Puzzle for Players

by Patrick Quentin

  I didn’t call him down. Although he’d denied it, I knew there was something about the Dagonet that had him scared. I knew too that he was sick. Besides, I didn’t want to risk another hysterical scene which would have thrown the company right off the rails as it had done earlier in the evening.

  When Lionel Comstock was safely dead, the rehearsal progressed without interruption for a while. Then, just after I had launched them into the second act, a rhythmic shuffling sounded from behind me in the dark house. I turned in my seat to see two figures winding their way slowly down the aisle toward me. They were both of them large colored men in overcoats. Between them they were carrying a long black coffin.

  This madhouse procession moved past me and up onto the stage, completely disrupting the rehearsal. With great reverence the colored men deposited the coffin on the boards and stared at Eddie. He said “Okay” and they disappeared.

  While I was still recovering, my stage manager strolled to the coffin and gazed down at it affectionately. He explained that he felt we needed the coffin at this stage of the rehearsal and he’d been able to pick up the genuine Pennsylvania Dutch article from a pal in Lancaster. To a rather shaken Comstock he pointed out the coffin’s various highlights, its heavy old-fashioned upholstery, its solid brass fittings and its general air of respectability. He also assured the old actor that sufficient air-holes had been bored to guarantee enough air during the period when he had to stay in it with the lid down.

  Eddie was all for running through the coffin sequence again. But I vetoed it. Comstock had put up with enough harrowing experiences already that evening. While the coffin loomed darkly in the center of the stage, I got the rehearsal going again, finished the second act and went into the third.

  It was some time later that I first noticed Dr. Lenz. He had appeared as if by magic and was moving gravely through the seats toward me. Although he had suddenly and generously put up the money to finance the show, Lenz had never before come to rehearsal. One of America’s busiest psychiatrists, he spent all his time either at his own sanitorium or in consultation with other equally prominent and impressive personages.

  He dropped into a seat and, when I caught his eye, he raised a large hand to indicate that he did not wish his unexpected arrival to interrupt the rehearsal. Then, settling back against the worn upholstery, he fixed the stage with an alert, critical gaze.

  I hoped against hope that he would give the seal of his approval to the way I’d treated the script which he had read with surprising enthusiasm. Dr. Lenz was one of the few men in the world whom I respected to a degree bordering on idolatry. With his little imperial, his benign profile, his imposing front, he always made me feel he had just stepped down from a cloud and dismissed a train of minor prophets. If Troubled Waters, in its present shape, got by with him, it would be Something with a very capital S.

  During the next few minutes my attention was fixed on his face rather than on the stage. I watched with a mixture of pride and uneasiness. Then all uneasiness slipped away. A slight smile had moved his mouth; his eyes crinkled up at the corners. There was no doubt that the play had gotten him.

  In my consequent exhilaration I didn’t notice at once that Eddie Troth had quit his chair in the wings. Presumably my stage manager had decided no more prompting would be necessary and had sneaked out for a quick drink.

  The last act was drawing to a close. Theo made her final exit—and then Gerald.

  “Okay,” I called to them. “Don’t wait unless you want to. That’s all till tomorrow. Eleven-thirty.”

  Gerald ran a comb through his glossy black hair and moved toward the swing-door. Theo stifled a cough, buttoned her tweed jacket and followed. They disappeared together.

  “Unless you need me, I think I’ll go, too.” Old Lionel

  Comstock’s voice sounded vaguely in my ear, “I would like to take a look around the dressing-rooms. It’s been a long time. A very long time.”

  I was dimly conscious of his gaunt face peering earnestly at me. I muttered, “All right, Lionel,” and he shuffled away, leaving Lenz and me alone in the auditorium.

  On the stage Wessler and Mirabelle were working up to their final scene, while Iris hovered in the wings.

  The varied emotions of Troubled Waters had played themselves out, leaving behind them a trail of havoc and frustration. The two Kirchner women, Theo and Iris, have insisted that Cleonie be turned from the house even though the flood has not yet abated. Surprisingly, Kirchner has taken the part of the woman whom he ought to hate for menacing the security of his home. He must choose between the known and the unknown. Left alone with the girl, he tells her how he has hoped to save her immortal soul; how he is ready to sacrifice even his domestic happiness for her salvation. In a magnificent finale Cleonie opens his eyes to the fact that it is her body, not her soul, that he has wanted. And she has really wanted him despite the dreary narrowness of his outlook. They are man and woman. Will he have the courage to face the flood with her? As the curtain falls, they are moving together toward the door—toward the impassable waters and their problematical future.

  I’d always been a bit bothered by the actual ending. To me, Kirchner’s willingness to succumb to the lure of sex seemed to ditch honest psychology in favor of derivative cynicism. No one but Wessler and Mirabelle could have carried it off. But they did that night—through the sheer force of their playing.

  Lenz and I watched in silence as the two of them, the heroic, bearded man and the slim, red-haired woman, walked hand in hand away from the footlights toward an imaginary door. In spite of the naked stage with its few odd props and Eddie’s bleak coffin, there was a real illusion. You could feel exactly how the characters in the play were feeling—Cleonie’s triumphant excitement at the success of her toughest piece of man-baiting, Kirchner’s dread of leaving the known and his blinding desire for the unknown. Wessler was working up to the curtain. He was timing superbly. His great hand moved forward, clutched the handle on the door that wasn’t there and threw it open.

  Almost he made you feel the cold blast of wind sweeping into the farmhouse; made you see the vast stretches of water which buried the land that had been his past, and which still set up an almost insuperable barrier between him and his future.

  The two of them stood there with their backs turned to the house, holding the tension. They had that whole, empty theater in their spell.

  And then it happened.

  Suddenly, without the slightest warning, the swing-door burst open and a man staggered onto the stage. I scarcely recognized Lionel Comstock. His face was contorted with panic. One hand half covered his eyes as if to shut out the memory of some frightful, invisible thing.

  He groped his way forward like a man in a dream.

  “The mirror!” he gasped. “I saw it. It came out at me —out of the mirror! Lillian! … Lillian … !”

  As his words faded into the silence, there was a faint sound offstage, a throbbing musical sound like the tinkle of falling glass.

  Comstock uttered a single groan. For the fraction of a second he stood erect and theatrical in the wide path of the spotlight. Then his shoulders crumpled; he swayed; he threw out a helpless hand and collapsed onto the boards, one arm sprawling grotesquely over the coffin.

  It had all happened too quickly for me. Vaguely I was aware of Iris hurrying from the wings and dropping to her knees at his side. I was conscious that Dr. Lenz had risen and was making his purposeful way toward the stage.

  But for some reason, it was Mirabelle who attracted my particular attention. She was standing exactly where she had been, her hand still in Wessler’s, her face gray as the dust sheets in the auditorium.

  “He’s dead,” she said in a flat, funny voice, “I know it. He’s dead.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DR. LENZ was up on the stage, bending over Lionel Com-stock, his capable fingers on the old man’s pulse. I joined him, feeling as helpless as I looked. Comstock’s lips were blue-gray; one leg was doubled back un
der him; his face, with its blind, staring eyes, showed stark terror. There was something horrible about that arm of his straddled across the coffin. There was something fantastically horrible about the whole set-up.

  “Quick, Mirabelle,” I said. “Your brandy.” Mirabelle seemed only half there. Vaguely she moved across the stage toward the table where the bottle stood. She was back again.

  “There’s none left, Peter. The bottle’s empty.” “It is too late for brandy.” Lenz looked up, his bearded face very grave. “Miss Rue was right. This man is dead.” “Dead!” Conrad Wessler’s huge shoulders were stooped as if in resignation to the inevitable. “It came out at me — out of the mirror” He repeated Comstock’s amazing words in a blurred whisper. “Once again, it is the mirror.”

  “Yes.” Mirabelle’s hand fluttered, to her cheek. “What did he mean about the mirror, Peter? What did he see?” It was a relief that Mirabelle, at least, hadn’t heard about Theo’s crazy experience upstairs. I looked at Iris. Neither of us spoke. For a long moment we all stood around ineffectually. Then Lenz said:

  “You had better telephone for an ambulance, Mr. Duluth.”

  Glad of a chance to get away, I ran offstage, down the stairs to the doorman’s room. “Mac!” I called.

  I put my head around the door. No one was there. As I hurried toward the telephone, Mac came shuffling from the direction of the stage door, carrying a Siamese cat and wiping furtively at his lips.

  “Just run out for a glass of beer…” he began. “To hell with your beer,” I said. “Call an ambulance right away. It’s Mr. Comstock. A heart attack.”

  “Comstock?” The old man stared at me, open mouthed.

  “Yes. And for God’s sake, get that ambulance.” I was starting back up the stairs, then I called: “Are all the others out of the theater?”

  “Lot of ‘em just went.”

  “Then don’t let any of them back in again. Tell them rehearsal’s over, tell them anything, but don’t let them in.”

  As I hurried back to the stage, I was still pretty stunned. All I could think was that something incredible was happening at the Dagonet, something that was endangering the very existence of my play. I had to get Mirabelle and Wessler out of the theater as quickly as possible. They were both of them strung up to snapping point. If either of them cracked, the show wouldn’t be worth two red cents.

  I found them standing side by side, close to the huddled body, their hands linked, instinctively posed as they had been for the last act curtain. In the shock of death they seemed to have forgotten their mutual antagonism.

  “Wessler,” I said, “you’d better take Mirabelle home. There’s nothing you can do.”

  The Austrian actor glanced at me vacantly as if English were a language that meant nothing to him. Then he did something with his feet that gave the impression of clicked heels.

  “So gut, Herr Duluth.”

  Mirabelle whispered: “All right, Peter.” She went across the stage, picked up her brandy bottle, slipped it under her arm and moved back to Wessler.

  I wondered vaguely why she had bothered to take an empty brandy bottle with her. But I didn’t really worry about it. I was too glad to see them go.

  Dr. Lenz, Iris and I were alone on the stage now. Lenz stood there, tall and imposing, his hands clasped across an ample vest.

  “Comstock had a weak heart,” I ventured lamely. “There’d been an attack before. It—it must have been the strain of acting.”

  Lenz nodded but he did not speak. In fact, he didn’t open his mouth until the men from the ambulance came and carried Comstock away on a stretcher. Then he said quietly:

  “I shall go to the hospital with them, Mr. Duluth, but I shall come to your apartment later.” He paused and added: “Meanwhile, try not to worry unduly.”

  I tried not to worry unduly, but it didn’t get me very far. The Dagonet had done enough to my nerves already; this latest and worst episode had started them running around in circles. I looked at Iris who was making an effort to light a cigarette as if everything were under control. Just to see her did something to me.

  “Darling,” I said, “before you say what you’re going to say, you must let me tell you one thing. You’re very beautiful and I love you very much.”

  “That’s two things.” She smiled fleetingly. Then she looked serious executive. “Peter, we’ve got to do something.”

  “About Comstock?”

  She nodded.

  “Poor old fellow,” I began. “He had a bum heart, the strain…”

  “Don’t talk like an infant. You know there’s more to it than that.” She paused, watching me curiously: “Didn’t you and Gerald really find anything upstairs in that dressing-room?”

  “Yes,” I said. “We found a Siamese cat with a pink ribbon around its neck.”

  “I don’t mean the cat. It wasn’t the cat that scared Theo. You know that as well as I do. And it wasn’t the cat that scared Comstock, either. Both of them saw something in a mirror, something bad enough to frighten Comstock to death. You saw how he looked when he rushed on stage Peter. It’s crazy to say he died of an ordinary heart attack. He was frightened to death. And he’d expected to be frightened before he ever came to the theater.”

  I’d been thinking the same thing, of course. There was no point in pretending I hadn’t.

  “So what?” I asked bleakly. “Do we believe there’s a disembodied reflection running amok in the Dagonet?”

  “I don’t know what we believe, Peter. But Comstock was scared of someone or something called Lillian. And there’s only one sensible thing to do. We’ve got to look for Lillian.”

  She took my arm firmly and started for the swing-door. There was nothing for it but to follow her lead, although it seemed pretty wild—searching a theater for a performing mirror and a ghost called Lillian.

  We moved out into the corridor. It had been eerie before. It was even more so now. The frugal light from the ceiling bulb came blurred through a coating of dust; the silence was stifling. Since Iris was on top of the situation, I made a point of playing the two-fisted, what-the-hell male. But I was very frayed.

  Ahead of us was the closed door of the first star dressing-room, the casus belli in the most recent battle between Mirabelle and Wessler. We paused in front of it. Iris slipped her hand into mine. I turned the knob, opened the door and switched on the light.

  I hadn’t seen this room before. It was more or less like the one upstairs that I had visited with Gerald, only larger, boasting a regular stand-up wardrobe with a full-length mirror instead of the smaller curtained closet. Iris’s fingers closed more tightly on mine as we looked at the dressing-table.

  The mirror immediately above it was splintered and cracked from side to side.

  I don’t know why that came as such a shock. After all that had happened already, I should have been able to take a broken mirror in my stride. But there is something in show-people, quite independent of reason, that reacts violently to this hoariest ill-omen in the Theater.

  Iris was taking it calmly. She moved to the shattered glass.

  “This must be the room where Comstock was frightened.” She turned to me, her pupils widening. “He said whatever it was came out from the mirror. With the mirror broken and everything, it’s almost as if something really had been coming out, stepping through from the other side. Peter, how beastly!”

  For the first time she looked rather shaken. Unexpectedly, that made me steadier.

  “Nuts,” I said without conviction. “Wessler probably broke the mirror himself before rehearsal.”

  Iris let go my hand and walked across to the wardrobe. She swung open the door, revealing Wessler’s black hat and the brocade opera cloak. There was something spectral about them hanging there where he must have forgotten them in his hurried departure with Mirabelle. I was going to make some flip remark when Iris gave a little cry and said: “Look!”

  She had bent and was picking something from the floor just at the foot
of the wardrobe. She moved back to me, holding it out.

  “Look, Peter.”

  I looked. In a way, that was the most unnerving of all our discoveries. In Iris’s hand was Wessler’s clay statuette —the little figure of Mirabelle Rue. That evening, before rehearsal, it had been perfect down to the last exquisite detail. It was different now. Although the body had not been touched, the neck had been brutally crushed, as by the pressure of rough fingers. The tiny head lolled limply, lending the figure a horribly realistic resemblance to a woman whose neck had been broken by strangulation— or hanging.

  “You remember what Theo said?” Iris dropped the figurine onto the dressing-table with fingers that shook. “She said the face she saw in the mirror was white, contorted like the face of a woman being hanged. Hanged! Let’s get out of here, Peter. I’ve—I’ve had enough.”

  So had I. Plenty. That wretched experience of Theo’s was getting out of hand; it was growing into a Juggernaut that had already crushed Comstock to death and seemed all set to go berserk through the entire theater.

  We hurried out into the passage. We had just started toward the stairs leading to street level when my toe knocked against something that tinkled. I looked down. Lying on the floor, gleaming in the drab light, was a fragment of glass. I glanced around and saw another—and then another. I bent and picked a piece up. It was ordinary plain glass.

  “What is it?” Iris asked nervously.

  I remembered then. “It must be the new glass panel

  Eddie got for the swing-door.” I looked up at her quickly. “Iris, just after Comstock dashed on stage, did you hear a sound—like breaking glass?”

  Iris nodded. She too had heard that curious, musical tinkle which had echoed through the silence backstage.

  ‘Then it must have been broken after Comstock came on stage,” she said. “He couldn’t have done it himself.”