Cue For Murder

Chapter Eight. Enter Rumor, Painted Full of Tongues

CAPRI’S RESTAURANT was below street level. From the entrance, a flight of steps led down to a dim, cavernous dining room decorated in red and black. The dark paneled walls were enlivened with mirrors and framed caricatures of theatrical personalities. A plush carpet made every footfall stealthy. Tables were ranged around the walls in front of upholstered benches. In the center a buffet displayed all sort of delicacies—cold smoked turkey, squabs in aspic, hot-house strawberries, and a huge cake with green icing soaked in rum. In the foreground was a small horseshoe bar. It was there that Basil discovered Pauline and Rodney.

Their glasses were empty. The ash tray in front of Rodney was piled with cigarette stubs. Pauline had her sketch pad on her knee, and her restless pencil was tracing profiles—always a sign of anxiety in her.

“Hello,” she greeted Basil. “Margot Ingelow hasn’t put in an appearance yet.”

“I don’t believe she’ll come,” he answered. “Shall we find a table?”

They got one facing the entrance. Pauline and Rodney sat on the bench; Basil took a chair opposite. A mirror above Pauline’s head gave him a clear view of the entrance and most of the room. They ordered the beer and club sandwiches for which the place was famous.

“Why isn’t Mrs. Ingelow coming?” asked Rodney.

Basil’s eyes were on the mirror as he told them about his visit to Wanda’s house. “And,” he concluded, “she identified Vladimir as John Ingelow.”

“Oh!” The exclamation was torn from Pauline.

Rodney seemed equally astonished.

Color flooded Pauline’s cheeks. “Then—if Wanda was really going to marry Ingelow . . .” She turned a radiant face to Rodney. “Can you ever forgive me?”

He smiled at her. Watching the two young faces, Basil hated to sound a note of warning. “This makes it all the more curious that Wanda should have been so . . .” He sought a euphemism. “So interested in Rodney.”

Pauline’s gladness faded like a mirror tarnished with a breath. “Maybe she just craves admiration from every man she meets.”

“Possibly.” Basil was studying Rod. Was this young man as frank and open as he appeared? Was this really the first time he had heard that Wanda planned to marry Ingelow? He had been seen so often with Wanda in the last few weeks, and she had seemed so certain he was infatuated with her. . . .

Rod grew uneasy under Basil’s scrutiny. “Do the police know about Ingelow?”

“Yes. It’s in the early editions of the evening papers.”

“Then of course Margot won’t come,” cried Pauline. “She’s as bold as brass and hard as nails, but even she would hardly lunch in public the day after her husband’s murder!”

“It seems unlikely,” agreed Basil. “The police are probably questioning her now.”

“Could she be the murderess?” suggested Pauline. “You saw her leaving the alcove. That gives her both motive and opportunity.”

Basil laughed. “Opportunity, yes—but is marriage alone a motive for murder?”

“They were estranged. They were going to be divorced.”

“Why risk your neck by murdering a husband when you can get rid of him by divorce and secure a handsome financial settlement besides?” returned Basil. “Today, marital murders are confined to sadists and those stern moralists who believe murder more virtuous or at least more respectable than divorce.”

“But she knew him.” Pauline was fighting to the last ditch for her theory. “That’s more than anyone else did—except Wanda.”

Basil turned to Rod. “Can you prove that you didn’t know Ingelow even by sight?”

“Well, no.” Rod’s restless fingers began tilting the salt cellar back and forth. “How can anyone prove a negative like that?”

“You can’t. You were seen everywhere with Wanda, and Ingelow was her lover. The police will assume that you knew who Ingelow was, and they will consider that a motive. So would a jury drawn at random from the citizens of a big city. One woman plus two men equals jealousy.”

“But it’s such damned nonsense!” exploded Rod. “Going about now and then with a woman you met casually in your daily work doesn’t mean you’re in love with her. And no man would risk his neck for anything less than love!”

Basil nodded, but there was doubt in his eyes. Wanda was an alluring woman. Rod was too young to be very experienced. A certain boyish naïveté was part of his charm. Suppose he had got beyond his depth with Wanda and then discovered she was playing with him while she planned to marry Ingelow? Men have been killed for less. . . . And such a killer might return to Pauline afterward in order to hide his motive from the police. . . .

“There she is,” said Basil quietly.

“Who?” They turned back to him as if they were coming out of a fog.

“Margot Ingelow.”

Evidently it took more than the murder of a husband to keep Margot away from her favorite restaurant at lunch time. She paused at the head of the stairs. Her gray eyes looked almost white in her smooth, brown face; her thin lips were firmly set together. She wore shepherd’s plaid taffeta with white doeskin gloves and patent leather sandals. Jaunty white wings decorated her small black hat.

“Who is the man with her?” murmured Rod. As the pair descended the stairs, he answered himself. “Good Lord, it’s Sam Milhau!”

The headwaiter seated them with a flourish and took their order himself. Milhau fussed and fluttered over his guest, arranging cushions at her back and taking her jacket. Margot received homage as calmly as an empress holding court. Other men began pausing at her table on their way in or out of the restaurant. She welcomed them with a smile that discovered a deep dimple in one cheek. It was hardly the smile of a brokenhearted widow, nor were the men who spoke to her mourners consoling the bereaved. Evidently she ranked already as a divorcée. But that didn’t quite explain the attitude of these men toward her. As Basil watched the pantomime in the mirror, he felt that these were not the poses and gestures of gallants flocking around a pretty woman. For one thing Margot was not pretty; for another, the men were all a little old for gallantry. Like Milhau, their manner was oddly deferential, pathetically eager.

At one end of the buffet were some live lobsters on ice. Milhau got up to select the ones he wanted.

“Now’s your chance,” whispered Pauline.

Basil rose, but he didn’t go to Margot’s table. He joined Milhau at the buffet.

“Oh, Dr. Willing!” Milhau’s plump face sagged unhappily. He lost interest in the lobsters. “Those’ll do.” The waiter took them away.

“Isn’t this devotion to Mrs. Ingelow rather sudden?” suggested Basil.

Milhau’s eyes were round and black and beady, like the canary’s eyes on a larger scale. “Well, business is business, Dr. Willing. I’m in rather a hole. My show is broken up, and my star is on the verge of a nervous break-down. I stand to lose about eighty thousand dollars unless I do something and do it quick. I’ve got a lot of people under contract, and I’ve got to put on another show as quickly as I can.” Milhau contemplated the lobsters that remained on their bed of ice with a deep sigh. “Mrs. Ingelow has always been nuts about the theater so—I’m trying to promote a little first aid to my bank account by getting her to back my next show.”

Basil was surprised. “Can Mrs. Ingelow afford that?”

“Can she?” Milhau’s eyes gleamed hungrily. “I’ll say she can! With all that Ingelow money!”

“I thought the money went to Miss Morley now.”

“That’s what Wanda thought!” said Milhau curtly. “But she thought wrong. I’ve just been down to Police Headquarters this morning and they’ve got the facts straight from Ingelow’s own lawyer. That new will leaving everything to Wanda hadn’t been signed yet. The whole fortune goes to ‘my beloved wife, Margaret Adams Ingelow’ as it says in the old will. Poor Wanda!”

“Then if Ingelow had lived to sign the new will, Mrs. Ingelow would have got nothing but her divorce settlement?”

“Sure. Oh, I know it’s a motive, but she wasn’t on stage last night, so she couldn’t—”

“One moment.” Basil stopped him. “Mrs. Ingelow was on stage last night. I saw her leaving the alcove shortly before the curtain rose.”

Milhau swore under his breath. “What are you trying to do? Railroad the only prospect I’ve got to the Tombs for murder? My God! If Wanda had to kill somebody why, oh, why, did she pick the fellow who was backing her show?”

“You think Wanda did it?”

“Well . . .” Milhau shuffled his feet. “I don’t know. But . . . who else?”

“Rodney? Leonard? Or Mrs. Ingelow herself? They all had the same opportunity as Wanda.”

“I don’t see Rod or Leonard as a murderer, do you?” Milhau’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. “They’re both ordinary, everyday fellows, and Mrs. Ingelow didn’t need the money that badly. She had a big divorce settlement.”

“Did Wanda need money?”

“She always needs money.”

“I think you’d better introduce me to Mrs. Ingelow,” said Basil.

“O.K.” Milhau was reluctant.

At close range Margot’s hard, smooth brown face looked as if it had been carved from wood and polished. The pale eyes and white teeth were like the ivory eyes and teeth set in dark fetish masks from Africa. Any other woman in the world would have shown some trace of embarrassment in her situation. But Margot did not. A man was talking to her as they approached. She dismissed him with a smile. When she saw Basil, the smile faded. As Milhau mumbled an introduction, she stared at Basil with blank insolence.

“No doubt you’ve forgotten me,” he said. “But I remember you clearly. We passed each other backstage at the Royalty last night.”

Eyelashes the same light brown as her skin flickered under the impact of this. “Won’t you sit down?” She ignored Milhau as he slumped on the bench beside her. “Then it’s you who told the police I was at the theater last night?”

“Dr. Willing is the police,” put in Milhau woefully. “At least, he’s hand in glove with them. He’s in the District Attorney’s office.”

“Oh.” Margot thawed a little. “An inspector came to my apartment just as I was leaving for the theater this morning. He kept me nearly an hour. I can’t understand why. Isn’t it obvious that that woman did it?”

“What woman?”

“Why, Wanda Morley, of course!”

Basil matched her directness. “You had motive and opportunity yourself.”

“Motive? Oh, the will. How sordid! Do you really believe I would kill my husband to prevent his signing a will leaving everything to another woman?”

“It has been done.”

“But I didn’t have to do it.”

“No?”

The waiter brought broiled lobsters. Margot waited until they were served. When the waiter was gone, she resumed. “You see, Dr. Willing, John was never going to sign that will leaving everything to Wanda.”

“Why not?”

“John and I were reconciled.”

“Rather sudden, wasn’t it?”

“No doubt it seemed sudden to Miss Morley.” Margot’s thin lips curled contemptuously.

“Was there any special reason for it?”

“I told John I was going to have a baby.”

“Oh.”

Basil’s expression amused Margot. She laughed aloud. “My dear Dr. Willing, you didn’t suppose I really was going to have a baby did you?”

“Wouldn’t it have been a little embarrassing when the expected heir did not appear?”

“Oh, I should have had one afterward. I was a fool not to have had one before, but I never realized that John cared about that sort of thing.”

“Why didn’t you come forward to identify Vladimir as John Ingelow when the morning papers carried the story of Vladimir’s murder?” asked Basil.

“It’s one thing to be innocent and quite another to appear innocent,” retorted Margot. “I knew the first suspect in the eyes of the police would be whoever inherited the Ingelow fortune. That happened to be I. So I hoped the police would never learn that I had been in the theater last night or even that I knew John was playing Vladimir. I felt sure someone else would identify him in a short while.”

“When did this reconciliation take place?”

“Last night. That’s why I went backstage. I was desperate. I had to do something to keep John from making a fool of himself over Wanda—a woman nearly twice his age. He had refused to see me again, but I knew he was playing Vladimir the opening night of Fedora. I tried to see him when he got back from Panama a few days ago, and I overheard him discussing the Vladimir business with Wanda on the telephone. It seemed a unique chance to have a word with him. I bought a ticket and bribed an usher to show me the way backstage.”

“By way of the fire escape?”

“Of course not! What ever made you think of such a thing? I went through the box-office door and then through the door that leads backstage from the orchestra seats. I waylaid John just as he was coming in the stage door. We stood there talking for about twenty minutes. Then he went on to Wanda’s dressing room.”

“So that was what delayed Ingelow,” said Basil. “And then?”

“He promised to give up Wanda and come back to me. You see how silly it is to talk about my killing John for money. I was to have all the money and John too.”

“But now you have all the money without John. Perhaps you prefer it that way. There are many wives of rich men who would.”

Margot considered this without emotion. “I won’t pretend I was madly in love with him but—I was sort of used to him. I wouldn’t have stabbed him just to get rid of him.”

“And what were you doing on stage when Adeane and I saw you leave the alcove?”

“After John left me, I suddenly decided I wanted him to take me home after the first act was over. The sooner I got him away from Wanda’s influence the better. So I crossed the stage to the alcove and waited for him in there. But when the actors began to gather on the stage I was afraid I might be caught there when the curtain rose. So I left the alcove before he came and crossed the stage to the wings in order to go round in front. That must have been when you saw me.”

“Then according to you, Wanda Morley had no motive for stabbing Ingelow. When he saw her in her dressing room after his interview with you he must have told her that he was going back to you and that his new will would never be signed.”

“No, he didn’t,” put in Milhau. “The police have been all over that with Wanda’s dresser. By the time Ingelow got to Wanda’s dressing room, she was fully dressed and there were several people there—her press agent, some boys from my office, and so on. She was worrying about her sable cloak—it hadn’t been delivered on time—and Ingelow had no chance to talk to her privately. Her dresser daubed his face with that corpse make-up. Everybody assumed he was some friend of Wanda’s playing Vladimir, but nobody knew who he was, and nobody paid any particular attention to him. You know how it is backstage on a first night—regular madhouse.”

“Wanda had every reason to believe he had signed the new will leaving everything to her,” insisted Margot. “And that’s why she killed him. It’s as simple as that.”

“It might be,” admitted Basil. “But of the two motives, yours is the more solid; for you did get the money, and she didn’t.”

“Does a motive have to be solid?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Then it was Wanda.” The pale eyes caught Basil’s and held them. “Dr. Willing, take my word for it. Wanda is the murderer. Everybody on stage saw John enter the alcove. He was alive, and the alcove was empty. The doors weren’t opened again until after the first act had started. Only three people approached John during the first act—Wanda, Rodney Tait, and Leonard Martin. The two men had no motive for killing John—they don’t even know him by sight. I introduced John to Wanda a few months before he went to Panama. He’s only been back three days, and last night was his first visit to the theater. Wanda was his only link with these people. She must have killed him—either because she believed he had signed the new will leaving everything to her, or because she had some reason to think he was tired of her and ripe for a reconciliation with me.”

“You can’t have it both ways.”

“No, but it might be either way.”

“Did anyone overhear your talk with Ingelow back stage?”

“Of course not.”

“Then we only have your word for it that there was a reconciliation. It’s equally possible that Ingelow refused to come back to you and that you waited for him in the alcove and stabbed him before the curtain rose, knowing that if he lived he would sign the will leaving everything to Wanda Morley and you would have nothing but your divorce settlement.”

“But I left the alcove before John entered it.”

“Can you prove that?”

Margot was relieved by the approach of the waiter. She pushed away her lobster without finishing it. “Omelette au rhum,” she said to Milhau. “And coffee.” She lit a cigarette and drew on it as if she felt the need of solace.

“It’s all the fault of that wretched Morley creature,” she went on almost passionately. “If she hadn’t run after John, all this would never have happened. It was such a silly infatuation of his! He never really cared for those sexy women. My God!” Margot’s eyes widened until a rim of white showed around the iris. She was staring beyond Basil. “Has the woman no shame? There she is now!”

Basil turned his head. Wanda was standing at the head of the stairs. Characteristically, Margot Ingelow thought it was all right for herself to lunch at Capri’s the day after the murder but all wrong for Wanda Morley to do so.

Blue flame flickered in a spoon as a waiter ladled burning rum and sugar over Margot’s omelette, but she had lost all interest in food. Her eyes were still on the stairs.

Wanda looked excessively thin in black from head to toe relieved only by topaz earrings and clip. Her freshly made up face was composed in an expression of interesting melancholy. Leonard was in attendance, quiet and self-effacing as he always was off stage.

Everyone waited to see if Wanda would pass Margot’s table. Basil saw Pauline’s little face, white and tense. Rodney was folding and unfolding his napkin quite unconscious of what he did.

Wanda reached the foot of the stairs. The head waiter tried to lead her to the other side of the room. She looked at him haughtily. “I want my usual table, Gennaro!” She swept down the left side of the buffet. She came face to face with Margot. Lines sprang into being as the muscles of her face grew taut. Milhau and the men who had flocked about Margot were not the only people who had heard the rumor of her newly acquired wealth. There was a gleam of savage hate in Wanda’s yellow eyes. She was no longer the famous actress or the charming woman—she was the gamine, grown old, but still redolent of the gutter.

Milhau half rose from his chair. “Wanda, I—I can explain. I need backing for your next show, and she’s just inherited the Ingelow fortune; and—”

“So I’ve heard!” Wanda flicked him with a glance, and his voice died. The hush became breathless. Leonard moved forward to Wanda’s side. She might have been transparent for any sign Margot gave of seeing her. That was too much for Wanda. Her hand darted out like a snake’s tongue. She snatched Milhau’s glass of liqueur from the table and dashed the contents into Margot’s eyes. She put all her trained power of expression into one word:

“Murderess!”

Margot rose with her hand over her eyes. She gave no sign of pain. She ignored Wanda. She ignored Milhau. “Will you get me a taxi, Dr. Willing? This is disgusting.”

Wanda burst into loud sobs. Leonard tried to comfort her, wiping her eyes with his own handkerchief.

Milhau looked after Margot with a moan. “There goes my eighty thousand bucks!”

In the taxi, Margot looked at Basil. For the first time he saw uncertainty in her eyes. “You know she spoke as if she really thought I did it. That would mean that she didn’t do it. But then . . . who did?”

Basil made no answer. He was wondering if Margot Ingelow might not be a better actress than Wanda Morley. . . .

II

The taxi moved up Fifth Avenue in a stream of cars that stopped and started for red and green lights as uniformly as if they were all controlled by a master switch. To a Martian who didn’t know the significance of traffic lights and one-way streets, it would have seemed as if some great game were being played on a chessboard with city blocks for squares and cars for chessmen, so strictly were the length and direction of each move prescribed. Margot sat leaning against the back of the seat, eyes closed, face blank as a mask carved in wood. Basil wondered why John Ingelow had been drawn to her in the first place. Just because she was different from most women? A young man of such wealth would get more than his share of feminine attention. He would soon grow tired of the simpering sweet, the fluffy frivolous, the austerely noble, and the lusciously earthy. To such a man satiated with the sickly sweet scents of the boudoir Margot might seem as refreshing as a sea-breeze. But what had driven him from Margot to Wanda and . . .

“Why Magpie?” asked Basil aloud.

She opened her eyes wide in surprise. The inner lids were still red with inflammation. “What do you mean?”

“Why do some people call you ‘Magpie’?”

“I didn’t know they did.” She stroked the rustling black and white silk skirt that billowed over her knee. “A magpie’s plumage is black and white, and I’m fond of the combination. I suppose that’s why. It saves time and trouble shopping to confine yourself to a few colors. And it impresses your personality on people.”

So her effects were deliberately contrived. She must realize that in a ruffled dress with permanented hair and china doll make-up she would be not only plain but commonplace. It was the severely straight hair, the sun-browned skin, and the crips dresses with their emphatic contrast of the darkest and lightest of colors that made her a personage. “Is that the only reason?”

“For what?”

“For the nickname Magpie.”

“Of course.” Her eyelids dropped. “What other reason could there be?”

“I don’t know. I wondered.”

“My friends call me Margot, and Margot means Magpie in French. John was the first to call me Margot. His mother was French, you know. She came to America as a governess. John’s father was a friend of her first employer and a good many years older than she. John was an only child, and between them they spoiled him.”

“How did his affair with Wanda Morley start?”

She shrugged with a twisted smile. “How do those affairs always start? John and I were quarreling a good bit. I had become interested in the stage. I met Wanda somewhere, and she said she would help me to get a start. I invited her to the house and . . . it wasn’t long before she was John’s friend instead of mine. He even talked of backing her plays. But as she was still theoretically my friend seeing him in my home and in my presence, no one suspected an affair between them at first, and later they were very careful. They even tried to hide the affair from me, so I wouldn’t bring counter charges and demand big alimony. Before he went to Panama he said he wanted a divorce from me. I wasn’t supposed to know he meant to marry Wanda; but I had guessed, and I refused. I tried everything I could think of to get him back but—we had quarreled too much. We no longer had any illusions about each other. Something that had been between us was gone, and you just couldn’t bring it back again.”

“What did you quarrel about?”

“Oh, nothing . . . everything . . .” She looked down now, playing with the gloves in her lap. “When a man gets tired of a woman any pretext for a quarrel will do.”

“Was one of the pretexts money?”

“Money?” Her light lashes flared back again and the wide, pale eyes stared into his. “No. I could have had all the money I wanted. But I didn’t want money—I wanted John. If only I’d realized sooner that he wanted children . . .” She spoke in a cold, level voice without apparent feeling. Basil wondered if it were really John she had wanted or the prestige and power of being his wife.

The taxi stopped in the shadow of a skyscraper apartment house towering against a sky that looked hard as a gray-blue stone.

“Won’t you come in?”

He followed her into the lobby. An express elevator rocketed twenty-three stories and they stepped into a vestibule made of glass walls. Through the glass they could see a living room, spacious and impersonal as a hotel lounge. It was surrounded by a terrace on all four sides. Each window framed a slice of garden chairs and shrubbery, parapet, and gray-blue sky. Awnings kept the living room shady and cool. It was furnished in the modern manner—an enormous, velvety rug all one color; plump davenports that seemed capacious enough to seat a regiment; radios that looked like tables and tables that looked like radios; little groups of book shelves with few books; and a great many bits of modern glass and pottery in unexpected corners. The whole thing was done in soothing, unobtrusive shades of cream and tan. The sober colors and stripped, functional lines expressed Margot’s nature perfectly. Had it expressed John Ingelow’s too? Or would he have preferred something more flamboyant—like Wanda’s drawing room?

There was no glossy display of silken luxury here. The magnificence of the place lay in its space and privacy—dearest of all luxuries on Manhattan Island.

“Wonderful place for children or pets,” said Basil.

“And I have neither!”

“Not even a canary?”

“Not in New York. I have a pair of Irish setters at Fernleigh and a whole stableful of saddle horses. I believe there are some canaries in the conservatory there. I never paid any attention to them. They belonged to John’s mother.”

With a crisp rustle of taffeta skirts Margot crossed the broad, shady room to the sunlit terrace. Far below the city lay wide and flat as a parti-colored carpet between its twin rivers. The clarity of the noon horizon had gone. The west was blurred with streamers of cloud. Glass and brightwork on cars and buildings glinted in the sun through a smoky blue haze.

The terrace was gay with spring flowers nodding to a brisk breeze. Margot dropped into a wicker armchair and touched a bell attached to the arm. It must have been a pre-arranged signal, for almost at once a maid appeared with a tray of Tom Collins’.

“There is a gentleman to see you, ma’am—Mr. Adeane.”

“I don’t believe I know a Mr. Adeane.” Margot cocked an inquiring brow at Basil.

“He played one of Vladimir’s servants last night.”

“Oh.” Margot considered this. “Perhaps I’d better see him.”

The maid disappeared into the living room. After a moment they heard the elevator doors sliding open once more. Apparently there was a reception room on the floor below. Without a sound of footfalls on the velvety rug the maid reappeared in the doorway and announced: “Mr. Adeane.”

He was hatless, and once more he wore a Byronic shirt open at the neck, but without a Byronic profile the effect was spoiled. His hairy tweed jacket had an unfortunate mustard tinge and brought out all the yellow undertones in his reddish hair and freckled skin. He was carrying a pipe and a bulky manuscript bound in green paper with brass staples that glittered in the sun. A shaggy dog was all he needed to look exactly like the standard publicity still of a Great Author.

He was obviously surprised to see Basil. It was to Margot he turned.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Ingelow. I’m afraid you don’t remember me; but I met you this morning in Sam Milhau’s office, and I was on stage last night when you left the alcove.”

“Yes?” Margot’s voice tinkled coolly as the ice cubes in her glass.

But it took more than mere coolness to daunt Adeane. He sat down without waiting for an invitation to do so and went on completely at his ease. “The police were asking me about it this morning. I told them you left the alcove before your husband entered it, so—” Adeane used a pause to emphasize his next words. “You couldn’t possibly have killed him.”

“That’s true.”

“Sure, it’s true, but—” A small, unpleasant smile played around Adeane’s mouth. “I’m the only witness you have to prove it.”

Margot looked at him contemptuously. “Did you come here to remind me of that?”

“Oh, no.” Adeane looked quickly at Basil as if he realized this was perilously close to blackmail. “I just want to say I’m sorry about your husband’s death, and all you’ve been through; and I have a suggestion to make. Sam Milhau says you’re interested in the theater. Now, you’re going to inherit the Ingelow fortune, so why don’t you back a play? I thought you might like to read mine.”

Margot stared at him speechless. Basil was reminded of the super-salesman who wrote: Dear Mr. Smith, I am very sorry to hear of the sad death of your mother, and I wonder if you would be interested in our new line of comic valentines?

“Take a look at it, will you?” Adeane thrust the thick manuscript into Margot’s hands and leaned back in his chair complacently as if he had conferred a favor upon her.

Margot seemed a little dazed by this frontal attack. Mechanically she began to turn the pages of the manuscript with one hand.

Adeane turned to Basil. “It’s called Destroying All Twigs.”

“Why?” asked Basil.

“Why not?” murmured Margot.

“That’s a quotation from Spender,” explained Adeane.

“And it means—well, it means any great social upheaval that sweeps all minor things aside.”

“Torn from the context, it sounds a little like Calling All Cars,” remarked Basil.

“Do you think anyone will know what it means?” added Margot.

“Why should they? Nobody knew what Dear Brutus meant at first. Or Cynara. Or Of Mice and Men. By getting an obscure, trick title you get people puzzled. They have to look it up, and that starts them talking about the play. My first scene is laid in a waterfront dive. There are three characters on stage when the curtain rises—Lulu, Rat-face, and Bugsy.”

Margot made a small gesture of distaste. “Is this another gangster play?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that. It’s more like Tobacco Road—only in New York.”

Basil noticed how quick Adeane was to cite models, or at least precedents, for everything about his play. Whatever talent he had appeared to be derivative rather than creative.

“They’re salty, down-to-earth characters,” he went on. “Lulu is a procuress. Rat-face had his head crushed in an hydraulic press when he was three years old, and he’s never been quite the same since. Bugsy is perfectly normal except that he has an overwhelming desire every now and then to taste human blood, and he has to kill somebody to gratify this impulse.”

“I suppose he’s the hero?” A spark of mischief danced in Margot’s eyes.

“There isn’t any hero.” Adeane was aggrieved. “These are just weak, ignorant people warped by life in a smug, hypocritical society. I’ve shown them just as they really are—ugly and vicious and cruel—but human and pathetic. Squeamish people won’t like the scene where Bugsy kills the crippled child, but if there are any realistic minds in the audience they will welcome such an honest, unflinching statement of fact. When the curtain rises, Bugsy is discovered in a drunken stupor. Lulu comes in and starts kicking him in the groin. He pulls out a handful of her hair, and—”

“It’s no use, Mr. Adeane.” Margot dropped the script on the table. “I’m not going to put on your play.”

Adeane was astonished. “But you haven’t read it!”

“No. I’ve made up my mind.” Margot answered crisply. “There are enough horrors in real life, especially in war time. People don’t want to see them on the stage as well.”

“But—” Adeane began to bluster. “Putting on a play like this is a public service. It’s the only way to show up life for the rotten mess it is. Besides—” He turned abruptly from the ideal to the practical. “People will pay real money to see that scene where Bugsy and Flo—just wait until I read it to you.”

He stretched out a hand toward the manuscript, but before he could pick it up Margot was on her feet. “I have an idea,” she cried. “I am going to back a play—but not this one!”

“You have another one in mind?”

“Yes. Wait a minute.” She darted inside. They could hear her dialing a telephone.

Adeane looked at Basil and sighed. “If only she’d listened to that one scene. I got it out of a book on psychopathology—Krafft-Ebing—and—”

“That sounds rather second-hand,” said Basil. “I thought realists got their stuff from real life. Why don’t you try writing a play around something in your own experience?”

“But my life is so dull!” Adeane was appalled. “Nothing ever happens to me! I’ve never met a sadist or a nymphomaniac or even a murderer—”

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that.”

“Oh!” Adeane was startled. “You mean—last night? Funny, I didn’t get any kick out of last night at all. Just hours of waiting for that inspector to question me, and then a few minutes of questioning, and then—home. Even murder is dull when it happens to me. Only one thing I saw seemed sort of interesting.”

“What was that?”

“When you and the Inspector were questioning me, did you happen to notice that fly?”

“Fly?” Basil was startled. He had not credited Adeane with any powers of observation.

“Uh-huh.” Adeane’s eyes were on the horizon. The sun had gone. The gray clouds were massing and spreading. Already they darkened the whole sky and dulled the sparkle of the city below. “The knife that killed Ingelow was on the table, remember? And there was a house fly buzzing around. It kept settling on the handle of the knife instead of the blade. But there was blood on the blade. I thought flies always went for blood. It seemed sort of queer.”

Margot’s voice came through the open window. “Mr. Milhau, please. . . . Sam? . . . Yes, yes, never mind that. I don’t care whether Wanda’s sorry or not! The point is this: I want you to carry on with the production of Fedora. . . . Yes, I said Fedora. I’ll back you to the limit. . . . No, I do not want to see a play by Granby Saunderson or anyone else! It’s Fedora or nothing! And it must be played exactly the same way by the same actors. I’ll send you a check. . . . Wanda needn’t know who’s putting up the money. . . . Nonsense! The murder will be good publicity. . . . Who’ll play Vladimir? My dear Sam, that’s your headache. . . .”

They heard the receiver click into place. When she came back her eyes were defiant.

“Mrs. Ingelow!” protested Adeane. “That awful romantic twaddle of Sardou’s! It was only staged as a vehicle for Wanda. Nobody liked it. But Destroying All Twigs is stark reality. It has the makings of a smash hit!”

Margot’s thin lips were set close in a taut smile. She looked at the sky. “Better come inside. It’s going to rain.”

The living room seemed shadowy now the sky was overcast. Margot stood at the open window for a moment, her back half turned toward the two men, her eyes on the sky.

“Just what is the idea of going on with Fedora?” demanded Adeane.

“Don’t you understand?” She glanced back over her shoulder.

Basil answered for Adeane. “The play’s the thing with which to catch the conscience of the king?”

“Exactly. John was killed during a performance of Fedora by one of three actors taking part in the play. I can watch all three every night and see which one really has the best opportunity to murder Vladimir during the action of the play. I’m reconstructing the crime—not just once, but every night as long as Fedora runs. Sooner or later as that scene is repeated over and over again the murderer’s nerves will crack and he’ll give himself away . . . or she . . .”

“But they might not play the scene exactly the same way they did last night,” objected Basil.

“Actors tend to play a scene pretty much the same way night after night,” argued Margot. “Habit is what makes it possible for them to remember a part. Milhau directed, and he’ll see to it that they stick to his direction.”

“You’ve forgotten one thing,” put in Adeane. “Stage people are superstitious. You’ll never get any actor in that company to play Vladimir again.”

“Oh, we’ll get somebody!” returned Margot airily. “Somebody who needs the money badly.”

“Why don’t you put on my play as well as Fedora?” insisted Adeane stubbornly. “Suppose I leave the manuscript with you, and when you’ve read it—”

“I don’t want to back any play except Fedora,” answered Margot. “Wanda Morley has cured me of all interest in the theater. I’ve had enough of the stage and stage people to last me all the rest of my life.”

“You’ll be sorry.” Adeane sounded more like a defeated salesman than a disappointed dramatist. “You’re throwing away a fortune. Sooner or later I’m going to get a backer for that play, and then just watch my dust! Where’d you leave the script?”

“I think it’s on the terrace,” Margot replied indifferently.

Adeane thrust his way past her and jerked open the terrace door. Wind hurled a handful of raindrops in his face. “Hey!” He sprang forward with the cry of a lioness who sees her cub attacked. The wind was tossing loose sheets of white paper about the terrace with the heavy playfulness of a gamboling elephant. There was typewriting on the sheets. They had come from Adeane’s script.

Basil went to help him gather the scattered pages together. By great good luck not a single page had blown over the parapet, but all of them were blistered with rain. Adeane stuffed the sodden mass between the green paper covers. “How did that happen?” he muttered.

There was no sign of the brass staples that had held the pages of the script together. Each page was loose and at the mercy of the wind.

“But the wind couldn’t have undone those staples!” Adeane’s eyes were on Basil angry and puzzled.

“Are you sure the staples weren’t loose?”

“No. I tightened them before I came out. I’m always afraid of losing a page or so.”

A clear voice came through the window. “Something wrong?”

They turned to see Margot watching them from the doorway. Her cheeks were flushed, her pale eyes bright as winter sunshine.

“The staples have fallen out of Adeane’s script,” Basil turned back to Adeane. “Are they on the terrace?”

“No.” Adeane was on his knees looking under the porch chairs. “They’re gone. Maybe that maid—”

“Why? Staples are scarcely valuable.”

“Maybe the wind . . .”

“Maybe.” Basil was unconvinced.

They went inside closing the French window against the rain. Basil looked thoughtfully at Margot. Was she capable of such a small act of cruelty? Could she have done it when she stood at the window overlooking the terrace near the garden table where she had left the script? Granted the play was silly, granted Adeane was callous and impertinent, it still seemed a petty, mean revenge for her to have taken. . . .

Damp and sulky, Adeane tucked the script under one arm. “I guess I’d better be going . . .”

“I’ll go with you,” said Basil.

“Don’t go, Dr. Willing!” Margot ignored Adeane. “At least wait until the rain is over. We can have tea or a cocktail.”

At that moment it was a tempting invitation with a dark, wet, unfriendly world outside, and everything warm, dry, and cushioned inside. But Basil wanted to see a little more of Adeane.

“Thanks, but I really must go.”

When the two men were in the elevator, Adeane spoke morosely. “You know, I don’t believe that woman likes me.”

“You chose the wrong moment to approach her—just after her husband’s death.”

“They were separated, weren’t they?”

“Perhaps she doesn’t want to be reminded of that now.”

“I don’t know what’s the matter with me.” Adeane seemed genuinely concerned. “I don’t know how to get on with people. I just haven’t any tact.”

“It has been said that tact is love,” returned Basil. “No amount of intelligence can replace sympathy when it comes to putting yourself in another person’s place.”

“I should sympathize with a woman like that who’s got everything I’d like to have!” cried Adeane bitterly. “Old Hutchins says I’m an egoist. Sure I am. Why not? How’s a guy going to get along if he doesn’t keep looking out for himself?”

“It didn’t get you very far this time, did it?” said Basil.

The doorman whistled up a taxi for them. Adeane asked to be let off at the theater. “Tact!” He brooded over the word resentfully “I don’t know anyone who can afford to back plays. My script has been knocking around producers’ offices for two or three years. I’ve tried and tried to break into the theater, and it’s been like trying to scale a wall of glass—high, cold, slippery and smooth, without a toehold anywhere. Talent counts for nothing. It’s all done by pull. I’d just about given up hope when Sam Milhau introduced me to Mrs. Ingelow at the theater this morning. They were going out to luncheon together, so I couldn’t speak to her then; but I’d heard she was stage struck, and I’d heard the rumor about her inheriting all this money, and she does owe me something for telling the police she couldn’t have killed her husband.”

“Does she?”

Again Basil discovered that irony was lost on Adeane. “Sure she does. I’m the only witness who testified she came out of that alcove before Ingelow went in.”

“And did she?”

Adeane’s eyes grew wary. “I should stick my neck out lying to the police for a dame like that! It’s the truth, but she still owes me something as I see it. I saved her a lot of grief. It seemed like a chance, so I followed it up. And what do I get? The cold shoulder! Because—you say—she’s upset by her husband’s death—a guy she was on the point of divorcing! I said I was sorry he was dead, didn’t I?”

Basil gave it up. Adeane was unteachable.

“If only she’d read that scene where Bugsy and Lulu gang up on Flo!” went on Adeane. “It’s stark realism—a slice of life raw and bleeding. I got the idea out of Krafft-Ebing.” He looked up suddenly. “You know, doc, you might be a lot of use to me.”

Basil had an instant impression that Adeane classified everyone he met by their possible usefulness to himself. “I’m afraid I couldn’t afford to back a play—”

“Oh, I don’t mean that. But you’re a psychiatrist, aren’t you? And all the characters in my plays have something the matter with them—usually psychopathic. You could tell me a lot about symptoms and things like that. For instance, take Bugsy, the sadist, in Destroying All Twigs. It would be possible for him to be a simple, friendly fellow when he wasn’t actually tasting human blood, wouldn’t it? I mean, psychologically possible.”

Basil disliked having his brains picked. “You ought to look it up at the medical library.”

“What medical library?”

“The one at Fifth Avenue and 103rd. Once you learn your way about there you can find anything. They have books you won’t find in any of the public libraries or even at Columbia.”

Adeane pouted. “It’s pretty hard for a layman to find out about these things in libraries. You spend hours looking something like hay fever up in card indices. It’ll say Hay Fever see Fever and then Fever, Hay see Hay. That’s what they call a cross-reference! When you finally run down the definitive work on the subject under Sternutatory Diseases see Nasal Passages you find it’s either in Choctaw or at the bindery or it only deals with Hay Fever as it affects Eskimos transplanted to the tropics.”

“What you want is a general reference book,” advised Basil. “A sort of medical encyclopedia that’ll give you a bird’s-eye view of the symptoms, treatment, and so forth, for each disease. Then you can fill in the rough outline with your own characters and local color, I suppose?”

“Uh-huh,” responded Adeane. “If I could find a book like that it would keep me busy for years.”

“Then your best bets are Barr, Tice, and Cushny.” The taxi swung into West 44th Street. Basil wondered if posterity would thank him for putting still more pathology into Adeane’s plays. “Each one has written, or rather edited, a pretty inclusive survey of disease in several volumes. With three of them to check on each other you can’t go far wrong. If you want more details, they always give bibliographies.”

“What are those names?” Adeanne drew out a stubby pencil and scribbled on the cover of his wilted script. “Barr—Tice—Cushny. Thanks a lot.”

Adeane backed out of the cab gracelessly. “So long, doc. And thanks for the lift.” He turned and swaggered down the stagedoor alley, a ridiculously cocky figure with his reddish hair and mustard tweed jacket exposed to the rain.

Basil gave Seymour Hutchins’ address to the cab driver and leaned back in his seat with closed eyes. Again he was seeing Adeane as he had first appeared on the terrace—coming up to Margot so insolently, the script in one hand, its brass staples gleaming in the sun. . . .

OceanofPDF.com