Puzzle for Players

by Patrick Quentin

  Lenz said, pitching his voice low enough to avoid angry shushes from below: “as soon as I learned how Miss Rue figured in the case, I realized what a simple problem we have been up against, Mr. Duluth. I told you once that there was more than a single thread of mystery at the Dagonet. That, of course, was the trouble. It was impossible to fit everything into one pattern. But now, with the elimination of extraneous matter, the motives behind the disturbances at the Dagonet seem as logical as they were ruthless.”

  They didn’t seem that way to me. It was a queer sensation, listening to Lenz with one ear, desperately keen to know what he had to say, and yet, all the time, being conscious of the play going on below me, gauging every line of dialogue that was spoken, checking every second of action against the yardstick of perfection in my mind.

  “For a while,” continued Lenz, “you felt, Mr. Duluth, that the trick in the dressing-room had been engineered by Mr. Kramer and Mr. Gates with the object of frightening Herr Wessler from the cast and substituting Mr. Gates in his place. I was ready to accept that theory until I realized how untenable it was. Even assuming that they had been successful in forcing Herr Wessler to resign, how would that help Mr. Gates’s cause? He must have known there were other actors besides himself in New

  York. Failing Herr Wessler, you would have chosen one of a dozen candidates before you chose Gates.”

  “You’re right,” I said. I was thinking, “Mirabelle’s a fraction too much upstage. Theo didn’t get that inflection across. But no one’s going to realize it.”

  “Having come to that conclusion,” Lenz went on, “I decided there was only one logical approach to the problem, an approach based on the assumption that the three major crimes, the frightening of Comstock, the murder of Kramer and the attempt on Herr Wessler were all the work of one person, motivated by one all important impulse. With that hypothesis in mind, it was not difficult to work out the reason behind the murderer’s behavior.”

  Henry dropped a program. Someone coughed. The sound echoed hollowly around the silent, absorbed house.

  “I feel you should hear the solution now, Mr. Duluth, so that you will be prepared when Clarke serves his warrant. I will pass it on to you just as it came to me.” Lenz glanced at me, gauging just how much of my interest was on him and how much on the play. “It was clear that someone in your company had a reason for wishing to remove Herr Wessler from the cast. At first I do not think he wanted to kill him. He merely wanted to sever his connection with the production because Herr Wessler was a menace to his own security.” He paused. “Just how real a menace he was, no one except the murderer knew—not even Herr Wessler himself.”

  Inspector Clarke was whistling very softly through his teeth. On the stage Gerald and Mirabelle were doing a lovely job with a tricky calf-love scene.

  “This individual,” said Lenz, “was living in constant danger of exposure by Herr Wessler. His only hope for self-preservation was to drive Herr Wessler from the cast. His opportunity came at the Dagonet; he knew of Herr Wessler’s fear of mirrors; he had learned the Lillian Reed legend. By the merest chance, Miss Ffoulkes’s failure to recognize Miss Rue’s image in the glass and Mr. Com-stock’s hysterical outburst gave him the ideal opening to take the first step in a proposed campaign for terrorizing Herr Wessler. In the manner already discerned by us, he arranged that grisly effect with the false mirror. The wrong person fell into the trap. Mr. Comstock was killed. From then on, this individual’s position was even more precarious. He had failed to drive Herr Wessler from the cast; and, in addition, he had a semi-accidental homicide on his hands. That first rehearsal at the Dagonet was trying for you, Mr. Duluth; it was far more distracting for the man who was later to murder George Kramer.”

  I said: “Then Kamer wasn’t murdered just because he was a blackmailer?…”

  “On the contrary, Mr. Duluth, he was murdered because he was a blackmailer. But he wasn’t killed for any of the relatively minor reasons which have already come out. Such as Mr. Prince’s domestic problems or Miss Rue’s photographs. George Kramer tried, as they vulgarly express it, to bite off more than he could chew. He endeavored to blackmail a person desperate enough to be really dangerous. George Kramer found out why this member of your company was afraid of Hen Wessler. We cannot at the present time tell exactly what steps he took. Perhaps he threatened exposure; more probably he attempted to extort money in exchange for his silence. In any case, he became even more dangerous to this individual than Herr Wessler himself.”

  My excitement about the play was taking second place now. More and more, Dr. Lenz was annexing my entire interest.

  “So he killed Kramer?” I asked.

  “Exactly. Inspector Clarke agrees with me that the scheme which resulted in Kramer’s death was as diabolically cunning as any he has ever come across. Were it not for the suspicions aroused by what had gone before and the chance discovery that the rat-traps had been tampered with, we might never have guessed the truth. As it is, one can appreciate how simple it would have been for this person, having instigated the fumigation, to have purchased some form of cyanide and slipped it into the coffin just before rehearsal time. Mr. Kramer was killed. Ostensibly Clarke was satisfied with the accident theory. For a while it must have seemed to the murderer that he had nothing to worry about.”

  “Except Wessler?” I asked.

  “Except Wessler. I have said that at the time of the first attempt upon him Herr Wessler was completely unaware of the vital knowledge he had in his possession. But, after Kramer’s death, something happened to give him the clue. As the days moved on toward tonight, he started to think and gradually he arrived at the truth. He saw how all along the solution had been within his grasp. He came to you before the dress-rehearsal; he told you that he knew what was behind the disturbances at the Dagonet. The murderer of George Kramer overheard that conversation. He realized there was only one hope for him! Not only did Wessler know of this thing in his past he had been trying so desperately to hide; Wessler also knew that he had murdered Kramer. Wessler could have sent him to the electric chair. That is why, at the last minute, he made that crude, hurried attempt upon Wessler’s life.”

  I didn’t understand. Still I hadn’t the faintest notion about the identity of this shadowy criminal.

  “It was the very desperation of that final act which gave him away.” Lenz’s voice moved softly on, with the actor’s voices on stage making a dim obbligato. “As you may have noticed, Mr. Duluth, everything which happened before, bizarre and outlandish as it may have seemed, was brilliantly camouflaged as an accident. Even if we had wanted to, we could hardly have been able to present the police with enough evidence for them to suspect foul play. For a while it puzzled me that this person should have been so abnormally careful. Then I realized the truth.” He paused, his eyes for one absorbed second focusing on the stage. “All along, Mr. Duluth, you have been justifiably worried that the disturbances at the Dagonet would result in the closing of your play. Perhaps you never realized that there was someone else even more desperately anxious than you for Troubled Waters to open. That person was the instigator of the disturbances.”

  Henry was pushing a package of cigarettes at me. I took one and started to smoke it furiously. I was thinking how probably there had never been anything crazier than this—an author, a psychiatrist, a theatrical producer and a policeman, sitting together in a box, bristling with tuxedos, watching a play which by all the laws of logic should never have opened, and discussing an unknown member of its company as a murderer.

  I said: “It’s getting a bit straighter in my mind. But not much. Who is this person? And what did Wessler have against him?”

  “Those two questions, of course, complement each other,” said Lenz. “Perhaps if I tell you in what way Herr Wessler constituted a menace, you will be able to realize who it is that had reason to fear him. Herr Wessler, as you know, has an extraordinarily retentive memory for faces. That is the key to it all. In the past, Heir Wessler sa
w this person once; he saw him in a certain situation which, if it came to light, would have destroyed everything this person had worked to gain. That is why, at first, Herr Wessler was only a potential menace. He had it in his power to remember this person’s face. That is why, at the end, he became a very real, immediate menace. For suddenly it dawned on him when and where he had seen this person before.”

  Lenz was smiling. “Both Inspector Clarke and Mr. Prince were able to guess my little conundrum at this juncture, Mr. Duluth. Cannot you do likewise?”

  “No,” I said emphatically. “I haven’t a dog’s chance of doing likewise. I don’t…”

  The play was working up to its climax now, and for some minutes I had been the battle ground for two conflicting and equally strong desires. It was vital for me to hear the end of Lenz’s story. I should have been ready to banish all other considerations from my mind. But I couldn’t

  I guess it was only human of me. It mattered like hell, of course, which member of my company was responsible for the murderous outrages committed at the Dagonet But the play mattered, too. In spite of all the crazy qualifications, this night was the high-spot of my career. I’d been through hell struggling toward the goal. Here was I, Peter Duluth, one-time drunk, one-time has-been, sitting at the first night of my come-back production. I’d just been married; there was the tingling excitement of Iris. There was the shattering excitement of what was happening on stage. These minutes were making history in my life. They would never, never come again. I had to enjoy them. For these last moments of the last act I had to turn my back on murder and murderers. I had to snatch my little moment of triumph.

  That’s why I didn’t even finish the sentence I had started to Lenz. All my attention was riveted on the stage, where now the play was riding inexorably to its close. The audience, undisturbed by the problems in our box, were caught up in the spell from beyond the footlights.

  It was almost terrifying—the intensity of interest which the play had aroused.

  I started feeling uneasy again. I had always been troubled by the actual end. It lacked the ringing authenticity of the rest of the play. It went over the edge into hokum. Maybe Mirabelle and Von Brandt couldn’t pull it off. Maybe, never having rehearsed together before, they wouldn’t be able to carry their miracle through to the final curtain.

  I watched them, the pulses in my wrists throbbing. Never throughout the evening had they dropped one inch from the incredibly high standard of their opening scene. They were alone together now. Theo, Gerald, Iris had all slipped out of the picture. They were both completely sure of themselves and of their audience. It was incredible that those two people who never before tonight had set eyes on each other could fuse into so perfect a team.

  With the house tensely silent, Mirabelle went into her final speech of triumphant passion where she challenged Kirchner’s hatred of her, taunted him with the fact that in his heart he lusted after her and recklessly dared him to give up everything and follow her anywhere—nowhere. It clicked. She got it superbly. It rang true.

  But it was Kirchner’s answering speech which had always worried me; his sudden crumbling from the man of iron into the shoddy sensualist; his hysterical renunciation of reality; his final departure with the girl into the slowly sinking waters of the flood. In rehearsal I had always hoped it would get by. Now, as I thought of it, it seemed screamingly wrong, a violent wrench out of character. I waited in miserable suspense to see how Von Brandt would carry it off.

  Mirabelle had finished now. My eyes were glued on that tall, dark figure, the man who had been crazy and who was destined to be the rage of New York. I knew his dialogue by heart. For one interminable second I waited for the words to come.

  They didn’t. There was still absolute silence on stage. Von Brandt and Mirabelle were still close together staring at each other.

  My heart sank like a plummet. Now, at the very last minute, Von Brandt had let us down. His memory had failed him. He had forgotten his final speech. The audience hadn’t realized anything was wrong. But in a second it would.

  Very slowly, however, Von Brandt pulled himself away from Mirabelle. With a gesture of infinite contempt, he turned his back on her. He moved away from her toward the old grandfather clock. He took the audience with him every step across the stage.

  Only gradually did I realize what was happening, realize with a flutter of excitement and panic that Von Brandt was changing the end. He wasn’t going to have Kirchner succumb to the tinsel lure of Sex. He was keeping him in character. It was a crazy thing for an actor to do, to swerve away from the script at the very climax of the play.

  He didn’t say a word. His back studiedly ignoring Mirabelle, he lifted one arm to the dial, unhooked the key and slowly, ritualistically started to wind the clock.

  It was simple, but it was brilliant. With that one little domestic gesture he showed more forcibly than any words could have done his complete victory over what was shoddy in himself. But the agonized tension inside me did not let up. This was the perfect resolution of the Kirchner character, but how the hell was the play to end? What was Mirabelle going to do? Now it was up to her.

  For one split second I could tell she was at sea. This violent alteration of mood coming now after the steady emotional flow of the play was a frightful ordeal for any actress. I might have guessed, however, that Mirabelle Rue could take it. Without letting the tension slacken one iota, Mirabelle saw and did the only thing to carry the final curtain.

  Like Von Brandt, she said nothing. With a slight, defiant shrug of her shoulders, she crossed to the actor as he stood there, stolidly winding the clock. For one instant she posed in front of him, head tossed back, hands on hips. Then, suddenly, derisively she spat on the floor.

  In the shocked silence that followed, she started toward the door of the farmhouse, her whole body revealing her bored contempt of this male who had failed to come up to scratch. She threw open the door, hesitated a moment, gazing out at the expanse of water beyond. Then, abruptly, she stepped out and disappeared back into the flood from which she had emerged. From nowhere.

  Mirabelle had gotten away with it.

  The curtain was falling now. It came as a signal for feverish applause from the house. The whole world seemed to be drumming with the hollow echo of palm on palm. Beside myself with excitement, I grabbed Lenz’s arm and dragged him out of the box. I wanted to have a basket of flowers so that I could strew them giddily in my wake. Everything was swell; everything had excelled my wildest dreams.

  There was bedlam going on backstage. I was seized by my publicity agent He was moaning hysterically: “I’ve talked to Brooks Atkinson. I’ve talked to Brooks Atkinson. He’s giving us a rave. He’s crazy about us. Everyone’s crazy about us. Pulitzer Prize, Pulitzer Prize, Pulitzer Prize…”

  Iris was flinging herself at me, weeping and sobbing: “Hell, Peter, hell, hell, hell, I’m so happy.” Mirabelle floated around me, caroling: “God what an end! God, Peter, what an end.” I went up to Von Brandt. I shook him by the hand. I tried to say something but I couldn’t He was smiling dazedly. He said: “Please excuse for the change of end, Mr. Duluth. Always I have been bothered by the end. Never until tonight did I realize…”

  “It’s dandy,” I said. “It’s colossal. I…”

  Eddie appeared from nowhere; he shouted for order and yanked all the company back on stage for a curtain call. I saw them obliquely from the wings; saw them lined up in the brilliant light, bowing to blackness beyond— blackness and applause.

  Then the curtain dropped on the audience’s undiminished enthusiasm and the cast were swarming around me again. Someone kissed me. Theo stumbled over the coffin and fell. Eddie was at her side in a flash, dropping to his knees and rubbing her left ankle.

  “Lucky I took up massage at the hospital, Miss Ffoulkes. Little bit of everything comes in handy for a stage-manager.”

  I had crossed to them, planning to find out if any damage was done, when Lenz laid his hand on my arm. There
was a slow twinkle in his eyes.

  “Aren’t you interested to hear which member of your company is going to be arrested, Mr. Duluth?”

  That pulled me up with a jerk. I stared at Eddie and Theo and then at Lenz.

  “W-why, of course,” I said. “Someone whom Wessler had seen somewhere he shouldn’t have been, wasn’t it? Someone whose face Wessler gradually remembered?”

  Theo and Eddie were gazing at us as if we were nuts. Then they went away for the third curtain call. Lenz and I were alone in the wings. I tried to get my breath, it seemed to have gone off in so many different directions.

  Lenz said: “You remember that first morning when Mr. Kramer told us the story of Herr Wessler’s breaking the mirror in the Thespian Hospital, Mr. Duluth?” “Yes,” I said. “Yes.”

  “As you may also remember, he told us he had learnt the story from a male nurse who had taken care of Wessler while he was blind and had been switched to Von Brandt after he had found Wessler breaking the mirror. Wessler had refused to have anything more to do with him?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I remember.”

  The audience wouldn’t let the cast leave the stage. Mirabelle was bowing and then Von Brandt The applause was still deafening.

  “Herr Wessler had therefore only seen this man’s face once; he had never heard him speak any language but German. No other person in the world would have recognized that person when he saw him again. Because of his astonishing memory, Wessler did eventually recognize him.”

  “Then it was that attendant at the Thespian Hospital?” I asked. “You mean he’s here in the company?” “He is.”

  “But what had he done to Wessler? What was he afraid would come out?”

  “He had done nothing to Herr Wessler himself, Mr. Duluth. What he did, he did to Herr von Brandt. As you know, before his psychosis developed, Von Brandt had a few days of sanity. At that time, this man was taking care of him. Von Brandt guessed there was a chance of his losing his reason permanently. Therefore he entrusted to this person his most cherished possession, something no one, not even Wessler, knew he possessed. He entrusted it to this man, making him promise to keep it safe for him. This man went back on his promise; thinking