13

 

 

Very carefully, Murray balanced the enamel dish and the second jar of heroin behind the curtain pelmet. He still hadn’t come up with a better idea. He stood back, letting his hands fall to his sides, and was abruptly aware of great weakness. He discovered an ache in the shoulder with which he had charged the door, and as though the ache were spreading into his very mind the trend of his thoughts grew dark.

What’ll happen? Tomorrow, will one of these damned black-garbed stewards simply take another jar and another syringe and leave them for Gerry to find, without a word?

He took out a cigarette and began to pace the floor. That must have happened already. What other explanation was there? Gerry couldn’t have afforded to buy one such jar of heroin, let alone two. It was on the house.

He felt sick. There was a calculated nastiness in this affair which he was sure could only have originated with Delgado. ‘His method of working’—faugh! What did it really consist in: rubbing the nerves of his actors raw?

For the first time, he began seriously to consider the chance of contacting someone who had worked on Trois Fois à la Fois.

And yet … some of the cast seemed improbably eager to jump when Delgado cracked his whip. Take the way in which Constant had swallowed the author’s bloody-mindedness and copied him in blaming Murray for the catastrophe. Granted, he’d apologized. But it had taken the shock of seeing Gerry in danger to make him think of being ashamed. Otherwise he wouldn’t have opened his mouth, except to make a few more snide cracks.

Even Adrian, the most experienced member of the cast in Murray’s view, hadn’t contradicted Delgado’s ill-tempered attack. Only Ida had done so—and Heather, but she was irrelevant …

He felt his mind slide back to the line it had been following when, down in the theatre, he had heard Gerry’s door close and then suspected what was going on. He’d been telling himself it was as though Heather were merely ‘on the house’ for Ida, like Gerry’s drug, Constant’s pornography, the liquor he’d been tempted with.

It wasn’t so silly, that idea. Except—what was the purpose behind it all?

Oh, damn Delgado for a temperamental bastard! Murray strode to the bed. There was only one thing he’d been able to do so far to kid himself he was hitting back, and that was his regular routine of stripping the metal embroidery off his mattress. He’d done it automatically every night since making his discovery, and just as automatically, when the bed was made during the morning, either it was replaced or a new mattress was found. It had happened again; there was the gleaming tracery of wire under the bolster.

He ripped it off. But this time he didn’t stop there. He opened the hinged panel concealing the tape-deck, twisted the spools off the turrets, and went to the window. Holding the spool which had less tape, he tossed the other out discus-fashion. It flew a satisfyingly long distance, unreeling a brown tail like a carnival streamer. Then he threw the other one, and slammed the window.

It made him feel better. But it was still a pretty childish gesture. He stubbed his cigarette and took a grip on himself.

Unless he made sense out of what Delgado was doing before tomorrow, there was going to be hell to pay. The resentment the rest of the cast felt against him—conjured up on the author’s say-so, but fierce enough despite that—had only started to smoulder. If tomorrow’s work went as badly as one could expect, it would blaze. It might ruin the entire venture. But Murray had an obscure conviction that Delgado wouldn’t give a damn.

So what was he after? He considered the remote possibility that he wasn’t interested in putting a play together at all; he was a character out of one of Constant’s books, getting his kicks by making people squirm, with enough money behind him from this Argentine billionaire not to mind if thousands of pounds were squandered.

No, it was too far-fetched. He had made a film which secured critical acclaim. He had made a succès fou out of the play with Garrigue …

Memory interrupted, in Roger Grady’s voice: ‘Because Garrigue killed himself. Because Léa Martinez went into an asylum. Because Claudette Myrin tried to murder her baby daughter.’

Would Roger be saying to someone else, next year or the year after, ‘Because Murray Douglas started drinking again. Because Gerry Hoading overdosed himself with horse. Because—’?

No.

He was sweating, and his hands were shaking. He drove his attention back to immediate problems. Suppose, for instance, he found himself in this same spot without having annoyed Delgado. Suppose he didn’t know anything about the tape-decks in the beds or the mysterious additions to the TV sets.

It didn’t figure. It felt wrong. There wasn’t any other sane reason why Delgado should have abandoned a play that was going like wildfire on such a specious excuse, except annoyance with the person he attacked. And the only thing Murray had done which had upset Delgado was to ask about the tape-decks.

He was going to look further into this. He had no notion what he might learn, but he had to do something, and no alternative offered itself.

Where to begin? He lit another cigarette and stared towards the wall beyond the TV set, the wall separating his room from number thirteen. The cable was secured now—he’d tested it—so he couldn’t deliberately repeat his smashing of a pile of equipment in there. And the door was always locked. He’d check that, too.

But there was something at the edge of his mind …

Got it. He went to the window, opened it, and craned out as far as he could. Yes, that was about right. If Gerry’s room was over the middle of the seating in the theatre and his own room was the end one, over the greenrooms, then room thirteen must be over the stage.

He wondered if he could get to its window, but had to abandon the idea at once. There was nothing to give him purchase on the outside wall; the windowsill was a mere ledge, and he could see clearly that the windows were tight shut. You’d need a ladder to get up there. Or a drain-pipe? No, there wasn’t one within reach.

So downstairs.

 

He walked across the stage, having put on the auditorium lights, and stared at the ceiling rather vaguely. He didn’t know what to look for. Between the curtain and the flies the ceiling was in deep shadow, and he had to concentrate hard before he could establish details.

It looked as though there was some kind of grille over the ceiling proper.

Glancing about him, he spotted the chairs and tables out of which Gerry had been improvising his two-level set. He measured distances with his eye. If he took up one more chair and set it on the highest table, he could easily reach the grille below the ceiling.

He proceeded to do that.

Beyond the grille something glinted. Bare wires—or metal rods, perhaps; they were quite thick. He got out his lighter and by its wan flame peered and poked with his finger between the bars of the grille.

Nothing he recognized. It was something akin to the metal embroidery on the mattresses. Curves, straight lines, spirals, threw light back to him. They wove between the grille and the ceiling over the entire area of the stage, as far as he could make out—

‘What do you find so interesting, Murray?’

Murray started and almost fell off his high perch, having to seize the grille to steady himself. Below him, on the floor of the auditorium, stood Delgado. The sallow face was dark with rage, but the voice had been level enough.

Murray paused. Then he gathered his wits and replied. ‘If you don’t know, Delgado, nobody else around here is likely to!’

Delgado took half a pace back, as though from a physical jolt. He said, ‘Come down from there, Murray! There’s delicate equipment up there, and you’ve smashed up quite enough already with your damned inquisitiveness!’

Murray cocked an eyebrow. Having startled Delgado, he felt remarkably self-possessed. ‘Okay, I’ll make a bargain with you,’ he proposed. ‘You tell me what this stuff is, and I’ll stop prying. But I want the truth this time, not a tissue of lies.’

Delgado’s response was to mount the stage and lay one hand on the leg of a table supporting Murray. ‘If you don’t come down, I’ll pull this table over and bring you down. Don’t think I can’t do it.’

Remembering the casual strength with which Delgado had torn hundreds of sheets of paper, Murray recognized the value of the threat. There was no alternative to surrender.

‘Okay,’ he said resignedly. ‘I’ll come down.’

Delgado stood back. He put his hands on his hips in a curiously womanish gesture as Murray descended.

‘I’m getting very tired of you, Murray,’ he said. ‘You seem to enjoy being a nuisance too much to appreciate that you’re here, living comfortably, receiving excellent pay, with the chance of partaking in something which will make theatrical history—’

‘Did you write your speech yourself?’ Murray broke in. ‘Or is it collectively improvised?’

For the second time in the space of minutes he had the unlooked-for satisfaction of discomforting Delgado. Muscles beneath the sallow skin tautened, and the voice took an edge of shrillness.

‘What were you doing when I interrupted you, Murray? Why have you been destroying things that don’t belong to you? Why are you trying to make trouble?’

‘Because you’ve a very bad liar, Delgado, and an even worse actor.’ It was heartening to be able to assume command of the situation, and Murray seized the chance. ‘First lie: your story about sleep-learning wasn’t true, so I decided to keep needling you to get at the truth. Second lie: your tantrum this afternoon, your saying that the work we’d done had been ruined by me, was so dishonest that even Ida saw through it. Third lie: all this crap about theatrical history! I don’t believe you give a damn about creating a play. I think you’re an evil little man with a dirty-minded lust for power, and it means more to you to have people dancing when you pull their strings than to achieve something artistically worthwhile. You may have convinced Sam Blizzard that you’re genuine, and you’ve certainly got talent enough to build a masterpiece out of your material. But I tell you this straight! You won’t get me grovelling to you either with threats or bribes. You can feed Gerry his heroin and Constant his dirty books and maybe they’ll think you’re doing them a favour and be grateful. You won’t get a hold on me like that. And if you put your mumbo-jumbo trickery in my bed and stuff mysterious gadgets into the TV sets and lie about what the things are for, you won’t stop me digging for the truth. Not until you level with me. Do I make myself clear?’

Delgado had heard him out with unwavering attention, his self-possession seeping back second by second. Now he gave a short laugh, and the sound made Murray’s skin crawl.

‘You are a very insecure person, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘You have to talk so loudly to reassure yourself. You are afraid that something is going on which you don’t understand. You feel that you have missed a clue somewhere, and the idea scares you. So you break things. You can’t afford to run away, but breaking things gives you a sense of comforting power. And you shift blame to me because you can’t face your own inadequacy. Though I’d have thought it was obvious even to you—after all, it wasn’t my fault you drank yourself into the gutter, was it? Still, you have some trace of spirit left. If you did not, I would not hesitate to tell Blizzard to get rid of you.

‘Your technique is showing,’ Murray said with scorn. ‘To dodge straight questions, you toss out insults, hoping I’ll be distracted by a fit of temper. It won’t work. You’re doing something for which the play is only an excuse, and just so long as you continue to deny that I’ll go on trying to prove it.’

‘You’re obstinate,’ Delgado said. ‘But I know what I’m doing, and you don’t. I don’t have to wonder which of us will yield first. As you wish, then. You will certainly suffer unnecessarily, especially when it becomes clear to all your colleagues that you are being deliberately obstructive. However, I can afford to throw you and anyone else aside.’

He gave a sleepy smile. ‘And you can’t afford to do anything. I’m your last hope, Murray. On your head be it.’