenile was looking as handsome as ever, but pale and rather sulky. He paid no attention to me. He just shot Iris a queer kind of glance and said:
“Hullo, Iris.”
“Hullo,” she said.
He was going to push past us when I stopped him. I had promised Mirabelle to get the Hollywood business cleared up. I thought it would be best to do it out there where the others couldn’t get involved. I chose the tactful approach. I didn’t remind him of his obligations to me; I just treated him like the kid he was and pointed out it was pretty dumb to take up the first movie offer that came his way.
He listened rather impatiently. He said: “I don’t give a damn about the offer. I don’t give a damn about Hollywood either. I told Mirabelle that. It’s just that I’ve simply got to get out of New York. I can’t stay in this dump any longer.”
It struck me as odd, his saying that. The other night, when he’d called me about Roland Gates, he’d been so stubbornly eager to stick by Mirabelle.
“Why do you suddenly want to leave New York, Gerald?”
He pushed out his jaw. He said, “That’s my own business.”
I lost my patience with him then. It so obviously wasn’t his own business whether or not he quit my show. I told him a hell of a lot, the general drift being that I needed him badly, that I wouldn’t dream of letting him break his
contract for no reason and that if he tried any funny business like walking out on me, I’d sue him.
I concluded: “And, if you had any loyalty to me or Mirabelle, you wouldn’t ever have brought the matter up.”
He flushed a very deep red. I couldn’t tell whether it was because he was angry or because he was ashamed.
“If that’s the way you feel, that’s the way you feel.” His eyes, dark, unruly, found Iris’s again. Then they turned to me, staring straight at me. I was astonished at the change in their expression. Gerald and I had always been pals. But at that moment he looked as if he was hating me like hell. “Okay, Peter, you can have me if you want me. I’ll stay. But I’ll tell you one thing. If I knock someone’s block off or burn up the theater or— well, don’t say I didn’t try and get out while the going was good, see.”
He swung away, and disappeared through the stage door.
I couldn’t make any sense out of that. I turned to Iris. Somehow I had the hunch that she knew what was back of it all. But she wasn’t answering any questions. I could tell that.
She slipped her arm through mine, a strange sort of pitying look on her face.
“Don’t mind him, Peter. Poor kid, he’s so young. It’s hell to be so young.”
She said that almost tenderly. And I was suddenly, unreasonably jealous of Gerald Gwynne.
Perhaps it was my imagination, but the Dagonet smelt, looked and felt far more wholesome after its night with the hydrocyanic discoids. The clearing of the air had a marked effect upon the company, too. They were almost cheerful. Theo, her cough less insistent, was puffing at a Goldflake, striding about the stage, pointing out to Eddie the small piles of whitish residue left by the discoids, and extolling hydrocyanic gas and codeine simultaneously. Wessler, squatting on a wooden box in the wings, was fiddling contentedly with a clay Rhine maiden and playing his where-have-I-see-you-before game with Gerald and Henry.
Even the stage looked far more as if we were getting somewhere. I’d wanted to rehearse some of the entrances and exits with an actual door and Eddie had fixed up a provisional tormentor from some junk he’d found below stage. It stood there just like a regular piece of scenery, making dress-rehearsal time seem excitingly close.
I was moving to join Wessler when the swing-door opened on Mirabelle, and she swept me away into a corner. She was radiant and vital as ever. If her encounter with Gates had taken anything out of her, she showed no signs of it. She asked breathlessly: “Peter, angel, tell me about Gerald—is it all right?”
“Yes,” I said. “I twirled my black mustaches and threatened to foreclose. He isn’t going to Hollywood.”
“Thank God for that.” Then she added in a queer, tentative voice: “And is—is Henry willing to cut the Kramer role?”
I told her what had happened. Her eyes clouded over. Her small gloved hands closed into fists and then opened again. “So Henry’s being difficult, is he? I’ll have to see about that.”
I was going to ask what she meant but at that moment George Kramer himself appeared from the house and started towards us. Mirabelle hurried away and went into a huddle with Gerald.
George Kramer came right up to me. For a few seconds his pouchy eyes watched Mirabelle. Then they slid over to me. “Miss Rue’s kind of nervous, isn’t she? High-strung. I guess that’s the way with most of the big-time actresses. She takes a swell picture, though. My candid shots were very successful yesterday.”
“They were?” I said.
“Sure. And the magazine goes to press tonight. Unless you need me, I’d like to leave right after I’ve done my part and rush some prints through to catch next month’s issue. Is that okay?”
“It’s okay,” I said, only too glad we’d get rid of him that much sooner.
I called the rehearsal to order then. The show went beautifully until the moment of Kramer’s entrance when, as the half-drowned business magnate, he was carried on stage by Wessler. Mirabelle had been playing superbly but at that point she went completely off key. There was nothing I could put my finger on; she said her lines; she went through her business; but there was a sudden exaggeration, a very subtle burlesque which brought out all the latent hokum in the scene.
For a moment I was bewildered; then it dawned on me that Mirabelle was putting on a deliberate act for Henry’s benefit. Since I had failed to persuade him into cutting the Kramer part she was making a stab at it herself. Only too gladly I gave her her head.
She took full advantage of it. All the time the script had her emoting over Kramer, watching him die before her eyes and recoiling in disgust from his dead body, she managed by brilliantly unobtrusive over-playing to guy the entire scene. Gerald started’to clown too while he and Wessler carried Kramer to the coffin, lowered him inside and closed the heavy lid on him.
Wessler was obviously baffled by what was going on, but he continued playing straight and he did it so well that he almost managed to lift the scene single-handed. He exuded tremendous force of personality when, as the iron-willed farmer, he ordered the others around the coffin, forced Mirabelle to her knees at the head and went into a prayer. In spite of Mirabelle’s final “Three Orphans” clutch at her throat, he brought real dignity to the moments when he and Gerald lifted the coffin, Kramer and all, and carried it through the door in Eddie’s tormentor offstage.
But as soon as they had exited, Mirabelle swirled down to the footlights and gazed at Henry.
“Mr. Prince,” she said dramatically, “at last you can see for yourself.”
Henry pushed at a lock of lank black hair which drooped over his forehead. �
�See what, Miss Rue?”
“That scene, of course. Perhaps it seemed all right on paper but when it’s acted, it’s ludicrous, perfectly ludicrous. You’ll have the audience rocking in the aisles. There’s only one thing to do. You’ve got to cut it out”
Henry’s eyes slid nervously toward the tormentor behind which Uncle George and the coffin had been deposited. “I—I don’t see anything bad in the scene if it’s played right.”
“Played right!” Mirabelle’s voice was suddenly ominous. “Just what do you mean?”
“Well, didn’t you overact slightly?” murmured Henry, flushing a deep crimson.
“Overact! Me, overact!” Mirabelle flung herself into an instant and terrifying rage. “Did you hear that, Peter? He’s accusing me of overacting. Me… . Isn’t he satisfied? Perhaps he can play the part better himself. Is that what he’s trying to say? All right, let him play it; I don’t give a damn. Let him play it To hell with him and his lousy melodrama.”
She hurled herself past Wessler and Gerald and stormed toward the swing-door. Henry, completely flustered, jumped up and called after her:
“Miss Rue, please, please, don’t go. I didn’t mean that. You know far more about these things than I do. If you really feel that way, of course we’ll cut the scene.”
In a second Mirabelle was back at the footlights, smiling a dazzling smile, stretching out her two hands to Henry.
“I knew it!” she cooed. “Didn’t I always say Henry was the most intelligent author I ever worked with, Peter? Didn’t I say that? Of course, too sad having to tell your uncle to leave, but the play must come first, mustn’t it? Why not make a clean sweep, Henry? Why not tell him now?”
“I… well…” stuttered Henry limply.
“He said he’d be leaving right away. He’s probably gone,” I cut in. “Eddie, go see if you can catch him.”
My stage-manager disappeared and returned to report Kramer had left. The show started off again smoothly.
Mirabelle’s victory had been overwhelming and unconditional.
Puzzle for Players Page 13
