Ever After (23 page)

Cabot’s splendid height and rugged good looks made him
recognized
wherever he went, to say nothing of the trademark he possessed in a beautiful red-haired wife who knew how to dress. His
hospitality
was famous, and celebrities from all over the world came to his dinner-table in Madison Avenue. It was rumoured that he had been urged to run for Congress but preferred his job at the
Star,
and that he had refused the Ambassadorship to the Court of St. James for the same reason. His children were much travelled at an early age, yet were singularly unspoiled by their father’s wealth, although their precocity had caused raised eyebrows all over Europe for years.

Unlike the
Tribune
, the
Star
under Murray ownership had no aversion to college men as cub reporters. The Boss’s son had
graduated
from Princeton full of Greek and Latin at twenty, the youngest in his class, and had gone to work as a leg-man the same summer, learning from the beginning. Two years later a mining disaster in Tennessee gave him his chance, and his story of the families
waiting
at the pithead, the touching colloquial vignettes gathered in sympathetic conversation with weeping women and frightened
children
who broke down and willingly told him all, established him as a first-class reporter.

The
Star
believed that a reporter with a clean collar and good manners not only upheld the dignity of the paper but was also likely to get into places where the traditional break-in newspaper man would have got thrown out, especially in crime cases. It also believed that reporters were born and not made, and that a nose
for news and a story sense could not be begged, bought, borrowed, or stolen, but had to arrive mysteriously along with your milk-teeth; that the best reporters had a sixth sense which always told them when they were being lied to; and that part of the job was cajoling facts out of people unwilling to talk, instead of trying to bully or bribe them out.

This was the atmosphere which was Bracken’s birthright, and it was here that Fitz had quietly, without presumption or push, made a place for himself. He may have lacked something of Johnny Malone’s single-minded genius for chasing the fire-engines. But he had tact, and an unobtrusive way of asking the most embarrassing questions, and a shy-seeming goodwill which disarmed the most reluctant interviewer, and—somehow—he brought back the story.

O
N
an evening in May along about the time Virginia had been making her curtsey at Buckingham Palace, Fitz and Johnny were attending a low performance at a questionable resort on West Thirty-fourth Street near Sixth Avenue, where a slightly passée specialty lady named Fay Lea had agreed to plug a song Fitz had written. Its title had caught her ear. It seemed to Fay, who was billed as a female baritone, that a song called
Dusk
Until
Dawn
might have possibilities, but the lyric had not lived up to her
expectations
. After some prodding by Johnny and a little coaching by Fay, Fitz had written in some new words, to which Fay added a few graphic gestures and expressed herself as satisfied. This was the night.

Fitz and Johnny arrived early and sat with the usual tall glasses on the table in front of them, watching the name-cards at the side of the stage change one by one towards Fay’s, which as the star turn was due about ten-thirty. There was an animal act to open, and a ventriloquist, and a family of contortionists—all very boring. They hardly noticed when a new card came on, reading: DON AND GWEN LASALLE,
The
Dancing
Wonders.

The music for the new turn was catchy and gay. The patter of the girl’s feet was expert as she began the act alone, dressed in blue spangles and tights, with a provocative shining fringe across her slender thighs, high laced shoes, and a curled blue ostrich plume in the pert hat above her dark hair. Her voice was rich and low when she began to sing, without the loud, strident notes that Fay Lea used.

Johnny was nodding peacefully above his glass and Fitz kicked him on the shin and said, “That’s a good tune She can sing, too. I’d rather have that girl plug my songs than Fay. Wake up, Johnny, do you know that girl up there?”

Johnny woke up politely and squinted through the haze at the name-card.

“Don and Gwen LaSalle,” he spelled out with some difficulty. “N-never heard of ’em.” He buried his face in his glass.

“Now, watch this, Johnny. She’s better than Fay by a damn’ sight.”

“But she hasn’t got the pull,” Johnny said sleepily, and shifted himself in his chair and focussed patiently on the blue-spangled figure on the stage. “Mm-hm,” he murmured after a minute. “Nice legs too. Not too fat. ’S funny, I don’t seem to like ’em fat. N-not any more. I m-must have outgrown that.”

“Not a bad chorus, either,” said Fitz, listening critically. “I wonder who writes her songs. Could we get an introduction after the show?”

“Sure.” Johnny waved a careless hand. “You watch out, though. Mustn’t go off-fending Fay now that she f-feels kindly towards you. She can do a lot to get your songs started.” He paused. His sleepy gaze grew more alert. “That’s very s-strange,” he said. “She’s given him his cue twice and he doesn’t show up. S-sing it again, kid, we don’t care if he
never
comes!”

The girl had begun the chorus for the third time, still dancing alone. But now her red-lipped smile was a little fixed, and her eyes kept going back anxiously to the left wings from where she had made her entrance and where the other half of the team was
overdue
. Faintly, above the brassy music, angry voices could be heard back stage where some sort of brawl was going on.

Johnny sat up.

“Trouble,” he said, sniffing with his experienced reporter’s nose, and a woman screamed in the wings, off left.

The girl in spangles glanced down at the orchestra leader. A signal passed between them. The music wound up with a crash and a blare on the next bar and the curtain came down.

“Let’s go see what happened,” said Johnny, rising.

“None of our business, maybe,” said Fitz, sitting still.

“When will you learn that you are a reporter and not a
gentleman
?” Johnny inquired severely. “Come on.”

With that well-known queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, Fitz followed Johnny through the pass-door and out on to the stage behind the curtain. Another canvas drop bumped down beside them—Fay’s—as they crossed the platform towards the white-faced stage-manager who was saying curtly, “Clear the stage, please—
next number, please—orchestra, Jim—all right, Fay, get out there and sing—clear the stage, everybody—let ’em have it, Fay—curtain up, Jim—”

“What went wrong?” Johnny asked casually, easing off into the wings after the stage-manager.

“Fellow shot himself. Busted up the act.”

“May we talk to the girl?” asked Johnny.

“Seen you before, haven’t I? You from the papers or the police?”

“The
Star.
Tell Jake Malone is here.”

“Oh, all right, so long as you aren’t flatfoots. Jake’s been sent for a’ready.” The stage-manager gestured impatiently towards the end of the stage, where the dressing-rooms were, and Johnny moved on with Fitz at his heels.

A knot of frightened-looking performers in various stages of
undress
and make-up huddled round the open door of one of the rooms avoiding each other’s eyes or whispering among themselves. Johnny and Fitz filtered through and Fitz leaned against the
door-casing
, watching a man in a shabby, ill-fitting suit who knelt beside the body of a man on the floor, his hands busy with its clothing. The girl in blue spangles stood over him, silent and motionless, waiting.

“Are you Mrs. LaSalle?” Johnny asked her gently, getting out his note-book and pencil in an unnoticeable sort of way. “I was out front and noticed something was wrong. Can you suggest any reason for your husband’s shooting himself in the middle of a
performance
?”

“He’s my brother,” said the girl without raising her eyes. “And the name is Murphy. Won’t somebody please find a doctor?”

“There’s no need for a doctor now,” said the man who bent above the thing on the floor, and as he looked round at them Fitz saw that he wore false whiskers and a funny nose, as part of the comic Dutch turn still to go on. He rose, brushed off his knees, and added kindly as the girl only stood watching him with a look of dazed, terrified disbelief—“He’s dead, Gwen. It didn’t hurt—he’s dead.”

Her face quivered. Her eyes filled with tears, and the heavy mascara beading on her lashes began to dissolve and smear. Her crimsoned lips twisted, but she made no sound, and still stood looking at the whiskered man in the false nose. Fitz saw that she was shaking from head to foot so that the spangles winked in the gaslight, and the bright fringe rippled and shone against her thighs. He reached for the chair at the dressing-table behind her, turned it round, and holding her by the shoulders guided her into it. Her knees gave way and she sat limply on the seat. Slowly her eyes travelled back to the body which lay almost at her feet. She stared at it, the tears running down her face, while no sound escaped her.

Fay’s strident singing came in strongly through the open door from the stage, borne on the brassy music, and the thump of
the drum was like a big heart beating, as the show went on. They were playing
Dusk
Until
Dawn.
Fay was plugging his song. But the spangled, weeping girl in the chair had the right voice for the song, not Fay. It was her brother, dead on the floor. Name of Murphy. Fitz glanced round the room for Johnny, who was in a corner with the stage-manager. Johnny was making occasional notes in the little dog-eared book he carried—getting the story for the paper. That meant it must be a good one, this time.

The woman from the contortionist act, wearing a dirty kimono which gaped to show her dirty white tights, slipped into the room and bent to lay a towel smeared with grease-paint across the dead man’s face. One by one the rest of them drifted away from the door. and the music went on.

Fitz was still standing close to the chair, but Gwen remained unaware of him. She sat with her hands locked together on her knees, her eyes fixed on the smeary towel while the endless tears slid down her cheeks, making black rivulets of mascara through the powder. Fitz couldn’t bear it. He took out his clean white handkerchief and knelt down beside the chair and began to wipe the girl’s cheeks, rather gingerly because of the way the stuff ran, and he began talking to her soothingly, as he used to talk to his sister Phoebe when she was little and cried.

“There, now, don’t you cry like this, honey, you’ll drown sure ’nough unless you can swim,” he began in his softest drawl whence all his final
r
’s had fled. “Nothin’ I say can help much, I know—but is there anything I can do to make things easier for you tonight, have you got some parents, maybe, you’ve got to break the news to, and you want me to do it for you? I’ve got the rest of the evenin’, you know, if I can be of any use to you. My name’s Sprague, I saw your act as far as it went, you’re new here, aren’t you? You sure got a lovely voice, maybe I could get you to plug one of my songs some time, huh? Now, don’t you cry like that, you’ll be sick—you just count on us for anything you need done, Johnny, there, he knows the ropes—you got friends, honey, hear what I say?”

Her eyes had come round slowly to inspect him with a sort of wondering curiosity. As he knelt beside her chair his face was almost on a level with hers, and for a long moment they looked at each other straightly while she took stock. Even with the smeared mascara and the hard line of the rouge on her mouth she was beautiful, with a fresh young beauty the gas-glare and make-up could not dim.

“Where did you come from?” she asked finally.

“I was out front, like I said just now.”

“You’re not from the police?”

“Who, me?” He grinned apologetically. “I just write songs,” he said.

“Why did you come here? What do you want?”

“Well, we saw something was wrong, and we—thought we might help out in some way.” He glanced again around the small room, which was empty now except for the two of them and the still figure on the floor. Johnny had moved outside the door with the
stage-manager
and was listening to another man, the one known as Jake, who wore a dress suit and gesticulated as he talked. Beyond them the music shrilled to a climax and there was applause. The curtain fell with a bump and rose again with a rustle. The music was resumed. “Your other friends around here don’t seem to be very—friendly,” he murmured, puzzled.

“Friends? I haven’t any.
He
saw to that.” Her eyes went back to the towel.

“How do you mean?”

“We had to stick together. I knew he was wrong, but I had to stand by him. Nobody else dared to, finally.”

“Why not?”

She looked at him, a slow, searching look.

“It’s a long story,” she said, and her lips closed on it.

He laid one warm, strong hand on hers where they rested, locked together, on her knees, and he realized again that she was trembling throughout all her body, as though she was very cold, or as though—

“What are you scared of?” he demanded, and the question was surprised out of him before his natural tact could operate.

“I’m not.”

“You’ve got nothin’ to be afraid of, honey, we’ll look after you.”

“I wish you’d go,” she said.

“Sure, we’ll all go.” He rose, still holding her hand. “You get dressed, Johnny and I are going to see that you get home all right.”

“No, I—I’d rather you didn’t get mixed up in this.”

“But we are mixed up in it. You don’t think we’re going to just walk out now and forget all about it, do you?”

“It would be better if you did.”

There was more applause and the curtain swished down again and Fay Lea swung masterfully into the little room, bringing with her an aura of musk and orris.

“Hey, you Dixie, get out there and call off your news-hound,” she commanded briskly.