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THE DARK WHEEL


THE
DARK


WHEEL
BY PHILIP MACDONALD
AND A. BOYD CORRELL

WILLIAM MORROW & COMPANY NEW YORK 1948


Copyright 1948 by Philip MacDonald and A. Boyd Correll.
Published simultaneously in the Dominion of Canada
by McClelland and Stewart, Limited, Toronto.
Printed in the United States of America.


PREO05
A2218 Dis
THE DARK WHEEL
M538955





There was a wheel inside his head.
Most of the time, it was inert-just
balanced there, so still that he would forget about it for
months, perhaps years, on end.
But there were times when it would
move. These were the times when other men (or
women) set up opposition to his will and wishes. It
would move then. At first, the movement would be
slow and reluctant-and if the opposition were with-
drawn, then the wheel would stop again.
But if the opposition stood up in de-
fiance, then the speed of the wheel would mount and
mount, and its whirling would make a humming in his
head, and the light from its polished spokes and sur-
face would flash behind his eyes and when he came to
himself, after some indefinite period of time, it would
be motionless.
And the barrier would have been
swept away-demolished.





с
н
А
Р
Т
Е
R
1
It was nine-fifteen, and the whole front
of the Burnside was empty and brightly lighted.
Over the marquee was a banner which said "500TH
PERFORMANCE"-and, underneath it, lights spelled
out the title of the play which W. Winchell, more than
a year ago, had called "a Vomi-drama in Three Spasms,
racing for limbo ..."
"BROTHER O' MINE” said the lights-and then, in
a different color, “DENIS LEMAY.” In another color
still, and much smaller letters, they added, “AND ALL-
STAR CAST.”
From the stage-door alley a wandering cat came lei-
surely out onto the empty sidewalk-then darted away as
a car slid up to the curb beside it.


e brim kena.lack, lightweidewalk-at
The car was a limousine-de-ville, as black as the cat
and much shinier. A man got down from his seat beside
the chauffeur. He was a big, light-moving man in non-
committal clothes, and he moved in a non-committal
way. He looked quickly to his right and left; then
opened the door of the tonneau and held the door while
another man stepped down to the sidewalk-a tall, spare
person, wearing a black, lightweight overcoat and a hat
whose brim kept his face in shadow.
In the foyer of the theater, Jim Grant was staring
vaguely at the plaster bust of Edwin Booth and think-
ing vaguely, as he always did, that the nose was wrong.
He was also thinking vaguely, as he always did, that he
wished he were anything at all except house manager of
this theater.
The outer doors opened, and the two men from the
car came through them, the one with the overcoat five
paces in front, walking with his hands deep in its pock-
ets, his head downbent.
Grant turned just in time to see them and also just
in time to beckon to the new girl as she started officiously
towards them.
“No tickets from them, honey," he said. “They're fix-
tures. Box E for the run.” He turned away. “God
knows why!” he said, half to himself.
The two men from the car were upstairs now, on the
mezzanine. They stood outside a box door labeled E,
and the first was helped off with hat and overcoat by the
second. They weren't sinister any more; they were ana-
10


chronistic. A Gentleman and his gentleman's gentle-
man.
The Gentleman said “Thank you, Larsen,” and
looked at his watch. “A few minutes early tonight, are
we not?"
"Yes, sir," said the man. He folded the overcoat and
laid it, with the hat, neatly upon the settee by the box
door.
The Gentleman put delicate fingers to his white tie.
It was an immaculate tie. It was fresh, dignified, de-
liberately old-fashioned and, therefore, symbolic of
everything about its wearer, from the cut of the tail coat
to the shape of the exquisitely trimmed, gray-flecked
mustache and imperial; from the precise modulations of
the soft voice to the erect and aristocratic carriage of the
thin and well-preserved body.
The man opened the box door, and the Gentleman
passed through it with a little nod of acknowledgment.
He closed the door and sat in the corner nearer the
stage, and tilted back his chair so that he was in deep
shadow. He showed no interest whatsoever in either
play or audience. His gaze was abstracted, and the lids
drooped down over his eyes. He was motionless-and in
the half dark looked like a wax-work figure in some
museum of the future. A figure labeled “Diplomatic
Type, Circa 1910 A.D.”
On stage, Denis LeMay was dealing competently
enough with the scene in which, as Julian, he returns
stealthily to his home having broken jail.
Denis LeMay liked this scene, because in it Julian,
11


apparently for the only time in his life, did no talking
but merely climbed in through a window and prowled
about a half-darkened set.
There was a certain tensity in the hackneyed situa-
tion, and the house was well-behaved and quiet. But
just before Julian heard the sound which sent him
(eight times weekly) into hiding, the occupant of Box E
became remarkably transformed.
He made no sound, but he was suddenly, vibrantly,
alive. His eyes, no longer hooded, were fixed upon the
stage, upon the central door at the back of the set.
The convenient curtains swayed as Julian hid behind
them. The door-handle rattled. The door itself opened
-and through it entered, as Judy, the young woman of
whom a certain columnist had written. “... the nause-
ous gloom which has overlayed the Burnside since the
opening of Brother O' Mine has lately been somewhat
dispelled by a newcomer to New York, Miss Kay For-
ester, who recently took over the part of Judy. This
gal, pal, can act! And furthermore, she is no strain on
the optics ..."
• Judy pressed a switch and light flooded the stage.
frightened girl. She came down stage, conquering her
audience unconsciously copied it, she drew more closely
around her the vividly embroidered kimono which the
prop man said was the only good thing in the play.
She stood by the desk and looked around her again.


She said, “Is-is there anyone here?” in a small voice
which cracked on the ugly note of genuine fear.
The man in the box sat hunched and motionless. His
eyes never left the figure of the girl upon the stage.
The performance went on-and on.
As the ineffable Julian, Denis LeMay talked and suf-
fered, talked and fought, talked and talked. Eighty-five
per cent of the women in the audience found him dev-
astating, but the other fifteen per cent were disapprov-
why, were vaguely shocked.
And Judy wept-and sacrificed herself-and came at
last to Happiness. Despite her incredible lines, she was
(as interpreted by Kay Forester) a living and charming
girl whose sufferings were somehow understandable.
The final curtain came down and stayed down. The
audience poured into the aisles, filling the theater with
hats and coats and chatter.
But the occupant of Box E made no move to leave.
He merely shifted to another chair, deeper still in the
shadows of the box. He became the wax-work again
until, some fifteen minutes later, there was a soft tap
at the door and the man he had called Larsen came
softly in.
Then he was Cornelius Van Toller once more-being
helped on with his overcoat while Larsen said, “Every-
thing is clear now, sir.” By everything Larsen meant
1 3


the coast; meant that now his master could leave the
theater with little risk of being seen.
He was Cornelius Van Toller again and life was con-
cushioned rut he had carved for it in the past months.
“Thank you, Larsen,” said Cornelius Van Toller-the
last of the long male line of Van Tollers, the present
controller of the immense Van Toller fortunes, the man
who might truly, in this fourth decade of the twentieth
century, have been called “Vanishing American.”


CHAPTER 2
Merely to pass through the gates of
reminded irresistibly of the end of the last century, but
to enter the house was to be actually whisked backwards
a full fifty years. From cornice to carpeting, from plate
to portraits, from servants' hall to the stereoscopic
"views” which Miss Caroline Van Toller still delighted
in, everything struck the same hushed historic note, so
that now it was the telephones and toilets which were
the real anachronisms, and one was sharply surprised
to find wickless lamps which turned on by some magic
contrivance in the wall.
Immediately above the main drawing room, that vast,
rococo chamber stretching half the width of the ground
1 5


C.
floor, was the suite of the master of the house; his bed-
room, his bathroom, his dressing-room and his study.
He was in the study now. He was alone and moving
inevitably toward the evening's inevitable climax. He
crossed the big room and turned the key in the outer
door. He retraced his steps to a far corner. He moved a
small table which stood against the paneled wall. He
picked up a chair and set it to face the blank space the
table had left.
He pulled a chain from his pocket, and put a key
slowly into a small lock which was almost invisible at
the edge of one of the panels.
He turned the key, and the panel swung out like a
door and folded back.
In the recess behind the panel was a picture-the full-
length portrait of a young woman.
At first sight, it might have been Kay Forester in the
part of Judy; Judy in the kimono; Judy on her first
appearance in Brother O' Mine.
But it wasn't Kay Forester. The resemblance was
only a matter of dress and youth and shapeliness. Dress
above all, for the figure in the portrait wore, unmistak-
ably, the striking kimono which the Burnside prop-man
valued so highly.
The face was completely unlike Kay Forester's face.
But it was an admirable likeness of its subject, who had
been Margaret Alden. And Margaret Alden, until her
untimely death less than a year ago, had played Judy.
Cornelius Van Toller sat in the chair he had so care-
16


fully placed. He studied, rapt and motionless, the por-
trait of Margaret Alden.
He did not know-and would not have believed it if
he had been told-that immediately below him, in the
huge drawing-room, his sister and his man were pre-
suming to discuss him.
There was an island of light at one
end of the drawing-room. The rest was a sea of shad-
ows, an ocean filled with other islands of bulky, looming
furniture.
In the light, Caroline Van Toller sat in her usual
chair. Its uncompromising back rose high above her
untidy head, and its uncompromising wings framed her
gentle, faded face. Beside her stood her embroidery
upon its frame, and near her feet slept Pasha, her Per-
sian cat. At her elbow was a small table, of the type she
called "occasional,” and on this was a silver tray with a
pitcher of milk, a tumbler, a pitcher of water, another
tumbler, and a small dark-green bottle. This last con-
tained her "drops," and was there in case her "silly old
heart should get to misbehaving."
She was leaning forward, her hands clasped in her
black-satin lap. She was looking earnestly, beseechingly,
at her companion.
Larsen sat to face her. He leaned his bulk towards
her, each of his great hands spread on a massive knee,
and he regarded her with a look which would have
made him almost unrecognizable to those who had only
1
7


seen him in his capacity of gentleman's gentleman. It
was the look of a kindly, thoughtful human being. It
was the look of a man deeply concerned for a friend.
Caroline was saying, “... and I tell you, Larsen, I
was so dreadfully upset that I could not-I simply could
not-face Mr. Van Toller when he came in! I-I actu-
ally practiced a deceit upon him!” Her thin hands
locked about each other. “I pretended I had dozed off.
Larsen-and he didn't disturb me ..."
"Now Miss Van Toller, now, ma'am, this will never
do, you getting all wrought up like this.” Larsen's deep
voice was placid, soothing. “I don't know what's got
into Mr. Armbruster, frightening you this way. Why,
everything's been going along just fine. I haven't had
the least little bit of trouble with Mr. Van Toller.”
"Mr. Armbruster didn't mean to upset me, Larsen."
Caroline's voice was unsteady. "It was just that he had
been talking to this psychiatrist-a very eminent man,
Larsen-and felt it was his duty to tell me what he had
been told. He did not mention any name to the doctor,
of course-Mr. Armbruster didn't, I mean-but he dis-
cussed the matter very fully and the doctor said-well,
he said that any patient with my poor brother's his-
tory—"
Her voice had been rising, her words coming fast and
faster, and now she broke off, breathing heavily. She
put a hand to her heart and Larsen got quickly to his
feet. He reached for the little medicine-bottle on the
tray, but she checked him. She said:
1 8


“No, no ... Thank you, Larsen but I'm perfectly
all right. It was merely a twinge ...".
Larsen stood looking down at her. His face was trou-
bled. He said, gently, “You shouldn't worry yourself
like this, Miss Van Toller, really you shouldn't. What
you should do, ma'am, is go to bed now and take a good
night's sleep.” He was like an elder brother. “Right
now there's nothing wrong at all—and we can have a
good long talk tomorrow, if you like.”
Caroline's fingers struggled with each other. “But I
want to discuss it now, Larsen. Please! I couldn't sleep
unless I did-not after what Mr. Armbruster was say-
ing ..."
Larsen scowled at the absent Armbruster-then
quickly smiled at Caroline. He said:
"Very well, ma'am, just as you like . . . But from
what you've told me, it doesn't seem as if this psychia-
trist had really told Mr. Armbruster anything we didn't
all of us know already. Only I expect he used a lot of
long words, like schizophrenia and so on. These medi-
cal gentlemen always—"
Caroline interrupted him. “But he did tell us some-
thing, Larsen! I thought I had explained to you. He
said-he told Mr. Armbruster, It was about my brother
going to that play every night, and—and the picture and
all that-he said to Mr. Armbruster, and he was very
strong about it, that something had to be done-that
something must be done very soon-to substitute a-a
reality for this,” she faltered—“Oh dear! I cannot re-
member the word—but it meant 'make-believe' ..."
119


"Would it be 'fantasy,' ma'am?"
“Yes, yes, of course! How clever you are Larsen!"
Caroline put a hand to her forehead. "I-I suppose I
know what the Doctor meant-but I don't see how the
-the substitution could be made.” She clasped her
hands now and looked over them appealingly. She said:
“Do you see any way, Larsen, do you? You are such
a tower of strength-cannot you think of something?"
Larsen began to pace. His heavy brows were drawn
together. Twice he seemed on the verge of speech but
each time he checked himself. And then he stopped
pacing, and turned to look down at her. He said
heavily:
"It isn't that I can't think of anything, Miss Van
Toller, because the same idea's been in my head for
quite a while now, and I have had a notion ... My
trouble is, I'm not sure if it would work.”
Caroline fluttered to her feet. She was beside him in
three small steps. She caught at his sleeve with both
hands and looked up at him in desperate appeal.
She said, “Oh, tell me! Please tell me, Larsen ..."
III
In the study, the picture had van-
ished. The panel was locked again and the table and
chair were back in their places.
Cornelius Van Toller stood by the open door to his
bedroom, his fingers to the light-switch.
He was tired. He was relaxed. He was going to bed,
and another perfectly ordered day would close; a day
2 0


in which the tenor of life as he planned it had once
more gone undisturbed.
His thumb contracted to press the switch-but there
came a soft tapping at his outer door.
He frowned. His lean body tensed. Here was the
unexpected, the unplanned-a pebble cast to mar the
surface of the pool.
The tapping came again. His frown deepening, he
hold. She flinched from his frown and he smoothed it
away and put a smile in its place. He was fond of Caro-
line. He loved Caroline. He must permit the pattern
to be disturbed for Caroline.
He pulled the door wide and said, “Why, Caroline,
my dear, this is a pleasant surprise! . . . Come in,
come in.” He was touched by the way she smiled up at
him, and he took her arm and led her across the room
and settled her in a big chair near the hearth.
Caroline smiled at him, but the smile was tremulous.
She said, “Oh, Cornelius, I do hope I didn't disturb
a little chat ..."
"And so it will, Caroline!" A thought occurred to
him and he gave words to it. “Do you realize, my dear
sister, that it has been-let me see, now-nearly a year
since you honored this room with your presence?"
There was something fixed about her smile. There
was something perturbing about the tittering little
laugh she gave.
"I purposely don't come in here much, Cornelius,"
21


yer
.
she said. “You see, I-I think a man should have a 're-
treat,' a place he can go for privacy, away from silly
bothersome women!"
“Oh, come now, Caroline, I'm sure you are neither
‘silly' nor 'bothersome.'” He contrived to keep his tone
fraternally teasing.
He watched her hands. They were pleating the satin
of her skirt.
“But perhaps you ought to have women to retreat
from, Cornelius.” There was a dreadful forced coyness
about her. “They might make life more-more inter-
esting for you.”
A tremor shook the wheel. Behind his eyes, the light
from it flashed-once.
He turned from her to hide his face. He crossed to
a table and took a cigarette from a box. He spoke
without turning his head. He said, carefully:
"I do not quite understand you, Caroline. And in
any event my life is surely my own affair?”
He took a long time lighting the cigarette, and her
voice came quavering from behind him. “But-but it
seems so empty, Cornelius, since-since that girl died!”
He had to turn around. He made himself turn
slowly.
Caroline whispered, “You seem to have pulled a cur-
tain down, a curtain between yourself and the outside
world.”
He looked at her hands again. They were clenched
on the arms of the chair, their nails digging into the
2 2


soft leather. Their knuckles were bone-white. He kept
on looking at them as he spoke. He said:
"You will oblige me, Caroline, by minding your own
business. I have my interests and I will keep to them.”
“But they are all in your mind, Cornelius!” Her
voice was high; it was terrified and yet determined.
"Surely, surely it cannot be healthy,"
He looked at her face now, and she shrank back into
her chair. He said, very slowly:
“Are you suggesting that there is anything wrong
with my mind?”
Her lips were trembling now. They said, “Oh no,
Cornelius, of course not! I-I only meant that—that
perhaps you should have more-more companion-
ship ..."
He turned away from her. He dropped his arms on
the mantel-shelf and laid his head down on them.
“Companionship!” he muttered. “Companionship!
... Have you forgotten it is only a few short months
since Margaret died?”
He fought with himself. He had himself nearly in
hand. The wheel-thank God!-hadn't moved.
He heard a movement. He felt his sister's hand on
his shoulder. He heard her voice.
"Poor Cornelius! My poor dear! . . . But you
shouldn't let it hurt you so! There's no need! ...
Don't you realize you're making everything worse for
yourself? All this self-torture, this visiting the theater
every night just to see another girl so you can remind
yourself of Margaret!"
2 3


He twisted his shoulder. He wanted to get away
from the touch of the soft hand. But it clung to him.
“Cornelius! Cornelius! Don't you see you might be
able to turn this misery into happiness? ... Don't you
see how much healthier it would be if you-if you
changed this illusion-for a reality?” Now both her
hands were clutching at him. “Cornelius! Suppose you
got to know the girl who's taken Margaret's place! Sup-
pose-"
He turned violently. He shook her hands from him
and covered his face with his own. His voice came
through them, muffled.
"And take away all I have left of Margaret! No!”
He dropped the hands. “No! You hear me? No!"
Again his sister laid her hands on him. She held the
lapels of his robe and came very close to him and looked
up into his face.
“But yes, Cornelius! Yes! Don't you see, my dear-
any reality is better than-than wrapping yourself up in
the past. Better than this-this fantastic idolization of
someone who is dead; this—this worshiping of a por-
trait-"
So she knew about the portrait. She had been spying
on him-spying!
There was a roaring in his head. The wheel started
-turned-began to gather speed. The light flashed
from it.
His hand shot to the mantel-and his fingers closed
around a heavy candlestick of bronze ...
He saw his sister's face split wide in a scream of ter-
2
4


ror which he didn't hear. He saw her retreat from him
-and stumble—and collapse into the big chair.
Gripping the heavy metal, his hand came away from
the mantel.
He took a step toward her..
She screamed again-but again he didn't hear her.
And he didn't hear the door open behind him. He
raised the candlestick high above his head and a pair of
huge arms came around him.
One held his body, the iron hand of the other
clamped on his upraised wrist.
And Larsen's soft, placid voice was in his ear. “Now,
now, sir, this will never do, will it? ... We mustn't
go upsetting Miss Caroline, must we? ... We wouldn't
want to bring on one of her heart-attacks, now would
we?"
He fought uselessly but then the wheel began to
slow. He could hear again, and even think after a
fashion. He was stronger than the wheel now. He
ceased struggling and the wheel stopped. "
He was passive in Larsen's grasp. He looked at Cara
line-a twitching, untidy heap in the big chair. Her
hands were clutching at her heart, and her face had a
queer, bluish pallor which he didn't like to see.
He closed his eyes. He was exhausted. He felt Lar-
sen's hands moving, and submitted to them as they
pulled down one shoulder of his robe and ripped open
the sleeve of his shirt.
He winced as he felt the sharp initial sting of the
hypodermic then relaxed completely as the first warm
2 5


wave of peace crept over and through him. He al-
lowed himself to be half-led, half-carried to the settee.
He lay down with a sigh of content.
He didn't open his eyes but he knew Larsen had left
him and gone to Caroline. Through the thickening
veil of drugged peace, he heard Larsen's voice as he
talked to Caroline. He heard Larsen hurry from the
room. He heard Caroline's dreadfully labored breath-
ing; there was a little whistling sound in it which al-
most made him laugh, only he was sorry for Caroline,
and laughing was too much trouble anyway.
He heard Larsen return. He heard water being
poured and the clinking of glass as Caroline was given
her “drops.” There was an interval and the sound of
Caroline's breathing became more natural. Then there
was Larsen's voice again and finally a series of sounds
which told plainly that Caroline was being helped, pos-
sibly carried, from the room.
He knew he was alone. He almost drifted into sleep,
but a thought stirred in the depths of his mind, and
swelled, and refused to be driven away.
made him speak to Larsen about it, when Larsen came
back and started to put him to bed.
He forced his eyes open and looked at Larsen. He
even caught hold of Larsen's sleeve with fingers which
felt fat and powerless.
“Kay,” he said, in a weak, faint mumble, “Kay For-
ester ..." His voice died and his eyes closed.
He dragged them open with tremendous effort.
2 6


started across the stage, knowing Denis was beside her
but not looking at him. She was lost in apprehensive
thought. She was beginning to wish she hadn't ap-
proached Guthrie at all.,
A scenery truck nearly ran into her and Denis put a
hand on her arm.
"Watch it,” he said.
He took the hand away but she could still feel it.
Her skin tingled where his fingers had been.
The truck went by and they walked on, and climbed
the stairs to the dressing room corridor. Then Denis
stopped. He was holding out a cigarette case to her
and she stopped too.
"Thanks,” she said and helped herself.
He gave her a light, then took one himself. She could
feel his eyes on her.
She moved on slowly, and Denis kept beside her. She
she felt vaguely disappointed. She liked Denis, al-
though she'd only known him since she'd joined the
cast, and although he'd never made any secret of his
intentions which were, as he frequently remarked, not
only strictly dishonorable, but libidinous in the ex-
treme.
"What's the trouble, Kay?” he asked instead, stopping
by the door of his dressing room.
“Oh, nothing." She looked at the end of her ciga-
rette, still feeling his eyes on her.
"You're like a kid who doesn't know which is com-
ing,” he said, “a Sundae or a hair-brush."
29


was he like really? Was he basically the so-and-so some
the small fry in the theater obviously like him so much?
And what was his own opinion on this interesting ques-
tion?
She opened the door of her dressing room and went
She was ready to go home but she was
waiting for Norman Guthrie. She sent her dresser off
and went on waiting. The suspense was hard to take
and she walked up and down the dressing room, smok-
ing too fast.
Along the corridor, Denis' door stood half-open. He
was ready to leave, but he made no move to do so. He'd
Molly go by, and now he puttered, finishing a drink and
taking a long time about it.
He heard footsteps and went to the door and saw
Norman Guthrie coming along with his short-stepped,
waddling walk. He smiled at Guthrie, a little mali-
ciously, and said, “Good evening, Herr Reinhardt,” and
grinned as he saw Guthrie wince and force a smile and
waddle determinedly on, his trousers flapping around
his chubby legs and the ends of his "artistic” tie flapping
on his shoulders. He had a brown-covered play-script in
his hand.
Idly enough, Denis' gaze followed the producer of
Brother O' Mine then sharpened with curiosity as he
31


saw the tubby figure stop at Kay's door. And knock.
And go in.
The knock, as knocks will when
you're waiting for them, made Kay jump. She drew a
deep breath and sat down on her dresser stool. She said,
“Come in,” very casually, and picked up a buffer and
started polishing her nails. She smiled at Norman
Guthrie as he entered, but she carefully didn't look at
the script he carried.
She said, “Hello, Norman. I thought you'd forgotten
me," and went on smiling and wondered whether he
knew how like a frog he was—a would-be esthetic frog,
but a frog just the same.
Guthrie said, “Perish the thought, my dear," in his
deliberately mellow tones. He sat in the wicker arm-
chair and set the play-script on his knees.
Kay still didn't look at the script. She looked straight
into Guthrie's small, bright eyes. She put the nail-
buffer down.
"Well—?" she said.
Norman Guthrie lifted the script from his knee. He
leaned over and set it gently down on her dressing-table.
"I have read it,” he said carefully. “I have read it
three times.” He paused. With a fat white hand he
made one of his gestures.
"Well—?" Kay said again.
"I think-and this is my considered opinion-that it
3 2


is a magnificent play." He was precise and measured
and weighty-and Kay could have strangled him.
“But it won't do, my dear,” he said. “People aren't
ready for it, nor for anything like it. It's too illumi-
nating, Kay, too_too iconoclastic. It-"
Kay said, “Don't bother to review it, Norman.” She
couldn't help it.
He didn't seem to hear her. "Personally,” his voice
flowed on, “I would not dare to put it on. They might
burn down the theater and hang me in effigy if I did!”
He stifled a chuckle.
Kay stood up. “On the other hand, they might flock
to see it and put up a statue to you.”
Guthrie sat where he was. He said suddenly:
"You didn't write it, Kay, did you?”
She stared at him, not seeing him. “I couldn't-and
you know it!” She moved restlessly. She said, “All
right, Norman, skip the rest ...”
He still didn't get up from the chair. “Maybe-
maybe-someone with more money, more courage, than
myself might be approached. Someone like George Vin-
cent, say ..."
Kay said, "No. I've tried him. And Frank Rossi.
And Rich-and Foster Cowan-everybody!” She glared
down at him. “You'll be proud to know, Norman, that
their reactions were just like yours. They love it! It's
wonderful! But they wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot
pole! They're scared!”
He shook his frog-like head. “My dear, of course they
33


are!” he said mellifluously. “It's too great a risk-far
too great!”
Kay said, “But they're in rather a different position
from you, Norman. They either haven't got theaters-
or they have good plays running. You've got this thea-
ter and Brother O' Mine! ... Christ!"
She pulled herself up sharply. “Sorry, Norman.”
He stood up now. He came over to her and took one
of her hands between pudgy palms and squeezed it
gently. “I'm sorry too, dear.” He said it without affec-
tation. “Because, for some reason, it seems to mean so
much to you."
He went to the door and opened it. He stood there
for a moment, making almost visible effort to get back
into character. .
“A great piece of work, Kay,” he said. “And I use
the adjective advisedly. A great play! But,” beat
three-“no-one will ever produce it.”
He went out, still shaking his head sadly. He closed
the door very softly, as if he were going out of a sick-
room.
Kay stared at the door and sat down in the wicker
chair. She was suddenly tired, awfully tired. She felt a
lump swelling in her throat, and there was an ominous
pricking behind her eyes. She thought: Hey! I'm get-
ting sorry for myself.
She jumped up and manfully swallowed at the lump
and walked over to the dressing-table. She blinked her
eyes very fast and subdued the pricking. She picked up
a powder puff.
1 3 4


IV
A moment or so before, Denis had
heard Guthrie come out of Kay's room; had seen him
waddle by, shaking his head.
Now Denis himself came out into the corridor. He
switched off the lights in his room and shut the door.
He put on his hat with care and then, as a stage-hand
came along, busied himself in lighting a cigarette. The
man said, “G’night, Mr. LeMay,” as he passed and
Denis said, “ 'Night, George,” and moved on, nearer to
Kay's door.
He heard movement behind it and went closer still.
He heard a hand on the latch and stepped forward
briskly—and bumped into Kay as she came out. It was
a hard bump-and most convincingly accidental. Kay
stumbled, and the script under her arm slipped and fell
to the floor.
“Oops!” said Denis. “Sorry!" He picked the thing up
and glanced at the cover. It was upside down and he
was turning it to read the title when an angry hand
snatched it from him.
"Sorry," he said again, then fell into step as Kay
started along the corridor. She quickened her pace to
get rid of him, but he merely lengthened his stride. She
felt suddenly ridiculous and slowed to a normal speed.
She knew he was looking at her, but she didn't look at
him.
“So it turned out to be the hairbrush,” he said. "Too
bad! But fancy letting Norman Guthrie do the pad-
dling!”
35


Kay stopped dead. She was overwrought, and this was
too much. She looked at him now. He was tall and
close and she had to tilt her head back a little. She said,
furiously: “And what the hell do you know about it?"
“Nothing." He smiled at her and she felt the surge
of anger die down. “Except, of course, what I've de-
duced,” he added.
The anger started to rise again. She said, “Which
is—?” very coldly.
“My dear Forester!" Denis' eyes were half-veiled now
by drooping lids. His face seemed sharper, older. He
looked, as he intended to, very much like William Gil-
lette as Holmes. He sounded exactly like him. “You
know my methods. Apply them, and the problem be-
comes simplicity itself. Step the First-you were appre-
hensively awaiting news which was going to be either
very good or very bad. Step the Second-you were
visited by Norman Guthrie, a theater-lessee and play
producer, and he carried the script of a play. Step the
Third-Norman Guthrie leaves your dressing room,
with sad, sympathetic mien and without the play-script.
Step the Fourth-you emerge several minutes later,
with the script and without your usually blithe appear-
ance. Step the Fifth_"
· "Yes,” said Kay. “Yes-yes. Very clever!” She moved
on again. She had had enough. This was like all Denis'
jokes, a little frightening. She wanted to say, “Leave
me alone. Please leave me alone!” But she didn't say
it. After all, how could Denis know the tremendous
importance of all this?
36


He kept beside her and he went on talking, even
narrow stairs to the stage-door. He said:
“Child's play, Forester, child's play. And still further
inferences are legitimately to be drawn from the data.
They can be supplied free of charge, too-(a) the play
in question must be very good, or Guthrie wouldn't
have turned it down; (b) you have already tried every-
one else you can think of or you wouldn't have given it
to Guthrie at all; (c)-"
They were outside now, in the alley, and she cut him
short. She said, almost desperately, “Denis, I haven't
time for this and it isn't funny. You don't under-
stand_"
"I was only trying to tell you,” he said, in an entirely
different tone, “that what you ought to have done was
-come to Uncle Denis.”
She just looked at him this time, without saying any-
He put a hand on her arm. "Spurn me not,” he said.
“Maybe I meant it. I'd have you know, girl, that de-
spite my humble appearance, many a millionaire is
proud to call me friend!” The light grip upon her arm
tightened a little. “Why not tell me all about it, over
a bite of supper?”
Violently, she jerked her arm free. She said, “Oh,
Denis, why don't you ever know when to stop?"
She almost ran to the mouth of the alley. She dis-
appeared.
37


CHAPTER 4
The apartment house was a new one,
half a block off Madison, in the sixties. Above the
twentieth story, every other apartment had a small
roof-garden, and onto the first of these—the one, to
be exact, which belonged to Apartment 2107–light
sprayed out from the uncurtained French windows of
the living room. .
Inside the room Larry Bradford-not so long since
Captain Lawrence Bradford of the Eighth U.S.A.A.F.-
sat disconsolate at a writing-table. There were paper
and pencils in front of him, but he wasn't using them.
He was staring out, across the roof-garden, at the jagged,
impossible, forever exciting skyline.
He didn't see the skyline, though, for all his staring.
38


He was too busy with the persistent, extraordinary idea
that he would like to go for a walk.
Which, of course-as he hadn't been able to move his
legs since that day in '44 when the Messerschmidt had
brought him down into a Normandy orchard-was com-
pletely ridiculous.
He heard a voice say, “Oh, my God!” and realized it
was his own voice and took himself in hand. He sat
straighter in his wheel-chair and took the last cigarette
from a pack and lighted it. He ran a hand through his
wiry blond hair and shook his nice-looking head
and squared his big shoulders. He thought: Maybe a
drink-or shall I wait ...
He was turning his chair when he heard a key in the
front door. He spun the chair back and picked up a
pencil and began to scribble.
The door opened and Kay Forester, who was also
Mrs. Lawrence Bradford, came into the little entrance-
lobby. She looked through the doorless arch into the
living room and saw her husband's too industrious back.
She pulled off her hat and dropped it on the little table
under the mirror. She put her purse down too, with
the play-script underneath it. She looked into the mir-
ror and arranged a smile. She went quietly into the
living room and said, “Hello, soldier!”—and Larry, over-
doing surprise, whipped his chair around, and beamed,
and said, “Hi there, Toots! I didn't hear you."
Kay thought: Here we go again-acting to each other!
She made haste to get near enough to touch him, to
kiss him, to feel his arms around her.
39


CIO
into the wastebasket. He rolled his chair away from
the table and turned it around, near the couch. He
heard Kay walking across the kitchen and put the smile
back on his face.
Her smile was back too. She brought it across the
room as carefully as she carried the two tall glasses. She
gave him one of the glasses and settled herself on the
sofa with the other.
They drank. They kept on smiling at each other and
Larry said suddenly:
“So Guthrie wouldn't touch it either?"
She stared at him in mute, miserable silence. She set
her glass down, very carefully.
She felt she was going to cry. She found she was talk
ing, standing up and talking. She was saying:
“... so Mister Norman Guthrie just loves it! Mister-
Norman Guthrie thinks it's a great play-and he uses
the word advisedly! But Mister Norman Guthrie's just
like the rest of them-he's scared of it!" Her hands were
clenched tight; the nails were hurting her palms.
"I wish I'd never let him read it!” she said. “I ought
to've known better. But it's such-such a shame! Won-
derful work like that-all wasted!”
She choked, and turned away from him-and then
heard sounds behind her and wheeled around and saw
he had pulled his crutches from their strap on the chair
and was dragging himself upright.
She rushed to him and eased him back into the chair
and said, breathlessly, “What is it, darling? What do
you want?"
w


He looked up at her and smiled.
“I was only going to beat you,” he said. “For getting
so steamed up because everybody in New York won't
admit I'm a genius." He reached down and picked up
his glass from the floor and took a long drink. He said,
“Anyone'd think our entire future was governed by
that misbegotten play of mine.”
you know it.”
"What’s all this?" He stared at her. "Oh, I see!
You've been talking behind my back. To Pressburger."
He cleared his throat and tucked his chin down and
gave an imitation of the eminent psychiatrist in ques-
tion.
“My deah Mrs. Bradford,” he said. “Spinal cases are
peculiah. The wound is-ah-healed, but not so the
subconscious mind! Oh, deah me, no! The patient
desiahs to walk-the patient, in point of fact, can walk;
but he is held back by feah-feah that perhaps, were he
to make the endeavah, he might-might fall straight on
his kisser.”
Kay laughed. It was a shaky sound, with a suspicion
of tears in it. She said:
“Almost word perfect, sweet. But there was some-
thing more, much more.”
He nodded. “I know that one too. It's the old 'out-
side factor,' isn't it? The thing that's going to cure the
dinkus in the subconscious and have me playing foot-
ball in a week.”
4
2


“And you think it's all nonsense?” Kay's mouth felt
dry. “Is that what you're trying to say? Is it, Larry?”
“No, it isn't. Not at all. I'm just endeavoring to get it
through your thick little skull that you're putting too
much on the play.” He reached out an arm and slid it
around her waist. “I don't necessarily have to be a
world-famous dramatist to get cured, honey."
His smile, his tone, his voice, everything about him
was growing more and more convincing. He held her
tighter. “Kay, baby, for God's sake get it out of your
head that the play's life-and-death! It isn't anything of
the sort, whatever I may have said six months ago. So
when I was in hospital I wrote a play. So all the pro-
ducers think it's too dangerous to handle. So what? So
I'll finish this other one or I'll maybe start on those
aeronautic articles Martin said he could use-or I'll in-
vent the answer to the atomic bomb or start knitting
pot-holders or—"
Kay said, “Oh, Larry, Larry-I believe you mean it!”
I mean what's coming, too: We give the play to an
agent to peddle and forget about it. I keep working
and going to Pressburger and before you know it the
dinkus will pop up from someplace and I'll be trying
to put a little class into that tennis game of yours. And
now kiss me and finish that drink and go get the bottle
and we'll proceed to get mildly swacked.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” said Kay. She felt almost happy.
That was at one o'clock.


But at four, when she'd been in bed
and asleep for an hour and a half, she came suddenly
awake.
She sat bolt upright and said, “Larry!” and switched
on the lamp. The other bed was empty. Its covers
were thrown back, and the pillow was lying on the
floor. Beyond it stood the wheel-chair, the strap at the
side hanging down and the crutches gone.
A faint breath of sound-perhaps not a sound, per-
haps just a feeling-came to her. She jumped out of
bed and ran to the door and opened it. Across the hall-
way a faint light showed in the living room. It came
from a single lamp near the windows and she ran to-
ward it, her feet making no sound on the thick carpet.
There was a big chair by the lamp and Larry was
slumped down in it. His arms rested along the arms of
the chair and his chin was on his chest. He was motion-
less, and there was an indescribable hopelessness in
every line of him. On the floor beside the chair lay his
crutches and beside the crutches were the two crum-
pled halves of the brown-covered play-script. It had
been torn savagely across, a little below the middle.
Kay's foot was almost on it before she saw it, and she
found herself looking straight down at the label on
which the title was typed.
The words seemed to jump up at her eyes—“The
Devil's Due-A Play in Three Acts-by Lawrence Brad-
ford.” And underneath them were the jagged edges of
the torn paper. She caught her breath with a little
- 4 4


gasp, and Larry heard her. He raised his head slowly
and looked at her. His eyes were dull, they seemed to
have no life in them at all.
“Oh, hello,” he said. “I didn't think you'd wake up."
His voice was as dead as his eyes. "Sorry," he said.
Kay dropped on her knees beside the chair. She felt
as if something inside her were going to break. She was
filled with contempt for herself and love and pity for
him. She put an arm around his shoulders, and was
suddenly seized with a flaming determination.
“They shall do it!" she said. "I'll make them put
it on!”
4
5


CHAPTER 5
The next morning was beautiful. It
was sunny and not too hot and the sky was a clear,
sharp blue. In Central Park the leaves were beginning
to show tinges of brown, and there was that sharp, de-
· lightful, evanescent something in the air which tells of
approaching autumn.
It was a morning which fitted very well with Kay's
mood. It filled her with vigor despite a sleepless night;
it made what she was going to do seem much easier; it
turned the wearing of the red hat and the new gray
suit into a fitting gesture rather than a necessity.
It was a lovely morning and it turned into noon and
Mr. Denis LeMay was wanted on the telephone. He
was paged at Shorr's; at Sardi's; at a favorite and lesser
4 6


known haunt called Alec's. And he was finally run to
earth, just as he arrived, in that delightful institution,
The Wayfarers Club.
Which explains how it came about that, less than
thirty minutes later, Mr. Denis LeMay and Miss Kay
Forester were sitting at a corner table at Pujol's, begin-
ning what promised to be a leisurely, excellent, and
abysmally expensive lunch.
Kay finished her dessert. It was rather
like Zabaglioni, but it tasted surprisingly of chestnuts.
She looked at Denis across the table and smiled. The
smile started as a real one, then, as she decided this was
the moment, became a little difficult to manage.
She said, suddenly:
“I'll say it before you do. You don't believe I left
my money behind and just happened to remember you
might be at The Wayfarers-now do you?”
Denis said, “Don't you want me to?”
She let that go. Above all, she didn't want to find
herself getting one of those absurd waves of anger
against Denis. She said:
"You think the whole thing was a plant, don't you?”
“Well” Denis regarded the end of his cigarette.
“I thought, since you insist, that you probably wanted
to see me for some reason.”
“But what reason, Denis?” She smiled determinedly.
“Did you think I was—surrendering?"
4 7


She said, “A friend of mine wrote it. And it's well,
there isn't any word except wonderful!” She took a sip
from the glass, and a bland and fortifying warmth
spread through her.
Her bag lay on the table and Denis was looking at it.
It was one of those large bags, very large. He said,
"You've got the script in there, haven't you?” and she
nodded.
There was a little frown between his eyes and she
said, “I know what's worrying you, Denis. It's the way
I'm doing this all the elaborate plot-twists. You're
wondering why I didn't just bring the script along
to the theater and give it to you and say 'read that and
then talk to you ..."
as.
think of it,” she said, “I don't know myself. Except-
except that this is terribly important to me-so impor-
tant it makes me nervous and sort of uncertain about
what I'm doing ...".
There was a silence which felt longer than it was
“And I can't wait,” she said. “I can't! I've been so bit-
terly disappointed, so many times.”
He didn't say anything and she finished whatever it
was in her glass.
“There's a part,” she said. “Noel. It would be mar-
velous for you!” She contrived a smile. “Or vice
versa.”
“Bribery yet!” Denis cocked one eyebrow higher
than the other.
. “Anything!” She pulled the bag toward her. “It's in
4 9


here and you're going to read it.” She drew a deep
breath. “Now!” she said.
Denis cast a slow and comprehensive glance around
the establishment of M. Pujol. He said:
“Not here, my child. Not even for you.”
“Anywhere,” she said. “I don't care. Only I'm going
to be there. I-well, I just can't wait for any more
phone calls or letters or appointments' not even with
you. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is!” She felt strong
and determined and rather enjoyed the feeling.
“H'mm!” Denis drained his glass. “Well, how about
my place?" he said and then grinned.
“No obligation," he said.
TIT
Denis' "place" wasn't what or where
she'd expected it to be. It wasn't an apartment. It
wasn't "modern.” It wasn't even uptown.
It was, in fact, near Washington Square. It was the
whole top floor of a large and shabby old house, and it
was reached by climbing endless and shabby old stairs
and going through a shabby old door at the top of
them; a door which made a tremendous surprise out of
the big living room into which it led.
She was in the living room now. She'd been in it
for nearly two hours. And for all but ten minutes she'd
been alone because Denis had said he couldn't read with
anyone watching him.
For the eighth or ninth time she walked around the
room. Deliberately, to keep it from other things, she
5 0


kept her mind on the room. She looked at the beamed
ceiling-at the big fireplace—at the endless bookshelves
-at the bar in its alcove-at the view from the bay
window-at the furnishings which didn't match at all
but blended perfectly.
She went over and looked at the charcoal drawing of
the Zulu head again; the very striking drawing, which,
somehow, she hadn't been surprised to find that Denis
had done himself. She remembered what Denis had
said when she'd asked who the artist was. He'd said,
“Uncle Denis—it's an old gentleman I met in Durban."
And about the sword which hung near it, he'd said,
"Japanese General's samurai sword, taken personally
by Uncle Denis, with some slight assistance from two
hundred and thirty-three other Marines ..."
Her mouth was dry. From a carafe on the bar she
poured a glass of water and drank it greedily and then
went back to the settee near the hearth.
She sat down. She was determinedly reaching out for
the book she'd been trying to read when she heard a
door open and started to her feet.
Denis came in. He was in shirtsleeves and had the
script in his hand. He put it down carefully on the
mantel and looked at her.
She couldn't wait for him to speak. She said, “Well?”
in a voice meant to be casual. “It's good, isn't it?"
“'It's more than that,” he said. “It's magnificent!”
She'd never heard quite that tone in his voice before
and she felt as if she'd been carrying a heavy weight for
51


a long way and someone had suddenly come up and
taken it from her.
Denis crossed to the bar. “And Noel,” he said.
“What a part! I'd give my left-I'd give anything to
play it!”
He said, “We must have a drink on this,” and began
Scotch? Brandy? Liqueur of any sort? Tom Collins?"
Kay shook her head. “Nothing for me, thank you."
She moved across to the bar as Denis mixed himself a
highball and took a long swallow at it. She said:
“Denis, what are we going to do? Do you really
know someone who might put it on? I mean—"
His eyes checked her. He took the glass from his lips
and then with the other hand took her arm. Without
speaking, he steered her back to the settee. She sat
down obediently and he stood over her, looking down
at her.
He swirled the liquid around in his glass and watched
it thoughtfully. He said:
“This is quite a problem. It isn't as if it was just
another play. It isn't. In the proper sense of the words,
it's a work of art-and like most works of art, it's dyna-
mite. If you aren't careful, it might go off in your
face.”
"What're you trying to do?" Kay said sharply. “Tell
me the same story as Guthrie and the others?”
“Good God, no!” He stared down at her. "You
couldn't shelve a play like that-it'd jump off and bite
you in the neck! But the sort of backer I had in mind,
5 2


the sucker who has a bit of money and likes to be
mixed up in the theater, he's out. Definitely out!”
She started to speak but he checked her again. He
said, “What we need's a lot of money. Money put up
by a personal backer; someone who wouldn't mind
gambling a very sizeable chunk purely for love."
Kay moved her shoulders irritably. She said, “Oh,
Denis, there isn't anybody like that. You're just-".
He cut her short. “You mean you don't happen to
know one. And neither do I-yet. But it's only Friday.”
Exasperation brought her to her feet. “That's the
trouble with you, Denis," she said. “You never know
yourself whether you're playing the fool or not!"
He stepped close to her and took her by the shoul-
ders. He said:
"I'm not fooling when I tell you this: I don't often
want things very badly; but when I do, when I want
something so much I'll do anything to get it-well, I
always seem to get it.” He gave the shoulders a little
shake. “And one of the things I really want to do is
play Noel in The Devil's Due."
She sat down again. She said, “I don't know why, but
I believe you mean that.”
He sat down beside her. “Of course I do!” he said.
“At the moment, I don't know how, or when, or where
I'm going to play it-but it isn't going to be long before-
I do. And when I do, you're going to be Deborah!”
There was an infectious certainty in his voice, and
for a moment she felt certain too.
53


“Oh, Denis!" she said—and he slid an arm around her
shoulders.
“Woman,” he said, “we'll slay 'em!”
The arm tightened and suddenly she was acutely
aware of it; each finger seemed to be sending separate
tendrils of feeling all over her body.
“But the money,” she said unsteadily. "This fairy
godfather, how do we find him, Denis?” She thought
about getting away from the arm and then thought:
It's going to look silly, whatever I do.
Denis said, “We'll find him-don't worry.” The arm
held her tighter still, and the tendrils turned into elec-
tric currents.
And Denis said, “Listen, Kay!” His voice was very
low, and the damn thing had an even stronger current
all its own. “I meant everything I said about the play.
But I meant it too when I said it was one of the things
I really wanted.”
There were too many currents. They had to be cut
off. Now. With the insulator she ought to have used
long before this.
She didn't resist the arm. She didn't move at all,
except to turn her head so that she might be looking at
the clock.
She said, “Is that clock right, Denis? For Heavens'
sake give me a phone!”
The arm was taken away, slowly. She could feel his
eyes. He stood up and walked away from her and in a
moment was back. He had a telephone in his hands,
g cord was trailing behind him.
0
54


She smiled at him and took the telephone and dialed,
and he leaned against the mantel and looked down at
her.
She could hear her number ringing, and after a mo-
ment the ringing stopped and Larry's voice said,
“Hello ..."
She said, “Larry? . . . It's me, darling ..."
She listened to the telephone.
She said, “No, darling, it's just that I forgot the time.
I'm with Denis LeMay. He's been reading the
script ..."
She listened to the telephone again.
She said, “The word he used was ‘magnificent'...
I'll tell you all about it at dinner, darling. I only called
to make sure you were all right.”
She listened some more and then said, "Oh-in about
half an hour ... Good-by, sweet ..."
She cradled the phone on its base and made quite a
business of setting it down on the table.
Denis lit a cigarette and threw the match into the
fireplace.
"That was very nice,” he said. “Affectionate, too.
Who was it, by the way?”.
Kay looked up at him. “My husband," she said and
was proud of the casual way the words came out.
"Really?” Denis' voice was even more casual than
hers had been. “He interested in the play too?"
“But of course!” The dialogue was getting harder to
read right. “He wrote it.”
“He did? ... Well, well!"
5 5


She didn't know the next line. She pretended to look
for something in her bag, and after a long pause Denis
said:
“I had heard you were vaguely surrounded by matri-
mony-but I imagined the other half was still safely
away somewhere, occupying Germany or Japan or some-
thing." His voice was-easy. He sounded amused.
Kay couldn't keep it up, for all sorts of reasons. She
got to her feet and faced him. He was still leaning
against the mantelpiece. She looked straight at him and
said:
“Denis-I ought to have told you about Larry before,
and—and that he wrote the play. But I was afraid you
mightn't read it if I did.”
"You probably have something there,” he said.
“But now you have read it, do you still want to do
something about it?” She had to get the answer to this.
Had to.
But he didn't answer it. He asked a question of his
own. “What's the matter with this spouse of yours that
nobody's aware of his existence?” He said it without
any particular emphasis, idly almost.
Kay said, “He doesn't want to meet people-yet.”
She clenched her hands. “He was very badly wounded.”
She took a deep breath.
Denis had picked up his empty glass. He was walking
toward the bar as he spoke. He said over his shoulder:
"Too bad ... How's he making out?”
“Very well.” The words came out too hard. "He'll
be quite all right soon.”
5 6


Denis was behind the bar now. "Good,” he said and
lifted a bottle and held it up to the light. “Change your
mind and have a drink?"
She didn't pay any attention to that. She marched
over to the bar and stood with her hands gripping the
edge of it.
“Denis!” she said. “Are you still sure you're going to
play Noel?”
He looked up from the glass he was filling. “Of
course I am,” he said.
“And are you still going to help find a backer?”
“Of course I am.” He put the glass to his lips and
drank.
“But how?” she said, violently. “And when are you
going to start? And where? We can't just-just tread
water! What're we going to do?”
"What you're going to do, my child, if you have any
sense at all, is leave it to Uncle Denis.”
He smiled at her. It was a smile which completely
changed her mood-a friendly, charming, completely
trustworthy smile. He came out from behind the bar
· and stood close to her. He said:
“Don't worry so much, Kay. Relax. Hold the right
thought with Mrs. Eddy and Uncle D..."
She did a foolish thing then. But she didn't think.
She laid her hand on his arm. She was going to speak,
but she didn't. Instead, she took her hand away-much
too quickly.
And Denis put his arms around her. They were long
arms, and powerful. They forced all of her against him.
5 7


Her head fell back, and he bent his head and kissed
her.
For some unmeasured division of time she didn't
resist. She did, in fact, the opposite-but then, piercing
the one basic emotion which possessed her for this in-
stant, came memory.
She put her hands against his chest and pushed as
hard as she could. The arms released her immediately
and she backed away from him.
“Damn you, Denis!” she said.
She walked back to the settee by the hearth and
picked up her bag and her coat. Denis didn't move.
She put the coat on and thrust the bag under her arm
and went back to him. She said, in a low voice which
insisted on shaking:
"If you'd done that before I told you about Larry, it
would've been my fault ... But after you knew-"
She realized she was just making sounds. And Denis
seemed to be smiling. At least, his mouth was smiling.
She walked to the door, feeling his eyes on her back.
She opened the door, and he said:
“You know what it is-you're unfair to Organized
Nature."
She went out, closing the door behind her.
5 8


CHAPTER 6
US
That night was one of those rare occa-
sions at the Burnside when Mr. Norman Guthrie was
“out front.” He occupied an inconspicuous orchestra
seat and sat through the entire performance of Brother
O' Mine.
The fact that he did this without going to sleep was
due to two causes-one faintly disturbing, the other
pleasantly mysterious.
The first was disturbing because it had to do with
Cornelius Van Toller-and Mr. Guthrie intensely dis-
liked having to remind himself that he was, in effect
although in secret, merely a paid servant of Cornelius
Van Toller's. Still, he had to recall the servitude once
in a while—and this was definitely one of the whiles.
59


He must, he realized, warn Mr. Van Toller at the earli-
est opportunity that if he didn't wish his presence to be
noticed in the theater, he must be more careful to sit
well back in his box. Once or twice in the second Act,
especially during Judy's big emotional scene with In-
spector O'Keefe, he had been plainly visible; had even,
Mr. Guthrie had noticed, drawn a covert glance from
Denis LeMay as the handcuffed Julian.
Van Toller morning” and put the whole distasteful
matter from his mind. He concentrated, instead, upon
the second cause of his wakefulness, the performance of
Miss Kay Forester. There was something the matter
with it, particularly in those scenes she shared with
Julian.
There was nothing terribly wrong, of course, because
the girl was an actress and a real one, and Mr. Guthrie
was not unduly concerned from a professional stand-
point. But he was curious, because he had somehow
achieved the idea that this change in Miss Forester's
performance was due to the fact that she was “opposite"
Denis LeMay, and “opposite” was a word which defi-
nitely tended to start one thinking, especially when
LeMay was involved.
Mr. Guthrie visited Miss Forester's dressing room in
the second interval. Mr. Guthrie was at his most charm-
ing. Mr. Guthrie had just "popped in." Mr. Guthrie
"happened to have been out front.” Mr. Guthrie had
thought Miss Forester “even better, dear, than the last
time" he had watched her. .
6
0


"Norman, you know I was lousy!” Miss Forester said.
“But don't worry about it. I don't feel good, that's all.
Tomorrow'll be another story."
She was apologetic, she was charming-and there was
nothing whatsoever to be found out from her which
could satisfy Mr. Guthrie's curiosity.
Which, very naturally, fed itself on the failureand
took Mr. Guthrie out of Miss Forester's dressing room
and-oh, so casually!-along to that of Mr. LeMay, who
irritatingly hailed him as “Max.”
Mr. Guthrie, curiosity triumphing over annoyance,
told Mr. LeMay he had “happened to be out front";
that he had found Mr. LeMay's performance "quite
flawless, my dear fellow” but that he was concerned over
“our sweet little Kay's,” which had seemed to him to
show a “definite falling-off, a lack of heart, one might
term it.”
But Mr. Guthrie got nowhere. His curiosity re-
mained unsatisfied. For Mr. LeMay, it seemed, had
noticed nothing out of the normal about Miss Forester
this evening, either on-stage or off.
And that, most definitely was that. Mr. LeMay who
was busy changing, seemed matter-of-fact and not par-
ticularly interested. Mr. Guthrie could not for the life
of him tell whether Mr. LeMay was acting or not.
Disappointed, Mr. Guthrie was about to take himself
off when the tables were turned upon him. There was
something, it seemed, which Mr. LeMay would like to
find out from Mr. Guthrie. Said Mr. LeMay:
61


“Oh, by the way, Norman, do you happen to know
the character in the first mezzanine box-stage left?"
"My dear fellow!" Mr. Guthrie was pained and a
little too glib. “I haven't the remotest idea who is sit-
ting where. Or why.”
"He's been several times before,” said Mr. LeMay.
“Which makes him either a lunatic or a friend of some-
one's. I seem to know the face, too, and that beard.
But I can't place it."
Mr. LeMay was talking idly, peering into his mirror
-possibly at his make-up, but possibly at Mr. Guthrie
who was now making for the door.
“I'm sorry, Denis ..." Mr. Guthrie was opening
the door now. “But I haven't any idea.”
He went through the door and closed it behind him,
underlining the mental note about tomorrow morning's
phone call.
It was one-thirty, and Mr. and Mrs.
Lawrence Bradford were on their way to bed.
Larry was already in his, and Kay was in the dressing
room which joined bedroom and bathroom. The door
was open, and they chatted while she brushed her hair.
It was desultory chat, and it had absolutely nothing
to do with what the chatters really had in their minds,
and it made Kay miserable.
She thought: We're acting to each other again and I
suppose it's my fault.
She went out into the bedroom, and as soon as she
6 2


ent voice:
"What's the matter, Toots? Really, I mean?” His
face was lined and his eyes were troubled.
She said quickly, “Nothing's the matter, darling,
honest!” She crossed to his bed and dropped on her
knees beside it and put an arm around his neck and
kissed him fiercely.
But it didn't work. Larry kept his arm around her,
but he said, “See here, honey, that guy LeMay ..."
He wasn't looking at her as he spoke. He said, “Did he
do anything to upset you this afternoon? I just won.
“I just wondered,” he said.
"I know I was-funny.” She didn't wait before she
answered. “I'm sorry, darling. I-I suppose I was mad
at myself because I'd gotten you all excited thinking
Denis might help,”
"And he can't? That what you mean?”.
"No-no. Maybe he can. Maybe he will. But-well,
he's just another actor, and you know what they
are ..." She kissed him again and said, “That's all,
Larry. I just don't want you to count on anything.
That's all, darling.”
He grinned at her, and the arm around her squeezed
very tight. It was a big arm; she could feel the muscles
in it swelling against her shoulder.
After a while, she got into her own bed. She said
good-night to Larry again and put out the light. She
6 3


was
sighed. She closed her eyes and began to conjure pic-
tures of the first night-the immensely successful first
night-of The Devil's Due by Lawrence Bradford; the
night when it turned out, as Dr. Pressburger had agreed
it might, that the success of the play proved to be the
"outside factor”; proved, as Dr. Pressburger had agreed
it might, to be the “actual turning point”; proved to
be the night when Larry believed he could walk again
--and did walk again; proved to be the time when it
was immediately apparent to the whole world that
Lawrence Bradford was in every way infinitely superior
to Denis LeMay; proved-
"Kay!" Larry's voice was hesitant in the darkness.
“Yes, darling, what is it?" She was up on an elbow at
once.
“That guy LeMay,” said the voice. “Is he in love
with you?"
There was no appreciable pause before she laughed.
"Denis!” she said. “Why, he's in the middle of a ter-
rific affair, Larry-and it's going to last all his life. He's
just crazy about Denis LeMay!”
She read the lines well, and Larry laughed. He didn't
say any more, and she heard him twisting about the
way he always did before he settled down to sleep.
It was nearly three, but Denis LeMay
wasn't in bed. He was at home, and alone, and he was
in pajamas; but he was standing at the high drafting
desk in the far corner of his living room.
64


He was finishing a pencil sketch of the head of Cor-
nelius Van Toller. It was a striking piece of work in its
way, and had that air of being easy to recognize if one
knew its subject-which Denis, except by occasional and
fleeting sight, of course did not.
IV
rose on
anc
e-
first curtain rose on the week's last performance at the
Burnside.
Mr. Norman Guthrie stood at the back of the mezza-
nine, appearing there just before the curtain rose on
Act II.
He waited for Judy's first entrance-and noted, with
passing interest, that his phone call of the morning had
borne fruit: the occupant of Box E remained stead-
fastly in the shadows.
Judy made her appearance and Mr. Guthrie imme-
diately put all other matters from his mind. He
watched his leading lady as a frog watches a fly. But
with no reward-for Judy was herself again, and what-
ever Miss Forester's trouble may have been on the
previous night, it was now either vanished or con-
quered.
Mr. Norman Guthrie left the theater, mildly disap-
pointed over failing to unearth a tidbit of scandal, and
convinced that there was no “situation" at all between
his star and his leading woman, who, after all, were
probably not each other's types.
He might have changed his mind, however, if he had
6 5


happened to overhear a conversation which took place
some two hours later, just as Miss Forester was leaving
the theater.
'Miss Forester and Mr. LeMay seemed to meet by
chance, Mr. LeMay having emerged from his dressing
room exactly as Miss Forester came out of hers.
"Hello, there!" said Mr. LeMay. He was affable,
friendly and entirely at his ease.
"Oh hello, Denis,” said Miss Forester, smiling
brightly and then starting off along the corridor.
Mr. LeMay caught up with her, and casually fell into
step.
"By the way," he said, "do you still want me to find
a backer for that play?" He might have been asking if
she wanted a cigarette.
Miss Forester stopped walking. “You know I do," she
said, and then, a little awkwardly, “But suppose you did,
though I don't see how you can, I want to make it quite
clear that-that-"
Mr. LeMay smiled and said, “No obligation," and
then, as Miss Forester started walking on again, kept
right beside her.
They were at the foot of the stairs when he said,
“How about a bite of supper?"
Miss Forester flushed, which made her look, if pos-
sible, even more attractive. But she didn't say anything.
She walked out of the stage door, and climbed into a
waiting taxi which she appeared to have ordered earlier.
She nodded in reply to Mr. LeMay's “good-night” and
slammed the door as the cab drove off.
66


This behavior on the part of his principals would
have intrigued Mr. Guthrie vastly but he had missed
seeing it.
And he missed something else; something which
would, in the vernacular, have scared the pants off him.
He had missed, though only by half a minute, being
on the spot when, earlier in the evening, a call-boy
had come to Jim Grant in the front of the house with a
message from Denis LeMay.
So Mr. Guthrie didn't know that his house manager
had accepted an invitation from his leading man for a
drink after the show. And, mercifully for Mr. Guth-
rie's peace of mind, he didn't know what Mr. LeMay
wanted from Mr. Grant, with whom (yet another fact
unknown to Mr. Guthrie) Mr. LeMay had been ac-
quainted for some years.
The pleasant grillroom (and bar)
which goes under the name of Alec's, caters in a quiet
and cheerfully restful way to a mixture of the sporting
the theatrical worlds-and it is only half a block from
the Burnside.
In the last booth against the wall of the paneled bar,
Mr. Denis LeMay and Mr. James Grant sat to face each
other. Before them were the last dishes of a meal, and
the waiter was clearing the table. He finished the task
and went away, and Mr. LeMay stopped chatting.
Mr. LeMay looked at Mr. Grant and suddenly pro-
67


duced, with something of the air of an Illusionist, a
roll of drawing-paper.
“Now, my friend,” he said, “I am about to behave
like a cad!” And he began to push the elastic band off
the paper cylinder.
Mr. Grant was puzzled. He looked at Mr. LeMay,
and he looked at the paper. “Go right ahead,” he said.
"James,” said Mr. LeMay, “I don't think there's any
doubt-do you?—that one of the lowest forms of life is
the man who trades on an obligation.”
Mr. Grant shrugged. "Way the world's run, isn't it?"
Mr. LeMay unrolled the paper now and turned it so
that his guest could see the drawing which covered one
side of it.
“Who's that?" said Mr. LeMay quickly.
Mr. Grant sucked in his breath with a small, reverse-
English whistle. He went on looking at the drawing
but he didn't speak.
Mr. LeMay was watching him.
"I just wanted to know," said Mr. LeMay, and rolled
up the drawing again. “I thought you might be able to
tell me.” He paused and sipped brandy. "Herr Rein-
hardt-Guthrie wouldn't ..."
Mr. Grant, too, sipped brandy. He looked very hard
at Mr. LeMay, and he said, after a long pause:
“I'm not supposed to talk ..."
And then he said, “But I've got a long memory; I
haven't forgotten what you did for me that time in
Chicago ..."


"Lowest form of humanity,” murmured Mr. LeMay.
“That's me.”
Mr. Grant said, more slowly still, “I hate the job I've
got-but it wouldn't do for me to lose it. My wife keeps
on breeding, whatever I do ..."
“Suppose I guaranteed you wouldn't lose it?" said
Mr. LeMay. "Or got you a better one?”
Mr. Grant surveyed his host in meditative silence.
"You're a right guy," he said at last. “And Guthrie
isn't a guy at all. So the hell with it!"
He reached out and picked up the drawing and un-
rolled it again. He took a pencil from his pocket and
wrote, at the foot of the paper, "Cornelius Van Toller.”
He handed the drawing back to Mr. LeMay and then
finished his brandy at a gulp. He said:
"Anything else you'd like to know?"
6
9


с
н
р
т
E
R
1
It was Sunday afternoon, and the sky
over all Manhattan was a clear, cobalt blue. But it was
too blue, even for New York, and away over the Atlantic
clouds were shouldering each other.
The sun flamed down over the city and somewhere a
carillon made pleasant sounds, but the air was too still.
In the morning there had been a breeze and that eva-
nescent promise of Fall, but now everything was hushed
and breathless and a little stale.
Kay was on her roof garden. She leaned on the upper-
most of the steel guardrails and looked idly down at the
fore-shortened vehicles and humans in the street two
hundred and fifty feet below her.
She was startled by a cry from behind her. "Avast
70


there, lubber!" came Larry's voice-and she turned to
see him rolling his chair down the wooden ramp she'd
had fixed so he could pilot himself in and out of the
French windows.
ing at his particular corner and now he was going to do
his particular stunt. She had the usual lump in her
throat as she watched him, but she didn't give herself
away; she just smiled.
As the chair started to roll down the ramp, Larry gave
the wheels a violent thrust, and shot out onto the roof
very fast. Then, increasing the speed still more, he
wheeled completely around, stopped the chair dead, put
it into reverse with all the power of his arms, and shot
backwards until it came to rest with a bump against the
guardrails precisely in its usual spot.
Larry beamed. He said, “That's the best yet! That
was good!” He looked at his wife. "Say it was good,"
he said.
She went quickly to the chair and bent over him and
kissed the back of his neck so he wouldn't be able to
see her face. She said, “It was dynamic, darling!” and
spoke through the kiss so he couldn't hear the quaver
in her voice.
He laughed, wriggling his big shoulders. “That's
nice,” he said, “but it tickles.”
He reached back a hand and caught her hand and
drew her around in front of him-and in the apartment
the telephone started ringing.
“Oh, nuts!” he said.
71


She patted his cheek, and turned and ran across the
roof to the French windows. She went into the living
room and picked up the phone and said, “Hello."
She was then astonished. Because she heard Denis'
voice, and Denis had never called her before; didn't
even, she'd thought, know her number.
She was so surprised that she missed his first few
words.
"... information and a hunch,” his voice was say-
ing. “I had the hunch first and when I began checking
on it, the information definitely bolstered it.”
Kay said, “Are you talking about the play-about a
backer?" and then added sharply, as she glanced at the
roof garden. “Won't it wait till tomorrow?"
She immediately regretted the sharpness. "Is it-is it
really a possibility, Denis?” she said. “And if it is, what
d'you want me to do?”
"Get together with Uncle Denis," said the telephone.
"In a purely business sense, of course ... What about
Alec's? Say at five ..."
Kay thought a lot, very fast. She said crisply, “All
right. I'll be there," and hung up the telephone.
She went slowly out onto the roof garden again.
Larry was reading the paper, perhaps a little too studi-
ously. She was quite close to him before he looked up.
"That was Denis LeMay,” she said. "He has some
idea for getting a backer. I'm going to see him about
it.”
Larry smiled. The smile looked all right, but she
wasn't quite sure about it.
7 2


SO
“Coming through, huh?” he said. “That'll teach you
to be doubtfull”
She shrugged. “How do I know until I've seen him?”
Larry didn't say anything, and after a moment she
blurted out, “I don't carel ... All I know is I'm going
to snatch at any straw which even might get the play
He smiled another sort of smile. “I like your nose
when you get mad,” he said. “It wiggles.”
The air was unnaturally still. The clouds, which had
been miles away out over the ocean, must have piled in,
for the sun suddenly went out and the light became a
sort of purplish-gray. Kay looked down at her hus-
band's upturned face, and said, in a desperate little
voice:
“You don't mind if I go, do you, Larry? I-I have to
try everything—even if it does spoil our only whole
day!”
His arm came out and caught her around the thighs
and pulled, and deposited her neatly in his lap. And
then, an ingenious arm, it contrived to be around her
waist.
"Look pall” he said. "I should be mad because
you're trying to do something for me!"
He kissed her on the mouth.
She got to Alec's by five minutes after
five.' As she stepped out of her taxi, there was a sudden
73


and sullen spatter of outsized raindrops. They lay sep-
arately on the sidewalk like oxydized silver dollars.
She paid her driver and walked into Alec's and
looked around for Denis and couldn't see him any-
where and at once felt very angry. She went further in
and looked again-and still couldn't see him. The place
had the Sabbath patina; that foreign, uncomfortable,
semi-populated feeling.
She was turning back toward the door when she saw
him walking toward her down the length of the bar.
He came up to her, looked at her with an expression
she couldn't read and bowed. It was a movement
which seemed to clothe him immediately in the habili-
ments of a statelier, stuffier age. He was a very good
actor.
He said, in a voice which precisely matched the bow,
“I crave indulgence for my tardiness, ma'am. I chanced
to be in the salle aux petits garçons ... May I escort
you to our seats?"
He led the way toward the last, most isolated booth.
He didn't touch her as they walked; he didn't even seem
to be looking at her. Which made the faint but definite
beginning of one of those involuntary thrills all the
more disturbing for her.
And then they reached the booth and everything was
all right. She slid into the seat at one side and Denis
sat to face her.
“What'll we drink?" he asked. “I can never make up
my mind at this sort of time.”
74


She lifted her shoulders. “I don't mind, Denis. I
don't care if we don't.”
“How d'you do it?" He was looking at her with un-
disguised approval. "I mean, it must be difficult to
know exactly how to look on a Sunday afternoon, with
a storm blowing up, when you go to a bar to see a man
about a play."
He beckoned to the waiter and gave an order and
then, when the man had gone, offered her his cigarette
case. For something to do, she took a cigarette and let
him light it for her.
There was a pause, and then she said, "Well, what
about business?"
"Straight-from-the-shoulder!" He looked at her with
an eyebrow raised. “Down-to-earth! No damn nonsense
about it!"
She said impulsively, “I'm sorry, Denis. I know I'm
being moronic. But I'm all sort of mixed up. You'll
have to take it or leave it, that's all.” She hesitated.
“You must think I've been behaving like a high school
sophomore-and I suppose I have. I'm sorry. It was all
my own fault in a way. I mean, I don't suppose you'd
have tried your-your line so hard if I'd explained about
Larry to begin with.”
She stopped suddenly-and Denis said, with no par-
ticular intonation:
"Wouldn't 1?"
She hardly heard him; she'd got to the point now.
“Larry's crack-up left him paralyzed.” She said it very
clearly. “He-he can't walk.”
100
7.5 ::


And the waiter chose this exact moment to arrive at
called Charles, he seemed to Kay to take an unconscion-
able time setting the drinks in front of them. But he
went away at last.
She waited for Denis to say something; something
about what she'd just told him. But he only looked
down at the glasses and said, “You might like this. It's
a Singapore sling."
And then he said, in quite a different tone, “You
know, it's very odd, but the only thing about Modern
Life which isn't thoroughly modernized is Modern Be-
havior.”
Kay stared at him. “That sounds awfully clever," she
said. “Is it?”
He went on as if she hadn't spoken. He said, “We
have Tomorrow's trains, Tomorrow's Food, and Next
Year's Underwear-but the vast majority of people still
seem to have Yesterday's emotions, all taken straight
from some antiquated Book-of-the-Rules. It's a bad
book. It stops people from thinking. It tells 'em what
to feel in any given situation, and they believe it."
"I'm not sure I know what you're talking about,”
Kay said. “And I probably wouldn't like it if I did.”
He shrugged. “I'm just trying to tell you I threw my
book away, years ago. That's all.”
He lifted his glass and looked at hers. He said, “Give
this a chance; you might even like it."
Automatically, she lifted the drink and sipped it—and
he went right on talking, just as if there hadn't been
76


any interlude, as if there were no such things as under-
currents.
“During your nightly travail as Judy," he said, “did
you ever happen to look at the nearest box on the mez-
zanine, stage left?” He waited a moment and then,
when she didn't speak, added, “There's a Jack in it."
“What are you talking about?” she said, “I never
seem to look at the audience, anyway ..."
Denis moved his glass. He rested his arms on the
table and leaned towards her.
"I am about to tell you a story,” he said. “Ready?
Once upon a time there was a very, very rich man-
we'll call him Jack-in-the-Box. Now Jack was enamored
of a certain insipid young woman, we'll call her Mar-
garet Alden ..."
t
f
"... after which,” said Denis, com-
ing to an end, “we will assume that everyone lives happy
ever after.”
He sat back and picked up his glass. Kay didn't look
at him; she seemed thoughtful, dubious. She said,
slowly:
“Let's drop the fairy-tale formula, shall we? What
you've been telling me seems to amount to this: Nor-
man Guthrie's a front for a rich man, who bought the
Burnside and put on Brother O' Mine for Margaret
Alden. He was keeping Margaret Alden—".
“Yes,” said Denis. “But quiet.”
“He was ‘protecting' Margaret Alden," Kay said, "so
7 7


discreetly that hardly anybody knew anything about it.
Then Margaret Alden was killed in a car smash, and
because this rich man,"
"-Jack-in-the-Box=”.
“_and because he didn't immediately take off his ter-
rible play, and because he still comes to see it some-
times, you suggest that we-"
"—that you—"
"—that I could approach him about The Devil's Due.
That's about it, isn't it, Denis? I'm putting it as-as
flat as I can, but that's what it comes to.” She was look-
ing down at her purse, fiddling with its clasp.
Denis sighed. “Lamentably unfeminine! So briefl so
concise; so free from curiosity. My good girl, don't you
want to know who Jack is when he's out of the box?”
"Well, who is he?"
“Cornelius, last of the Van Tollers."
“No!” said Kay in astonishment.
“Yes! Cornelius Van Toller-the Legend; the Last
Aristocrat; the Untouchable, Ineffable, Unpublicized
Midas!"
“All right, all right. But what difference does it make
who he is? It doesn't alter-"
"Great God, woman-don't you get the set-up at all?
Why, after Maggie Alden's death, didn't Van Toller
take off the misbegotten Brother O' Mine? Why did he
order Guthrie to keep on papering the theater? Why
does he come, not ‘sometimes' as you said, but every
night, to see the sludge? And why doesn't he arrive
until Judy's first entrance?”
7 8


see
Sar.
“D’you mean he thinks I might-'take Margaret Al-
den's place in more ways than one?' Is that it?" .
“Use your head, Kay. If it was, he'd have passed at
you before this. No, my guess is that he's a sentimen-
talist and you're a sort of-keepsake. A living photo-
graph. For him, coming to the theater every night's like
opening an album-only the pictures move; they even
say the same things Maggie used to say. He was really
in love with her, I'm told, incredible though it may
seem. I believe there was even talk of marriage ..."
He broke off. He looked hard at Kay, who was star-
ing down at the table, tracing a pattern on it with her
forefinger.
"This was just an idea,” he said, sharply. “If you
don't like it, say so."
Kay raised her head and looked at him squarely. Her
eyes were shining; they were alive with excitement. She
said:
"Don't be a fool, Denis! Don't you know I'm so ex-
cited I can hardly breathe! Can't you see I was only
egging you on to convince me so I could be sure you
weren't fooling, or exaggerating. I think it's the wildest
idea I ever heard of and that's just why I think it's
worth trying!”
She took a long and determined swig at her drink.
“Know what I'm going to do?” she said. "I'm going
to take the bull by his golden horns! How would you
like to order me a taxi?”
“What?" Denis stared at her.
She began to pull on her gloves. “I'm going to call
79.


at that horrible-looking house. I've seen it often
enough.”
Denis laughed-but, strangely for him, he seemed un-
certain. He said, “What makes you think you'll even
get inside?”
“Of course I will! I may not see Midas himself-but
I'll get in! You're so bright, Denis, you ought to know
the barriers around characters like that are mostly in
people's minds."
Denis lit a cigarette. He looked at her over the
match flame with a curious, half-calculating glance, as
if he were adjusting his thoughts of her. He said:
"I think this ought to be a careful, strategic cam-
paign. I even have some ideas on how it ought to be
planned.”
“Oh, phooey to strategy!” Kay had both her gloves
on now. “And if you won't get me a taxi, I'll find one
myself.”
Denis was still staring at her, but now he was smiling.
She had an idea he was annoyed with himself for hav-
ing been surprised.
“I seem to have started something," he said. “So I
should be entitled to an explanation, don't you think?
Or do you?"
“Explanation? Of what?”
“Of why you want to go banging your head against
stone walls instead of waiting until we've found where
the gate is. Something like that."
“Oh, I see what you mean," Kay said slowly and
then, after a long pause, “It's hard to explain but I'll
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“'If you're really going,” he said, “there are one or
two things you ought to remember.” .
There was no difference in his tone at all, but that
didn't matter.
"What are they?" she said. “Tell me."
"First, you only guessed Meinheer Van Toller owns
Guthrie and the Burnside-you don't know. Because
nobody told you.”
“Right,” said Kay.
“And nobody told you who he was. You took pains
to find out because you'd seen him at so many perform-
ances. And you recognized him from a non-existent
press photograph. Or something."
“Right."
“And I don't think you'd better find it necessary to
say you're married, if you follow me."
“I see what you mean," Kay said slowly.
“And that's all,” Denis said. “And you've got a
lovely night for it. Listen!”
As he spoke there came a low growl of thunder, and
Kay realized it wasn't the first she had heard.
"Mr. LeMay!" came a voice. “Mr. LeMay!” and they
turned to see Charles waving them to the door.
He held it open, revealing premature darkness and a
descending sheet of water which seemed almost solid.
There was a vivid flash of lightning, and thunder
cracked and rumbled. At the curb stood a taxi, the
water bouncing off its shiny roof.
Charles stepped out of the door, still holding it for
8 2


them. He had a huge umbrella, already opened, in his
free hand.
turned to him, startled.
"When you're through,” he said, “how about a bite
of dinner somewhere? We could go down to my place.
or anywhere you like ..."
She didn't say anything. She stepped outside and
under the vast umbrella and let Charles hurry her across
to the cab.
:
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Through the shimmering veil of fall-
ing water and in the menacing three-quarter darkness,
the big house was weirdly unreal. It hunched sharp
shoulders against the thunder; it glowered through the
rain; in the over-vivid moments of lightning, it seemed
to be baring its teeth.
Inside it, at one end of the vast drawing room, Caro
line Van Toller sat in her usual island of light. But it
wasn't an island to her, it was a cottage she'd built in
her mind. She had always wanted a cottage.
She sat in her high-backed wing chair, which she had
turned to face the fireplace. She wished the weather
had permitted a fire-but since it hadn't, contented her-
self with the embroidered flames on the screen which
. 8 4.


filled the opening of the hearth. The chair-back towered
above her head, and she could easily believe the farthest
wall was close behind it; just as easily as she could be-
lieve that the stool on which Pasha slept, not far from
her feet, was in the little bay-window her cottage al-
ways had to have. A very heavy clap of thunder sounded
immediately overhead, and she shivered delightedly.
She liked the storm, in an awe-filled way; it made the
cottage so snug and safe and grateful by comparison.
She yawned, and put up a fragile hand to cover her
mouth. Soon, she thought, she would go upstairs and
lie down for an hour before dinner. She even thought
that it might be nice to have a light meal brought to
her in bed. But then she thought of poor Cornelius,
and how lonely he would be eating all by himself, and
how bad it was for him to be lonely.
She thanked Heaven, as she had ten thousand times
in the past few days, that the dreadful events of that
dreadful night last week seemed to have gone com-
pletely from Cornelius' memory. Because it would be
unbearable if he did remember, and—and carried over
the hatred he had shown for her!
She sighed a tremulous little sigh and then thanked
Heaven for something else. She thanked Heaven-oh,
so fervently!—for having guided her to tell Cornelius
her notion-Larsen's notion-that he should meet this
girl Kay Forester who had taken Margaret Alden's
place. She trembled all over when she thought what
might have happened if they had plotted to bring about
the meeting without first finding out what he felt!
8 5


in here, Fawcett, because Mr. Van Toller is sure to be
home shortly."
“Yes, ma'am.” Fawcett started away, then checked
himself. He said, “I omitted to mention the young
lady's name, ma'am; I beg your pardon. It is Miss Fos-
ter, ma'am.”
He went then, back across the yards of carpet to the
distant door. Caroline hitched her chair around a little,
and patted her hair, and smoothed wrinkles from her
dress, and wondered idly about the name Foster.
Thunder rolled again, but further away; the cycle of
the storm was swinging outwards. On Caroline's knees,
Pasha suddenly came to life. He rose gently to padded
feet and leaped to the floor, landing with a soft and
cushioned plop.
Once more the door opened, and Caroline looked to-
ward it.
“Miss Foster, ma'am," came Fawcett's voice from the
shadows, and Caroline rose as a girl came quickly across
the room toward her. A girl, Caroline could see al-
ready, who walked well; a girl, too, who dressed with
tasteful quietude.
In the dim background, Fawcett went out, closing the
door noiselessly behind him. The girl came into the
island of light, and Caroline saw without surprise that
she was very pretty-well, perhaps “pretty” was not ex-
actly the word; perhaps "attractive" would be a better
one.
Caroline moved forward a little. “Miss Foster?" she
said. “Do sit down, won't you? My brother is not in-
8 7


Fawcett probably told you-but I expect him at any
moment."
The girl took the indicated chair. She' moved, Caro-
line noted, as gracefully as she walked. And when she
spoke, her voice was really delightful.
She said, “I feel I ought to apologize, Miss Van Tol-
ler.” She smiled, and Caroline was charmed. “This is
awfully late for an afternoon call, I know-but I simply
have to see your brother!”
Caroline settled back into her own chair. “There's
nothing to apologize for, my dear,” she said gently. She
noticed that Miss Foster's hands were holding her purse
very tightly, and it occurred to her that the girl might
be nervous. This distressed her, and she made haste
with small talk.
“Is Cornelius expecting you, Miss Foster?” she said.
“Because if he is keeping you waiting, it is really too
bad of him!"
As she uttered the words, she suddenly realized how
very much out of the ordinary this situation was. She
had been so tired, her silly old head was so confused,
that she actually hadn't stopped to think about the
oddity of a young woman-and such a charming young
womanl-coming to visit Cornelius.
The charming young woman was talking. “... afraid
Mr. Van Toller doesn't know me,” she was saying. “But
I have something to tell him which—which is going to
interest him very much. Very much indeed!” She had
taken off her gloves now and was twisting them about
in her hands instead of clutching at the bag.
8 8


Caroline made haste with more conversation. She
smiled at her visitor, and studied her with entirely in-
offensive scrutiny, and said:
“Tell me, Miss Foster-I seem to see a certain resem-
blance-are you by any chance related to the Hatherton
Fosters of Boston? Such a delightful family."
"No," said her visitor. “No, I'm not.” She smiled.
“As a matter of fact, I'm afraid your butler didn't quite
catch my name. It's Forester-Kay Forester.”
"Oh, dear, dear!” said Caroline, with placid annoy-
ance. "How foolish of Fawcett. I'm afraid his hearing
is not-"
She stopped in mid-sentence. Her lower jaw dropped
and she forgot to close her mouth. A dark wave of
premonitory terror surged over her. Her heart started
to pound with dreadful, irregular thumps. Her face
grew suddenly scarlet, then as quickly ashen. She got
to her feet with a violent thrust of her arms. She ad-
vanced upon her astounded visitor and looked down at
her and said, hoarsely:
“Kay Forester! ... The actress? ..."
"Why, yes! What in the world's the matter, Miss
Van Toller? I_".
The girl was standing up now-and Caroline seized
her by the arm with both hands. She tugged at her and
said, “You must go! You must go at once! At once!”
The girl was bewildered. “But what . .. why ...
Miss Van Toller, I don't understand!” She resisted the
pull at her arm and it became frantic.
8 9


Outside, the rain was thinner now
and slanting before a driving wind. There was no light-
ning and the mutters of thunder were far away. It was
very dark and there was a dank chill in the air.
Kay was halfway to the gates. She was very angry.
She bent her head against the wind-driven rain and
didn't feel it. She didn't see the ugly groups of shrub-
bery and their uglier shadows. She didn't hear the wind
in the tall, shapeless trees.
The wind grew stronger, and the rain stung her face.
She bent her head still lower, keeping her eyes on the
concrete of the driveway. She rounded a curve and saw
onrushing lights reflected in the wet, gleaming surface.
They were almost on top of her and she made a wild
leap sideways ... .
She landed on the grass but her ankle turned pain-
fully and she fell sprawling.
She struggled to her knees, fighting with desperate
gasps to get air back into her lungs.
The car stopped. Two doors slammed, and two men
hurried toward her and one of them, big and square
and powerful, lifted her up. Her breath came back and
she knew she wasn't badly hurt. But her hat was over
her eyes and there was mud on her clothes and face.
She wanted to cry, and managed a shaky laugh instead.
The two men hovered around her and the other one,
the one who hadn't picked her up, was talking ...
"... entirely my driver's fault," he was saying in a
soft and somehow distinguished voice. “He took that
9 1


curve much too fast! I do trust you aren't hurt ..."
In the dimness, his face was barely discernible-but
even before she'd properly seen the sharply-etched lines
of the imperial, she realized this was the man she'd
come to find
“It's all right,” she said shakily. "I'm all right ..."
And she tried to put her hat back into place. It was
soggy and shapeless and she tore it off.
Cornelius Van Toller took her by the arm and led
her toward the car. He was talking but she didn't hear
what he said, she just went meekly along, limping a
little on the twisted ankle.
She shuddered as she thought how she must look and
then was glad he hadn't recognized her. Perhaps he
wouldn't recognize her even when she was tidied up
but it wouldn't matter then; she'd just tell him. Any-
way, here she was, getting into Cornelius Van Toller's
car, helped by Cornelius Van Toller himself, and with
a hell of a good chance of seeing Cornelius Van Toller
alone and being able to talk to him.
Her ankle throbbed and the mud on her face was
caking uncomfortably, but she didn't care. She won-
dered, vaguely, what would happen if she met the crazy
old sister again, then put the thought aside. She began
to rehearse in her mind how she was going to introduce
the subject of the play.
CV
II
wa
W
Caroline was in her room and lying
down. Except for a feeling of extraordinary lassitude,
9 2


she was quite comfortable. She heard faint sounds from
below which must mean Cornelius had returned, but
they didn't worry her. In fact, they pleased her, for the
Forester girl had gone and the danger had been averted.
And she was always happier when Cornelius was
home. In a little while, when she felt stronger, she
would send for Larsen and tell him about what had hap-
pened. She sighed in relief as she thought of Larsen
and how he stood like a rock at her back.
Larsen himself was in his own small sitting room in
the servants' quarters. He had put the young lady in
charge of a parlor maid, and he had seen Mr. Van Tol-
ler comfortably settled in the library. He relaxed with
a pipe and a paper.
He didn't know the young lady was anything but an
ordinary caller on Miss Van Toller, and she wasn't hurt,
and Mr. Van Toller wasn't upset, and everything was
all right.
Larsen stretched out in his easy chair and puffed
happily at his pipe. Having finished with Dick Tracy,
he turned the brightly-colored pages in search of Terry
and the Pirates ...
Not far away, Kay looked into a mirror with critical
satisfaction. The stains on her dress had been skillfully
removed. Her hair had been redone. She was clean,
she was dry, and the borrowed shoes and stockings
might have been a great deal worse.
Her spirits rose and she said, “That's better!" and
smiled at the maid who was helping her.
“Oh, you look nice, Miss!" the woman said and then,
93


He must have spoken again, because she said some-
thing.
"Oh, I'm perfectly all right,” she said. “Really! And
anyway, it was all my own fault ..."
He was standing by the lamp. He was taller than the
lamp, and his face was in shadow. He still held the
wheel in check. He heard a voice come out of his
mouth and it said:
“Not at all ... Not at all ... My driver was en-
tirely to blame, Miss—?”
He waited for her voice. It was Margaret's voice.
But it wasn't Margaret's voice. It said:
"I was hoping you'd recognize me, Mr. Van Toller,
I'm Kay Forester ...”
He didn't hear the rest of what she said. He forced
himself to move-and crossed to the table behind her
chair. There was a tray on the table, with wine glasses
and a heavy, tortuously-cut decanter.
And then it said, “I hope you will join me in a glass of
Madeira ..."
He took the stopper from the decanter with his left
hand. The fingers of his right closed around the throat
of the decanter.
But they were the wrong way. His thumb was down,
his hand turned over. The glass felt hard and cold and
heavy against his fingers; when he saw how he held it,
he couldn't free them.
The girl turned her head to look at him.
9
5


Sweat broke out on his forehead. The fingers would
not leave the decanter.
He looked down at her, his face safe in the shadow.
He looked down at her and suddenly she smiled at
him.
With the smile, all likeness to Margaret vanished. It
was a wide, generous, full-lipped smile and it seemed to
irradiate the whole of her. '
It made the most extraordinary changes, this smile,
in the whole pattern of life; changes which took place
with a bewildering shift of values and colors and shapes
inside his head.
The fingers around the neck of the decanter began
to loosen. He looked down at them in astonishment.
He saw them lift away, change their grip, raise the de-
canter steadily, pour deep-brown wine into the waiting
glasses.
Now he wasn't fighting against the wheel. He didn't
have to. It wasn't trying to turn ...
It was nearly twenty minutes later
when Larsen came running down the stairs; running
very fast.
He had been talking to Caroline Van Toller and now
he knew it was Kay Forester in the library ...
He raced for the library.
But outside the door, he heard a murmur of voices
from inside the room and checked his noiseless rush.
murmu
96


The door closed and the voice was cut off.
Larsen strode away. When he reached the stairs, he
raced up them and he almost ran along the corridor to
Caroline's room.
She was standing in the open doorway, clutching the
side of it for support. She looked at Larsen's face with
wide, panic-filled eyes, and the big man came close to
her and did something he had never done before. He
put his hand on her arm. His smile was broad and im-
mensely reassuring. He said:
“It's all right, ma'am! It's all right! Everything's
fine!”
“But-but-" Caroline was incredulous.
"That doctor of Mr. Armbruster's was right!" Lar.
sen saw his hand on her arm and withdrew it hastily.
“Mr. Van Toller's met her after all—and he has 'sub-
stituted the reality for the fantasy! Don't you under-
stand, ma'am?"
“Oh Larsen! But are you sure?”
“Miss Caroline, I saw his face! And I heard the way
he was talking!"
Caroline gasped. A slow and beatific smile spread
slowly across her face. She stood away from the door.
She stood straight and looked straight at her friend.
She held out her hand.
“Larsen,” she said. “Would you very much mind
shaking hands with an old lady?"


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ZIE
The weeks passed, and summer with
them. The evanescent promises of Fall redeemed them-
selves, and the leaves in Central Park were really brown
now and dropping with every current of air. The sun
shone without blazing, and the air was heady and light
and exciting, like an Anjou wine. There was football
in the papers again, and the furriers were taking whole
pages for their advertisements.
And Broadway stretched and shook itself and plunged
into an orgy of new-season activity. All the way from
Fortieth Street to the Theater Guild it hummed and
chattered; the Agents' offices were filled again, and once
more words like budget and option and rehearsal came
echoing out of Shubert Alley.
99


ver.
The acolytes of Thespis were in their perennial
throes. Those of them who were busy were very busy
indeed, those who weren't pretended they were—and the
resulting sound and fury rang loud as ever.
One of the really busy was Mr. Norman Guthrie,
who, several weeks ago and entirely without warning,
had taken off Brother O' Mine and announced that
after due interlude he would reopen the Burnside with
a new play, by an unknown playwright. Mr. Guthrie
let it be known that the title of this work was The
Devil's Due but, apart from this meager information,
would say nothing. He had hired a new publicity man,
one Samuel Schumaker, who was both expensive and
ingenious, and he was running no risks of endangering
Mr. Schumaker's program.
So he went on with his work and said nothing and
waited until after the cast had actually been hired and
rehearsals were about to start and the first fruits of
Mr. Schumaker's first campaign began to bear.
The fruits were rumors, tidbits of gossip, "over-
heards." They were all professional, all intriguing, and
amounted to a swelling tide of interest in “this thing
Norman Guthrie's gotten hold of.”
Mr. Guthrie liked the effect very well indeed, except,
of course, the hints that the money behind the produc-
tion wasn't his at all but came from the coffers of-
well, of A Very Big Name ...
But Mr. Guthrie soon grew used to these detractions
from his own importance. It was better, he thought,
though not so bluntly, to have half a cake than no cake
100


hand to his forehead, and permitted joyous surprise to
illumine his features.
"At last!” he breathed. “At last!”
stood very straight and bowed gallantly over his paper
cup.
“Miss Forester," he said, “your humble, obedient
servant to command ..."
They went to Alec's. They sat in
Denis' usual booth and ate hungrily. They hardly spoke
during the meal, but when it was over, Kay said sud-
denly:
"Denis, there's something I have to talk to you
about," and then hesitated.
“Meinheer Van Toller?” Denis said, and then, “No
need to feel shy with Uncle Denis.”
Kay felt color rising to her face. She was going to
talk about Van Toller and she did feel shy. She felt
shy because during the incredible whirl of the past
weeks, she hadn't once before this seen Denis alone.
This was extraordinary, whichever way she looked at it.
She hadn't meant it to be like this, but things had just
happened that way and Denis himself hadn't made any
effort to change the pattern. In fact, he'd seemed like a
different man; a man only interested in Kay Forester as
a fellow-actor.
She smiled, but it was a very temporary smile. “Those
deductions of yours!” she said, and then:
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“Denis-he doesn't know I'm married, and it's worry-
ing me. It's worrying me terribly! I don't know what
to do about it. Everything's all going so well it seems
too good to be true! It seems as if something had to go
wrong-badly wrong!--and I keep wondering whether
that's going to be it.”
She said, “That was sort of garbled, wasn't it? But I
think you know what I'm trying to get over. I'm scared!
get away from the feeling that if he knew, he might,"
she shivered—“he might refuse to go on backing the
play! And that would be”.
She left the sentence unfinished. She said, "Denis-
what'll I do?"
He'd been looking at her all the time she was talk-
ing. He was still looking at her. He said, slowly:
“I'll have to know a lot more before I can tell you.
"No!” Kay shook her head decisively. “That's-
that's—"
“—that's what's worrying you?”
“No-well, yes in a way!” She couldn't tell whether
Denis was ribbing her or not. She said, in a little rush
of words, “Denis-it's awful! He's very sweet, and very
charming, and amazingly generous. And he isn't pass-
ing at all-he's courting! Sometime—sometime soon-
he's going to propose!” She laughed a tight, mirthless
little sound. “It's fantastic, I know-but it's true!
Laugh as much as you want to-but there it is!"
But Denis didn't laugh. He pursed his lips into a
1 O 3


soundless whistle and raised his eyebrows. And then
he said:
“If he's that way, he must've asked a lot of questions
and you must've lied. And that's going to make it bad!"
"I have not lied—I'm not that much of a fooll And
he never has asked any questions-I mean not about
anything which has to do with any time before he met
me! It's not natural-but he hasn't ... If it didn't
sound so silly, I'd say he seemed to be frightened of the
past, especially in regard to me. Whenever we talk
about anything to do with me, it all dates from that
Sunday night when I went to see him and nearly missed
him because I got thrown out by his crazy old sister-”
"Because you got what?”
1,"Oh, didn't I ever tell you about that? It gave a sort
of Alice-Through-The-Looking-Glass touch to the
whole business.” She told him the whole story, sur-
prising herself by how well she remembered, not only
the details, but her own feelings.
"No," said Denis, when she'd finished. “No, you
never told me that.” He smiled suddenly. “But of
course, you haven't had much time lately, have you?
I mean all the excitement. Rehearsals. Lunching every
day with the Money-Behind-The-Show. Running home
to Author in the evenings.
"Oh, Denis!"
"It is fruitless,” he said in a low voice, "to get mad at
Uncle Denis."
He stretched a hand across the table and its fingers
closed lightly over her hand. It was a perfectly natural
1 04


gesture and he broke the contact immediately—but she'd
forgotten how much a touch might do.
And Denis went on talking, in exactly the same tone
as before.
“This female Van Toller,” he said, “did it ever apolo
gize? Did you ever find out why the violence? Was it
anything to do with Maggie Alden?”
She shrugged, hoping she looked as if what he had
once called “cataclysms” were unknown to her. She
said, “Oh, I don't know. It didn't matter really. Yes,
she did apologize. She wrote me the next day. She
really must be a little off, because the letter was all con-
fused, all about how she'd mixed up my name with
someone else's, and would I forgive her, and might she
ask me not to mention the 'incident to her brother. I
couldn't make head or tail of it, so I called and said not
to worry and then forgot all about it. I've only seen
her once since, and she was as sweet as pie.”
There was a silence then and she took another ciga-
rette and Denis gave her a light and she said at last,
almost sharply:
"But we got off the point. Which is what do I do
about everything?"
"This Week's Prize Dilemma,” he murmured. “If
you don't tell Meinheer, it isn't cricket. If you do tell
Meinheer,” he shrugged—“what happens to Mr. Brad-
ford's play?" He was silent a moment, and then he said,
“And talking of Mr. Bradford, what does he think of
the situation?”
She winced. “Surely you realize I can't tell him any-
105


thing about it! He just thinks it's all-all an ordinary
business deal I managed to put over.”
She stared at Denis indignantly, but he wasn't looking
at her. He was looking at his watch. He said, “Hey!
We must go," and pulled out a pencil and signed his
bill.
They were on the sidewalk and halfway back to the
Burnside before either spoke again; and then he said:
“Has it struck you, my child, that Meinheer might
find out from someone else you were married?"
"Oh, my God!” Kay checked in her walk. “Denis,
what am I going to do?"
He looked down at her as they moved on. He said,
“I don't know-yet. But I'll probably think of some-
thing. In the meantime-well, we'll have to leave it
where it is, on Jupiter's lap.”
"Yes, I suppose so." Kay sighed. “But not for too
long."
They walked on in silence. For some reason, perhaps
because she had such implicit faith in Denis, she felt
better.
But she would have felt worse, very much worse, had
she known of the recent activities of one Theodore
Krumm; activities which even at this moment were
coming to a head.
Mr. Krumm was sharp-witted, sharp-featured, sharply-
dressed and incongruously soft-voiced. Mr. Krumm was
indigenous to Broadway-and one of the varied ways in
which he picked up money was to act as leg-man for
that widely-read theatrical columnist, Monty Baron.
106


Mr. Krumm, waiting in Mr. Baron's office in the
Record Building for Mr. Baron to return from lunch,
was pleased with himself. Purely by accident, through
having bought a drink for an ex-girl-friend who used to
be in Repertory, he had the makings of a nice little
squib–and Monty was bound to like it. It had all
Monty's favorite angles.
He was right. Mr. Baron did like it. Mr. Baron said
he would run it tomorrow, and also said-which de-
lighted Mr. Krumm-that he'd like any follows on it
which Mr. Krumm could dig up.
Mr. Baron made some notes on his pad; notes like-
“B’side-Devil's D-N. Guthrie-K.F. L'ding w'man
married author? war-hero." .
"Okay, Theo,” he said. "Not bad. Not bad at all."
IV
That afternoon, for the cast of The
Devil's Due, was even worse than the morning had
been, particularly for Noel and Deborah. The lunch-
break didn't seem to have done any good, and de
Voutray was harder to please than ever. Five o'clock
came and went and so did six. The small-part people
were sent off, and then the other principals-and still
the directorial hair was torn, still the directorial voice
was raised in screams and lowered in cajolery.
It was the first scene in Act II which was the trouble
-the scene where Noel first shakes Deborah's faith in
the unknown Machine.
"No!” screamed de Voutray, who in spite of his name
107


had an accent which reeked of Vienna. “No and no
and no and NO! It iss not right! It iss not the moot!
It iss not the tempo! It iss not annything at all! It
hass no emortion! It is-pah!” He drew breath and
notched the scream an octave higher. "Ant it iss your
fault, Kay! How can thee man give emortion when
you have no emortion!”
Kay turned away. She was very nearly in tears. She
walked across the bare stage toward the shadow of the
wings and the boards rang hollow under her heels.
Denis stood where he was; she could hear the scrape of
a match as he lighted a cigarette. She heard de Voutray
come onto the stage; heard him say to Denis, “What iss
the matter with her?” on a high and yet rising note.
She went into the shadows. She drew a deep, deep
breath and covered her face with her hands and forced
her thumbs into her ears. She felt rather than heard
footsteps coming toward her and swung around to see
Denis. She said, “All right, all right! I'll be with you
in a minute ...".
But he didn't go away. He stood where he was, close
to her.
“It's a pity Claude's such a Middle-European sort of
bastard,” he said. “Because he's really a damn good
director.”
"Don't baby me!” She only just managed to prevent
herself from stamping.
He didn't seem to hear her. He said, “You know
what's the matter? I've just seen it. Your Deborah's
not thinking the way the author meant her to think in
108


this scene. He meant her to be thinking Noel was a
four-letter heel, and you're playing it as if you weren't
sure what he was. That's the whole trouble.”
She was furious. “Who the hell are you to tell me
what the author meant?” she said fiercely-and in the
middle of saying it realized he was absolutely right.
Quickly, before he could say anything, she added, “But
you're absolutely right! Tell Claude to give me a min-
ute and we'll do it again.”
They did it again-and this time de Voutray almost
smiled. He said, “Now that iss different! That hass
the moot! Tomorrow, we do it again and we kip the
moot. Goot-night now."
He was gone-and Kay let out a great, tired sigh. She
looked at her watch and started across to the back of
the stage, to the chair which held her hat and coat.
Denis kept beside her. They stood in the half-dark
and he helped her on with the coat. In the empty si-
lence of the auditorium the little lamp which had been
near de Voutray's seat went out. Then the footlights
went out.
She got her arms into the coat and said “Thank you,”
and then found that Denis' arms were still around her
shoulders as he stood behind her.
"Poor little Forester,” said his voice in her ear, very
softly. And then it said, “Don't you worry. Every-
thing's going to turn out right side up. And you're
going to be terrific!”
She was very tired, and the arms around her weren't
holding her tight, and the voice and what it said were
109


CHAPTER 10
Cornelius Van Toller closed the door
of his study behind him and crossed to the big table in
the window and sat down and lit a cigar and contem-
plated with pleasure the neat pile of afternoon papers
Larsen had set out for him.
The cigar drew well; the luncheon had been good;
dear Caroline-really, she seemed a different woman
these days!-had been a pleasant companion. The sun
streamed cheerfully through the windows, and he was
very comfortable.
He was more than comfortable. He was happy. He
was happy in a youthful, exciting way. He was in love.
He was in love as a young man is in love. And he was
playing Prince Bountiful for his loved one.
111


side Theater" and then “Lovely, talented Kay For-
ester ..."
He settled back in his chair. With a smile, he began
to read. He read:
Behind the forthcoming production of the interesting
new play, The Devil's Due, at the Burnside, lies a pleasing
story. Lovely, talented Kay Forester, who will have the
femme lead and who has acted throughout as the agent of
the unknown author, one “L. Bradford,” turns out to be
none other than Mrs. "L. Bradford.” A passionate believer
in her hubby's genius, Kay fought tooth and nail to find a
backer for his play.
It seemed for a moment as if life itself had stopped.
He sat rigid, the paper shaking in his hands.
His face was gray; pale with a queer luminosity. Al-
though the room was cool, sweat glistened on his face.
Behind his forehead, with a jolting jar impossible to
control, the wheel started to turn.
It gathered speed, filling his head with its angry hum-
ming.
He lost all control, all knowledge of himself. He
thrashed about like an animal in pain. His hands tore
at the paper-shredding it, pulping it, destroying it.
And then, so fast and steadily did the wheel run, he
began to think again; to think around it; though
whether it was he or the wheel that dictated the
thoughts he didn't know.
He stood up. He gathered together the scraps of
torn paper. He crossed the room and opened the inner
door and went into his bedroom. Carefully, he studied
himself in a mirror.
113


His face was still pale and drawn, and the eyes were
too wide; too vivid. He could do nothing about the
pallor, but he could hide the eyes, at least until they
learned to obey. From a drawer he took a pair of dark
green glasses. He put them over his eyes and looked at
himself again.
And, after a long moment, he smiled.
He went back into the study again. Composed, out-
wardly cool, he reached for the telephone.
It was only five-thirty but Kay had
been at home for an hour or more.
She basked in memory of Claude de Voutray's ap-
proval, and she hadn't seen Monty Baron's column of
the afternoon. She had bathed; she had tried a new
way of doing her hair and liked it; she looked forward
to a long and restful and happy evening. She felt more
relaxed, more really at peace than she had for weeks.
She jumped as she heard a rattling crash from the
dressing room, and then a string of muffled curses in
Larry's voice.
She ran to the door and pulled it open. Larry's back
was to her. His crutches were propped up beside him,
and the wheelchair stood in the open doorway of the
bathroom. In shirt and trousers he was perching awk-
wardly on the dresser-bench. He was gripping the dress-
ing table with one hand and trying to reach down to
the floor with the other. On the floor, upside down,
was the small drawer in which he kept things like hand-
11.4


kerchiefs and cuff links and nail scissors, and the mis-
cellany was spread all over the carpet.
"Never mind, darling,” she said. “I'll fix it.” She
started forward-only to stop abruptly as he looked
around at her. His face was red and his blue eyes glit-
tered with anger.
He said savagely, “Will you for Christ's sake quit
helping!”
His voice was tight and rough-edged, and she said
quickly, “Okay, sorry,” and backed out into the bed-
room and closed the door.
She wasn't hurt, or even particularly disturbed. She
even smiled a little to herself as she crossed the room
and sat on the edge of her bed. Once or twice lately,
several times in fact-Larry had broken out like this.
The first time had been just after all the business had
been settled, and the play had actually gone into re-
hearsal. She had been hurt then, and dreadfully wor-
ried. It had been so unlike him that she'd gone to see
Dr. Pressburger ....
That was why she was smiling now. Because Dr.
Pressburger had told her what he thought-and what he
thought had turned out, when you came right down to
it, to be exactly what she thought herself. Dr. Press-
burger had told her that what he called “the period of
resignation” was over for Larry, killed by all the excite-
ment about The Devil's Due and the possibility of suc-
cess—“A very, ve-ry encouraging sign, my deah Mrs.
Bradford!”
In effect, though entirely without committing him-
115


self, Dr. Pressburger had firmly established himself in
her mind as a supporter of her theory, her conviction,
that a successful first night for The Devil's Due was
synonomous with a complete dissolution of what Larry
called the “dinkus” in his subconscious.
And that was all she'd wanted, support for that dream
about the first night, and Larry sitting in the box, and
the cheers, and the cries of “Author-Author!" and the
spot wheeling around to the box-and Larry suddenly
standing up, forgetting his crutches.
And so she smiled to herself. Idly, she reached out a
hand and switched on the radio which stood on the
table between the beds. She tuned in, softly, to a pro-
gram which eminently suited her mood-the music for
Les Sylphides-and she went on thinking about Larry.
She was still deep in her thoughts when Larry him-
self, now in his chair, wheeled into the room.
He stopped the chair just inside the door and looked
at her and said:
“I'm sorry, Kay! I'm awfully sorry ..."
She jumped up and went across to him.
“You shut up!” she said softly, and dropped on her
knees and put her arms around him.
“I don't know what happens to me!” he said. “I
don't want to say things like that,”
"Shut up!” she said again, and pulled his face down
to hers and kissed him.
It was a moment or so later that the music from the
radio stopped-to be replaced in due course by a nasal,
strident voice which somehow compelled attention. A
116


voice which spoke very quickly but very clearly, its
sentences punctuated by the agitated ringing of a bell.
It was saying, when they became aware of it:
"... and it makes this commentator wonder! Hol-
lywood, please notel ..."
“Monty Baron,” Larry said and Kay nodded. She
started to get to her feet. She was going to switch the
radio off, because neither of them liked Monty Baron.
But Monty Baron's next words held her motionless.
“Passing to Broadway and the theater,” he was say-
ing. "Interest is brewing higher over Norman Guthrie's :
forthcoming venture at the Burnside, a new play called
The Devil's Due ..."
"Well, well!” murmured Larry, and sat a little
straighter in the wheel chair.
"Readers of my column in the Record,” blared the
voice, "will remember I uncovered this P.M. the story
that clever and beauteous Kay Forester, who peddled
and generally agented the play as well as securing the
femme lead, was the wife of the unknown author, one
‘L. Bradford'. . .”
Kay was frozen. It was utterly impossible for her to
move.
"But I now have further information-" the voice
was remorseless—“which adds even more color to this
romance of Broadway. 'L. Bradford' is none other than
Captain Lawrence B. Bradford, ex-Army Air Forces
Ace. This commentator wishes all success to the tal-
ented young couple,”
The voice went on, but it was just a noise in her
117


thinking—and was halfway across to the entrance-lobby
before she even wondered who the caller might be.
She reached the door. She put her hand to the latch
and pulled it open, prepared to deal rapidly with any-
one who might be here, with anyone or anything, in
fact, except the man who was standing on the thres-
hold ...
UIT
She had opened the door herself,
which meant that everything was going as he had
planned it should.
In his head the wheel spun steadily.
He was perfectly cool, perfectly calm, and the delec-
table sight of her made no difference to the calmness.
She was the goal; not the opposition.
He raised his hat and bowed. He smiled. He said:
"Good evening, my dear. I hope you'll forgive this
unannounced call, but I had to see you upon a matter
of considerable importance.”
He could see he had startled her. She was staring at
him as if she couldn't believe her eyes.
“I took the liberty," he said, “of obtaining your ad-
dress from Guthrie."
She recovered herself. But she was still pale, and it
seemed to him her smile cost effort.
She said, “Oh, please come in,” and held the door
wider. And then, as he stepped through it, she mur-
mured something about not recognizing him because
of the dark glasses.
119


She led the way into the living room as he explained
the glasses-necessitated by a slight eyestrain-and these
banalities lasted until he was seated.
He looked around the room then and out at what he
could see of the roof garden in the twilight.
He said, “Charming, charming! But of course it
would be," and didn't say anything about the big pho
tograph of the handsome young man in uniform, and
watched her as she moved about, drawing curtains and
switching on lights.
He thought how graceful, how desirable, she was.
He seemed to be seeing her in a new and more exciting
light than ever before. It was as if all his perceptions
had been heightened by the shock of what he had dis-
covered-or perhaps by the relentless, humming pace of
the wheel.
She took a chair near his. He felt that she was under
tremendous nervous strain which might or might not
be due to his presence.
She offered him a cigarette. He took it, and then
stood up to hold a light for hers.
He found he was now in a position where he could
pretend to notice the photograph for the first time.
So even this simple action was as if he had planned
it. Perhaps he had planned it. He didn't know. But
everything was fitting in, and he had an electrifying, an
uplifting sense of power.
She was saying something. She was saying, “I'm very
glad to see you. But I'm very anxious. What is it you
want to see me about?”
1 2 0


Her voice was uncertain. There was a quaver under-
neath its firmness. But he wouldn't, he dare not, let
her distress affect him.
He contrived to catch sight of the photograph. He
bent to examine it. He said, “May 1...?" and
picked it up and studied it. He said, “Is this your hus-
band, my dear?”
He heard her draw in her breath.
“Yes,” she said, and that was all.
He set the silver frame carefully back in its place.
He looked down at her. She was sitting very straight
in her chair, her hands gripping its arms. He said,
gently, “I must confess, Kay, that I am at a loss to
understand why you didn't tell me before ..."
And then he waited.
She sat even straighter. He saw her knuckles turn
white as she tightened her grip on the chair.
“I don't tell anyone,” she said. Her voice was dry
and brittle, each word cut off sharply. “Larry was-
very badly wounded. He's getting better. But he can't
walk yet. He doesn't want to meet people. So I just
don't tell anyone about him.”
And then she said, “But I should have told you. I'm
sorry."
He wanted to go to her and take her warm, strong
softness into his arms. But he made no movement.
He knew exactly what to do. He was very calm. For
a moment he put a hand up to his downbent head; for
a moment he was silent.
And then he took the hand away and looked at her
121


would like to meet your husband ... But I fully
realize-”
She didn't let him finish. She said, “But of course!”
and was gone. A door slammed behind her, but through
it he could hear her voice. He heard another voice too,
but shut his ears to it. He began to pace up and down
the room.
He heard a door open and turned to face the sound.
There was a chair with wheels, and a man in the
chair who was moving it. He was moving it so that it
was approaching.
He was a young man. He had big shoulders and the
handsome face of the photograph. He was trying to
smile.
He was a young man and he had broad shoulders.
But he had to make the chair move before he could
move himself.
He was a young man, with broad shoulders and a
handsome face.
But he couldn't stand up. He couldn't walk.
He was the opposition and his name was Lawrence
Bradford and he couldn't walk.
The chair went on approaching-and Lawrence Brad-
ford spoke to Cornelius Van Toller.
Some futile form of greeting.
Lawrence Bradford couldn't walk, but Cornelius Van
Toller could walk.
Cornelius Van Toller walked to meet the chair. He
took Lawrence Bradford's hand and shook it.
Cornelius Van Toller spoke to Lawrence Bradford
1 2 4


as if he were completely unconscious of Lawrence
Bradford's infirmity.
He was still speaking this way when Mrs. Lawrence
Bradford joined them.
There was more talk. He saw the way Mrs. Bradford
looked surreptitiously from him to her husband. He
saw the growing delight with which Mrs. Bradford
noted her husband's increasing relaxation.
He smiled at Mrs. Bradford and went on talking to
Lawrence Bradford.
Mrs. Bradford left them.
He went on talking to Lawrence Bradford and at last
Lawrence Bradford started talking to him.
He heard Lawrence Bradford, and smiled and gave
the right answers-but in his head the wheel drove on
and he listened to its humming and waited for the plan.
The next step? What would it be?.
Mrs. Bradford joined them again. She carried a tray
with glasses, and a frosted, brimming pitcher. He
jumped up and took the tray from her and set it down
where she told him. He could move about and do serv-
ices for her. He was not immobile in a chair
She filled the glasses and served him and Lawrence
Bradford.
He raised his glass and gave a toast to the success of
the play.
Then they drank to him, separately and together.
Lawrence Bradford was laughing, joking, entirely at
his ease and seemingly surprised and delighted to be so.
But she was silent. Continually, she looked at Law-
1 2 5


rence Bradford with a sort of dazed, incredulous happi-
ness.
That was painful. But with his new strength he could
bear it.
And he had to bear, too, the way in which from time
her eyes; so filled with gratitude and affection and
wonder.
Emotions which, when the opposition were removed,
could so easily be fused into something else!
But the plan-the next move. When would it come
to him?
He went on talking with them both, but mostly with
Lawrence Bradford, completing his conquest.
Soon he looked at his watch again, and again pre-
tended he must leave, and then allowed himself to be
persuaded to dine with them.
The humming of the wheel was safe and powerful
and steady-but still the next step was hidden.
He must wait.
The dinner was ordered, but before it came there
were more cocktails.
Lawrence Bradford was talking, telling the story of
an experience in war.
He listened to Lawrence Bradford with a smile on
his mouth and his eyes safe behind the dark spectacles.
She was listening too. And she sat on the arm of
Lawrence Bradford's chair.
She put her hand on Lawrence Bradford's shoulder
-and the sight stabbed him.
1 2 6


Lawrence Bradford slid his arm around her waist
with a casualness nearly insupportable.
And then, as Lawrence Bradford went on talking,
Lawrence Bradford's hand left her waist and idly, acci-
dentally, proprietorially, came to rest upon her leg-
upon her thigh where its rounded firmness, as she sat
upon the chair-arm, was pressed tight against the silk
which covered it.
This time, the stabbing pain seemed to pierce his
entrails.
His eyes were safe, and he could control the muscles
of his face-but the thin stem of the glass in his hand
snapped between his fingers.
The glass fell. The jagged piece of stem remaining
in his grasp cut into the flesh of his thumb and dark
blood sprang from a deep cut.
There was a flurry of sympathy and concern. Noth- .
ing was further from their thoughts than the real cause
of the accident. He was safe. And the plan was safe.
Now the next step stood out in stark clarity.
He concentrated upon how to bring it about.
All the delightful time she was fussing over him and
bathing the cut and bandaging it-all the time, at the
back of his mind, he concentrated upon it.
He ate Lawrence Bradford's food and drank Law-
rence Bradford's wine. He talked and laughed with
Lawrence Bradford.
Never once, not by reference nor look nor action, did
he show any sign of thinking that Lawrence Bradford
was different from any other man.
1 2 7


He went from success to success with Lawrence Brad-
ford.
And he went on thinking.
Somehow, somehow, he must induce Lawrence Brad-
ford to cease his hermitic existence. He must induce
Lawrence Bradford to become used to leaving the pro-
tection of this place; to grow accustomed to being in
other places, places where he would be vulnerable.
He thought of a way. It was the right way. And
he could make it start to work very easily. And quickly.
Within a few days, perhaps.
He was delighted with the clarity of his mind, with
the ease in which he could divide it into two different
and simultaneously working compartments.
He was amazed by his mind, and by its power. He
didn't realize, until perhaps an hour after the glass had
broken under the pressure of his fingers, what had hap-
pened to his mind.
And then, quite suddenly, he knew.
The wheel had gone. It had gone forever. It had at-
tained such velocity that it had become one with him.
He had always dreaded the possible fusion. But now
it had happened, he welcomed it.
At exactly the right moment, during exactly the right
lull, he started his campaign.
He said to Lawrence Bradford, in exactly the right
tone:
“You know, I think it would help the play enor-
mously if you would sometimes attend rehearsal ..."
1 2 8


CHAPTER 11
A week passed, and the tempo of New
York quickened still more, and rehearsals at the Burn-
side kept pace. Nerves were stretched overtight; tem-
pers and temperament were the order of every day; and
Claude de Voutray, fighting vainly against the decision
to open “cold” at the Burnside itself, began to lose
weight.
Even Mr. Guthrie was unhappy, feeling keenly the
sudden fall from absolute majesty he had suffered a
few days ago, when Cornelius Van Toller, for no appa-
rent reason, had decided to come completely out into
the open as The-Money-Behind-The-Show.
Mr. Guthrie would, of course, adapt himself to the
situation in time. But he was having hard going in the
1 2
9


interim, because he hadn't been led to expect any such
-well, blatancy in Mr. Van Toller's association with the
Theater. And he certainly hadn't anticipated that Mr.
Van Toller himself would not only take to visiting the
theater nearly every day, but would also strike up a
firm friendship with the crippled author who had
turned out to be Kay Forester's husband.
Poor Mr. Guthrie! But even he, troubled though he
was, couldn't fail to catch the increasing excitement as
the opening drew daily nearer.
Kay was having a fitting.
And she liked the dresses. They were going to be
exactly right, strange enough to match the play's strange
atmosphere, not so strange as to be freakish or unbe-
coming. She liked them very much. .
She liked everything and everyone this morning. She
even liked the irrelevant fact of its being Tuesday, al-
ways her favorite day of the week if she thought about
it.
When she was through she found it was noon, and
liked it to be noon. She started to walk back to the
Burnside. It was a fairly long walk, but she liked the
idea of it and she liked the streets and the people and
the arching gray sky and the tingling sharpness of the
air.
She would be at the theater in fifteen or twenty min-
utes, just in time, probably, for lunch-break. Just in
time to slip in and find Larry without anyone seeing
1 30


her and have a few words with him before Cornelius
Van Toller took them both out to lunch.
She walked fast, liking the exercise. She wondered
how Larry was enjoying his first taste of rehearsal, and
whether they'd found a place where he could sit and
watch without being noticed. She was immensely grate-
ful to Cornelius Van Toller for having at last per-
suaded Larry to go, and lost in admiration of his under-
standing that it would be best if she weren't there. She
thought about Larry and how much better he'd been
ever since the evening when Cornelius Van Toller had
first come to the apartment; the evening when she'd
found out what a wonderful person Cornelius Van Tol-
ler really was.
She thought about Cornelius Van Toller in a warm,
inconsequential, happy sort of way—and then found
herself thinking of Denis.
She was worried about Denis-or by Denis. For the
last few days, Denis had been-sort of in a shell. No,
not in a shell-behind a wall.
It didn't seem to worry Denis himself at all, but (let's
face it Forester!) it did worry her. She didn't like Denis
to be behind any wall.
Her pace slackened as she began to consider the whole
question of Denis.
So she thought Denis LeMay was terribly attractive
and apparently he felt the same way about her. But
she wouldn't, she couldn't, pay any serious attention to
Denis LeMay. So she should be annoyed and worried
because he put himself behind a wall.
1 31


But sometimes he seemed to be looking at her over
the wall and—and laughing!
And he oughtn't to be laughing. Or ought he?
Well, he oughtn't to be laughing as if he were wait-
ing ...
Her thoughts were interrupted. There was a siren
screaming somewhere, going past and away from her.
There were policemen in the road holding the traffic
to let the firetrucks by. A little way ahead, on her side
of the street, a crowd was gathering, and people were
running past her to swell it.
She was only a block from the Burnside-and just as
she became aware of the smell and darkness of smoke in
the air, she was nearly knocked off her feet by a news-
boy who hurtled past her, weaving like a rabbit in and
out of the throng and shouting in ecstasy, "It's d'
t’yerter ..."
· Her heart jumped up into her throat, and she began
to run with the rest.
She reached the mouth of the stage-door alley and
saw smoke pouring from the big scene-doors at the far
end. She ran down the alley, toward a little crowd
which blocked it just this side of the stage door itself.
She tripped and almost fell over a line of hose being
dragged by three firemen ahead of her. A voice shouted
and a blue-clad arm snatched at her. She evaded it and
plunged on-to be brought up short by a tight knot of
people from the theater, including Guthrie and de
Voutray.
She had almost knocked Guthrie down in her head-
1 3 2


rms.
long rush, and now she tugged at his arm and shook
him as she looked wildly around.
She thought she was screaming but the words sounded
like a whisper in her own ears. She said, “Larry!
Where's Larry?”
Guthrie looked at her vacantly, more like a frog than
ever, and she plunged away from him. She saw a fire-
man going into the stage-door and darted after him.
The smoke was making her cough. She was almost
through the doorway when strong arms caught her from
behind and held her and a voice said, “You can't go in
there, Miss ..."
She fought against the arms. She kicked and strug-
gled and tried to scream “Larry!" again. Then very
suddenly she was quiet.
She had seen something. She had seen two figures
which came unsteadily out of the billowing black smoke
and into the open, one carrying the other helpless over
its bent shoulders.
Denis, with Larry slung like a sack of potatoes over
his back ...
She tried to twist her head to talk to the man who
held her. She never saw his face, but she must have
said the right words because he let her go-just as Denis
lowered his burden neatly onto a crate against the alley
wall.
There were cries of astonishment. A general, sense-
less babble. There was a concerted rush of the theater
group.
But she got there first, dimly conscious of another
1 3 3


figure seen for the first time, Cornelius Van Toller. He
was near the stage door. He might just have come out
of it. He had both hands to his head and was leaning
against the wall. His hair was dishevelled and there
was a great white mark upon one shoulder of his dark
coat.
She didn't pay any attention; these things just regis-
tered automatically in her mind. She forged irresistible
way to Larry.
She bumped against Denis as he was turning away
from Larry. She reached Larry, and dropped on her
knees beside the crate. She saw he was unhurt. She
sobbed, “Darling! . . . Darling! ..." and put up her
hand to brush away the black soot-stains from his face.
She wanted to laugh-or was it cry?-at the way he
pushed her hands aside.
"I'm all right!" he growled. “For Christ's sake don't
fuss.”
In next to no time the danger was
over. The smoke lessened, blew away altogether. The
firemen came out of the scene-doors, dragging the hoses
to melt. In the alley itself, the theater folk began to
talk loudly, fighting anticlimax.
"Whe-ew!" they said. “Close call, that!” “How the
hell come it started!” “That's what you get with paint-
vats all around!” “There was a notice up, can't they
read!”
1 3 4


And somebody said, “Who was the guy LeMay pulled
out?"
And somebody else said, “That's the author. Cripple.
Paralyzed by a wound or somep’n. Heard Guthrie
talkin' about him. Seems nobody knew he was around."
The prop man, an ebullient and emotional character,
sought out Mr. Denis LeMay.
Mr. LeMay was standing somewhat aloof from the
excitement, brushing off the soot and dirt from his
admirable suit of white-striped gray flannel, and the
prop man seized his hand and pumped it up and down
in an ecstasy of congratulation.
"I seen it!” he said brokenly. "I seen it all, Mr. Le-
May! It was great! Great! The way you grabbed the
poor feller out from under that flat! Why, nobody else
even knew he was there!” His words tumbled over
each other; he was almost sobbing. He went on pump-
ing the hand, which, after a moment, Mr. LeMay
quietly released.
"I know, Walter,” said Mr. LeMay. “I know ... I'm
a hero!” He sent a glance toward the wall near the stage
door; toward Miss Forester and Miss Forester's hus-
band. His eyes lingered on the pair for a long moment,
and then he looked at the prop man with an enigmatic
little grin.
"Walter,” he said, “did you ever notice that heroes
are abysmally dumb?"
“Huh?" said the prop man.
"They never seem to know,” said Mr. LeMay, “which
side the butter's on.”
1 3 5


He left Walter gaping, and walked toward the mouth
of the alley. In his way was a group formed by Mr.
Guthrie, Mr. de Voutray, Mr. de Voutray's assistant, the
stage manager, and also Mr. Van Toller. Mr. Guthrie
was in the middle of an impassioned diatribe.
"You put notices up!" wailed Mr. Guthrie. “You
make 'em five feet high and print 'em in blood! You
trade on the fact that there isn't anyone in the company
who doesn't know Theater! You imagine any blind, dis-
eased, unprintable son-of-a-scrubwoman would know
there's nothing more explosively inflammable than
paint! And what happens? What happens?”
Mr. LeMay arrived on the last despairing note of the
final “happens.” He said: “Somebody smokes. Some-
body who doesn't think rules apply to him.” He looked
around at the startled faces.
“The last person you'd think of, Norman,” he said
-and now looked directly at Mr. Van Toller.
The group was bound in a sudden, appalled silence.
“And just what are you suggesting, Mr.-LeMay?"
Cornelius Van Toller's voice was icy.
Mr. LeMay shrugged. “I'm not suggesting anything
at all-merely stating. I happened to see you light a
cigarette-just before the fire started. You weren't par-
ticularly near the paint, of course, but,"
He left the sentence. up in the air. He brushed at a
scorched place on his coat-sleeve and walked on.
Behind him he heard a sudden gasp and then words.
“Great heavens, Guthrie-he's right!" came Van Tol-
ler's voice. “I hadn't thought-but I remember now. I
1 36


CHAPTER 12
He had failed. The opposition had
not been swept away: Lawrence Bradford still existed.
He was driving them home. He and Lawrence Brad-
ford sat with Kay between them.
He was wearing his dark glasses again.
He had failed. But that didn't mean he would al-
ways fail.
He wasn't unduly perturbed, but he made sure they
knew what he was supposed to be feeling. They took a
great deal of trouble to convince him the fire couldn't
possibly have been his fault.
“And even if it was,” said Lawrence Bradford, laugh-
ing, “there's no harm done, is there? You stop worrying
sir ..."
1 38


was surprised by the reaction of pleasure she had at
being so naturally associated with Denis.
She walked quickly down the length of the bar and
saw Denis in the end booth. He seemed to have finished
lunch and was sitting with an empty glass in front of
him staring down at it as if he were thinking about
something he didn't know the answer to.
He looked up and saw her when she was still a few
feet from the table.
"Oh, hello,” he said, and stood up. “What're you
doing here?”
She slid into the opposite seat and he sat down again.
She said, “I've been looking all over for you,” and then
hesitated.
"Now that's encouraging!” He smiled. “We must
have a drink on that.”
She started again. "I had to find you,” she began and
then stopped as Charles came up to the table and Denis
looked inquiringly at her.
"Oh, anything,” she said.
“Two more of these, Charles,” said Denis, and the
old man flapped away.
Kay tried once more: it wasn't easy. “I simply had to
find you. I_"
He interrupted her. "You're not going to say they
want us at the theater?”
“No, no.” She shook her head with an impatient
little movement. “Next call's 9:30 tomorrow. Van Tol-
ler told Guthrie no more today.”
“A fine gesture!" Denis said. “Noblesse oblige!”
1 4 0


There was something in his tone--and Kay found her-
self on the defensive. She said, “I think it was very
sweet of him. After all there's no real damage done in
the theater, and there's no reason why we shouldn't
work.”
“All right, Meinheer's a noble, generous soul.” Denis
looked at the scorched place on his sleeve. “And he
owes me a suit. And somebody ought to teach him
it's dangerous to play with matches."
"Oh Denis, we don't really know what started the
fire. So why be mean about him?"
Denis looked at the burned sleeve again. “Well, this
material's hard to get.” He suddenly smiled at her.
"And since when, by the way, have you been his stand-
ard-bearer?"
"Since he found out about Larry, and I found out
how terribly wrong I'd been about him.” She was
vehement.
“Oh, yes," said Denis. “Quite,” and there was a
pause, and Charles came back to the table and set a
drink in front of each of them and flapped away.
She looked at Denis then and said, “Let's get back to
what I really want to talk about. You know why I
tracked you down here, don't you?"
He was looking straight at her but she couldn't tell
whether he was laughing or not.
“I had to find you,” she said. “To-to thank you. If
it hadn't been for you—”.
He wouldn't let her finish. "No, no. You mustn't
1
1
4


-all tongue-tied!”
She smiled and kept on looking at him, and she said,
“Well then, how does one tell them how immeasur-
ably grateful one is?”
Denis looked very serious now. “One just takes pains
to show one's gratitude,” he said. “One's very nice to
them, very considerate. One makes sure to fall in with
their wishes. One gratifies their desires, so to speak.
One-"
She thought she'd better stop him. “One seems to
One seems to
Denis shook his head. “Oh, it's very simple really.
Fun, too. It all depends on the way you look at it.”
He took a long pull at his drink; then set his glass
down quickly.
"By the way,” he said, “what are you doing this eve-
ning? How about a bite of dinner?"
She was utterly taken aback, but she didn't say any-
thing. She just looked at him.
He didn't wither under the look. He only smiled.
She was sure he was going to speak, and she knew it was
going to be about his Book-Of-The-Rules. But he didn't
speak.
So she said something. “Oh Denis!” she said. “You're
impossible!"
And then she said, almost viciously, “And won't it
ever dawn on you that you're wasting your time?”.
"Am I?” he said. And again she didn't know whether
or not he was laughing.
1 4 2


“Well, I came here to thank you,” she said. “And
I've done it."
She lifted her glass and sipped at the drink and set
the glass down again. She said:
“I was also supposed to say Larry wanted you to come
in for a cocktail this evening. But I'll just tell him you
can't make it.”
"Oh, I wouldn't do that,” Denis said. “Tell him I'll
be there. What time?"
She stared at him. “If you must know, it was six."
She was really angry now, and it made everything
easier. She picked up her purse and got quickly to her
feet. Denis stood up too. He said, "Exit Uncle Denis,
temporarily. And enter Uncle Galahad.”
She didn't pay any attention. She walked quickly to-
ward the door and Denis dropped back into his seat.
He finished his drink and beckoned to Charles, who
came at once. He pushed his empty glass toward
Charles.
“Charles,” he said, "another grail of Scotch.”
III
The world was tumbling about Caro-
line's head; the world which had lately been such a
pleasant, happy place.
She sat in the high-backed chair and looked fearfully
up at Larsen's troubled face. Around her, the cottage
faded and the huge room loomed dark and inimical.
She said unsteadily, “But-but, Larsen-do you mean
that-that he actually—that you think he-that-"
1 4 3


She couldn't get out the words. Her heart was begin-
ning to pound uncomfortably and her thin hands
twisted about each other.
Larsen looked more troubled than ever. “Miss Caro-
line,” he said, “I wouldn't have worried you, not for
anything-but I had to! You see, I wasn't in the theater
when it happened. To tell the truth, I wouldn't've
thought anything much about it if Mr. LeMay hadn't
come up and said that to me, the way I told you.”.
A sharper fear than all the other fears pierced Caro-
line's mind. She said, in an odd little whisper, “Larsen!
You don't mean this man-this actor-you don't mean
he actually saw Cornelius,"
“Oh, no, Miss Caroline!" Larsen hastened to kill this
particular fear. “Mr. LeMay was just annoyed by what
he thought was Mr. Van Toller's carelessness—"
“But you, Larsen-you think it wasn't carelessness!
You think-"
"Miss Caroline-I don't know what I think. But I'm
-well, I'm not easy in my mind. That's why I'm trou-
bling you this way.”
From somewhere a sudden strength came to Caroline.
She stood up. She said, “Larsen, stop worrying about
me! You're afraid Cornelius started that fire! I know
you are!" Some of the strength ebbed away, but she
drew upon what was left.
“But why, Larsen?” she said. “Why would he do it?"
She caught at Larsen's arm with both hands. “Why?”
“Miss Caroline," the man said heavily, “suppose we've
been wrong! Suppose he's just been fooling us he liked
2
W
1.4.4


And the doorbell rang:
She said, “Oh, that's probably Denis," and turned
back into the room and started for the front door. She
was proud of the natural, almost placid reading she'd
given. She even tried to convince herself that she felt
natural and placid.
But it didn't work; she didn't feel anything except
god-awfully uncomfortable.
She reached the lobby, and then the door.
She opened the door and found herself staring at a
figure so unexpected that she didn't recognize it until it
spoke; until it said, in a fussy, gentle tremolo, “Oh, Miss
Forester-Mrs. Bradford, I should say–may I come in?"
"Oh, it's Miss Van Toller!" Kay tried hard to keep
the astonishment out of her voice. “I'm sorry, I didn't
recognize you."
She stood aside and the old lady came in with a side-
long, crablike movement which was somehow disturb-
ing.
Kay shut the door. She murmured politenesses and
led her visitor into the living room and settled her in a
chair and waited.
“I suppose,” said Caroline Van Toller breathlessly,
“I suppose this visit must be a surprise to you, Mrs.
Bradford—but I-I've been wanting to come and see you
-ever since that Sunday when I was so—so unforgivably
rude” The wavering voice trailed off into silence, and
the old lady put both hands to her side, her left side,
with a sort of clutching movement.
“Oh, please, Miss Van Toller!" Kay said. “Don't
1 46


think anything more about it.” She wished Larry would
come in, but knew he wouldn't. She wished it wasn't
nearly six o'clock.
"You're very kind, my dear,” said Caroline Van Tol-
ler. “And very gracious. But then I knew you would
be-from what my brother has said about you."
She paused—and then, when Kay didn't speak, seemed
to nerve herself for some great effort. She said, “It-it
was really about Cornelius that I came to see you, Mrs.
Bradford. What I have to say is extremely difficult.
But-but I have to say it-to tell you—” Her breathless
voice stopped again, and again the black-gloved hands
made their fumbling gesture at her side.
Another emotion added itself to Kay's bewilderment
-maybe it was anger. She said, “This seems to be up-
setting you, Miss Van Toller, whatever it is. Why don't
you just forget about it?”
"Oh, you don't understand!” Now Caroline's face
was working strangely. “I must tell you-I-it is my duty
to tell you. It-it has to do with Cornelius. With his-
his past, his-”
Kay didn't like this. She decided to put an end to it.
"I don't think I want to hear any more,” she said
crisply. “Your brother will be here himself very soon.
So let's wait until he arrives, shall we?”
She had expected a result from this-but by no means
the one which actually came. Caroline Van Toller shot
to her feet, jumping up like a badly operated marion-
ette. Under her shapeless clothes her frail body was
1 4 7


trembling. In her gray, tired face, the faded eyes were
suddenly bright with panic.
“Cornelius coming here!” she whispered. “Oh, my
heavens!” She came close to Kay and peered into her
face with agonized eyes. “Oh, please,” she said, "please,
he mustn't know I was here! Please!” Her hand was
shaking; she was shaking all over. “I-I will talk to you,
some other time, some other time"
She turned and made for the door at a curious, wad-
dling little run, which ought to have been funny but
certainly wasn't.
Kay stood still, staring in amazement. The door
slammed and she was alone again.
She frowned. She went slowly toward the French
windows just as Larry rolled the chair out from the cor-
ner of the roof where he'd been hiding.
“Who was the old buzzard?” he asked-and then saw
her face and added quickly, “And what the hell was
she worrying you about?”.
"That,” said Kay slowly, “was Miss Caroline Van
Toller. And what she wanted-well you tell me.” She
was still frowning. “Must be out of her mind,” she said.
Behind her, the front doorbell rang again. She
started, and Larry said, “That's probably Van Toller
himself.”
She went to the door again. She forgot Caroline Van
Toller as she opened it and saw Denis.
She said, “Oh, hello, so you did make it?” That
sounded all right, she thought.
Denis said, “Six on the nose!” and came in and
1 48


dropped his hat on a chair and followed her into the
living room. He was completely at ease. He was an old
friend dropping in for a drink. He was casual and-and
comfortable. He looked around the living room and
said, “Nice," and then let himself be steered toward the
windows.
She was a little in front of him when she reached
them. She heard him say something which seemed to
be, "How d’you like the armor?” and she decided not
to ask what he meant. She called to Larry, now in his
usual corner against the rail.
“Here he is,” she said. “Denis LeMay in person.”
She stood aside then while Denis crossed the roof
toward Larry, who rolled the chair forward to meet
him.
She watched them. She could see Larry's face, but
only Denis' back. She saw Larry smile-and he held out
his hand and Denis took it.
"I'm very glad to see you,” Larry said, and sounded as
if he meant it. "In fact, if it hadn't been for you, I
wouldn't be able to, if you know what I mean."
She moved a little nearer. She said, “You'd better
watch it, Larry. Denis doesn't like being thanked.”
But neither of them paid any attention to her and
she wished she hadn't spoken. They didn't seem to have
heard her.
Larry said to Denis, “I owe you an apology. I didn't
even speak to you at the time, let alone thank you.”
Denis said to Larry, “Why should you? After all it
was sort of hot in there.” He moved a little and leaned
1 4 9


against the rail and took out a cigarette case. She could
see his face now.
She could also see Larry's face. He looked down at
his wheelchair with a strange expression, and she
winced. But then he looked up at Denis and grinned.
"It wasn't the heat so much,” he said. “It was the
humility."
And then the doorbell rang again.
He had pressed the bell. Now he
waited.
His heart beat faster, as it always did when he was at
this door. It beat faster because he knew she would
open the door herself.
He liked his heart to behave this way. It made him
feel a young man again and he liked to feel young. It
helped him.
It would help him particularly now that he had failed;
now that he must wait while he planned again.
He heard her footsteps behind the door and it opened
and she stood there.
She was beautiful. She smiled, and greeted him, and
held the door wide for him.
He smiled at her, and stepped through the door.
As she was shutting it, he obeyed a sudden impulse
and took the dark glasses from his eyes. He wanted to
see her with no obstruction to his vision.
He watched her carefully-and saw there was no
wrong reaction in her eyes to the sight of his.
1 50


So he had completely mastered himself. He had con-
quered the agonized dismay, which at first had been
brought by his failure. He slipped the glasses into his
breast pocket and followed her into the living room.
Through the open windows, he could see Lawrence
Bradford and another man.
The actor LeMay.
Momentarily, he felt uncertain. He found himself
taking the glasses from his pocket and putting them
over his eyes again.
He nerved himself for the encounter with LeMay-
and then found that they were not, after all, going
directly out on to the roof.
She had stopped, in the center of the room. She was
looking at him with troubled eyes. She moved into the
shadows by the hearth, and he followed her.
He couldn't bear to see her troubled. He said, keep-
ing his voice very low, "What is the matter, Kay? Is
anything troubling you?”
She said, hesitantly, “Well, yes and no.” She said,
“I don't know-I suppose it's silly of me-but I don't
know whether to tell you or not . . . Except ...
well, I really do think I ought to ..."
He wanted to touch her. He didn't touch her. But
he moved a little closer to her and spoke even more
quietly than before. He had the most delightful sensa-
tion of intimacy. She was troubled and she was going
to tell him her trouble and he was going to cure it. He
said, "What is the matter, my dear? Please tell me.”
1 5 1


She was still hesitant, but she said, "It-it's about
your sister"
He said, “My sister?” and could hear the astonish-
ment in his own voice.
She said, “Yes—she was here-a few minutes ago ..."
There was a jarring in his head and for an instant
he remembered the wheel.
But then, at once, he was part of it again.
"Caroline came here!” he said—and then, controlling
his voice, “Whatever for?”
She said, “I–I don't quite know. She seemed to be
trying to tell me something about-well, about your
“past'_"
Again the jarring in his head.
But he kept command of himself. He even managed
to smile. A smile tinged with sadness.
He said, “Poor Caroline! I wonder what bee she has
in her bonnet now.”
He knew with absolute certainty what he had to do.
The entire plan unrolled itself in his head. It cost him
no effort, and it was flawless.
She was saying something, but he only caught the last
words. “—so she never got to the point, whatever it
was. As soon as I mentioned I was expecting you, she
ran out-"
He didn't let her finish. He said, “You must not
distress yourself, my dear. You were right to tell me.”
Again he contrived the sad little smile.
He said, “I have lately been troubled, seriously trou-
bled, by Caroline's-state of health.”
1 5 2


с
н
а
р
т
E
R
1
3
It was twenty-five minutes to seven
when Mr. Cornelius Van Toller stepped out of the
main entrance of Miss Forester's apartment house.
He settled himself comfortably in the rear seat of his
limousine, gave an order to Larsen for transmission to
the chauffeur-and was borne in swift majesty to his des-
tination, which was the large and richly somber brown-
stone building which housed the most exclusive of his
clubs.
He got out of the car. He said to Larsen, “I may dine
here. You had better wait; but see that you and Car-
thew have something to eat.”
He entered the club and went straight to the dining
room. It was only sparsely filled at this early hour, but
1 5 4


he chose a table in the middle of the room and saw and
was seen by several other members.
He ate sparingly, but took a long time about it-and
when at last he had finished his coffee and signed his
bill, he went slowly out of the room, and slowly through
the main hall, and then slowly up the wide stairway.
He made his way to the second of the reading rooms.
It was a padded, comfortable room, and in it two
padded and comfortable men were playing chess. One
of them looked up at him with a smile of recognition
and he made answer with a nod.
He wandered around for a moment or two, then
chose a volume from one of the tall bookcases which
framed the hearth. The book in his hand, he looked
about as if wondering where he would sit; then moved
across to a tall winged chair in the ell which went past
the fireplace. The back of the chair was opposite the
chess table--and as he sat in it there was a little twitch-
ing around the corners of his mouth which might have
been the beginning of a smile.
He opened the book on his knees, rustling the pages.
He cleared his throat with an elaborate little cough. He
twisted about in his chair. He created, in fact, an excel-
lent sound-picture of a man settling down for an hour
or more.
But he was far from settling down; so far that in less
than three minutes he wasn't in the chair at all. Nor
in the room. Nor, indeed, in the building.
And he had absented himself without the knowledge
of either of the chess players.
1 5 5


maid had come and helped her off with her hat and coat
and been sent away. And then she had made her own
way down the length of the room to her usual chair, and
in due course the “little something” had arrived a bowl
of soup, a small glass of the old brown sherry she would
sometimes sip at, a little silver rack of toast, a cut-glass
bowl of fruit.
She had forced herself to eat and drink-and then had
been delightfully surprised to find how much better she
felt. She was actually sleepy, and she pulled the walls
of her cottage around her and dozed a little and con-
trived to forget about Cornelius and what would hap-
pen if he ever found out what she'd tried to do.
The doze was softly merging into real sleep when it
was broken by a sound.
Caroline started, stirred, sat upright in the big chair.
The sound had come from the back of the great room,
from somewhere near the French windows which led
out onto the gardens. She peered over the edge of the
chair, through the dissolving wall of her cottage. She
thought the curtains over the windows were moving,
but she couldn't be sure. She couldn't see very well,
staring as she was out of the brightness into gloom.
She said, with a sort of sharp breathlessness, “What is
it? Is anyone there?” and then, just as her heart began
to pound warningly, was relieved by the sight of Pasha
as he stalked, bushy tail erect and slowly twitching, into
the island of light.
“Oh, Pasha!” said Caroline. “So it's only you, dar-
ling!” She leaned over the arm of the chair and made
1 5 7


her chair; the tray which carried the remains of her
meal.
Slowly, the hand began to tilt the tray-and then, just
as the things upon it began to slide, up-ended it with a
violent twist which sent china, silver and glass smashing
down to the hearth-tiles with a prolonged and appalling
crash topped by the great metallic clang of the falling
tray itself.
In one single reflex movement, Caroline came to her
feet. Her face was contorted, the mouth wide as if to
let out a scream. But no sound came-and both her
hands flew toward her heart, and then, the movement
oddly arrested, grasped at the air. Her whole body
stiffened-twisted-fell face downward beside the debris
on the hearth.
She twitched once, and then was still. Absolutely still.
Cornelius Van Toller moved from behind the chair.
He came into the light and for a moment stood looking
down at his sister's body.
He stepped over it-and, without a backward look,
walked into the shadows.
The curtains over the French windows moved again,
then fell back into place ...
It was five minutes to ten and the chess
game had reached a critical stage. With sadistic delib-
eration, White moved a bishop; sat back to smile at his
opponent's frown.
"H’mm!” said Black, and went on frowning.
1 59


A club servant came into the room on quick, quiet
feet. He looked around, seemed about to leave, then
approached the chess players. He bent over the table
and said to White in that whisper reserved for Silence
Rooms, “Excuse me, sir, but have you seen Mr. Van
Toller?”
White nodded toward the big wing chair. “Over
there, Carson. Was reading, probably asleep.”
The servant went to the chair and around it and
found, surely enough, the man he sought. A book was
open on his knees, but he seemed to be drowsing. He
raised his head slowly; looked up blankly for a moment;
then with awareness.
"Yes?” he said, and smothered a yawn.
He was summoned to the telephone. His home was
calling-and urgently, it seemed.
"Dear me!” said Mr. Van Toller. “I hope there is
nothing wrong," and went quickly from the room.
1 6 0


CHAPTER 14
"DEATH CLAIMS VAN TOLLER
KIN!” said the newspapers-and “VAN TOLLER
HEIRESS PASSES!”—and “GOTHAM MOURNS
CAROLINE THE BOUNTIFUL!”
And the Sunday supplements disinterred pictures and
stories of the fabulous family, titling these by such
phrases as “Last of The Four Hundred,” and “Aristoc-
racy a l'Americaine."
And no fewer than three sermons preached on that
same Sabbath in New York dealt almost exclusively with
the virtues, real and imagined, of poor, dumpy, fluttery
little Caroline.
Though they differed, of course, in tone and treat-
ment, the references to the deceased lady, whether they
161


were tabloid or TIME-written, air or chair-borne, all
carried one theme like a minor banner: the undoubted,
the dire, the much-to-be-pitied sorrow of Cornelius,
now in actuality the Last Van Toller.
There were repercussions at the Burnside, of course.
Kay and Norman Guthrie went to the funeral, and the
rest of the cast sent a magnificent wreath, and the indi-
vidual actors-with the rather noble exception of Mr.
Denis LeMay-sent, individual telegrams.
And after that, things at the theater went on as usual,
except for the absence of Cornelius Van Toller himself
and occasional references by Guthrie to the “odd thing
I saw at the Van Toller funeral, old boy ...".
Which oddity had been the accidental sight of a
large, quiet, noncommittal man, in dark, noncommittal
clothes, who stood at a respectful distance from the
grave and the guests with tears pouring unchecked and
unnoticed down his dark and noncommittal face.
It was exactly a week before the open-
ing—the terrifying, stone-cold, Broadway opening-that
Cornelius Van Toller returned to New York and the
theater. He appeared in the morning, in the middle of
rehearsal, and in spite of de Voutray's scowls, whisked
Kay off to lunch.
They had a corner table at the Vicomte-and they
hadn't been sitting at it for more than ten minutes
before Kay, definitely and by no means comfortably,
became aware of a change in her host. He looked the
1 62


But I don't wish you to look at it until next week; not
until after the opening. In fact, I would like you not to
see it until you have read the critiques of your per-
formance."
He raised his hand from the package, so that she
could see the card tucked under the binding. He said,
“I am convinced they will fully justify this inscription.”
Kay looked at the card. She saw, with an odd feeling
of fear, that it read, “For the First Lady of the Theater.'
TIL
It was after two in the morning, but
hard white lights still flooded the stage of the Burnside,
making the auditorium an inky, empty blackness which
seemed to throw back every line and movement, with
sullen rejection, into their faces..
But Claude de Voutray kept them working. He
ranted and raved. He tore at his hair and almost wept.
He cursed and cajoled alternately. He knew what he .
wanted and would not stop until he got it.
There was a brief break at half past two, while de
Voutray took old Karle away for some private and
phenomenal exhortation, and Kay–who felt that at any
moment she would either scream or just lie down and
sleep where she stood-crept alone to the back of the
stage and found a corner, shaded by some flats, where
a chair stood surrounded by packing cases.
She sank into the chair and propped her elbows on
her knees and dropped her head into her hands.
Na
. 165


Her mind was blank and heavy-feeling, and her body
ached. She didn't think; she existed.
Dimly, she heard footsteps drawing near, ringing
hollow on the boards.
Even when they came right around into her shelter
and stopped immediately behind her, she didn't look
up. She was too tired. If she didn't move, and didn't
speak, perhaps whoever it was would go away.
An odd thing happened then. Suddenly, with no
warning, a tingling awareness spread through her. In a
strange way, it seemed actually enhanced by her fatigue.
It was so surprising, so completely unexpected, that it
was a moment before she recognized it for what it was.
And then she did, and sat up quickly and turned in
her chair to see Denis standing behind it. She seemed
actually to see him for the first time tonight, although
they had been working together for all these hours. His
face was a little pale, and there were dark shadows of
beard along his jaw and dark lines of fatigue below his
eyes. But the eyes themselves were alive as ever.
He was carrying in one hand two thick mugs; in the
other a slopping carton of coffee. He set the mugs down
on a packing case and filled both of them and handed
one to Kay. He said, “Straight from the East River.
But it's hot.”
Kay had herself in hand now. She looked at him and
smiled and said, “Bless you, Denis,” and sipped grate-
fully at the coffee.
He picked up his own mug and looked at it, and put
it down with a grimace. He sat on a corner of the case,
1 6 6


his knees almost touching Kay's, and pulled out ciga-
rettes. As he lit hers, Kay said, “How much longer's
Claude going to keep us here? Did you find out?”
Denis shrugged, and de Voutray's voice came out of
his mouth. “Jusst a little while, a couple of hourss,
maybe. Until the actorss haff captured the emortion.”
Kay took another sip of coffee. “And will we be
graciously allowed to go home for breakfast?"
“Hey!” Denis leaned forward. “That gives me an
idea! Nervous, highly-strung artists such as ourselves,
working at this feverish pitch-what we need, what we
must have, is complete relaxation!”
But Kay's troubles had come flooding back into her
mind now, and she barely heard him. She said, auto-
matically, “Relaxation? Where would you find it-
working with Claude?”
"At my place, of course!” He seemed filled with sur-
prise at her denseness. “A bite of breakfast first, and
then-well, we could branch out in any one of several
directions."
She didn't say anything; she just looked at him.
"If you're thinking of that Galahad armor," he said,
"it was only rented.”
“Oh, Denis, quit, will you!” Her voice sounded
sharper than she meant it to, and she added, “I'm wor-
ried, terribly worried!”
“About the office scene? Don't you trouble yourself,
my child. You're sensational, whatever de Voutray
says."
Kay said, “It isn't anything to do with the show."
167


He handed it to Kay. "Your play, Pandora,” he said.
She looked at him first, then down at the case.
Slowly she opened it.
“Ouch!” said Denis.
She didn't say anything. She stared down at the mag-
nificent stone as it lay embedded on its dark blue velvet.
It was a diamond. It was strangely yet flawlessly cut.
It must have weighed all of twenty carats. It was set as
a pendant, and its platinum chain, so fine that it seemed
a mere thread, was coiled about it.
She shut the case and looked at Denis. “What am I
going to do?” she said.
"If you'll take my advice, which you probably won't,
you'll hock it.”
She went on as if he hadn't spoken. “I can't send it
back yet because I'm not supposed to know what it is!
And I daren't upset him before we open, there's no
knowing what he'd do!”
"All right. Put it in your bank. Or in Guthrie's safe.
Anywhere it can't be lifted.”
Kay looked down at the leather case, turning it this
way and that in her fingers. She said, “It's sort of-
frightening, isn't it?"
"It's more than that.” Denis stubbed out his ciga-
rette. “It's sort of insane."
of movement and a man's voice, harsh with fatigue,
shouting, “Now then! Places everyone, please! Miss
Forester-Mr. LeMay-Mr. Karle."
But Kay didn't seem to hear. "Denis!" she said.
169


“Now you're frightening me! What d’you mean–ex-
actly?"
Denis stood up. He said, “I don't know-exactly.”
He reached down and took her hands and pulled her to
her feet. “But I do know I'm not going to think any
more about it! Not until next week. Not until after
we've opened.”
“Kay! Deniss!" De Voutray's voice was a passionate,
squeaking shout.
Kay sighed. “Here we go again!” she said-and
stepped out from the little shelter into the hard white
light.
1.70


с н А Р Т Е R
15
see
The days passed. To Kay, each one
seemed intolerably long-and yet, when she came to
count them in retrospect, they appeared to have gone
by much faster than days have any right to.
They were odd, unreal days, made almost unbearable
by the incessant, nerve-tearing work, and worse by the
sudden wave of Indian Summer which hit the whole of
New York State.
Yet, in a way, she welcomed the work and the ten-
sion and the heat. They made her able, most of the
time at least, to forget her worries. She didn't have
time to think about them, nor the strength with which
to think about them. She housed the leather case and
its alarming content in her bank and almost succeeded
171


in banishing it from her mind. At home, she bore
Larry's occasional nervous outbursts with something
approaching equanimity: at the theater, she succeeded
in not losing her temper with anyone except Claude de
Voutray, and that only once.
And mercifully, Van Toller left her alone. Except
for one day, when he took Mr. and Mrs. Bradford out
to lunch, she hardly saw him, except as a solitary, dimly-
recognizable figure in the auditorium.
And Denis-Denis was amazing. Professionally, she
didn't know what she would have done without him.
Personally, he was a friendly bulwark. She couldn't
make out whether, seeing her increasing tension, he had
rented the Galahad armor again, or whether, craftsman
that he was, he too was absorbed in work to the exclu-
sion of everything else. But she didn't care. She only
knew the result was exactly what she needed.
The cold, the stone-cold, the (to many
minds) disaster-inviting opening was to be on Thursday
night.
And so, on Wednesday, there was a dress rehearsal
which managed to last, as such things will, for some
thirteen consecutive hours.
It went neither very badly nor very well, so that
neither common sense nor supersition was any consola-
tion, or any guide.
Exhausted, aching all over as if she had been beaten,
Kay slid into bed at three-thirty. In the next bed, Larry
172


wasn't asleep. But-bless him!-he was pretending to be,
which was the next best thing.
She knew she wouldn't sleep. She was too tired. She
knew she wouldn't sleep.
She streched out to her full length between the sheets
and dropped her aching head onto the pillows-and
slept.
II
And she dreamt. She dreamt she was
asleep-and then she dreamt she waked and it was morn-
ing. Everything was sharp and factual; she never, as it
were, dreamt she was dreaming.
It was early. But she got up and made the coffee,
spoiling it the first time by letting it boil over. She
made it again and took a cup in to Larry with his orange
juice.
She was at the theater before anyone else. She was
horribly, terrifyingly nervous. Yet everything was hor-
ribly, terrifyingly ordinary.
And then, somehow, it grew to be curtain time ...
And then she was on, knowing she wouldn't remem-
ber a line-and suddenly finding she knew all the lines
and what they meant more clearly than she ever had
before.
And, so it seemed, did everyone else. Especially
Denis. Denis was-wonderful. He lifted everyone to his
own level.
And, as the Overseer, old Karle was terrific. Starting
slow, and underplaying, she thought at first, a little too
1 7 3


much, he really warmed up in his first big scene in Act
Two. Even when he stumbled on the steps and nearly
fell, he managed to make it seem an integral part of his
performance.
It was all sharp. It was all factual. It was all hap-
pening.
The house was quiet, unnaturally quiet. There was
some applause after Act One, but no one had any way
of telling, yet, whether it was merely polite. And, at the
end of Act Two, with its astounding climax, there was
even less—so that there was an inescapable feeling
among the cast that they had merely pleased a few
enthusiasts.
And then the Third Act-and, suddenly, as she lay
motionless on the stage-right flight of steps which led
down from the Overseer's desk, she became aware for
the first time of the nearer box on the mezzanine at the
other side. The box which held Van Toller and Larry.
Then Denis' electrifying entrance-his speech of
rebellion-his quick cross from the other steps,the
relentless strength of his arms as he picked her up, still
inert, and made their exit ...
And the final curtain ... And then a horrible, a
terrifying interlude of silence ...
And then applause, applause such as she had never
heard before-a pandemonium of applause!
And the curtain rising and falling for countless calls
-calls for the whole company-calls for Denis and Karle
and the other women and herself-calls for Denis and
Karle and herself-calls for Denis and herself ...
17.4


The weather, for instance. The Indian Summer heat,
instead of being merely unpleasant and depressing, be-
came an animate evil. It sapped all strength and pur-
pose, and it seemed to ensure that no one in his right
mind would indulge in theater-going.
But everyone did, all the same. At
about eight-fifteen, the cars started to roll up, and by
eight-thirty the theater was filled, with all theater-loving
New York and Rivers Tomlinson.
The curtain, scheduled to rise at eight forty-five,
actually and surprisingly did so before nine-thirty, and
Kay, after an agonizing first entrance, became lost in
Deborah and forgot the dream.
She may have fleetingly remembered it as the curtain
came down on Act One, and there came noncommittal
applause, but certainly she didn't think of it in detail or
as in any way prophetic until, toward the end of Act
Two, Karle stumbled on the stairs as he made his way
up to the Desk.
She had no more lines in the scene-which was just as
well: the sudden realization that the dream had been
no ordinary one, was a considerable shock.
After the curtain of Act Two, she went to her dress-
ing room as quickly as she could. She didn't have a
change to make—and she sent Molly away, and she sat
and thought.
She thought about the dream-and she thought about
that book Larry was always talking about, Dunne's Ex-
176


periment with Time. She'd never been able to get
through it herself, but she did remember the chapter
about dreams, and the theory that very frequently in
sleep one slipped, as it were, from one "time-furrow" to
another, with the result that (quite often, according to
the erudite Mr. Dunne) dreams were actual representa-
tions of events that, in ordinary parlance, “were going
to happen.”
Her heart pounding, she began to check the dream
against the facts—and she saw, with mounting, almost
unbearable excitement, that they fitted.
To take just a few instances. She'd dreamt she spoiled
the first lot of coffee-and she had spoiled the first lot
of coffee. She'd dreamt the weather was hot,and it
was. She'd dreamt the applause after Act One was non-
committal-and it had been. She'd dreamt there was
less applause after Act Two-and there had been.
And, in the dream, Karle had slipped, exactly in the
way he had slipped just now.
VI
And then, at last, the Third Act-and
eventually Denis' electrifying entrance-his speech of
rebellion-his quick cross from the other steps-the re-
lentless strength of his arms as he picked her up, still
inert, and made their exit ...
And the final curtain . . . And then a horrible, ter-
rifying interlude of silence ...
And then applause, applause such as she had never
heard before-a pandemonium of applause!
177


And the curtain rising and falling for countless calls
-calls for the whole company-calls for Denis and Karle
and the other women and herself-calls for Denis and
Karle and herself-calls for Denis and herself ....
And the pandemonium going on ...
And then the cries for “Author! Author!”
And then, at last, a spot flashing on, and swivelling
toward the mezzanine box ...
It was exactly like the dream. It was the dream. It
was only different because now-thank God!-she knew
what was going to happen!
Soon–very soon!-after three more of those calls for
“Author!” Larry was going to stand up; to stand up
without his crutches!
She smiled to herself. She wasn't breathing. Her
hands were gripping at each other, the nails digging
into the palms. She was waiting-but this time she didn't
have to leave her body standing where it was and pro
ject herself into the box, beside Larry and yet apart
from him, and pray.
This time she knew what was going to happen-and
she was filled with almost unbearable happiness.
And then the happiness was killed-killed with one
searing, agonizing stab.
Larry reached out to the corner of the box and took
his crutches from where they lay and used them to lever
himself to his feet ...
1
7 8


с н д р т E R
16
"DEVIL'S DUE SMASH HIT,” said
the papers, and “REMARKABLE PLAY SUCCEEDS
AT BURNSIDE” and “OUTSTANDING DRAMA
BY WAR ACE.”
And on his page in the Record, in a double column
liberally sprinkled with such sub-heads as "S.R.O. Cinch
for ‘Due,"” “Orchids for LeMay, Forester,” “Bradford,
Guthrie Hit Jackpot,” Mr. Monty Baron epitomized all
the other critics, great and small, when he wrote,
“... in short, The Devil's Due is a great play, mag-
nificently acted, faultlessly staged. A double-barrelled,
high-octane must on your theater list.”
Unusually, in addition to that on his dramatic page,
there was a by-line of Mr. Baron's prominent in the
1 79


news columns. It was headed, “GOTHAM HONORS
BROADWAY. STAGE PARTY ON VAN TOLLER
YACHT. MILLIONAIRE BACKER ENTERTAINS
BURNSIDE CAST”-and it began, “A new high in first-
night revelry was established last night when Cornelius
Van Toller (who, as this reporter has previously re-
vealed, is the money behind the sensational ‘Devil's
Due') entertained celebrities of stage and screen at a
party given for the cast of Norman Guthrie's newest
venture, aboard his magnificent yacht, the Margarita,
brought to special anchorage in the Sound for the oc-
casion,”
But one couldn't have read these
things until several hours later. Now, at two A.M., the
party was in full swing. As Monty Baron might have
said (and, in fact, did say) the S.Y. Margarita was “ablaze
with lights from stem to stern.”
And in her saloons, and over her decks, except for a
small, dark, roped-off section near the stern, milled the
guests of Cornelius Van Toller. There were glasses in
their hands, and the strains of stringed music in their
ears. Their bellies were pleasantly filled with ambrosial
food and, in the main, their heads with nectarial fumes.
They had been impressed by the play; they were more
than impressed by their host and their surroundings.
It grew to be two-thirty and more-but, as yet, only
one of the several launches had taken shorewards any
departing guests. There was, however, a tendency,
1 80


growing more and more marked as the time slipped by
and a certain chill began to creep into the salt air, to
leave the decks and concentrate in the main and lesser
saloons.
At a quarter to three, these were crowded almost be-
yond capacity—but still the corks popped and the music
played; still the stewards bustled, and the voices chat-
tered.
There were, of course, parties within the party. Some
were mere collections of people, others definitely
Groups. The biggest, and at this time and place the
most “important,” of these was collected at and around
a small table on the starboard side of the main saloon.
Behind this table, in his wheel chair, sat Lawrence
Bradford. On his right was Cornelius Van Toller, on
his left that doyenne of the English and American Thea-
ters, Miss Veronica Chapel. Permanent among the
standing throng around the table were Norman Guthrie
and Rivers Tomlinson, who seemed to form a sort of
steady core for a fluctuating mass which at one time and
another managed to include everyone in the genus of
those whom Monty Baron and his like were certain to
call "luminaries.”
For a young man who was at once war hero, inter-
esting invalid and successful playwright, Larry Bradford
was remarkably self-contained. True, he radiated ela-
tion, and was quite frankly enjoying every minute-but,
at the same time, and in spite of faithful attention to
the champagne glass which Cornelius Van Toller
seemed to think it his mission to keep forever brimming,
1 81


Which thoughts, exactly and at that
exact moment, were also Kay's. But she was in no posi-
tion to give them voice. So she leaned back in the cor-
ner of the settee, frequently sipping from the glass in
her hand, and kept on looking up at the long, thin man
who leaned over and went on talking, talking.
She felt suddenly as if she were going to cry again,
and took a determined swig of champagne from her
glass. The crisis passed-and she wondered, without car-
ing too much, whether her eyes looked all right or
whether they still showed traces of the storm of weeping
which had seized her in her dressing room a few hours
ago.
By one of those inexplicable acoustical phenomena
which seem to happen at all big parties, she suddenly
heard Larry's laugh cutting through all the component
sounds of the babel. It came from behind her, on the
other side of the saloon. She didn't turn around to look.
In fact, she shifted a little in her seat, so that her back
was even more squarely presented to any chance glance
of her husband's. She went on looking at the man who
bent over her. She couldn't face Larry again-not yet:
she couldn't be sure of successfully hiding the profound,
the abysmal disappointment which had consumed her
ever since the dream had played her false and he had
reached for his crutches. She'd done it for a whole hour
when the party started, and that was enough.
She listened determinedly to the face above her.
"... and Heywood for once looked foolish,” it was
1 8 3


saying. "It would have done your heart good to see him
-it really would!".
Kay laughed; she knew it was the right place to laugh
and hoped the laugh itself was right. She drained her
glass—and then, as a white-coated steward halted by the
settee, took a full one from his tray and set down the
empty.
“Then there was the time when I had that run-in
with G.A. . ." The rusty voice was going on, and on,
and on...
Out of the corner of her eye she saw another wine-
steward approaching. She finished what was in her
glass and beckoned to him. She wondered vaguely
whether there was enough champagne in the world to
make her drunk. And then she wondered vaguely
whether, in a manner of speaking, she wasn't drunk
already.
And then she saw Denis. He was standing at the long
bar which had been set up across the after-end of the
saloon. He had his back to her, and was talking to
someone she couldn't see because of some other people
in the way. Somehow she contrived to go on looking at
Denis without noticeably looking away from her dron-
ing companion. She found she liked looking at Denis.
She thought how well he looked in tails, not consciously
dressed-up as so many men do, but as if he'd just hap-
pened to put them on.
She wondered whom he was talking to-and then, as
the intervening heads moved out of the way, saw that
1 84


OV
met, there was a vibrating, breathless silence which
lasted until Denis broke it.
He said, “Well, well! That was a bad one!” and bent
over her and took her hand as if to pull her to her feet.
"And this is even worse!” he said.
She stood up. He let go of her hand but then his
fingers took hold of her arm, just above the elbow.
She didn't look at him but she didn't pull her arm
away.
She found they were threading their way toward the
entrance and the main companion.
“You know something?" she said. “I'd like another
drink.”
Denis paused. “Okay,” he said. “And after that a
bite of fresh air ..."
O
. TV
At precisely that moment, Cornelius
Van Toller was filling Larry Bradford's glass again.
In the group around them, a somewhat heated argu-
ment had arisen-and, under cover of its clamor, he
drew his chair nearer to Larry's, and leaned closer to
Larry and said, very low: “Lawrence, I want to talk
with you. Suppose you and I go up on deck for a while?”
down at his wheel chair with a rueful twist of his mouth.
Van Toller's smile was blent of exactly the right pro-
portions of sympathy, friendliness and understanding.
He said, “You came down in the elevator, Lawrence
-and it's still there, you know.”
1 87


“That's right, so it is!” Larry laughed. “Okay, let's
go!"
Kay and Denis stood at the port rail,
amidships. There was a breeze-and after the heat and
stuffiness down below, the air felt almost cold. Kay
pulled her cloak closer around her shoulders and looked
out over the still, glimmering water. Her head felt
clear now-abnormally clear.
She said, softly, “It's beautiful!” And then abruptly
turned around with her back to the rail and the sea.
She said, almost violently, “But I don't want to look
at beautiful things! They're sad! I want a drink.”
“All right.” Denis looked at her. “All in good time.”
He put his hand on her arm again. The cloak was
covering it now, but that didn't seem to make any dif-
ference.
He walked slowly and she had to keep pace with him.
They were moving toward the stern of the ship, and
there were no lights. They seemed to have the whole
deck to themselves. There was no moon, but the stars
were brilliant and the very darkness seemed itself to
have a luminous quality.
They came to a rope stretched forbiddingly across the
deck at waist height. Beyond was more deck, and then
the towering bulk of the poop. They stopped, and
Denis leaned on the rail and flipped away the end of his
cigarette. It descended in a glowing little arc which
1 8 8


vanished as it hit the water and made her wonder fleet-
ingly whether it had ever been at all.
“You know what your trouble is?” Denis said, exactly
as if there had been no break in their talk. “It's Tradi-
tion. You're overwrought, as they say—so what do you
do? You get out the book, and you look up what your
sort of person ought to do in the circumstances. And
the book says, 'Follow dotted line A-B in Fig. 14.' So
you turn over the illustrations until you find Figure 14
and you see dotted line A-B means 'Get plastered.'”.
“Book?" said Kay. “Oh, I suppose you mean that
Book-of-the-Rules you're always talking about.” She
tried to smile—but as he chose that moment to put his
hand on her arm again it was difficult.
His fingers tightened a little, and he drew her to one
side as he leaned over and unhooked the rope.
“Let's trespass,” he said. He pointed to the steep
companion which led up to the level above them.
“Might be nice up there."
She didn't say anything. She followed him over the
demarcation line, and waited while he hooked the rope
back in place, and then slowly crossed with him to the
foot of the companion. From below, through the open
ports of the main saloon, came a sudden swelling of
music as the group of strings set to work again after an
interval which had lasted, she realized now, ever since
she had come on deck.
1 89


VINT
There were two Cornelius Van Toll-
ers co-existent at this moment.
And he was both. And there was a third as well; a
third who watched the other two, and knew.
There was one who talked with Lawrence Bradford,
unrolling before the eyes and mind and feeling of the
cripple, a tapestried program of success and fame and
wealth.
There was the other, who was acting in accord with
the Plan.
With what he knew to be consummate artistry, he
stopped short in mid-sentence as he talked to Lawrence
Bradford.
And he turned his head, as if hearing something from
the companion-way behind him.
And he said, with precisely the correct touch of im-
patience in his carefully modulated voice, “Dear me!
I'm afraid we are going to be interrupted!”
And then he took the next step. It was easy, ridicu-
lously easy.
He said hurriedly, “Let us move, Lawrence,
quickly ..."
And then he said, as if in considerate afterthought,
“But perhaps you would rather postpone all this?”
He laughed. Just the right laugh. And then he said
the next words he had to say.
He said, “After all, I shouldn't be so impatient ..."
And Lawrence Bradford showed then that, though all
1 9 3


unconsciously, he too was subservient to the Plan. Be-
cause he said, “But I want to finish. Let's go!"
And Lawrence Bradford looked around him, and
said, after that, “But which way?”
He had to be careful that the chuckle rising inside
him did not show itself. He said to Lawrence Bradford,
after due pretense of cogitation:
"I know! This way, my boy."
And he started off toward the stern. He walked fairly
quickly, but not too fast for the chair to keep pace.
I x
They were both on their feet now,
and they were very close. But Denis wasn't touching
her.
They were standing near the starboard side-and they
could see the water. Or, if they wanted to, they could
look straight down and see the main deck.
Kay wasn't looking at either the water or the deck;
so she didn't see the gap in the rail; the gap some twelve
feet below and twenty to the left of where she was
would have called a landing-ladder.
And she wouldn't have thought about it even if she
had seen it. She was listening to Denis, and being
aware-shamefully, delightfully aware-of Denis' prox-
imity.
"So here it is,” Denis was saying. “I've been on the
stage, all over the world, nearly all my life . . .” His
voice was very low, but she could hear every syllable
1 94


ser
of every word. “I've worked with a great many people,
and a lot of them were good workmen. But you're the
best of them all.”
He meant it. She knew he meant it.
“Oh, Denis,” she breathed, and didn't know whether
the words made any sound or not. Her head felt
strange, as if she were dizzy inside, without any exterior
sensation. Somewhere in her was still the hard, dull
ache of her unhappiness and disappointment-but all
around it, almost hiding it, almost making her forget it
was there, was a deep, breath-taking excitement.
“And that,” said Denis, “is enough of impersonality.”
His voice was very low still, but it was different.
He moved. He turned to face her. His hands came
up and took her by the shoulders—and then, as if they
didn't like the feel of the cloak, moved themselves and
slid under the cloak where it fastened below her neck
and went back to the shoulders again.
She gasped-she couldn't help it-as his fingers closed
on the softness of her skin.
“Me too!” he said, so softly that, over the music,
which seemed to be growing louder and wilder, she
didn't hear the words so much as feel them.
His hands were insistent: they pulled her to him now
-desperately, strainingly close. She tilted her head to
look up into his face, and his head was lowered and
their mouths met.
195


х
The Plan was working with oiled and
exact precision.
Here was Lawrence Bradford, in his wheel chair.
And they were alone on the deck.
And there-just there!-was the gap in the rail.
And-to show how even the unpredictable was in
favor of the Plan-there was the loudness of the music
below.
In a moment, they would be past the gap, so they
must stop.
He dropped his cigar with exactly the right exclama-
tion of annoyance.
He stopped.
The wheel chair stopped.
He picked up the glowing end of the cigar and threw
it over the side.
He said, “Clumsy of me!” and pulled out his cigar
case.
Now he must induce Lawrence Bradford to turn the
wheel chair so that it faced the gap, and was not broad-
side to it.
He opened the cigar case and offered it to Lawrence
Bradford, who shook his head with a smile.
He took out a cigar himself, and pierced it, and struck
a match to light it-and let the sea-breeze blow out the
flame.
He lit another match and made pretense of trying to
shield the flame with his hands. And he let that match
blow out.
1 96


He gave vent to another exclamation, and used an-
other match, bending down by Lawrence Bradford's
shoulder as if to shield the flame.
He let this match blow out, too.
And Lawrence Bradford, as was fore-ordained, said,
“Just a minute ..."
And Lawrence Bradford turned his wheel chair, so
that his broad back would give ample shelter.
And now Lawrence Bradford was facing the sea and
the gap.
“Okay,” said Lawrence Bradford. “Duck down be-
hind me.”
XI
The kiss had seemed to last forever-
but now the contact was broken, and it was Denis who
had broken it.
She didn't want it broken. It was as if her mind had
stopped working, and all thought, as well as the proc-
esses of thought, had been taken over by her body, Her
hands had been on his shoulders; now, as he raised his
head, they slid around his neck and tried to hold him
closer. His arms moved-but they didn't let go of her.
One stayed around her shoulders, and the other, with a
little twist of his body, slid beneath her knees.
And she was lifted effortlessly-as easily as Deborah
was lifted by Noel from the steps to the Overseer's desk.
But her emotions were far from Deborah’s.
Holding her in his arms, Denis bent his head and
1 97


kissed her mouth again. And then he turned, as she had
known he would, toward the awninged seat.
He took a step and then abruptly stopped.
Her head was against his shoulder and she couldn't
see what he had seen. As he had turned and moved
away from the rail, his eye had chanced on the main
deck below—and he had seen two figures. They were
unmistakable. One was in a wheel chair, and the other
was standing behind the chair.
He saw something else as he looked again. He saw
the gap in the rail and its relation to the figures.
A quick frown drew his brows together. His mouth
opened for an instant and then closed sharply, with a
click of his teeth. Every muscle in his body tightened.
He looked like a man in whose mind has suddenly
dawned complete and unexpected understanding of
some hitherto unsolved problem.
With ungraceful haste, he dropped Kay down to her
feet. He muttered something which to her aghast ears
sounded like, “Back in a minute" and was gone, reach-
ing the top of the companionway in three silent, leap-
ing strides ... i
XIT
Now was the moment.
Everything was right. Everything was ready.
Placidly unaware, Lawrence Bradford sat in his wheel
chair.
And he was behind Lawrence Bradford, his hands
upon the back of the wheel chair.
1 9 8


His fingers gripped hard. His whole body grew rigid
with impending effort-
And something went wrong with the Plan. There
were running footsteps down the companion from the
poop-and, at the same moment, the bulky form of Lar-
sen appeared from the shadows at the other side.
Something had gone wrong with the Plan-but not
irretrievably.
He took his hands from the chair and turned toward
Larsen.
XIII
Over his arm, Larsen was carrying a
light dress overcoat. His heavy face was expressionless,
and his glance did not so much as flicker toward Law-
rence Bradford in the chair.
"Excuse me, sir," said Larsen, “but it's getting quite
chilly, sir ..."
He held out the coat, ready to be put on.
"Oh, thank you, Larsen,” said Cornelius Van Toller.
He slipped on the coat with Larsen's aid. He looked
at the wheel chair and said, “How about you, Law-
rence? Would you like Larsen to get you a coat?"
From behind the group, at the foot of the companion,
Denis was watching. After a moment, he turned as if to
go back up the steps. But he didn't. Kay was coming
down them. Her cloak was drawn closely around her,
and its collar stood up, framing her face in darkness.
He was standing in her way, and she turned sideways to
pass him. He was going to speak, but she spoke first.
1 99


“I think you do, my friend. Although, speaking for
myself, I've only just begun to.”
“Sir?” said Larsen again.
“D’you want a blueprint of my mental processes?"
Denis dropped his cigarette to the deck and trod on its
glowing tip. “They deal in the main with fires in thea-
ters; and diamonds as big as duck eggs; and missing sec-
tions of rail. That sort of thing. And they might add
up, Larsen, to a very unsatisfactory state of affairs.
Especially for Mr. Bradford.”
There was a long moment of silence.
“Need I say more?” said Denis, raising his voice a
trifle.
Larsen said, hurriedly, “No, no, sir. Not now." He
cast an anxious glance along the deck, and Denis, fol-
lowing the man's eyes, saw that the trio were coming
slowly along the deck, Kay on one side of the wheel
chair and Van Toller on the other.
He stood away from the bulkhead. He looked at Lar-
sen and said, “Call me when you get home. Village
42368."
“Yes, sir," Larsen said.
"And don't forget. Never mind what time it is.”
Denis turned away. He didn't want to meet the ad-
vancing trio, and the companion was handy.
He went down it as Larsen turned and walked off
Neither of them saw the one darting glance with
which Cornelius Van Toller had seen them in colloquy.
2 0 1


gathered his strength for the thrust at the wheel chair-
there had been the saving of him.
Because he had not intended that hesitation. Now
that he thought, and searched his memory, he knew.
Something apart from him had made him hesitate.
Made him hesitate so that he could be saved.
Saved so that the Plan could be adjusted, improved.
He knew this now. And he knew more. He knew,
suddenly, that everything about this apparent error had
had a purpose.
It had all been arranged with the sole object of show-
ing him where danger lay.
And danger lay in Larsen. It would always be there
while Larsen was there.
It lay certainly in Larsen. And possibly in the actor
LeMay.
So Larsen must be dealt with-and the other most
carefully watched.
It was after four-thirty when the big
black car rolled down Riverside Drive and turned in
through the iron gates.
And it was twenty minutes later that Cornelius Van
Toller, about to get into bed, looked at his man Larsen,
and smiled, and said kindly, "Now you take yourself
off, Larsen. It's shockingly late and you must get your
sleep."
"Thank you, sir,” Larsen said. He was momentarily
at ease, because, whatever the truth might be about
2 0 3


what hadn't happened on board the yacht, there seemed
no mistaking the genuineness of his employer's present
mood. It was a mood Larsen knew well; a mood which
poor Miss Caroline had always delighted in. “You see,
Larsen,” she used to say triumphantly, "when he's like
that, that's what he really is!"
“Good-night, sir,” Larsen said, and went out of the
bedroom and through the study.
He closed the door softly behind him-but then, in-
stead of going along the corridor toward the service-
stairway and his own quarters on the third floor, ran
quickly down the main stairs again.
an
Denis was in bed. But he wasn't
asleep. He was sitting up, with the pillows propped be-
hind his head, a book on his knees, and the telephone
on the bed-table beside him.
The telephone rang, and he reached out a hand and
picked it up and heard Larsen's voice. Even through
the receiver, it sounded cautious.
It said, “Mr. LeMay? ... This is Larsen ..."
"Yes,” Denis said, and then, “Larsen, you and I must
get together, and the sooner the better. There's a lot
for us to talk about.”
“Yes, sir.” There was a curious note in the hushed
voice now. “To be frank with you, Mr. LeMay, I'll be
glad to.”
“Things getting a little too much for you?”
"Well, sir, if you're right about about what nearly
204


ately above was a servants' bathroom-and he heard
Larsen's quiet, heavy tread on its tiled floor; then the
rushing of water into the tub.
Van Toller smiled. He eased the door back until it
closed soundlessly.
He went back along the passage. He went down the
main stairs. He went through into the kitchen quar-
ters, and down more stairs, and at last was in the cellars.
He moved fast—a lean, somber figure passing silently
through the somber house.
He was some minutes in the cellar before he found
what he wanted. But when he had found it, the rest
was simple.
He turned the big brass tap. It moved easily under
the pressure of his fingers—and at once the gas supply
was cut off from every outlet in all of the thirty rooms.
He retraced, upwards, his passage through the house
until he reached the second story service door. He
opened this again, as silently as before-and, now mov-
ing very slowly and with excessive care, mounted the
steps to the next floor. The bathroom door was closed
but through it he could hear the splashing sounds of
Larsen bathing.
Deliberately, neither slow nor fast, but still without
sound, he went along the dimly lit passage to Larsen's
room. The door was standing ajar, and the light was on.
He went in. He looked around him with sharp, dart-
ing glances—and found that the gas heater was in the
wall, close to the door.
He crossed to the one window and pulled back the
206


curtains and raised the blind. The upper sash stood
open a foot-and he pushed it slowly and carefully up
until it was completely closed.
He pulled down the blind again and drew the cur-
tain across. He moved back to the door and bent over
the gas heater and turned the tap fully to the “on” posi-
tion-and then, struck by a sudden thought, lifted a
corner of his silk robe, and rubbed the tap clean.
The bathroom door was still shut as he passed it, but
he could hear the gurgling of the wastepipe. He went
softly down the stairs to the service door. He pushed it
open and slipped through it, and then stood by it, hold-
ing it slightly open while he listened.
In a few moments, the bathroom door opened, the
light clicked off, and he heard Larsen's slippered feet
shuffling away along the corridor.
He heard Larsen's door close and gave a little sigh of
satisfaction ...
Again he waited until it was almost
dawn and he dared wait no longer.
He went to the cellars again and once more he turned
the big brass tap, this time polishing it with the corner
of his robe.
The gas was on again ...
2 0 7


tain she was ashamed of herself and her own weak-
nesses ...
“Kay!” said Larry's voice. “Kay! Time to wake up,
honey!”
She groaned again and rolled over on her back and
opened her eyes and somehow managed to sit up.
Wincing, she put a hand to her forehead. She saw
Larry sitting in his wheel chair between her bed and his
own. He was bathed, he was shaved, he was fully
dressed.
She rubbed her eyes and stared at him. She said,
"You look wonderful, darling! But don't look at me!"
She saw he was pointing at the bedside table. She
turned her head slowly and carefully and saw there was
a tray there; a tray with a pitcher of orange juice on it,
and a glass, and a cup, and a silver pot which steamed.
Larry laughed at her expression. He rolled the chair
up further between the beds and poured her a glass of
orange juice and put it into her hands.
"No miracle,” he said. “Just a telephone."
While she drank greedily, he slid his hand down in
the chair beside him and pulled out a thick mass of
neatly-folded newspapers, all turned back to their the-
atrical pages. He leaned over and set them on her knees.
She grabbed the topmost paper off the pile with one
hand and with the other held out her empty glass.
“More!” she said-and began to read.
By the time she'd finished her second cup of coffee,
she had read all of them once, and several twice. She
2 0 9


had also discussed them with Larry, collectively and
individually.
They were extraordinary notices. Among them, there
wasn't a dissentient voice. For the play there was noth-
ing but praise; and nothing but more praise for the
acting.
She had, in fact, only one little fault to find with
them. They seemed to say, all of them, a little too
much about herself and Denis, in almost equal propor-
tions, but not quite enough about Karle.
“I can't believe it!” said Larry suddenly, and looked
at her with that engaging grin of his. “I just can't be-
lieve it!"
She jumped out of bed and leaned over the chair and
put her arms around him and kissed him.
“It's true, darling!” she said. “And everything's won-
derful!"
von-
SO
But a little later, when she was alone,
and halfway through dressing, everything seemed far
short of wonderful.
She had cured her headache, and she knew now what
sort of a day lay in front of her. It wasn't a day of cele-
bration at all. It was a most unpleasant day. It was,
when she faced the facts, a frightening day.
It was made so by the two jobs she had to do. The
first, she had known about and dreaded for a week.
The second, she had only just decided upon.
Without Larry knowing, she had to go to the bank,
2 1 0


and she had to take Van Toller's impossible present out
of her safe-deposit box; and then she had to mail it,
with the extremely inadequate letter she had drafted the
day before, back to Riverside Drive.
And, also without Larry knowing, she had to see and
talk with Dr. Pressburger. She had to; there was an
absolute compulsion in her.
Dr. Pressburger had no time available,
but he went through the process known in his office as.
“squeezing her in.”
She had arrived at four-and now, at twenty-five min-
utes to five, she was about to leave.
She didn't want to leave, but she knew by the way
Dr. Pressburger was fidgetting that she'd already over-
stayed
She twisted her gloves on her lap. She said, trying to
keep desperation out of her voice:
"All I really want to know, Doctor, is whether it
might work. Not whether it would; whether it might.”
Doctor Pressburger put both hands on the desk and
rose to his stout height between them. He smiled briefly
down at Kay with very white teeth. He said:
“My dear Mrs. Bradford: that is not the type of ques-
tion which a medical man in my position should an-
swer. However, knowing you two young people as I do,
I will tell you that what you propose-although I could
not possibly recommend it-could bring about the de-
sired result ...".
2 1 1


He went on looking down at her. He was very grave.
He said, “But, very probably, it would not. And then
the emotional strain which would have been imposed,
not only upon your husband but upon yourself," He
allowed an expressive shrug to complete the sentence.
Kay got to her feet. She said, “Well, we seem to have
tried everything else,” and found her voice was un-
steady.
She said, “Well, thank you, doctor. Thank you very
much ..."
She felt tears pricking behind her eyes—and hurried
out of the office.
IV
Two and three-quarter hours later, at
exactly seven-thirty, Denis glanced at his watch for the
fifth time in as many minutes. Frowning, he looked
out of his booth and down the length of the crowded
bar of Alec's.
Charles flapped toward him, concerned.
“Anything the matter, Mr. LeMay?" asked Charles.
“I think,” said Denis, “that I'm being stood up.”
“That's too bad, sir." Charles shook his head sadly.
“Maybe I should get you another drink, sir, and the
evening paper?"
He brought both, and presently Denis was sipping at
a new glass and idly glancing at headlines. He had de-
cided to give Larsen only five more minutes when, turn-
ing the paper over to its second page, his eye was caught
by an item near the top.
I.
as a
2 1 2


He started, his eyes narrowing. He read:
DEATH IN SOCIALITE HOUSEHOLD
Second Tragedy in Month Strikes
Van Toller Mansion.
Van Toller was saddened today by the accidental
death, due to asphyxiation, of Mr. Van Toller's
confidential valet, Edmund Larsen.
By some accident, the gas in the man's bedroom
had been turned on. Although the window of the
room was shut, suicide is apparently out of the
question, according to other members of the house-
hold and Mr. Van Toller himself. The deceased
was not known to have any private troubles and
was very well contented with his post, which he
had held for quite some time ...
There was more, but Denis didn't trouble to read it.
The paper crumpled in his hand, he sat staring at the
other side of the booth.
He hadn't moved when, a few minutes later, Charles
came by again, and paused at the table. Charles glanced
at his watch and coughed.
"Excuse me, Mr. LeMay," he said. “But oughtn't
you to be getting over to the theater?”
Denis looked at him. “In a minute, Charles. Right
now I'm trying to remember something. It's a name.
It's something like Armstrong-or Anstruther. Unless
I'm crazy and it's Witherspoon ..."
.
IC booth.
2 1 3


Denis opened the door and stepped in and closed it
behind him.
He crossed to her one good chair and dropped into it
and sat back, crossing one leg over the other. She could
see him in her mirror as she turned, pretending to re-
touch her eyeshadow. He wasn't smiling-in fact, he
seemed unusually grave. But he was inexplicably, in-
furiatingly at his ease.
He said, “Well, they still seem to like it," and took a
cigarette from the pack on the arm of the chair and
lit it.
She turned on her dresser-stool and looked straight
at him.
She said, “Is that what you came in to say?"
"No." He did smile, now, but only briefly. “As a
matter of fact, I wanted the answers to a few simple
questions."
Kay drew a deep breath. “Look, Denis, I happened
to drink too much last night. I wish I hadn't-but I'm
just not going to talk about it!"
“Nor am I.” For an instant, the familiar half-satiric
gleam was back in his eyes. “Let's leave all that-for the
moment, at least.” He seemed to settle himself still
more comfortably in the big chair. “Right now, I
merely wanted to find out what you and your husband
were doing after the performance tonight?
Kay stared at him. The nice, protective, impersonal
shield she had built up in her mind was dissolving. She
was getting angry with him again-and that was a bad
sign.
iar
2 1 5


She said, flatly, “We're going right home." But then
couldn't help adding, “If it's anything to do with you.”
Denis looked at her impassively. “I happened to no-
tice Larry was in the box with Meinheer again. So I
was wondering whether"
She interrupted him. “You needn't worry, Denis,".
she said. “Nobody's forgotten to invite you to any-
thing." It was feline, and she meant it to be. She felt
feline.
But Denis only went on looking at her. It was odd,
the way he was looking at her. He hadn't ever looked
at her like this before.
He said, “How are you getting home? My car's here,
so I could drive you both if you like.”
couldn't understand.
He said, “Or maybe Meinheer's taking you, in that
battlewagon of his?"
"We're taking a taxi,” she said. “And it's ordered
already.”
Molly came in then, and the call-boy's voice from the
end of the corridor came with her, chanting, “Begin-
ners for Act Two, please! Beginners for Act Two!”
Denis stood up. He dropped the end of his cigarette
into an ashtray and made for the door, giving Molly a
smile as he passed her.
He went out-and Kay, looking after him with a puz-
zled expression, saw that Molly was carrying a long,
slim, beribboned box, plainly from a florist's.
216


Molly tendered the box with a smile. “It was at the
stage door, Miss,” she said. “It's from Mr. Van Toller."
Vi
Now was the time.
Two more minutes and she would be on the stage.
He let an exclamation escape him-and Lawrence
Bradford turned to look at him-and he leaned nearer
to Lawrence Bradford and said the words he had to say.
He whispered, “You must forgive me for a few min-
utes, my boy..."
He let his voice tail off into a mumble out of which
only the words, “... forgot something ... must be
attended to ... back very shortly” emerged at all
clearly.
And he was out of the box before she was on the
stage.
Long enough before to disassociate his departure from
her entrance; soon enough before to make sure he
would not meet her on the way to the dressing rooms.
He went through the pass door-and he moved, as he
was meant to move, swiftly but without undue appear-
ance of haste.
He saw no one on the way to her dressing room.
And when he tapped at the door, there was no an-
swer.
So every detail fitted. Even her dresser was not there.
He entered the square, dull room and it was fragrant
with the scent of her.
He found her purse. It stood on the little shelf above
217


things he had to use: the woollen muffler; the small,
neat, vicious saw; the small bottle of oil.
Surely, silently, he stepped out onto the roof garden.
He looked to his left and to his right.
And he felt a surge of elation.
The apartment to the left was dark. The apartment
to the right was dark. And from immediately above
came a loud and raucous blaring of cheap music.
He stepped away from the windows. And then-he
could not help it, though it wasted another fragment
of time-he paused. And he traced, with his eye and his
mind's eye, the route which Lawrence Bradford inev-
itably took when he wheeled himself out here in his
chair.
The route which had become routine.
He could see it now. As he had seen it not once, but
a dozen times.
Lawrence Bradford wheeling down over the little
wooden ramp. Lawrence Bradford spinning the chair
in a wide, fast circle. Lawrence Bradford-his back to
the corner and the little hedge with the guardrail be-
hind it-giving one sudden, tremendous thrust with his
powerful arms.
Lawrence Bradford, in his chair, rapidly rolling back
until the wheels bumped against the hedge and the rail.
And Lawrence Bradford grinning then and saying,
"Neat, huh?”
Lawrence Bradford, who would follow this route only
once again.
He wasted no more time. Protected by the darkness
2 1 9


and the blaring music from above, he went to the cor-
ner, and he knelt, and he took the little saw, and he put
oil on its blade.
And he set to work.
The teeth of the saw bit surely into the metal.
It did not take him long. Much less time than he had
anticipated.
He stood straight. He gently tested the guardrail with
his hand.
And it shook. With its three supporting rods sawn
almost through, it would fall at the lightest blow.
He went back into the dark living room. He put the
tools back into the pockets of his overcoat.
He retraced his course to the door-and through it-
and out of the building.
And again he found a cab at once.
And he was back in the theater before the curtain
rose on the Third Act.
Lawrence Bradford smiled at him.
And he smiled at Lawrence Bradford.
2 2 0


had gone back into the theater, and then, as the limou-
sine reached the mouth of the alley, started to follow it.
He had an uneventful journey. At stately speed, the
great black car rolled unhurried, undeviating way to
Riverside Drive. It slowed as it approached the
wrought-iron gates, then made a stately, sweeping turn,
and passed through them.
Denis drove by. He went a few hundred yards
further, and turned, and drove back, and parked unob-
trusively opposite the gates. He was in time to hear the
main door of the house close, and the car drive away to
the back. He sat where he was for ten minutes, and
watched the lights in the windows until all those on the
ground floor were out and others had come to life on
the second.
He drove away then, fast. He was frowning: he
seemed angry and impatient, like a man who has played
safe but fears he's been wasting his time.
. It was nearly one o'clock when he
reached the address the telephone book had given him
as being the residence of the most likely Armbruster.
But fortunately the house-a decorous, soberly rich
brownstone-was not yet dark. He parked on the other
side of the street and crossed quickly to the house and
went up its steps two at a time and put his thumb on
Almost at once the door was opened, by a sharp-fea-
tured, middle-aged woman in a cap-and-apron uniform
2 2 3


which should have looked anachronistic but somehow
didn't in this doorway. She regarded Denis with blank
hauteur, waiting for him to speak.
He said, “Mr. Armbruster at home? I have to see
him.”
Her expression didn't change. She said, “Mr. Arm-
bruster has retired,” and started to close the door.
But Denis moved quickly nearer and put his hand
against it. He saw her eyes widen in fear, and said
quickly:
“It's very urgent business. Very urgent!” He put a
foot on the door sill. “You'd better get Mr. Armbruster
-quick!”
She stared at him, gaping, torn between panic and
indignation. In a moment she would either scream or
try and slam the door on his foot. He said:
“Tell him Mr. LeMay has to see him. Denis LeMay.”
He took a chance on the scream, and pushed against the
door, and she gave way and he stepped over the thresh-
old.
A male voice demanded, “What is all this? What's
going on?” and a fussy, pompous, gray-haired man came
bustling out of an inner door into the furniture-crowded
hall. He switched on another light as he spoke, and
Denis saw an interior which might have been designed
for any play about the ’nineties. He also saw, standing
close to the front door, as if they had only recently
been brought into the house, a cabin-trunk and two
suitcases.
The maid fluttered. She started to stammer some-
2 2 4


thing, but Denis cut in on her. He looked at the man
and said, “Do you handle the Van Toller affairs? If you
do, I have to talk to you. Now. My name's LeMay."
“Mine's Armbruster.” The man was looking at Denis
with a puzzled frown. “You're Denis LeMay, aren't
you?” He didn't sound so indignant now, and he waved
an impatient dismissal at the hovering maid, and she
sniffed loudly and picked up one of the suitcases and
went off with it.
Armbruster went on staring at Denis. “This is a
peculiar time to call, Mr. LeMay. I only returned from
a vacation half an hour ago—and I'm tired after the
journey. I suggest that tomorrow=”.
Denis didn't let him finish. “This is important.” He
looked down at the man without any expression. “If
you called it a matter of life and death, you wouldn't be
wrong."
"You mentioned the name Van Toller?” Armbruster
said. He seemed to be hovering between anger and
concern.
Denis nodded. “And there's more to come. D’you
want to hear it where you are?" He sounded as if he
didn't like Mr. Armbruster much, and looked even
more that way.
"H'mm!” said Armbruster in his throat and then,
“H’mm!" again. He waved Denis into the room he had
himself appeared from, and followed.
It was, in equal thirds, library, office and sitting room,
and it matched the parlor maid and her uniform. There
were glass-fronted cases of leather-bound books, and a
4,
2 2 5


He paused again. “Suppose I start 'way back," he
said. “Before any of the current characters come into
the plot at all. Suppose I start with the original produc-
tion of a terrible play called Brother O' Mine-and a
girl called Margaret Alden ..."
TIL
And, twenty minutes later, he sat
back, and sighed, and shifted his position in his chair.
"That's all,” he said. “A tale told by an idiot, full of
sound and fury-and signifying a hell of a lot of
trouble!"
Armbruster had been sitting very still. He hadn't
spoken, and he had kept a hand up to his forehead,
shading his face, all the time Denis had been talking.
But now he thrust back his chair-and stood up-and
glared at Denis. He said:
"Do you realize, Mr. LeMay, that the man you've
been talking about is one of the country's foremost
figures?”
“Of course I do!” Denis sat forward. “And I also
realize he has one of the country's foremost bank ac-
counts. Which is why he's never been put where he
belongs-in a lunatic asylum!"
A surge of color came to Armbruster's face, then
ebbed away. “I protest!” His voice was thick and un-
certain. “These monstrous allegations—"
Denis cut him short. “If you don't want 'em, I can
go down to Center Street and make them there!" He
put his hands on the arms of his chair as if about to rise.
2 2 7


“And so help me, that's what I will do, if you don't
talk sense.”
Armbruster's eyes wavered; the glare became an un-
certain stare. He muttered, “We mustn't grow heated,
sir, we mustn't grow heated,” and sank back into his
chair. He seemed smaller, shrunken. With visible
effort, he spoke again, but now his words were slow and
careful.
He said, “Let me assure you, Mr. LeMay, that I real-
ize your motives to be above reproach. But I feel bound
to point out that your conclusions are based merely
upon inference-” he paused a moment-"if not imag-
ination.”
Denis looked at him. “Why aren't you throwing me
out, then? Why didn't you throw me out ten minutes
ago?"
Plainly, Armbruster did not like this. But he went
on talking, still in the same painstaking way. He said:
“Let us, if you please, examine your indictment piece-
meal. Let us take, for instance, the sad death of Miss
Caroline Van Toller. Now this was not unexpected; the
poor lady had for years been suffering from a dangerous
heart condition ..."
Denis shifted in his chair, but he didn't say anything
-and the dry, precise voice went on.
"Now the man Larsen," it said. “The death of this
unfortunate fellow would seem to have been one of
those tragic but lamentably frequent accidents which
occur every day in New York. And what you and Lar-
sen may have imagined you were about to see on the
2 2 8


yacht last night, that could well be nothing more than
-ah-nebulous fantasy ..."
He waited—and then, as Denis still did not speak,
seemed to gather confidence.
"To go further back,” he said. “To the fire in the
theater. Now, I heard about that at the time—and so I
know that it was not serious. Also, no one was
hurt ..."
He paused again, and leant forward, crossing his
hands judicially and resting them upon the edge of the
desk.
“So may we pass from incident,” he said, “to what
you, Mr. LeMay, appear to consider as motivation? I
refer to Mr. Van Toller's-ah-relations with Miss Al-
den, and later with Miss Forester; to his-ah-feelings
in regard to these ladies—”
Denis sat up. He said, savagely, “I know! He's got a
Mother-complex. He just wants little girls to be
happy!”
He jumped to his feet. He slammed his first down on
the gleaming mahogany, so hard that the silver-framed
photograph fell face downward with an ugly clatter.
"For Christ's sake!” he said. “I'm sick of this! What
do you want-clues, and fingerprints, and candid-camera
snapshots?”
He leaned both hands on the desk and towered over
the shrinking Armbruster. “I've told you once," he
said. “I'll tell you again: Cornelius Van Toller's a
public menace! He's trying to get rid of Larry Brad-
ford because he wants Larry Bradford's wife. And any-
2 2 9


one in his way-anyone who tries to stop him-gets
quietly and skillfully removed from this world!”
With visible effort, Cecil Armbruster averted his eyes
from the angry eyes above him. He reached out a hand
which was not quite steady and picked up the fallen
photograph. He looked at it with a strange expression-
and set it down, meticulously, in its permanent place.
And then he looked up. He seemed exhausted sud-
denly, and much older, and when he spoke his voice
was unsteady.
He said, “Mr. LeMay, I will not try to hide from you
the fact that Mr. Van Toller does indeed suffer from a-
a sporadic mental derangement. In view of your-of
your revelations-suspicions, I should say—it is abund-
antly clear that steps must be taken-"
"What steps? And when?"
Armbruster stood up. He came slowly around the
desk and stood near Denis' chair. Now he had sur-
rendered completely, he was almost pitiable.
"If you think everything is-safe tonight,” he said, “I
was intending to visit Mr. Van Toller the first thing
tomorrow morning. I should have Dr. Auerbach with
me, of course—and he could-could decide what course
to take ..."
"All right,” said Denis, after a pause. “Provided you
call me right away and tell me what's been done."
He stood up and bent over the desk and picked up a
pad and pencil and wrote. “There's my number," he
said, and turned away and was starting for the door
when Armbruster checked him.
2 30


CHAPTER 20
It was nine o'clock.
In spite of her fatigue, Kay had been up since seven.
She was in the living room, sitting by the French
windows. She had opened them for the morning sun,
and was staring out blankly across the roof garden. She
was very pale and her face was drawn, but there was a
look of resolution about her eyes and her mouth. It
was resolution which had been hardened by all the
thinking of a sleepless night, and now she was only
waiting for the time for action to arrive.
She sat very still. Some little time ago she had heard
Larry get up, and then the thump-thump of his crutches
as he went to his dressing room. She was waiting to
hear the thump-thump again as he came back.
2 3 2


She heard it-and got up, slowly and stiffly, and
crossed to the desk where the phone stood, and reached
out her hand, and took off the receiver and laid it down
beside the base of the instrument. She had thought
everything out, and she knew she had to do this: at any
cost she must avoid the dangers of interruption.
She stood with her hand on the desk, listening to the
sounds from the bedroom. After a moment, she crossed,
very quietly, to where the wheel chair stood, close to
the bedroom door. She took hold of the chair and
pulled it away from the door and then pushed it right
across the room.
She sat on the arm of a big chair and started waiting
again. Her heart was beating too hard and too fast, but
she did her best to pay no attention to it, nor to the
dryness of her mouth, and most particularly she tried
to ignore the hollow feeling of fear inside her.
There wasn't long to wait now; there couldn't be.
She wished desperately she'd never thought of doing
what she was determined to do. But, since she had
thought of it, she was going to do it. There was a com-
pulsion in her to do it.
It was nine o'clock.
A taxi passed Kay's apartment house. At the mo-
ment, it was the only vehicle on the street at this end
of the block, and if she had happened to be on the roof
garden, she could have seen its yellow top.
It went to the end of the block, and then, without
2 3 3


pings which Armbruster hadn't noticed before, on the
floor by the chair.
“Ye-yes, doctor," Fawcett quavered. “And when he
opened it—and saw what it was—and read the note, Oh
his face, sir! - I said something-I don't remember
what-and he turned on me!” The tears had come now
and were running down the furrowed cheeks. "He-he
-picked up the lamp and struck at mel ..." His voice
tailed off into snuffling sobs.
Armbruster started to speak, but Auerbach shook his
head warningly, and pointed meaningly at the package.
Armbruster stooped and fumbled among wrappings
and came up with a sheet of notepaper in one hand and
a flat case of gold-tooled leather in the other.
He opened the case, and saw the incredible gem which
Denis LeMay had told him about. He shut the case
quickly and looked at the letter. It was signed, “Kay”-
and his perturbed eye caught several unrelated phrases
which were more than enough; such phrases as,
"... sure you will understand ... so you must real-
ize Larry wouldn't let me accept ... be able to thank
you enough for all you've done ..."
He slipped the leather case into one pocket, the letter
into another, and he heard Fawcett's voice again-
“... I was afraid, doctor! His face!”
He looked at Auerbach. He said, “I must telephone.
Back in a minute.”
He ran from the room, making for the telephone in
the hall. He pulled the piece of paper with Denis'
number on it from his pocket. With shaking hands, he
2 39


you ask me, I think they're your whole trouble. I've
been feeling that way for quite a while ..."
She let her voice trail away into silence. She went on
looking at him.
He took another overlong step toward her on his
crutches. He swayed dangerously this time, and her
heart seemed to stop beating and then start again with
savage, irregular thuds. She clung to the chair. She
didn't move, and she didn't let her face change.
He recovered his balance. He said, “Oh, Kay-don't,"
in a whisper-and she nearly broke.
But she didn't. Her face looked as if she hadn't heard,
and she said, “Doctors! If you didn't pay so much atten-
tion to what Pressburger and the others keep telling
you; if you just used your own sense, and wanted to, you
could beat this thing yourself. And easily, too!”
She had to look away from his eyes. She couldn't bear
to see them.
But he turned his head away. He was looking at his
wheel chair. His crutches went thump-thump as he took
two steps-careful steps, this time-toward it. And then
he rested. He was breathing harder than ever, and when
he spoke there was something in his tone which, impos-
sibly, hurt more than his eyes had hurt. The words
meant nothing, it was his voice.
“There's no point going on with this,” he said. “I
think I'll get some air."
He took two more steps on the crutches, and rested
again-and she knew what was going to happen.
He was going to the chair. In another four steps he'd
2 4 4


reach it, and then he'd let himself down into it-and
he'd wheel it out onto the roof-and go to his usual
corner-and all this would have been for nothing! For
worse than nothing, because she would have failed com-
pletely, and she would have to tell him she'd only been
trying a dangerous experiment-and that would make
him more set than ever-and-and-
She couldn't let it happen. She had to keep trying,
had to!
The idea came to her, and she acted on it without
any second thought. She stood up, and crossed in front
of him, and sat in the chair herself.
She made her eyes hard. She even made her mouth
smile a small hard smile as she looked up at him.
“This isn't bad,” she said. “Quite comfortable.”
His face was white, even his lips. He said, in a
strange, strangled sort of voice, “This isn't funny. Get
out of my chair, will you!” He was three or four paces
from her still-some five or six crutch steps.
“You know what?" she said. “I don't think there's
much the matter with you at all, really. I think you
don't want to be well. I think it's more ‘interesting' to
be waited on-and admired for being so brave'-and-"
"You'd better stop, Kay!” He took another step for-
ward on the crutches. “And get out of my chair!"
VII
It was twenty-five minutes past nine.
He had looked at his watch and it was twenty-five
minutes past nine.
2 4 5


He kept the binoculars steady at his eyes. His arms
were aching, but he didn't mind them aching.
Through the binoculars, clearer and sharper than it
would have been if he himself had been standing there,
he could see the roof garden.
But still there was no one on it. And no sign of any.
one.
But he could wait.
He caught his breath. He had seen something-a
movement in the patch of darkness made by the French
windows.
He stood away from the wall. He was careful not to
alter by a fraction the angle of the binoculars.
Now he couldn't feel the ache in his arms.
He saw another flicker of movement in the darkness
of the windows.
And then he saw the chair!
It came rolling down the little ramp onto the roof.
But it came slowly, not nearly as fast as it usually did.
The sun was strong against him, and he could not
see as well as he had hoped.
But he saw the chair make the turn which was prelude
to the swift roll backward to the rail.
There was something wrong with the turn, with the
whole way the chair was moving.
And then he saw what was wrong.
It was not Lawrence Bradford in the chair. It was a
woman in the chair. It was Kay.
He heard a scream come from his mouth. “No!” he
2 4 6


Auerbach made a little clicking sound with his tongue
against his lips.
Diagonally across the busy roadway, weaving in and
out of indignant traffic, running toward them with a
wild, incredible speed, was the figure of Cornelius Van
Toller.
His eyes were staring. His mouth was a wide dark
hole in his face. His gray hair was tossed in disorder.
And surrounding him almost palpably was the aura of
madness.
Dr. Auerbach made a little sign with his hand and
the two solid men moved forward. The wildly-racing
figure, reaching the sidewalk, tried to swerve around
them-and failed—and then, as they grappled with him
and held him, started to scream out, on a dreadful high-
pitched note, a babbling, incomprehensible torrent of
words.
Dr. Auerbach moved in on the swaying group. Some-
thing glittered in his hand, and the two solid men held
one of their captive's arms out rigidly, the sleeve moved
back from its white flesh.
A little crowd began to gather, and Armbruster
moved fusily about in it, saying things like, “No trouble
-no trouble ... Medical case-medical case ..."
The captive was quieter now. He wasn't struggling
any moreand the babbling torrent of words had died
down. He seemed to sag in the grip of the men who
held him, and they began to move him toward Auer-
bach's car.
They were half-leading, half-carrying him-but sud-
2 4 8


denly he stopped. He seemed to be fighting for
consciousness. For an instant he stood straight. He
shook his head as if to clear it, and he said, loudly and
distinctly, but as if each apparently unrelated word were
a final effort, “Rail ... Break ... Stop her... Chair ..."
There was something piteous in the insane effort the
man was making, and Denis turned away.
"Come on. Come on, now,” said one of the solid men
quietly-and Van Toller, with one last struggle to free
his arms, collapsed as the drug took charge of him.
He was hurried, neatly, into Dr. Auerbach's car. A
solid man sat on each side of him in the rear seat-and,
in the front, Dr. Auerbach slid behind the wheel.
Armbruster watched them drive away. He turned
back to the apartment house entrance, to where Denis
stood beside the door. He took out a handkerchief and
mopped his forehead and watched the little crowd of
watchers break up. He was very white, and the fingers
which held the handkerchief were trembling violently.
Denis looked at him, and took him by the arm and
led him through the glass-and-metal doors and sat him
on the nearest chair in the lobby.
“Thank you, thank you,” muttered Armbruster, and
mopped again, and pushed the handkerchief back into
his pocket.
Denis smiled at him suddenly. “You know what we
ought to do?” he said. "We ought to get out of here
and go and give thanks somewhere. Over several
drinks ..."
2 4 9


IX
It was half past nine.
And Larry was outside now. She was still in the
wheel chair, halfway across to his corner. She was rock-
ing the chair to and fro, rolling it back a few feet; then
forward.
He was standing just outside the windows, at the top
of the little ramp. He wasn't leaning against the win-
dow-frame, he was balanced on his crutches.
The sun was so strong that she couldn't-thank God!
-see his face properly.
She was talking. It was strange, but she seemed to
have to wait until she'd said something before she knew
what the words were. She was saying:
“... So if you still want your chair, why don't you
come and get it?”
And then she was saying, “Without those damn
crutches!"
Larry said something then. It was the first time he
had spoken since she had rolled the chair away from
him and out of the windows.
Larry said, "Hasn't this gone far enough? Or too far,
maybe?”
She thought: if he uses that voice again, I can't go on!
And like an echo in her mind came a memory of Dr.
Pressburger's voice. That grave, slow voice saying,
“... and then the emotional strain which would have
been imposed, not only upon your husband, but upon
yourself_"
2 50


She could see in her mind the foreboding shrug which
had finished the sentence.
But she looked across at Larry, wrinkling up her eyes
as if the sun was hurting them. And she said:
"You'd like to hit me, wouldn't you? ... Well, why
don't you come and do it?”.
And then she said, “Without those crutches!"
The crutches went thump-thump, thump-thump.
Their rubber tips sounded hollow on the wood of the
ramp.
He was down on the roof-level now. He was standing
there, swaying. He was looking at her.
“Without the crutches,” she said and rolled the chair
back a few feet toward the rail ...
It was thirty-three minutes past nine.
Denis and Armbruster still sat in the lobby. There
was a little more color in Armbruster's face now, and no
sweat on his forehead. But his eyes were still clouded
with shock and distress, and still he kept talking on the
subject which plainly was going to possess his mind for
a long time to come.
"It's no use, Mr. LeMay,” he said. “I simply cannot
get over the look on his face! And the sound of his
voice! It was as if he was someone else!” He shuddered.
“Someone I'd never known.”
Denis got up from his chair. “I still say what you need
is instant stimulation-in a large glass.”
Armbruster stood up too. He tried to smile, but with-
2 5 1


out much success. The troubled look came back into
his eyes and he said, “I'll never get that out of my mind
-never! That face! That voice! That senseless bab-
bling-something about 'rails,' and 'falling'-and some-
body-some woman-who had to be stopped...” He
shook his head. “It's going to ring in my ears, that
voice!”
And then he said, “There was another word he kept
saying. What was it? . . . 'Break.' That was it! Raiſ
and 'break ... Extraordinary! Do you suppose, Mr.
LeMay, that his disordered mind had gone back to the
incident on the yacht? Maybe he-"
He broke off, staring astonished at the expression on
Denis' face—and then, completely amazed, at the sight
of Denis racing with long, furious strides across the
lobby ...
XI
It was thirty-six minutes past nine.
And Larry was halfway across the roof garden.
But he was still on the crutches. They went thump-
thump every time he took a step toward her.
She was only a few feet from the corner now. If she
let him come much further she wouldn't be able to twist
the chair out of his way. If she let him come much
further she would have to see his face. Not only look
at it, but see it. And she knew she couldn't bear it.
She wondered whether she could keep this up-and
heard herself talking again.
2 5 2


“Without the crutches!” she was saying. “Be a little
man now, and throw them away!”
But they went thump-thump once more-and he was
a step nearer.
He said, "Get out of that chair!” and his voice
sounded as if he were speaking without opening his
teeth.
She almost closed her eyes. He was very close now.
If she wanted to keep this up she must get out of his
way.
She sent the chair backwards with all the force of her
arms and body, so that it would bump against the hedge
and the rail in his corner-and perhaps give her time to
turn it and get out of reach ...
But even as she made the effort, even a fraction of an
instant before the wheels started to roll, she was aware
of something happening, something outside her and
Larry-some fierce and urgent interruption ...
A burst of sound from inside the apartment-a crash
as if the front door had been thrown violently open-a
wild sound of pounding, racing feet-a hoarse shout in
a man's voice she seemed to recognize-
She didn't understand. She was angry. She couldn't
-she mustn't-have interruptions.
The chair was rolling back. It was rolling fast-but
Larry was very near. She was waiting, desperately, for
the bump at her back which would mean she could start
to turn the chair, and get away, and go on trying ...
The chair was rolling back ... But the racing feet of
the interruption pounded across the living room-and a
2 5 3


figure burst out from the French windows—and took
one flying jump toward her-and landed almost on top
of Larry, who was half-turned around to see what it
was-
And she saw it was Denis-and, just as if he didn't see
Larry on his crutches-just as if he didn't even know
Larry on his crutches was there-he pushed violently
past Larry and made another sort of rushing leap to-
ward her ...
The crutches flew out of Larry's grip and fell down
with a clatter-and Larry almost fell too, only the big
garden table was near enough for him to catch hold of
and save himself-
The back of the wheel chair bumped against the rail.
Only it didn't bump the way it should have-it sort of
squashed. And instead of being solid behind her, it gave
way with a deadly, sickening, empty weakness ...
All in the same instant, in the same miniscule little
fragment of time, she knew there was nothing beneath
her-nothing for two hundred feet and more. She saw-
not with her eyes but in her mind-she saw the nothing-
ness her body was going to pass through-
But something caught her. Something checked her.,
A hand. A rough, violent, immensely powerful hand.
Denis' hand. It was like the hand of God.
It caught her by the front of her blouse-and by her
flesh. It checked her, so that she couldn't fall. And it
hurt her. It tore her back from the grip of gravity. It
hurt her so much that she cried out-
In her ears there was a peculiar, crunkling noise as the
2 5 4


He was standing. His arms were around her and his
crutches were lying behind him. He was leaning on her
strength but he was standing.
They went on holding each other, and they kissed,
and when he raised his head it was only so that he could
see her face.
He said in a whisper, “My God, sweetheart!-if it
hadn't been for LeMay-"
And she remembered Denis. Her head felt odd-she
didn't seem able to make it work properly.
She said, “Denis!” and looked-and saw him.
He was standing by the windows. He had a cigarette
in his hand which he must have just lighted, and he was
looking straight at her and Larry. But he didn't seem to
have heard her.
He muttered something. He was talking to himself,
thinking aloud. But she could see his mouth, and she
could see the words whether she actually heard them or
not.
He said, “I suppose I ought to give up!”-and then,
although she called his name again, much louder, he
disappeared through the windows. .
She heard his footsteps crossing the living room-and
then, after a moment, the slam of the front door.
2 5 6





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