"Who he?"

The Dial Press New York 1953

Copyright, 1953, by Alfred Bester _Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 53-9322_

DESIGNED BY WILLIAM R. MEINHARDT Printed in the United States of America By The Haddon Craftsmen Inc., Scranton, Penna.

To ROLLY

Chapter I

Every morning I hate to be born, and every night I'm afraid to die. I live my life within these parentheses, and since I'm constantly walking a tightrope over hysteria, I'm perceptive to the dilemmas of other people as they cross their own chasms.

I'm a script-writer by trade, specializing in mystery shows. I'm married to an actress. We're both of us second-raters in the entertainment business ... mostly anonymous to the public, fairly well-known to our colleagues. Between us we make from ten to twenty thousand dollars a year, depending on the breaks. This is only fair money in our business.

It seems like a fortune to our families, and we dazzle them with our glamour. We hate this, but we can't dispel the illusion that General Sarnoff claps me on the shoulder and calls me by my nickname. Now we've given up trying. We realize that people want their friends to be glamorous, so we've stopped trying to avoid undeserved admiration. But I can't stand deception, and if I appear to be cynical in this story, it's because I'm leaning over backwards to tell you the truth. As a matter of fact I'm the reverse of cynical ... rather naive, in love with adventure and romance, with the moral and ethical standards of an Eagle Scout.

This is all I intend telling you about myself, because the story isn't about me; it's about some tightrope walkers I know, and their strange adventures in this fantastic frontier town we natives call The Rock. The Rock, of course, is Manhattan Island, the only part of Greater New York that we consider to be the genuine New York; and in our business there is a very small society of natives born and raised on The Rock. You'd be surprised at how few there are.

The Rock is the roaring frontier of the new life we are all beginning to live, a life that is a terrifying mixture of the conscious and unconscious levels of our minds. It is new and terrifying because the unconscious depths which were concealed up to now, have become exposed, and participate openly in our every-day life, turning it into a savage, merciless war.

It's like those subway rides you take on trains that tunnel deep under the city, emerge abruptly into the daylight to roar past third-storey windows, and then plunge down into the lower levels again. So, when you meet people on The Rock, you never know when some unexpected turn will carry you up for a flashing glimpse through the windows of their souls, or down into the black depths of their hatreds and formless desires.

Adventurers from all over the world crowd into our town, just as fortune-hunters went west a century ago. In the old days in Denver and Fargo you fought for your life and your fortune, but in our frontier town you fight for your sanity as well. The drives and ambitions, the deep passions and compulsions, the blind search for symbols and compensations that bring the bandits to The Rock are naked and exposed, and this is where the danger lies. A man may declare war on you because you're a threat to his job, or merely because you're the symbol of a threat to his precarious stability. When you cross a street you never know whether you're going to be sandbagged by a thief's blackjack or a neurotic's nightmare.

The Rock is so wild and wide-open that nobody ever pretends to mask the deep chasms and smouldering fires in their lives. We carry our fears and fixations like naked weapons as we walk our tightropes, and we use them as quickly and murderously as Billy The Kid used his six-gun. The result is that we fight, love and adventure on all levels and never bother to distinguish reality from illusion because both are equally living and dangerous.

I'll try to separate fact from fancy in this adventure I'm going to tell you, but in the end I think you'll agree that it's unnecessary. Like the classic bartender in the classic Western, you'll duck behind the beer kegs at the first shot, whether it comes from a real gun or the explosive ferment in a man's mind. And don't imagine for a moment that this story is a plug for psychoanalysis. Whether you believe in analysis or not, you must admit that man, like the iceberg, is nine-tenths submerged. I'm simply going to describe what life is like in our frontier town where the submerged levels float up to the surface.

The locale of this story is a show I never worked. It's a TV variety clam-bake called "Who He?" ... one of those lunatic mish-mashes that started out as a panel quiz show and ended up as a musical. It stars Mason & Dixon, supported by Kay Hill and Oliver Stacy. It's directed by Raeburn Sachs, written by Jake Lennox, with music by Johnny Plummer. It's produced by Melvin Grabinett Associates and costs the client, Mode Shoes, $50,000 a week.

"Who He?" is not an expensive show as TV variety shows go. It's in the middle bracket. I think you might be interested in a rough break-down on the budget which will give you some idea of the stakes for which the people in this adventure were fighting. The monetary stakes, that is. The network charges $25,000 for a half-hour of coast-to-coast time. Mig Mason, the star, gets $2,000 a week. Diggy Dixon, who is co-starred with him, doesn't get a nickel because Mason's a ventriloquist and Dixon is the dummy. Stacy, Kay Hill and other talent and specialties including the dancers get $3,000.

The writers, Jake Lennox and Mason's gagmen, split $1,500 between them. Lennox also gets a small cut in the producer's take for helping create the show. Incidentally, one of the gagmen got married for the first time on his forty-third birthday. The marriage broke up after two weeks. The bride went home to Canada and the gagman went down to Washington and became a spy for the government. We're still trying to figure it out. Maybe he decided that any tight rope, even an espionage tight rope, would be safer than the one he was on.

Raeburn Sachs gets $750 a week for directing "Who He?". How Sachs got started in the business is one of the great legends, and the only explanation for his weird public and private life. He was a stencil clerk in a Chicago advertising office, and one day he drove to work in a new Cadillac. He also wore new clothes and a new look. Everybody asked Ray if he'd robbed a bank. Chicago-type joke. Ray told them proudly that he'd written a hit tune called "Lumbago" or something like that.

Nobody ever heard of the tune. The office did a little detective work and discovered that "Lumbago" did exist, had truly been written by Ray, and had been recorded as a favor to him by a cousin who led a band working for a Chicago recording company. The gimmick was that there was another side to the record, the Flip, they call it, and Sinatra was on the Flip. Sinatra made the sales, but Ray shared the money. That made him a reputation and started him as a variety expert. He's been trying to justify that wrong Flip ever since.

Here's a little more budget: Johnny Plummer, married to the most exotically beautiful noodnick in the world, is allotted $1,500 a week for orchestra, copying and his own fee. The noodnick has standing orders to keep out of the theater because she disrupts the camera men, and camera time is counted like radium. Cameras and technicians cost $2,000. Sets and props cost $3,000. Special effects like rain, snow, Acts of God and Rear-Projection cost $500.

The producer, Mel Grabinett (Mr. Blinky to his enemies; he has no friends) takes $3,000 which he cuts up with Jake Lennox and Ned Bacon who developed "Who He?" with him. Jake and Ned get two and a half bills each. That's $250. Borden, Olson and Mardine, the advertising agency representing the client, adds 15% of the gross cost of the show for agency fee, and that plus prize money and incidentals comes to $50,000 a week to demonstrate the superior quality of Mode Shoes.

Some forty hard-working, variously talented people put together "Who He?" every week ... artists, technicians and business men. Each of them is walking his own private tightrope, but all of them must walk the communal tightrope of the show on Sunday night at nine o'clock before 37 million viewers. The individual pressures added to the common tension of the show make it seem inevitable that the program will blow up during rehearsal and never get on the air. Yet "Who He?" has appeared 39 weeks in succession without mishap. Without mishap, that is, until the performance on New Year's night.

It was one of those nightmares. Everyone who saw the show knew something was wrong. Mig Mason performed so badly that you could see his mouth twitch and his neck muscles jerk during the ventriloquist routines with the dummy. Oliver Stacy handed out the wrong prizes. Johnny Plummer missed his cues. Floor managers and stagehands wandered dazedly before the cameras. The dancers went through the production numbers as though they expected the roof to collapse at any moment. _Variety_ happened to catch the show that night and murdered it.

_Variety_ was unfair. Their reviewer should have checked first. He would have learned that the show went out the window because one man fell off his private tightrope with such a disastrous jar that everyone else was shaken. He would have discovered that less than five feet of sight-line saved the theater audience and the TV viewers from the spectacle of a dead man hanging by the neck from the iron grid above the stage.

For twenty-nine minutes and thirty seconds, stars, actors, dancers and technicians went through the motions of playing "Who He?" under a corpse with starting eyes and swollen tongue ... a victim of the savage, merciless warfare in our frontier town, murdered by the ferment in a man's mind.

I knew the corpse. I know what killed him. I'm still friendly with most of the cut-throats who watched him die. I've spoken to them, questioned them, and heard what they couldn't say as well as what they said. I've pieced out all the strands that wove themselves into a rope around a man's neck. This is the story of what happened....

Chapter II

Jake Lennox had been fighting a losing battle with himself for ten years, and it was a struggle he had never been aware of. The two levels of his mind hated each other and were tearing him apart. Jake had a conscious ideal, the model of the man he wanted to be ... austere, kindly, infallible, sophisticated. Like many of us, he suffered from the Mignon Complex. He was bitterly ashamed of his background. He had had a squalid childhood as the son of a drunken Long Island clam-digger, and would have liked to awaken one morning to discover that he was really the second son of the Marquis of Suffolk.

But deep down inside, Jake was a hell of a rowdy guy; full of laughter and boisterous energy, yearning for ribald friends and a burning girl he could love and marry and riot in bed with. He was not aware of this. He believed in the conscious image of what he wanted to be. And while the lusty passions within him fought to overturn and destroy the world he had made for himself, his conscious mind was fighting desperately to hold it together.

Occasionally the conscious mind gave way, which is why Jake Lennox awoke on Christmas night in the role of another man. He was convinced that he was Mr. Clarence Fox from Philadelphia. I got this story from Jake and from Aimee Driscoll when I went up to her apartment to claim Jake's overcoat and precious gimmick book. Jake couldn't face Aimee again. She represented the turmoil inside him which he could not acknowledge.

Aimee (how about that name?) is a blonde with a poached face and the fattest behind and bosom in the hustling racket. If you looked at her through a gin bottle you might imagine that she was a busty Swedish acrobat, which was what betrayed Jake. There are front-men and rear-men, Aimee kindly explained to me, and she parlays both into a lovely living. Mr. Clarence Fox was an All-Around Camper.

He awoke, still drunk and still bloody from the brawl in Ye Baroque Saloon where he had acquired Aimee. He wore his underwear and was cramped into an overstuffed sofa and covered with a gritty Navajo blanket. It was dark. Lennox let out a roar that slid into a ballad which he'd composed the night before and with which he'd been injuring ears ever since.

Aimee heard the racket, ran into the living room and turned on the lights. Lennox winced, closed his eyes, and sneezed three times in stately waltz tempo.

"Less light," he muttered. "A switch on Goethe. I am excessively educated, and all by hand. Need more crud in my blood." He began to roar again.

"Stop that noise, Clarence!" Aimee called from the door. "Stop that goddam singing."

Lennox finished the ballad which included every dirty word he knew. Seventeen, by actual count.

"And stop talking dirty," Aimee told him primly. She was wearing a bra, panties and high black net stockings; not, she pointed out, in hopes of arousing the beast in Mr. Fox. It was her conventional uniform. As a matter of fact she knew he was still drunk and hoped he wouldn't start anything. She waddled to the sofa and bent over Mr. Fox solicitously. He had been very generous to her even though her professional services had not yet been requested. Mr. Fox stared up at her bursting cleavage, then suddenly thrust his heavy hand down into it.

"The All-Mother," Lennox laughed.

He hurt her. Aimee squawked and jerked back. Lennox held on to the bra and tore it away. He began to cheer: "Brah! Brah! Brah!" waving the bra like a college pennant.

"You goddam lousy bum!" Aimee screamed. "You're mean. You're mean dirty drunk. I never liked you from the beginning, you goddam lousy son of a--"

"No, no," Lennox protested. "An act of admiration. 'Fair is my love, for April's in her face, her lovely breasts September claims his part....' Poem by R. Greene. Speaks for C. Fox."

He lurched up from the sofa, captured Aimee and clutched her reverently. He pressed his face between her breasts. He had not shaved in a day and a half, and his beard was excruciating. Aimee fought and twisted and thrust him away. Lennox straightened and rocked like a high mast.

"'But Cold December dwelleth in her heart,'" he mumbled sorrowfully. "Where's the woman who'll give passion with the sweetness of virgins and the lunacy of whores? You give, Aimee, but you taste like money." He staggered, tripped on a mass of cardboard and wrapping paper, and fell heavily into a three-foot Christmas tree that expired with a jingle and pop.

Aimee burst out laughing. She was revenged. Lennox arose in a fury, seized the Christmas tree by the butt and beat it savagely against the wall. Aimee protested. He leaped toward her and lashed her across the high fat buttocks. Aimee screamed. Lennox slipped and bruised himself on a solid square object covered with tissue paper. He clutched it.

"You leave that alone, Clarence," Aimee yelled. She forgot all other outrages and ran across the room. She clawed at Lennox and tried to pull him off. The tissue paper tore away.

"What'r you protecting? Virginity?" Lennox growled.

"It's the Christmas present you gimme. You bought it last night. Don't you bust it!"

Lennox peeled away tissue paper to reveal a dark wood console and a twelve inch TV screen.

"The Monster!" he cried. "The One-Eyed Beast!" He hammered the top of the set with his fists. Aimee fought him helplessly, then darted away and returned with an empty quart beer bottle. She swung it with both hands and clubbed Lennox across the back of the neck. He fell forward into the rubbish like a tackle throwing a rolling block. He was the size of a tackle.

Lennox climbed to his feet, his throat working convulsively. "Bathroom," he croaked. He was sick. Aimee knew the symptoms well, and no vendetta was worth another cleaning bill. She turned Lennox around and pushed him competently through a narrow door into the small bedroom and then into the bathroom. She turned on the light, flipped up the toilet lid and with the skill of long experience, bent his head down to the bowl. Then she backed out and slammed the door.

During the preliminary moment of agony, Lennox thought: "They play Boys' Rules. Oh Virgins! Respectables! Learn from them--" Then the purge began.

When the heaving stopped, Lennox straightened painfully, flushed the toilet, then examined his face in the mirror. To him it was the face of Mr. Clarence Fox, the visiting Quaker from Philadelphia. His cropped hair was still sleek; nothing could ever muss it. But his dark eyes had heavy purple shadows around them, and his lined face was bruised.

He was purged, still drunk, but beginning to sober. He staggered to the bedroom, found his clothes neatly hung in a closet, and dressed. He went out into the living room. Aimee had straightened it. She wore a white housecoat blemished by green and scarlet petunias, and was kneeling alongside the new television set plugging it into a wall outlet.

"If you got any on the floor you better clean it up," she said icily.

"Merry Christmas," he answered. "Happy to pay for damage to life and limb."

Lennox reached into his pocket, took out his wallet and was fingering through it for money when his eye noticed the identification card.

"This isn't my wallet," he said.

"What?"

Lennox plucked at his shirt dubiously. "Not my clothes either."

"What are you talking about, Clarence? Them's your clothes." Aimee switched on the set and fiddled with the controls.

"No. Not mine. Belong to somebody else. Character named Lennox."

"Who?"

He extended the wallet for Aimee to examine. "My name's Fox. Clarence Fox from Philadelphia. This is Jordan Lennox, says here. See? Jordan Lennox. How'd he get into the act?"

The screen ignited, herringboned, then sprang into life. The blast of Johnny Plummer's orchestra filled the room with bright expectation. A Main-Title card displayed white comedy letters against a cartoon background while the voice of Oliver Stacy read it with frenetic sell: THE MODE SHOW ... STARRING MIG MASON AND DIGGY DIXON ... PLAYING--'WHO HE?'

"Who He!" Aimee called over the burst of studio applause. I love that program. I get every question right. I could make a fortune if I could get on." She backed up, feeling for a chair, her eyes fixed on the screen.

Jake Lennox's consciousness ignited, herringboned, then sprang into life.

"'Who He!'" he burst out, stunned and bewildered. "That's my show."

Clarence Fox stole back to Philadelphia.

"That's my show," Lennox repeated.

"How do you mean, your show?"

"I write it. I own a piece of it."

"That's a hot one," Aimee laughed.

"Don't you understand? It's my show. I'm Jake Lennox. I write that--I--What the hell am I doing here? I'm supposed to be at the theater."

Lennox turned and stumbled out of the apartment. He clattered down the brownstone stairs and fell half a flight. It was bitter cold on the street. Snow and rain were falling, and the air was like ice-water. Lennox ran west to 3rd Avenue, the great exposed nerve of The Rock's delirium. It was empty. The bars exuded urine-colored light. The antique shops blazed with cut-glass chandeliers. Alongside him, a darkened barber-pole still revolved its red and white spiral with the sound of guillotines.

A small man in a derby, pea-jacket and white duck trousers passed him and addressed him brightly: "Hiya, Dan. Nice to see you again." The man in the derby continued up 3rd Avenue greeting empty doorways in friendly tones: "Hello, Jerry. Long time no see.... Hiya, Pete? How's the family? Glad to see you, Ed." Lennox stared at him, then saw a cab, ran for it and leaped inside.

"Gotham four one thousand," he called to the driver. He shook his head. "No. That's the backstage number. I--Let's take it from the top. Venice Theater. 50th and Sixth. I'm in a rush, Mr...." He tried to focus on the license card above the glass partition. It would be considerate to call the man by his name instead of Mac or Bud. His eyes bleared and he gave it up.

He sat on the edge of the seat, terrified by his abrupt return to sanity, fighting to recapture the Lennox he admired and wanted to be ... the sober Lennox, the second son of the Marquis of Suffolk. He found his wristwatch in his jacket pocket and put it on, Nine-three. Mig Mason would be starting the first Mason & Dixon spot on the show. What was it this week? The football routine. Mason in moleskins. The dummy under a sheet. _What football player made ghosts famous? For five hundred dollars, Who He? Red Grange. That's ab-so-lute-ly_ CORRECT! (Applause). Lennox began to shake,

"What's happened?" he muttered. "Where've I been? I'm in a panic. Why, for five hundred dollars?"

Lennox sorted through his shattered memory of the past twenty-four hours. He was afraid to unearth, uncover, reveal; yet compelled, like a man exploring the pain of an aching tooth. The fragments were incomprehensible and crumbled under the most delicate touch. A Chinese face appeared, then faded. A series of meaningless explosions sounded like a vanishing execution squad. There was a knot. A gleaming African smile. The knot again. A brass-bound staff and the brazen uproar of gongs. A knot. A target. A knot.

"And fear," Lennox said. "Fear. For God's sake, I was drunk, that's all. Nothing more. Why am I afraid? What've I done?"

He examined his wallet. Twenty three dollars left out of four hundred. How much had gone for that television set bought for the blonde.... What was her name? Anna? Mamie? Bought for her by a Quaker. Mr.... Who was it? Charles something? Claude? Lennox winced and shook his head. The memory was going ... going ... like the streets disappearing under the sleet. Twenty four hours, and nothing but veiled patches left. A Quaker. A blonde. A knot.

"Christ," he prayed. "Dear Christ stand by me. Stand by me now."

Lennox discovered he was crying. He was outraged. An austere, kindly, infallible, sophisticated man didn't weep. It was that other character he was forgetting with sickening speed ... a lurid, roaring, shameful savage. He pounded his fists together, then looked again at his watch. Nine-seven. Oliver Stacy and Kay Hill in the first song spot. Stacy dressed in sheik's robes singing to Kay wearing an English riding habit and making like Agnes Ayres. _For seven hundred and fifty dollars what famous actor was the first famous sheik? Who He? Rudolph Valentino, (Applause). Play-off from orchestra and segue into Intro for drama spot._

The cab jammed in traffic at 42nd and Vanderbilt, and again at Madison. Lennox resisted the impulse to thrust his head out the window and roar at the hacks and busses. He fought for control. Nothing remained from the lost night but a Quaker, a blonde, a knot and terror. He turned his back on the fragments and the fear and clung to the framework of the world he knew. He was Jordan Lennox who owned a piece of and wrote most of "Who He?" He had never won a Pulitzer Prize but he had never been less than a contract writer in his life. He had never auditioned for a job in his life. He had never been fired from a job in his life. In ten years of brawling and knifing his way up in the business he had never lost a fight.

"No, by God!" he said suddenly. "What have I got to be afraid of? They're all afraid of me."

When he got out of the cab at the stage door he was no longer tremulous. He was again the Jake Lennox we all knew, sardonic, hostile, unyielding. He poked a dollar at the driver for the fare, and another dollar for a present. "Merry Christmas, Mac," he said, not unkindly, and walked into the theater. His feet left black prints on the sidewalk. The city too was covered with sleet.

It was 9:31-30. The show was two minutes off the air. Lennox pushed through the crowd of wives and friends that crammed the backstage corridor and reached the wings. Instantly, he halted. He smelled trouble, and the prospect recharged him with energy. He stared around with quick, guarded eyes.

The house was emptying out. The two glass control booths at the back of the orchestra were filled with gesticulating agency men who might or might not be berating Raeburn Sachs, the director, and Sol Eggleston, the network camera-director. Jake's nostrils dilated. The stage was in a turmoil. Six dancers in snow-crystal costumes dashed past him with their duck-footed gait, whispering nervously.

"Angie ... Flo ... Ruthanna!" Lennox called. They were his favorite pipe-lines to the backstage. They glanced at him with frightened eyes, looked away and scampered up the iron stairs to the dressing rooms on the balcony overlooking the stage. In a corner book-fold set representing Santa's workshop, Oliver Stacy was snarling at Kay Hill, a thin, attractive girl with acid eyes and a slack mouth.

The camera crews and stagehands were striking equipment and sets in silence. There was no chatter or laughter despite the fact that the Grabinett office had slushed them with Christmas graft and it smelled as though the graft had been sampled. Lennox turned and looked across the house to the right boxes where the musicians' platform was built, searching for his friend, Sam Cooper, the rehearsal pianist. The musicians were leaving. Sam was nowhere in sight. Lennox mustered himself for another fight. Carrying his naked weapons ready for quick murder, he strode to the star dressing room on stage, knocked once and entered, prepared for attack or defense.

The star stood in scarlet Santa costume with half a beard clinging to his lantern jaw. Mig Mason was thin, dark, young, with a good hairline and a bad nose-job. He was sobbing hysterically. His wife, Irma, in a mink coat, wearing Christmas orchids, a bad platinum dye and a good nose-job, was trying to soothe him. The producer, Mel Grabinett, blinking and jerking, was roaring at Tooky Ween, Mason's agent. Diggy Dixon, the dummy, in gnome's costume, sprawled on the dressing table alongside the door and regarded the scene with a wooden grin.

"I don't care how much you're worth," Grabinett stuttered. "I don't care how much goddam billing you handle. What the hell are you trying to do? Bury my show?"

"What are you trying to do?" Ween rumbled. "Bury my property?"

"It ain't bad enough you gouge my budget for three grand. Three Almighty Grand for that special skyscraper set so he can crawl around like a cowardy cockroach and drop the dummy and turn my show into a trappisty--"

"I told you I had to have three hours' rehearsal on camera," Mason shrieked.

"He had to have three hours," Irma said.

"But then he has to bitch the telephone contestant!" The producer's face twitched hideously. "She give him the right answer. Kris Kringle, she said. My operator was monitoring that Kansas call. She heard it. The dame give the right answer."

"She did not," Mason cried. "Tell him, Tooky. The right answer was St. Nicholas."

"The right answer was St. Nicholas," Irma said.

"It was Kris Almighty Kringle, you no-talent son of a--"

"Lay off!" Ween broke in. He glared at Grabinett. "Lay off my property. You ain't just talking to talent. He's a star."

"The question," Grabinett told the star with exaggerated calm, "was: You seen me play the part of Santa Claus in our comedy sketch. Now, for five thousand dollars, can you tell us another name for Santa Claus. That was the question. And she give the right answer. Kris Kringle. But no, you said. Sorry, you said. That's not right. Thank you. Merry Christmas. And you hung up the phone and hung me up with the FCC. That dame's husband is a lawyer. He called back before we went off the air. He's so goddam mad he's suing us for fraud. He's suing the network." Grabinett's voice broke in agony. "He's suing the client. The client!"

"The answer was St. Nicholas," Mason shouted.

"It was Kris Almighty Kringle!"

Lennox could have backed out and disappeared unnoticed; instead he thrust the dressing room door wide. The knob struck the dummy and knocked it to the floor. Everyone twisted around and saw him. Instantly they seemed to close ranks. Even the dummy shifted its eyes malevolently. Lennox looked them over insolently, daring them to attack. They attacked,

"Ask him!" Mason cried. "Ask him! He wrote it. He's supposed to know all the answers. The Thinker!"

"It's his fault," Irma said.

"Where the hell you been?" Grabinett blurted. "You know what happened? If you'd been around tonight we wouldn't be in this jam."

"You got one hell of a nerve writing a lousy show like this for my property," Tooky Ween growled, "I want a new writer hired."

"You don't need a writer," Lennox snapped. "You need an education. And don't try to rap me for that skyscraper fiasco. F-I-A-S-C-O. I voted for Rear-Projection at the conference."

"You can't get laugh values with projection," the agent rumbled. "You got to pin-point my boy on a genuine set."

"And what happened on the genuine set? Lennox eyed Mason coldly. You dropped the dummy? For laugh values?"

"They never gave me a chance to rehearse the chimney," Mason wept. "When I got halfway down with the bag of presents and I say to Diggy: Hey Diggy! This ain't the right chimney. It smells wrong. And Diggy says...."

From the floor the dummy cackled: "Better get your paddle out, Mig. You're up the creek."

Lennox scowled. "I told your gagmen not to use that. We agreed to cut it." He enlisted Grabinett. "You backed me up, Mel. Yes?"

"Yeah," Grabinett answered. He too scowled at Mason.

"But it's the best boffola in the routine. When I did it on the Oddfellows show last year they--"

"Used it last year? You swore the Santa sketch was an original." Lennox attacked Tooky Ween. "You guaranteed Mason would use nothing but original material on this show. Fact?"

"Listen," Ween began to explain, "My boy is--"

"Your boy is going to lay a suit for breach of contract in your lap if you don't watch him."

"It was so strictly original," Mason protested hysterically. "Last year we did it like a chimney sweeper and his helper. We--"

"And next year it'll be a burglar and his friend. What happened tonight in the two thousand dollar chimney? Two, Mel?"

"Three!" Grabinett howled. "Three thousand bucks so he could get his pants full of nails and drop the dummy trying to ungoose hisself. It was a trappisty!"

"Who'd he drop it on, Tooky?"

"Who cares who?"

"Mel and I care. We're still trying to find a laugh in that sketch."

"I care on who." Irma raked Ween with her eyes. "Happens he dropped Diggy on me. My head."

Lennox kept his face straight. "Did it get a laugh?"

"Nobody saw. I was behind the set."

"Cuing him from the script," Grabinett sputtered. "He didn't even know his lines."

"If you don't like my boy, you know what you can do," Ween told him.

"There's co-operation for you," Lennox said bitterly. "What does he have to lose, Mel? He's got a network contract for his boy. Two thousand a week guaranteed, work or no work. What does he care about the show?" Lennox looked at Mason sympathetically. "But you ought to care, Mig. It won't do you any good to go off and lose your fans while Tooky collects his ten percent."

"Fifteen," Mason snapped.

"Oh? Three bills a week out of you? For what? Watching? Advising? Protecting? No. 'If you don't like my boy, you know what you can do.' Agents!"

"What the hell are you trying to parlay?" Ween demanded.

"I think you're looking for an excuse to get out of the show," Lennox answered. "You're trying to duck the Kansas lawsuit. Your property got Mel into this jam. Now you want out so he'll have to face it alone."

"They'll never get away with it," Grabinett shouted. "Neither of you both. You got me into this. You're stuck with it."

"St. Nicholas!?" Mason cried. "St. Nicholas!"

"Yeah? Show me where it says in the contract," Ween answered, "It ain't our headache. It's yours."

"Then how would you like it if I handed you a real genuine headache, Mr. Ween? Something I had been protecting your Almighty property from." Grabinett blinked ominously. "A nice little headache waiting for your boy up at the office in a blue envelope. Number six, it is."

"What?" Lennox exclaimed. "Another one, Mel?"

"Yeah. Another one. It come special delivery this morning. What a sweet Christmas card! Wait'll you read it, Jake. It got me so scared, I--Wait'll Mig reads it."

"What's this? What's this?" Tooky Ween said angrily. "You been holding out on my property's fan mail?"

"Not any mail he wants to read. Some elegant letters in blue envelopes which--"

"Mel! Hold the phone," Lennox interrupted. "We decided we weren't going to mention those letters to anyone. Are you going to blow it?"

"It's already busted wide open. If Kansas don't take us off the air, them letters will." Grabinett shook his fist at Ween. "Threatening letters which come addressed to 'Dear Who He' and signed 'Guess Who' and they'll curl the hair off all his property, including that atom bomb shelter he built in Westchester and this no-talent dummy-dropper."

"Cut out them insults," Ween said furiously.

"Cut out them grammar," Lennox murmured. Having turned the united front back into civil war, he felt secure again; in full control of the situation, austere and infallible. But the news about the letter was alarming. It was another attack to be met ... a vicious, anonymous onslaught, far more dangerous than the threatened lawsuit.

"I been trying to protect my show," Grabinett continued passionately to Tooky Ween. "I been trying to protect your lousy artiste so he could earn his two yards and get us a rating, but if you're gonna rat on me, then I'll--"

"Why don't you leave me alone?" Mason screamed. "What are you trying to do? Murder me? Leave me alone!"

He scooped up the dummy, thrust past Lennox and dashed out of the dressing room. The others stared in astonishment, then all four ran after the star. Mason was at the prop table. He snatched up a ski-pole and veered out on the naked stage, whirling the pole over his head, making whimpering sounds. He smashed the single work-light hanging down from the grid, and the stage was in darkness. Irma screamed. Grabinett groaned. Tearing noises came from the back wall where the struck sets were stacked. Lennox took over.

"Angie! Flo! Ruthanna!" he shouted. His favorites heard him. They opened their dressing room door and came out on the balcony. The stage was flooded with dilute light from overhead.

"What is it, Jake? What's the matter?"

"Keep that door open. We need light," Lennox answered. He called to the star: "Mig, don't be a fool! If you want to break something, your agent's right here."

Mason stopped ripping the flats apart, dropped the ski-pole, turned and ran wildly behind the master switchboard in the left wings. An instant later they heard the clatter of his feet ringing down iron steps. They pursued him down the spiral stairs to the huge dressing room under the stage where six naked ballet boys in half makeup were standing and staring in bewilderment.

"Excuse us, ladies," Lennox called. "Where's Mig?"

They pointed to a heavy bulkhead door just oozing shut.

"Jesus Almighty," Grabinett moaned. "He's down in the cellar."

"Find the electrician," Lennox told him. "Tooky, get a flashlight. Irma, you wait here."

Lennox went through the cellar door, stumbled down an endless zig-zag flight of concrete steps, clinging to the rail. He came to the bottom of the steps, lost his grasp on the rail and was lost in blackness.

"Mig!" he shouted.

There was no answer.

"Mig! Come back. It was St. Nicholas."

He fumbled in his pockets for matches, listening for the sound of footsteps. He heard faint echoes far ahead, and ran forward, meanwhile pulling a book of matches out and trying to light one. "What a Christmas," he muttered and blundered against a wall with a stunning impact. The matches flew from his hand. He clung to the wall, waiting for the crashing in his head to subside.

"Tooky! Mel!" he called. "Hurry up with the lights!"

There was no answer. There was no light.

"There must be an easier way to earn a living," he told himself and began to grope blindly.

Suddenly he lost control again. For the second time in that monstrous day he was attacked by panic. It was inexplicable and gut-chilling.

"No," he said. "No. Please."

He was blacked-out and could not withstand this second blow. He began to wilt and fight for breath. The mass of the theater overhead pressed down on him, slowly collapsing, painfully crushing. He clawed at the wall and searched feebly for the stairs. He turned a corner, another, a third. He was lost forever.

A hard hand thrust into his neck. Lennox cried out and jerked his arm up. He was struck savagely across the forearm by something stiff and wooden. He backed away from this menace and blundered into a jagged field of metal bones that rattled and clashed. Lennox sagged to his knees and cried shamelessly. That was how Sam Cooper found him half an hour later; kneeling in a cellar storeroom amidst overturned music stands, sobbing before an imperious wooden Indian.

Without a word, Cooper pulled Lennox to his feet, brushed him off and led him back to the cellar stairs. His flashlight played erratically on the glistening tunnels and rotting wooden doors. In the days of past glory, the Venice had been one of the big musical houses and its vaults were stuffed with the jetsam of ancient hits: Congo masks, Hessian boots, racks of tarnished costumes, ear-trumpets, Civil War muskets, an entire Merry-Go-Round with peeling poles and blind horses.

"Love to steal them and deal them out to Mig's audience some night," Cooper murmured.

"The guns?"

"The ear-trumpets."

Cooper helped Lennox up the concrete stairs. As he thrust open the bulkhead door, he said: "Easy. Gone home. The dancers."

"Get reporters," Lennox said. "I found Judge Crater."

They entered the empty dressing room which was still lit. Cooper sat Lennox down before a bulb-ringed mirror, handed him a box of cleansing tissue and a comb. Lennox cleaned himself wearily and pretended to comb his hair. Cooper lit a cigarette and thrust it between Jake's lips.

"I don't smoke," Lennox said, handing it back.

"You smoke when you're plastered."

"I'm not plastered."

"It says here." Cooper took a drag. "They've got an old Bechstein Grand in that cellar," he said softy. "I'm going to take your tape recorder down some night and break it up with an axe. The Bechstein. Could sell a dub to every pianist in town. Wish fulfillment."

"Do me a favor," Lennox said.

"Name it."

"Break up the wooden Indian on the Flip."

"I thought that was Judge Crater."

"I thought it was Kris Kringle," Lennox said somberly, fingering his neck. Suddenly he asked: "Where's Mason? Dead?"

"Went under the cellar. Came up the other side. Went back to his dressing room and doing very well I hear."

Lennox grunted thrice in anguish. Cooper eyed him solemnly in the mirror. His face wore a permanent expression of perplexity. He was tall, compact, with strong hands, high cheekbones and deep-set narrow eyes. He had the well-scrubbed Princeton look, and as a matter of fact had been a big wheel in Triangle shows before he broke into television. He was a mediocre song-writer and a magnificent rehearsal pianist, which is a high art unappreciated outside the business.

Cooper and Lennox had been close friends for over three years, and for the past ten months Sam had been sharing Lennox's apartment. When Lennox invited him, Sam had moved in his grand piano, seventeen copper pots, one hundred and thirteen record albums, a complete Hi-Fi sound system, two Siamese cats, and a mink-dyed skunk. He'd said: "Gosh, fellows, let's room together all through school." They were still together, despite the skunk.

"Great God on echo!" Lennox said after a long pause, "I think I'm on my way to the booby hatch."

"Oh? Why the hell did you go charging down there? For Mig?"

"I was playing the scene."

"Rover Boys to the rescue. Which were you? Fun-loving Tom?"

"No. Noodnick Jake. And then I lost hold...."

"On Mig?"

"Myself. You saw me down there...." Lennox winced in shame. "Hysterical."

"Maybe you're afraid of the dark."

"I wish it were something nice and simple like that; but the cellar was just the pay-off on something worse. I.... When did you see me last?"

"Yesterday. After rehearsal. You went out for a drink with Avery Borden," Cooper answered promptly.

"I remember that. I remember the drinks. Then--I didn't sleep home last night?"

"Not last night. No."

"Christ, stand by me!" Lennox muttered.

Cooper looked bewildered. "You've slept out before. Why the production? What plays?"

"I've lost a day," Lennox said slowly. "I don't know where I was or what I was doing from nine last night to nine tonight."

"Um. Loaded?"

"Looks like."

"Smells like. What were you drinking? Caveat Emptor Reserve?"

"I've got a feeling that I did something dirty.... Something that's going to shock hell out of me if I ever find out.... Something as dark as that cellar. Maybe that's why I blew down there."

"You're not the dirty type, Jake."

"But I'm scared. I--You know those newsreels where they dynamite a smoke-stack?"

"Yep. Always comes after the Miami water-skis. They play suspense-type music in two-four."

"I feel like that moment just before everything collapses. But what blew up, Sam? What happened?"

"You think something blew up between tonight and last night?"

"I know it. That must be why I blacked out. I can remember ... I can remember a Quaker and a blonde...."

"Quaker? Man from Philadelphia?"

"Yes. A Quaker and a blonde and a knot."

"Blond woman?"

"I think so."

"What kind of knot?"

"What kind could there be?"

"Dozens. The kind you tie, like hangman's knot. How fast a ship goes. A knot in wood. A knot in palmistry. A knot in--"

"You're no help. I can't remember. Just a Quaker and a blonde and a knot. It's crazy. Why'm I shaking like this?" Lennox tried to control himself. His eyes burned with tears. "Look at me. Jake Lennox, leader of men, crying like a fag."

"You know something," Cooper told him solemnly. "On you it's becoming. Makes you human."

"Human!" Lennox burst out in contempt, grinding his eyes with his knuckles.

"You need a bath and some food," Cooper said firmly. "Leave us go home. On your feet, Beaver Patrol. Watch it! You've got your hand in something."

"Robust Juvenile No. 4," Lennox muttered, peering at the makeup jar.

"Robust and juvenile men.... Forward!"

They left the dressing room, turned out the lights and mounted the spiral staircase. A new work-light had been hung from the iron grid high above the stage. Mason's dressing room was open and an informal party was in progress, Mason had the dummy in one hand and a bottle in the other. He was going through a comedy routine while Grabinett, Ween, Irma and a dozen others shrieked with laughter.

As Cooper and Lennox passed the door, the dummy cackled: "Ah! The Thinker and the poor man's Paderoosky. Merry Christmas, boys."

Lennox pulled to a stop despite Cooper's urging. "Peace on earth, good will to all men," he answered savagely. "For five thousand dollars can you tell us what it means?"

Grabinett, Ween and Mason glared at Lennox with hatred. He scowled back and then permitted Cooper to lead him to the stage door. As they plunged out into the sleet, he growled: "I'll fight."

"Who?"

"I don't know ... but I'll fight. I'll go down fighting, and I won't go down."

Chapter III

The Lennox apartment was on Knickerbocker Square which is one of scores of hidden relics of the past concealed on The Rock. There are elongated sycamore trees corseted with cement, a Greek cross of gravel paths, four square patches of grass, and a black and brass fence surrounding all. The houses facing the square are red stone Dutch style with copper roofs, bottle windows and glass orangeries in the rear. The old night lanterns and polished stone carriage posts are still standing. Lennox occupied a floor and a quarter in Number 33.

You entered from the street into the kitchen, decorated with Cooper's cooking utensils and garish butcher charts he had charmed out of an influential meat-packer in Grosse Pointe. There was also a lunatic side-arm Oliver typewriter which he had charmed out of a Brooklyn druggist. It wrote in minims and other pharmaceutical symbols, and Cooper typed recipes on it. He once sent me one that read like Witch's Brew. Turned out to be Fruit Soup.

Past the kitchen, through a short hall lined with cupboards, you came into the living room. It was forty feet long with high windows looking out on a rear garden, and had evidently been enlarged from two smaller rooms because there were two fire-places on the right wall. On the left was the door to Cooper's bedroom, the door to the bath, and a narrow flight of steps leading up to the other quarter floor Lennox had. This was a second bedroom and study where Lennox slept and worked.

The living room contained Cooper's piano, his Hi-Fi system, his records and his two Siamese which hunted in pack. The mink-dyed skunk had conceived a passion for the bathtub and only came out grudgingly when the shower was turned on. Lennox had four or five hundred books in walnut breakfront cases and a pair of butterfly wing chairs to which he was devoted and over which he waged relentless war with the Siamese who well knew how to punish him when he offended them.

There was an Italian couch before one fireplace, which was kept practical, as we say in the business, and a sawbuck table that doubled as a bar against the other which contained an aquarium of adenoidal goldfish. The walls were decorated with smouldering photographs contributed by Cooper's sister who had studied with Berenice Abbott, but had not yet recovered from the childhood influence of a Doré Bible. There was a magnificent refectory table with six captain's chairs near the windows.

It was a warm, pleasant apartment since Cooper had moved in. His easy style took the curse off Jake's stiffness. In the past we used to dread going to Jake's parties. He was such a punctilious host that he invariably chilled the guests. But Cooper, who came from fresh-water society, had lived with protocol too long to be impressed by it. He kidded Lennox into relaxing and showing us flashes of his real self ... the Lennox that Cooper knew. I think everyone would have loved Jake if they could have seen him the way he showed himself to his friend.

But this Christmas night Lennox was not lovable; he was impossible. It was his custom to make his prayers in the shower, asking God to keep him austere, kindly, infallible and sophisticated. He never begged. He made his request as one son of the Marquis of Suffolk to another. Now, however, he was raging. He stood under the hot downpour with uplifted head, fists clenching and unclenching, furious with himself and God.

"What next?" he asked the shower-nozzle. "What else? Don't pull any punches. I won't whine or beg off. Let's have it all, and I'll show You!"

He cut off the water, wrapped himself in a towel, kicked open the bathroom door and stalked out into the living room. The mink-dyed skunk galloped past him back into the bathroom and stamped its paws angrily when it discovered the tub was wet. Cooper had a fire going in the practical fireplace, and a pot of coffee tactfully exposed on an end table alongside one of the wing chairs. It was half-past ten and the Siamese were enjoying their bedtime magic hour, skittering crazily up and down the apartment with crossed eyes and flattened ears.

Lennox dried his back and rump carefully before he sat down. He poured black coffee and drank it as though it were poison hemlock. Cooper came in from the kitchen and appeared to be having a magic hour of his own, for he was wearing his chef's hat and a dinner jacket. Lennox stared at him.

"Black tie tonight, Scout Lennox," Cooper told him, removing the hat. "All out for the Christmas jamboree."

"What the hell, Sam?"

"Pull in your feet." Cooper poked at the logs with an old bayonet. "Must apologize, Sir Jasper. Only a cad would touch another man's hearth. They teach you that in Islip? Rules for Perfect Behaviour. Like passing the port to the left."

"They taught me nothing in Islip," Lennox growled. Nevertheless he filed this lesson away, until he caught the gleam in Cooper's eye. He squirmed a little. "What's this black tie routine? More Perfect Behaviour?"

"I'll tell you, son. There's no food in the house. So I thought we'd accept Alice McVeagh's invitation and free-load. She's giving a monster rally. A debutante party. Turkey, ham, chutney, kedgeree, boiled mutton, boiled guests, boiled debs--"

"Who's Alice McVeagh?"

"You'll like her. She always passes the port to the left. Gives Square parties. Strictly Square. Nobody in the business. A pleasant change."

"I'm staying home."

"Not a crust in the house, Jake."

"I'm staying home."

"Um. You want to brood, eh? In F-minor."

"Sam, I need a party like a hole in the head."

"The hole's there already. You need to fill it. Get dressed. We'll go mingle."

"Sit down."

"Get dressed."

"Sit down."

Cooper cocked an eye at Lennox, then sat down in the facing wing chair. Instantly one of the Siamese leaped on him. Cooper calmly extinguished it with the chef's hat and deposited it on the floor where it struggled ecstatically.

"Death to the invaders," Cooper murmured.

After a long pause, Lennox pointed to the frantic hat and said: "Look, Sam. That's me."

"The cat in the hat?"

"Yes."

Cooper gazed at Lennox with solemn perplexity. "You said you were like a smoke-stack."

Lennox waved his hand irritably. "I'm fighting blind, Sam. I'm in a hassle. The show's in a hassle. You know about my blackout. You know about Mason lousing the grand prize tonight?"

Cooper nodded.

"That's bad enough, but there's something worse. We've been getting letters. Threatening letters. The filthiest crazy letters you ever saw in your life. Five already. Blinky tells me there's a sixth up at the office ... more dangerous than the rest. If I don't do something about those letters, we may go off; but so help me, Sam, I'm so mixed up I don't know what to do."

"Told anybody about them yet?"

"No."

"The network?"

"How can I? All they have to do is smell trouble ... particularly dirty trouble like this ... and they'll yank us off. They've got a dozen clients hungry for that nine to nine-thirty spot. They've got nothing to lose."

"Um. Dangerous letters?"

"Filthy dangerous."

"That means trouble if you stay on?"

"Probably."

"What kind?"

"I don't know. It's an audience show. Suppose we let a lunatic in one Sunday night. You draw the pictures. Anything could happen."

"Police?"

"I'm afraid to go to the police."

"Why?"

"That turns it from a private stink into an official stink. That's why Blinky and I've been keeping it quiet. If the story gets out we'll be cancelled."

"Not positively."

"I won't take the chance."

"Why not? So you're cancelled. Is that the end of the world?"

"I won't be cancelled," Lennox said grimly.

"No, I guess not. You won't let anything be cancelled, will you, Jake?"

"Nobody's going to end anything for me except me."

"And you won't ever end anything."

"Why should I?" Lennox exclaimed impatiently. "I like what I've got. I'm thirty-five, Sam. I've come a hell of a long way from a kid telegrapher counting words in Islip, Long Island. What kind of a chicken-gut would I be to let it fall apart?"

"This I don't follow," Cooper said plaintively. "You mean the end of 'Who He?' is the end of everything? Exit Jordan Lennox, homeless, friendless, trudging back to that clam-shack in Islip, a broken man...."

"For God's sake, will you level with me! I've had a hell of a day and I don't feel like yakking it up. Who am I fighting, Sam? How am I going to fight? Jesus Christ on camera!" Lennox pointed again to the struggling hat. "I'm like that amateur tiger ... banging my brains out against nothing."

Cooper looked at the bounding hat, then back at Lennox. "Exactly like that," he said softly. "The cat's doing it for kicks. So are you."

"For kicks!"

"Yep."

"That's a lousy thing to say."

"Why? It's a compliment. Everybody says you've got deep freeze inside you. I know better. This is proof you've got emotions, Jake. Trouble is you only let 'em out of hock once a year, so you have to turn it into a production to make up for lost time."

"Who's making a production? We've got a law suit coming. We've got a lunatic knocking on the door. I've got a blank day full of memories I don't want to remember hanging over me. I've got emotions. What do you want me to do? Whistle 'Dixie'?"

"I want you to calm down and spread it out over the rest of the year. Make a note in your gimmick book: New Year's Resolution by Jordan Lennox. I will faithfully--"

Lennox started up from his chair. "My God! Where's the notebook?"

Cooper shook his head.

Lennox raced up the stairs to his bedroom. He carried a famous black gimmick book in which he noted down ideas, gags, references, characters, and so on. He had carried it for ten years. He was never without it, and had developed a nervous mannerism of feeling for it every few minutes ... a sudden sharp flexing of his right arm against his chest to see if the precious gimmick book was in place in his inside pocket.

He came down the steps a minute later. "Where's my overcoat?" he yelled.

"Which coat?"

"The one I wore tonight."

"You weren't wearing any coat."

Lennox raced to the front closet, pulled it open and tore at the racks. Then he swung around in dismay. "It's gone."

"Which? The burberry?"

"No. Yes. I must have carried it in the coat last night. I lost it in the blackout."

"Is the coat insured?"

"To hell with the coat," Lennox cried. "I'm talking about my notebook. It's gone. Lost. The gimmick book, Sam!"

"Forget it. I was hoping you'd lose it. It was beginning to fall apart."

"But I've got everything in it. A year of ideas...."

"You transcribe 'em every week," Cooper said comfortably. "You've got a complete file upstairs in the office. You haven't lost anything. Calm down."

"What the hell is the matter with you? Can't you understand? I've carried that book for ten years. I've never been without it."

"Then it's time you bought another one. Start the New Year right."

Lennox paced in agitation. "I've got to remember where I was last night. I've got to remember. I've got to find that gimmick book."

"Oh come on, Jake. How long are you going to milk this hysteria routine? Lost nights, lost books, threatening letters.... What d'you think you're doing? Auditioning? You need a new script writer, boy."

"You lousy bastard! Maybe I need a new friend," Lennox shouted.

"Maybe you do at that. Want to start a fight? You want to end it right now?"

"I'm damned well fighting right now."

"Then let's go." Cooper leaped up and faced Lennox aggressively. He cocked his right fist and pointed to his chin. "Go ahead. Let loose. I've been waiting three years to watch you throw a punch."

Lennox looked at Cooper uncertainly. In his blind fury he could not be sure whether Cooper was grinning in anger or amusement. At that moment the Siamese burst out of the hat, leaped to Jake's rump and clawed its way up his naked back to his shoulder.

"Jesus!" All the pressure in Lennox exploded in a strangulated yell. He doubled over. Cooper snatched the cat off his shoulder and hurled it onto the couch. He shoved Lennox into the bathroom, held his neck firmly and sluiced his back with rubbing alcohol.

"My compliments to Captain Bligh," Lennox said through his teeth. He stamped his foot in agony, almost trampling the mink-dyed skunk.

"Mutiny never pays," Cooper murmured, kicking the skunk out of the way. He swabbed efficiently with iodine, then led Lennox back to the fire and sat him down on a stool to dry. The Siamese, no fools they, had disappeared. Lennox sat rigid with control until the pain faded. He remained rigid.

"Stay mad; stay human," Cooper urged. "On you it's becoming. I could kill those cats for lousing our brawl. Let's find them, Jake. I'll hold them while you beat the bejezus out of them. Then the cats can hold me while you beat the--"

"Shut up. Don't be a damned fool, Sam."

"Which of us is the damned fool, Jake?"

Lennox took a deep breath and relaxed. "Me," he said. "A nuisance and a noodnick. Don't tell anybody."

"On the contrary. I tell everybody. That's why you're getting popular."

Lennox stood up, took Cooper's shoulder in his big grasp and clutched hard. He looked at his friend with a secret glance of devotion and gratitude, then turned away in embarrassment.

"After we eat," Sam said casually, "we'll go look for the gimmick book. You'll start remembering. We'll find it. And don't worry.... You won't remember anything to be ashamed of."

Lennox choked. "How's my back?" he asked. "Is there blood?"

"Nope. Just scars."

"Tsk! And me with that Hattie Carnegie backless collecting dust in the boudoir. Black tie?"

"Black tie."

Lennox went upstairs and dressed.

Myself, I don't like Square parties; neither does my wife. Squares are all right, but there's an invisible barrier between us and them. For one thing, our tempos don't match. We can throw away a dozen gags while a Square is beating a cliché to death. For another thing, Squares persist in thinking about the entertainment business the same way they did back in Victorian times. To them we're artificial, child-like and irresponsible. When Squares learn that I'm a writer, I can see that look pass over their faces ... the look that says: He's lazy and hates to get up in the morning.

They reveal this when they invariably ask the question: "Do you work all night?" If I say yes, they gloat, and I have to restrain the angry impulse to point out that I'm forced to work at night in order to avoid the interruption of Square phone calls and luncheon invitations and all the other pleasant devices which enable them to do four hours work from nine to five.

My wife has a tougher time. Her face and voice are highly expressive, naturally, being an actress. Whenever she's with Squares they watch her with appraising eyes and constantly interrupt with: "Oh stop it. You're acting now, aren't you? Why can't you be natural?" Once my wife lost her temper and answered a solid citizen: "You want to go to bed with me, don't you? Why can't you be natural?"

There was a gratifying hush of horror. I whipped out a pencil and scribbled on my cuff. "I've been watching you all with my keen eye," I announced, "and constantly analyzing ... dissecting. I'm going to crucify you in the _New Yorker_." We swept out, and at the door my wife turned and said: "What's more, we're not even married. He's my brother and we're living in incest."

Jake liked Square parties. He enjoyed winning respect by admitting that he worked regularly from nine to five, by wearing proper conservative clothes, by showing the outward signs of success which business men understood and approved. He spoke about his profession like an industrialist; and although he was a sensitive, gifted writer, he pooh-poohed such matters as talent and inspiration, and discussed creativity as merchandise, his stock-in-trade.

He liked Alice McVeagh's party. It was given in her penthouse on East End Avenue, a Georgian duplex with delicate curving staircases, panelled study, oval library, a ballroom and two kitchens, one for the staff alone. The buffet in the dining room glittered with silver and crystal ... fresh caviar on crushed ice, scarlet lobsters, smoked turkeys, great oriental melons oozing thick nectar, a frosted copper cask in which peaches soaked in liqueurs, and dozens of coffee flagons bubbling over alcohol lamps.

The guests were charming. Cool young ladies and their energetic mothers. Pleasant young men Cooper had known at Loomis and Princeton, and the jolly old gentlemen they would in time become. They were all exquisitely casual about the perfection of their dress and manners. They were assured. They belonged. And how badly Jake wanted to belong on their terms. How badly all of us want to belong on somebody else's terms.

He was painfully well-behaved. He stood tall and erect and moved slowly, keeping his voice quiet and his hands at his side. He had two sherrys at the bar and chatted respectfully with guests ... a burly gentleman who owned half the cotton mills in New England and was devoted to game fishing, the goggle-eyed son of a near-East ambassador who discoursed in French and broken English on _Le Jazz Hot_, a red-headed man loading up on white Martinis who confessed he taught scene design at Yale, a pregnant young matron who had been a famous debutante.... Jake's deep-lined face was wooden and unrecognizable to Cooper who smiled privately.

There was music in the ballroom and couples dashed in to the buffet and back; crop-haired young men and boyish girls with delicious young figures and stereotype faces framed in straight honey hair. Lennox felt awed and hostile toward them. He escorted a brisk dowager to the buffet. She took an instant liking to him (older women always adored Lennox) and favored him with a ringing denunciation of the Metropolitan Opera Management and glowing praise for Charles of the Ritz.

Cooper rescued him at last and took him to the ballroom. "Eat enough?" he whispered. Lennox nodded. "All right, boy. Leave us mingle."

There was a Candle-Dance in progress in the darkened ballroom. Ten couples were turning and circling through a simple dance figure while the orchestra played "Pop Goes The Weasel." Each dancer carried a silver saucer candlestick in which a white taper burned. When the orchestra "Popped" the dance stopped, and the dancers tried to blow out each other's flames. When a candle went out, the dancer left the floor. The spinning and weaving of yellow flames gleaming on silk and satin and jewels made an enchanting picture.

Cooper nudged Lennox and handed him a candlestick and a burning taper.

"No, Sam!" Lennox protested.

"Come on, gents. All out for the sack-race."

Lennox perceived that a second dance circle was forming. There were two girls alongside Cooper, holding lighted candles and waiting impatiently to join the circle.

"But I've never danced this before, Sam. We had fire laws in Islip."

"You'll pick it up." Cooper whispered introductions to the girls. "My great and good friend, Arson Lupin. Ouch! Let's go."

The four slipped into the second circle and began the dance. It was bewildering for Lennox, but he had been a schoolboy fencer and was quick and graceful for a big man. Also, he was intensely competitive. He watched sharply, learned the simple figures and protected his flame. By the time half a dozen had been eliminated from his circle, he was able to look around and enjoy himself. There was one hand-clasp in particular that had electrified him, and he was trying to identify the owner.

It was a woman's hand, warm, slender and strong. Each time he grasped it, his spine tingled and he thought of the deep carpets in the network offices that produced leaping sparks when you touched a light switch. The hand had been helpful, too, turning him left and right with friendly pressures, leading him through his first confusion. The orchestra went "Pop." Lennox stopped, held his candle high and looked around the circle.

There was Cooper, looking solemn and perplexed in the glimmering light as he blew mightily in the direction of _Le Jazz Hot_. There were two honey-haired stereotypes in thin-strapped gowns, shielding their candles with their hands. There was a horsy woman with an extinguished flame, tramping off the floor. The music started again before Lennox could examine the others. He was cynically certain that the horsy woman had owned the hand. Then, as he circled, again came that electrifying touch.

He looked quickly at his partner. Lennox had a weakness for straw-colored blondes, big-boned women who looked Swedish. This was the exact opposite. She looked like a slave on a Moorish auction block; cropped jet hair in tight ringlets, deep dark almond eyes, a full mouth, strong white teeth. The head was beautifully poised on a long neck. She had wide shoulders and the deep-cut jersey bodice revealed a high full bosom. Her skin was astonishing, very clear, very dark, and as lustrous as black pearl under the candle-light. She was slender, not tall, and moved with a lazy grace that was familiar to Lennox but not yet identifiable.

The orchestra went "Pop." Lennox and the girl stopped and examined each other, unmindful of their candles. She smiled. Her smile was sudden and changing, like the unexpected dazzle of light reflected from water. The music started again and she danced on to the next partner. Lennox watched her circling and weaving and suddenly recognized what was familiar about her carriage. She moved like a slender, graceful, cow-puncher; the shoulders square, the slim hips swaying, the arms slow and relaxed.

In that moment Lennox remembered that he had written a thousand love scenes and knew that every one had been a lie. There was a thundering confusion in his head; exultation and terror pounded in his heart. His whole life seemed drawn by the burning glass of this moment into a focus on this girl. She was smiling now at Cooper and murmuring to him. Lennox could have killed Sam.

He murdered each of her partners in succession until she came around the circle to him again. As he reached eagerly for her hand, the orchestra went "Pop." The other dancers stopped. Lennox continued until he was close to her and took her hand. In the flickering light, his face was black and white with shadows and highlights and looked almost ferocious. The girl's almond eyes widened slightly, and her smile faded, but her body did not lose its easy poise.

Dancers nudged Lennox politely. The music had started. The girl released herself and continued. Lennox went through the motions and grimly defended his flame from extinction while the girl remained in the dance. _Le Jazz Hot_ left. The stereotypes left. Cooper was eliminated. Six remained. Then five. Then three. Finally it was Lennox and the girl, circling and turning, hand in hand, candles fluttering no more than his own breath.

They danced for timeless moments, and Lennox, dazed and intoxicated, was not aware that he was speaking to her in silence ... by touch, by glance, by moving expression ... revealing the secret part of himself that had never been shown before. Then he did something extraordinary for Jordan Lennox, the man who never quit, who never conceded, who had wanted to win a victory before those awesome spectators. The music went "Pop." He held out his candle to the girl, and with his right hand extinguished the flame.

There was a burst of applause. The lights went up. The orchestra swung into a dance tune and the floor filled. Lennox lost the girl in the crush and wandered aimlessly to the side of the ballroom where an unidentified person took the candlestick from him. He went to the bar, now inhabited exclusively by the red-headed teacher from Yale and the bartender.

"Listen," Lennox began incoherently, "A dark girl. In an off-the-shoulder dress. She.... With cropped hair and oriental eyes. She gleamed...."

"Who?" the red-head inquired, weaving violently.

"A girl with black short hair. She--You heard me. Do you know her? Know who she is?"

The bartender shrugged. The red-head eyed Lennox fixedly, meanwhile shaking his head. "Never heard of her. Never-never-never. No such thing's dark girls anymore. Species extinct. Like used t'be everywhere poodles. Now only boxers. Poodles extinct. Also poodle brunettes, Q.E.D.?"

Lennox returned to the ballroom. He searched for the girl. He searched for Cooper. Two steps led up to the white door of the oval library. Lennox mounted them for a better view and found himself face to face with _Le Jazz Hot_.

"Who was she?" he burst out.

"Pardon, M'sieur?" _Le Jazz Hot_ goggled at him.

"The dark girl. In the dance with us."

"I am so sorry."

Lennox abandoned him, left the steps and prowled around the edge of the ballroom. He went again to the bar, regarded the red-head and the bartender without comprehension, wandered off and discovered, in a hall of Chinese teapaper, a small Christmas tree hung with corsages. A honey-haired girl in a thin-strapped evening gown was unpinning some orchids from the tree.

"I beg your pardon," Lennox mumbled.

She looked at him curiously.

"The dark girl who was dancing with us. Do you know her?"

"Dancing with us?" All her charm disappeared in the bray of her voice.

"My God!" Lennox thought in panic, "I haven't heard her speak. What if she...." Aloud, he said: "The Candle-Dance. The dark girl in our circle who--"

"I wasn't in the Candle-Dance," the girl informed him coldly and turned away. She was the wrong stereotype.

Lennox went back to the library steps and began searching the dance floor, couple by couple. Below him and to one side a voice called: "Psst! Hey Jake!"

He looked down. Cooper was standing there, grinning. "Three down from the drums. With a guy in hornshell glasses."

Lennox glared at Cooper, challenging derision, then stared at the dance band. He found her and murdered the man in the spectacles. Without moving his eyes he asked: "Who is she?"

"Don't know."

"I've got to meet her."

"Grab her after this dance."

"I've got to be introduced."

"Come on, Jake! This isn't the nineties."

"I want to be introduced. Can you swing it?"

"I can try."

Cooper departed. Lennox remained where he was, watching the girl as the man in the hornshell spectacles whirled her out to the middle of the floor. The dance ended, the couples applauded languidly and shuffled. Lennox looked around desperately for Cooper. When he turned back to the dance floor he had lost the girl again. Before he could get panicky he saw her as the music started. She was alone on the floor, walking toward him, with square shoulders and lazy arms and hips. He could not believe his eyes. She came directly to the library stairs, stepped up and held out her hand. Lennox took it and felt both of them tremble slightly.

"Why didn't you cut in?" she asked in a candid, transparent voice.

He could not believe his ears. Drawing her with him, he backed into the white and gold oval library. She was smiling uncertainly. After a tremulous pause she asked: "Is this how it happens?"

Lennox couldn't speak. There was a long silence; a long communication that seemed to dread words.

"I'm frightened," she said.

Lennox shook his head.

"At first I thought I'd help. You know, the dance? Then I thought you were being hasty. And then it happened, didn't it?"

Lennox nodded.

"If you don't let go of my hand, I'll faint ... I think. What do we do now?"

Before he could answer, Cooper appeared in the door with a magnificent white-haired woman wearing a bronze dress and a jade necklace. Both smiled.

"Ah! Just in time," Cooper said, "Our hostess, Madam McVeagh. Jordan Lennox."

"So nice to have you, Mr. Lennox." Alice McVeagh shook hands magnificently. Everything about her was magnificent and overpowering. "Gabby, dear, have you met the gentlemen? Jordan Lennox ... Sam Cooper. Gabby Valentine." She overpowered Lennox. "Sam tells me you're an author, Mr. Lennox. Do you write all night?"

Lennox pulled himself together before the Presence. "No," he answered in the voice of the second son of the Marquis of Suffolk. "I work from nine to five, Mrs. McVeagh."

"But how disappointing. Aren't you an artist?"

"No, Mrs. McVeagh, I'm a business man. I sell ideas for a living."

"Oh dear! And I had such a lovely picture of you ... working all night and smoking opium."

"Only when he's plastered," Cooper grinned.

Lennox looked at him stonily. Poor Jake! Standing there on his best behavior, tall and erect with his hands at his side; keeping his face wooden and unrecognizable, trying to belong on Alice McVeagh's terms, and destroying himself before Gabby Valentine. To his hostess he tried to appear austere, kindly, infallible and sophisticated. To Gabby he seemed hostile and unyielding. If only Cooper had come five minutes later. When he finally departed with the hostess and Lennox turned to resume the intimacy with Gabby, it was too late.

"Gabby...." he began.

"No," she interrupted, bitterly disappointed. "No. It was only the candle-light." She took a deep breath. Her smile was no longer a private matter between them. "Please forget everything I said. I thought you--" She broke off.

"You thought I what?" Lennox asked sharply. He was deeply hurt by her abrupt change.

"It doesn't matter."

"It matters to me."

"Please don't cross-examine me," Gabby said gently. "I made fool of myself, that's all."

"I think you're trying to make a fool of me."

"No. It's all right. I'm the idiot, not you. What do you write, Mr. Lennox?"

"I write better scenes than this, Miss Valentine. My characters don't play games."

"Neither do I."

"Then what the hell happened?"

"Nothing happened. That's why I'm an idiot."

Lennox was furious, and, consequently, icy and sardonic. He imagined that this was an impudent young society girl, willful and cavalier, who had taken it into her head to make an ass of him. He couldn't have been more wrong.

Gabrielle Valentine was a unique creature. You meet people like that occasionally, and if you're not too cynical you treasure them ... beautiful beings who've been loved and adored from birth and have grown up unspoiled and trusting, completely honest and without guile. This is rare because beauty is more often a curse for a woman and usually sickens her unless she turns it into her profession. No plain girl will believe this, but it's true.

Gabby had received affection all her life and gave it as freely. She was not brilliant, which was just as well. No one really likes brilliant people. She was a girl of average intelligence who had grown up in a world which she was able to treat with the disarming confidence of a child. Half the world treated her with the tenderness reserved for children. The cynical half could not abide her transparent honesty.

She was twenty-eight. Her father had been an old-line Socialist and had worked with Eugene Debs. He had come from a French Colonial family which had lived in Indo-China for generations and, I suspect, probably intermarried with natives. Certainly Gabby seemed to support the legend that women of mixed French and Oriental blood are the loveliest in the world. Her mother was still living and was a very smart couturiere. Gabby didn't see much of her. She was too busy making her own affectionate way in the world.

She had trained, of all things, as an architect, and worked as a free-lance draftsman. Drafting pays well and Gabby was able to afford her own apartment in one of the better Village studio buildings. She was political-minded, an inheritance from her father no doubt, and was an invaluable asset in fund-raising campaigns. She had once gone down to Wall Street and bearded a Republican financier in his den for a contribution to the Democratic party. Or maybe it was a Democrat for the Republican party. I forget which, not being political-minded myself. The point of the story is that she got the money.

She was an artist, but she didn't understand music. She had learned to be chic, but wasn't interested in clothes. She liked good food, but had to be told when it was good. She drank very little. She liked people more than anything else ... liked to be with them and talk to them, provided they were honest and unaffected. Everyone came to her with their troubles and she gave all her affection and help. She had never been in love.

And then had come this burst of flame in the glimmering darkness with Lennox, and there was a stranger in his body who had killed the flame with his rigid poise before Alice McVeagh and was trampling on the embers in icy fury.

"Please go away," Gabby said quietly. "You're making me hate you, and I don't like that."

"I'm sorry, Miss Valentine," Lennox answered. "I don't know the rules of your game. Is that a request or a challenge?"

"Why should it be? Do you like to fight?"

"I'm enjoying this fight ... with all my heart." Lennox showed his teeth in a smile.

"That's a sign of weakness, isn't it?" Gabby looked at him with steady eyes. "Like sick dogs that bite. Please go away."

"You've done the biting."

"Oh. You're hurt. I'm sorry."

"No, I'm enjoying the game. What do you do, Miss Valentine, when you can spare the time?"

"You can't be a very good writer if you talk like that," Gabby said slowly. "You sound as though you like to hate people."

"I'm a very successful writer."

"There's a difference."

"What big teeth you have, grandma."

"I don't like to be with people who hate," Gabby nodded gracefully. "Goodbye, Mr. Lennox."

"The end of Round One?"

"No. The end. I don't think we should see each other again."

"You'll see me often," Lennox assured her. "We'll fight this to a finish."

"There's nothing to fight."

"Something happened, and then you changed your mind. I'd like to find out how your gears mesh. Professionally, of course. I can always use a comedy gimmick." Automatically he flexed his right arm against his chest and was appalled to remember that his gimmick book was lost, but he was too angry with Gabby to concentrate on it.

"Who did you hope I was in the dark?" he asked. "Aly Khan?"

"You're making it worse."

"Who did you think I was?"

"I thought you...." She shook her head. "How can I say? I thought I--" Suddenly her dark eyes filled with tears. "You're not very kind. I've just made a fool of myself and I'm hurt too. Are you enjoying this?"

"Passionately."

"Please let me go."

She broke away from him and descended the library steps to the ballroom, her shoulders square, her carriage relaxed and graceful. The bright chandelier lights gleamed on her skin. Lennox followed her doggedly around the edge of the ballroom and into the bar. He could not let go. He would not let up. Gabby bent over the red-head sleeping on the bar.

"Phil," she said. "It's time to leave." She shook him gently.

The red-head snorted and slept. Gabby looked reproachfully at the bartender who instantly became apologetic, as though he had personally supervised the downfall of the teacher from Yale.

"It's not your fault," Gabby told him. "He comes down from New Haven full of undergraduate notions. He had to work his way through college. He never had a chance to be hedonistic."

Lennox stepped forward. "I'll take you home, Miss Valentine."

"It isn't me that has to be taken. It's Phil."

"To New Haven?"

"What if I said yes?"

"Bon voyage, Miss Valentine."

"Oh, why are you so hostile?"

"Because I'm a damned fool," Lennox answered furiously. "All right. I'll take him back to New Haven for you."

"Not New Haven. New York. The Harvard Club."

"A neat one-two. Next time I'll know when to duck. I'll take you both home."

"Not me. Phil."

"You and Phil both."

"That's your price?"

"It's a bargain, Miss Valentine. Snap it up."

"I think I'd better get someone else."

She left the bar. Lennox heaved the red-head up, powerfully but not unkindly, and hauled him to the door. There, an efficient man in black uniform located hats and coats without clues and helped Lennox dress the red-head. Then Lennox dressed himself. When Gabby came to the foyer with three eager admirers, Lennox looked them over and growled: "I'm taking you both home. I'm prepared to fight for it. If you don't believe me get ready for a scene."

Her eyes flashed, but she dismissed the men and got into her coat. Together they took the teacher downstairs in a burning silence and propped him in a cab between them. As the cab drove off Lennox asked: "Why the Harvard Club? He teaches at Yale."

No answer.

He contrived to peer past the red-headed barricade at her. She was impassive. The street lights flickered on her skin like lightning on jewels. He had never wanted anyone and hated anyone so badly in his life; nor known anything so inexplicably out of his grasp.

He said: "I worked my way through college too. I was a telegrapher."

No answer.

After five minutes he said: "Can you spell hedonistic?"

No answer.

They arrived at the Harvard Club and turned the teacher over to a patient doorman. Lennox did not ask permission to re-enter the cab. He got in and slammed the door. Gabby gave her address in the Village and the cab started. Lennox was startled. He had expected a number on Park Avenue. He revised his guess about her society background.

The cab crunched downtown through crusted streets. The rain and snow had stopped. There was no wind, but the air was still bitter. A few blocks from Union Square, Lennox abruptly called to the driver: "Stop here. On the right, two doors down. Don't argue with me. Stop."

The cab stopped. Lennox opened the door and got out. To Gabby he said: "Wait here for me. Understand? Wait." He turned and ran across the sidewalk to the open door of a Salvation Army Mission in a small store. There were candles burning in the window. He ducked into the store, removed two candles from the window, dropped a five dollar bill in their place, and ran back to the cab. He got in and shut the door.

"All right, get going," he told the driver. He handed one of the burning candles to Gabby without a word.

She smiled; that sudden dazzle of light on water, then her face lost its expression when she saw the cold fury in him. She shook her head.

Lennox slid the glass partition panel aside. "Can you sing?" he asked the driver. "Sing Pop Goes The Weasel."

"Have a heart, buddy."

"'Pop Goes The Weasel' ... in the key of C. Take it."

"That ain't no Christmas Carol."

"And this ain't no Christmas present." Lennox poked a bill through the slit and dropped it. "Sing."

The driver began a miserable croaking. Lennox sat back and eyed Gabby. She blew out her candle and turned her head away. He dropped his candle and trampled it.

"Listen to me," he said. "My name is Jordan Lennox, I'm thirty-five years old. Unmarried. My income is thirty-five thousand a year. I have no family left, but the Islip YMCA director will provide a character reference. My blood type is O. My eyes are twenty-twenty. My I.Q. is a hundred and nineteen. I understand people, but I don't understand you. I would like permission to get to know you better. If necessary, this oral request can be followed by a formal letter from my attorney and a bond will be posted."

The cab stopped before a squat studio building with great duplex windows, Lennox had the fare ready. He thrust it over the driver's shoulder, then helped Gabby out of the cab and with a fierce secret gesture signalled the driver to get lost.

"Well?" he asked.

She shook her head. He would not give up. He took her arm, escorted her the five steps to the doorway, thrust open the door and handed her through.

"Why not?" he asked.

"Goodnight."

"Why not?"

"You wouldn't understand."

"Make me understand."

"Goodnight."

His fingers gripped her arm. "Make me understand."

"What can I say? I thought you were somebody else. I thought...."

"What?"

"Once," she said slowly, "I had to study chemistry. And in the stockroom there was a glass jar filled with the most beautiful candy I ever saw. Then someone told me it was poison. Crystals of poison.... That's what happened."

"Poison!" he exclaimed. "I'm poison to you?"

"No; but you aren't what I thought you were. It's my fault. I made the mistake and I--" Gabby broke off in astonishment. The color had drained out of Lennox's face. The fury drained out of his body. He took a step into the foyer and let go of the door which swung heavily and smashed his hand resting limp on the jamb. He wrenched his hand free and took another hypnotic step toward the row of brass letter-boxes on the foyer wall. Each had a white call button underneath the name plate. In clear block letters alongside VALENTINE was FOX.

"What is it?" Gabby cried.

"'Fair is my love, for April's in her face,'" Lennox mumbled. "Her lovely breasts September claims his part...." He turned a wild face to her. "What made me think of that? What's terrifying about it?"

"What's the matter?"

"I don't know," he answered, swallowing hard and lifting a trembling hand to his face. It left blood smears on his cheek. "I'm lost. Again. I.... Christ!" He shut his eyes and pressed his fists together. "Sam," he whispered. "Sam. Come and get me. Please."

"You'd better come in," Gabby said in alarm. She took him upstairs to her apartment and through a barn-like studio to a tailored bedroom where she helped him off with his coat and sat him down on a chaise longue. He was shaking. He tried to joke. "We shouldn't be here," he said. "Very suggestive."

"It's too cold in the studio. What's the matter? What happened to you?"

"Downstairs. That name ... Fox. It cut me off from everything. I don't know why. I'm crying again," he groaned. "Crying. There's been nothing but dirt and tears all day. I don't know what happened."

"I'll get you a drink."

"No. Thank you. I'm not sick. It's just something trying to come back and hurting like sin."

"What do you mean?"

"I can't explain. Give me a minute.... It'll go away again, if I'm lucky. Then I'll go too."

He sat in silence, trying to control himself, looking around the room with smarting eyes. Gabby took off her coat, left the bedroom and returned a moment later with a glass and a sealed bottle of whiskey. She tried to remove the cap and failed. She handed the bottle to Lennox who took it, opened it mechanically and then put it down.

"I didn't know you lived like this," he said at last.

"How do you mean?"

"Like this. Not girly-girly. I thought ... Park Avenue and decorators. This could be a man's place. Do you play Boys' Rules?"

"You didn't."

"I know it. I've been trying to start all over again for the last two hours." He stood up, went to the bed and touched the pillow gently. "Hello, Gabby," he said. He went to the dressing table and touched it. He touched the window drapes, the lamps, the books, the pictures ... everything that was hers as though he were touching her heart.

Without looking at her he said: "You're right. I'm poisonous ... but I love you. I'm the wrong man, but I love you. It's too quick ... only a few hours, but I love you. I hate too much, I hurt too much because I'm poisonous.... And I love you. I'd better go now. Goodnight."

He searched blindly for his coat, ashamed to meet her eyes, and the real Lennox appeared, the Lennox she had seen by candle-light two hours ago.

"Oh!" Gabby exclaimed in tears, "Oh darling ... darling! Why did you hide from me? Why?"

He caught his breath. She came to him and he took her in his arms. After a moment he managed to speak.

"Is this how it happens? Has it happened again?"

She clung to him.

"Now I'm frightened, Gabby."

"Why did you hide from me? Why did you change like that? You were so cold and hateful...."

"I didn't know I was hiding. I didn't know what I was doing. I've been half crazy all day." He raised her hand and pressed it against his eyes. "I dreamed about meeting you, but not like this. I was going to be at my best. You know? Brilliant and successful. Scattering money and charm in all directions. Winning you ... not whining my way into your heart."

"No. No. You don't understand. No one wants to be won. We want to be wanted.... Needed."

"God knows, I need you. God knows, I--"

"Shhh." She seated him again, ran out of the room and returned with a warm moist cloth. She cleaned his hand and his cheek. Lennox seized her suddenly as she stood over him and buried his face in her body.

"It's all right, darling," she whispered. "Don't be afraid. You're just used to taking, that's all. Nobody ever gave you anything."

He looked up at her. "What happened to us after the dance? What did I do then? What's wrong with me? Was I mean dirty drunk? Did I--" He stopped. He stood up slowly. In a strange voice he said: "Mean dirty drunk. Clarence Fox from Philadelphia. The Quaker and the blonde. Yes. That's where the gimmick book is...."

Gabby was alarmed again. She put her hands on his shoulders.

"But why can't I remember the rest?" Lennox asked in terror. "The knot. What's so horrible about a knot? What is it? Why can't I remember what it is?"

She tried to press him back on the chaise longue. He was too big to be forced but he responded instantly to her pressure.

"You're in trouble," she said. "Let me help."

He tried to smile. "Yes. It's bad. I want to hide things from you, but you empty me out. Let me keep a few secrets for a little while. I can't do it unless you let me."

She nodded.

He took a breath. "I'm afraid to break this moment. I'm remembering what happened two hours ago."

She shook her head emphatically.

"But I.... But something's got to be written down before I forget it again. Someone has to go somewhere and get something for me."

"I'll go," Gabby offered.

"No," Lennox said sharply.

She picked up a sketch-pad and pencil from the bed table and looked at him. Lennox spoke as though each syllable were acid on his lips. "Aimee Driscoll. 900 East 33rd Street." Suddenly he burst out: "There's worse. There's going to be worse to remember!"

She came to him and took his face in her hands. "This isn't a moment, is it?"

"No," he said. "Please God, darling.... No." He pulled her down alongside him and kissed her until he plunged into a darkness which he did not fear.

Chapter IV

Four o'clock in the morning after Christmas I was trying to see how many different ways I could type NOW IS THE TIME FOR ALL GOOD MEN TO COME TO THE AID OF THEIR PARTY when my phone rang. I was indignant but I had to find out who'd be calling at that hour. I picked up the phone. Lennox was on the other end.

"Kitten? Jake Lennox."

"What are you calling for?"

"Are you working?"

"No. I'm hung up on a script."

"Then I'm not interrupting. I want a favor." Jake was always direct on the horn. "I'll tell you first, then you can say yes or no."

"Shoot."

"I think I left my gimmick book in the apartment of a woman named Aimee Driscoll, 900 East 33rd. I can't get it myself."

"Why?"

"Just listen, Kit. I need somebody I can trust to go there and pick it up for me first thing in the morning."

"Don't you trust Cooper?"

"I can't locate him."

"Isn't he home?"

"No. You ask too many questions, Kitten."

I admit I'm curious. That's how I got my nickname; but I'm always annoyed when anyone throws it up to me.

"Ask Cooper when he comes home," I said. "And that's not a question."

"I can't." Lennox sounded a little strained. "That's why I'm asking you. Yes or no."

"Do I owe you a favor?"

"No."

"Then I'll do it."

"As soon as possible, Kit."

"Nine o'clock in the morning."

"Thanks. Meet me in Grabinett's office at ten."

"Can't you wait a few hours, Jake? Ten's too early."

"Why?"

"It's like this. If I stay hung up I'll have to research in the library for an idea. I can pick up the book first thing, but then I'd like to get a few hours work done in the Reading Room."

"Right. Reasonable. Twelve o'clock?"

"Yes."

"Meet me at Sabatini's. I'll spring for a drink."

"Sabatini's at noon. What's that noise?" In the background I could hear sound. I listened hard. It was music. Delius.

"Oh. I almost forgot," Lennox said. "I left a coat too. My burberry. Will you latch on to it, Kit? Thanks. Goodnight."

He hung up hastily. I went down the hall and looked into the bedroom. My wife was still up, reading. Robin has straight straw-colored hair and is stacked like a Swede acrobat, a fact which always made me nervous where Lennox was concerned.

"Put on a nightgown or pull up the sheet," I told her. "You're demoralizing the neighbors." Robin grinned shamelessly. I closed the blinds and turned on the bedside radio. "Find me Delius," I said. "I've got to write down a name and address." I wrote it down, only I spelled it Amy. Robin dialed through the stations one by one. No Delius. She looked at me.

"Dig this," I said. "I happen to know Cooper hates Delius. Won't have a record in the house. But Jake just phoned and there was Appalachia blasting in the background. Big romantic stuff, and not from a radio either." I told her about Jake's call. "All right, Robin, you guess first."

"Do you think he's good in bed?"

"For God's sake! Women! Haven't you got any romance in you?"

"That was romance."

"It was not. You give us complexes. Is bed everything?"

"Yes."

"What about all the rest?"

"Bed first."

"I guess you're right," I said and I was an hour late getting to Aimee Driscoll's apartment next morning.

I was lucky at that. She'd just gotten up and was in a vicious mood. She handed me the freeze reserved for Squares and I handed it right back. That gave us an understanding and put us on a basis of armed neutrality as fellow members of the entertainment profession. The blonde and I passed a few remarks about the Quaker. She called my attention to the new television set and laughed it up because she'd gotten it out of the Quaker for nothing; but I noticed that she laughed angrily. I didn't know why.

The photograph should have tipped it. It stood on the set in a silver frame, faded and vignetted, a costume piece, circa 1913. It was a portrait of a man with heavy brows and a stern face and could have been a photograph of Lennox in costume and makeup. The fact that she'd placed it on the set Lennox gave her was significant, but I only realized that after the death in the Venice theater.

"Who's the grim reaper?" I asked.

"My old man," Aimee answered. She darted a look of loathing at the photograph. It was so poisonous that I wanted to ask more questions, but before I could get started, she gave me the brush-final. I left with Jake's gimmick book and burberry and didn't get to the library until eleven....

Lennox marched into the Grabinett office at ten sharp. It was in a small building off Madison Avenue in the fifties. Grabinett had started there as a two-bit agent in a rat-hole, and when he hit the big money it turned out that rentals were too tight for him to move into larger quarters. He spread into stockrooms, broke through closets and halls, had it all decorated and air-conditioned, and it still looked like a blond wood rat-hole. They held daily rat-races there.

Grabinett was in his corner office eating Danish and coffee and reading Red Channels. There was a stack of mail, Nielsen Reports, _Variety_, _Billboard_, Radio and TV Newssheets on the desk before him. Lennox tore off his coat, revealing that he was still wearing black tie. He flung the coat on a chair piled with bundles of stenciled scripts.

Grabinett eyed Lennox with lively hatred and verged on continuing the battle from the night before until his attention was distracted by the dinner jacket.

"What's this?" he blinked.

"Costume."

"You're a panel expert?" Grabinett leaped up in dismay. "Jesus Almighty! Don't tell me A&B sold another panel show to the network. What have they got on Roy Audibon? Do they know where the body's buried?"

Lennox didn't bother to answer. He pulled a sheaf of notes from his inside pocket and glanced at them. "What's your schedule this morning, Mel?"

"Loaded. I ain't got a minute."

"What about Kansas?"

"That's up to the network. I got a conference scheduled with Roy Audibon for thissafter."

"Haven't you tried anything else?"

"What the hell else is there to try?"

"I've got an idea." Lennox reached across the desk and picked up Grabinett's phone. He punched buttons until Patsy Lewis, the office operator, answered him in a jaw-clenched Bennington drawl.

"Patsy? Jake Lennox. Good morning. You were monitoring that call to Kansas last night?"

"Good morning, Mr. Lennox. Yes, I was."

"Remember the number?"

"Who could forget?"

"Get 'em for me, please. Right away." Lennox hung up.

"What the Almighty are you up to?" Grabinett cried. He reached for the phone. Lennox reached for his wrist.

"Leave go. You know what a call to Kansas costs?"

"Less than a lawsuit. Let me try this, Mel. You can bill me for the call if I louse it. Where's that love letter that came yesterday? Get me the file."

"Who the hell do you think you are this morning? Jesus H. Napoleon?"

"What? Does it show?" Lennox smiled suddenly. "That's the trouble with turning over a new leaf. You do it in the old style and people don't understand."

"Are you drunk or something?"

Lennox looked at Grabinett keenly. "You're a lot more perceptive than I thought, Mel. Yes, I'm something. Something as high as a kite. And full of New Year's Resolutions." He tapped the sheaf of paper. "My list of good deeds, waiting to be crossed off. Oh!" He looked closer at the list and flushed. "Says here: Section One. People. Relations to. Paragraph One. Grabinett. Attitude toward. Make it up to Blinky for being a louse last night."

"What!"

"At the theater last night," Lennox said steadily. "I was a louse. Please excuse me. I apologize."

"Who the hell are you calling Blinky?"

"Oh God!" Lennox groaned. "She's right. It takes practice."

The phone rang. He picked it up. It was the Kansas contestant with her husband counseling her on an extension. It was eight o'clock in the morning in Kansas, and bitter cold, but no colder than those two litigants.

"Good morning. This is Jordan Lennox, the writer on the 'Who He?' show," he began smoothly. Kansas sputtered. Lennox paused and then went on: "Yes, I know. It was an unfortunate mistake last night, but of course you'll get the prize. Mr. Grabinett has mailed your check out. Anyway, it isn't important because I think you'll agree it was your good luck when you hear the proposition I have for you. What?"

Lennox waited patiently while Kansas fumed. Finally he interrupted; "I'm very sorry you feel that way. You see, the accident last night was the springboard for a new TV show that we'd like to build around you. A half-hour situation comedy about a real life couple that competes for prizes."

Grabinett's jaw dropped and he blinked at Lennox. Jake winked and continued: "The idea is to combine realism and comedy. You'll appear on all the give-away shows and compete. We'll follow your adventures, show what you do with the prizes, how your friends react, and so on. We were planning on starting promotion with a publicity spread in one of the picture magazines, but if you insist on suing I'm afraid we'd better forget--What? Certainly I'm serious. I'm a writer. I know a solid idea when it hits me in the face."

Lennox clamped a hand over the mouthpiece and whispered to Grabinett: "Get that check in the mail. Airmail special." He unclamped the phone. "Of course. Of course. I understand. Naturally you were upset; but we can forget about that now. I'll arrange for a few words from Mr. Mason. You'll get your check tomorrow and we'll start preparing your new show immediately. Mr. Grabinett will send out contracts for you to sign. In the meantime.... Happy New Year."

He hung up, reached for the list and crossed off an item.

"Cooled?" Grabinett blinked incredulously.

Lennox nodded. "As soon as they deposit that check we're safe. Have a couple of exclusive service contracts made out to them for a show called.... Oh, let's see.... 'The Man and Woman from--' No. 'The Couple From Missouri.' That'll keep 'em happy."

"Genius Almighty! What was that about Mason?"

"They'll settle for an apology on the show next Sunday."

"An apology from Mason? He'll never do it."

"We'll worry about that at the show conference." Lennox consulted his list. "Can I see the letter now, Mel? That's our real problem."

"Napoleon," Grabinett muttered and went to the wall safe. He twirled a dial perfunctorily and swung the door open. He withdrew a manila folder and brought it to the desk, handling it as though it were crawling with roaches.

"The top letter," he said.

"Thanks. See about the check and the contracts, will you, Mel? Let's get the minor rap all squared off. I'll get out of your way now. Where can I go read the letter?"

"Stay here!" Grabinett exclaimed. "Don't let it out of here." He left the office and slammed the door.

Lennox opened the folder. It contained six pale blue envelopes and six sheets of blue letter paper. The quality of the paper was good. The quality of the writing was bad; clumsy scrawlings, jagged, hysterical, sick. The pirates on The Rock are notorious for the freedom of their language, but there is a vast gulf separating profanity from malignity. The first five letters had been filthy gutter abuse. This last was comparatively clean, but even more sickening for the naked venom of its hatred.

Dear Who He: Do you remember me yet? Are you feeling the pain? I'm going to kill you. I'll tear your guts out and rip your eyes and listen to you scream. Your bones will smash and your blood will run and the fancy filth in you will pour out like sewers like rot like ruin. I promise there will never be any Happy New Year for you! This is the last warning. Be killing you New Years.

Guess Who

Lennox closed the folder. There was no need to re-read the earlier letters. He remembered them and they were more revolting, if less specifically threatening. He took a deep breath, then went to the corner sink behind a screen and washed his hands. He had been carried down into the sewers of a sick mind. It was not a new experience, but Lennox could never accustom himself to it. Grabinett came back into the office.

"Well, Napoleon? How about that one?"

"It's the pay-off." Lennox shook himself. "We can't stall, Mel. We've got to go to the police."

"No."

"I'll go. Get a girl in here. The letters ought to be photostated before I take them."

"Not the cops, Jake. For crank letters?"

"They aren't crank letters any more. They're threats."

"Against who?"

"Somebody on the show."

"Which?"

"One of the permanents who's on every week. Mig. Stacy. Kay Hill...."

"Kay? A dame?"

"Why not? You read the letters. They could be written to a man or a woman."

"Yeah. I guess you're right."

"Then there's Johnny Plummer. Raeburn Sachs...."

"Nobody sees Ray. He ain't ever on camera."

"It has to be someone who's seen every week or whose name appears every week. Ray's name is on the credit drum after every show. So is yours."

"Me!" Grabinett cried in astonishment.

Lennox nodded. "Every week. 'A Melvin Grabinett Production.'"

"That's a goddam lie. Those letters ain't to me."

"You say. How do I know? Maybe that's why you don't want to go to the police. Maybe you're covering."

"Would I show 'em to you if I was? Would I--You get a credit too. 'Written by Jordan Lennox.'"

"That's right. Let's include me too. That makes seven. Who else appears every week ... name or face? Oh. Charlie Hansel, the dance director. That's all. A total of eight. One out of the eight is getting threatening letters and we've got to do something about it before everything blows up in our face next Sunday."

"Throw 'em off the show, goddam 'em!"

"All eight of us?"

"No. The one that's getting wrote to."

"Which?"

"Find out which."

"How?"

"I don't know how. You're The Thinker. You think it up how."

"I can't. Not off-hand. It wouldn't do any good to ask. Who'd tell the truth with something dirty as this in their past?"

"God damn!" Grabinett blinked furiously. "Why hasn't anything happened before? Why wait 'till now?"

"I don't know, Mel. They're crazy letters. Go figure a lunatic mind. Maybe the police can. We're sitting on dynamite. The fuse is lit. We know the blow-up's coming next Sunday. We've got to do something to stop it."

"How do you know for sure next Sunday?"

"You read the last letter. It's plain. Be killing you New Years'. What more do you want? We have to go to the police."

"I don't believe it."

"You can't run away from it, Mel. I'll draw you a picture. Look ... it's next Sunday night. Mig's doing the drama spot, the 'Man Without A Country' question. They're working on No. 2 Camera dollied back for the full courtroom shot. Ray's in the controls calling shots to Sol Eggleston. Sol's on the Party-Line talking to the camera crews. Johnny Plummer's got the music soft. You're with the agency men in the back of the control booth.... Yes?"

Grabinett nodded, fascinated.

"And then there's a wild yell in the house and a lunatic comes charging down the center aisle. He's got a gun. He jumps up on the stage, and he's right on camera. He's cursing and swearing. The audience realizes it isn't a gag and starts screaming. Before Master Control can pull us off the air, he starts shooting.... Who? What difference does it make? Thirty million people see it. And when the police start asking questions you'll have to say: 'I was warned. I got letters, but I didn't do anything about it.' How long would you stay in the business after that?"

Grabinett blinked for half a minute, then pressed a button on his desk. The office door opened and his secretary came in three steps and waited.

"Got something for photostat," Grabinett said faintly.

Lennox placed the folder inside a large script envelope and handed it to the girl. "This is a rush job, please. Three copies. Tell them to handle the material as little as possible, in case of fingerprints." The secretary's face brightened with interest as she took the envelope. Lennox added sharply: "Don't read any of it. You'll be sorry if you do. This isn't for little girls."

He put on his coat and buttoned it up to the neck. As he left the office, he muttered: "It isn't for little boys, either."

He went home. Cooper wasn't in the apartment, but his bed had been slept in and the animals had been fed. Monday was the one day of vacation for the entire "Who He?" staff, and there was no telling where anyone might be on this blessed day of release from the rat-race. Lennox changed, then went to the phone and dialed Houseways, Inc.

"Miss Valentine, please."

"Who's calling?"

"Frank Lloyd Wright."

There was a pause, then Gabby's voice, soft and reproachful. "You shouldn't have said that."

"I know. There's something about a phone that always makes me lie. Being invisible, I suppose. Do draftsmen come under the Women's Employment Regulations?"

"Why ... there's no such law."

"Of course there is. You know the one I mean, sweetheart. You lectured all about it just before I spilled the coffee. Where they have to let women out for five minutes every hour to use the bathroom."

"Oh. You mean--"

"Where's your bathroom?"

"Jordan! For Heaven's sake!"

"I can't wait till tonight to see you. I borrowed full drag from Costume. Cloth coat with fur collar. Spike heels. Eugenie hat. I'll meet you in the john. I'll smuggle in brownies and coke. We'll have a spread."

Gabby began to laugh.

"What do you say?"

"Go away. I have to work."

"Chicken! How about lunch?"

"Darling, I'm sorry. You know I can't. I told you last night."

"How about Elevenses?"

"Go away."

"Tea?"

"No."

"What do you look like when you work? Smock and beret and a calabash pipe?"

"Not nearly so glamorous. More like 'Out Of The Inkwell.'"

"Who He?"

"The old movie cartoon."

"Oh. We'll have to do something about that. I can't hang up."

"Neither can I."

"Let's be strong."

"I don't know how."

"I'll count to three. Then we'll both hang up."

"Count to ten."

"No. Three. That's the way to be strong. Ready?"

"Yes."

"One.... Two.... What comes after two?"

"Ten," Gabby said and hung up.

Lennox nodded to himself approvingly. She knew how to tag a scene. He called Robin.

"Robin? Jake Lennox. Did Kit pick up my stuff?"

"What time is it?" Robin mumbled.

"Eleven."

"For God's sake, Jake! I'm not up yet."

"Did Kit go downtown this morning?"

"I think so. Yes. He did. Now get lost. You're stunting my growth."

"Can you write?"

"I forget."

"Well memorize this. A call for 'Who He?' next Sunday. Show-time nine to nine-thirty at the Venice Theater. Pick up your script at the office tomorrow and they'll give you the rehearsal schedule. The job pays two bills. Can you fit it into your schedule?"

"Can I!" Robin exclaimed.

"Pleasant dreams," Lennox chuckled and hung up. He knew how to pay for a favor.

He took a cab uptown, bought a beret and smock in Saks and a calabash pipe in Dunhill's, and had them delivered to Gabby Valentine at Houseways, Inc. Then he went up to the network studios and walked in on the morning rehearsal of "The People Against--" the radio show produced and directed by Ned Bacon, his partner on "Who He?"

Bacon was a short, stocky Irishman in his mid forties. He had an impudent boyish face on which he had superimposed an expression of pugnacious cynicism. He seemed to regret that he had not been a bad boy and spent his life making up for it. There is an ancient and honorable association of Fire-Buffs, amateurs who are fascinated by firemen and run after fires. Bacon was a Thief-Buff. He spent his nights on 3rd Avenue running after crooks, cops and crime.

His crime show had been an outstanding leader in radio for fifteen years, and only the advent of television which was strangling all night-time radio was now bringing it to an end. In the old days "The People Against--" had owned the network on Mondays. It was their prized show. Its studio was sacred and officiously guarded. Inside, the orchestra minded its manners, a rare thing for musicians, and the cast worked in terror of Bacon who swaggered through rehearsals with his hat cocked over one eye.

Now, all was changed. The studio doors were unprotected. No actors stood before them waiting for a chance to smile at Bacon. Inside, the full orchestra was reduced to an organ and two instruments. The studio itself was crammed with stored television sets, leaving just enough working space around a couple of microphones before the control booth. Half of Bacon's cast was in makeup and costume. They had obviously sandwiched "The People Against" in and were earnestly memorizing lines for TV shows. But Bacon still swaggered with his hat cocked over one eye.

Lennox sat down quietly in a corner and waited. Bacon was directing an actor in the style that had made him famous.

"You don't understand it," Bacon spoke confidentially. "You don't feel it like a gimpster. Let's have the line again."

"I want my vigorish, doll!" the actor snarled.

Bacon shook his head and sidled up to the actor like a pick-pocket. "Vigorish," he explained, "is thief talk for percentage. See? You're filing a beef about your cut in the caper. But it has to mean something more. Make like you're pimping for the broad when you say that. You've got your hands up her skirt. You're naked but you're not catching any colds. Think about her naked and warm up. Then we'll try it again."

He swaggered over to Lennox. "So Mason blew it last night," he said.

Lennox nodded. Bacon eyed him pugnaciously. "It's time we separated the men from the boys."

"Oh?"

"Sachs has got to go."

"Are you going to start that again?"

"Jake, that varsity cheer-leader is turning everything into a clam-bake. He's so busy playing the genius routine he's tuned in on dead air. Next Sunday's his last show. I'm taking over after the first of the year."

"Directing?"

Bacon nodded. "I'm from radio," he said bitterly. "I'm not supposed to know anything about the theater. TV's one of the Mysteries, and I don't know the pass-words. That's the line these Johnny-Come-Lately fags in TV are handing out. If you haven't got talent, turn the business into a secret fraternity so real talent can't get in. Well, the old man from radio is coming out of his cave."

"Does Blinky know?"

"He'll be notified. I got the agency on the horn this morning. Avery Borden's with me. How about you?"

"What have I got to do with it?"

"Between us we own half the show. If it comes to a Mexican stand-off with Blinky, we can swing the vote with Avery in our corner."

"I'm not ready to hassle about that yet, Ned. I've got something more important to worry about."

"This is important."

"Mine's worse."

"I thought we were partners," Bacon said angrily. "Are you welshing on me?"

"No. I'm trying to keep our show from falling apart."

"So am I. Either you're with me or agin' me. Make up your mind."

"Damn it, Ned. This is no time for Civil War. We're sitting on a blast right now."

"You gutless Summer Soldier!"

"Will you listen! The show's in a jam. We're all in a jam. We're being threatened. It's going to hit the fan next Sunday. I came here to get the name of that detective friend of yours over at the Precinct Station."

Bacon's face lost its rage and kindled. "Oh? Threats? What kind? Extortion? Blackmail? Is it one of the Heavies or a Con? I know all the rackets, Jake. That's my business. Why the hell didn't you tell me?"

"I'm telling you now."

"What rumbled? Who blew the gaff?"

"We can't discuss it here. I'll see you later and let you have everything. What's the name of the detective?"

"Fink. Sergeant Robert Fink. Tell him Ned Bacon sent you. Ned Bacon from...." He paused for a soundless fanfare. "'The People Against--.'"

"Right."

Bacon escorted him to the studio door. "Tell Bob to take you out on the case. Meet the people, Jake, People are your business. Get a load of life. Break out of that Ivory Tower. Rub elbows with the marketplace."

Lennox looked at him contemptuously. "You love this, don't you, Ned? Threats.... Rackets.... Crooks.... The spittoon life."

"It's people, Jake. It's life. It's my business."

"I like my life just the way it is," Lennox said. "That's why I'm going to see your detective ... for salvation, not masturbation."

Bacon flushed angrily. "You're never the genial type, Jake, but there's times when you fill me with death wishes."

"Be seeing you, Scarface." Lennox exchanged a level glance of loathing with his partner and left the studio.

"Salvation!" he repeated emphatically. "Yes, by God! Now we know where we're going."

Chapter V

"I've got to look into a butcher store," Fink said. "Drive over with me. You can tell me about those letters."

They got into a dusty car parked in front of the Precinct Station. Fink was a small, slender man with thin blonde hair and the harmless manner of a bank clerk. He had a soft sweet voice. He seemed shy. His smile was hesitant and haphazard, as though he acknowledged humor but had given up hope of ever recognizing it.

"Shopping for dinner?" Lennox asked.

"No. The Health Department had a complaint this butcher is selling bad meat. They couldn't find anything so they handed it to us. You can tell me about those letters."

Lennox told him. Fink drove carefully and listened without comment. Finally he shook his head.

"Tough," he said.

"You mean dangerous?"

"Tough to locate the writer."

"Are the letters dangerous?"

"Everything's dangerous."

"That isn't much help. I'm scared."

"It's smart to be scared. You don't know who they're written to?"

"No. Like I told you, it could be a choice of eight."

"Maybe." Fink smiled. "We'll see if we can find out who's writing them. You've got all the letters in this folder?"

"Yes."

"If you're worried about next Sunday why don't you keep the public out of your theater?"

"We can't do it, Sergeant.... Mr.... Which is it?"

"Bob."

"I didn't know you people were so informal."

"We're not. It's code."

"Code! You're kidding. I don't believe it."

Fink nodded. "Say you're in my office being questioned. One of my associates walks in and he doesn't know who you are. I have to warn him to be careful what he says. Instead of calling him by his first name I call him Mister. That's the tip-off."

"I'm flattered. You make me feel like a deputy."

"If you're worried about next Sunday why don't you keep the public out of your theater?"

"How do you know I'm not a crook, Bob? Why'd you teach me your code?"

"Any friend of Ned's."

"No. Honestly."

"You know everybody in your business, don't you?"

"Practically."

"I know everybody in my business."

"But suppose I tell other people and it gets out?"

"What difference? We're protecting ourselves. We don't care who knows it. If you're worried about next Sunday why don't you keep the public out of your theater?"

The third repetition of the question, identically phrased, made Lennox aware of a tenacious quality in this quiet little man. He could not be diverted.

"It's a comedy show," Lennox explained. "We have to have an audience. Our star wouldn't work without one."

"He could try."

"He wouldn't want to try."

"You can ask him."

"I'll ask him, but I know the answer. I thought ... well, that you might put some of your men in the house Sunday night."

"For eight hundred people? It wouldn't do much good." Fink smiled haphazardly. "How do you hand out the tickets?"

"Mostly through the network. They're requested by mail."

"They never keep any record. Doesn't your sponsor get tickets too?"

"I'll let you in on our code," Lennox grinned. "We never call them the sponsor. Always the client. In case you want to pass as a TV artist."

"Thanks. Doesn't your sponsor get tickets too?"

"He gets a batch. So does the agency. Also the producer, Mel Grabinett."

"How far ahead do you hand out tickets?"

"About two weeks."

"Then they're all out for next Sunday?"

"Yes."

Fink smiled. "Well.... We'll see if we can find out who's writing them. You've got all the letters in this folder?"

"All. Oh. I had them photostated. Is that all right?"

Fink nodded and parked the car before a small butcher store in a run-down tenement. He opened the glove compartment, placed the manila folder inside, then carefully locked the compartment. They got out of the car and he locked the doors carefully.

"Need any more from me, Bob?"

"The letters are enough."

"Then I'll be going."

"What's your hurry? Come on in."

Fink led the way to the tenement doorway alongside the butcher store. Lennox had expected him to enter the store. Instead, Fink entered the house in which the store occupied the street floor front. The letter boxes were battered and unnamed. A card stuck in the glass door read DUGAN--SUPER.

"It's a condemned house," Fink said. He pushed open the door and walked past a lopsided flight of stairs. He knocked on the door of the rear apartment. Lennox held his breath. There was an incredibly foul odor in the building.

The door opened and a shriveled woman appeared.

"Mrs. Dugan?" Fink said quietly. "The Health Department had a complaint this butcher is selling bad meat. I'm Fink from the Precinct." He slipped his wallet out, flipped it open to display the blue and gold badge pinned inside, then returned it to his back pocket.

"I don't know nothing about it, I'm sure," Mrs. Dugan quavered.

"This is just routine."

Fink pushed into the apartment, followed by Lennox. They went down a hall to a tiny parlor facing a narrow court. It was dark and cluttered with dismal furniture. Fink remained standing. He caught Jake's eye, looked down at a chair, then back at Lennox and shook his head slightly. Lennox remained standing. His skin began to crawl. Mrs. Dugan slumped down in a rocker.

"The Health Department had a complaint this butcher is selling bad meat," Fink repeated. "Anybody in the building buy from him?"

"There's nobody but us," Mrs. Dugan said.

"No tenants?"

She shook her head.

"Just you and your husband?"

She nodded.

"Dugan's the super?"

"Yes."

"You buy meat from this butcher?"

Her hands twitched on her knees. Fink waited patiently for her to answer.

"You buy meat from this butcher?"

"Yes," Mrs. Dugan whispered.

"Any of it bad?"

"No."

Fink took out his notebook and scribbled. Lennox flexed his right arm against his chest, then looked around uneasily.

"Where's Dugan?" Fink inquired.

"He went up to the roof to look for leaks." The woman tapped her knee with a stained forefinger. "On account of the snow."

"Uh-huh. Snow was pretty bad last night?"

She nodded and tapped her knee again. "Awful. He been up there all morning. The roofs is shot."

Fink put away the notebook. As he turned to leave he jerked his head at a framed photograph of a man in World War I uniform.

"That Dugan?"

"Yes," she said. "He lost his eye at Shatto Theory."

"Tough," Fink murmured and departed.

Outside in the hall the odor was sickening.

"Smell that?" Fink said. "It's why the Health Department got those complaints."

"Aren't you going to check the butcher?"

"Is the old lady still in the apartment?"

"Yes."

"Uh-huh. Where's the way to the basement? Oh. Here. Come on." Fink opened a wooden door behind the flight of stairs and produced a flashlight. He started down. Lennox followed.

"Why the basement?" he asked.

"Didn't you see her give it away?"

"Give what away?"

"When she said Dugan was up on the roof. She kept pointing down with her finger."

The basement was a reeking mass of rotting crates and cartons. There was a furnace in the middle with hot-air ducts spreading up to the low ceiling like square octopus arms. Fink located a hanging light bulb and switched it on. He walked to the street end of the basement, crouching under the ducts.

"We'll try the coal bins first," he said. "That's the usual."

"Bob! What is this?"

"She was lying," Fink explained. "You have to be good to make all of you lie at the same time. Part of you always gives the truth away. That finger gave her away. Dugan's down here." He picked up a long-handled shovel and began turning over coke in the wooden bunkers.

"Dugan's down here?"

"Uh-huh. Didn't you see his war picture? The wives hate to give up the pension when the husbands die, so sometimes they don't report the death. But they have to hide the body...." Fink shoveled vigorously, then grunted: "Look."

A hand and arm were thrust out of the coke. It was a left hand, rotting, swarming with maggots. Lennox let out a hoarse cry and backed away. He turned and ran crouching under the ducts to the basement stairs.

"Hey! Lennox!" Fink called in surprise.

Lennox gasped out an apology and raced up the steps. He held his breath. In the hall he came face to face with Mrs. Dugan just coming out of her apartment. He averted his head and ran out into the street. He found a saloon, went in and had two quick shots of brandy, trying to forget that hideous left hand. The brandy took hold in his stomach and he was able to relax. Presently he nodded emphatically. "By God!" he muttered. "He'll find out who's writing those letters. He'll save us. I wouldn't have believed it. A bank clerk."

He was still nodding and muttering to himself when he met me in Sabatini's. I took him to the coat room, showed him the burberry and handed him the check. I took out his gimmick book and gave it to him. He patted it fondly, the way you pat a faithful dog, and slipped it into his pocket. Then he flexed his right arm against his chest and grinned at me.

"Like getting my heart back, Kit," he said. "Thanks. I had one hell of a fantastic experience this morning. What are you drinking?"

We went to the bar and gave Romo our orders and Lennox told me about his guided tour through a nightmare and the corpse in the coke. "If you didn't come up with anything in the library," he said, "I'll make you a gift of the story."

"I can't use the story, Jake. Continuity would never pass it. But I could use the gimmick."

"It's yours."

"You mean that? Thanks." I really was grateful. Lennox knew how to pay for a favor. "It's solid, Man. That finger pointing down when she's swearing the husband's up on the roof. Great sight gimmick. It's the most." I began to drift off into a plot.

"Write it down, Kitten."

"What? Oh, I don't have to. Gimmicks like this you never forget."

"Locate anything this morning?"

"Something real odd. Poison-eaters."

"Poison-eaters? You're putting me on."

"No, Jake. I'm not kidding. I'm going to use it for a switch on the tired routine about an unknown killer menacing unknown victims. You know. Who's doing what to who and why."

Lennox spilled his drink.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing. Go on."

"Here's the gimmick. You know about the dope habit. People start hitting heroin or cocaine and can't get off the hook. Well, the same thing happens with poison."

"I don't believe it."

"Some people acquire the poison habit. They eat arsenic for their health and--"

"Their health!"

"That's right. They take it in small doses so it isn't lethal and they build up a tolerance for it."

"Why?"

"They've got an idea it's good for them. For malaria. A tonic. An aphrodisiac. But dig this. Once they start they can't stop. It's habit-forming like dope. They've got to keep on eating poison the rest of their lives."

"I'll be damned."

"And they thrive on it, Jake. That's the truth." I waited a couple of minutes and then asked: "Why'd you throw a fit before?"

He grimaced. "That line about an unknown killer and unknown victims. It was a little too close to home."

"How?"

"I'm in the same fix, Kitten."

"You're an unknown killer?"

"No. One of the victims."

"This I got to hear."

He shrugged. "Let's have another drink. I'll tell you about it if you swear to keep it quiet."

I reached out with both arms and touched the crowd surrounding the bar. "On a stack of agency men."

Jake snorted. We had another drink and he unloaded the letter story in a low voice, his eyes flashing angrily, his fists clenching and unclenching. He had a set of photostats in his pocket, but he wouldn't show them to me then ... not in Sabatini's with half the business leaning over our shoulders warning Romo to leave the garbage out of the old-fashioneds. When he was finished, Lennox looked at me expectantly.

"You're a mystery writer, Kitten. How would you crack this one?"

"When I plot 'em," I said, "I've got sense enough to give myself a gimmick to get out on. A left-handed man pulls matches from the left side of the book. The U. S. didn't mint any silver dollars from 1909 to 1921. All ticket punches have different designs ... and so on. Where's your gimmick?"

"There isn't any I know of."

"Then leave it to Fink. Smart cop, Fink. He'll find the gimmick."

Lennox nodded. "But damn it, I can't sit on my credits and wait for the explosion Sunday. I've got to do something."

"You're an amateur, Jake. Stay out of the act."

"I've got a crazy feeling that everything's hanging on this one week. If I fight through the week, I'm safe. I've got to fight, Kitten."

"You fight too much. Sit tight for a change and wait."

"No. Damn it. No." He brooded, then burst out: "I've got an idea what to do."

"What?"

"While Fink's looking for the guy who's writing these letters...."

"Could be a dame."

"What?"

"A dame. A doll. A tootsie. A--"

"I heard you. I never thought of that, but you're right. It could be a woman. So. While Fink's looking for the writer, I could be looking for the writee."

"Where's your gimmick?"

He waved around at the bar. "Right here in this Violent Ward."

"You better explain. Take it from the top."

"If I called in everybody on the show and just told them about the letters, they'd deny they were written to them. There wouldn't be any impact. They'd be able to cover up the secret."

"Why should they cover?"

"You don't get threatening letters unless you've got something dirty in your past."

"Why should it be secret?"

"Because the letters are anonymous. No addressee. No signature. It's got to be a secret between two people. Yes?"

"I'll buy it."

"Whoever's sending those letters knows the right man will recognize them as soon as he sees them. All right. I know how to tag the one out of the eight who's getting the threats."

"How?"

"They're all in the business. Mixed up, neurotic, sick in the head like this sunny straight-jacket crowd in here right now. You have to be sick to like this rat-race. The higher up you rise in the spiral, the more precarious your balance becomes ... like a kid on ten-foot stilts."

"I think of them balancing like tightrope walkers."

"But balance is the gimmick, Kitten." Lennox pounded his point like a piledriver. "Balance. Balance. Balance. Suppose I pulled these letters on them in private, one after the other. Mason. Sachs. Stacy. Kay Hill. Plummer. Charlie Hansel. Took the letters out and said: 'This was sent to you. Read it.' Watched them read it. You know how precariously they're balanced. On twenty-foot stilts. Living on nerves. Wouldn't the impact knock them off? Wouldn't the right one give himself away?"

I thought that over. "The trouble with your idea," I objected, "is that if they're all precarious like you--"

"They are. You know that. The whole damned business is. That's what I hate about it. I feel like a visitor in a booby-hatch."

"Then they'd all be knocked off balance, guilty or not guilty. They'd all fall off their tightrope."

"No, you're wrong."

"What about Blinky? You said he threw a fit."

"But not a guilty fit. That was obvious. No, by God! It'll work. I know it'll work. I'm going to try it. You want to place any bets? I'll make book."

"My money's on Sachs. He stole that song he wrote back in Chicago."

"What about Kay Hill? From Brooklyn. Trying to pass as English. She's from Canarsie where they really breed crooks. What about Charlie Hansel, the undercover queen? Trying to pass with that hoofer he married."

"She's married? That fag?"

"Yes. To a dame named Gretel. They used to be 'Hansel and Gretel, Dansomimes.'"

"Oh no! Dansomimes?"

"The queens could be catching up with Charlie. What about Oliver Stacy? He's run through every woman in town. He went through the Rehearsal Club like a plague. Forty-three ingenues in thirty-six days. And how about Johnny Plummer? He's a Commie."

"You sure?"

"Almost positive."

"God knows, you may be right about them, Jake. When the right man reads those letters there could be a blast that no one could miss. Maybe a complete confession. If--"

I broke off because Lennox wasn't listening. He was staring at Roy Audibon, the network veep, who was passing through the crowded bar on the way into the restaurant. Vice-presidents are job lot in Sabatini's and Lennox couldn't be gaping at Audibon even though he is the original charm-boat. Tall, slender, grizzled hair, hornrim glasses, a smile that could register on a Geiger Counter.... Audibon is the veep's veep. He's Mr. Network. I noticed that he was with a dark girl in a grey flannel suit. She had cropped curly hair, oriental eyes, and a lazy carriage. She was a looker, but you get to expect that in Sabatini's. Only the lookers get taken there. It was Gabby Valentine, of course, but I didn't find that out until later.

"Roy Audibon!" Lennox exclaimed angrily.

"What's the matter?"

"I'm in pain."

"Where does it hurt?"

"I don't know. Let's find out." He waved to Heitor, the head waiter. Heitor came bustling up to the bar prepared to give us a hard time. I saw Lennox slip him two tens and lay down the law in a whisper.

"Yes, Mr. Lennox? At once, Mr. Lennox?" Heitor always made every statement a question. "If you will bring your drinks to the table, please? The table is ready now, gentlemen?"

"I'll spring for lunch," Lennox said and we went into the dining room. Heitor bustled to the side tables against the wall and pulled an empty away from the banquette. It was alongside Audibon's. Lennox, who is invariably punctilious, broke his rule and held me back with a firm nudge. He slipped in first and sat down alongside Gabby who was gazing at him with big eyes. Then I sat down and the table locked us in.

That was one of the best luncheons I never had. I got stuck with the check, too, but that didn't bother me. I knew Lennox would settle up, once he recovered his sanity ... if he ever did. He started off ignoring Gabby. He just pressed against her as he leaned over to speak to Audibon.

"I beg your pardon, friend. I'm a stranger in town. Would you point out some celebrities, if any?"

"Hello Jake," Audibon smiled. All the Geiger Counters went clickety-click.

"Are you a celebrity?" Lennox inquired genially. "They say that real life vice-presidents can be seen in the flesh, or was it the Altogether?"

"Why sure, son. Got your autograph album? There's Mr. Avery Borden right across from you." Audibon smiled across the restaurant to Avery Borden who also is the original charm-boat. Tall, slender, grizzled hair and hornrim glasses. Mr. Agency. Borden smiled back. Clickety-click. Clickety-click.

"But are you a vice-president?" Lennox wanted to know.

"I'll show you my tax statement," Audibon answered and turned to Gabby.

"I beg your pardon, Miss." Lennox drew back. "Was I leaning on your derriere?"

"I'd have to answer that in French."

"Are you a vice-president?" Lennox asked her. "Answer in English."

"Not altogether," Gabby said. "Haven't you accosted me before?"

"I hardly think it possible. I just got out of stir."

Gabby clapped her hands. "Of course I know you. You're famous. They wrote you up in the _Calabash Chronicle_."

"The Calabash King." Lennox nodded modestly. He leaned across her again, his hand groping for hers. "Are you in this here theaterical game, Mister? I hear you're all pretty fly. Bohemian. Stay up all night and drink like sixty. Is it true? Speak."

"Oysters," Audibon told the waiter. Clickety-click went the smile. "We smoke too, sonny. And ride bikes no-hands."

"I'll bet my father can lick your father."

"The hell he can. My father's a cop."

"What have you got, Meccano or Erector Set?"

"Meccano."

"Yahh!" Lennox sneered.

"What have you got, Lionel or American Flyer?"

"Lionel. O-Gauge."

"Pfff! Which do you get, _Boy's Life_ or _American Boy_?" A "Both," Lennox said with a superior air.

"Oh yes?" Audibon retorted with heat. "Well let me ask you one question. Just one question. Do you get _Ropeco Magazine_?"

Lennox cringed and hung his head, then he and Audibon burst out laughing. Clickety damn click all over the place. I started looking for somewhere to hide. There was a war breaking out. They were hating each other and skirmishing in the tunnels beneath the glitter. They were hating for reasons I didn't know and probably they didn't know either; but that wouldn't make any difference, not on The Rock where you killed first and went to the head-shrinker later.

"What are you going to do about that Kansas hassle?" Audibon asked with sincere concern.

"It's been taken care of," Lennox smiled. "There won't be any suit."

"Good boy. Glad to hear it." Clickety-click. "I know you wouldn't cross-ruff the network into a Donnybrook."

"We aim to please, boss."

"It's knowing how that scores. Damn it, Jake, I wish we had more like you. We could use you on our other sick shows."

"How do you mean ... other?"

"Now, Jake, we're a couple of Pros. We know how to count without fingers. You've got a pretty sick show, boy."

"It's got a damned good rating for an invalid."

"The best!" Clickety-click. "Of course your Sunday slot is rated at ten points better than you're doing, but that's not your fault. You can't maximize variety on Sunday."

"The client doesn't think so." Lennox smiled till it hurt. "We've got 'em convinced they're going to rename it Shoeday."

"Bless their dear little souls," Audibon enthused. "Of course they're not getting dollar and cents value percentagewise. Your package doesn't integrate with their product. There's a synthetic overlap but not a genuine structural mesh."

A chill ran down my spine. When network veeps start talking like that the words don't mean anything because they're just the sound of a knife being sharpened. Lennox stiffened and returned Audibon's smile doggedly.

"We welcome suggestions," he said. "Name a mesh."

"Now don't ask me to sign this, but I think they need a Frontal Lobe show with a broad base of family appeal on a week night. They need a spacious universe type show. Something more galactic, with meaning."

"With meaning," Lennox repeated in an ominous voice. He looked at Gabby. "It's awesome. How does it feel to have lunch with a frontal lobe?"

Audibon laughed. Lennox laughed.

"Steak," Audibon told the waiter. He transferred the charm back to Lennox. "Jake, why are writers so hyper-conservative? You people are the bottle-neck of the business. Every time we try to revaluate and mock-up a new concept, you come out of the garret and say no."

"And what were you thinking of slipping into our Sunday night slot?" Lennox smiled. "A galactic 'How To' show?"

Audibon had worked his way up by parlaying a series of 'How To' panels through the agencies. How To Sing. How To Dance. How To Make A Dame. Every time you turned around there he was in another agency with another How To.

He gave Lennox the clickety-click again. "How To Educate Writers," he said. "Present writers excluded."

"You're optimistic. We gave up all hope for vice-presidents years ago. Present restaurant excluded. Tell me, Miss Calabash. Would you rather be marooned on a desert island with a mink-dyed skunk or a mink-dyed vice-president?"

"Gabby," Audibon laughed. "This is Jake Lennox. I pay him to entertain at lunch."

"Society's Favorite Funster," Lennox grinned. "And the lady is...?"

"My wife."

"That's a genuine funny. Goody for you, Roy. What's your name when he isn't dreaming galactically, Miss Calabash? Are you--" Lennox stopped. He stared at Gabby, at Audibon, then back at Gabby.

"Yes?" he asked quietly.

She nodded. Jake's face turned black. He shoved our table out, knocking glasses and rolls all over the place. He stood up, grabbed a corner of Audibon's table and slewed it into the aisle. He seized Gabby's arm.

"Out!" he said.

"Jordan!"

"Out."

"Behave yourself."

"Come on. Out!"

"Lennox! What the hell is this?" Audibon demanded.

"One more word out of you and I'll kill you," Lennox growled. He pulled Gabby to her feet and went out of the restaurant with her. Heitor saw the fuss and bustled up, ready to give Lennox a hard time. He took one look at his face and backed away.

On the street, Lennox pushed through the lunch hour crowds, never relaxing his grip on Gabby's arm. Both of them were too angry to speak. Finally Lennox spat: "Married? To him?"

"We're separated."

"How long?"

"A year."

"How long were you married?"

"Eight months."

"To him! Married to that--"

"Thank God it wasn't to you."

"Thank Roy, dear. He's our local god."

Gabby suddenly clutched his arm and dragged him to a stop before a sidewalk pitchman demonstrating a silver-plating fluid. The pitchman lost his audience.

"You listen to me," Gabby said,

"You answer me first. Why didn't you tell me?"

"When?"

"Last night."

"When you were so charming? The way you're acting now?"

"I mean later."

"We were talking about you."

"Exclusively?" Lennox showed his teeth. "You couldn't find a moment to let me know? It wasn't important enough even for a throw-away?"

"Is it important to you?"

"It's damned important."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"You're behaving like a fool."

"That I do know."

He started off again, plowing through the crowds, hustling Gabby along full speed. Her skirt was narrow, she was wearing high-heeled opera pumps, it was painful for her. Lennox knew it and enjoyed it. He didn't know why he was trying to punish her; but Gabby had an inkling of what chasm might be producing the rage, and she was so transparently honest that she blurted it out.

"Dog in the manger," she said.

"Is that supposed to have meaning?"

"You're not jealous."

"I never said I was."

"You want revenge."

"Revenge for what?"

"Because you weren't the first."

"What!" He stopped and backed her into the recessed show-window of a lunchroom. "What was that?"

"You want revenge," Gabby repeated angrily. "You want to punish me because you weren't the first."

"Damn you, Gabby...."

"Isn't it true?"

"No."

"You didn't need me. You needed a conquest."

"Shut up."

"You thought you owned me. From the beginning. All of me. You're selfish, egotistical, self--"

"Why didn't you say your date was with Audibon?"

"It was none of your business."

"Everything about you is my business. What did Audibon want?"

"You moved in on me last night," Gabby said. "And now you'd like to move in on the rest of my life. You want to own everything."

"Yes. Everything, damn it! You own all of me."

"I don't want it. I don't want ever to own anybody, and I won't be owned. Don't interrupt, Jordan. Listen to me." Gabby was raging. "You think you've staked out a claim, but it isn't like that at all. There'll be days when we discover we need each other and then we'll be together. There'll be other days when nothing will happen. But no claims, no ownership, no possession, no habit. Do you understand?"

"Do you think you're lecturing a child?"

"You are a child. Selfish. Spoiled. Rude."

"You're talking about manners. What the hell does that have to do with love?"

"Everything. Do you want to love me or use me?"

"Use you? For what?"

"Your whipping boy. You were rude to Roy in the restaurant. I don't know why you were fighting but--"

"He's knifing my show!"

"I don't care. You were rude. You behaved dreadfully. Then you were ashamed and you tried to take it out on me. Is that your kind of love? Hurtful? Hateful?" She began to tremble.

"Yes, it is. I'm not going to apologize. I told you last night ... you open me up. I look at you and my guts come out. If part is poison, I can't hide it. And I don't give a damn. I earn my living in a lying rat-race. There has to be honesty between us or what's the use?"

"Not this kind. This isn't honesty. It's--"

"I'm being honest," Lennox insisted savagely. "I can fake a romance with a woman any time, but I don't want faking between us. There wasn't any last night, Gabby. Not from me. Don't hand me that revenge routine. I didn't have any illusions. You were too good for me to imagine that I was the first--"

She slapped his mouth with all her strength, and raised her hand to slap him again. Lennox caught her wrist and twisted it down.

"Bitch!" he shouted.

She burst into tears. "What are you doing to me?" she cried in desperation. "What are you making me do? Look at us ... fighting like this. It's horrible. But you like it, don't you? You want us to hurt each other. Don't you?"

His heart constricted. "No. For God's sake. No. I--" He looked around. People were staring. Behind them, a chef at a window grill was gaping through the plate glass. There was no taxi in sight; no hiding place. There was an empty delivery truck parked at the curb. Lennox took Gabby across the sidewalk, opened the truck door and forced her into the driving cab. He got in himself and slammed the door. Gabby was crying without control. He was shamed and elated.

"Gabby...."

"Go away."

"Listen...."

"Be quiet. Go away."

"Not now. Not when you're like this."

"I never hit anybody in my life. I never wanted to hit anybody ... ever. I'm cheap and...."

"No."

"I'm so ashamed. My God! How you can fill me with shame."

"I know. I warned you, didn't I!"

She didn't answer. Lennox waited, then he said: "Look at it my way. I'm having a rough time this week. I don't know how I'm going to get through Sunday. That's why I'm acting like this. I said last night I wanted you to see me at my best. This is my worst."

"It can't be just this week. It--"

"Yes it is. And I thought: Thank God for Gabrielle. I'm in the worst hassle of my life, but I've found her when I needed her most. I can depend on her forever. I've got someone sane and beautiful to hold on to in this rotten war."

"Well? Well?"

"And then Audibon was sprung on me. 'My wife.' Bang."

"Which meant you couldn't depend on me. Is that it?"

"I don't know. I was scared. Maybe I'm jealous. I was afraid I was losing you."

"Jordan--"

"No. Let me finish." He took a deep breath. "I did everything wrong. But I couldn't help myself. I think I knew I was doing everything wrong. But I couldn't stop myself. You know how dangerous a drowning man is? He'll clutch at you and drown you too if you don't hit him. That's what happened. I was drowning.... You hit me.... I'm grateful...."

Gabby turned to him, her dark eyes searching his face. He met her gaze steadily. Her expression slowly changed from anguish to compassion, and she reached out and touched his mouth gently. Lennox smiled a peace-offering, and it was answered. He pulled her to him and kissed her until the kiss was returned. Then they sat quietly, allowing the silence to speak for them and heal the quarrel.

Suddenly the truck door was wrenched open and a burly man bawled: "What the hell are you doing in there?"

"Listen," Lennox snapped. "We're from the phone company. Why the hell don't you pay your bill?"

Gabby burst out laughing. Lennox helped her out of the truck and glared at the astounded driver. "This is your last warning, cheapskate. Next time we take the truck away."

They scampered off down the street and flagged a cab. As they got in, Lennox exclaimed: "Jesus! Me mackinaws."

"Jesus, me job!" Gabby said.

"What about lunch? I loused your steak."

"I'll have something sent up."

They sat close together in comforting silence all the way to Houseways, Inc. At the office door Lennox took her shoulders in his hands for a moment, then asked: "Forgiven?"

Gabby nodded.

"See you tonight, please?"

"Tonight."

"Don't spring another husband."

She shook her head.

"You'd better divorce him. I've got serious-type intentions."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"He won't let me. He wants to own me too."

"How can he stop you?"

"Not now, Jordan. Some other time. But ... I've got problems too."

She ran into the office. Lennox stood watching her and grinding his teeth on Audibon's name. Then he looked up and down the street, located a restaurant, went in and bought a lunch and had it sent up to Gabby.

"This is Monday," he muttered. "Six more days. Christ, stand by me. Gabrielle, stand by me."

He returned to Sabatini's, claimed his overcoats, and went home. Cooper was in the kitchen piling canned goods on the shelves while the Siamese climbed on him and begged shamelessly for food. There was a rigid law in the house that neither man ever questioned the other about his private life, but Cooper's face wore such an expression of blank dismay that Lennox was startled into breaking the rule.

"Sam! What's the matter?"

Cooper opened his mouth, then closed it.

"Where were you last night? Has anything happened? Speak."

"I'm famous."

"What?"

Cooper nodded, "You remember last month Mason wanted a song spot with the dummy? Comedy duet."

"Sure. I couldn't come up with a suggestion and you cooked up a tune. 'We're The Most.' So?"

"They released it last week. It.... So help me, it's turning into a hit. Suidi took me down for a disc-jockey interview last night."

"Suidi? Who he?"

"The ambassador's son."

"_Le Jazz Hot?_ Goggle-eyed guy?"

"That's him. He owns a record company. They make race records mostly, but he took a chance on 'We're The Most' and it.... You should have heard them rave last night."

"This is sensational, Sam. Man, this _is_ the Most!"

"It's an outrage," Cooper said. He was angry and perplexed.

"What's burning you?"

"I spend years writing tunes. I drudge like a sincere-type writer. A veritable Irving Beethoven. And what happens? Nothing. But a lousy little novelty I work up in half an hour during rehearsal.... It's a trappisty."

"Lay there and bleed, long-hair. This is great. Can I shake the hand that shook the hand of Irving B. Cooper, author of 'We're The Most' and countless other hit tunes which their names are legion?" Lennox pumped Cooper's limp hand and dragged him into the living room. "This needs a drink. We'll all have a drink, by God. Bring out the skunk."

He filled glasses and thrust one into Cooper's fist. "We'll plug it on the show. Maybe we can get Mason to use it for his theme. Tell me about last night. Why the hell didn't you say _Le Jazz Hot_ was your publish--" Lennox did a take. "Hold the phone. You mean you were supposed to meet him at Alice McVeagh's party? It was a business date?"

"Well...." Cooper began.

"And you were supposed to go down for the interview afterwards. Yes or no?"

"Not exactly, Jake...."

"But you didn't tell me. No. You let me bellyache and offered to go looking for the gimmick book, and you would have too, you liar. You'd have given up the interview, you perjurer. Wouldn't you?"

Cooper was flustered. "How about the book? Did you locate it?"

"All taken care of. I figured out the Quaker and the blonde. I'll tell you later."

"What about the knot?"

Lennox flinched. "That's still hanging over me. I haven't remembered everything yet." He swallowed and tried to regain his enthusiasm. "To hell with it. Kit went down and rescued the book. Here it is. Now let's have your story."

He pulled out his notebook to display it. The photostats came out with it and scattered on the floor. Cooper looked down at the white writing on the black background.

"What's this?"

"The letters we've been getting. To hell with them too. I want to hear about you." As Lennox picked up the photostats, Cooper took one and examined it curiously. "Forget the letters, Sam. I've worried enough today. Let me have a few jollies. How much money are you going to make? Will you hit the jukeboxes?"

"I've seen this writing before," Cooper said.

Lennox froze. "What?"

"I've seen this handwriting before."

"Sure?"

"Positive."

"Don't put me on, Sam. This is seri