Puzzle for Players

by Patrick Quentin

  At three-thirty I broke the rehearsal. The woman had to go for costume fittings and Wessler was giving a couple of press interviews. I told Eddie to have them all back by seven and left the theater with Iris for a late lunch.

  We had passed the doorman’s room and were strolling down the alley when I heard a mournful miaow. I turned to see the diabolical Lillian r unnin g along a ledge behind us, her tail erect, her whiskers trembling with emotion.

  For no apparent reason, she gave me a look of infinite tenderness and leaped onto my shoulder. I made an irascible move to throw her off, but she stuck. She sat there, purring and pushing a rasping chin against my cheek.

  “I think,” I said, “that I hate this animal more than…”

  I broke off because of the look on Iris’s face. She was staring at me with a sort of wild excitement.

  “Peter,” she said, “don’t move. Stay there. Don’t touch the cat.”

  “What…” I began.

  “Peter, what fools we’ve been. What incredible fools. Do you know what you’ve got on your shoulder?”

  Vaguely alarmed for her sanity, I said: “I have on my shoulder the cat of the doorman.”

  “No,” she said. “You haven’t. Look at it—the colour of its fur. It’s weaved around your throat. It’s light brown. Don’t you see?”

  She leaned toward me, grabbing my arm. “That isn’t a cat, Peter, it’s a light tan fur.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I PUSHED the cat off my shoulder. It scuttled back through the stage door.

  I said: “So our cat’s been masquerading. But where does it get us?”

  “It gets us to this,” said Iris firmly. She had it all figured out. “Last night you asked Lenz why on earth there should have been two unknown people in the theater— the man with the mask and the woman with the light tan fur. Don’t you see the explanation now? Theo only thought the face she saw was a woman’s because of the fur. Now that the fur’s a cat…”

  “The person who carried it might just as well have been a man,” I finished. “In other words, those two people can be merged into one. But where else does it get us?”

  “Nowhere,” said Iris blandly. “But we can think about it while we eat lunch.”

  We did think about it over lunch without progressing any further. We were still thinking about it when an apologetic rustling at my side drew my attention to Henry Prince. My young author was twiddling his hat in thin fingers; his solemn spectacles were aimed at my face.

  “They told me you’d be here, Mr. Duluth,” he said.

  I asked him to join us at lunch but he said he wasn’t hungry. Could he talk to me, he said. I nodded and he dropped into the third chair next to Iris.

  “Mr. Duluth,” he faltered, “I want you please to do me a favor. Will you break the news to Uncle George, I mean about his not being needed for the part any longer?”

  “Sure,” I said. “If you’d rather not do it yourself.”

  Henry picked up a piece of bread and pulled off random crumbs. “It’s all very worrying. I was so afraid Miss

  Rue would walk out that really before I knew what I was saying, I’d given in about that role.” He looked lost and pathetic. “I shouldn’t have done it. I don’t know what will happen.”

  There was no mistaking his distress.

  “What’s on your mind?” I asked.

  Henry glanced at Iris who said politely: “Shall I take my fruitcup to another table?”

  “No, no. I don’t mind your hearing. It’s a relief to be able to talk. I’ve been so worried, so—so alone.” Henry squeezed crumbs into a bread pellet. “I think you guessed, Mr. Duluth, that I didn’t really want that scene kept in. It was just that Uncle George wanted to play it and—well, I have to do what he tells me.”

  It was an immense relief to have someone let down at last and give me some dope on Uncle George Kramer.

  “We suspected as much,” I admitted. “Has Kramer been blackmailing you?”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t say that. I’m sure Uncle George is being this way just because he thinks I’m going to be successful and rich. He thinks I can afford it.”

  “What’s he got against you?” I said.

  Henry hesitated. “It’s just that he knows something about—about my family. He used to be so kind about it until he found out that my play was going to be put on. Then, that first night when he came to the Dagonet, he was quite different, kind of sneering and threatening. He told me he wanted to get that photographic assignment and when I explained I didn’t have the authority to give it him, he—he said he’d tell everyone what he knew.”

  “So he railroaded you into making me give him the photographic work and that part in the play?”

  “Yes. You see, Uncle said he had a particular reason for wanting to be in your play. And the five hundred dollars I borrowed from you…”

  “That went to Uncle George too. I thought as much. Maybe I’m a suspicious New Yorker, Henry, but that sounds damn like blackmail to me. I guess you’re scared now we’ve got rid of him that he’ll tell the world what he knows?”

  “I am, Mr. Duluth. I’m terribly afraid. But I don’t think Uncle George is really bad. If only you could help me.” Henry sniffed and blew his nose on a serviceable handkerchief. “It would be the end of everything if Uncle George told about Father.”

  For the first time in our acquaintance I started thinking of the shy, naive Henry as a human being. I was sorry for the poor kid. He was so very much at the mercy of any cheap chiseler.

  Irsi leaned forward. “What is it he knows about your father, Henry?”

  That was a question I had not felt justified in asking, but I silently cheered Iris’s nerve. Henry looked at his hand miserably.

  “It’s not only Father—it’s me, too. You see, Dad was the bank-manager in Karsville where I was born. Everyone respected him and he was a fine person. But last year there was trouble. Some company went bankrupt. The bank had a great many shares. Dad and all his depositors were faced with ruin. He took desperate measures to try and save the bank. I don’t really understand those things or what he did. But the inspectors found out and—and put him in prison. He’s there now.”

  We didn’t say anything and he went on: “I’d been training to be a doctor at the time. But, of course, I had to give it up. We didn’t have any money left and I had to support mother somehow. I tried to get a job but I couldn’t until Uncle George turned up one day and said he could get me into the Thespian Hospital. It wasn’t much of a salary but I’d have taken anything and my medical training was useful.”

  He was watching me with worried eyes. “All the time, in my free moments. I was trying to write a play. Dad had always wanted me to do it. I finished it at last and sent it off to you. Your reply came back accepting it and asking me to come to see you. I was so excited I threw up my job right away before pay-day. I didn’t have a cent in my pocket. I always sent most of my salary back to Mother. I had to get to New York. Uncle George’s car was there outside the hospital. I just got in it and drove up here. I didn’t mean to steal it. I was going to drive right back, but seeing you and hearing about the play made me forget everything. The police traced the car and delivered it back to Uncle George. I didn’t really think I was doing wrong, but when he came to the theater that night, Uncle George told me he could still have me arrested if he wanted to for taking a stolen car over a state line. That’s—that’s how he made me get him into the play and everything.”

  I stared at him. “Henry, is that all Uncle George has got against you—that your father’s in jail and that you borrowed his car?”

  “But think what it would mean to me if it all came out now just when I’m beginning to be successful. My father a jailbird; me a thief and …”

  “My dear Henry—” I felt very paternal in the face of so much rural simplicity—“New York’s a little different from Karsville. In New York your father can be in jail, your mother can be in jail, your grandmother can be in jail an
d everyone gives three cheers. As for the car-stealing—if that’s all you’re worried about, forget it.” A sudden idea came to me. “On the contrary, we won’t forget it. This is swell. Why didn’t I think of it before? I’ll get my press-agent to slam the story all over the theatrical columns. Eager young author steals car to keep appointment with producer. It’ll make dandy publicity.”

  Henry was gazing at me half in astonishment, half in relief. “You really mean it wouldn’t matter—not even if Uncle told?”

  “Your Uncle George,” I said, “hasn’t a leg to stand on. And you and I are going right round to his studio and we’re going to fix his feet so properly that he’ll want to creep away and curl up and die.”

  I was excited. I had a lever on Mr. Kramer at last. With any luck I could use Henry’s pathetic little problem to rid the Dagonet of disturbances permanently. For I knew Kramer to be a small-time blackmailer; I was positive that all the trouble at the theater had been mere manifestations of Uncle George.

  When Iris went off for her fitting appointment, I bundled Henry into a taxi and drove around to Kramer’s studio-cum-apartment, somewhere in the East sixties. An elevator took us to the third floor and a door bearing the legend: “George Kramer, Art Photographer.”

  I knocked peremptorily. There was no reply. I knocked again.

  “Perhaps he’s in the dark-room.” suggested Henry. “Try the door.”

  I did. It was open, and we walked in.

  A narrow hall led into a large studio furnished with chairs, spotlights, hanging backcloths, cameras and a few surrealistic blocks of wood which were obviously used to inject Art into the photography. Several tin cabinets lined the walls; their drawers all gaped open, revealing an untidy mass of scattered studio portraits.

  Henry moved to a door in the rear wall calling uncertainly: “Uncle George! Are you there? It’s Henry.”

  When there was no reply, he muttered something about looking in the bedroom. Left alone, I moved to the photograph cabinets. It seemed odd to me that Mr. Kramer should have left them in so singularly haphazard a condition. I glanced into the first drawer. The photographs inside, mostly portraits of theatrical celebrities, were crushed and bent as if someone had been furiously searching through them, completely indifferent to the havoc caused. The more I looked, the more certain I became that the searcher, whoever he was had not been Mr. Kramer himself.

  Most of the photographs were, or had been, in folders, each of which was marked with the particular name of the actor or actress. As I passed to the next cabinet, I noticed a folder labelled Mirabelle Rue. I pulled it out and opened it.

  It was empty.

  That started me thinking. Then, just as I was throwing the file back, a most extraordinary picture, half concealed by a dislodged profile study of Tallulah Bankhead, caught my eye. I tugged it out for closer inspection. It must have been about twelve inches by fifteen—the life-size image of a face. And it was an incredibly shocking face—the face of a man with dead, staring eyes, blistered lips and cut, distorted cheeks. A man without identity, a Grand Guignol fantasy.

  As I gazed at it in revolted fascination, Henry reappeared, murmuring: “Uncle must be taking the candid shots round to the magazine. I …” He came up to me, pausing by my elbow. “My God!”

  I glanced up. The change in his appearance was amazing. His lips were half open; his eyes were fixed incredulously on the photograph in my hand.

  “What on earth’s the matter?” I asked.

  “That photograph!” he breathed.

  “Its fairly unpleasant, but…”

  “But it’s not just a photograph.” Henry twisted his fingers together. “I mean—don’t you know who it is? It’s Wessler.”

  “Wessler!”

  I gazed down at that appalling travesty of a face.

  “Wessler,” repeated Henry. “Just after the airplane accident.”

  I could see it then. Once it had been pointed out to me, I could just realize how this thing could be Conrad Wessler. The matted hair was blond, the eyes, though lusterless, were the same eyes. It was shocking to think that anything so basically perfect as Wessler’s face could have disintegrated into something as grotesque as this.

  I turned back to Henry. “But how do you know?”

  “Uncle George told you about these photographs he took for the plastic surgery people at the Thespian Hospital,” he faltered. “When Wessler found out about them, he asked to have all the negatives destroyed. Uncle kept this one. He showed it to me back in Karsville. He enlarged it—just the face. He said then it might be valuable. I didn’t understand what he meant. I didn’t know he— he still had it.”

  I hardly listened; I was too busy thinking. At last we were getting onto Kramer’s real racket. A man with an entree into an actor’s hospital taking pictures of actors when they were sick and holding them up with the negatives when they were cured—that was as low and unsavory a brand of blackmail as I had ever come across. And it explained so much. Mirabelle had been at the Thespian Hospital, too. Probably Kramer had been trying to blackmail her with some photograph of this sort. That was why she’d been so anxious to get rid of him and yet so obviously scared of him.

  And then this picture of Wessler—it opened up a new vista.

  “Listen, Henry,” I said, “this is important. That first night when Kramer came to the theater, you left almost immediately. You went to have a drink together, didn’t youT’

  “Why, yes.”

  “But after you left the theater, were you with Kramer all the evening?”

  Henry looked rather dazed. “No, I wasn’t, Mr. Duluth. After we’d been at Sardot’s about half an hour, Uncle George met a friend of his—Roland Gates. They sent me away. They said they had something private to talk over.”

  Everything was fitting in far more reasonably than I’d imagined possible. With blinding clarity, I saw what must be the solution to our mystery. Kramer had in his possession this picture of Wessler. On the night that he’d come to the theater he’d probably had it in his portfolio, intending to use it to extort money from Wessler. That would explain his eagerness to force Henry into getting him a place in the company.

  And then he had met up with Roland Gates. Gates wanted like to hell to play opposite Mirabelle. He wanted like hell to get Wessler out of the cast. After they had sent Henry away, the two of them could so easily have pooled resources and worked out a plan for frightening Wessler out.

  Kramer knew about the Austrian’s fear of mirrors; he’d seen the doorman’s scrap-book and from it could have learned the Lillian Reed legend. They had all the cards. One of them could have brought the light tan fur cat in earlier and staged the prologue. Theo saw them later. While Roland Gates got rid of the doorman and kept watch downstairs, Kramer could have slipped into the dressing-room and engineered the trick with the false mirror.

  And, for the first time, I realized just how diabolically cruel that trick must have been. Kramer had this photograph of Wessler. If he had modeled his clay mask on it, Wessler would have been confronted not with just any frightening face, but with a ghastly travesty of himself as he had looked in those terrible days after the accident.

  The more I thought, the more logical it all seemed. The plan failed; instead of frightening Wessler it killed Comstock. Then, with typical bravado, Gates had gone on trying to achieve his object and tried to blackmail me by threatening to expose to the police a crime which he himself had committed.

  I felt an absurd exhilaration. All I had to do was to let Kramer and Gates know I was wise to their racket, and scare the daylights out of them. Then there’d be no more trouble at the Dagonet

  The case was solved.

  I folded the photograph of Wessler into my pocket, thanking God I’d managed to confiscate it before it could do any more damage. In a burst of enthusiasm I slapped Henry on the back.

  “Henry,” I said, “the Dagonet is no longer jinxed. The waters have stopped being troubled. We have nothing more to worry about.”


  I meant it. I really thought it. But that was probably the rashest statement ever made by any human being.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  MY mood of exhilaration did not flag. It lasted through a couple of hectic hours at the office and was still bubbling when I reached the Dagonet. Now that I was convinced the Kramer-Gates combine had been back of everything. I was in no hurry to bring matters to a head. My only immediate precaution was to leave a note for Kramer with the doorman. The note informed Uncle George curtly that his services were no longer required and that, if he came to my office next morning, he would be paid his rehearsal salary to date. That, I figured would keep him away from the Dagonet and ensure his appearance at my office where I could tell him forcibly what I thought of him.

  I was looking forward to that moment.

  I managed to check an impulse to pass on the good news to my company. By that time I was cagey enough to hold back until I was one hundred percent sure of my ground. But Iris noticed something had happened to me. Just before I got the rehearsal started, she said: “Peter, what’s the matter? You look as if you’d just created the world.”

  “I have,” I said. “I’ve created a new heaven and a new earth and they’re both completely devoid of ladies with light tan furs, blackmailers, faces in mirrors and corpses. Okay, everyone—let’s get going. We play the first act according to Mirabelle’s altered script.”

  I’d been excited about that rehearsal before it began. I was wowed when it started. Something, presumably the absence of George Kramer, had given the company that extra fillip of assurance which makes all the difference between brilliance and competency. I sat there in the auditorium watching, admiring and feeling smug.

  And it seemed perfectly justifiable for me to feel smug. As the first act zipped forward, I started totalling up exactly what I’d accomplished. A few months ago, I had been a futureless has-been just out of a nuthouse; Henry Prince had been a small-town nobody; Iris had never even walked across a stage; Wessler, his career apparently at an end, had been moping over his half-brother and his own synthetic face; and Mirabelle had been struggling on the brink of a nervous break-down. A few months ago we had been just that—a bunch of ciphers, making loud noises in a void.