It was a hall, and in one corner Claudine had installed a tinny-sounding, crazy-Otto type of upright piano. Makeshift curtains indicated a section for action that, later on, would translate into the actual stage. For the show-business people it was certainly makeshift, but it did save theatre hire. A theatre could come later, when the show had shaken down into its routine. On the eventual stage, the final slickness necessary to a musical could be imparted. For the time being, however, this huge barn was ideal in that it was both secluded from the city's activity and fairly private.
A tangle of wires was the lighting conversion, bathing the stage corner in light, and casting a penumbra of shadow deeper into the hall, where new cars were storaged, silent and shining.
Perhaps twenty people were taking part on this particular evening, as Louise and Claudine came in a couple of acrobatic dancers were going through their act to the tinny jazz from the old piano.
A way in another corner, a ventriloquist was juggling three balls while holding a zany conversation with his doll.
Nobody paid any attention as Claudine and Louise came up to the group in the corner, under the lights. A few bade Claudine a casual good evening. Most of the artists simply went ahead with what they were doing. The rest had retired to the half-gloom on the edge of the lighted area.
Louise found herself entranced with the ventriloquist. She could not resist – laughing at the droll, goggle-eyed look on the face of the doll as it seemed to be trying to unravel the intricacy of the juggling.
Bending and twisting its head, now squinting up at the topmost ball, now down at the fast-working hands of the juggler, the wooden puppet was keeping up a flow of wisecracks as the ventriloquist strove to explain how he kept the three balls moving.
Eventually he broke down and the doll went limp as he tossed the balls on to a nearby table. As he wiped his brow, he noticed Louise…
"Hullo," he said, appraising her stunning beauty. "You're a new face. You in the show?"
"No," said Louise, appraising the man's appraisal of her, "I came with Claudine. That act of yours is a scream. How do you do it?"
"Glad you like it," acknowledged the ventriloquist. "It's ad-lib, mostly. Look, like this."
He took up a ball, a cube and a triangular prism, all about the same size, and his painted wooden puppet, "Those screeched thing's don't have the same shapes!" the falsetto, impertinent voice of the doll. It was unexpected, hearing the doll chatter before even the act had begun.
"Quiet, stupid!" admonished the man. "They're not supposed to be. Anybody can juggle with ordinary balls."
"So you're so smart you've got to use different shapes now?" jeered the doll. "This, buddy, I gotta see!"
"Then watch, carefully," said the man in his own voice.
He tossed the cube into the air. The doll's head twisted round and up, to watch the cube in flight. Down it came – on to the doll's head.
"Hey!" exclaimed the doll, in anger. "You gotta watch it, Buster! That one hurt!"
"So? Next time, duck your fool head, stupid!"
The man got the three objects going, at which the doll shook its head in quaint disbelief.
"Tsk-tsk-tsk! I don't believe it, personally," it commented cheekily. "It's just not possible. Not with a guy as dumb as this!"
"You'll get another one on your head in a minute. Mind your manners, friend."
"Make it the round one, then, will you?"
"Why the round one?"
"It's softer. Got no corners on her, like the last one. Who's the girl friend, Buster?"
"This one who just came in?"
"Who else, stupid? Claudine I know already. Good looker, isn't she? What's her name?"
"Says her name's Louise."
"Louise who? I knew a Louise once, that time we were playing in London. She in the show? Hey, watch that sharp one there, Houdini! It could hurt. You a friend of Claudine?"
It was absolutely uncanny, thought Louise, weak with laughter. She found herself answering the ridiculous doll.
"Yes, I am."
"Well, you watch out, sister," warned the doll, devoting its attention now to Louise.
Meanwhile the three objects flashed up and down in bewildering succession.
"Why?" asked Louise, stringing along in spite of herself.
"Mean to say you never heard? Tsk-tsk-tsk! Showbiz, cet ees not for ze toureest, man petit chou! Don't say Charlie-boy didn't warn you!"
"What do you mean speaking to a lady like that, you idiot?" chided the ventriloquist. "And about her friend, too?"
"She? A lady? And in this room, with all these busted down people? That's all somebody had to tell me."
"Since you know so much about people, what's the matter with us, wise guy?"
"Queer. Everyone of you. Queer as a ruddy three-pound note!"
"That's enough from you, Charlie-boy!"
Saying which, the ventriloquist broke his act down and put his doll down on the table next to the three objects he had been juggling.
"Quite fantastic!" cried Louise, happily. "What a wonderful act! I suppose you could go on for hours. It all seems so easy to you!"
"Years of practice, honey," he grinned. "The name is Rollo. Hi, Louise."
"Hi," she said, accepting his handshake.
Claudine was in a far corner, speaking to a troupe of female dancers. Onstage the acrobatic pair were still practicing their gyrations. In another comer, two groups were rehearsing their own acts.
"Come and tell me about the show," she said.
"Delighted."
Rollo led her out from the aura of light in which he'd been working, and they sat down on the running board of a car, in the gloom. "It's a musical, see? A revue."
"I see. A lot of acts all strung together. Any continuity?"
"That's its trouble. The acts are good. None better. But the story's pure corn, and Claudine can't see it!"
"But if the acts are good, the story doesn't matter."
"I dunno. It may go, but I always say give the customers something just better than they're going to get in this lot."
On stage, the acrobats called a halt. Limp and damp with perspiration, they collapsed on a pile of blankets at the side of the rough stage. Claudine was calling the dancers onstage now.
"This'll be interesting," said Rollo, pointing. "Watch."
Aloofly unconcerned, about ten of the girls, each of them tall and stately with the shape of showgirls the world over, began openly to undress. Louise caught her breath. In the vast, otherwise deserted room, this was a piquant development.
"Nudes?" she asked.
"Nudes," he grinned. "That's Claudine. Any other night, they could dance in what they're wearing. But they all dance nude in the show and when Claudine comes, they strip. Me, I think the woman's got a thing about it, personally."
The girls had peeled down to their buffs by this time.
Ten nudes is a lot of nudes, especially when they are show nudes, Louise was thinking. There was something dangerously erotic at the sight of them filing into a chorus line under the harsh light of that section of the room that represented the stage. By now, everybody was looking on. All other rehearsals had stopped…
Claudine called out some instructions. The pianist swung into a medium-slow "St. Louis Blues," and the chorus line came to life.
It was a crisp, staccato, off-beat routine, and Claudine was aiming at an almost mechanical synchronization. Fascinated, Louise watched the unbelievable sight of twenty naked breasts jouncing there in splendid unison, twenty legs flashing up and down in polished accuracy and, from time to time as the… girls high-kicked in great arcs, the ten twats all momentarily exposed, wide-mouthed and tantalizing.
Claudine allowed the number to go its full 32 bars, then called a halt.
The girls stood relaxed, chests rising and falling in splendid nudity as Claudine instructed them in their next routine. It was to be a snaky samba line in which the dancers had to serpentine about the stage.