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 playbill:
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.
Swiftly the scene was building to a climax. Vladimir’s assailant had escaped. That gave Leonard a chance to draw a malicious thumbnail sketch of a policeman so absorbed in the strategy of a man-hunt that he was happily oblivious to all the human feelings of his quarry. Rod came out of the alcove and crossed the stage to Wanda and Leonard.
Madame, it is the end.
She clasped her hands, staring into his face. Dead? The word was a sigh. Rod bowed his head.
Wanda squeezed all the melodrama there was out of those last few moments. Vladimir! She ran into the alcove. Don’t you know me? She threw her arms around the motionless figure on the bed, kissing the still lips. Vladimir, speak to me! She fell across the body, sobbing loudly.
Basil felt a light touch on his arm. It was Pauline.
“Let’s slip out quickly before the rush.”
