Cue For Murder

Chapter Ten. Rehearsal

IN THE EARLY MORNING the theatrical district looks as tawdry and disheveled as a woman caught by the dawn still wearing evening dress and make up blended for artificial light. This morning a sun glare as ruthlessly intolerant as youth itself searched out everything that was mean and ugly and false in the neighborhood of Broadway and West 44th: sidewalks littered with paper and cigarette butts; garbage cans in the alley at the rear of the cocktail bar; showy façades of varnish, glass, and metal camouflaging buildings of drab brick or dingy stone; and eddies of dust everywhere, the thick, black, powdery dust at the heart of the city. It was not pretty. It was the dance hall and gambling saloon section of a frontier town raised to the nth degree.

Yet Basil looked at the scene with a certain affection this morning, for it had suddenly become ephemeral—part of a world that might be destined to change beyond recognition. He no longer asked himself if the buildings were handsome or hideous, sanitary or insanitary, but if they were bombproof or non-bombproof. The Tilbury building towered against the cold blue sky with the arrogance of a structure confident in the strength of its steel frame and cinder-concrete roof and floor arches. The shabby walls of the theater looked defenseless and insubstantial as paper—brick walls without a steel frame that would crumble at the first blast.

A timid voice cut across these sentimental reflections. “Excuse me, but can you tell me the way to Mr. Milhau’s office?”

Basil looked and saw a long, weedy youth whom any draft board would automatically classify as 4F on sight. His blondness was as wan as a faded water-color. He bore all the sad stigmata of the shabby genteel—worn suit carefully pressed, cracked shoes scrupulously polished. His manner was a blend of eagerness and anxiety. It was just for the purpose of keeping such perennial job-seekers out of their offices that big business men surrounded themselves with cordons of secretaries and receptionists. But Basil had always had a sneaking suspicion that this system kept out a good deal of grain along with the chaff, so he took a certain perverse pleasure in saying: “I’ll show you the way. I’m just going there myself.”

Milhau’s office was on the ground floor to the right of the box office—two rooms as small, dark, and glossy as Milhau himself. The outer office was ruled by a houri with soft, improbably golden hair and hard, brown eyes. She recognized Basil whom she had seen with the police when Ingelow’s death was first discovered. “Dr. Willing—go right in.” Her stony gaze shifted to the youth. He winced and colored and mumbled something inaudible. A little regretfully Basil left him to his fate and went inside.

“Hello.” Milhau at his desk waved Basil to a chair and pushed a box of cigars in his direction. “Hutchins says you want to see the rehearsal this morning. That’s O.K. with me, but what’s the big idea?”

Basil pushed the cigars back with a shake of his head. “Timing.”

“Timing?” Milhau took one of the cigars himself and bit off the end. “I don’t get it. Nobody has an alibi—I mean nobody that’s under suspicion.” He waited for Basil’s explanation. None came. He went on in a lower voice. “Listen, Dr. Willing—no one knows that Mrs. Ingelow is backing this revival of Fedora except you and me and Adeane. He told me you knew. I’m relying on you not to talk about it, because—”

The door burst open and the houri plunged into the room. “A Mr. Russell to see you—from Carson’s.” She was excited.

Milhau’s eyes narrowed. “So they got somebody?” he said in a level voice.

“Yeah. And he’s been in hospital six weeks. Hasn’t seen a newspaper.”

“Oh.” Basil was aware of some message passing from the girl’s eyes to Milhau’s. Then Milhau said: “You’ll excuse me a minute, Dr. Willing?”

“Certainly.” Basil settled back in his chair. Milhau looked as if Basil’s presence hardly suited his programme but he dared not protest. He spoke to his secretary with resignation. “Send the guy in.”

The weedy youth came in diffidently. “My name’s Russell, and I’m from the Lemuel Carson agency. Mr. Carson said there was a small part for me in a play called Fedora.”

“Yeah.” Milhau’s voice was genial, but his gaze was coldly appraising. “It’s a walk-on part. You only appear in the first act. All you have to do is to lie perfectly still on a couch in an alcove at the back of the stage. You’re supposed to be dying.”

The boy smiled. “I ought to be able to do that. I’ve been doing nothing else for the last six weeks. How many lines do I speak?”

“None.”

The boy’s face fell. Basil recalled that in minor parts an actor’s salary bore some relation to the number of lines he spoke on stage.

Milhau went on in his level voice: “You’ll get fifty dollars a week.”

“Fifty bucks and no lines to speak!” Russell smiled nervously. “Seems as if there must be a catch in it!”

“I’ve had trouble getting anyone to play the part at short notice,” answered Milhau. “As it is, you’ll only have one rehearsal. Then—if you do all right—we’ll sign a contract.”

“That suits me.” Russell was beaming as if he had just found the pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow.

Again the door burst open. It was not the secretary this time, but Rodney Tait. The doctor’s bag in his hand looked incongruous with his tweed jacket and flannel trousers. He nodded briefly to Basil, ignored Russell, and marched up to Milhau’s desk. He turned the bag upside down and dumped its contents on the blotter—a shining array of surgical knives.

“Listen, Sam. I want you to lock them in your safe in the presence of witnesses.”

“But—” began Milhau.

“And give me a receipt!” continued Rod implacably. “If I’ve got to carry this bag on stage tonight I’m going to carry it empty. Nobody’s going to say again that I was the only person seen on stage with a knife in my hand.”

“All right, all right!” Milhau looked anxiously at Russell. “Some other time—”

“No, now!” Rod’s voice was taut and brittle. “I’m not going to be put on the spot again.”

“Oh, all right!” Frowning, Milhau got up and went to a wall safe. His thick fingers fiddled with the lock for a moment, and the massive door swung open ponderously. He picked up the knives by their handles and dropped them on the floor of the safe.

“All right,” said Rod with a sigh of relief. “Now you can close the door.”

Milhau swung the door back into place and fumbled with the lock again.

Rod held out the empty black bag to Basil. “I call you to witness that the bag is empty. Put your hand inside and make sure.”

Basil obliged with a grin. The bag was empty.

Rod turned to Russell. “You, too!”

Russell looked inside the bag. “There’s nothing there now. But—I don’t understand—”

“I want everyone to realize that if anything happens tonight it has nothing to do with me!” explained Rod.

“Hello, Sam.”

The three men turned and saw Pauline in the doorway. She looked like a schoolgirl, hatless, in low-heeled shoes, and a polo coat, with a portfolio under one arm. Her fresh young face showed no sign of the strains and shocks of the last few days. She nodded casually to Basil as she came forward and even more casually to Rod. “Here are the sketches for Wanda’s new costume.”

“Wanda’s new costume?” Milhau lifted his hands in the air and shook them helplessly. “Is this an office or a madhouse? What new costume?”

“For the first act,” answered Pauline quietly. “Wanda says she’ll never wear that gold dress again.”

“Why not? That gold dress cost money!”

“Well . . .” Pauline smiled slightly. “It did get rather crushed the other evening.”

“Why can’t she have it pressed?”

“Come on, Sam. Be human. Don’t make it any harder for her than it is. After what happened she just can’t wear that gold dress again. The associations are too unpleasant.” Pauline opened her portfolio on the desk.

“I don’t see why not.” Milhau looked at the sketches cursorily. “What’s this, no yellow? Wanda always wears yellow or gold because of her eyes.”

“She wants it as different as possible this time,” explained Pauline. “All white—ermine, velvet, and diamonds.”

Milhau frowned. “Too high-keyed for those deep reds and blues in the background.”

“I’m not so sure.” Pauline was pleading. “I think it might be effective to have Wanda the one pale note in that dark scene. Ermine-and-diamonds does give a sort of ice-and-snow effect that’s good with a Russian background, and it would set off her dark hair.”

“How are you going to get this ready by tonight?”

“She has an ermine coat of her own and diamonds. Rosamonde has promised to rush the dress here by seven-thirty. It’s perfectly simple—a few lengths of white velvet cut and stitched together.”

“Oh, all right.” Milhau waved her aside. “But do try to keep the cost down.”

“Sam, are you busy?”

It was Leonard this time. His long, bronzed face was serious.

“Oh, no, I’m not busy! I’m a gentleman of leisure!” groaned Milhau. “What now?”

“I just wanted to make a suggestion about tonight.” Leonard leaned against the corner of Milhau’s desk. “Don’t you think we’d all be a little happier if the fellow who plays Vladimir weren’t made up quite so . . . realistically? You could have his head turned away from the audience you know.”

The secretary stuck her improbable golden head around the door jamb. “Rehearsal, Mr. Milhau. Everybody’s waiting for you on stage!”

Milhau groaned again, snatched a dog-eared copy of the script from his desk and rose. “Why did I ever go into show business?” he asked the universe. “Why wasn’t I a bootblack or a truck driver?”

As he plunged through the lobby to the auditorium the others straggled after him. Russell fell into step beside Basil.

“Excuse me . . .” Russell’s manner was more anxious than ever. “But—” His voice sank to a whisper. “There’s something queer going on here. I don’t understand it. Why does this man they call ‘Rod’ make such a fuss about carrying a knife on stage? Why does Miss Morley want a new costume when she only wore the other one once? And why is an old skinflint like Sam Milhau offering fifty bucks a week for a walk-on part that’s not worth thirty-five?”

Basil looked at him almost as appraisingly as Milhau had done. “Is it true you’ve been in hospital for six weeks without seeing a newspaper?”

“Yes. I had a touch of tuberculosis.”

“You might as well hear the truth from me,” went on Basil. “You’re sure to hear it from someone sooner or later, and I don’t think it’s quite fair to keep you in the dark. I suppose Milhau thinks that if he can just get you through one or two performances before you learn the truth you won’t mind so much when you do learn it.”

“Learn what?”

“Your predecessor who played the part of Vladimir at the opening night before last was murdered on stage.”

“W-what?” Russell stood stock still in the middle of the center aisle. Basil stood beside him as the others went on down to the footlights. “He was stabbed with a surgical knife like those you saw in Rod’s bag. It happened during the first act but his death wasn’t discovered until the curtain fell.”

“And no one noticed he was dying until then?”

“No, because he was playing the part of Vladimir—a dying man—all during the first act. He was even made up to look like a corpse.”

The word “corpse” seemed to bring the thing home to Russell. “Who did it?” he demanded hoarsely.

“No one knows. Only four people had the opportunity. Three are actors who’ll be on stage with you tonight: Wanda Morley, Rodney Tait, and Leonard Martin. The fourth is the wife of the murdered man, a Mrs. Ingelow.”

“What’s the idea of going on with the show?”

“It’s the only way Milhau can get any return on the money he’s already invested in it.”

“Money.” Russell grew thoughtful. “I could certainly use fifty bucks a week, but I don’t much like stepping into a dead man’s shoes and a murdered man’s at that. . . . Do you think it would be—well—dangerous?”

“I don’t see how,” answered Basil. “You have no connection with anyone else in the cast or with the Ingelow family, have you?”

“No. I’ve seen Miss Morley and her company on the stage from a gallery seat, and I’ve been turned down by Milhau’s secretary once or twice when I asked for a job; but that’s the sole extent of my connection with any of them. I never even heard of this Ingelow and his wife.”

“Then I should think you could enjoy your fifty bucks a week without worrying,” said Basil.

“Coming, Russell?” called Milhau from the footlights.

“Yes, sir!” The boy hurried down to the stage.

Basil followed more slowly, taking in every detail of the scene. Instead of a shadowy auditorium with a single work light dangling from a wire on stage, all the lights were blazing. Evidently Milhau was a sufficiently shrewd practical psychologist to realize that his cast would see all sorts of ghosts in dark corners and shady vistas. Adeane was standing near the footlights at the edge of the stage with a new book in a fresh dust jacket tucked under one arm. As he saw Basil and the others coming down the aisle from Milhau’s office, Adeane leaned forward to greet Basil. “Well, doc, have you found out who killed Cock Robin yet?”

As Basil disliked being called “doc” by anyone except Inspector Foyle, he did not reply in kind to Adeane’s jarring laugh.

Adeane seemed in unusually high spirits. His freckled, usually sallow face was flushed, and there was a reddish glint in his hazel eyes. Had he been drinking? Or had something more subtle than alcohol intoxicated him? He called loudly across the footlights:

“It was I,

Said the Fly,

With my little Eye . . .”

“Is this a confession?” murmured Basil.

Adeane laughed again. “Oh, no—I didn’t do it, and I didn’t even see it done. But I know whom I’d make the murderer if I were writing a play about it.”

“Who?”

“That’s telling.” Adeane rattled on. “I must thank you for sending me to that medical library. I got enough dope on disease there to last me twenty years. When I got home I had aches and pains in every part of my body—head, heart, lungs, stomach, kidneys, and I would have had a pain in the pancreas if I’d known where the pancreas is! I read a lot about diseases of the pancreas in your friends Barr, Tice, and Cushny. A bit too technical for me, they were. But I got hold of a book by Victor Heiser that was really something. A lot of stuff about native medicine in India and so forth that was very interesting . . . ve-ry interesting indeed!” Adeane smiled his slow, thick-lipped smile which Basil had found so unpleasant from the first moment they had met.

On stage the first-act set looked as if it had not been touched since the other evening. Already the actors playing Vladimir’s servants were gathering around the domino table for the opening scene, only this time they were in shirts and slacks instead of high-collared Russian blouses. Adeane’s reddish hair and mustard tweed jacket stood out among them as he thrust his way to his seat at the domino table. Russell crossed the stage to the couch in the alcove. Adeane looked up and drawled with almost impish malice the very words he had spoken to Ingelow: “Hello, so you’re the corpse!”

Russell stopped short. There was a deathly stillness. Then Milhau called out: “That isn’t funny, Adeane! Go in the alcove and shut the door, Russell. We’re ten minutes late already.”

His top sergeant brusqueness restored order. But it could not scatter the unpleasant aftertaste of that moment. Russell entered the alcove. The double doors closed slowly, hiding him from view.

Leonard’s voice spoke in Basil’s ear. “It’s absurd, but I hate the look of those closed doors. After what happened last time I wish I weren’t the one who has to open them. I can’t help being afraid I’ll find him dead, though I know it’s entirely unreasonable. I wonder why I feel that way?”

“Suggestion,” answered Basil. “A scene can revivify memory just as intensely as an odor or a musical phrase. Memory has more to do with the senses than reason.”

Leonard turned away to take up his place in the wings ready for his entrance a few minutes later. Milhau was sitting with an assistant producer in the second row center. Basil took a place beside Pauline in the third row.

“I don’t like this,” she whispered.

“Been reading about ‘eternal recurrence’ like Hutchins?”

“No, it’s just—”

“What?”

“Suppose that by taking the part of Vladimir and seeing the action of the play from Vladimir’s angle of vision this boy, Russell, will discover something about the action of the play that proves only one person could possibly murder Vladimir during the first act? And suppose the murderer realizes this? Then the boy wouldn’t be too safe would he?”

“You do have the nicest ideas,” said Basil. “But I’ve been over the script thoroughly, and I don’t see any way Vladimir could learn something that was not known to any other observer on stage or in the audience.”

“Everybody ready?” cried Milhau. “Shoot!”

The orchestra lights were dimmed but the stage remained a brightly lighted box.

One of the servants moved a domino. Four!

Six! cried Adeane.

Rehearsal had begun.

The full force of all Hutchins had said about eternal recurrence came home to Basil in the next few moments. To a layman there was something uncanny and even a little frightening about the way the actors repeated every word and inflection and gesture of the other evening as if they had ceased to be human beings and become mechanical toys who always did and said certain things when you wound up their springs. While one part of Basil’s brain kept his eyes on his watch and his hands busy with a pencil noting the time of each entrance and exit on the margin of Rod’s time table, another part of his brain was considering that law of intertia that makes momentum or habit such a tremendous power in the physical and psychical worlds. Everything was a part of it—planets and electrons going round and round the same orbits; Hindu marriage ritual still performed though its significance is forgotten; the intricate instincts of insects who also performed elaborate rituals without knowing why; the child who had to repeat a poem from the beginning in order to remember the last line; the embryo that has to recapitulate the development of the whole species before it can turn a cell into a man. No wonder the most evil and the most ridiculous beliefs became sacred once they were sanctioned by tradition. No wonder that “thinking is hard work while prejudice is a pleasure.” Obviously it was initiative in both act and thought which taxed the nervous system most exhaustingly and unpleasantly. But habit like a buoyant tide of psychic momentum bore the actors through their parts and enabled them to perform prodigious feats of memory repeating page after page of dialogue without mistake or omission.

Once more the domino game was broken up by the ring of the doorbell. Once more Wanda swept into the room saying: Is the master away? This morning her stage presence had the same quality that had held Basil’s attention the other evening; but she was less imposing in her plain black dress, and her lines seemed to come a little more rapidly.

“Are they taking it at the same pace they did the other night?” he asked Pauline.

“A shade faster,” she answered. “They’re nervous. That’s why Sam made them have this run-through. It’ll break the ice so they’ll be all right tonight.”

Again Wanda was at the fireplace. Again the doorbell rang. Again Leonard rushed into the room crying: The count’s room—quickly!

Even without costume and make-up he seemed another man on stage—taller and more robust as he strode to the alcove and threw the doors open.

Pauline gasped and caught Basil’s hand. Russell was lying on the couch exactly as Vladimir had lain, head turned to the audience, one arm dangling. It was as if time had been turned backward. Leonard opened his mouth and closed it as if he could not remember his next line. No one else moved or spoke. Then Russell shifted the position of his head. Someone laughed. It sounded like Adeane’s laugh.

“Steady!” Milhau used his top-sergeant voice again. “Russell!”

“Yes, Mr. Milhau?” The “corpse” sat up on the couch with a grin. Basil could almost hear the tension relaxing all around him.

“Be careful not to move at all after the doors are opened. Get into as comfortable a position as you can, and then keep perfectly still. I know it isn’t easy; but it can be done, and you’re supposed to be in a coma.”

“Yes, sir.”

“O.K.” said Milhau. “We’ll start at the beginning again.”

Pauline dropped Basil’s hand with a sigh. “That’s the first time I ever saw Leonard blow up in his lines.”

Wanda, Leonard, and Hutchins left the stage. The corpse rose and closed the alcove doors. The servants sat around the domino table again.

“Shoot!” said Milhau.

Four!

Six!

Is the master away?

The count’s room—quickly!

Every word, tone, shade of meaning was repeated with mechanical perfection as if they were seeing a movie twice over. This time when the double doors were thrown back there was no longer the same feeling of horror. They had been through that scene once this morning and nothing had happened. The evil spell was broken. Already the memory of the other evening was beginning to fade, to be replaced by other memories. Psychologically this repetition of Fedora was the best thing that Milhau could possibly have done for the actors in his company.

Russell lay still as a log. Rod, in tweed jacket and flannel trousers, was even more inadequate than ever as Dr. Lorek. An accident?

Attempted murder.

Rod moved into the alcove and opened his bag. This time there was no flash of steel. He stood between Vladimir and the audience, so no one could see what he was doing.

Fedora was sobbing. I pray you, as I pray God—save his life! Suddenly Fedora turned her back on Lorek and walked down to the footlights. She was Wanda Morley now and she spoke in an angry voice without a hint of sobbing: “What are you doing here?”

Her gaze went beyond the row of seats where Basil and Pauline was sitting. They turned and saw Margot Ingelow calmly ensconced in the seat behind them. She looked remarkably cool and fresh in a white linen dress printed with large, splashy black poppies. She wore a small white hat, and her head was tilted slightly to one side, a smile curving her lips.

“What are you doing here?” repeated Wanda.

“Enjoying myself.”

“I will not go on with this rehearsal as long as that woman is in the theater!” cried Wanda.

Milhau came up the aisle and spoke in a low voice to Margot. “You shouldn’t have come; but as long as you did, you’ll have to make your peace with her somehow.”

“Isn’t it she who should make peace with me?” retorted Margot. “I didn’t throw a glass of liqueur in her face!”

Milhau stood still for a moment, his eyes narrow and calculating. Then he said: “The only thing to do now is to tell her you’re backing the revival.”

“But you said she’d never stand for that!”

“She’ll have to. This is the only way to rehabilitate her career, and she needs the money.”

“Wanda Morley needs money!” Margot laughed. “I thought she was the actress who always wanted to lead a simple life in the suburbs. This is her opportunity!”

“You’ll have to talk to her—nicely. Or else give up the whole thing.”

“I’m never ‘nice,’” returned Margot.

But she followed him down the aisle to the footlights where Wanda was standing. Wanda leaned down to speak to them, her face ugly with anger. Soon that look gave way to surprise. Evidently it had not occurred to her that Margot was backing the revival of Fedora. Milhau did most of the talking, waving his hands eloquently. Margot was silent and smiling. Finally with a shrug Wanda yielded. Basil decided she did need money pretty badly or she would never have accepted Margot’s backing.

Magpie returned to her seat, and this time Milhau let the company go on from the point where they had been interrupted. But Wanda’s acting had lost fire and conviction. Evidently Margot’s presence troubled her.

With ambassadorial unction, Hutchins delivered the line Basil was waiting for: He cannot escape now, every hand is against him. Basil glanced swiftly at his watch again and noted the time. Leonard left the stage to search for Vladimir’s murderer. Rod announced Vladimir’s death solemnly. . . . Madame, it is the end. . . .

Leonard re-entered through the door at left: Gone!

Wanda ran to the alcove. Vladimir! Speak! She threw herself across Russell’s body, cradling his head in her arms as she had cradled Ingelow’s. Don’t you know me? Speak! Ah! She sank to the floor. It was the end of the first act.

But Vladimir lay still.

On stage every face was strained and rigid. Wanda rose. A topaz ring winked golden as she put out one slim hand cautiously and touched Russell’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“Sure.” He sat up grinning. “Is that the end of the act? Nobody told me!”

Everyone began to talk and laugh a little too loudly. Milhau interrupted. “Second act, please.”

The second act set was brought down from the flies to stage level, and the second act began.

Basil paid little attention to the second and third acts of Fedora. He was lost in calculating the timing of the first act. He had to allow for the minutes lost by each interruption during the rehearsal and its slightly more rapid tempo. But at last he had worked it out. On the opening night the Siriex line—He cannot escape now,—must have occurred at the very moment Hutchins had surmised—twenty-four minutes after the curtain rose, that is at 9:04 if the curtain rose at 8:40. The estimates Rod had made of the exits and entrances in his original time table appeared to be equally accurate, if you assumed that the rehearsal was a shade too fast.

When Basil put down his pencil the third act was drawing to a close. This scene represented the garden of Fedora’s villa in the Bernese Oberland. There was a backdrop of Bernese alps. In the middle distance there was a glimpse of the village of Thun beside a small lake. Then came a gateway and in the foreground a terrace with a profusion of flowers. Stage sunshine brooded over the scene for it was supposed to be an afternoon in May.

Rodney Tait’s portrayal of Loris Ipanov in this scene was just as wooden as his portrayal of Dr. Lorek in the first act; but at least he was young and tall and well proportioned, and all those qualities suited the part. Wanda’s black dress looked absurd against the country background, but her acting had regained some of its authority and enthusiasm. It was she who was supposed to die at the end of this scene and she was putting a great deal of feeling into her last moments. It’s getting dark . . . Everything is fading. . . . But, Loris. I’m not sorry to die. Life and love are unjust . . .

A boy wearing shirt and slacks of pea-green cotton crossed the back of the stage beyond the garden gate singing in a rather sweet tenor: My girl of the mountains . . .

“What’s he supposed to be?” Basil asked Pauline.

“A Savoyard peasant. The beach costume does mar the effect, doesn’t it? But he’ll be in peasant dress tonight.”

I’m cold . . . Wanda was still dying. Loris, where are you? I can’t see you now. . . .

I’m here, my darling! responded Rod as ardently as a man reading aloud a passage from the Encyclopædia Britannica. Here to give you my forgiveness!

Loris! sighed Wanda. I love you! Their lips met in a kiss that looked like a real one—the first suggestion of realism Rod’s acting had achieved so far.

“She made him do that!” whispered Pauline furiously.

Wanda’s head fell back on the cushions of a garden seat. Rod sobbed aloud—three sobs a minute carefully timed. Hutchins laid a flower beside Wanda’s hand. Other actors—supposed to be Italian servants—knelt and crossed themselves. The electrician off-stage pressed a switch and the sunshine faded into a beautiful lavender twilight.

Again like an echo the voice of the singing peasant was heard off-stage: My girl of the mountains . . . will never come back. . . .

If someone had set off a charge of dynamite the effect could not have seemed more devastating. Wanda, so gracefully dead, sprang to her feet shouting. Basil would not have believed her carefully modulated voice could become so strident: “Damn it, what did you do that for?” was the mildest expression she used. Rod was equally furious. “Haven’t you any sense at all?” Hutchins plunged through the frail garden gate into the wings and reappeared dragging the boy in pea-green slacks with him. “You know you shouldn’t have done that!” Everyone began to talk so furiously that it was impossible to hear a word. Leonard and the other actors in the orchestra seats were as excited as those on stage. Only two people besides Basil himself seemed undismayed—Margot and Adeane. Even Milhau was red with fury. He ran up three shallow steps that bridged the footlights to the stage and confronted the boy in green. “Who told you to do that?”

“Nobody. I just didn’t think. After all, it isn’t an ordinary rehearsal. We’ve already had one first night.”

This was not the happiest excuse he could have offered. At mention of that first night the gabbling tongues died away in silence.

“You’re fired,” said Milhau bitterly. “Get your money and go.”

“Lissen, Mr. Milhau. I got a contract, and—”

Basil leaned toward Pauline. “What is the trouble?”

Her smile was faintly ironic. “You may have heard that stage people are superstitious. One of their pet superstitions is that the last line of a play must never be spoken at rehearsal. I suppose they wouldn’t mind quite so much if they hadn’t been jittery to start with. After all, this production has had its quota of bad luck already.”

“Didn’t the boy in green realize what he was doing?”

“I suppose not. I suppose he thought having had the opening already . . . But that was only one act. The whole production has never been shown in public, so technically this is a pre-production rehearsal.”

“Aw, gee, Mr. Milhau,” the boy was arguing. He was a plump, swarthy youth who had evidently been chosen for the part because his large, moist, black eyes and oily waves of black hair suggested the coarse vitality of a peasant. “It’s just a superstition . . .”

The cackle of voices rose again. A tall, thin figure pushed its way through the crowd of actors on the stage clustered around Milhau and the boy.

“Mr. Milhau!” It was Russell. His voice broke like an adolescent’s. “I’m sorry, but I can’t play Vladimir tonight. I just can’t. Not after that.”

“Well, now, Russell, it’s just a superstition,” Milhau took over the boy’s own argument glibly.

“You may call it superstition, but I believe in good luck and bad. I’m not going to play that part tonight.”

“A hundred a week!” snapped Milhau.

“No,” retorted Russell. “There’s something fishy going on around here, and I don’t like it. Why didn’t you tell me about the murder when I applied for this job? Why did you get a new man like me instead of getting one of the actors who only appears in the last act to play Vladimir in the first? Why were you all so scared when I didn’t move at the end of the first act? No, thank you, Mr. Milhau, you can get somebody else to play Vladimir. I haven’t signed a contract yet, and I’m not going to!”

There was complete silence as Russell stalked down the steps and up the center aisle to the exit.

Before anyone could speak, Adeane left his seat in the orchestra and lounged down to the footlights, hands in his pockets. “I never heard such blasted nonsense in all my life!” he drawled scornfully. “Anybody’d think you were a pack of kids or savages the way you fuss over your taboos. I’m not an actor, thank God—I’m a dramatist just doing a little acting on the side, so I’m not superstitious. I walk under ladders all the time and spill salt whenever I get the chance. I’ll be glad to play Vladimir if somebody else will play Nikola.”

Milhau came down to the footlights. “Thank you, Adeane. I won’t forget this. You’ll get the same salary you’re getting now, and let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you.”

“How about reading some of my plays?” responded Adeane with the same smile he had given Margot when he told her she “owed” him something.

Milhau swallowed and steeled himself to make a real sacrifice. “O.K. Give them to my secretary.”

Adeane looked as if he were patting himself on the back. “Thanks, Mr. Milhau. I’ll do that!”

But the rest of the company was uneasy. Wanda spoke. “Sam, do we have to go on with Fedora?”

Margot answered her: “Of course we do! It’s all settled. Mr. Milhau and I between us would make things very unpleasant for anyone who broke a contract at the last moment.”

“You heard the lady,” said Milhau curtly. “The box office is sold out for weeks ahead, and no silly superstition is going to keep me from seeing that curtain rise tonight at 8:40 sharp!”

“What about me?” The boy in pea-green slacks looked at Milhau impudently.

“Oh—go to hell!” Milhau hurried back to his own office—the rehearsal was over.

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