Cue For Murder

Chapter Three. Enter First Murderer

WHEN BASIL set out for the theater the evening was young, and he decided to walk. He turned into 44th Street from Fifth Avenue, the east wind at his back, pushing him along with surprising force. With the reluctance of a busy man, he had obeyed Pauline’s injunction to “dress.” Now the pavement felt hard under the thin soles of patent leather shoes, and white doeskin gloves impeded his efforts to dig loose change from a hip pocket when he stopped at a newsstand for an evening paper. He amused himself with the thought that this unaccustomed splendor was almost as good as a disguise. No one was likely to recognize Dr. Willing, the active member of the District Attorney’s staff, or Dr. Willing, the studious psychiatrist, in this drone’s livery.

As he came to the Royalty Theatre, he stepped back to the curb and looked up with a certain curiosity. It was one of New York’s older theaters. A gloomy façade of plum-colored stone with white trim suggested a wedge of fruit cake with vanilla icing. The marquee blazed with electric bulbs:

Sam Milhau presents WANDA MORLEY

in FEDORA

with RODNEY TAIT and LEONARD MARTIN

Light flooded two great posters at either side of the box-office door—fleeting impressions of Wanda caught on paper with a few slashing brush strokes in sepia and red. Her head was a small, dark ovoid poised on a long, sinuous, white column of neck. Her tilted eyes were half shut in a provocative side glance over a shrugging shoulder. The wide mouth with its thin, scarlet lips curled in a sardonic smile. It might not be art, but it was Wanda. One sketch showed her against a Muscovite skyline of onion-shaped domes; the other, against a summery background of oleander and mimosa. Nothing in either suggested that anyone else appeared in the play. But apparently Wanda was what the public wanted. Already a long queue besieged the box office and an extra traffic policeman was telling a pair of autograph seekers to move on.

Basil glanced at his watch. It was only eight, and the curtain would not rise until eight-forty. He looked about for a place where he could read his evening paper.

To the left of the theater stood a gaudy, Broadway hotel; to the right, one of the low buildings called “taxpayers” because their rentals just cover the landlord’s tax bill. This one housed a row of small shops and restaurants, and the first of these was a cocktail bar.

The moment Basil entered the place he knew it was expensive. There seems to be an unwritten law in New York that the more expensive a drinking place, the dimmer the light; and this place was so dim that he could hardly see across the room. Night gathering in the street outside turned the plate glass window into a huge mirror. Behind the bar, another mirror doubled the reflection of amber bottles with golden highlights. Wherever there wasn’t a window or a mirror, there was a highly polished surface of wood or metal, so the whole place shimmered like a faceted jewel in the half-light. The air was close and spicy with an aroma of mixed drinks. Soft music came from a radio turned low. A solitary bartender mixed his highball and inquired if there were any news about the opening next door in the evening paper?

Basil turned to the theatrical page.

OPENINGS TONIGHT

At the Royalty Theatre this evening, Sam Milhau is reviving Sardou’s Fedora starring Wanda Morley. According to Mr. Milhau’s office, Fedora, usually considered a romantic melodrama, will be staged tonight with the strictest realism. Action and dialogue have been brought up to date. The Russian Revolution of 1917 replaces a Nihilist plot in the original version, and the players will appear in modern dress. Miss Morley is, of course, playing the title role created by Bernhardt. Rodney Tait, her leading man, is making his first appearance on Broadway after winning laurels on the West coast; and a distinguished supporting cast includes Leonard Martin who is returning to the New York stage after a year’s illness.

“That all?” The bartender was disappointed.

“There’s something under Stage Notes.”

They read it together.

There may be jealousy and bickering in some theatrical companies, but according to Sam Milhau, the company that is opening tonight at the Royalty in his revival of Fedora is just one big, happy family; and no member of that family is more beloved than the star, Wanda Morley. Even the stagehands have fallen under Miss Morley’s spell. They have all clubbed together in order to send her a floral tribute on the opening night. “Just because she’s regular guy,” explained one of the electricians. “And we want her to know we’re all rooting for her!”

The bartender grinned. “The things them press agents think of!”

The street door flew open as if a gust of wind had blown it in. A young man swaggered up to the bar. He was about Basil’s own height, just under six feet, and he was dressed as Basil was dressed—patent leather shoes, dark overcoat, white gloves and muffler, and what Parisians used to call a “hat with eight reflections.” But there was a difference. Perhaps nothing tells more about a man’s temperament than the angle at which he wears a top hat. Timidity carries it as straight as a book balanced on top of the head to improve posture. Toughness pushes it far back to expose a tousled forelock. Gaiety tips it to one side. But arrogance tilts it as far forward as possible, carrying the head high and the chin thrust out to keep the brim from sliding down over the eyes. This young man was arrogant. Hat balanced precariously just above the bridge of his nose, he peered through the shadow the brim cast across his eyes like a half-mask and gave his order curtly: “Rum, gum and lime.”

The bartender was polishing a tumbler. He paused to rest two hands on the counter and responded deliberately: “That’s a new one on me.”

“Two jiggers of rum, one of lime juice, and one of sugar-cane syrup,” retorted the young man impatiently. “If you haven’t any syrup, grenadine will have to do. And fill it up with ice and soda.”

The bartender measured the ingredients gravely. The young man took a sip from his tall, pinkish drink and made a face. “Sugar-cane syrup is better!”

The bartender cast an eloquent glance at Basil. Sugar-cane syrup indeed! What next?

Basil remembered that Adler, the psychologist, claimed he could always tell whether a man had been the eldest, youngest or middle child of his family the moment he entered a room. Surely Adler would have classified this young man as a youngest child or an only son. Once he must have been the “baby” of a doting family, and he had never got over it. There was perennial immaturity in every word and gesture, though physically he looked about thirty. His face was fair and smooth. He might have been handsome in a sulky way if his lower lip had not been so full and protruding it was almost pendulous.

He had finished his drink. He took out a billfold of black pinseal. It contained a thick wad of greenbacks and some sort of official card in a cellophane pocket. He peeled off a five-dollar bill and slapped it down on the mahogany counter. “Where’s the stage door of the Royalty Theatre? I’ve been walking all around the square looking for it!”

The bartender returned the four dollars’ change. “It’s right next door. You have to go down the alley to get to it.”

The young man took a cigarette from a crumpled packet and stuck it in his mouth so it dangled damply from his lower lip. Somehow that was as insolent as the exaggerated angle of his hat. A match flared in the dusk and spotlighted his face. As the mirror behind the bar caught the image in the window, there seemed to be dozens of fair young men in shiny black hats lighting cigarettes in a long vista of reflections like a visual echo. He tossed his burnt match on the floor and the picture vanished. He strode through the doorway, his unbuttoned overcoat swinging from his shoulders as loosely as a cloak.

“Some young fool with too much money for his own good!” surmised the bartender. Basil paid for his own drink and went outside.

Night had fallen. In the pallid glare of the street-lamps the pavement was a dusty gray blushing here and there under neon signs. Down a narrow alley that ran between theater and taxpayer a dingy light shone on a sign painted Stage Door. The warm evening had brought out several flies that banked and plunged like miniature dive bombers around the kitchen door of the cocktail bar. Half-way down the alley a frame shack huddled against the side wall of the taxpayer. There was a crude sign outlined in white paint:

MARCUS LAZARUS

Knives and Scissors Ground

Saws Filed and Set

If it has an edge, we sharpen it!

Curiosity drew Basil toward the scene of the “burglary.” As he turned the corner into the alley, the wind passed him with a thin tuneless whistle. Light shone from one small, unshaded window in the wall of the shack. Through a broken pane he saw an old man in shirt sleeves sharpening a pair of shears. A shower of blue sparks sprayed from a humming grindstone worked with a foot treadle like a sewing machine. The light from an oil lamp picked out each finest wrinkle in the cobweb of lines that seamed the old face and left the rest of the workshop in shadow. It was like a little genre painting of the Dutch or Flemish School. Fancy supplied catalogue notations: MAN WITH SHEARS; attributed to Rembrandt or his School. Note mellow, golden flesh tones and fine detail in treatment of face and hands . . .

Basil’s glance searched the shadows beyond the lamplight. Something dangled from a wire hooked to the ceiling. It was covered with a piece of burlap. It looked like a birdcage . . .

A sudden swishing sound startled him. As he turned his head, something darted past his eyes and fell at his feet with a crisp rustle. It seemed to be a booklet bound in paper, about the format of a theater program but more bulky.

As a psychiatrist he had often observed that most people never look above their own eye-level without provocation. He himself was no exception to the rule. Though he had been looking all around him since entering the alley he had not looked up once. Now he raised his eyes. Beyond the low roof of the taxpayer, skyscrapers were piled as carelessly as a child’s blocks against an inky, blue sky. The side wall of the theater towered on his right, sheer and blind as a cliff. A red glow pulsated against the drab stone like the flicker of firelight. Apparently it came from the winking neon signs on Broadway beyond the taxpayer. A fire escape zigzagged down the wall. On the top landing, Basil could just make out a dark, faceless figure—a still shade among shadows that quivered as the light came and went. It was so shrouded in some sort of long cloak or overcoat, he could not see if it were man or woman. It was motionless as an animal when it “plays dead” in order to escape notice.

“Hi! You dropped something!”

No answer. Had the wind carried his voice away?

He picked up the booklet. It was a typewritten manuscript bound in paper with brass staples. When he lifted his eyes again, the figure was moving.

Like most theater fire escapes this one was substantial—an outside stairway built of flat iron bars with its first flight anchored securely to the ground. On impulse Basil stuffed the manuscript in his overcoat pocket and started up the stairs. The wind met him half-way, howling and dancing like a dervish over the roofs of the city. The higher he went, the more urgent the blast. He clutched his hat with one hand and clung to the iron railing with the other, while his overcoat flapped about his knees. Through the bars overhead he saw the dark figure move again. It seemed to melt into the wall of the theater. When Basil reached the top landing there was no one there.

At this height, the red glow he had seen from below was flickering all around him, and he could see over the roofs of lower buildings to its source—letters of fire, flashing and fading their message with the regular beat of a pendulum:

Time For Tilbury’s Tea!

Other tubes of neon gas shone uninterruptedly, outlining the hands and numerals of a great clock. At first glance it seemed suspended between heaven and earth without means of support. Then as his eyes grew used to the uncertain light, he saw that the figures of the clock were merely unframed and uncovered, set flush with a block of stone in the darkened tower of a skyscraper that blended with the night sky. It was just eight twenty-five. He glanced at his own watch and found it ten minutes slow. Automatically, he set it right.

Beside him in the theater wall, a fire door stood open. Someone passing through the doorway in a hurry had not given the door a hard enough tug from within to counteract the pull of the wind and catch the snap lock. Basil stepped inside and drew the door after him. He had a brief tug of war with the wind before he got it closed.

He was standing on the top landing of another iron stairway—the sort you see in factory lofts, composing rooms, and other places where durability comes before comfort or beauty. Below, four stories deep, lay the fascinating confusion of a theater backstage on the eve of an important opening. There was no one else on the stairs now, but there were a hundred places in that huge windowless barn where a dark figure might have hidden: the dressing rooms opening onto the staircase; the maze of flies and catwalks overhead; and the wings far below where a mixed crowd of actors, stagehands, firemen, dressers, press agents and men from the producer’s office pullulated like ants around an ant heap. None of them noticed Basil as he stood looking down at them. Like him, none thought to look above eye-level without provocation. Any one of them might have been the dark figure he had seen. Or had the whole thing been an illusion born of the shifting shadows? His hand went to his pocket. The manuscript was still there. That much at least was solid and real.

He took it out and leaned forward to catch the light from below. The cover was made of coarse blue paper. It was labeled:

FEDORA, A Drama in three acts

By Victorien Sardou

He turned the pages. It was an English translation of the old French play, revised and modernized. All Desiré’s lines were crossed out, and all Fedora’s lines were checked with blue pencil. This must be Wanda’s script—the one she had used in learning the part of Fedora. At first he thought there were no other marks. Then he saw that one line spoken by another character had been heavily underscored in lead pencil:

SIREX: He cannot escape now, every hand is against him!

II

Basil went down the stairs. On each landing he passed a door. On the floor level he saw one embellished with a silver star. He rapped lightly.

The door flew open. “Oh, you’re late. I—Oh . . .”

It was Wanda herself. Dark hair streamed loosely across her shoulders. There was something snakelike about the small, flat head, the long neck, the lithe body and tilted jewel-bright eyes. Sulphurous yellow satin billowed around her—the color of a canary’s plumage. From throat to hem it was fastened with tiny buttons and loops of the same material. There must be at least twenty or thirty of them. Could she have fastened so many tricky little loops in the two or three minutes since he had seen a dark figure on the fire escape?

As she recognized Basil, her smile went out as if someone had snapped off a switch. For a moment her face was a cold, clay mask, painted rather garishly. Then she assumed artificial animation. “Dr. Willing!” This time her smile was a muscular effort. “Will you excuse me? I’m on in the first act, and I must dress now. I do hope you’ll enjoy the play!”

“I’m beginning to enjoy it already.”

Her eyes opened wide. “What do you mean?”

“Hasn’t the play begun already? Or, at least, a play?” He held out the manuscript. “I believe this is yours.” He showed her the first page with all Fedora’s lines checked.

“Why, yes.” But she wasn’t looking at the manuscript. She was looking at the hand that held it. “What have you been doing to your gloves?”

He looked down. The palm of his white glove was streaked with black dust. He laughed. “Your fire escape needs a spring cleaning. I was in the alley just now when you dropped this, and I followed you up the fire escape.”

“Are you crazy? I was never on the fire escape! What would I be doing there?”

“I don’t know, but I couldn’t help wondering. And I couldn’t help thinking it odd that you marked one line spoken by one of the other characters. A rather sinister line.” Basil read it aloud: “He cannot escape now, every hand is against him!”

Wanda’s pupils dilated until her eyes looked almost black. “I never marked that line!”

“Then who did?”

“I don’t know. Why should anyone else mark a line in my script?” Her gaze went beyond him.

He turned. There was no one there, but he had an impression she was waiting for someone.

“You really must excuse me,” she said hurriedly. ‘I’ll see you after the play, I hope.” She stepped backward, closing the door. She had forgotten all about her script.

With something like a shrug, Basil put it back in his overcoat pocket and wandered off in search of a door to the front of the theater.

The stage was already set for the first act. Every way he turned, he was blocked by a frail wall of muslin canvas stretched on frames of lathe, held upright by wooden braces nailed to the floor, and ropes running through pulleys anchored to the roof. It seemed to be the wrong side of a box set enclosing the stage completely on three sides. In the rear wall there was a small three-sided projection—apparently the obverse side of an alcove opening into the set. Beyond this alcove in the right wall of the set there was an open window. Outside the window, a backdrop was painted to represent snow-covered roofs against a starry sky—the view from the window. An electrician was just placing a blue-shaded lamp so that it would shine on the snow to simulate moonlight. A formidable tangle of wires filled the small space beyond, so Basil turned and went around to the opposite side of the set. There he found a door in the canvas wall. Facing it was another backdrop painted to represent a marble wall. In front of the wall stood a small table supporting a bowl of beaten brass. Apparently this was the segment of hallway beyond the door that would be visible to the audience when the door was opened during the action of the play. To an audience under the spell of a dramatic scene, that door would seem to lead to a whole houseful of rooms and beyond to a street and a city full of people. Actually it led to a few inches of backdrop with nothing beyond but the brick wall of the theater.

The door opened. For one dreadful moment, Basil feared the play had begun and he was going to be caught on stage. But it was Pauline who came off the set, shutting the door behind her. It closed with the dry snap of real wood and he saw that it was made of plywood set in a lath frame.

There was a thread of frown between Pauline’s brows. Her mouth drooped disconsolately. She stopped when she saw him. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for a way out.”

“Are you good at finding things?”

“What’s lost?”

“Nothing very important. And it isn’t exactly lost. It’s only . . . Rod and Leon can’t find it, and neither can I.”

“Then it’s probably lost. What is it?”

“A knife.”

Basil’s composure hid a sense of shock. “What sort of knife?”

“Well, it’s like this,” Pauline went on wearily. “Sam Milhau is awfully keen on what he calls ‘realism.’ That doesn’t mean that he likes human characters or possible situations in the plays he produces. It just means that he likes the details of a production as literal as possible. Only he doesn’t call it ‘literal.’ He calls it ‘authentic.’ Real food if there’s a meal, real flowers if there’s a garden. He’d have real fires in stage fireplaces if the fire department would let him. Tonight Rod plays the part of a surgeon who has to probe a wound for a bullet, and Milhau wants Rod to carry a real surgical bag with real scalpels and what not. Of course Milhau didn’t want to pay a lot for his realism, so the prop man tried to get a surgical bag second hand. He couldn’t get one because surgeons are donating all their old instruments to the Red Cross these days. Then Rod remembered that one of his uncles was a retired surgeon, and he got hold of this uncle’s old kit. The knife blades were awfully blunt and rusty, but he polished them up a little so they’d look clean and bright—more ‘realism.’ He’s been carrying the bag at pre-views and try-outs, and tonight—about ten minutes ago—he opened the bag and saw that one of the knives was missing. He says it’s the same knife he used at the pre-views, so I went on stage just now to see if he’d left it on the set, but it isn’t there. Suppose you come and take a look around his dressing room.”

Pauline led the way to another door on the floor level and tapped lightly. A voice shouted: “Come in!”

They entered a room about sixteen feet square. Rodney Tait stood in front of a dressing table examining the contents of its drawer. A dressing gown of light blue flannel was belted tightly around his waist. Leonard Martin was pacing the floor—five steps in one direction, stop and turn, five steps in the other direction, and da capo. He, too, wore a dressing gown, but his was silk of a vivid, cardinal red.

Rod grinned at sight of Basil. “Got a criminologist on the job?”

“Well, the knife is missing.” Pauline perched on the arm of a chair. “It could have been stolen.”

Leonard laughed. “Who would steal an old surgical knife? Some ardent Red Cross worker?”

“Are you sure the kit was complete in the first place?” asked Basil.

“No, I’m not.” Rod shut the drawer with a slam. “I never examined it very thoroughly until tonight, but I have an impression that all the pockets were filled when I first used it.” He turned to Leonard. “Haven’t you?”

“Yes, but it’s just an impression,” responded Leonard. “I could be mistaken.”

“Well, you didn’t leave it on the set,” announced Pauline. “I looked all over the alcove, and it just wasn’t there.”

The bag stood on the dressing table—a very ordinary bag of black calfskin scuffed and cracked with age. Basil looked inside. Sewn to the lining were loops and pockets something like the interior of a woman’s sewing bag. All but one were filled with surgical instruments. There was nothing to indicate whether that one had contained a knife recently or not. Basil took out a probe and examined it in the intense glare that came from the high-powered bulbs framing the mirror. The blade bore the name of a Boston manufacturer. It was good steel, freshly cleaned, though the edge was dull. The handle was engraved rather elaborately with a spiral pattern of grooves and “lands” like the interior rifling of a gun barrel in reverse, though the grooves were much deeper and the lands correspondingly higher.

“This is the instrument you’d probably need if you were probing for a bullet,” said Basil, picking up a probe.

“Is it?” Rod was interested. “Then I shan’t worry about the missing scalpel. What do I take the bullet out with?”

“Rod, don’t be an idiot!” cried Pauline. “As if anyone in the audience could see what you’re using when you’re way back in the alcove. All they get is a flash of light along the blade. You might just as well use a bread-knife.”

“I don’t care whether they can see me or not,” retorted Rod. “I’m like Milhau—I want realism. Everything must be authentic.”

Pauline and Leonard laughed. Evidently Milhau’s “realism” was a running gag.

But Rod was serious. “Even if the audience can’t see the knife, I can.”

“For the gods see everywhere?” suggested Basil.

“Exactly,” agreed Rod. “It has a psychological effect on me to know I’m doing the right thing in the right way whether the audience knows it or not. I never could see anything funny about the fellow who blacked all over for Othello. I’d do the same thing myself!”

“Are you sure it was a scalpel you used during rehearsal?” asked Basil.

“Well, it was a knife like this.” Rod held up a scalpel. “That’s another reason I’m pretty sure a knife is missing. I have a distinct impression that there was a pair of these, and now there’s only one.

Basil turned to Pauline. “Did you search the set thoroughly?”

“Indeed I did. I spent about five minutes poking into everything there.”

“And you’re sure the knife isn’t in here?” Basil turned back to Rod. “You might easily have laid it down somewhere in this room instead of returning it to the bag after the pre-view.”

“That’s what I thought. But I’ve looked and so has Leonard, and it just isn’t here.”

Basil’s glance swept the small room. It was furnished sparingly—rug, couch, dressing table, bench, wardrobe, and washstand. All the movable furniture was pushed back against the walls leaving a space about fourteen feet square in the middle of the room.

“No windows?” remarked Basil.

“There are no windows backstage even in dressing rooms,” explained Leonard. “If there were, daylight might filter onto the set in the wrong place. Or a draught might blow against a sturdy brick wall until it flapped like a flag, and the audience would see it was only painted canvas.”

Basil sat on the upholstered couch and slipped his hand down between seat and back. He fished out a cigarette stub, two hairpins, a broken pencil, a ten-cent piece, and a small nail file, but nothing that remotely resembled a surgical knife.

Pauline was watching him curiously. “You really think it matters?”

“Well . . . a sharp knife isn’t a good thing to leave lying around.” He made his voice casual.

“But it wasn’t sharp!” protested Rod. “Those knives haven’t been used for years.”

“Then your realism didn’t extend to sharpening the knife?” murmured Basil.

“No. Too much like work when they’re as blunt as that. Besides, I’ve cut myself with a razor too often to hanker after handling a really sharp knife on stage.”

“They’re quite sharp enough as they are.” Leonard displayed a small, dark cut on his right forefinger. “I did that just now when Rod asked me to go through the bag for him.”

“Better put iodine on it,” said Basil. “Tetanus germs thrive in dusty places.”

Leonard laughed, but Pauline found a bottle of iodine on the dressing table and insisted on applying it.

Basil pulled out the dressing-table drawer. Nothing there but the expected array of cosmetics, combs, and brushes.

“When did you first realize the knife was missing?”

“Just about ten minutes ago. I opened the bag to put in some gauze dressings I had bought for tonight—more realism—and I noticed that empty pocket. I wasn’t sure whether it had been empty before so I went to Leonard’s room and asked him if he could remember. He said he thought the kit was complete the last time I had it on stage. That was yesterday. He came back here to help me look for it. We met Pauline outside, and it was she who suggested I might have left it on the set. She went off to look for it there.”

Basil nodded. Apparently each one of the three had been alone ten minutes ago. Any one of them could have been the dark figure on the fire escape. . . .

“Could the knife be on one of the other sets?”

Rod shook his head. “Dr. Lorek and his surgical bag only appear in the first act. I play another part in the second half of the play. Sardou wrote before the days of Equity salaries, and he didn’t care how many characters he had. Milhau has cut out all the walk-on parts he could and doubled up on those that appear only in the first act.”

“I hate to break up this party,” drawled Leonard, “but do you realize the curtain will rise in three minutes, and I have to go on in seven minutes?”

Basil rose. “If I were you, I’d be careful of that knife on stage tonight. Perhaps it would be wiser to forget realism for once and carry an empty bag. You could make the motions of probing for a bullet without any probe.”

“But that would spoil everything!” exclaimed Rod. “The flash of light along the blade of the knife is what makes that scene!”

Leonard was gazing at Basil in astonishment. “You don’t think this knife business is serious, do you?”

“It’s probably just mislaid—a case of first-night jitters. But—” Basil hesitated.

What did it all amount to? A surgical knife lost . . . a burglar who broke into a knife-grinding shop without stealing anything . . . a canary let out of its cage . . . a script of Sardou’s Fedora with one rather ominous line underscored. . . . The rest was “atmosphere,” not evidence. The District Attorney’s office was not interested in atmosphere. Neither was the Police Department. . . .

III

Pauline led Basil briskly through the semi-darkness, swerving now and then to avoid a tangle of rope or a dangling wire. The canvas wall was on their left, the brick wall of the theater on their right; and the roof so high above their heads that the ceiling was lost in shadow. They passed the plywood door and came to the end of the canvas wall. There was a narrow gap between it and the proscenium arch. Through this gap Basil had a glimpse of men gathering around a table set for a game of dominoes—actors assembling on stage to be discovered by the audience when the curtain rose.

Beyond them at the rear of the stage there was a double doorway. As Basil watched, it opened, and a woman came out drawing the doors together behind her. She crossed the stage with a firm, slow step. The glare of the footlights fell on a hard, sun-browned face—eyes narrow; nose sharp; lips thin and resolute. Light brown hair, straight as pine needles, coiled in a neat roll on the nape of her neck. Her sun-baked skin was almost the same shade of tan as her hair, but her eyes were light. She wore no make-up save a slight reddening of the lips. Her dress was a stiff silk, striped diagonally in black and white. It was crisp, severe and dashing—a style that suited her. Cloak and gloves were black. As the cloak flowed behind her Basil remembered that the figure on the fire escape had been a dark one.

She reached the gap in the wings. Her pale eyes dwelt on Basil briefly—a cool, inimical stare. Then she passed him, disappearing among the shadowy shapes beyond the stage.

Pauline touched his arm. “What are you waiting for? We must hurry!”

Directly in front of them was a heavy door covered with green baize. A faint buzzing came through it, as if bees were swarming beyond. When Basil opened the door for Pauline, the buzzing became a shrill clatter of many tongues. They were on the frontier between reality and illusion. In one step they passed from the actor’s raw world of seam and packthread to the cushioned, gilded world of the spectator where canvas is stone; spotlight, moonlight; and rouge, the first bloom of youth.

On this side of the curtain all the hangings were ripe red plush; all the fringe a glittering gilt; all the paneling figured walnut; all the pillars veined marble, and all the chandeliers dripping with crystal prisms. The domed ceiling was painted with a billowy Aphrodite supported by bulbous cherubs on pink cotton clouds against a turquoise blue sky.

“A perfect setting for Fedora,” whispered Basil.

“Isn’t it?” responded Pauline. “Sam Milhau was pretty clever not to streamline this place. If only the footlights were gas jets Belasco’s ghost could feel at home.”

As if their entrance had been a signal every light in the house went out except the dim red exit lights that pricked the darkness far back under the first balcony. They were at one end of a corridor that embraced the orchestra seats in a half-circle. They hurried around to the head of the center aisle. As they reached it, the footlights flashed on—a crescent of yellow glare that sculptured the lower folds of the curtain while everything above swam in a watery twilight without color or contour. The clatter of tongues died away in a silence taut with expectation.

They were stopped half-way up the aisle by an usher with a flashlight. “Your tickets?”

Basil fumbled in his breast pocket, found the envelope Pauline had given him. “We’ve just been backstage. Can you take the stubs and check my hat and coat for me?”

“I shouldn’t, but I will. This way, please.”

He led them down the center aisle to seats in the fourth row and thrust souvenir programs into their hands—sumptuous affairs of cream-colored parchment bound with crimson cord and a sketch of Wanda on the cover. The star did not believe in hiding her light under a bushel. . . .

Basil glanced toward the critics’ row. “Wonder what they’ll say?”

“Formula X31B2,” answered Pauline. “Last night the brilliant artistry of the American theater’s first lady, Miss Wanda Morley, infused life and passion into the sawdust and tinsel of a creaky old melodrama by Victorien Sardou. When will our theater provide the gifted Miss Morley with a vehicle worthy of her great talent and beauty? It never occurs to them that Wanda chooses bad plays on purpose so she’ll always seem better than the play.”

“And the audience?”

“They’ll eat it up. Look at them now—watering at the mouth.”

Every seat in the house was filled, and filled magnificently. A Wanda Morley opening was one of the few events that could make a New York theater look as festive as the opera. Every silver fox farm in the West must have contributed its quota of pelts to the scene, while Siberia must have been entirely denuded of mink and ermine. There was a vast display of bald heads and boiled shirts among the men; of shaved armpits and shoulders coated with liquid powder among the women. In spite of the elaborate artifice of jewels, silks, and coiffures, the feminine faces looked strained and haggard in the cold twilight as their eyes settled hungrily on the curtain.

Basil’s glance came back to Pauline and dwelt approvingly on her simple, long-sleeved, long-skirted dress of clear azure. “You’re the only one who doesn’t look like a singe endimanché.”

“Well, a costume designer ought to know something about clothes!” She lifted one hand in a self-deprecating gesture. The palm of her white glove was streaked with black dust.

“How did that happen?”

Silk rustled, and a woman behind them leaned forward to hiss: “S-s-sh! Will you please be quiet?”

The curtain was rising.

IV

ACT I, St. Petersburg. Winter. The house of Count Vladimir Andrejevich. A parlor in the antique Muscovite style with Parisian decorations . . .

Sam Milhau’s stage designer had interpreted Sardou’s directions luxuriantly. There was a low, domed ceiling formed by interlacing ogive arches. Synthetic firelight drew monstrous shadows on walls enameled in barbaric blues and reds, yellows and greens. The painted figures seemed to dance a stealthy measure whenever you didn’t watch them closely. Candle-flames made white highlights in a silver samovar. A tea service of blue and gold Sèvres and a few brittle Louis XVI chairs gave the Parisian touch Sardou had insisted upon.

In the left wall Basil recognized the single door he had seen from the other side. From here, the plywood looked like stout oak carved intricately. In the right wall, he looked through the window to snow-covered roofs. Could that chill moonshine really be coming from the blue lamp he had seen backstage? At first he was puzzled by the double doors that stood closed in the rear wall of the set. Why hadn’t he noticed them on the other side? Then he remembered the three-sided projection of lathe and canvas he had passed at the rear of the set. As he had surmised, it was an alcove. It must be reached from the stage by these double doors, now closed; and apparently they were its only opening.

The rising curtain disclosed the domino players Basil had seen on stage from the wings. They were supposed to be servants gossiping informatively as stage servants did in Sardou’ day. There was a general coughing and shuffling and rustling of programs as the modern audience grew restive. First-night nerves seemed to have congealed the actors playing these minor parts. They spoke and moved as stickily as flies on fly-paper.

Then everything changed.

A bell rang.

The Princess!

Stage servants scattered in guilty haste, hiding dominoes and tea cups. One ran to open the single door at left. An outburst of hand clapping rippled through the audience.

Fedora, in full evening dress, closely wrapped in furs, enters hurriedly . . .

Bernhardt herself could not have looked the part more superbly. Wanda was cloaked from head to heels in dark, supple, plumy sables. A few flakes of stage snow clung artfully to hood and shoulders as if they had just fallen while she stepped from troika to porte-cochère. As she reached the stage fireplace, she tossed her small round muff on a chair and stretched out ungloved hands to a red cellophane fire, chafing them with a realistic shiver. Her hood fell back, and she allowed her open cloak to slide down to her elbows without dropping it altogether. Her shoulders were bare and dazzlingly white above the dark fur. For this scene Pauline had designed a dress of golden gauze, sleek at the waist, and foaming about the feet in a frothy glitter. Diamonds blazed at her throat and crowned her dark head, heightening the golden flash of her eyes. Obviously they were the real thing, cold and heavy. Her small head bore the weight proudly as she turned from the fire and spoke her first line. Is the master away?

No more shuffling of feet or rustling of programs. There was something in Wanda that bewitched an audience—a vitality, only partly sexual, that could be felt across the footlights like the warmth of a fire. She had the politician’s knack of infecting a crowd with uncritical enthusiasm for everything she did. Even the other actors on the stage responded to her vivacity. It was not a mere quickening of tempo, but a surge of power from a personality geared to a higher voltage than theirs. In a few moments the fate of Wanda as Fedora had become a matter of personal moment to every member of the audience. Would she discover that Vladimir had gone out to carouse with other women on the eve of his marriage to her?

Wanda dropped into an armchair before the fire. Its light turned her gauzy skirts to rose-gold. As a servant parried her questions, her glance strayed toward the closed double doors. What’s that?

The bedroom.

Wanda ignored the sly undertone in the servant’s voice. A charming tenderness infused her smile as she turned back to the fire.

Again the doorbell rang. Again a servant hurried to open the door at left. Wanda, lost in her own thoughts, did not turn her head as a man in the uniform of a Tsarist police officer entered brusquely. The count’s room—quick!

This was an actor Basil did not recognize, but he was reminded a little of his friend, Inspector Foyle. This was the universal policeman—robust, hard-headed, unimaginative, doing his duty as his superiors saw it and asking no inconvenient questions of God or man. It was a caricature, shrewdly observed, subtly suggestive, and the actor contrived all this without any help from Sardou who had roughed in Grech, the police officer, as carelessly as he sketched all his minor characters. Wanda had brought the warmth and color of a brilliant personality into the play and captured the sympathy of the audience. But for all her charm the play itself had remained an emotional illusion. Only when Grech entered the scene did the illusion suddenly become reality itself. Now the blue spotlight really was moonlight, and the painted roofs beyond the window really were the roofs of Moscow while Broadway and New York and even America were thousands of miles away.

Grech snatched off heavy, leather gauntlets and thrust them in his belt. The servant pointed to the double doors mutely. Grech strode upstage from left to center and threw the double doors open with a wide gesture.

Something between a gasp and a sob was wrenched from the audience. The alcove was a shallow oblong, and, as Basil had seen from the other side of the set, there were no doors or windows in the side and back walls. Within the alcove the only light came from a red-shaded candle that burned before a black and gold icon on the rear wall. It was furnished with a rug, a small table, and a narrow bed. On the bed a man lay on his back—a long figure stretched at full length under a crimson quilt. Only his head and one arm were uncovered. The arm dangled limply, lax fingers trailing to the floor. The head was turned toward the audience. Dim as the light was, Basil would have known that handsome, sulky face anywhere. It was the man he had seen in the cocktail bar.

But for him the alcove was empty.

His face was made up with considerable skill, Basil thought. It was exactly the shade of dirty white he had so often seen on faces of the dying and the dead in his medical experience. The make-up man had even contrived to suggest the sharpened nose and the pinched, blue look around the lips. Or perhaps that was another of the electrician’s blue lamps focused on the mouth . . .

The audience sat in almost cataleptic stillness as it realized that Vladimir had been lying wounded—perhaps dying—in this inner room all the time that Wanda and the servants, unaware of his presence, waited in the alcove for him to come home. Fur cap, military tunic, and high boots lay in a heap on the floor as if he had dropped them there before he crawled blindly into bed exhausted, scarcely conscious . . .

Even now Vladimir did not move or speak.

Grech was the first to enter the alcove. He leaned over the bed with his back to the audience, hiding Vladimir from view. After a moment he turned. How like Inspector Foyle and all the other policemen Basil had ever known was the curt, businesslike tone of Grech’s voice as he rapped out one word: Wounded.

Wanda had turned her head from the fire at the sound of the doors opening. As Grech approached the bed she had risen. Now with a cry that seemed torn from her heart, she ran into the alcove and dropped on her knees beside the bed. Her arms cradled Vladimir’s head. She sobbed aloud, her face against his shoulder.

Grech came downstage center and spoke to the nearest servant: Who is that woman?

Only then, when Grech stood for the first time in the full glare of the footlights, did Basil recognize him as Leonard Martin. Basil was so fascinated by this discovery that he could not take his eyes off Leonard for some time after. The colorless brows and lashes had been darkened. A wig hid the bald head and thin fringe of sandy hair. A full-skirted overcoat with broad shoulders made him look larger and more formidable. But it was not make-up alone that gave Leonard all the rugged virility he had seemed to lack off-stage. Everything about him was different—voice, gait, gesture, and bearing were those of another man. Wanda had won the sympathy of the audience by the intensity of her own personality. For that very reason she had not acted at all. It was Fedora as Wanda Morley, not Wanda Morley as Fedora. She could control the expression of her emotions at will, but they were always her emotions. She could not simulate another character alien to her own temperament. With Leonard it was different. He was more than an actor—he was an artist. He didn’t use Grech as a vehicle for exploiting his own personality. He didn’t even act Grech—he was Grech. He destroyed his own personality temporarily in order to make Grech, the policeman, a living, breathing individual with a robust personality all his own that had nothing to do with a quiet, sickly little actor named Leonard Martin. Wanda was merely an alluring woman. Leonard was a creative artist. Basil wondered if the audience appreciated the difference between sex appeal and art.

Perhaps Wanda was afraid of comparisons, for now she went out of her way to draw the attention of the audience to herself. How could anyone watch Grech question the household servants near the footlights, while Wanda, in the alcove, kept her hands in constant motion by straightening Vladimir’s pillow, stroking his cheek, lifting his arm back onto the bed?

The door at left opened to admit Dr. Lorek. His entrance completely destroyed the illusion of reality on stage which Leonard Martin had created. Once again the moonlight was just blue lamplight; the roofs of Moscow, painted canvas.

Even if Basil had not known who was playing Lorek he would have recognized Rodney Tait at once. He was supposed to be a distinguished surgeon called in to save a valuable patient lying at the point of death; but he only succeeded in being exactly what he had seemed off stage—a personable, debonair young man without a care in the world. His success in the theater was obviously owing to a pleasing voice and easy manner, rather than any talent as an actor. His good-humored presence served him well enough when he played young men like himself. But, like Wanda, he was incapable of portraying any character alien to his own nature. Tonight he was miscast in just such a role. He was trying—too hard. With artless solemnity he divested himself of padded overcoat, fur cap, and fur-lined gloves, piling them neatly on a chair. You could almost hear the beat of the dramatic school metronome between each carefully spaced syllable when he exclaimed woodenly: An accident?

The fluid perfection of Leonard’s delivery was a painful contrast as he answered: Attempted murder.

Rod picked up his black bag and moved toward the alcove. He had an unfortunate trick of relaxing between his lines and forgetting all about his part while he allowed his eyes to roam the stage, examining the set, the other actors, and even the audience with the detached interest of a spectator. Then, when he heard a cue for his next line, he would come to with a start and begin to “act” again. In the alcove he went through the motions of examining Vladimir with mechanical precision—lifting an eyelid, groping for a pulse, frowning portentously. He scribbled a prescription and sent one of the servants to get it filled. He called for hot water. Wanda hurried downstage to relay the order to the household. Rod was left alone with Vladimir in the alcove. Rod set his little black bag on the bedside table and opened it. He leaned over the bed. Candlelight struck a glancing beam from a steel blade in his hand. The flash dazzled Basil so he couldn’t see whether it was a probe or a scalpel. But he thought he understood why Rod had decided to bring the knife on stage after all. He probably believed that realistic bits of stage “business” would help out his deficiencies as an actor.

Only a second or so had passed when Rod laid down the knife and came out of the alcove to discuss the case with Leonard.

“Quickest extraction of a bullet on record!” whispered Basil to Pauline. “What price realism now?”

She smiled—and just then Basil was startled by a familiar line: He cannot escape now, every hand is against him!

Basil’s glance returned to the stage. The line had been uttered by an actor Basil had not noticed particularly until this moment—an elderly man who had entered just after Leonard. He had announced himself in the play as “Jean de Siriex of the French Embassy.” Basil riffled through pages of luxury advertisements and intimate chats on What The Man Will Wear until he came eventually to the business end of the playbill:

Jean de Siriex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Seymour Hutchins

Pauline saw what he was doing and whispered: “Who’s playing Vladimir?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I’ve no idea. They used a dummy at the pre-view.”

Basil’s eyes ran down the entire cast.

Fedora Romazov . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wanda Morley

Grech, a police officer . . . . . . . . . Leonard Martin

Lorek, a surgeon . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rodney Tait

“Vladimir isn’t listed.”

“What a pity! He’s good. That’s what I call realism.”

Basil lifted his eyes to the stage once more. “Too realistic to be real.”

In the cocktail bar the fellow had not looked like an actor. Now, in Basil’s opinion, he was overacting with such extreme exaggeration that he made the whole play seem false and forced—the usual fault of the amateur in any art. Basil had heard that a death scene never fails on the stage. No matter how poor the play or the players, the drama of death must always transcend their limitations. But this time the old saying did not hold good. This death scene was tailing drearily. Vladimir lay utterly still with limp, curled fingers, half-closed, eyes, sunken cheeks, and colorless lips parted in a soundless moan as if each breath were drawn in agony. Yet somehow it was such a blatant bid for pity and terror that the natural reaction of the spectator was: You’re not fooling me! The minute the curtain’s down you’ll be up and off to a champagne supper! Even malnutrition cases in the public ward of a free hospital didn’t look quite so drained of vitality when they checked out. Or if they did—well, that was one of the things Basil came to the theater to forget. . . . He felt a certain relief when Rodney returned to the alcove and stood with his back to the audience hiding Vladimir from view.

Swiftly the scene was building to a climax. Vladimir’s assailant had escaped. That gave Leonard a chance to draw a malicious thumbnail sketch of a policeman so absorbed in the strategy of a man-hunt that he was happily oblivious to all the human feelings of his quarry. Rod came out of the alcove and crossed the stage to Wanda and Leonard.

Madame, it is the end.

She clasped her hands, staring into his face. Dead? The word was a sigh. Rod bowed his head.

Wanda squeezed all the melodrama there was out of those last few moments. Vladimir! She ran into the alcove. Don’t you know me? She threw her arms around the motionless figure on the bed, kissing the still lips. Vladimir, speak to me! She fell across the body, sobbing loudly.

Basil felt a light touch on his arm. It was Pauline.

“Let’s slip out quickly before the rush.”

The curtain was falling as she led the way up the center aisle and down the side aisle to the door that gave back stage. They paused at the narrow gap in the wings. Wanda was taking curtain calls with Leonard and Rodney on either side of her. A messenger boy brought a big gilt basket of roses down the center aisle and hoisted it over the footlights to her. As the curtain fell again Rodney and Leonard retired to the wings opposite. Wanda took the last bow alone on an empty stage with her blood-red roses. No, not quite alone. Vladimir was still lying on the bed in the alcove. Basil felt grateful for that. He hated to see a stage corpse coming to life to take a curtain call.

At last the curtain was down for good, muting the thunder of applause. Wanda turned toward the wings. She seemed to be looking for someone. Then she glanced back at the alcove and smiled.

“You can get up now, darling!” She called gaily. “First act’s over, and your job is done. Was it very hard?”

No answer. Wanda laughed and picked up her sable cloak. “Get up! Is this your idea of a gag? The stagehands have to shift the scene. Next act in Paris.”

Dark fur cloak trailing from one arm, gauzy, golden skirts fluttering around her, she seemed to drift rather than walk to the alcove. Still laughing, she leaned over and touched Vladimir on the shoulder. Her smile died. She lifted her knuckles to her lips as if stifling a cry.

Basil crossed the stage to the alcove. Pauline, Rodney, and Leonard were close behind him. Wanda’s tawny eyes were wide open, staring straight into Basil’s.

“He’s—dead.” Her breath separated the words. Her eyes closed. She swayed and toppled. She lay on the bare boards of the stage as still as Vladimir himself. Pauline knelt beside Wanda, drawing the fur cloak over her, taking a crystal phial of smelling salts from Wanda’s purse. A stagehand came up to the edge of the group. “Listen, we gotta shift this scene now.”

No one paid any attention to him. Everyone was looking at the man on the bed. His half-shut eyes were filmed, his open lips were pale and dry. There was a little saliva at one corner of his mouth and one tiny drop of blood. It might have been caused by a pinprick.

Basil touched the neck. It was still warm. He pulled down the crimson quilt that had covered Vladimir all during the first act. The grooved handle of a surgical knife protruded from the chest just above the heart. There was no breath, no pulse. The dangling arm was rigid.

“Who is this man?” Basil lifted his eyes to Rodney and Leonard.

“I don’t know,” said Rodney.

Leonard nodded in sober agreement. “Never saw the fellow before in my life.”

The stagehand moved forward. “I don’t know the guy. Is he—?”

“Dead.” Basil supplied the word quietly. “And apparently murdered. Will you notify the Police Department at once?”

“But—the show—?”

A hint of grim amusement flickered at the corners of Basil’s mouth. “This is one time when the show will not go on.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s nine-forty, and—”

“One moment,” interrupted Rodney. “I make it nine-thirty.”

“You’re slow.” Leonard was looking at his own watch. “It’s exactly twenty minutes of ten.”

“Well, split the difference,” said Basil to the stagehand. “Tell them we discovered the death at about nine-thirty-five.”

“For the love of Pete, what’s going on here?” A plump, swarthy little man in a dinner jacket who looked as if he had been stuffed and varnished pranced across the stage in great excitement. “What are you doing here?” He stared at Basil. “I’m Milhau, the producer, and I must ask you to get off the stage at once. The man can’t shift the scene unless you—” His voice trailed away. Some of the stuffing seemed to ooze out of him and his patina lost a little of its gloss. His eyes were on the knife handle protruding from Vladimir’s chest. “W-why—w-what—Is this a gag?”

“No. It’s the real thing.”

“My God!” Milhau wailed and wrung puffy hands.

“Who is this actor?” inquired Basil.

“That’s no actor! Oh, my God!”

“Then who is he? And what is he doing here?”

“I don’t know.”

Basil began to lose patience. “You say you’re the producer of the play in which this man played the part of Vladimir; and yet you tell me he is not an actor, and you don’t even know who he is?”

“That’s right,” answered Milhau. “I know it sounds cockeyed. But I can explain. Vladimir has no lines to speak. He has hardly any acting to do. He just lies still at the back of the stage in a dim light and plays dead. He doesn’t have to be an actor any more than the dead men in Arsenic and Old Lace or the convicts in The Man Who Came to Dinner. He isn’t listed on the program. When Bernhardt did Fedora in Paris, Vladimir was always played by one of her boy friends who was not an actor. Edward VII was one of them, and nobody in the audience recognized him. The gilded youth of Paris got a kick out of being kissed by Bernhardt in public—all the thrills of going on the stage and none of the hard work. As soon as Wanda heard about that she wanted to invite one of her pals to play Vladimir here on the opening night. I said ‘Okay’ and never thought anything more about it. We used a dummy during rehearsals. I suppose this must be some guy she invited, but—. Good Lord, I have no idea who he is!”

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