The Empire of Night

41

Einstein and I made our good-byes and I rose and he rose and we shook hands. I offered to find Madam Cobb and I urged him to wait, as I knew where to locate her in the theater. He thanked me and sat down and I stepped out of the dressing room and softly clicked the door closed behind me.

I turned to head along the corridor to the auditorium.

Mother was standing a few paces away, alone, leaning against the wall and smoking a cigarette. She looked at me and hastily dropped the cigarette to the floor and tapped it out with the toe of her shoe.

I approached her.

We spoke low.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you smoke,” I said.

“It’s been a long time since you’ve seen me frightened.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

She said no more than that in answer to what she would usually take to be a juicy theatrical cue line. I believed her.

“What is it?” I said.

“I’m going with him.”

“Stockman?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Monday morning. Early. He asked me to go with the most tender of entreaties. Albert the vulnerable, the tortured, the needy. Then he swore me to secrecy with a whispered vehemence that scared the living bejabbers out of me.”

I didn’t respond at once. I tried to figure out how much I should tell her, in her present state, of my own recent fright. For fright it was quickly becoming. My mind had only just begun to work out all the implications of what Einstein had told me. Stockman was heading south to somehow expedite an aerial poison gas attack. And thinking this far now, I thought to add against London.

“He’s not going to invite you,” Mother said.

“He told you that?”

“Yes. I’m to play the Grande Dame to Victor and to you. The story is that I’m going away alone for a few days to a spa. I must. I’m not telling you where.”

“Will Barnowsky tolerate that?”

“I’m ill. I need to go away for a time. He’ll tolerate it. We’re still two weeks from opening. I’m doing swell, my son. Swell. Let a stand-in rehearse with these locals. I can be ill for days and still play Hamlet in my sleep. In two languages? Not a problem for Isabel Cobb. You know I can do anything on a stage. Anything I want. My mind. My will. My heart. My mind. Did I mention my mind? It can do anything.”

Abruptly she stopped speaking.

She heard herself. “What the hell was that little monologue all about?” she said. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“You’ll be fine,” I said. “The third act has begun in our play. That’s all.”

“Yes, my darling. Yes. You’re right.”

I reached under my coat and into the small of my back and I drew my pocket Mauser from its holster. I brought it out before her. Too quickly. She drew a sharp, lifting, stiffening breath and reared back.

“I want you to take this,” I said.

“Is it necessary?”

“You tell me. It’s to calm your fear.”

She looked at it.

“Do you know how to use it?” I asked.

“Don’t you remember my Lydia Justice in A Woman Wronged?”

I didn’t. “Do you know how many plays I’ve seen you in?”

“Well, I learned to shoot for Lydia. And though on stage they were blanks, they were precisely shot.”

“Fine.” I offered the pistol.

She waved it away. “Do you actually think I could kill him?”

I’d even asked myself the same question not too long ago. The last ten minutes had given me my answer, I realized. I thought again to tell her about the gas. But after that one brief, clear-headed admission of her fear, she’d been thrashing around to deal with it in every way but honest. These much higher stakes might only frighten her more, and she could inadvertently betray herself to Stockman. She needed to know, but not now.

“You may not approve,” she said. “You may not believe me. He may have terrible flaws. But I love him.”

I clamped my mouth tightly shut and looked away.

She read the gesture. Partially. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll stop him. I know I have to stop him from whatever it is we’re all worried about. I’ll bring him down. But that’s all I can do. There is no possible circumstance where I’d shoot him to death.”

I said, “People other than Stockman could be a danger to you.”

I offered my Mauser once more.

She looked at it.

“Believe me,” I said, quite softly. “There are things we can’t anticipate.”

She took a deep breath.

She took the pistol from my hand.

She held it like she knew what to do with it. Like she was the wronged Lydia Justice six nights and two matinees a week.