What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (27 page)

A monitor, a greenish, distorted square in the outer dimness, glowed blankly and then, in a blare of music, came alive with the titles. Larry stared, blinking, and his senses were assaulted by the noise and flash of a jingling, jangling commercial cartoon.
He looked away wildly only to see the floor manager wave violently for his attention. The commercial ended, and the floor manager cut his hand downward. Larry felt an inner cringing as Camera One bore down on him from the left, its red eye glowing brightly.

The director, his eyes fastened hotly on the control booth’s preview monitors, adjusted his headset and lowered his mouth to the mike. These last twenty minutes, since the opening of the show, had been a living, galloping nightmare.

“He’s dropped four minutes!” he said sharply. “Signal him!”

Down in the studio, the floor manager looked up frantically. “I have,” he whispered back through his throat mike. “He’s frozen. He doesn’t even see me.”

“Keep the idiot cards on him if you have to carry them onto the set.”

“What do you think I’m doing?”

The director looked back at the monitors and leaned sharply forward. In the action on the screen, Edith Gates had crossed up to the door to make an exit. According to the blocking, she was to hold there as the camera moved up to her, look back at Larry and then go out. Before the camera had even begun to move, Larry had rushed into the scene and, incomprehensibly, gripped the actress’ arm.

“Just a minute,” his voice said urgently over the speaker. “I want you to deliver something.”

The director stared, his blunt young features tight with dismay. In the scene, Larry crossed to the desk, took up a pencil and pad and scribbled a hasty note. Finished, he returned to Edith and pressed it into her hand.

“Deliver this instantly,” he said.

“Judas!” the director exploded, “he’s rewriting the script!”

His gaze, leaving the monitor, followed Edith as she made her exit. Down below, the actress emerged from the set, closed the door and stood for a moment in angry contemplation. Glancing
down at the note in her hand, she squeezed it into a tight, hard ball and hurled it into the shadows. The director whistled softly.

“Edith’s ready to kill him.”

“If she doesn’t,” the floor manager whispered back, “somebody else probably will…”

At the break for the middle commercial, Larry, certain now that his effort to summon help through Edith had failed, made his way dazedly from the set. He was barely through the door when a hand gripped his shoulder and spun him around. With a muffled cry of alarm, he looked up into the intent face of his dresser. It came back to him that in the three minute interval he was to make a swiftly-timed costume change. Still, he tried to pull away. In his mind, possibility had become certain knowledge; the boy was going to kill him on camera, during the performance.

“Don’t—”

Unheeding, the dresser stripped off his coat and hurled it aside. At the same time, he reached for Larry’s tie.

Larry’s gaze scanned the back of the set. He gripped the dresser’s arm. “He’s going to kill me,” he whispered. “He’s—”

The dresser brusquely dislodged his hand and glanced toward the control booth. “If he doesn’t,” he said absently, “the producer probably will.”

“Listen to me!” Larry pleaded. “I’m—”

He drew in a quick breath. The boy, appearing suddenly at the corner of the set, moved smilingly forward. Larry felt his knees begin to buckle.

“Hold still,” the dresser commanded.

After a few shambling steps the boy stopped, watching, smiling. Larry looked away from him. The dresser deftly slipped a fresh tie under his collar and knotted it. Lifting a new coat onto his shoulders, he buttoned it and slapped his shoulder.

“All set,” he said.

Someone opened the door. “Places, Mr. Richards! Thirty seconds!”

Larry turned. A hand was waving him imperatively forward. He started toward it, then stopped. In turning, he had caught a glimpse of Lisa standing at the side of the set. He started in her direction, but the hand reached out and pulled him back. “Places!”

The light struck his eyes again, and the vision of Lisa vanished.

The director, glancing up from the monitors, looked out across the set and put his hand quickly to his earphones. The show had now reached its final quarter.

“Who’s that kid down there?” he snapped. “Get him out, he keeps edging into the light.”

“A guest of Mr. Richards, the noted actor,” the floor manager whispered tersely. “He came in with him.”

The director sighed with weary defeat. “Okay,” he said, “leave him be. Let’s not offend the noted actor.”

Edith Gates, her nerves taut, faced Camera One and cheated a glance in Larry’s direction. She had worked other television shows and she had seen much of camera fright. She had never, however, seen anything like the demoralizing terror that had gripped Larry Richards. For a man with his background and reputation his behavior, in her humble opinion, was unforgivable.

“For myself,” she said, speaking the lines of the play, “I won’t mind too much staying behind…”

She spoke, less aware of what she was saying than of Larry hovering behind her, practically in her shadow. That was his latest—crowding. She felt, almost, that he was using her as a protective shield. Finishing her speech, she turned and faced him.

Trying not to show it, she felt a flicker of alarm. Larry was beside her, hand outstretched, and for one brief instant she had the panicky sensation that he was going to grab her. Her eyes met his and some communication passed between them, too swiftly, though, for her comprehension. Then Larry let his hand fall away. Forcing a smile, she returned to character and crossed up to the desk.

She felt oddly shaken, as though having passed through some undefined crisis. If she wasn’t wrong, in that last moment, just when he had withdrawn his hand, Larry’s expression had shown a kind of relief. Or perhaps resignation. She shrugged it off; the important thing was the play, to get through somehow to the end of it.

Larry moved down and out of camera range as Peter Bliss, the English character actor entered upstage for his scene with Edith. Whatever happened now, he thought, he would at least know that he was incapable of risking someone else’s life to save his own. In relinquishing his plan to use Edith as a shield for escape, he had placed himself somehow beyond the grip of terror. There were only a few minutes left; if anything was going to happen, it would have to happen soon and swiftly. He accepted this now almost with a sense of tranquility.

As Edith and Peter finished their scene he moved back into range. They exited, and he was alone before the cameras. There remained only the final scene, the business at the desk with the legal papers and the concluding telephone monologue. That left the boy three minutes in which to make his move. With an increasing sense of detachment, Larry crossed up to the table and stepped carefully into position.

He took up the sheaf of legal papers, studied them for a moment, then laid them aside. That done, he picked up the telephone. He marvelled at the sudden clarity of his thoughts, the sudden understanding that this moment was wholly of his own making. There was not an end to courage, it could not be used up; there was only the submission to fear. If he had not permitted his vision to be clouded by the astigmatism of apprehension and doubt, this moment could never have come. If he had only clung to the staunch standard of Lisa’s strength and love—Reaching down, he dialed the number of the apartment that had been his and Lisa’s home. Facing Camera Three, as it came toward him, he started the monologue.

With the first words, he saw the boy move into the light at the far side of the set. He gripped the phone so tightly it seemed he would crush it, but he forced himself to continue speaking. Knowing bleakly that what was about to happen would not matter too deeply to anyone except Lisa, he lifted his face to the camera for the final close-up. He paused. There was a moment of hushed stillness. And then it happened.

It began with small, staccato jets of action that swiftly combined into a bursting fountainhead of wild confusion. Lisa appeared abruptly from the darkness, hurrying toward the boy. The boy whirled and drew the gun from his pocket. The two of them came together, and the gun glinted small, stabbing reflections of light as they struggled for its possession. Larry, guided suddenly by instinct, moved. Swinging away from the camera, he hurled the telephone with all his strength and saw it strike the boy solidly at the point of the shoulder. The boy lurched and, dragging Lisa with him, disappeared into the outer darkness. Above them, a light on a tall metal standard tottered crazily and fell. The telephone crashed to the floor, and there was a thunderous explosion.

Running footsteps converged from all directions. Someone shouted, “Cut the mikes!” A door slammed, and there was more yelling. The monitor went blank, then came instantly alive again with the jibbering cartoon. Larry, his heart pounding, reached out blindly for the desk. The lights danced before his eyes, and he knew vaguely that he was falling.…

As Lisa entered, he rose, steadying himself against the edge of the table.

“It’s all right,” he said, anxious to reassure her. “I’m fine.” His hand gripped the edge of the table more tightly. “I thought he had hurt you, Lisa.”

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “It was the light that made the explosion. I only ran after him, Larry, because I saw him step into the light. I should have known sooner—The gun was empty, Larry.”

For a moment he was almost close to laughter. “Did you talk to him?” he asked.

“Only for a moment, before the police came. Larry—”

“He’s only a kid,” Larry said. “Sick, half-starved. He had his reasons.” He closed his eyes for a moment. His thoughts which had been so clear before were vague and jumbled. “If I tried—I think I could help him.” He looked up at her slowly. “You were right, Lisa. I was afraid. I—”

“Larry,” she said, “please, let me tell you—Bert Fielding called. It was announced, what happened, on the air—”

He held out his hand, as though to stop her. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

“Yes, Larry,” she insisted, “yes, it does. I spoke to him myself. He said that if you could be at the theatre tomorrow to sign the contract, he wants you for the part. He said he didn’t know how you got through it at all, but if you could he would trust you with anything. Larry…”

For a long moment, they simply stood there. The ordeal, tonight’s ordeal, the ordeal of the last four years, was finally over, and they had survived. Just for now, that was all that mattered. Then Larry moved forward, and she was suddenly in his arms. He held her close to him, tightly, knowing that the answer to their survival was here in this closeness, in the bond that held them together, knowing that he could never be afraid again.

“Lisa—” he whispered.

He started to speak, to say more, but there was a knock at the door, and the time for words was gone. She looked up at him and smiled. Returning her smile, he reached down for her hand. Their eyes clung for a moment longer, and when the knock sounded again, they went together to answer it.

All because no one would take Orvil’s egg seriously, the world was in for quite a shock one of these days.

Of course, not even Orvil himself knew exactly where the egg came from. He had been buried in an avalanche somewhere up around the North Pole at the time and when he’d finally dug himself and the egg out of the snow and found his way back to Sitka, he wasn’t quite sure of where he’d been.

When, after a very rough flight back to the United States, he arrived at the Featherstone Foundation, Orvil felt that his trials and tribulations were over. But he was wrong. Not one single member of the staff remembered anything about giving him the grant and sending him north in the first place. Finally, he wound up in a small office on the third floor, facing a gentle-eyed lady with gray hair and a nice smile. Twisting his long legs nervously around the legs of his chair, he told her the whole thing. As he concluded the narrative, the woman nodded patiently.

“I see,” she said. “Can’t you even remember the name on the project check?”

“It was some sort of French name,” Orvil said slowly. “I remember that the man was very small and wore pince-nez glasses.”

“Oh, of course!” the woman cried. “Well, that explains the whole thing! Poor Mr. Tuteur. He was confined—shortly after you departed, apparently. He did many curious things.”

In essence, that concluded the interview. The Foundation
didn’t pay Orvil the bonus he’d expected, and they flatly refused to finance another one-man expedition in the opposite direction to the South Pole. Nevertheless, Orvil was permitted, not to say urged, to keep the egg all for himself.

“Those dinosaur things are very nice, I’m sure,” the gray-haired lady said pleasantly, “but people keep bringing them in all the time, and we really haven’t much use for another one.”

That settled the matter; Orvil suddenly found himself only slightly less out in the cold than he had been at the North Pole. He was unemployed, he was broke and he was in New York—a combination that rendered his long, sensitive face even sadder than usual. He returned to his drab room at the hotel, sat down on the edge of his iron-posted bed and stared morosely at the crate in which he had tenderly housed the egg. Heaven knows what he might have done next if, just then, a knock hadn’t sounded at the door. Orvil answered it to find a dark, sharp-eyed man in a plum-colored suit looking up at him.

“Orvil Sleeper?” the man asked eagerly.

“That’s right,” Orvil said. “What do you want?”

“I write things,” the man said. “I was down at the Featherstone Foundation today doing some research for an Arctic epic, and this dame told me you just pulled in from up that way.”

“I was up north,” Orvil admitted gloomily.

“Far north?” the man asked.

Orvil nodded. “So far north that I may have really been headed south again when the avalanche hit me. I should have kept on going, I guess.”

“Avalanche!” the dark man cried, edging through the door and into the room. “Hey, that’s great! Dramatic stuff! Tell me all about it.”

Orvil watched bewilderedly as the man sat down in a chair and motioned him back toward the bed. He closed the door.

“Well,” he said, “if you really want to hear about it…”

So, for the second time that day, Orvil recited the entire history
of his ill-fated trip to the north country. He went clear through, from the beginning to the end. “So you see,” he concluded apologetically, “I’m not quite sure exactly where I was. Just north, that’s all.”

“Kid,” the dark man said happily, leaning forward and tapping Orvil’s knee with a finger, “it doesn’t make any difference. It will make a hell of a fabulous picture for Hollywood. It’s got everything! An avalanche! Man against the elements! The works! They’ll pay a mint for a true to life experience like this. Of course I don’t know about this egg routine. It sounds kind of crazy to have a guy go through all that and come out with nothing but an egg. Maybe we could switch it to a lost treasure.”

“It was an egg,” Orvil said mildly. He got up and started toward the crate. “Would you like to see it? It’s very interesting to look at.”

“Not now, baby,” the man said quickly, “not now.”

“It’s very large,” Orvil offered.

“Some other time, lover,” the man said warmly and handed Orvil a large paper. “Just sign on the line at the bottom and we’re in business. It’s the usual release.”

“Well, all right,” Orvil said agreeably, “only don’t you want me to write it all out or something?”

“I’m doing that myself already,” the man said, watching closely as Orvil signed the paper. “I’m writing in my head at this very minute! Don’t worry about a thing, sweetheart, you’ll get yours.”

Orvil finished signing and handed back the paper. “I’m sure this is very nice of you—uh—dear,” he said, not wanting to be outdone in urbanity. “When will I hear from you again?”

“Sooner than you think, son,” the man said, “sooner than you think. I know a producer who’s just dying for this yarn. He’s got an Eskimo under contract.”

A mere two weeks later Orvil found himself in Hollywood.

The man in the plum-colored suit, it turned out, was a screen writer of some note named Sid Kelp. Sid had not only sold Orvil’s personal experience to Pacific Pictures for a feature film but had
managed to get Orvil a job on the picture as technical adviser. Pacific Pictures found Orvil a bungalow cottage at the foot of the Hollywood Hills, and the second day he was there Sid pulled up at the curb in a tomato-colored convertible to drive him to work.

“Look, Sid,” Orvil said as they pulled away into the street, “I don’t think I quite understand what a technical adviser is supposed to do.”

“It’s easy, pal,” Sid said airily. “All you have to do is read the script and say it’s great. Everytime they ask you if they’re doing something right, nod your head vigorously up and down. These boys out here work best with encouragement.”

“Suppose I see something that’s wrong?” Orvil asked.

“Look the other way,” Sid said blandly. “Stare at the starlets.”

At the studio Orvil was shown to a sunny cubicle at the end of a second-story corridor. It contained a desk, two chairs and a lounge. Orvil sat down at the desk and waited. Presently a demure-looking brunette wearing a very tight sweater and a very loose skirt arrived to present him with a thick manuscript entitled
Journey Afar
.

When the brunette had gone, Orvil began to read. He read without interruption for an hour and a half, then rose and made a small sound of bewilderment. He walked down the hall until he found a messenger boy and asked him the way to Sid Kelp’s office.

Orvil found Sid sitting with his feet up on the desk, eating an apple and staring bemusedly at the ceiling. He glanced around as Orvil entered.

“Hi, sweetheart!” he said genially. “Just dreaming up a new epic about the American Indians. Come on in and smoke a peace pipe.”

Orvil carefully closed the door. “I just read the script, Sid,” he said.

“Great!” Sid said. “I guess you noticed a few changes. How’d you like it?”

“Well, it’s all right, I guess,” Orvil said, “but—well, maybe they
gave me the wrong story. I can’t find anything that happened to me in it at all.”

“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Sid said. “The big thing out here these days is technicolor. Everything is technicolor. The American public loves the stuff. And anyone knows that you can’t get any color value out of a background of solid white snow. So we just made a little switch and changed the locale to the South Seas, which is a riot of color. Essentially, it’s still the same story.”

“But I’ve never seen a bamboo raft in my life,” Orvil said. “I made the whole trip by dog sled.”

“Be reasonable, kid,” Sid said. “You can’t cross the Pacific Ocean in a dog sled.”

“And it was whale blubber the natives gave me, not coconut juice.”

“You’re fighting me, kid,” Sid said. “Just relax and let it go. Release those nervous tensions.” He took his feet off the desk and leaned forward. “What do you know about American Indians?”

“Nothing at all, Sid,” Orvil said and left.

Orvil was troubled; the studio had bought a true to life experience and that was what they deserved to have. In Sid’s script even the egg had been transformed into a beautiful girl who had been shipwrecked on an island as an infant. Orvil decided that it was only his duty to seek out Mr. Grossbeck, the producer of the picture, and explain to him what had happened.

It was three days before Orvil finally got an appointment. On the day of the interview, he brought his egg to the studio, in the hope that its presence would help him make his point clear to the producer. After a prolonged delay in the outer office, he was ushered into Mr. Grossbeck’s owlish aura by a sallow young assistant. Mr. Grossbeck greeted him with a blank stare.

“What’s on your mind, Sleeker?” he said. “Make it fast.”

“Sleeper,” Orvil said. “Orvil Sleeper.” As quickly as he could, holding the egg gingerly on his lap, he tried to explain about the
script. He had only just begun, when Mr. Grossbeck, with a pained expression, looked around at the assistant.

“What’s with this creep, Dave?” he asked. “We ain’t doing any comedies this season, are we? Besides, it ain’t even funny, this bit with the egg. Get him outa here.” He looked around at Orvil and pointed to the egg. “And get that phoney prop back to the property department.”

So it was that another Golden Moment arrived only to develop a bad coat of tarnish. Before he quite knew how it had happened, Orvil found himself and his egg summarily banished to the dim reaches of a large, barnlike structure in the company of a lot of dusty curiosities.

After a moment of utter bewilderment, he sat down on a carved chest and wedged his narrow chin moodily into his hands. He almost wished he had stayed lost at the North Pole or, going still further back, that he had stayed home on the farm in Nebraska and never read
National Geographic
.

It was while Orvil was thinking these dark thoughts, looking long, lank and lonely, that a small, vital girl with dark, close-cropped hair, lovely soft brown eyes and an exclamatory figure appeared in the doorway. She strode forward into the dimness, then looked in his direction and stopped.

The girl in question was Meg Quimby. She was research assistant on another technicolor masterpiece called
Tasmanian Tempest
and she had come to the property department in search of a Tasmanian prayer rug. Despite her youth, she had been around Hollywood long enough to know the ropes.

As a child, however, Meg had spent most of her time playing with dolls and small wooly animals, and it was only natural that she had developed into the type who just naturally likes to have something helpless around to cuddle. Experience, though, had proved to her that around the studios this could be a dangerous impulse and she usually did her best to repress it. Now, however, as her eyes adjusted to the dimness and she saw Orvil sitting there
with that bleak, unloved look on his thin, sad pan, the old yen rose up in her shapely bosom in an almost engulfing tide. She moved toward him, tentatively.

“Gee whiz, fella,” she said, “what’s the matter?”

Orvil raised his head only slightly. “Huh?” he said.

“What happened?” Meg asked. “Can I bandage something?”

Orvil shook his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he murmured. However, as Meg approached, he automatically moved over on the chest to make room for her. “Nothing matters around here, I guess.”

“Look, son,” Meg said softly, “you’re the first male I’ve seen around here who looks like he might actually be some mother’s son. Of course I might be wrong, but I’d still like to hear your story. What are you doing down here in the dark?”

Orvil looked up into her brown eyes and sighed deeply. “It’s a long story,” he warned.

“That’s fine,” Meg said and sat down beside him. “Tell me.”

Orvil began to talk. He told her everything he had planned to tell to Mr. Grossbeck, then went on to his banishment to the property department.

“I guess they just don’t want things done right around here,” he concluded sadly.

Meg patted his hand. “You mustn’t let it get you down,” she said. “Everything turns out backwards out here. Look at the pictures they make.”

“Well, anyway,” Orvil said, “you’re very nice to take an interest. It makes you feel better to get it off your chest to someone. Would you like to see my egg?”

“Oh, could I?” Meg cried delightedly. “That would be wonderful!”

Just then, however, a boy with a very long neck and a bad complexion stuck his head in the door.

“Hey, Meg!” he yelled. “How about that rug? The mad genius is tearing his hair out.”

“Oh, golly!” Meg cried, jumping up. “I completely forgot!” She
turned regretfully to Orvil. “Maybe you could show it to me some other time.”

“Sure,” Orvil said quickly. And before he knew what he was doing he made his first request for a date. “How about tonight? Maybe we could eat dinner together. I’ll pay.”

For a moment Meg’s eyes searched his face. Then she smiled. “It’s a date,” she said. “I’ll meet you outside the studio gate when I get off work.” And with the boy following after her, she disappeared into the gloom.

At Meg’s suggestion they had dinner at a small, inexpensive restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. On the occasion of his first evening out with a girl, Orvil left the egg behind, since it didn’t seem quite right to bring it along. Nevertheless, he talked about the egg; he told Meg minutely how he had hacked it free from a block of ice attached to an ice floe which was going south at the time.

“I also found a lot of bones and things, too,” he told her, “but I lost them in the avalanche. The egg was the important thing.”

Meg, who had listened to all this with an open-mouthed fascination which Orvil couldn’t help but admire, sighed tremulously.

“For a guy with sad eyes,” she said, “you certainly do get around.”

“Well, maybe I’m kind of just bragging myself up a little,” Orvil admitted. “I guess you’re just about the first person who’s ever really listened to me—except Mr. Tuteur. And they locked him up.”