The private room was small but there was a hospital screen in one corner of it and behind the screen, secreted there before Trevor was wheeled in, sat Inspector Fox, his large, decent feet concealed by Trevor’s suitcase. Alleyn occupied the bedside chair.
On receiving assurances from Alleyn that the police were not on his tracks Trevor reported, with more fluency, his previous account of his antics in the deserted auditorium, but he would not or could not carry the recital beyond the point when he was in the circle and heard a distant telephone ring. “I don’t remember another thing,” he said importantly. “I’ve blacked out. I was concussed. The doc says I was very badly concussed. Here! Where did I fall, Super? What’s the story?”
“You fell into the stalls.”
“Would you mind!”
“True.”
“Into the stalls! Cripes! Why?”
“That’s what I want to find out.”
Trevor looked sideways. “Did old Henry Jobbins lay into me?” he asked.
“No.”
“Or Chas Random?”
A knowledgeable look: a disfiguring look of veiled gratification, perhaps, appeared like a blemish on Trevor’s pageboy face. He giggled.
“He was wild with me, Chas was. Listen: Chas had it in for me, Super, really he did. I got that camp’s goat, actually, good and proper.”
Alleyn listened and absently noted how underlying Cockney seeped up through superimposed drama academy. Behind carefully turned vowel and consonant jibed a Southward urchin. “Goo’ ’un prop-per,” Trevor was really saying, however classy the delivery.
“Some of the company are coming in to see you,”
Alleyn said. “They may only stay for a minute or two but they’d like to say hullo.”
“I’d be pleased,” Trevor graciously admitted. He was extremely complacent.
Alleyn watched him and talked to him for a little while longer and then, conscious of making a decision that might turn out most lamentably, he said: “Look here, young Trevor, I’m going to ask you to help me in a very tricky and important business. If you don’t like the suggestion you needn’t have anything to do with it. On the other hand—”
He paused. Trevor gave him a sharp look.
“Nothing comes to the dumb,” he said. “What seems to be the trouble? Come in and give.”
Ten minutes later his visitors began to arrive, ushered in by Peregrine Jay. “Just tell them,” Alleyn had said, “that he’d like to see them for a few minutes and arrange the timetable. You can pen them up in the waiting-room at the end of the corridor.”
They brought presents.
Winter Meyer came first with a box of crystallized fruit. He put it on the tray and then stood at the foot of the bed wearing his shepherd’s plaid suit and his dark red tie. His hair, beautifully cut, waved above and behind the ears. He leaned his head to one side and looked at Trevor.
“Well, well, well,” he said. “So the great star is receiving. How does it feel to be famous?”
Trevor was languid and gracious, but before the prescribed five minutes had elapsed he mentioned that his agent would be waiting upon Mr. Meyer with reference to the Management, as he put it, seeing him right
“We don’t,” Winter Meyer said, eyeing him warily, “need to worry just yet about that one. Do we?”
“I hope not, Mr. Meyer,” Trevor said. He leaned his head back against the pillows and closed his eyes. “Funny how faint I appear to get,” he murmured. “I hope it won’t be kind of permanent. My doctors seem to take a grave view. Funny thing.”
Mr. Meyer said, “You played that line just like the end of Act I, but I mustn’t tire you.”
He tiptoed elaborately away from the bed and, as he passed Alleyn, let droop a heavy white eylid.
Jeremy Jones had made a group of tiny effigies representing the characters in the play and had mounted them on a minuscule stage. “Ever so quaint,” Trevor said. “Ta, Mr. Jones. You have been busy. Put it on my tray, would you?”
Jeremy put his offering on the tray. Trevor gazed into his face as he did so. “You are clever with your fingers,” he said. “Aren’t you, Mr. Jones?”
Jeremy looked suspiciously at him, turned scarlet and said to Alleyn: “I mustn’t stay too long.”
“Don’t go,” said Trevor. “Yet.”
Jeremy lingered, with one eye on Alleyn and awkwardly at a loss for anything to say. Peregrine tapped on the door, looked in, said: “Oh, sorry,” when he saw his friend and retired.
“I want to see Mr. Jay,” Trevor said. “Here! Call him back.”
Jeremy fetched Peregrine and seized the opportunity, after a nod from Alleyn, to make his own escape. Peregrine, having already done his duty in that respect, brought no offering.
“Here!” Trevor said. “What price that kid? My understudy. Is he going on tonight?”
“Yes. He’s all right,” Peregrine said. “Word perfect and going to give quite a nice show. You needn’t worry.”
Trevor glowered at him. “What about the billing, Mr. Jay? What about the programmes?”
“They’ve been slipped. ‘During your indisposition the part will be played—’ You know?”
“Anything in the press? They haven’t brought me any papers,” the feeble voice grumbled. “What’s my agent doing? My mum says they don’t want me to see the papers. Look, Mr. Jay—”
Alleyn said: “You’ll see the papers.”
Peregrine waited until Charles Random arrived. “If you want me,” he then said to Alleyn, “I’ll be in the corridor.”
Random brought a number of dubious-looking comics. “Knowing your taste in literature,” he said to Trevor. “Not that I approve.”
Trevor indicated his tray. As Random approached him, he put on a sly look. “Really,” he said, “you shouldn’t have troubled, Mr. Random.”
They stared at each other, their faces quite close together—Random’s guarded, shuttered, wary and Trevor’s faintly impertinent.
“You’ve got a bruise on your cheekbone,” Random said.
“That’s nothing. You should see the rest.”
“Keep you quiet for a bit.”
“That’s right.” Random turned his head slowly and looked at Alleyn. “Police are taking a great interest, I see,” he said.
“Routine,” Alleyn rejoined. “Merely routine.”
“At a high level.” Random drew back quickly from Trevor, who giggled and opened his bundle of comics. “Oh, fabulous,” he said. “It’s ‘Slash.’ Z-z-z-z-yock!” He became absorbed.
“That being that,” Random said, “I shall bow myself off. Unless,” he added, “the Superintendent is going to arrest me.”
Trevor, absorbed in his comic, said: “You never know, do you? Cheerie-bye and ta.”
Random moved towards the door. “Get better quick,” he murmured. Trevor looked up and winked. “What do you think?” he said.
Random opened the door and disclosed Miss Bracey on the threshold.
They said, “Oh, hullo, dear,” simultaneously and Random added: “This gets more like a French farce every second. Everyone popping in and out. Wonderful timing.”
They both laughed with accomplishment and he went away.
Gertrude behaved as if she and Alleyn had never met. She said good morning in a poised voice and clearly expected him to leave. He responded politely, indicated the bedside chair, called Trevor’s attention to his visitor and himself withdrew to the window.
Miss Bracey said, “You have been in the wars, dear, haven’t you?” She advanced to the bedside and placed a small parcel on the table. Trevor lifted his face to hers, inviting an embrace. Their faces came together and parted and Miss Bracey sank into the chair.
“I mustn’t stay too long: you’re not to be tired,” she said. She was quite composed. Only that occasional drag at the corner of her mouth suggested to Alleyn that she had fortified herself. She made the conventional inquiries as to Trevor’s progress and he responded with an enthusiastic account of his condition. The worst case of concussion, he said importantly, that they’d ever seen in the ward.