IF THINGS WENT ON at this rate, John Scales would be a very rich man. Already he was a man to be envied, as any ignoramus might guess who passed the King’s Theatre after 8 o’clock. Old Florrie, who had sat for so many years on the corner with her little tray of matches, could have given more than a guess, for what she didn’t know about the King’s was hardly worth knowing. When she had ceased to adorn its boards (thanks to a dreadful accident with a careless match and gauze draperies, that had left her with a scarred face and a withered arm) she had taken her stand near the theatre for old sake’s sake, and she watched over its fortunes, still, like a mother. She knew, none better, how much money it held when it was playing to capacity, what its salary list was like, how much of its earnings went in permanent charges, and what the author’s share of the box-office receipts was likely to amount to. Besides, everybody who went in or out by the stage-door came and had a word with Florrie. She shared good times and bad at the King’s. She had lamented over lean days caused by slumps and talkie competition, shaken her head over perilous experiments into highbrow tragedy, waxed tearful and indignant over the disastrous period (now happily past) of the Scorer-Bitterby management, which had ended in a scandal, rejoiced when the energetic Mr Garrick Drury, launching out into management after his tremendous triumph in the name-part of The Wistful Harlequin, had taken the old house over, reconditioned it inside and out (incidentally squeezing two more rows into the reconstructed pit) and voiced his optimistic determination to break the run of ill-luck; and since then she had watched its steady soaring into prosperity on the well-tried wings of old-fashioned adventure and romance. Mr Garrick Drury (Somerset House knew him as Obadiah Potts, but he was none the less good-looking for that) was an actor-manager of the sort Florrie understood; he followed his calling in the good old way, building his successes about his own glamorous personality, talking no nonsense about new schools of dramatic thought, and paying only lip-service to ‘team-work’. He had had the luck to embark on his managerial career at a moment when the public had grown tired of gloomy Slav tragedies of repressed husbands, and human documents about drink and diseases, and was (in its own incoherent way) clamouring for a good, romantic story to cry about, with a romantic hero suffering torments of self-sacrifice through two-and-three-quarter acts and getting the girl in the last ten minutes. Mr Drury (forty-two in the daylight, thirty-five in the lamplight and twenty-five or what you will in a blond wig and the spotlight) was well fitted by nature to acquire girls in this sacrificial manner, and had learnt the trick of so lacing nineteenth-century sentiment with twentieth-century nonchalance that the mixture went to the heads equally of Joan who worked in the office and Aunt Mabel up from the country.
And since Mr Drury, leaping nightly from his Rolls saloon with that nervous and youthful alacrity that had been his most engaging asset for the past twenty years, always had time to bestow at least a smile and a friendly word on old Florrie, he affected her head and heart as much as anybody else’s. Nobody was more delighted than Florrie to know that he had again found a winner in Bitter Laurel, now sweeping on to its 100th performance. Night by night she saluted with a satisfied chuckle each board as it appeared: ‘Pit Full’, ‘Gallery Full’, ‘Dress Circle Full’, ‘Upper Circle Full’, ‘Stalls Full’, ‘Standing Room Only’, ‘House Full’. Set to run for ever, it was, and the faces that went in by the stage door looked merry and prosperous, as Florrie liked to see them.
As for the young man who had provided the raw material out of which Mr Drury had built up this glittering monument of success; if he wasn’t pleased, thought Florrie, he ought to be. Not that, in the ordinary way, one thought much about the author of a play – unless, of course, it was Shakespeare, who was different; compared with the cast, he was of small importance and rarely seen. But Mr Drury had one day arrived arm-in-arm with a sulky-looking and ill-dressed youth whom he had introduced to Florrie, saying in his fine, generous way: ‘Here, John, you must know Florrie. She’s our mascot – we couldn’t get on without her. Florrie, this is Mr Scales, whose new play’s going to make all our fortunes.’ Mr Drury was never mistaken about plays; he had the golden touch. Certainly, in the last three months, Mr Scales, though still sulky-looking, had become much better dressed.
On this particular night – Saturday, 15th April, when Bitter Laurel was giving its 96th performance to a full house after a packed matinée – Mr Scales and Mr Drury arrived together, in evening dress and, Florrie noted with concern, rather late. Mr Drury would have to hurry, and it was tiresome of Mr Scales to detain him, as he did, by arguing and expostulating upon the threshold. Not that Mr Drury seemed put out. He was smiling (his smile, one-sided and slightly elfin in quality, was famous), and at last he said, with his hand (Mr Drury’s expressive hands were renowned) affectionately upon Mr Scales’s shoulder, ‘Sorry, old boy, can’t stop now. Curtain must go up, you know. Come round and see me after the show – I’ll have those fellows there.’ Then he vanished, still smiling the elfin smile and waving the expressive hand; and Mr Scales, after hesitating a moment, had turned away and came down past Florrie’s corner. He seemed to be still sulky and rather preoccupied, but, looking up, caught sight of Florrie and grinned at her. There was nothing elfin about Mr Scales’s smile, but it improved his face very much.
‘Well, Florrie,’ said Mr Scales, ‘we seem to be doing pretty well, financially speaking, don’t we?’
Florrie eagerly agreed. ‘But there,’ she observed, ‘we’re getting used to that. Mr Drury’s a wonderful man. It doesn’t matter what he’s in, they all come to see him. Of course,’ she added, remembering that this might not sound very kind, ‘he’s very clever at picking the right play.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Mr Scales. ‘The play. I suppose the play has something to do with it. Not much, but something. Have you seen the play, Florrie?’
Yes, indeed, Florrie had. Mr Drury was so kind, he always remembered to give Florrie a pass early on in the run, even if the house was ever so full.
‘What did you think of it?’ enquired Mr Scales.
‘I thought it was lovely,’ said Florrie; ‘I cried ever so. When he came back with only one arm and found his fiancée gone to the bad at a cocktail party –’
‘Just so,’ said Mr Scales.
‘And the scene on the Embankment – lovely, I thought that was, when he rolls up his old army coat and says to the bobby, “I will rest on my laurels” – that was a beautiful curtain line you gave him there, Mr Scales. And the way he put it over –’
‘Yes, rather,’ said Mr Scales. ‘There’s nobody like Drury for putting over that kind of a line.’
‘And when she came back to him and he wouldn’t have her any more and then Lady Sylvia took him up and fell in love with him –’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Mr Scales. ‘You found that part moving?’
‘Romantic,’ said Florrie. ‘And the scene between the two girls – that was splendid. All worked-up, it made you feel. And then in the end, when he took the one he really loved after all –’
‘Sure-fire, isn’t it?’ said Mr Scales. ‘Goes straight to the heart I’m glad you think so, Florrie. Because, of course, quite apart from anything else, it’s very good box-office.’
‘I believe you,’ said Florrie. ‘Your first play, isn’t it? You’re lucky to have it taken by Mr Drury.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Scales, ‘I owe him a lot. Everybody says so, and it must be true. There are two fat gentlemen in astrakhan coats coming along tonight to settle about the film-rights. I’m a made man, Florrie, and that’s always pleasant, particularly after five or six years of living hand-to-mouth. No fun in not having enough to eat, is there?’
‘That there isn’t,’ said Florrie, who knew all about it. ‘I’m ever so glad your luck’s turned at last, dearie.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mr Scales. ‘Have something to drink the health of the play.’ He fumbled in his breast-pocket. ‘Here you are. A green one and a brown one. Thirty bob. Thirty pieces of silver. Spend it on something you fancy, Florrie. It’s the price of blood.’
‘What a thing to say!’ exclaimed Florrie. ‘But you writing gentlemen will have a bit of a joke. And I know poor Mr Milling, who wrote the book for Pussycat, Pussycat and The Lipstick Girl always used to say he sweated blood over every one of ’em.’
A nice young gentleman, thought Florrie, as Mr Scales passed on, but queer and, perhaps, a little bit difficult in his temper, for them that had to live with him. He had spoken very nicely about Mr Drury, but there had been a moment when she had fancied that he was (as they said) registering sarcasm. And she didn’t quite like that joke about the thirty pieces of silver that was New Testament, and New Testament (unlike Old) was blasphemous. It was like the difference between saying, ‘Oh, God!’ (which nobody minded) and ‘Oh, Christ!’ (which Florrie had never held with). Still, people said all kinds of things nowadays, and thirty bob was thirty bob; it was very kind of Mr Scales.
Mr John Scales, slouching along Shaftesbury Avenue and wondering how he was going to put in the next three hours or so, encountered a friend just turning out of Wardour Street. The friend was a tall, thin young man, with a shabby overcoat and a face, under a dilapidated soft hat, like a hungry hawk’s. There was a girl with him.
‘Hullo, Mollie!’ said Scales. ‘Hullo, Sheridan!’
‘Hullo!’ said Sheridan. ‘Look who’s here! The great man himself. London’s rising dramatist. Sweet Scales of Old Drury.’
‘Cut it out,’ said Scales.
‘Your show seems to be booming,’ went on Sheridan. ‘Congratulations. On the boom, I mean.’
‘God!’ said Scales, ‘have you seen it? I did send you tickets.’
‘You did – it was kind of you to think of us amid your busy life. We saw the show. In these bargain-basement days, you’ve managed to sell your soul in a pretty good market.’
‘See here, Sheridan – it wasn’t my fault. I’m just as sick as you are. Sicker. But like a fool I signed the contract without a controlling clause, and by the time Drury and his producer had finished mucking the script about –’
‘He didn’t sell himself,’ said the girl, ‘he was took advantage of, your worship.’
‘Pity,’ said Sheridan. ‘It was a good play – but he done her wrong. But,’ he added, glancing at Scales, ‘I take it you drink the champagne that she sends you. You’re looking prosperous.’
‘Well,’ said Scales, ‘what do you expect me to do? Return the cheque with thanks?’
‘Good lord, no,’ said Sheridan. ‘It’s all right. Nobody’s grudging you your luck.’
‘It’s something, after all,’ said Scales defensively, ‘to get one’s foot in at all. One can’t always look a gift horse in the mouth.’
‘No,’ said Sheridan. ‘Good lord, I know that. Only I’m afraid you’ll find this thing hang round your neck a bit if you want to go back to your own line. You know what the public is – it likes to get what it expects. Once you’ve made a name for sob-stuff, you’re labelled for good – or bad.’
‘I know. Hell. Can’t do anything about it, though. Come and have a drink.’
But the others had an appointment to keep, and passed on their way. The encounter was typical. Damnation, thought Scales, savagely, turning in to the Criterion Bar, wasn’t it enough to have had your decent play cut about and turned into the sort of thing that made you retch to listen to it, without your friends supposing you had acquiesced in the mutilation for the sake of making money?
He had been a little worried when he knew that George Philpotts (kindly, officious George, who always knew everybody) had sent Bitter Laurel to Drury. The very last management he himself would have selected; but also the very last management that would be likely to take so cynical and disillusioned a play. Miraculously, however, Drury had expressed himself as ‘dead keen’ about it. There had been an interview with Drury, and Drury, damn his expressive eyes, had – yes, one had to admit it – Drury had ‘put himself across’ with great success. He had been flattering, he had been charming. Scales had succumbed, as night by night pit and stalls and dress circle succumbed to the gracious manner and the elfin smile. ‘A grand piece – grand situations,’ Garrick Drury had said. ‘Of course, here and there it will need a little tidying up in production.’ Scales said modestly that he expected that – he knew very hide about writing for the stage – he was a novelist – he was quite ready to agree to alterations, provided, naturally, nothing was done to upset the artistic unity of the thing. Mr Garrick Drury was pained by the suggestion. As an artist himself, he should, of course, allow nothing inartistic to be done. Scales, overcome by Drury’s manner, and by a flood of technicalities about sets and lighting and costing and casting poured out upon him by the producer, who was present at the interview, signed a contract giving the author a very handsome share of the royalties, and hardly noticed that he had left the management with full power to make any ‘reasonable’ alterations to fit the play for production.
It was only gradually in the course of rehearsal, that he discovered what was being done to his play. It was not merely that Mr Drury had succeeded in importing into the lines given to him, as the war-shattered hero, a succulent emotionalism which was very far from the dramatist’s idea of that embittered and damaged character. So much, one had expected. But the plot had slowly disintegrated and reshaped itself into something revoltingly different. Originally, for example, the girl Judith (the one who had ‘gone to the bad at a cocktail party’) had not spurned the one-armed soldier (Mr Drury). Far from it. She had welcomed him and several other heroes home with indiscriminate, not to say promiscuous enthusiasm. And the hero, instead of behaving (as Mr Drury saw to it that he did in the acted version) in a highly sacrificial manner, had gone deliberately and cynically to the bad in his turn. Nor had ‘Lady Sylvia’, who rescued him from the Embankment, been (as Mr Drury’s second leading lady now represented her to be) a handsome and passionate girl deeply in love with the hero, but a nauseous, rich, elderly woman with a fancy for a gigolo, whose attentions the hero (now thoroughly deteriorated as a result of war and post-war experience) accepted without shame or remorse in exchange for the luxuries of life. And finally, when Judith, thoroughly shocked and brought to her senses by these developments, had tried to recapture him, the hero (as originally depicted) had so far lost all sense of decency as to prefer – though with a bitter sense of failure and frustration – to stick to Lady Sylvia, as the line of least resistance, and had ended, on Armistice Day, by tearing away the public trophies of laurel and poppy from the Cenotaph and being ignominiously removed by the police after a drunken and furious harangue in denunciation of war. Not a pleasant play, as originally written, and certainly in shocking taste; but an honest piece of work so far as it went. But Mr Drury had pointed out that ‘his’ public would never stand the original Lady Sylvia or the final degradation of the hero. There must be slight alterations – nothing inartistic, of course, but alterations, to make the thing more moving, more uplifting, more, in fact, true to human nature.
Because, Mr Drury pointed out, if there was one thing you could rely on, it was the essential decency of human nature, and its immediate response to general sentiments. His experience, he said, had proved it to him.
Scales had not given way without a struggle. He had fought hard over every line. But there was the contract. And in the end, he had actually written the new scenes and lines himself, not because he wanted to, but because at any rate his own lines would be less intolerable than the united efforts of cast and producer to write them for themselves. So that he could not even say that he had washed his hands of the whole beastly thing. Like his own (original) hero, he had taken the line of least resistance. Mr Drury had been exceedingly grateful to him and delighted to feel that author and management were working so well together in their common interest.
‘I know how you feel,’ he would say, ‘about altering your artistic work. Any artist feels the same. But I’ve had twenty years’ experience of the stage, and it counts, you know, it counts. You don’t think I’m right – my dear boy, I should feel just the same in your place. I’m terribly grateful for all this splendid work you’re putting in and I know you won’t regret it. Don’t worry. All young authors come up against the same difficulty. It’s just a question of experience.’
Hopeless. Scales, in desperation, had enlisted the services of an agent, who pointed out that it was now too late to get the contract altered. ‘But,’ said the agent, ‘it’s quite an honest contract, as these things go. Drury’s management has always had a very good name. We shall keep an eye on these subsidiary rights for you – you can leave that to us. I know it’s a nuisance having to alter things here and there, but it is your first play, and you’re lucky to have got in with Drury. He’s very shrewd about what will appeal to a West End audience. When once he’s established you, you’ll be in a much better position to dictate terms.’
Yes, of course, thought Scales – to dictate to Drury, or to anybody else who might want that type of play. But in a worse position than ever to get anybody to look at his serious work. And the worst of it was that the agent, as well as the actor-manager, seemed to think that his concern for his own spiritual integrity didn’t count, didn’t matter – that he would be quite genuinely consoled by his royalties.
At the end of the first week, Garrick Drury practically said as much. His own experience had been justified by the receipts. ‘When all’s said and done,’ he remarked, ‘the box-office is the real test. I don’t say that in a commercial spirit. I’d always be ready to put on a play I believed in – as an artist – even if I lost money by it. But when the box-office is happy, it means the public is happy. The box-office is the pulse of the public. Get that and you know you’ve got the heart of the audience.’
He couldn’t see. Nobody could see. John Scales’s own friends couldn’t see; they merely thought he had sold himself. And as the play settled down to run remorselessly on, like a stream of treacle, John Scales realised that there would be no end to it. It was useless to hope that the public would revolt at the insincerity of the play. They probably saw through it all right, just as the critics had done. What stood in the way of the play’s deserved collapse was the glorious figure of Garrick Drury. ‘This broken-backed play,’ said the Sunday Echo, ‘is only held together by the magnificent acting of Mr Garrick Drury.’ ‘Saccharine as it is,’ said the Looker-On, ‘Bitter Laurel provides a personal triumph for Mr Garrick Drury.’ ‘Nothing in the play is consistent,’ said the Dial, ‘except the assured skill of Mr Garrick Drury, who – ‘Mr John Scales,’ said the Daily Messenger, ‘has constructed his situations with great skill to display Mr Garrick Drury in all his attitudes, and that is a sure recipe for success. We prophesy a long run for Bitter Laurel.’ A true prophecy, or so it seemed.
And there was no stopping it. If only Mr Drury would fall ill or die or lose his looks or his voice or his popularity, the beastly play might be buried and forgotten. There were circumstances under which the rights would revert to the author. But Mr Drury lived and flourished and charmed the public, and the run went on, and after that there were the touring rights (controlled by Mr Drury) and film rights (largely controlled by Mr Drury) and probably radio rights and God only knew what else. And all Mr Scales could do was to pocket the wages of sin and curse Mr Drury, who had (so pleasantly) ruined his work, destroyed his reputation, alienated his friends, exposed him to the contempt of the critics and forced him to betray his own soul.
If there was one living man in London whom John Scales would have liked to see removed from the face of the earth, it was Garrick Drury, to whom (as he was daily obliged to admit to all and sundry) he owed so much. Yet Drury was a really charming fellow. There were times when that inexhaustible charm got so much on the author’s nerves that he could readily have slain Mr Drury for his charm alone.
Yet, when the moment came, on that night of the 15th–16th April, the thing was not premeditated. Not in any real sense. It just happened. Or did it? That was a thing that even John Scales could not have said for certain. He may have felt a moral conviction, but that is not the same thing as a legal conviction. The doctor may have had his suspicions, but if so, they were not directed against John Scales. And whether they were right or wrong, nobody could say that it had made any difference; the real slayer may have been the driver of the car, or the intervening hand of Providence, sprinkling the tarmac with April showers. Or it may have been Garrick Drury, so courteously and charmingly accompanying John Scales in quest of a taxi, instead of getting straight into his own car and being whirled away in the opposite direction.
In any case, it was nearly one in the morning of Sunday when they got the film people off the premises, after a long and much-interrupted argument, during which Scales found himself, as usual, agreeing to a number of things he did not approve of but could see no way to prevent.
‘My dear John,’ said Mr Garrick Drury, pulling off his dressing-gown (he always conducted business interviews in a dressing-gown, if possible, feeling, with some truth, that its flowing outline suited him), ‘my dear John, I know exactly how you feel – Walter! – but it needs experience to deal with these people, and you can trust me not to allow anything inartistic – Oh, thank you, Walter. I’m extremely sorry to have kept you so late.’
Walter Hopkins was Mr Dairy’s personal dresser and faithful adherent. He had not the smallest objection to being kept up all night, or all the next morning for that matter. He was passionately devoted to Mr Drury, who always rewarded his services with a kind word and the smile. He now helped Mr Drury into his coat and overcoat and handed him his hat with a gratified murmur. The dressing-room was still exceedingly untidy but, he could not help that; towards the end of the conversation, the negotiations had become so very delicate that even the devoted Walter had had to be dismissed to lurk in an adjacent room.
‘Never mind about all this,’ went on Mr Drury, indicating a litter of grease-paint, towels, glasses, siphons, ash-trays, teacups (Mr Drury’s aunts had looked in), manuscripts (two optimistic authors had been given audience), mascots (five female admirers had brought Mickey Mice), flowers (handed in at the stage-door) and assorted fan-mail, strewn over the furniture. ‘Just stick my things together and lock up the whisky. I’ll see Mr Scales to his taxi – you’re sure I can’t drop you anywhere, John? Oh! and bring the flowers to the car – and I’d better look through that play of young what’s his name’s – Ruggles, Buggies, you know who I mean – perfectly useless, of course, but I promised dear old Fanny – chuck the rest into the cupboard – and I’ll pick you up in five minutes.’
The night-watchman let them out; he was an infirm and aged man with a face like a rabbit, and Scales wondered what he would do if he met with a burglar or an outbreak of fire in the course of his rounds.
‘Hullo!’ said Garrick Drury, ‘it’s started to rain. But there’s a rank just down the Avenue. Now look here, John, old man, don’t you worry about this, because – Look out!’
It all happened in a flash. A small car, coming just a trifle too fast up the greasy street, braked to avoid a prowling cat, skidded, swung round at right angles and mounted the pavement. The two men leapt for safety – Scales rather clumsily, tripping and sprawling in the gutter. Drury, who was the inside, made a quick backward spring, neat as an acrobat’s, just not far enough. The bumper caught him behind the knee and flung him shoulder-first through the plate-glass window of a milliner’s shop.
When Scales had scrambled to his feet, the car was half-way through the window, with its driver, a girl, knocked senseless over the wheel; a policeman and two taxi-drivers were running towards them from the middle of the street; and Drury, very white and his face bleeding, was extricating himself from the splintered glass, with his left arm clutched in his right hand.
‘Oh, my God!’ said Drury. He staggered up against the car, and between his fingers the bright blood spurted like a fountain.
Scales, shaken and bewildered by his fall, was for the moment unable to grasp what had happened; but the policeman had his wits about him.
‘Never mind the lady,’ he said, urgently, to the taxi-men. ‘This gent’s cut an artery. Bleed to death if we ain’t quick.’ His large, competent fingers grasped the actor’s arm, found the right spot and put firm pressure on the severed blood-vessel. The dreadful spurting ceased. ‘All right, sir? Lucky you ’ad the presence of mind to ketch ’old of yourself.’ He eased the actor down on the running board, without relaxing his grip.
‘I got an ’andkercher,’ suggested one of the taxi-men.
‘That’s right,’ said the policeman. ‘’Itch it round ’is arm above the place and pull it as tight as you can. That’ll ’elp. Nasty cut it is, right to the bone, by the looks of it.’
Scales looked at the shop-window and the pavement, and shuddered. It might have been a slaughter-house.
‘Thanks very much,’ said Drury to the policeman and the taxi-man. He summoned up the ghost of a smile, and fainted.
‘Better take him into the theatre,’ said Scales. ‘The stage-door’s open. Only a step or two up the passage. It’s Mr Drury, the actor,’ he added, to explain this suggestion. ‘I’ll run along and tell them.’
The policeman nodded. Scales hurried up the passage and met Walter just emerging from the stage-door.
‘Accident!’ said Scales, breathless. ‘Mr Drury – cut an artery – they’re bringing him here.’
Walter, with a cry, flung down the flowers he was carrying and darted out. Drury was being supported up the passage by the two drivers. The policeman walked beside him still keeping a strong thumb on his arm. They brought him in, stumbling over the heaps of narcissus and daffodil; the crushed blossom smelt like funeral flowers.
‘There’s a couch in his dressing-room,’ said Scales. His mind had suddenly become abnormally clear. ‘It’s on the ground-floor. Round here to the right and across the stage.’
‘Oh, dear, oh, dear!’ said Walter. ‘Oh, Mr Drury! He won’t die – he can’t die! All that dreadful blood!’
‘Now, keep your ’ead,’ admonished the policeman. ‘Can’t you ring up a doctor and make yourself useful?’
Walter and the night-watchman made a concerted rush for the telephone, leaving Scales to guide the party across the deserted stage, black and ghostly in the light of one dim bulb high over the proscenium arch. Their way was marked by heavy red splashes on the dusty boards. As though the very sound of those boards beneath their tread had wakened the actor’s instinct, Drury opened one eye.
‘What’s happened to those lights?’ … Then, with returning consciousness, ‘Oh, it’s the curtain line … Dying, Egypt, dying … final appearance, eh?’
‘Rot, old man,’ said Scales, hastily, ‘You’re not dying yet by a long chalk.’
One of the taxi-drivers – an elderly man – stumbled and panted. ‘Sorry,’ said Drury, ‘to be such a weight … can’t help you much … find it easier … take your grip further down …’ The smile was twisted, but his wits and experience were back on the job. This was not the first or the hundredth time he had been ‘carried out’ from the stage of the King’s. His bearers took his gasping instructions and successfully negotiated the corner of the set. Scales, hovering in attendance, was unreasonably irritated. Of course, Drury was behaving beautifully. Courage, presence of mind, consideration for others – all the right theatrical gestures. Couldn’t the fellow be natural, even at death’s door?
Here, Scales was unjust. It was natural to Drury to be theatrical in a crisis, as it is to nine people out of ten. He was, as a matter of fact, providing the best possible justification for his own theories about human nature. They got him to the dressing-room, laid him on the couch, and were thanked.
‘My wife,’ said Drury, ‘… in Sussex. Don’t startle her … she’s had flu … heart not strong.’
‘All right, all right,’ said Scales. He found a towel and drew some water into a bowl. Walter came running in.
‘Dr Debenham’s out … away for the week-end … Blake’s telephoning another one … Suppose they’re all away … whatever shall we do? … They oughn’t to let doctors go away like this.’
‘We’ll try the police-surgeon,’ said the constable. ‘Here, you, come an ’old your thumb where I’ve got mine. Can’t trust that there bandage. Squeeze ’ard, mind, and don’t let go. And don’t faint,’ he added sharply. He turned to the taxi-men. ‘You better go and see what’s ’appened to the young lady. I blew me whistle, so you did oughter find the other constable there. You’ (to Scales) ‘will ’ave to stay here – I’ll be wanting your evidence about the accident.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Scales, busy with the towel.
‘My face,’ said Drury, putting up a restless hand. ‘Has it got the eye?’
‘No, it’s only a scalp-wound. Don’t get excited.’
‘Sure? Better dead than disfigured. Don’t want to end like Florrie. Poor old Florrie. Give her my love … Cheer up, Walter … Rotten curtain, isn’t it? … Get yourself a drink … You’re certain the eye’s all right? … You weren’t hurt, were you, old man? … Hell of a nuisance for you, too … Stop the run …’
Scales, in the act of pouring out whisky for himself and Walter (who looked nearly as ready to collapse as his employer) started, and nearly dropped the bottle. Stop the run – yes, it would stop the run. An hour ago, he had been praying for a miracle to stop the run. And the miracle had happened. And if Drury hadn’t had the wits to stop the bleeding – if he had waited only one minute more – the run would have stopped, and the film would have stopped, and the whole cursed play would have stopped dead for good and all. He swallowed down the neat spirit with a jerk, and handed the second glass to Walter. It was as though he had made the thing happen by wishing for it. By wishing a little harder – Nonsense! … But the doctor didn’t come and, though Walter was holding on like grim death (grim death!) to the cut artery, the blood from the smaller vessels was soaking and seeping through the cloth and the bandages … there was still the chance, still the likelihood, still the hope …
This would never do. Scales dashed out into the passage and across the stage to the night-watchman’s box. The policeman was still telephoning. Drury’s chauffeur, haggard and alarmed, stood, cap in hand, talking to the taxi-men. The girl, it appeared, had been taken to hospital with concussion. The divisional police-surgeon had gone to an urgent case. The nearest hospital had no surgeon free at the moment. The policeman was trying the police-surgeon belonging to the next division. Scales went back.
The next half-hour was a nightmare. The patient, hovering between consciousness and unconsciousness, was still worrying about his face, about his arm, about the play. And the red stain on the couch spread and spread …
Then with a bustle, a short, stout man came in, carrying a bag. He took a look at the patient, tested his pulse, asked a few questions, shook his head, muttering something about loss of blood and loss of time and weakness. The policeman, somewhere in the background, mentioned that the ambulance had arrived.
‘Nonsense,’ said the doctor. ‘Can’t possibly move him. Got to deal with it here and now.’ With a few brisk words of commendation, he dislodged Walter from his post. He worked quickly, cutting away the sodden sleeve, applying a proper tourniquet, administering some kind of stimulant, again assuring the patient that his eye was not damaged and that he was suffering from nothing but shock and loss of blood.
‘You won’t take my arm off?’ said Drury, suddenly visited with a new alarm. ‘I’m an actor – I can’t – I won’t – you can’t do it without telling me – you –’
‘No, no, no,’ said the doctor. ‘Now we’ve stopped the bleeding. But you must he still, or you might start it again.’
‘Shall I have the use of it?’ The expressive eyes searched the doctor’s face. ‘Sorry. But a stiff arm’s as bad as no arm to me. Do your best … or I shall never play again … Except in Bitter Laurel … John, old man … funny, isn’t it? Funny it’s this arm … Have to live on your play for the rest of my days … the only, only play …’
‘Good God!’ cried Scales, involuntarily.
‘Now, I must have this room clear,’ said the doctor with authority. ‘Officer, get these people out and send me in those ambulance men.’
‘Come along,’ said the policeman. ‘And I’ll take your statement now, sir.’
‘Not me!’ protested Walter Hopkins, ‘I can’t leave Mr Drury. I can’t. Let me stay, I’ll help. I’ll do anything –’
‘The best way you can help,’ said the doctor, not unkindly but with determination, ‘is by giving me room to work. Now, please –’
Somehow they got Walter, struggling and hysterical, into the dressing-room across the passage. Here he sat, gathered together on the edge of a chair, starting at every sound from outside, while the constable interrogated and dismissed the two taxi-men. Then Scales found himself giving a statement, in the midst of which, the doctor put his head in to say:
‘I want some of you to stand by. It may be necessary to make a blood-transfusion. We must get that arm stitched, but his pulse is very weak and I don’t know how he’ll stand it. I don’t suppose any of you know which blood-group you belong to?’
‘I’ll do it!’ cried Walter, eagerly. ‘Please, sir, let it be me! I’d give all the blood in my body for Mr Drury. I’ve been with him fifteen years, doctor –’
‘Now, now,’ said the doctor.
‘I’d sacrifice my life for Mr Drury.’
‘Yes, I daresay,’ said the doctor, with a resigned look at the constable, ‘but there’s no question of that. Where do people get these ideas? Out of the papers, I suppose. Nobody’s being asked to sacrifice any lives. We only want a pint or so of blood – trifling affair for a healthy man. It won’t make the slightest difference to you – do you good, I shouldn’t wonder. My dear sir, don’t excite yourself so much. I know you’re willing – very naturally – but if you haven’t the right kind of blood you’re no good to me.’
‘I’m very strong,’ said Walter, palpitating. ‘Never had a day’s illness.’
‘It’s nothing to do with your general health,’ said the doctor, a little impatiently. ‘It’s a thing you’re born with. I gather there is no relation of the patient’s handy … What? Wife, sister and son in Sussex – well that’s rather a long way off. I’ll test the two ambulance men first, but unfortunately the patient isn’t a universal recipient, so we may not get the right grouping first go-off. I’d like one or two others handy, in case. Good thing I brought everything with me. Always do in an accident case. Never know what you may need, and time’s everything.’
He darted out, leaving behind him an atmosphere of mystery and haste. The policeman shook his head and pocketed his notebook.
‘Dunno as blood-offerings is part of my dooty,’ he observed. ‘I did oughter get back to me beat. But I’ll ’ave to give that there car the once-over and see what my chum ’as to say about it. I’ll look in again when I done that, and if they wants me they’ll know where to find me. Now, then, what do you want?’
‘Press,’ said a man at the door, succinctly. ‘Somebody phoned to say Mr Drury was badly hurt. That true? Very sorry to hear it. Ah! Good evening, Mr Scales. This is all very distressing. I wonder, can you tell me …?’
Scales found himself helplessly caught up in the wheels of the Press – giving an account of the accident – saying all the right things about Drury – what Drury had done for him – what Drury had done for the play – quoting Drury’s words – expatiating on Drury’s courage, presence of mind and thought for others – manufacturing a halo round Drury – mentioning the strange (and to the newspaper man, gratifying) coincidence that the arm actually wounded was the arm wounded in the play – hoping that Eric Brand, the understudy, would be able to carry on till Mr Drury was sufficiently recovered to play again – feeling his hatred for Drury rise up in him like a flood with every word he uttered – and finally insisting, with a passion and emphasis that he could not explain to himself, on his own immense personal gratitude and friendship towards Drury and his desperate anxiety to see him restored to health. He felt as though, by saying this over and over again, he might stifle something – something – some frightful thing within him that was asserting itself against his will. The reporter said that Mr Scales had his deepest sympathy …
‘Mr – ha, hum –’ said the doctor, popping his head in again.
‘Excuse me,’ said Scales, quickly. He made for the door; but Walter was there before him, agitatedly offering his life-blood by the gallon. Scales thought he could see the pressman’s ears prick up like a dog’s. A blood-transfusion, of course, was always jam for a headline. But the doctor made short work of the reporter.
‘No time for you,’ he said brusquely, pulling Scales and Walter out and slamming the door. ‘Yes – I want another test. Hope one of you’s the right sort. If not,’ he added, with a sort of grim satisfaction, ‘we’ll try bleeding the tripe-hound. Learn him not to make a fuss.’ He led the way back into Drury’s dressing-room where the big screen which usually shrouded the wash-stand had been pulled round to conceal the couch. A space had been cleared on the table, and a number of articles laid out upon it: bottles, pipettes, needles, a porcelain slab oddly marked and stained, and a small drum of the sort used for protecting sterilised instruments. Standing near the wash-basin, one of the ambulance men was boiling a saucepan on a gas-ring.
‘Now then,’ said the doctor. He spoke in a low tone, perfectly clear, but calculated not to carry beyond the screen. ‘Don’t make more noise than you can help. I’ll have to do it here – no gas-ring in the other room, and I don’t want to leave the patient. Never mind – it won’t take a minute to make the tests. I can do you both together. Here, you – I want this slab cleaned no, never mind, here’s a clean plate; that’ll do – it needn’t be surgically sterile.’ He wiped the plate carefully with a towel and set it on the table between the two men. Scales recognised its pattern of pink roses; it had often held sandwiches while he and Drury, endlessly talking, had hammered out new dialogue for Bitter Laurel over a quick lunch. ‘You understand’ the doctor looked from one to the other and addressed himself to Walter, as though feeling that the unfortunate man might burst unless some notice was taken of him soon – ‘that your blood – everybody’s blood – belongs to one or other of four different groups.’ He opened the drum and picked out a needle. ‘There’s no necessity to go into details; the point is that, for a transfusion to be successful, the donor’s blood must combine in a particular way with the patient’s. Now, this will only be a prick – you’ll scarcely feel it.’ He took Walter by the ear and jabbed the needle into the lobe. ‘If the donor’s blood belongs to an unsuitable group, it causes agglutination of the red cells, and the operation is worse than useless. He drew off a few drops of blood into a pipette. Walter watched and listened, seeming to understand very little, but soothed by the calm, professional voice. The doctor transferred two separate droplets of diluted blood to the plate, making a little ring about each with a grease pencil. ‘There is one type of person’ – here he captured Scales and repeated the operation upon his ear with a fresh needle and pipette – ‘Group 4, we call them, who are universal donors; their blood suits anybody. Or, of course, if one of you belongs to the patient’s own blood-group, that would do nicely. Unfortunately, he’s a group 3, and that’s rather rare. So far, we’ve been unlucky.’ He placed two drops of Scales’s blood on the other side of the plate, drawing a pencil-mark from edge to edge to separate the two pairs of specimens, set the plate neatly between the two donors, so that each stood guard over his own property, and turned again to Walter:
‘Let’s see, what’s your name?’
As though in answer, there was a movement behind the screen. Something fell with a crash, and the ambulance man put out a scared face, saying urgently, ‘Doctor!’ At the same moment came Drury’s voice, ‘Walter – tell Walter –!’ trailing into silence. Walter and the doctor dived for the screen together, Scales catching Walter as he pushed past him. The second ambulance man put down what he was doing and ran to assist. There was a moment of bustle and expostulation, and the doctor said, ‘Come, now, give him a chance.’ Walter came back to his place at the table. His mouth looked as though he were going to cry.
‘They won’t let me see him. He asked for me.’
‘He mustn’t exert himself, you know,’ said Scales, mechanically.
The patient was muttering to himself and the doctor seemed to be trying to quiet him. Scales and Walter Hopkins stood waiting helplessly, with the plate between them. Four little drops of blood – absurd, thought Scales, that they should be of so much importance, when you remembered that horrible welter in the street, on the couch. On the table stood a small wooden rack, containing ampoules. He read the labels, ‘Stock serum No. II’, ‘Stock serum No. III’; the words conveyed nothing to him; he noticed, stupidly, that one of the little pink roses on the border of the plate had been smudged in the firing – that Walter’s hands were trembling as he supported himself upon the table.
Then the doctor reappeared, whispering to the ambulance men, ‘Do try to keep him quiet.’ Walter looked anxiously at him. ‘All right, so far,’ said the doctor. ‘Now then, where were we? What did you say your name was?’ He labelled the specimens on Walter’s side of the plate with the initials ‘W.H.’
‘Mine’s John Scales,’ said Scales. The doctor wrote down the initials of London’s popular playwright as indifferently as though they had been those of a rate-collector and took from the rack the ampoule of Serum II. Breaking it, he added a little of the contents, first to a drop of the ‘J.S.’ blood and, next, to a drop of ‘W.H.’ blood, scribbling the figure II beside each specimen. To each of the remaining drops he added, in the same way, a little of Serum III. Blood and serum met and mingled; to Scales, all four of the little red blotches looked exactly alike. He was disappointed, he had vaguely expected something more dramatic.
‘It’ll take a minute or two,’ said the doctor, gently rocking the plate. ‘If the blood of either of you mixes with both sera without clumping the red corpuscles, then that donor is a universal donor, and will do. Or, if it clumps with Serum II and remains clear with Serum III, then the donor belongs to the patient’s own blood-group and will do excellently for him. But if it clumps with both sera or with Serum III only, then it will do for the patient in quite another sense.’ He set the plate down and began to fish in his pocket.
One of the ambulance men looked round the screen again. ‘I can’t find his pulse,’ he announced helplessly, ‘and he’s looking very queer.’ The doctor clicked his tongue in a worried way against his teeth and vanished. There were movements, and a clinking of glass.
Scales gazed down at the plate. Was there any difference to be seen? Was one of the little blotches on Walter’s side beginning to curdle and separate into grains as though someone had sprinkled it with cayenne pepper? He was not sure. On his own side of the plate, the drops looked exactly alike. Again he read the labels; again he noted the pink rose that had been smudged in the firing – the pink rose – funny about the pink rose – but what was funny about it? Certainly, one of Walter’s drops was beginning to look different. A hard ring was forming about its edge, and the tiny, peppery grains were growing darker and more distinct.
‘He’ll do now,’ said the doctor, returning, ‘but we don’t want to lose any time. Let’s hope –’
He bent over the plate again. It was the drop labelled III that had the queer grainy look – was that the right way or the wrong way round? Scales could not remember. The doctor was examining the specimens closely, with the help of a pencil microscope … Then he straightened his back with a small sigh of relief.
‘Group 4,’ he announced; ‘we’re all right now.’
‘Which of us?’ thought Scales (though he was pretty sure of the answer). He was still obscurely puzzled by the pink rose.
‘Yes,’ went on the doctor, ‘no sign of agglutination. I think we can risk that without a direct match-up against the patient’s blood. It would take twenty minutes and we can’t spare the time.’ He turned to Scales. ‘You’re the man we want.’
Walter gave an anguished cry.
‘Not me?’
‘Hush!’ said the doctor, authoritatively. ‘No, I’m afraid we can’t let it be you. Now, you’ – he turned to Scales again –‘are a universal donor; very useful person to have about. Heart quite healthy, I suppose? Feels all right. You look fit enough, and thank goodness, you’re not fat. Get your coat off, will you and turn up your sleeve. Ah, yes. Nice stout-looking vein. Splendid. Now, you won’t take any harm – you may feel a little faint perhaps, but you’ll be as right as rain in an hour or so.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Scales. He was still looking at the plate. The smudged rose was on his right. Surely it had always been on his right. Or had it started on his left? When? Before the blood-drops had been put on? or after? How could it have altered its position? When the doctor was handling the plate? Or could Walter have caught the plate with his sleeve and swivelled it round when he made his mad rush for the screen? If so, was that before the specimens had been labelled? After, surely. No, before – after they were taken and before they were labelled. And that would mean …
The doctor was opening the drum again; taking out bandages, forceps, a glass flask …
That would mean that his own blood and Walter’s had changed places before the serum was added, and if so …
… Scissors, towels, a kind of syringe …
If there was the slightest doubt, one ought to draw attention to it and have the specimens tested again. But perhaps either of their bloods would have done equally well; in that case, the doctor would naturally give the preference to John Scales, rather than to poor Walter, shivering there like a leaf. Clump with II, clear with III; clump with III clear with II – he couldn’t remember which way it went …
‘No, I’m sorry,’ repeated the doctor. He escorted, Walter firmly to the door and came back. ‘Poor chap – he can’t make out why his blood won’t do. Hopeless, of course. Just as well give the man prussic acid at once.’
… The pink rose …
‘Doctor –’ began Scales.
And then, suddenly, Drury’s voice came from behind the screen, speaking the line that had been written to be spoken with a harsh and ugly cynicism, but giving it as he had given it now on the stage for nearly a hundred performances:
‘All right, all right, don’t worry – I’ll rest on my laurels.’
The hated, heartbreaking voice – the professional actor’s voice – sweet as sugar plums – liquid and mellow like an intoxicated flute.
Damn him! thought Scales, feeling the rubber band tighten above his elbow, I hope he dies. Never to hear that damned-awful voice again. I’d give anything. I’d give …
He watched his arm swell and mottle red and blue under the pressure of the band. The doctor gave him an injection of something. Scales said nothing. He was thinking:
Give anything. I would give my life. I would give my blood. I have only to give my blood – and say nothing. The plate was turned round … No, I don’t know that. It’s the doctor’s business to make sure … I can’t speak now … He’ll wonder why I didn’t speak before … Author sacrifices blood to save benefactor … Roses to right of him, roses to left of him … roses, roses all the way … I will rest on my laurels.
The needle now – plump into the vein. His own blood flowing, rising in the glass flask … Somebody bringing a bowl of warm water with a faint steam rising off it …
His life for his friend … right as rain in an hour or two … blood-brothers … the blood is the life … as well give him prussic acid at once … to poison a man with one’s own blood … new idea, for a murder … MURDER …
‘Don’t jerk about,’ said the doctor.
… and what a motive! … murder to save one’s artistic soul … Who’d believe that? … and losing money by it … your money or your life … his life for his friend … his friend for his life … life or death, and not to know which one was giving … not really know … not know at all, really … too late now … absurd to say anything now … nobody saw the plate turned round … and who would ever imagine …?
‘That’ll do,’ said the doctor. He loosened the rubber band, dabbed a pad of wool over the puncture and pulled out the needle, all, it seemed to Scales, in one movement. He plopped the flask into a little stand over the bowl of water and dressed the arm with iodine. ‘How do you feel? A trifle faint? Go and lie down in the other room for a minute or two.’
Scales opened his mouth to speak, and was suddenly assailed by a queer, sick qualm. He plunged for the door. As he went, he saw the doctor carry the flask behind the screen.
Damn that reporter! He was still hanging round. Meat and drink to the papers, this kind of thing. Heroic sacrifice by grateful author. Good story. Better story still if the heroic author were to catch him by the arm, pour into his ear the unbelievable truth – were to say, ‘I hated him, I hated him, I tell you – I’ve poisoned him – my blood’s poison – serpent’s blood, dragon’s blood –’
And what would the doctor say? If this really had gone wrong, would he suspect? What could he suspect? He hadn’t seen the plate move. Nobody had. He might suspect himself of negligence, but he wouldn’t be likely to shout that from the housetops. And he had been negligent – pompous, fat, chattering fool. Why didn’t he mark the specimens earlier? Why didn’t he match-up the blood with Drury’s? Why did he need to chatter so much and explain things? Tell people how easy it was to murder a benefactor?
Scales wished he knew what was happening. Walter was hovering outside in the passage. Walter was jealous – he had looked on enviously, grudgingly, as Scales came stumbling in from the operation. If only Walter knew what Scales had been doing, he might well look … It occurred to Scales that he had played a shabby trick on Walter – cheated him – Walter, who had wanted so much to sacrifice his right, his true, his life-giving blood …
Twenty minutes … nearly half an hour … How soon would they know whether it was all right or all wrong? ‘As well give him prussic acid,’ the doctor had said. That suggested something pretty drastic. Prussic acid was quick – you died as if struck.
Scales got up, pushed Walter and the pressman aside and crossed the passage. In Drury’s room the screen had been pushed back. Scales, peeping through the door, could see Drury’s face, white and glistening with sweat. The doctor bent over the patient, holding his wrist. He looked distressed –almost alarmed. Suddenly he turned, caught sight of Scales and came over to him. He seemed to take minutes to cross the room.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the doctor. ‘I’m very much afraid – you did your best – we all did our best.’
‘No good?’ Scales whispered back. His tongue and palate were like sawdust.
‘One can never be certain with these things,’ said the doctor. ‘I’m very much afraid he’s going.’ He paused and his eyes were faintly puzzled. ‘So much haemorrhage,’ he muttered as though explaining the trouble to himself. ‘Shock – cardiac strain – excitable’ – and, in a worried voice – ‘he complained almost at once of pain in the back.’ He added, with more assurance: ‘It’s always a bit of a gamble, you see, when the operation is left so late – and sometimes there is a particular idiosyncrasy. I should have preferred a direct test; but it’s not satisfactory if the patient dies while you wait to make sure.’
With a wry smile he turned back to the couch, and Scales followed him. If Drury could have acted death as he was acting it now! … Scales could not rid himself of the notion that he was acting – that the shine upon the skin was grease-paint, and the rough, painful breathing, the stereotyped stage gasp. If truth could be so stagey, then the stage must be disconcertingly like truth.
Something sobbed at his elbow. Walter had crept into the room, and this time the doctor made way for him.
‘Oh, Mr Drury!’ said Walter.
Drury’s blue lips moved. He opened his eyes: the dilated pupils made them look black and enormous.
‘Where’s Brand?’
The doctor turned interrogatively to the other two men. ‘His son?’
‘His understudy,’ whispered Scales. Walter said, ‘He’ll be here in a minute, Mr Drury.’
‘They’re waiting,’ said Drury. He drew a difficult breath and spoke in his old voice:
‘Brand! Fetch Brand! The curtain must go up!’
Garrick Drury’s death was very ‘good theatre’.
Nobody, thought Scales, could ever know. He could never really know himself. Drury might have died, anyhow, of shock. Even if the blood had been right, he might have died. One couldn’t be certain, now, that the blood hadn’t been right; it might have been all imagination about the smudged pink rose. Or – one might be sure, deep in one’s own mind. But nobody could prove it. Or – could the doctor? There would have to be an inquest, of course. Would they make a post-mortem? Could they prove that the blood was wrong? If so, the doctor had his ready explanation – ‘particular idiosyncrasy’ and lack of time to make further test. He must give that explanation, or accuse himself of negligence.
Because nobody could prove that the plate had been moved. Walter and the doctor had not seen it – if they had, they would have spoken. Nor could it be proved that he, Scales, had seen it – he was not even certain himself, except in the hidden chambers of the heart. And he, who lost so much by Drury’s death – to suppose that he could have seen and not spoken was fantastic. There are things beyond the power even of a coroner to imagine or of a coroner’s jury to believe.