What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

by Henry Farrell

  “Larry—”

  She was looking up at him, her hands shoved deep into her pockets in a gesture of retreat. “When you are an important person, Larry, you must be kind.”

  Her words recalled an unwanted vision to his mind. There had been a young actor at the auditions for “The Deaths of Kings.” The boy had recognized Larry and after his dismissal, under the misapprehension that Larry was starring in the play, had waited for him in the alleyway to beg for another reading. Larry, struck with the irony of the situation after his own interview with Bert Fielding, had laughed. It had been purely a reflex, hysterical perhaps, but the boy hadn’t known that. Larry would never forget the look that had come into his eyes. When you hurt people, Lisa had said, you make them cruel.

  “If I can just get through this, Lisa,” he said, begging her to understand, “if I can just get through tonight, I’ll be all right.”

  Her gaze faltered and fell away. “You may never get through tonight,” she said. “Tonight may continue always if you—” She shook her head hopelessly. “I can’t help you, Larry. You are too badly frightened.”

  She seemed about to go on, but then, concealing her face from his gaze, she turned and walked away, a small, erect figure in flight from the directness of her own words.

  He watched her go with a growing sense of astonishment, but he made no move to follow her. And then, because there was nothing else to do, he turned back into the room and closed the door. The dry snap of the catch echoed through the room sharply. Crossing to the dressing table, he sat down and rested his head in his hands. He tried to turn his mind hopefully to the job ahead.

  And yet what Lisa had said was true; he was frightened. His success in the theatre had been hard won, a hazardous journey into a desperate world of barred doors and hostile human deities in whose cold, impersonal eyes was the constant admonition that Mr. Laurence Richards, for all his remarkable talent and ambition, was hardly irreplaceable. His arrival at the top had not been a triumphant emergence onto a secure plateau, but a hesitant ascent to a precarious summit with a straight-down view of the depths that awaited him if he should slip. And now, after four years of illness, it was like starting all over again. Perhaps, he thought, there was an end of courage; perhaps it could be used up like the other, tangible commodities of this world.

  Wearily, he opened his eyes. Scanning the articles of makeup before him, he derived from their precise, familiar arrangement on the table an oblique sense of reassurance. He reached for a brush and glanced up into the mirror. His hand froze.

  The boy stood directly behind him, a pale, slack figure in a cheap gray suit. He wore no necktie, and one hand was pressed deep into the pocket of his jacket. His gaze rose to meet Larry’s in the mirror, but seemed to dwell on some other image, some inner equation that could not be readily solved. Stung with surprise, Larry turned abruptly in his chair.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded. The continued withdrawal in the young face made him speak more sharply. “What do you want?”

  The boy’s gaze remained steady. His lips moved, as though to smile, then fell again into stillness.

  “I think you had better leave,” Larry said uneasily. “I—”

  The boy frowned. His eyes became shadowed. Larry felt a queasy tightening at the back of his neck.

  “You have exactly three seconds to clear out of here.”

  The boy shook his head. “I’ve been waiting all afternoon,” he murmured. His tone was soft, noncommittal. “I’ve been hiding.”

  Larry placed a hand flatly on the dressing table and felt a sudden dampness in the palm. Ignoring an inner warning to remain still, he stood up.

  In anticipation, the boy moved instantly forward. At the same time, his hand darted from his pocket. Larry stopped short, gaping down with shocked disbelief at a small, gleaming automatic. He drew in a quick, shallow breath.

  “What are you doing with that?” he blurted. The boy looked up at him, his eyes more keenly focused, more sly. “My wallet is in the drawer, there. There isn’t much—”

  The boy wasn’t listening. He looked slowly from the gun to Larry, as though absorbed in some delicate relationship between the two devined only by himself. “Mr. Richards,” he murmured softly. “Mr. Laurence Richards.”

  “I—” Larry stopped. Studying the boy’s face more closely, memory stirred. He was the young actor from the auditions. Remembering, he heard again the boy’s desperate plea echoing shrilly through the shadowed alleyway. He heard his own laughter and saw the young face contort with deadly hatred. In an agony of embarrassment and self-recognition, he had spoken, he had said something.

  “Young man,” he had said, “You’ll never convince anyone that way. You sound like a fictional character.”

  It had been an abortive attempt at lightness, aimed more at himself, really, than the boy, but the boy couldn’t have understood that. Hopelessly, Larry had turned and walked away, leaving the boy behind, alone and mute in that narrow, littered arena of humiliation and failure.

  “Am I convincing now, Mr. Richards?” the boy asked suddenly. “I’d hate to waste your time.”

  Larry’s gaze returned swiftly to the gun. There was no use trying to explain; the boy would never believe him now. “You’d better forget this and leave,” he said. “If I just yell—”

  “If you do,” the boy said, “I might kill you.”

  Larry’s mind recoiled sharply from the word. “I—I’ve got a show to do,” he said foolishly. He took a step backward and collided with the chair. “You’re insane.”

  The boy nodded. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe you get kind of crazy when people laugh at you and treat you like nothing.” His pale eyes narrowed. “Have you got time to listen to me, Mr. Richards? I’m not very important.”

  Larry caught a fleeting glimpse of himself in the mirror and put a hand to his glistening brow. He felt a quick rise of panic. Where the devil was everybody?

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  The boy shrugged. “Maybe nothing, Mr. Richards. Maybe you could rush me, and I wouldn’t do a thing.” He smiled at Larry’s uncertainty. “I honestly don’t know. Do you?”

  “If this is supposed to be a joke—”

  “You owe me a laugh, Mr. Richards. You had one on me.”

  “I’ve got a show to do.”

  “Sure, I know.”

  They both turned as a knock sounded briskly at the door. “Five minutes, Mr. Richards!” a voice called. “Places!” There was a pause, then the sound of retreating footsteps. Larry started forward, but checked himself.

  The boy nodded, smiling. “I guess you’d better go do your show, Mr. Richards.”

  “Go?” Larry looked up hopefully.

  “Sure. Go on.”

  “Then, you—?”

  “Oh, I’m going along with you.” Lowering the gun into his pocket, he motioned toward the door. “Come on, Mr. Richards.”

  Larry wet his lips. The metallic taste of fear, sharp in his mouth, gave rise to a sudden wave of nausea. With a numbing sense of unreality, he moved forward to the door.

  When they entered the studio, it was a dark hive of activity. Stage hands, actors, technicians, moved in all directions, intent, concentrated. Larry and the boy were just another part of the moving pattern as they crossed to the more densely shadowed area at the back of the set. Larry’s gaze darted to the chair beside the set which had been Lisa’s during rehearsals. It was empty. He turned back, desperately.

  “What do you want?” he begged. “If—”

  The door of the set jerked suddenly open, and the floor manager, a solemn, shirt-sleeved young man wearing a throat mike, looked out in a dazzling, diagonal fall of light.

  “Luck, Mr. Richards,” he nodded gravely. His gaze moved in a questioning, sidelong glance at the boy. Larry stared back at him dumbly, lost in a sea of indecision.

  “I’m a friend of Larry’s,” the boy said easily.

  The floor manager looked back at
Larry, his expression stormy. “This is your responsibility, not mine, Mr. Richards,” he said shortly. “Keep him out of the way.” He stepped back inside and slammed the door. “Places, everybody!” he yelled.

  Larry swung about, his heart pounding. “Get out of here!” he rasped. “If you don’t—” A threatening move from the boy stopped him.

  Footsteps approached rapidly from behind, and Edith Gates, Larry’s leading lady, took her place beside the door. She was a tall, handsome girl, an intelligent actress. Straightening her skirt, she cast Larry a hurried glance.

  “Luck, Mr. Richards,” she said.

  Larry and the boy exchanged glances. “Good luck,” Larry said tiredly.

  The boy smiled. “Places, Mr. Richards,” he murmured.

  Entering the set, the lights burst upon Larry’s vision in a blinding, white explosion. He stood for a moment, dazed. Hazily, the floor manager appeared beside one of the cameras.

  “Two minutes!” he yelled.

  Larry stared, his thoughts in chaos, his head throbbing. The lights were a solid, emcompassing wall. The boy could be anywhere, watching, waiting…

  “One minute!” the floor manager waved to him. “You open over at the desk, Mr. Richards!” He raised his hand and started calling off the seconds.

  Incredulously, Larry crossed to the desk. His mind groped desperately for reality, for something—A hush fell over the studio.

  A monitor, a greenish, distorted square in the outer dimness, glowed blankly and then, in a blare of music, came alive with the titles. Larry stared, blinking, and his senses were assaulted by the noise and flash of a jingling, jangling commercial cartoon. He looked away wildly only to see the floor manager wave violently for his attention. The commercial ended, and the floor manager cut his hand downward. Larry felt an inner cringing as Camera One bore down on him from the left, its red eye glowing brightly.

  The director, his eyes fastened hotly on the control booth’s preview monitors, adjusted his headset and lowered his mouth to the mike. These last twenty minutes, since the opening of the show, had been a living, galloping nightmare.

  “He’s dropped four minutes!” he said sharply. “Signal him!”

  Down in the studio, the floor manager looked up frantically. “I have,” he whispered back through his throat mike. “He’s frozen. He doesn’t even see me.”

  “Keep the idiot cards on him if you have to carry them onto the set.”

  “What do you think I’m doing?”

  The director looked back at the monitors and leaned sharply forward. In the action on the screen, Edith Gates had crossed up to the door to make an exit. According to the blocking, she was to hold there as the camera moved up to her, look back at Larry and then go out. Before the camera had even begun to move, Larry had rushed into the scene and, incomprehensibly, gripped the actress’ arm.

  “Just a minute,” his voice said urgently over the speaker. “I want you to deliver something.”

  The director stared, his blunt young features tight with dismay. In the scene, Larry crossed to the desk, took up a pencil and pad and scribbled a hasty note. Finished, he returned to Edith and pressed it into her hand.

  “Deliver this instantly,” he said.

  “Judas!” the director exploded, “he’s rewriting the script!”

  His gaze, leaving the monitor, followed Edith as she made her exit. Down below, the actress emerged from the set, closed the door and stood for a moment in angry contemplation. Glancing down at the note in her hand, she squeezed it into a tight, hard ball and hurled it into the shadows. The director whistled softly.

  “Edith’s ready to kill him.”

  “If she doesn’t,” the floor manager whispered back, “somebody else probably will…”

  At the break for the middle commercial, Larry, certain now that his effort to summon help through Edith had failed, made his way dazedly from the set. He was barely through the door when a hand gripped his shoulder and spun him around. With a muffled cry of alarm, he looked up into the intent face of his dresser. It came back to him that in the three minute interval he was to make a swiftly-timed costume change. Still, he tried to pull away. In his mind, possibility had become certain knowledge; the boy was going to kill him on camera, during the performance.

  “Don’t—”

  Unheeding, the dresser stripped off his coat and hurled it aside. At the same time, he reached for Larry’s tie.

  Larry’s gaze scanned the back of the set. He gripped the dresser’s arm. “He’s going to kill me,” he whispered. “He’s—”

  The dresser brusquely dislodged his hand and glanced toward the control booth. “If he doesn’t,” he said absently, “the producer probably will.”

  “Listen to me!” Larry pleaded. “I’m—”

  He drew in a quick breath. The boy, appearing suddenly at the corner of the set, moved smilingly forward. Larry felt his knees begin to buckle.

  “Hold still,” the dresser commanded.

  After a few shambling steps the boy stopped, watching, smiling. Larry looked away from him. The dresser deftly slipped a fresh tie under his collar and knotted it. Lifting a new coat onto his shoulders, he buttoned it and slapped his shoulder.

  “All set,” he said.

  Someone opened the door. “Places, Mr. Richards! Thirty seconds!”

  Larry turned. A hand was waving him imperatively forward. He started toward it, then stopped. In turning, he had caught a glimpse of Lisa standing at the side of the set. He started in her direction, but the hand reached out and pulled him back. “Places!”

  The light struck his eyes again, and the vision of Lisa vanished.

  The director, glancing up from the monitors, looked out across the set and put his hand quickly to his earphones. The show had now reached its final quarter.

  “Who’s that kid down there?” he snapped. “Get him out, he keeps edging into the light.”

  “A guest of Mr. Richards, the noted actor,” the floor manager whispered tersely. “He came in with him.”

  The director sighed with weary defeat. “Okay,” he said, “leave him be. Let’s not offend the noted actor.”

  Edith Gates, her nerves taut, faced Camera One and cheated a glance in Larry’s direction. She had worked other television shows and she had seen much of camera fright. She had never, however, seen anything like the demoralizing terror that had gripped Larry Richards. For a man with his background and reputation his behavior, in her humble opinion, was unforgivable.

  “For myself,” she said, speaking the lines of the play, “I won’t mind too much staying behind…”

  She spoke, less aware of what she was saying than of Larry hovering behind her, practically in her shadow. That was his latest—crowding. She felt, almost, that he was using her as a protective shield. Finishing her speech, she turned and faced him.

  Trying not to show it, she felt a flicker of alarm. Larry was beside her, hand outstretched, and for one brief instant she had the panicky sensation that he was going to grab her. Her eyes met his and some communication passed between them, too swiftly, though, for her comprehension. Then Larry let his hand fall away. Forcing a smile, she returned to character and crossed up to the desk.

  She felt oddly shaken, as though having passed through some undefined crisis. If she wasn’t wrong, in that last moment, just when he had withdrawn his hand, Larry’s expression had shown a kind of relief. Or perhaps resignation. She shrugged it off; the important thing was the play, to get through somehow to the end of it.

  Larry moved down and out of camera range as Peter Bliss, the English character actor entered upstage for his scene with Edith. Whatever happened now, he thought, he would at least know that he was incapable of risking someone else’s life to save his own. In relinquishing his plan to use Edith as a shield for escape, he had placed himself somehow beyond the grip of terror. There were only a few minutes left; if anything was going to happen, it would have to happen soon and swiftly. He accepted this now almost with
a sense of tranquility.

  As Edith and Peter finished their scene he moved back into range. They exited, and he was alone before the cameras. There remained only the final scene, the business at the desk with the legal papers and the concluding telephone monologue. That left the boy three minutes in which to make his move. With an increasing sense of detachment, Larry crossed up to the table and stepped carefully into position.

  He took up the sheaf of legal papers, studied them for a moment, then laid them aside. That done, he picked up the telephone. He marvelled at the sudden clarity of his thoughts, the sudden understanding that this moment was wholly of his own making. There was not an end to courage, it could not be used up; there was only the submission to fear. If he had not permitted his vision to be clouded by the astigmatism of apprehension and doubt, this moment could never have come. If he had only clung to the staunch standard of Lisa’s strength and love—Reaching down, he dialed the number of the apartment that had been his and Lisa’s home. Facing Camera Three, as it came toward him, he started the monologue.

  With the first words, he saw the boy move into the light at the far side of the set. He gripped the phone so tightly it seemed he would crush it, but he forced himself to continue speaking. Knowing bleakly that what was about to happen would not matter too deeply to anyone except Lisa, he lifted his face to the camera for the final close-up. He paused. There was a moment of hushed stillness. And then it happened.

  It began with small, staccato jets of action that swiftly combined into a bursting fountainhead of wild confusion. Lisa appeared abruptly from the darkness, hurrying toward the boy. The boy whirled and drew the gun from his pocket. The two of them came together, and the gun glinted small, stabbing reflections of light as they struggled for its possession. Larry, guided suddenly by instinct, moved. Swinging away from the camera, he hurled the telephone with all his strength and saw it strike the boy solidly at the point of the shoulder. The boy lurched and, dragging Lisa with him, disappeared into the outer darkness. Above them, a light on a tall metal standard tottered crazily and fell. The telephone crashed to the floor, and there was a thunderous explosion.