The Case of the Solid Key Page 3

  “But Eddy can sing.”

  “All right. So Hardy can’t sing either. That makes him twice as attractive.”

  The hero’s tirade was over at last, and now Sarah spoke. She was, apparently, the wife, urging her husband to die for his principles even though those very principles forbade him to fight. The speech itself was as badly written as Hardy’s; and furthermore—what truly shocked Norman—even the delivery was not much better. There was, however, this subtle difference: the handsome brute, it was obvious, simply could not act; Sarah had merely not yet learned fully how to. Individual phrases were perfect, touching with a poignant clarity which probed far beneath the script. But others were gauche, falsely inflected, inaccurately timed.

  The girl still fascinated Norman beyond measure, but his critical faculties protested. “I thought you said last night that this girl was the best actor in the outfit.”

  “She is,” Fergus insisted. “I know she’s not ready yet for a heavy assignment like this, but she’s got the stuff. A terrific director might get it out of her even now. Carruthers isn’t that good, but even he’s doing something for her. Wait till she’s rehearsed another week in this; I’ll lay you odds you hear something worth hearing.”

  Suddenly a petulant voice cut across Sarah’s. “Mr. Andrews!” It was the youth with the sandals.

  Mark Andrews looked up from his prompt book. “Yes, Vane?”

  “This girl simply must not cross over to me on that speech. Mr. Carruthers never gave her any such cross. I have to be over here alone, with that pale-green spot. My whole presence in the scene has no Meaning unless I’m aloof.”

  Andrews checked the page before him. “He’s right, Miss Plunk. There’s no cross marked here.” Sarah looked flustered. “I’m sorry. I know there isn’t. But I had to make that cross. If you’re going to plead with a man for your husband’s soul, you don’t stand at the other end of the room to do it.”

  “Realist!” the youth sneered, with an expressive twitch of his hips.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to take that up with Mr. Carruthers,” said Andrews. “Go back to ‘In the name of pity,’ Miss Plunk, and don’t cross this time.” The stage manager rose as Sarah resumed her speech, and sauntered back to where Fergus and Norman sat. “Some day,” he observed quietly, “Hilary Vane is going to stamp his foot so hard he’ll sprain a toe.”

  “I thought Sarah was right about that cross,” said Fergus.

  “Sure she was. But I’m not directing this show. My job’s to see that they follow the promptbook.”

  The construction of The Soul Has Two Garments, Norman thought, was something to marvel at. Each character was apparently a symbol: Hardy represented Good; the blond youth, Evil; and Sarah, Womankind (or possibly Human Confusion). And each character set forth his symbolism in a long tirade, while the others stood by and waited until they too could talk themselves out. It was not a play, it was a declamatory contest. A Shaw, to be sure, can get away with this device; but God help the playwright who attempts it with less than genius. And with every word it grew more patent that whatever this playwright’s attributes might be, literary genius was not among them.

  Now it was Evil’s turn. Still aloofly downstage, the young man with the hips began a speech of corrosive cynicism. It was possibly a trifle better written than the other speeches (for heavies are far easier to write than heroes) and, to Norman’s pleased surprise, infinitely better spoken. This Hilary Vane knew what he was about. He cheated deftly (that is, he seemed to continue facing upstage while projecting his voice clearly into the auditorium), his voice was suavely sinister, and he gave every barb the full value which the author had hopefully intended it to have. His pointing was sharp but unobtrusive; he used tricks so expertly that you perceived no tricks.

  “The boy’s good,” said Norman.

  “I know he is—damn him,” said Mark Andrews.

  Hilary finished his speech. There was dead silence. Andrews started to speak, then looked down at the promptbook and swore quietly to himself. He rose and advanced to the stage in long strides. There he paused and abruptly let out a Gargantuan bellow.

  “MISS DAYTON!”

  Silence.

  “I haven’t seen her at all this morning,” said Sarah.

  “Surprise!” Andrews observed bitterly. “Has anybody seen her? Don’t all speak at once.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be here,” said the heroic Hardy. “She was quite all right when I left her last night.”

  “Uh-huh.” Andrews nodded wearily. “And what time was that?”

  “Well, we were a little late maybe. It might have been—well, say about three o’clock.”

  “Fun,” said Andrews, “and games.”

  “But I’m here,” Hardy protested.

  “And that, of course, makes everything quite all right. From all Junior Leaguers who want to be actresses,” he groaned sincerely, “Good Lord, deliver us!”

  “What’ll we do now?” Sarah asked.

  Andrews thumbed through the script. “Cut to Act Two, Scene Three. That’s your scene with Vale over the corpses. Hardy, you may sit in a corner and write ‘I will always take actresses home early’ one hundred times.”

  For a moment Hardy Norris seemed to wonder if he should take the command literally. Finally he decided against it, and vaulted over the footlights with a virile Fairbanksian bound. Landing lightly on his feet, he stood and stretched, his muscles rippling exquisitely under his silk sport shirt.

  “Save it, Tarzan,” said Andrews tersely. “Carol’s not here yet. All right, Vane. Open with your soliloquy.”

  Norman had an uneasy feeling that every scene in this play opened with a soliloquy, and that there were a great many scenes. But before this soliloquy had gone more than a sentence, the door of the auditorium burst open abruptly and a cheery voice called, “Hello, everybody! Am I late?”

  This would be the missing Carol Dayton, whose noun rhymed with the adjective. Norman took one eye-filling glance at her and had a time to keep from whistling. For if each character in this play were symbolic, there was no doubt at all as to what role Carol would play. Fleshly Desire could never have been more buxomly and bumptiously depicted.

  Her hair was on the exact border line between red and gold. Her round face was made up with a brazenly thorough absence of good taste which had its own outrageous charm. She wore slacks and a sweater—usually an informal and unalluring costume, but in her case so carefully fitted to each rich curve of her body that it was more provocative than the most seductively ornate negligee.

  Mark Andrews was unmoved by this sudden apparition of allure. “The next time I hear you ask are you late …” he began with quiet intensity.

  “Hello, Hardy!” Carol burbled. “Were you late too? Hello, Fergus.”

  Andrews shrugged. “What’s the use? I could give you hell for a solid ten minutes and you’d think I was complimenting you on your figure. Go on. Get up there on the stage. We’re at your entrance in the first act. Back to your places, the rest of you.”

  “You didn’t notice, did you,” Fergus asked, “if Carruthers was in his office yet?”

  “He’s there. There’s somebody with him, though.”

  “We’ll go catch him. So long, Mark.”

  Andrews waved his hand despondently. “Prologue this afternoon at two. Be sure you’re here, O’Breen.”

  As they left the auditorium, Norman could hear Carol’s shrill voice addressed to Sarah. “What a pretty little dress, dear! It must have looked divine on the dummy.”

  A very young girl was sitting in the waiting room. As the two men entered she jumped up and seized Fergus’ arm. “Oh Mr. O’Breen! I am glad to see you.”

  “Carruthers in, Betsy?”

  “He’s busy right now. I want to see him too. Only first I want you to tell me what I ought to do because it’s a frightful problem and when a girl hasn’t any folks she doesn’t know who to turn to and you’re almost the only nice person here excepting Mr. Andre
ws and he’s always busy and of course Mr. Jordan’s sweet but he isn’t here yet and—”

  “Look, Betsy. Give me time to be a gentleman. Betsy Weaver, this is Norman Harker. He’s a playwright.”

  Betsy’s was the first satisfactory reaction to that announcement. Her blue eyes widened unbelievably and her lips pursed into a prolonged and ecstatic Oooooo! “You write plays?”

  “That’s the general idea.”

  “Oh I think that’s wonderful, I mean when people do things, not just things people tell them to, like actors, but really do things all out of themselves like, I mean I really do.”

  She was nice, Norman thought. Something of a kitten about her. Not kittenish, in the repulsively coy sense of the word, but truly like a kitten—warm and cuddling and nice to have around.

  “Let’s sit down,” Fergus suggested. “And what’s the Great Problem of Life, Betsy?”

  Betsy sat and smoothed her short skirt over her unplumped adolescent legs. “Mr. Carruthers,” she announced, “is going to throw me out of the theater. Oh not because I can’t act because I can and I know it and he knows it and you know it too, Mr. O’Breen, even if you do make faces at me in rehearsal and make me blow up in my lines only I must say if I have to have a love scene with anybody I’d just as soon it was you instead of that great big Mr. Norris who’s probably so strong he’d crush the breath out of you only of course some girls like that but I don’t think I do, not really, or that sissy Mr. Vane …”

  “Betsy Macushla,” said Fergus patiently. “You’re in trouble. Remember? You want to tell me all about it.”

  “Of course. I’m telling you, aren’t I? Because I haven’t any money any more on account of I lost that job at the drive-in stand only I didn’t tell anybody because I was ashamed and it was a good job too and those uniforms were cute as anything but the government is making them obey the law and pay all the girls minimum wages so they’re firing them and taking on men because the law doesn’t say anything about that and I’d like to know what the government thinks it’s doing protecting our jobs so hard we haven’t got any jobs any more.”

  “Betsy,” said Fergus, “you are now entering on deep and uncharted waters of social philosophy. Maybe you’d best just stick to the particular. So Carruthers is going to toss you out on your shell-like ear because you can’t pay up any more?”

  “Exactly,” said Betsy, with surprising concision.

  “And no job in sight?”

  “Oh I’ll make out. I always have because people always go around saying I’m like a kitten and a kitten is really just a cat isn’t it? only that doesn’t sound so nice if you call people it and a cat always lands on its feet and so do I only right now I don’t just know where. But Mr. Carruthers said he’d think about it and if I saw him today maybe he’d figure a way out so here I am.”

  “Watch your step, Betsy. There’s no couch in that office that I remember, but watch your step anyway.” Fergus patted her hand lightly. “Oh, something reminds me—and I swear it isn’t casting couches—that I meant to ask you to dinner tonight. I’m tired of my sister’s cooking. How’s about it?”

  There was a momentary glint of pure physical hunger in her eye. “Oh, Mr. O’Breen, I’d simply love to! Only I couldn’t be seen with you anyplace nice on account of I just haven’t got a thing to—”

  “Wear your cute uniform,” said Fergus. “They made you buy it, didn’t they?”

  The door of the office opened, and a tall, lanky man came out, homely but not unattractive in a gaunt Gary Cooper manner. His eye lit on Fergus, and his face crinkled into a grin. “Hiya!” he cried. “What on earth are you doing in this—”

  Out of the corner of his eye Norman caught a warning gesture of Fergus’ hand. “Sorry,” said the newcomer. “For a minute there I thought you were—”

  Then Betsy let out another Oooooo! If the noise with which she had greeted Norman as a playwright were ecstatic, this one left such a mere piffling thing as ecstasy miles behind in the dust. “Mr. Jackson!” she gasped.

  Norman looked again. Yes, he should have recognized the man. Adept photography made him better-looking, but there was the ruggedly charming Jackson personality. This was a big name indeed to grace the Carruthers Little Theater.

  “Please somebody!” Betsy was burbling. “Mr. O’Breen, have you got a pencil? I just never have things when I need them.” Fergus grinned as though in on some secret joke and handed over pencil and paper. “Now Mr. Jackson, can I oh please can I have your autograph!”

  “I wish,” said the man resignedly, “this would stop happening. But I suppose here it’s understandable enough. No, Miss, I am not Paul Jackson. I’m just his brother.”

  “Oh …” Betsy half-pouted. “But,” her hopes rose again, “aren’t you maybe an actor too? You’re nice enough looking and you’re tall and—”

  Fergus snorted.

  “Sorry, Miss.” Jackson frère looked embarrassed. “But if you’re hunting for glamour I’m not the lad for you. I’m just a policeman.”

  “A policeman!”

  “A. Jackson, detective lieutenant, Homicide. And good day to you.”

  Betsy’s third Oooooo! was by far the best of the lot.

  Chapter 3

  Between the lieutenant’s departure and his own reception into the office, Norman had time for not a little random worrying, to which Betsy’s gay prattle provided a restful obbligato. There was something definitely not kosher about this setup into which he had stumbled. Item, Fran Owen, who passed out at the sight of a photograph of a corpse, 1927 vintage. Item, Fergus O’Breen, who admitted frankly that he was no actor and who didn’t care to be recognized by police detectives. Item, Sarah, who loved the stage but worked in a theater aiming solely at films, and who held mysterious conferences with werewolf-browed gentlemen who vowed secrecy. Item, the as yet unseen Mr. Carruthers himself, who took out fifty-thousand-dollar insurance policies and had private interviews with lieutenants from Homicide.

  There was a pleasant enough surface of Bohemian camaraderie among these young actors, but there was something else beneath the surface, something … A volcano was too trite a metaphor, but Norman could think of nothing more fitting. He had heard a little of the rumbling, and he wondered when the explosion would come and whether he should stick around that long. But a chance to get his play produced, to snatch some success out of this journey westward, to justify the gesture that had cut him off forever from Oklahoma …

  “Mr. Harker?” Rupert Carruthers himself stood in the doorway of the office and fixed his deep eyes on Norman.

  “Yes.”

  “Fennworth tells me you want to talk about a play. Please come in.”

  Even his brief reflections on wheels within wheels hadn’t prepared Norman. Rupert Carruthers was the man with the werewolf’s eyebrows.

  Carruthers tilted himself back in the chair behind his desk and carefully pressed together the tips of his fingers. “You understand, of course, Mr. Harker, that our organization here does not function in the same manner as the commercial theater.” His voice was rich and suave, with the nationless accent of a drawing-room actor.

  “Naturally,” said Norman, wondering just what this opening meant.

  “To be more explicit, I mean this: if, after a careful consideration, I should decide that your play was worth producing, I should not give you an advance for the option. Operating on this small scale, I could not afford to do so. We would look upon the production as a joint investment, to which you contribute your talent and I the facilities of my theater. Any profit that accrues to either of us must come later, if the films or a commercial producer should decide to take on the play. Is that agreeable to you?”

  “It sounds reasonable.” (“And God knows,” Norman added to himself, “I’m in no position to try to drive a bargain.”)

  “I always like to make that point quite clear. So many young men long for instant fame and fortune, and grow resentful when I cannot proffer it to them at once. Now te
ll me about your play—what is its title?”

  “I’m afraid it hasn’t got one. I’ve stuck six titles on the damned thing so far, and I don’t like one of them; so at present it’s just That Play of Mine.”

  “Your first?”

  “First full-length. I’ve done scads of one acts, and one of them took first prize in—”

  Rupert Carruthers raised a graceful hand in protest. “Don’t say it. A young writer here in Hollywood is as sure to have won a one-act play contest back home as a girl is to have been Miss Wacketonka Falls. I am, however, more broadminded than most producers or agents; I shan’t hold it against you. It is merely something that happens to young men, like writing sonnet sequences or falling in love with older women. Now tell me, briefly, the story of your play.”

  Norman coughed. “I’m afraid it’s not that kind of a play. Or I’m not that kind of a writer. I can’t up and tell things. If they could be told briefly, I shouldn’t bother to take three acts writing them.”

  Rupert Carruthers sighed patiently. “You haven’t been in Hollywood long, or you’d have learned that success may depend far more on how you can tell your story than on how you can write it. But go on—try to give me an idea.”

  “Well …” Norman wriggled uncomfortably. “This probably isn’t going to make any sense, but here goes. What the play is, if it’s anything, is a sort of companion piece to Steinbeck.”

  “Which Steinbeck? Grapes of Wrath?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. There’s strong publicity value in that. Burning topic. Sensational exposé. Besides, the picture is making money. Go on—it’s about the Okies?”

  “Yes and no. Look, it’s like this. What do people think of now when you say Oklahoma? Dust Bowl and refugees streaming out. Or they go back into the past a little and think of Oklahoma Territory—picturesque color—Lynn Riggs stuff. But there’s another angle too, and that’s what I’m trying to treat.”

  “What is that?” Carruthers was beginning to look skeptical. “Embattled farmers gallantly sticking it out to resist nature?”