The Case of the Solid Key Page 2

  “Not just Sarah,” Norman murmured. “Oh no. It couldn’t stop there. But Sarah Plunk …!”

  “Where’s Carol?” the girl asked.

  “My fatal charm’s wearing off. I’d already put the Little People to work on the problem, and was just thinking of calling in the family banshee, when she gave it up as a bad job. She’s out with Hardy tonight, and I wish her luck.”

  “What in?”

  “In getting the ants out of her pants.”

  “Sounds interesting,” said Norman. “But who is this Carol?”

  “Another Carrutherite. We sort of cluster here at Joe’s.”

  “Carol,” said O’Breen, “is rich, and the noun rhymes with the adjective.”

  “This little theater of yours,” Norman ventured hesitantly, “what sort of plays does it produce?”

  “Turkeys. Stinkeroos to you. You should see the sweet little opus we’re werking on now. The Soul Has Two Garments—so help me Saint Malachi, that’s the title.”

  “But Mr. Jordan is such a fine man,” the girl interposed.

  “So that makes him a playwright? Look, my sweeting: I am myself indifferent honest, and I’ve even got a heart of gold at odd moments; but I can’t act for sour apples.”

  “And yet you’re in the little theater. I wonder why?”

  “All right. You, my radiant child, can act fabulous rings about anybody else there. And yet you’re in the little theater. Can I wonder why, too?”

  For a moment those two sat staring intently at each other. An unpleasant haze of suspicion was descending on the once bright scene—suspicion of what, Norman could only wonder. He broke the silence with, “Your director does originals then?”

  “Yes. On terms arranged with the author.”

  “I wonder …”

  “Why not? You can’t be worse than Jordan.”

  Norman looked at Sarah Plunk. “There’s a part in there that you might just—”

  O’Breen gestured at a figure entering the spot. “Gathering of the clans,” he exclaimed. “Hi, Fran! Over here!”

  The newcomer looked their way, returned Fergus’s wave with great gravity, and steered a perilous course among furniture to their table. Her clothes were comfortably shabby and her age impossible to guess—probably a little under thirty, though she looked older. Her face was squarish and high-cheeked, with a suggestion that she might be capable of an almost Cornell type of beauty; but at the moment she was obviously tired, dispirited, and more than a little drunk.

  “Fran Owen,” said the redhead, “this is Harker. Further handles?”

  “Norman.”

  “Thanks. Mine’s Fergus, by the way—last names don’t endure long around little theaters. Fran here is our character woman—born to play Chekhov or Odets, neither of which she’s ever had a crack at. Harker, Fran, is a playwright.”

  “Oh God,” said Fran in greeting.

  “He’s nice though,” said Sarah. “For a playwright. And he’s from Oklahoma.”

  “Look,” Fran protested. “I came here for a cup of coffee. Nice, strong, hot black coffee. I don’t want playwrights from Oklahoma. I never asked for playwrights from Oklahoma. All I want is nice, strong, hot black coffee and then I’ll go home.”

  “I’ll get it.” Fergus rose and went to the bar.

  “I shouldn’t have made it Joe’s,” said Sarah plaintively.

  “Why, Mata?”

  “People. Nice people. People I like. But not tonight. I could have gone on being—”

  “You have gone on being. I don’t have to make the obvious quotation about names, do I? All this means is that now I can—”

  Fran burped abruptly. “I beg your pardon. Am I in the way or something? Because I’m going home right away. All I want is—”

  “—nice, strong, hot black coffee,” Fergus concluded, setting a steaming cup before her. “And one straight rye,” he put it at his own place, “and two beers. On the house.”

  Fran roused herself. “On the house! Joe never does that.”

  “Well, on the house of O’Breen.”

  “Fergus!” said Sarah. “You shouldn’t.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll put it on my expense account.”

  “Expense account?”

  “I mean my calculations on what it costs me to be an actor. Normal Expenses: Item, entertainment of charming actresses and promising playwright.”

  “Please.” Norman took out his billfold. “Think of the playwright’s pride.”

  “Do you indulge in such luxuries?” A gleam of curiosity came into the green Irish eyes. “What’s that in your billfold? Clippings on your notable career?”

  “Don’t mind Fergus,” said Sarah. “He’s just another Elephant’s Child with a ’Satiable Curiosity. Only it’s more fun to pull his leg than his nose.”

  Norman took the clippings out. “Career notes,” he said, “but not mine. They’re a murderer’s.”

  “Amateur criminologist? Research for an article?”

  “For a play, I hope—if I can get the damned thing straightened out in my own mind.”

  “Can I see? Murder’s more or less of a hobby of—Aha! The Randolph case! Splendiferous!”

  “You’re familiar with it?”

  “God, yes. It’s a classic. The second homicidal use of sodium fluoride in history, and officially unsolved. Have you got any ideas on it?”

  “Cheerful conversation,” said Fran thickly.

  “At least,” Sarah observed, “it’s better than the war. Go on, boys.”

  “Yes and no,” Norman replied. “Of course the obvious murderer is Beemis—the business manager. But that alibi of his—”

  “I’ve an idea on that,” Fergus broke in eagerly. “It all depends on that stomach analysis establishing the time from the last meal. Now if—” He glanced at the girls and paused. “Maybe we’d better take that up later. I suppose I’ll be seeing you around?”

  Fran picked up the clippings. Absent-mindedly she also picked up Fergus’ straight rye and emptied it into her nice, strong, hot black coffee.

  “Afraid you will. I’ll try anything once, and I can’t lose by at least seeing your director. What’s his name?”

  “Carruthers. Rupert Carruthers, no less.”

  “And what’s he like?”

  There was a moment’s silence. “Different people,” said Fergus at last, “seem to get different slants on that. I’d like to talk to you after you’ve seen him.”

  “What’s the phone at the theater? Should I make an appointment?”

  “Tell you what. Got a car?”

  “No.”

  “Give me your address, and I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning and drive you down to the theater with me. Introduce you around, and you can size things up. I could even drive you all home tonight if—”

  “I think I’d like a walk,” said Sarah. “After another beer or so—Fran!”

  Fran Owen staggered halfway to her feet. Her face was blank and terrible. Her hand, clenching the table, was brilliantly white against the dirty wood. For a moment she stood there wavering, then slumped to the floor. The clippings fell with her and scattered. Beside her face lay that peculiarly morbid shot which a daring Cincinnati reporter had secured of Mrs. Randolph’s stark and all but naked corpse.

  Chapter 2

  It had been the hell of an ending to a romantic evening. Fergus’ roadster (as yellow as the outrageous polo shirt) had served as ambulance and Sarah Plunk had gone along as nurse, leaving Norman to walk home alone and ponder at length just what sort of setup he was getting entangled with. But whatever the setup might be, if it could lead to a production of his play, and above all, if it could lead to his seeing more of this quietly fascinating girl with the absurd name …

  “You got Miss Owen home all right?” he asked Fergus when the young Irishman picked him up the next morning.

  “Sure. But I’m getting worried about her. I’ve seen Fran do some plain and fancy drinking in my time, but I never saw her pass
out before. It’s beginning to tell on her. Or maybe it was that Randolph photo—God knows that’s not precisely an appetizing morsel of flesh. It got me for a minute—Fran stretched out there like a more fully clothed duplicate of the corpse. Not pretty. Not one little bit.”

  “It should teach me, I suppose, to keep from reaching for my wallet. Profitable experience. And Miss Plunk?”

  “What about her?”

  “She came through the ordeal all right?”

  “She always does. You know, Norm, it’s funny about that gal. You look at her and you think ‘Hm—just a nice quiet little number from the country.’ But I’ve yet to see the situation that wench didn’t live up to. She’s been around. And on your right, sir, you see the spacious grounds of the Carruthers Little Theater.”

  The Carruthers Little Theater, on its quiet side street between Sunset and Santa Monica, looked from the outside like an aged (for Southern California) but otherwise ordinary frame house. That, in fact, was what it had been before Rupert Carruthers took it over. Now only the shell of the house remained the same. The two front rooms had been converted into a waiting room and an office, and the remaining partitions had been knocked out to form the theater proper—a small auditorium seating about eighty people, and an inelaborate stage.

  “We don’t want big mass effects and trick lighting,” Carruthers had explained to his protesting stage manager. “We aren’t putting on shows to draw in the public. All we need is a platform where actors can display themselves to agents and casting directors—an auction block pure and simple.”

  And that is about all that the stage was—a display case for flesh, and the hell with the subtleties of directorial illusion. Behind the house and connecting with the stage, a lean-to had been added for dressing rooms; and the garage had been converted into a workshop for the contriving of what few theatrical effects were absolutely indispensable.

  Thus ran Fergus’ brief explanatory notes on the theater. “It isn’t much of a setup,” he concluded. “But Carruthers claims he has sold certain people to films. None since I’ve been here, though.”

  “Then that’s the sole purpose of this outfit—to sell actors to pictures?”

  “Actors and—maybe—playwrights.”

  “And there’s not even an attempt to put on a good show for its own sake?”

  “Why should there be? No money in that in this man’s town.”

  “But Miss Plunk seems so devoted to the stage and so scornful of the movies—”

  “Nuts,” Fergus snorted. “That’s the act they all pull, even when they’ve hit the bigtime. ‘The Stage will always be my own true love.’ And once a year they trek back to Broadway for a roast turkey with well-publicized gravy. But do they ever settle down to really working at the stage? It’s a line. But come on. Let’s go launch your career.”

  The shabby office held a desk, two chairs, and an inordinate litter of papers. Its bleakness was relieved only by the colorful assortment of theater programs and signed photographs which covered the walls. Behind the desk an old man was busily making entries in a large account book. His gray hair retained just enough streaks of persistent black to rob it of dignity, and his skin, though of an even yellowish tinge, managed to give something of the same streaky appearance.

  As the two young men entered, he closed the ledger, looked up, and grunted. “It’s you, O’Breen.”

  “Damned if it isn’t,” said Fergus cheerily. “Look, Mr. Fennworth. This is Norman Harker. He’s come from Oklahoma with his brief case on his knee. What does a business manager’s mind deduce from that?”

  “A playwright,” said Adam Fennworth—not quite in the same tone in which Fran Owen had murmured, “Oh God,” but close enough.

  “Is Mr. Carruthers in?” Norman asked. “I’d like to talk to him about my play.”

  Fennworth took out an ancient and heavy watch and snapped back its lid. “He’s due by now. But he’s been working late recently. Probably he won’t be in for another half hour.”

  “Working?” Fergus was curious again. “With Mark Andrews to run the stage and you to balance accounts, what should keep our eminent director up all night?”

  “Mr. Carruthers is particularly anxious that the effects in the prologue to The Soul Has Two Garments should come off well. He has been experimenting with some new developments in colored fire.”

  “Funny. I thought he didn’t give a variegated damn about stage effects.”

  “You may not realize it, O’Breen—certainly from your work in rehearsals one might well conclude that you do not—but this production is a momentous event in the history of the Carruthers Little Theater. Never before has such a truly outstanding script fallen into our hands.”

  “It’s outstanding, all right,” Fergus admitted.

  “Mr. Carruthers is placing every resource which we possess behind this effort. This will make the Carruthers Little Theater known throughout the land as the first group to venture on the production of a Jordan play.”

  “And why the insurance gag? Publicity?”

  Adam Fennworth frowned. “Where did you hear about the insurance, O’Breen?”

  “I don’t know. People talk. It’s a good stunt.”

  “Stunt, indeed …! Ah, Mr. Harker, I observe that you are interested in Paul Jackson.”

  “Indeed I am.” Norman had been regarding one of the framed photographs on the wall, inscribed With gratitude and best wishes from Paul Jackson. “I think he’s probably the most intelligent juvenile in Hollywood.”

  “You know him?”

  “Only on the screen. Has he worked with Carruthers?”

  “Never officially. That is to say, he has never appeared in one of our productions. But Mr. Carruthers has given him a great deal of private coaching, with the results that you have seen. And now,” he reopened the account book, “if you gentlemen will excuse me, Mr. Carruthers should be here within a half hour at most.”

  “Come on,” said Fergus. “We’ll see if Andrews’ll let you watch a rehearsal.”

  “Paul Jackson,” Norman observed as they left the office, “certainly speaks well for Carruthers’ ability. Though I wish Metropolis would let him do more interesting work. He’s always either in those foolish Derring Drew melodramas or teamed in an insipid light romance with Rita La Marr.”

  “You don’t like Rita? Breathes there a man with soul so dead who never prayed his lonely bed might once be graced by Rita’s head? Not that head is quite the word, but it rhymes.”

  “Oh, sure. But if I want Sex in the Theater, I’ll take mine straight at a burlycue. I’m old-fashioned enough to expect actresses to act.”

  “To be exact, Norm, I’ve never noticed whether Rita could act or not.” Fergus grinned to himself. “Notice how fast Fennworth shut me up on that insurance business?”

  “What is that?”

  “Maybe just vagrom rumor. I don’t know for certain. But where there’s smoke … and I think there’s a smoke in the woodpile. The story goes that Carruthers and Jordan—that’s the author of The Soul Has Two Garments—have taken out one of these partnership-insurance effects: if anything happens to either of them before The Soul is produced, the survivor rakes in fifty grand.”

  “Fifty thousand dollars?”

  “If you must be so colloquial about it, yes. And that ain’t alfalfa.” Fergus paused before the door of the minute auditorium. “Brace yourself,” he counseled. “You are now about to hear the immortal Jordan prose.”

  The first thing Norman noticed was that Sarah Plunk was on stage. There, even with dust-filtered morning sunlight instead of foots, she seemed to belong. What he had sensed latent within her in a drugstore booth, he now saw revealed: an inherent grace, a quiet glow of loveliness far more important than the physical beauty which she lacked. Last night had been no whimsical passing adventure. Whatever came of his play, whatever came of himself, this girl was in his life to stay.

  On the stage with her were two young men, the one as handsome and the ot
her as pretty as one could possibly ask. The first, who was engaged at the moment in bellowing the statement that the only power a man held over his fellow men was the power to serve them, was, in simple descriptive fact, tall, dark, and handsome; he was also tall-dark-and-handsome, with that sense of indefinable allure which Miss West has given to the phrase. The second, who was sneering quietly downstage left, was chiefly distinguished by open-work sandals and a minute mustache of a blondness just this side of invisibility. From time to time during the other’s speech, he twitched his full hips in what was apparently a symbol of decadent contempt.

  Fergus led the way to a man who slouched in a third-row aisle seat, with a rumpled brown hat shoved far back off his high forehead. “Mark,” he whispered, “this is Norm Harker—he’s here to talk over a play with Carruthers. Mind if we sit around and watch?”

  Mark Andrews did not even look up from his prompt copy. “Why not? This is just a run-through for lines and places. If he can stand it, I can.”

  They found seats in the last row. “That,” Fergus explained in a low voice, “is Mark Andrews, stage manager, general factotum, and a hell of a good guy. Fennworth looks after the financial end, but Mark pretty much runs the theater.”

  “Then what does Carruthers do?”

  “Build up his bank account. But listen; this is a juicy spot.”

  The handsome youth was now expounding the doctrine that evil can never be combated by evil means, that weapons turn their users into extensions of themselves, a long-winded statement of doctrine not dissimilar to Gandhi’s passive resistance.

  “I agree,” Norman murmured in paraphrase, “with every word he says; but I would fight to the death against his right to say it so badly.”

  “Do you mean the speech itself or the way Hardy reads it?”

  “Both.”

  “And I’m with you on both counts. Still, I think Hardy’s the most likely person in this theater to be snapped up by the studios.”

  “But he can’t act!” Norman protested.

  “Sure he can’t act. Neither can Nelson Eddy, and he makes a living.”