ca-na-ry, v.i. To dance, to frolic; to perform the old dance called a canary. (Obs.)
ca-na-ry-bird, n. An insessorial singing bird, a kind of finch, from the Canary Islands, the Carduelis canaria or Fringilla canaria of the finch family, much esteemed as a household pet, being one of the most common cage birds.
“Not much help I’m afraid!” Hutchins looked up with a smile. “A dog? An island? A wine? A dance? You have a wide choice. And here are a lot of derived words—canary-bird flower, canary-vine, canary-moss, canary-stone, canary-wood.”
“That’s enough!” cried Basil. “You’re making it too complicated!”
Hutchins laughed and shut the book with a loud clap. Basil rose and picked up his hat. Lights in the windows of various buildings were beginning to glow through the early dusk. Suddenly he saw letters of fire: Time For Tilbury’s Tea! Now he understood why the skyline looked so oddly familiar—it was the same scene he had observed last night from a different angle. “That wall with the fire escape must be the Royalty Theatre!” he exclaimed. “And the low building opposite us is the taxpayer beside the stage door alley!”
“Yes.” Hutchins’ gaze followed Basil’s. “Amazing how a little shift in the angle of vision can change the look of everything, isn’t it? This hotel faces on 45th Street, but as my window is in the back it overlooks 44th. New York is full of these surprises. When you enter a building you can never tell from the front door view what unexpected sights you may see from a back, top-floor window. Over there is a physical culture school that has classes on the roof all during the day though nobody in the street knows anything about it.”
“I should think that Tilbury neon sign would get on your nerves.”
“One gets used to things, and I won’t have to put up with it much longer. I understand Broadway is to be dimmed out in a few days, and before the war is over it’ll probably be blacked out.”
As Basil started for the door, Hutchins called after him. “One moment.” Hutchins laid aside the book and came over to the door. His eyes were fixed on Basil’s earnestly. “You know you said something important a moment ago.”
“What?”
“You said I was making the canary business too complicated. Has it occurred to you that you are making it too complicated yourself?”
Basil smiled. “Maybe you have something there! It’s one of my worst failings—to elaborate an idea with so many fine shadings of implication and potential meaning that I lose sight of the essential thing. The murderer’s motive for releasing the canary is probably something extremely simple and obvious, and that’s why I’ve missed it. I’ve been looking for something subtle and complex. I needed what I got from your window—a little shift in the angle of vision!”
As Basil went down in the elevator he made an effort to dismiss all the complexities and think of the simplest, most obvious significance implied in the act of releasing a canary from its cage. For a moment an idea seemed to flicker on the periphery of consciousness. But strain his attention as he would its color and shape still eluded him.
Chapter Ten. Rehearsal
IN THE EARLY MORNING the theatrical district looks as tawdry and disheveled as a woman caught by the dawn still wearing evening dress and make up blended for artificial light. This morning a sun glare as ruthlessly intolerant as youth itself searched out everything that was mean and ugly and false in the neighborhood of Broadway and West 44th: sidewalks littered with paper and cigarette butts; garbage cans in the alley at the rear of the cocktail bar; showy façades of varnish, glass, and metal camouflaging buildings of drab brick or dingy stone; and eddies of dust everywhere, the thick, black, powdery dust at the heart of the city. It was not pretty. It was the dance hall and gambling saloon section of a frontier town raised to the nth degree.
Yet Basil looked at the scene with a certain affection this morning, for it had suddenly become ephemeral—part of a world that might be destined to change beyond recognition. He no longer asked himself if the buildings were handsome or hideous, sanitary or insanitary, but if they were bombproof or non-bombproof. The Tilbury building towered against the cold blue sky with the arrogance of a structure confident in the strength of its steel frame and cinder-concrete roof and floor arches. The shabby walls of the theater looked defenseless and insubstantial as paper—brick walls without a steel frame that would crumble at the first blast.
A timid voice cut across these sentimental reflections. “Excuse me, but can you tell me the way to Mr. Milhau’s office?”
Basil looked and saw a long, weedy youth whom any draft board would automatically classify as 4F on sight. His blondness was as wan as a faded water-color. He bore all the sad stigmata of the shabby genteel—worn suit carefully pressed, cracked shoes scrupulously polished. His manner was a blend of eagerness and anxiety. It was just for the purpose of keeping such perennial job-seekers out of their offices that big business men surrounded themselves with cordons of secretaries and receptionists. But Basil had always had a sneaking suspicion that this system kept out a good deal of grain along with the chaff, so he took a certain perverse pleasure in saying: “I’ll show you the way. I’m just going there myself.”
Milhau’s office was on the ground floor to the right of the box office—two rooms as small, dark, and glossy as Milhau himself. The outer office was ruled by a houri with soft, improbably golden hair and hard, brown eyes. She recognized Basil whom she had seen with the police when Ingelow’s death was first discovered. “Dr. Willing—go right in.” Her stony gaze shifted to the youth. He winced and colored and mumbled something inaudible. A little regretfully Basil left him to his fate and went inside.
“Hello.” Milhau at his desk waved Basil to a chair and pushed a box of cigars in his direction. “Hutchins says you want to see the rehearsal this morning. That’s O.K. with me, but what’s the big idea?”
Basil pushed the cigars back with a shake of his head. “Timing.”
“Timing?” Milhau took one of the cigars himself and bit off the end. “I don’t get it. Nobody has an alibi—I mean nobody that’s under suspicion.” He waited for Basil’s explanation. None came. He went on in a lower voice. “Listen, Dr. Willing—no one knows that Mrs. Ingelow is backing this revival of Fedora except you and me and Adeane. He told me you knew. I’m relying on you not to talk about it, because—”
The door burst open and the houri plunged into the room. “A Mr. Russell to see you—from Carson’s.” She was excited.
Milhau’s eyes narrowed. “So they got somebody?” he said in a level voice.
“Yeah. And he’s been in hospital six weeks. Hasn’t seen a newspaper.”
“Oh.” Basil was aware of some message passing from the girl’s eyes to Milhau’s. Then Milhau said: “You’ll excuse me a minute, Dr. Willing?”
“Certainly.” Basil settled back in his chair. Milhau looked as if Basil’s presence hardly suited his programme but he dared not protest. He spoke to his secretary with resignation. “Send the guy in.”
The weedy youth came in diffidently. “My name’s Russell, and I’m from the Lemuel Carson agency. Mr. Carson said there was a small part for me in a play called Fedora.”
“Yeah.” Milhau’s voice was genial, but his gaze was coldly appraising. “It’s a walk-on part. You only appear in the first act. All you have to do is to lie perfectly still on a couch in an alcove at the back of the stage. You’re supposed to be dying.”