Who He? E-Book

Alfred Bester

• Herausgeber: Wildside Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 433

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

In the glittering yet treacherous world of 1950s Manhattan television, successful scriptwriter Jordan Lennox has built the perfect life—until anonymous threatening letters begin arriving at the studio. As the writer of the hit variety show Who He?, Lennox knows the brutal reality behind the glamorous façade of network TV. Now, with a mysterious enemy plotting violence for the live New Year's broadcast, Lennox must navigate a maze of suspicious colleagues, industry politics, and his own troubled psyche to uncover the stalker's identity.

Set against the high-stakes backdrop of early television, this noir thriller explores the thin line between sanity and madness in the entertainment business, where careers—and lives—can end in an instant.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

WHO HE?, by Alfred Bester

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

DEDICATION

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

WHO HE?,by Alfred Bester

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Originally published in 1953.

Published by Wildside Press LLC.

wildsidepress.com

DEDICATION

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.