“No. I tightened them before I came out. I’m always afraid of losing a page or so.”
A clear voice came through the window. “Something wrong?”
They turned to see Margot watching them from the doorway. Her cheeks were flushed, her pale eyes bright as winter sunshine.
“The staples have fallen out of Adeane’s script,” Basil turned back to Adeane. “Are they on the terrace?”
“No.” Adeane was on his knees looking under the porch chairs. “They’re gone. Maybe that maid—”
“Why? Staples are scarcely valuable.”
“Maybe the wind . . .”
“Maybe.” Basil was unconvinced.
They went inside closing the French window against the rain. Basil looked thoughtfully at Margot. Was she capable of such a small act of cruelty? Could she have done it when she stood at the window overlooking the terrace near the garden table where she had left the script? Granted the play was silly, granted Adeane was callous and impertinent, it still seemed a petty, mean revenge for her to have taken. . . .
Damp and sulky, Adeane tucked the script under one arm. “I guess I’d better be going . . .”
“I’ll go with you,” said Basil.
“Don’t go, Dr. Willing!” Margot ignored Adeane. “At least wait until the rain is over. We can have tea or a cocktail.”
At that moment it was a tempting invitation with a dark, wet, unfriendly world outside, and everything warm, dry, and cushioned inside. But Basil wanted to see a little more of Adeane.
“Thanks, but I really must go.”
When the two men were in the elevator, Adeane spoke morosely. “You know, I don’t believe that woman likes me.”
“You chose the wrong moment to approach her—just after her husband’s death.”
“They were separated, weren’t they?”
“Perhaps she doesn’t want to be reminded of that now.”
“I don’t know what’s the matter with me.” Adeane seemed genuinely concerned. “I don’t know how to get on with people. I just haven’t any tact.”
“It has been said that tact is love,” returned Basil. “No amount of intelligence can replace sympathy when it comes to putting yourself in another person’s place.”
“I should sympathize with a woman like that who’s got everything I’d like to have!” cried Adeane bitterly. “Old Hutchins says I’m an egoist. Sure I am. Why not? How’s a guy going to get along if he doesn’t keep looking out for himself?”
“It didn’t get you very far this time, did it?” said Basil.
The doorman whistled up a taxi for them. Adeane asked to be let off at the theater. “Tact!” He brooded over the word resentfully “I don’t know anyone who can afford to back plays. My script has been knocking around producers’ offices for two or three years. I’ve tried and tried to break into the theater, and it’s been like trying to scale a wall of glass—high, cold, slippery and smooth, without a toehold anywhere. Talent counts for nothing. It’s all done by pull. I’d just about given up hope when Sam Milhau introduced me to Mrs. Ingelow at the theater this morning. They were going out to luncheon together, so I couldn’t speak to her then; but I’d heard she was stage struck, and I’d heard the rumor about her inheriting all this money, and she does owe me something for telling the police she couldn’t have killed her husband.”
“Does she?”
Again Basil discovered that irony was lost on Adeane. “Sure she does. I’m the only witness who testified she came out of that alcove before Ingelow went in.”
“And did she?”
Adeane’s eyes grew wary. “I should stick my neck out lying to the police for a dame like that! It’s the truth, but she still owes me something as I see it. I saved her a lot of grief. It seemed like a chance, so I followed it up. And what do I get? The cold shoulder! Because—you say—she’s upset by her husband’s death—a guy she was on the point of divorcing! I said I was sorry he was dead, didn’t I?”
Basil gave it up. Adeane was unteachable.
“If only she’d read that scene where Bugsy and Lulu gang up on Flo!” went on Adeane. “It’s stark realism—a slice of life raw and bleeding. I got the idea out of Krafft-Ebing.” He looked up suddenly. “You know, doc, you might be a lot of use to me.”
Basil had an instant impression that Adeane classified everyone he met by their possible usefulness to himself. “I’m afraid I couldn’t afford to back a play—”
“Oh, I don’t mean that. But you’re a psychiatrist, aren’t you? And all the characters in my plays have something the matter with them—usually psychopathic. You could tell me a lot about symptoms and things like that. For instance, take Bugsy, the sadist, in Destroying All Twigs. It would be possible for him to be a simple, friendly fellow when he wasn’t actually tasting human blood, wouldn’t it? I mean, psychologically possible.”
Basil disliked having his brains picked. “You ought to look it up at the medical library.”
“What medical library?”
“The one at Fifth Avenue and 103rd. Once you learn your way about there you can find anything. They have books you won’t find in any of the public libraries or even at Columbia.”
Adeane pouted. “It’s pretty hard for a layman to find out about these things in libraries. You spend hours looking something like hay fever up in card indices. It’ll say Hay Fever see Fever and then Fever, Hay see Hay. That’s what they call a cross-reference! When you finally run down the definitive work on the subject under Sternutatory Diseases see Nasal Passages you find it’s either in Choctaw or at the bindery or it only deals with Hay Fever as it affects Eskimos transplanted to the tropics.”
“What you want is a general reference book,” advised Basil. “A sort of medical encyclopedia that’ll give you a bird’s-eye view of the symptoms, treatment, and so forth, for each disease. Then you can fill in the rough outline with your own characters and local color, I suppose?”
“Uh-huh,” responded Adeane. “If I could find a book like that it would keep me busy for years.”
“Then your best bets are Barr, Tice, and Cushny.” The taxi swung into West 44th Street. Basil wondered if posterity would thank him for putting still more pathology into Adeane’s plays. “Each one has written, or rather edited, a pretty inclusive survey of disease in several volumes. With three of them to check on each other you can’t go far wrong. If you want more details, they always give bibliographies.”
“What are those names?” Adeanne drew out a stubby pencil and scribbled on the cover of his wilted script. “Barr—Tice—Cushny. Thanks a lot.”
Adeane backed out of the cab gracelessly. “So long, doc. And thanks for the lift.” He turned and swaggered down the stagedoor alley, a ridiculously cocky figure with his reddish hair and mustard tweed jacket exposed to the rain.
Basil gave Seymour Hutchins’ address to the cab driver and leaned back in his seat with closed eyes. Again he was seeing Adeane as he had first appeared on the terrace—coming up to Margot so insolently, the script in one hand, its brass staples gleaming in the sun. . . .
Chapter Nine. Aside
IN THE WEST FORTIES there is a small shabby hotel. To people from out of town it looks exactly like all the other small, shabby hotels in the theatrical district. Only dyed-in-the-wool New Yorkers who know the various planes and facets of their city well realize that this particular hotel has been for years the headquarters of all those stage people who cannot afford to live at clubs or luxury hotels. Young actors on their way up and old actors on their way down pass each other at this half-way house between success and failure. Seymour Hutchins had lived there before he became a star and returned there now he had ceased to be one. According to Milhau, who gave Basil the address, Wanda and Rod had both lived there in their salad days, but not Leonard, who always occupied a little attic room at the Players when he was in New York, no matter how much money he was making.