The Plot

by Irving Wallace

  Medora held the dress before her, smoothing it. “Advantageous to whom?”

  “To the Club Lautrec, of course. Not the extra champagne that we might sell. That is minor. Rather, the goodwill your friendliness could engender. And advantageous to you, too. I have the impression that you have never been averse to meeting politicians and diplomats. Perhaps you will still find ‘them of interest.”

  “I’m not soliciting for any pimp,” she said angrily, “and I never have.”

  He flushed, but contained his temper. “I never asked you to solicit. I asked you to be cooperative.”

  She thought, at once, of the British delegates who might visit the show, and who might help her contact Sir Austin, if that became necessary. She said, “All right. I’ll be cooperative.”

  “Thank you. Next, the second point, of greater importance. Our contract states that you will also be cooperative about participating in any promotion and publicity that the staff of the Club Lautrec arranges. This is extremely important at this time, Medora. Usually, when we contract for a feature act, we have many weeks to build public interest in that act. But you were hired overnight. Aside from posters, advertisements, a few newspaper squibs, an article in Une Semaine de Paris, we have had no time to sell your attraction to the public. However, there is one bit of good fortune. The Summit has brought to Paris more than a thousand newspaper reporters, many with local outlets for their stories. My staff has been in touch with the press, making an effort to arrange appointments for interviews. With these, I would expect your fullest cooperation.”

  “Very well. You have it. Now will you permit me to dress?”

  “I have your cooperation, you say? Bon! Then I must advise you that your first interview has been arranged.”

  “Well, you let me know when and where, and I’ll—”

  “Right now and right here,” he said. “She’ll be here in—in fifteen minutes.”

  Medora glowered at him. “Oh, how clever. Aren’t you the crafty one, sneaking it in like that! Couldn’t you have told me first off? Well, I’m not so sure. I think it’s inconsiderate of you. In fact, downright unfair. I’m absolutely a wreck—driving all night, rehearsing half the afternoon, and you say that I must see some horrible reporter person now. If you’re halfway decent, you’ll give me a chance to get my bearings. I’m sure you can postpone it.”

  Michaud’s features were pained. “Medora,” he implored, “this interview is the most vital to us of any. It was difficult to make this appointment. A postponement might antagonize her and lose us the story. Surely, you have heard of Miss Hazel Smith?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t remember,” said Medora petulantly. “I only know I’m tired and want to be left alone.”

  “Miss Smith is the most renowned American correspondent in Europe,” Michaud pleaded. “Her Atlas syndicate will publish the interview with you everywhere in the world. But to us, the importance is that the interview will appear in the European edition of the New York Herald Tribune, in France-Soir, even in Die Welt and Il Messaggero and others which are sold in every Paris kiosk. The story will attract—”

  “You win,” said Medora suddenly, weary of combating him. “Only tell her no more than a half hour, and—”

  He had opened the door, singing out gayly, “Merci bien, Mademoiselle Medora.”

  “—and you be sure to tell her this interview is strictly about my career, understand? One word about Jameson and the interview is fini. You tell her that.”

  “I promise. I vow. It is done.”

  He went quickly, and when the door closed and she was rid of him, Medora collapsed on the bench with relief. After five minutes and one cigarette, she had regained her strength. She finished cleaning off the last of her stage makeup, then she used the eyebrow pencil, powder puff, lipstick lightly, to ready her for the woman reporter and the street. Finally, her dressing completed, she took up her straw handbag and started downstairs.

  Entering the cabaret, she found it unexpectedly dismal and forlorn, like an uninhabited coral reef devoid of all that was animate and alive. Empty nightclubs in empty afternoons had always made Medora melancholy, as if she were wandering through a necropolis. But going past the stage, she could see that the hall was not entirely empty of people. In the distance, near the entrance, three men and a woman, wearing something that resembled drab prison garb, were laying cloths on the tables. And now she was aware of more human activity in the foreground, in front of the stage.

  Michaud, exuding charm, was addressing a woman who was taking notes. This was probably the reporter woman, Medora decided, and approaching the pair, Medora guessed that the reporter woman, an American, was formidable. The woman carried a terrible mussiness of brick-red hair that somehow went with her pinched nose but seemed unreal when contrasted against her cream complexion. She was too broad-beamed for the cut of the brown suit she wore, and as a consequence the skirt had wrinkled. She held her writing pad close to her face, and Medora supposed that she was nearsighted bu too vain to wear spectacles. Well, at least she was American, which was more promising than the British journalists, whose savaging Medora had so long endured. She prayed that the interview would be bland and brief.

  “Ah, and here comes my star of stars!” Michaud exclaimed. He rushed forward to take Medora’s forearm, and gallantly led her to his journalist. “Miss Medora Hart, Miss Hazel Smith, the celebrated Miss Smith of ANA.”

  Medora greeted her interviewer with constrained warmth, and Hazel Smith acknowledged this with a lipless one-second smile that came on, went off. Then Hazel Smith cocked her head and examined Medora, as she might if evaluating a new piece of statuary that had received mixed reviews.

  “Well, the two of you have met,” Michaud announced with exuberance. “I am sure you would prefer to be left alone to have your conversation.”

  “We won’t need you any more, Mr. Michaud,” said Hazel Smith.

  “Bon! Nevertheless, I shall be in my office upstairs, always available, should there be a question,” said Michaud. “I’ve ordered coffee and cakes. They will be here any moment. If you will forgive, I go.”

  “So go already,” said Hazel Smith.

  For an instant, Michaud lost his poise, but recovering, he chuckled and said, “I know you will always write a good story, Miss Smith.” He winked broadly at Medora and added, “But do not tell her everything, my pet.”

  At last, he was gone, and Hazel Smith plopped down into the chair and shook her head. “What an ass he is,” she said.

  Trying to restrain herself from agreeing, or in any way showing her delight, Medora placed her handbag on the table and sat down, more relaxed than before. After fussing with her yellow collar and her hair, Medora looked up to find the American reporter staring intently at her. Wriggling uncomfortably, Medora pulled herself erect and drew down the hem of her wool dress.

  “You’re quite a dish, Miss Hart,” said Hazel Smith. “Now I can understand all that brouhaha in England a couple of years ago.”

  Disconcerted, Medora was not certain what her reaction should be. “Well, I don’t know—I—but, thank you, anyway.”

  Hazel Smith crossed her legs, opened the pad on her knee, and scratched her pen on the paper to see if her pen was working. “I’m ready, you’re set, let’s go,” she said. “What are you doing here, Miss Hart?”

  “What am I doing here?”

  “You know what I mean. Why did you come to Paris at this time?”

  “To—to work in the Club Lautrec. Isn’t it obvious?”

  Hazel Smith impatiently rapped her pen against the edge of the wooden table. “Come on, now, come off it. We’re the two of us together. No one around. You can level with me. It’ll write better that way, and be better for you.”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea of what you are speaking about, Miss Smith.”

  Hazel Smith pushed herself against the table, head projecting like a pecking hen. “Here’s what I’m speaking about. I looked you up in our morgue at ANA. F
or the last few years you’ve batted about the Continent playing honky-tonks. Not much fun, I’m sure. Suddenly, overnight, you’re the star of a big Paris nightclub. You’re in Paris, in fact, for the first time in God knows when. So I ask myself—how come?”

  Medora stiffened. “I’m here because Monsieur Michaud needed a name attraction known to most of the international delegations. I suppose he decided that I had the name by now.”

  “That figures. In short, he wanted the Jameson girl.”

  The woman was thoroughly disagreeable, and Medora began to hate her. “Put it any way you wish,” she said icily.

  “Oh, I will, I will, I assure you,” murmured Hazel Smith, as she wrote. “That still leaves my other question unanswered. Why Paris now?”

  “I told you.”

  “You told me nothing, Miss Hart. But I don’t mind telling you what I suspect. I suspect that you came to Paris because Sir Austin Ormsby is here for the Summit and his brother is here, and you wanted to take up with them again. I assume you were as well acquainted with Sir Austin as his—as that brother—Sydney.”

  Medora felt her entire body shaking at the outrageous behavior of this offensive woman. “Miss—Miss Smith, that’s not fair, that’s bitchy of you. Michaud promised to tell you I’d—I would only discuss my work, my work, that’s all.”

  Hazel Smith was pointing the pen at her. “I am discussing your work, Miss Hart.”

  “Oh, you—how can you—?”

  “Easy, Miss Hart. Level with Hazel and you won’t be sorry. Now, I don’t know if you came running here to have a reunion with Sir Austin or with Sydney Ormsby. I believe this is the first time you’ve been in the same city with the Ormsbys since the Jameson scandal. No matter. What I am asking is—did you come to see them—for auld lang syne, you know—or did they send for you?”

  “How horrid!” Medora cried. She wanted to go on, but she could not. She began choking, suffered a spasm of coughing, then she grabbed at her straw handbag and jumped to her feet. Standing unsteadily, eyes brimming, she looked down at her tormentor. “You’re a dreadful bitch, and I won’t talk to you!” Crazily, the tears began to roll down Medora’s cheeks, and she sobbed uncontrollably. “How—how can you—bring, bring all that—bring that up? How can you, after the hell—the rotten hell I—I’ve been through?”

  Starting to choke again, Medora wiped a fist against her flow of tears. Seeing the inhuman redhead coming toward her, Medora backed away, shouting brokenly, “Leave me alone!”

  She wheeled, stumbled, caught herself by grabbing a table edge, then ran up the aisle, past the alarmed Club Lautrec waiters. Continuing to sob, continuing to run, she went through the lobby and burst into the Rue la Boëtie.

  Outside at last, freed of the hateful presence of her past, she tried to control the wretched sobbing that had already attracted the attention of pedestrians. Fumbling for a lace handkerchief, she dabbed at her eyes and streaked face, and blew her nose, and blindly made her way up the street.

  When she reached the corner of the Champs-Élysées, she stopped to catch her breath and Compose herself. Seeking her compact mirror, she tried to understand her hysterical outburst. The American reporter’s revival of Medora’s past had been blunt and offensive, but everywhere in Europe, these last years, sooner or later, she had undergone similar reminders, yet she had never dissolved in tears before. Of course, Hazel Smith’s coarse insinuations about why Medora was here, and what she was up to, had been unexpected and hurting, perhaps summarizing too rudely the world’s frank opinion of her and the hopelessness of her ever becoming anything more than the Jameson girl. Yet, even the insinuations had not been provocative enough to explain her wildly emotional reaction.

  Trying to steady her hand, she held up the compact mirror and powdered over the unattractive tear streaks on her face. She looked a hag for twenty-one, for any age, she saw, an utter mess, but it was understandable, for she was a mess. She had overreacted to the reporter, probably, because the accumulated years of enforced exile and frustration had caught up with her. Too, she was a bundle of tensions, every quivering nerve exposed, because she was banking so much on using the Nardeau oil painting of Fleur to bend Sir Austin to her just demands. This centering of her entire hopes on one chance, the uncertainty of how to proceed, this, combined with her lack of rest, the exertion of the rehearsal, the ugly scene with Michaud, had brought her to the brink of disintegration. The American reporter’s cruel questions had merely pushed her over.

  Closing her compact, putting it away, she felt her sanity somewhat restored although she did not feel better.

  A hand was on her elbow, and she started. She heard someone say “Miss Hart” She spun around.

  Hazel Smith was standing before her, and at first Medora hardly recognized her. Except for the pile of red hair and the wrinkled brown suit, she did not seem to be the same person. Her metallic inquisitor’s eyes had softened, the nostrils of her pinched nose were quivering, her lipless mouth had become feminine, her frightening pad and pen were missing. It was as if Mrs. Hyde had swallowed from the vial and become, incredibly, Mrs. Jekyll.

  Medora’s mechanism of automatic response—anger, flight—remained unactivated. She waited with dumb wonderment.

  Hazel Smith, pale and concerned, ducked her head abjectly, and when she spoke, her tone was contrite. “I—I’m glad I caught you, Miss Hart. I want to apologize.” She raised her head, embarrassed. “I want to tell you as quickly as possible I’m ashamed. I guess I haven’t said that to anyone in years. You’re right, you know. I did behave like an awful bitch. It comes naturally. Maybe for a reason you might understand.” She paused. “Anyway, when you’ve devoted yourself to your work for years, to keep busy, to escape thinking, to avoid being a vulnerable person, you sort of get in the habit of treating your interview subjects like—well, like bloodless Names, not like real human beings. You forget they have feelings, because you want to forget you, yourself, once had feelings. It’s easier that way, going at it like a relentless automaton, and believing the subjects across from you are automatons. Also, I suppose, it’s the best way to get good stories, by hitting hard at people, refusing to consider their sensitivity, just being brutally frank and ruthless. I mean, if you stopped for a second to think how your subjects really felt, as people, why, you couldn’t do it, and then you wouldn’t get the stories and have a big career. And having a big career is everything, when there is nothing else… I do hope you will understand, Medora, and forgive me.”

  During this recital, spoken so sincerely and directly, Medora’s emotions had been utterly upended, and altered to such an extent that she had found herself too incredulous to interrupt. Ten minutes ago, she had despised this middle-aged woman. Now, standing in the sun of the Champs-Élysées, listening to her, and finally believing her, she found herself sorry not for herself but for Hazel Smith.

  “I suppose, maybe, you shouldn’t be the one to apologize,” said Medora hesitantly. “Maybe I should, for dissolving like I did, making such a scene over routine questions that I—I’ve heard many times before.”

  “No, Medora, it was me, myself, and I who were to blame. Your breaking up that way was like a healthy slap, bringing me to my senses, making me see the reality of what I’ve become. When you ran off, I realized what I had been asking you, and I realized that you weren’t just a brainless little tart who had used her body to exploit men and be exploited by them. I sensed that you were someone who had been victimized, forced to grovel and suffer, and in you, well, I sort of saw something of myself—that’ll surprise you, but I did see that—and then I realized you weren’t a headline only, just as I’m not a by-line only, but a person with a heart, just as I am, and—well, it’s not like me, but I suppose this is something of me, too, but I. decided to hell with the damn story. All I wanted was for you to know I was sorry. So now you know.”

  “Thank you, Miss Smith. I just—”

  “Hazel—I’m Hazel in my off hours.”

  Medora ass
ented gratefully. “Thank you, Hazel, but I have to say again that I blew up because I guess the pressure had been building a long time and it had to be released. It’s not that I mind talking about the Ormsbys—Sir Austin, really—or the whole Jameson affair; it’s just that there’s no one to talk to about it, as a friend—you have no idea, but there’s no one—because if I want to confide, I can’t trust anyone, because they want to use me or use what I tell them, and so the best I can do is have miserable little talks with myself, and that’s not healthy.”

  Hazel Smith offered a sympathetic smile. “You can talk to me, Medora. Maybe I can help you more than I’ve ever been able to help myself.” She waited, then went on. “I mean it. you what. Unless you’ve got something better to do—because I haven’t, and even if I had I wouldn’t right now, anyway—why don’t we sit somewhere with a cup of coffee or a drink and let down our hair? I mean, strictly off the record. No interview. Just an old bag and a pretty young girl who both want comforting. Oh, of course I’ll write a story, to make your boss happy and give you some publicity, which maybe would be helpful. But it would be strictly about you as an accomplished young lady who’s come out of the lower depths to carve a big career for herself and finally attain the summit of show business in Paris. I’d refer to the Jameson case only in a passing line.”

  “I shouldn’t mind that.”

  “But right now, no paper and pencil. My bunions are killing me. And you don’t look exactly like a tower of strength. There’s a café over there. Let’s sit down.”

  Medora did not resist. She permitted Hazel Smith to steer her away from the corner. They walked up the Champs-Élysées until they arrived at the Café Francais, a modest sidewalk oasis between a drygoods store bearing a sign reading SOLDE, and a shop with the sign TABAC, and located near the large open entrance of the Lido Arcade.