Hanged for a Sheep (29 page)

Mr. Burden had been startled and hurt; had almost heatedly described overhead and permanent organizations and the high cost of riding on trains. Mr. Sproul had been expansive and assured, and had actually got fifty-five per cent. He was pleased, and his pleasure had seeped through his account of the interview. Mr. North did not tell him that Mr. Burden had, on occasion, been known to pay sixty, but this small fact Mr. North had treasured.

He treasured it now, looking up at Victor Leeds Sproul and waiting for Mr. Sproul to get around to introducing him to the two women. There should, Mr. North realized, have been only one woman—the program chairman. That would be—Mr. North searched his memory madly for a name which had been there a second before—that would be Mrs. Paul Williams. It was she who had suggested that, on this first lecture, so widely advertised and so, in all respects, important, a representative of Mr. Sproul's publishers might care to be on hand and introduce the lion. This suggestion had brought Mr. North to his present state, and during the negotiations he had received several letters of confirmation from Mrs. Williams and written several letters, also of confirmation, to her. He had also spoken to her early that day on the telephone, further confirming the already woefully confirmed.

“I'm Mrs. Williams, Mr. North,” she said now, still confirming. Mr. North retrieved his hand from Mr. Sproul and accepted the hand of Mrs. Williams. Mr. Sproul looked on with the air of a man who has made things right.

Mrs. Williams was, Jerry North estimated, in her middle thirties. And the word for her was “trim.” Slightly taller than most women, she was trimmer than almost any. Her blond hair, swept up at the sides of her head, was perfect in its contours. Her figure was—Mr. North thought for a phrase—beautifully held in. Looking at her, you thought, with a sudden recollection of things past, of corsets. And yet she was not obviously corseted; it was more as if she were corseted by will power. She was, Mr. North decided, a businesslike lady and kept everything under control.

And then, murmuring a blurred “how do you do?” Mr. North was conscious of the first oddity of what was to become so odd an evening. Mrs. Williams was looking past him and a little upward, and Mr. North realized that she was looking up at Victor Leeds Sproul—looking at him with an expression which Mr. North found unexpected, but could not analyze. Involuntarily, Mr. North turned a little and looked, in turn, up at the lion of the evening. The lion was amused. He was looking at them with amusement. It was that amusement, Mr. North decided, which had momentarily disconcerted Mrs. Williams, who probably was difficult to disconcert.

If she was disconcerted, her recovery was instant. She looked at Mr. North, now, and said, with just that hint of disclaimer which detached politeness suggested, that she really felt as if she knew Mr. North.

“We are so delighted that you came, Mr. North,” she said. “Yourself. And I am so glad the firm agreed with my thought. I'm sure that Mr. Sproul is pleased, too.”

“Least they could do,” Mr. Sproul said, but he said it jovially. “Eh, North?”

Mr. North said something about its having been a very happy thought. He looked at his watch.

“We'll give them another five minutes, I think,” Mrs. Williams said. “They expect it. And would you like to have me introduce you, Mr. North? Just a word, of course.”

“I think,” the other woman in the room said, in a husky, attractive voice, “that somebody ought to introduce
me
. Don't you?”

This last was evidently to Mr. North. He turned, smiling.

“Loretta Shaw,” Sproul said over their heads. He said the name as if it should be obvious. “Mr. North. From my publishers, Retta.”

The girl, too, seemed amused, but her amusement was different in quality from Sproul's. She seemed amused at herself and at Mr. North and at all of them. Mr. North looked at her, which was enjoyable. She was slender and quick and vivacious and had dark-brown hair. She did not look corseted; she was, on the contrary, noticeably pliant. The pliancy was unobtrusive, but inescapable; no man looking at her could miss it. Mr. North, pleased—and for a moment almost forgetting the ordeal ahead—did not miss it. He wondered who she was.

“Just heartening me up, Retta is,” Sproul explained. “Came around to see that I hadn't fainted, or done a bunk or—what do we Americans say?—scrammed. A friendly thought.”

“And,” Loretta Shaw said, “obviously unnecessary. I should have known, Lee. Takes more than an audience to—to frighten Victor Leeds Sproul.”

Mr. North had a feeling she had first intended to finish her sentence differently—less amiably. But it was a fugitive feeling, based more on something in the air than in the girl's voice or manner.

“Tourists,” Sproul said, with easy contempt. “American tourists. Here or there, what difference does it make?”

“Lee!” the girl said. “If you feel that way, keep it to yourself. Don't be—condescending.”

She spoke now, Mr. North was sure, as if she had a right to caution. She looked up at Sproul and shook her head. There was admonition in the gesture.

“That's all over, Lee,” she said. “Try to remember. This is New York. This is where we all live—where you live.”

Sproul answered her in French, too rapidly for Mr. North's ears and memory. She smiled and, Mr. North thought, smiled involuntarily, against her own judgment. She answered in English, rejecting shared secrets.

“Be careful,” she said. “Tell him to be careful, Mr. North. Mrs. Williams.”

Mrs. Williams's voice was corseted, detached.

“I am sure Mr. Sproul will be—tactful,” she said. “But he will find that ours is a very—mature audience. I have no doubt that it will understand Mr. Sproul.”

It was, Mr. North thought, an odd word to use, as she used it. She gave it a rather special flavor, as if it meant more than it seemed to mean. She had, he decided, grasped Victor Leeds Sproul rather more completely than most people did in a short time, and she could not have met him more than once or twice in the course of her confirmations. She seemed to have hidden views concerning him. But then, Mr. North reflected, the outward contradictions of Mr. Sproul were not really difficult to grasp. And Mrs. Williams, although it was hard not to think of her as prim, was evidently not without comprehension. And judgment. It never paid, Mr. North thought—thought under the nervousness which was again taking possession of him—it never paid to take people as being altogether what they looked to be. Still, he added to himself, that's about the only thing we have to go on.

He looked at his watch again, and Mrs. Williams looked at hers, and this time she nodded. She went to a door opposite that by which Mr. North had entered, and instantly Mr. North guessed what the little door was. It was the little green door at Sing Sing. He took a deep breath, adopted an expression—of which he was doubtful—and prepared himself. Mrs. Williams smiled back at them encouragingly and opened the door. Mr. North heard the other door, now behind them, close, and was conscious that Miss Loretta Shaw had quitted their doomed procession. Mr. North stepped aside and let the lion precede him. The lion followed Mrs. Williams. As Sproul passed him, Mr. North looked up into the large face, wondering if, now that the moment had arrived, trepidation would make its impress even on Victor Leeds Sproul.

It had not. On the contrary, Sproul looked elated and a little flushed. He beamed down at Mr. North, and beamed excessively; he snapped two large fingers and, as he passed, murmured “tourists” and seemed to be laughing. Mr. North hoped that he had not had one drink too many to bolster himself for this crucial first stage of the de luxe tour. But the worry, at the most hardly palpable, passed instantly. Mr. North could not spend time worrying about Mr. Sproul; Mr. North had barely enough time left to worry about himself. Because, as he had feared, the little door—which was, he noticed, only symbolically green—opened directly onto the stage.

The muscles at the back of Mr. North's neck tightened as he looked out over the auditorium. It was filled, all right. There must be, Mr. North thought, nearer a thousand than five hundred. The tight muscles pulled Mr. North's head back. He was aware that a fixed smile had settled upon his lips—fixed and, he was convinced, fatuous.

“They'll wonder who I am,” Mr. North thought. “They'll know her, and they've seen pictures of him and who, for God's sake, am I? What's been rung in on them?”

There were three chairs behind a lectern. There was a big chair in the middle, with a high back, and smaller chairs on either side, with lower backs. The big chair for Sproul, the papa bear. The little chair further on for Mrs. Williams, the mama bear. The little chair nearest for Mr. North, the rabbit. Oh God, thought Mr. North. He felt in his pocket for the notes.

He pulled the notes half out and pushed them back. What difference would notes make? He couldn't read them, obviously. They would be only a confusing blur, and this was as well, because—and now he realized it—what he had written on them, those few words which were to guide him, were beyond belief asinine. To utter them would make him at once pathetic and absurd. And they were the only words he knew!

Because now, as Mrs. Williams rose and went to the lectern and rapped on it, Mr. North's mind was blank. It was not merely blank in the ordinary sense; it was blank like a doorway opening on nothing. Mr. North opened the door of his mind and looked in and it opened on nothing. Even consciousness of his own identity seemed to have vanished; the world was an empty dream, with the trimmings of a nightmare. Mr. North searched desperately in his mind for an inkling of anything—he was to introduce somebody for some purpose—a man named Victor—Sproul Victor. I—

“And now,” Mrs. Williams said, her voice corseted with assurance, “I am happy to introduce a representative of Mr. Sproul's publishers who will, I am sure, have something to tell us about their very successful author. Mr.—Gerald North.”

Mrs. Williams turned and smiled at the blank which was Mr. North. He felt himself smiling back. He felt himself rising and walking to the lectern. He felt himself reaching for the sheaf of notes in his pocket and watched himself spreading them out on the lectern. He knew he was raising his head and looking out over the audience and smiling faintly, and he heard his throat clear itself.

And then, of course, that miracle occurred which always occurred; that miracle which, even when he was blankest, Mr. North had always realized would probably happen. Mr. North returned to himself. He saw the audience as a collection of reasonably friendly people, waiting without bias for him to speak; he heard the rustle behind him of Mrs. Williams sitting down and another sound which was, he supposed, Mr. Sproul shifting his feet. He could even, in the instant before he began to speak, hear Mr. Sproul breathing—breathing, it seemed, a little heavily from excitement. So it had got to Sproul, Mr. North thought, pleased—and now, almost amused, Mr. North had been through it and come out on the other side; Mr. Sproul was in it now. Before him, not any longer before Gerald North, loomed that awful moment of arising and that perilous step from seat to lecturing position.

Mr. North began to speak. He watched the people at the rear of the shallow balcony to make sure that they could hear him; he begged them not to be frightened because of the notes, promising them that he would not use them. “Consider them,” he begged, “only as a straw which I have put ready to be clutched.”

He would not, he promised, delay them. He might tell them one small story about Mr. Sproul. He told them one small story about Mr. Sproul and paused, with a half smile which meant that they might, if they wished, now laugh. They laughed. He capped their laugh with an inflection, and they laughed again.

“When you come down to it,” Mr. North thought, “I'm really pretty good at this. Too bad Pam can't hear me.”

He looked out over the audience and for a moment confidence caught in his throat. Pam could hear him all right—assuming his voice was carrying to the fifth row on the side, as presumably it was. Pam was sitting there looking interested and when she caught his eye she smiled and nodded. Dorian Weigand was sitting beside her, and Pam turned to Dorian and made a tiny gesture of lifted eyebrows toward Jerry and Dorian smiled at him. Mr. North hesitated, fractionally, and went on.

He had talked, now, for a little more than five minutes. He rounded it off. They had come to hear Victor Leeds Sproul, not to hear his publisher—obviously biased in Mr. Sproul's favor. “Our bias toward anybody who sells a hundred thousand copies is boundless,” Mr. North assured the audience, which smiled. He had come, Mr. Sproul had, to tell them about a beautiful city which no longer was; about a gracious thing which had been killed. How ruthlessly, how barbarously killed they needed neither Mr. North, nor even Mr. Sproul, to tell them. But Mr. Sproul could, better than any other man of whom Mr. North could think, tell them something of that gracious life—of that ancient civilization—which now had ended but which might, they all hoped, one day rise again. And now it was his very great honor to introduce to them—

“Mr. Victor Leeds Sproul, distinguished author of
That Was Paris
. Mr. Sproul—”

Mr. North turned, smiling, with a half gesture toward the big man in the big chair. And for a second he waited, still smiling, his back half to the audience. And then, in a tone only a little raised, he repeated: “Mr. Sproul.”

He repeated it because it seemed that Mr. Sproul had not heard. Mr. Sproul sat in the chair and did not move, and he seemed strangely relaxed, except that he was breathing very noisily. For a horrible moment it occurred to Mr. North that Mr. Sproul had gone to sleep.

But Mr. Sproul had not gone to sleep, and that realization was more horrible still. Mr. Sproul was in a coma and, at that moment, while Mr. North watched, the body moved a little and the eyes, which had been closed, opened. Then the mouth opened, too. But no words came out of it; never any more would words come out of it. The body, already slumped, relaxed just perceptibly and Mr. North, frozen incongruously with his smile and his half beckoning gesture, knew sickly what had happened.