Wanda had turned her head from the fire at the sound of the doors opening. As Grech approached the bed she had risen. Now with a cry that seemed torn from her heart, she ran into the alcove and dropped on her knees beside the bed. Her arms cradled Vladimir’s head. She sobbed aloud, her face against his shoulder.
Grech came downstage center and spoke to the nearest servant: Who is that woman?
Only then, when Grech stood for the first time in the full glare of the footlights, did Basil recognize him as Leonard Martin. Basil was so fascinated by this discovery that he could not take his eyes off Leonard for some time after. The colorless brows and lashes had been darkened. A wig hid the bald head and thin fringe of sandy hair. A full-skirted overcoat with broad shoulders made him look larger and more formidable. But it was not make-up alone that gave Leonard all the rugged virility he had seemed to lack off-stage. Everything about him was different—voice, gait, gesture, and bearing were those of another man. Wanda had won the sympathy of the audience by the intensity of her own personality. For that very reason she had not acted at all. It was Fedora as Wanda Morley, not Wanda Morley as Fedora. She could control the expression of her emotions at will, but they were always her emotions. She could not simulate another character alien to her own temperament. With Leonard it was different. He was more than an actor—he was an artist. He didn’t use Grech as a vehicle for exploiting his own personality. He didn’t even act Grech—he was Grech. He destroyed his own personality temporarily in order to make Grech, the policeman, a living, breathing individual with a robust personality all his own that had nothing to do with a quiet, sickly little actor named Leonard Martin. Wanda was merely an alluring woman. Leonard was a creative artist. Basil wondered if the audience appreciated the difference between sex appeal and art.
Perhaps Wanda was afraid of comparisons, for now she went out of her way to draw the attention of the audience to herself. How could anyone watch Grech question the household servants near the footlights, while Wanda, in the alcove, kept her hands in constant motion by straightening Vladimir’s pillow, stroking his cheek, lifting his arm back onto the bed?
The door at left opened to admit Dr. Lorek. His entrance completely destroyed the illusion of reality on stage which Leonard Martin had created. Once again the moonlight was just blue lamplight; the roofs of Moscow, painted canvas.
Even if Basil had not known who was playing Lorek he would have recognized Rodney Tait at once. He was supposed to be a distinguished surgeon called in to save a valuable patient lying at the point of death; but he only succeeded in being exactly what he had seemed off stage—a personable, debonair young man without a care in the world. His success in the theater was obviously owing to a pleasing voice and easy manner, rather than any talent as an actor. His good-humored presence served him well enough when he played young men like himself. But, like Wanda, he was incapable of portraying any character alien to his own nature. Tonight he was miscast in just such a role. He was trying—too hard. With artless solemnity he divested himself of padded overcoat, fur cap, and fur-lined gloves, piling them neatly on a chair. You could almost hear the beat of the dramatic school metronome between each carefully spaced syllable when he exclaimed woodenly: An accident?
The fluid perfection of Leonard’s delivery was a painful contrast as he answered: Attempted murder.
Rod picked up his black bag and moved toward the alcove. He had an unfortunate trick of relaxing between his lines and forgetting all about his part while he allowed his eyes to roam the stage, examining the set, the other actors, and even the audience with the detached interest of a spectator. Then, when he heard a cue for his next line, he would come to with a start and begin to “act” again. In the alcove he went through the motions of examining Vladimir with mechanical precision—lifting an eyelid, groping for a pulse, frowning portentously. He scribbled a prescription and sent one of the servants to get it filled. He called for hot water. Wanda hurried downstage to relay the order to the household. Rod was left alone with Vladimir in the alcove. Rod set his little black bag on the bedside table and opened it. He leaned over the bed. Candlelight struck a glancing beam from a steel blade in his hand. The flash dazzled Basil so he couldn’t see whether it was a probe or a scalpel. But he thought he understood why Rod had decided to bring the knife on stage after all. He probably believed that realistic bits of stage “business” would help out his deficiencies as an actor.
Only a second or so had passed when Rod laid down the knife and came out of the alcove to discuss the case with Leonard.
“Quickest extraction of a bullet on record!” whispered Basil to Pauline. “What price realism now?”
She smiled—and just then Basil was startled by a familiar line: He cannot escape now, every hand is against him!
Basil’s glance returned to the stage. The line had been uttered by an actor Basil had not noticed particularly until this moment—an elderly man who had entered just after Leonard. He had announced himself in the play as “Jean de Siriex of the French Embassy.” Basil riffled through pages of luxury advertisements and intimate chats on What The Man Will Wear until he came eventually to the business end of the playbilclass="underline"
Jean de Siriex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Seymour Hutchins
Pauline saw what he was doing and whispered: “Who’s playing Vladimir?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I’ve no idea. They used a dummy at the pre-view.”
Basil’s eyes ran down the entire cast.
Fedora Romazov . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wanda Morley
Grech, a police officer . . . . . . . . . Leonard Martin
Lorek, a surgeon . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rodney Tait
“Vladimir isn’t listed.”
“What a pity! He’s good. That’s what I call realism.”
Basil lifted his eyes to the stage once more. “Too realistic to be real.”
In the cocktail bar the fellow had not looked like an actor. Now, in Basil’s opinion, he was overacting with such extreme exaggeration that he made the whole play seem false and forced—the usual fault of the amateur in any art. Basil had heard that a death scene never fails on the stage. No matter how poor the play or the players, the drama of death must always transcend their limitations. But this time the old saying did not hold good. This death scene was tailing drearily. Vladimir lay utterly still with limp, curled fingers, half-closed, eyes, sunken cheeks, and colorless lips parted in a soundless moan as if each breath were drawn in agony. Yet somehow it was such a blatant bid for pity and terror that the natural reaction of the spectator was: You’re not fooling me! The minute the curtain’s down you’ll be up and off to a champagne supper! Even malnutrition cases in the public ward of a free hospital didn’t look quite so drained of vitality when they checked out. Or if they did—well, that was one of the things Basil came to the theater to forget. . . . He felt a certain relief when Rodney returned to the alcove and stood with his back to the audience hiding Vladimir from view.