And so it came to pass that I was able to put to use a winter I had spent taking ballet lessons because my left knee had, thanks to hypothermia experienced in the Aleutian Islands when I was drenched by water from the Bering Sea, ceased to be of much use to me. Only the ballet lessons sufficiently thawed me. So I embarked on a path that I had seen just ahead of me, but wondered if I could do anything about it. There were experiences in life when most of the writers at that time would rush into print to describe their latest marriage, latest divorce, or the tenure they had achieved at some university; I wasn�t about to do that sort of thing, but at the same time I thought what fun it would be to show what life was like inside a ballet company.

The book you have before you is a very popular novel called Death in the Fifth Position�about a ballet company more or less based upon the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Victor joyously published it and did well with it, and I was encouraged. In fact, I worked very hard at being a mystery writer, somewhat heavily reliant upon Agatha Christie. There were three Edgar Box books in all, each written in eight days at the rate of ten thousand words a day, and I lived on them for the next dozen years until I discovered live television, where I wrote a great many plays for NBC, CBS, and so on. In the end, I suspect I owe a great deal to Mr. Prescott�s spite. To write really as oneself and yet be pretty much anonymous is a strange and dislocating experience. But many things start to become easy for you when you are not in the rat race for that most peculiar of prizes: to be considered the great American novelist of any given time. I have seen so many of them come and go in what has proved to be my very long day.

Victor Weybright is long since dead, but with some gratitude I feel obliged to dedicate these humble stories to him, whose mischievous gift as a publisher saved me for a decade or two while gaining a Nobel Prize for Bill Faulkner of Oxford, Mississippi.

1

�You see,� said Mr. Washburn. �We�ve been havig trouble.�

I nodded. �What sort of trouble?�

He looked vaguely out the window. �Oh, one thing and the other.�

�That�s not much to go on, is it?� I said gently; it never does to be stern with a client before one is formally engaged.

�Well, there�s the matter of these pickets.�

I don�t know why but the word �picket� at this moment suggested small gnomes hiding in the earth. So I said, �Ah.�

�They are coming tonight,� he added.

�What time do they usually come?� I asked, getting into the spirit of the thing.

�I don�t know. We�ve never had them before.�

Never had them before, I wrote in my notebook, just to be doing something.

�You were very highly recommended to me,� said Mr. Washburn, in a tone which was almost accusing; obviously I had given him no cause for confidence.

�I�ve handled a few big jobs, from time to time,� I said quietly, exuding competence.

�I want you for the rest of the season, the New York season. You are to handle all our public relations, except for the routine stuff which this office does automatically: sending out photographs of the dancers and so on. Your job will be to work with the columnists, that kind of thing���to see we�re not smeared.�

�Why do you think you might be smeared?� The psychological moment had come for a direct question.

�The pickets,� said Mr. Washburn with a sigh. He was a tall heavy man with a bald pink head which glittered as though it had been waxed; his eyes were gray and shifty: as all honest men�s eyes are supposed to be according to those psychologists who maintain that there is nothing quite so dishonest as a level, unwavering gaze.

I finally understood him. �You mean you are going to be picketed?�

�That�s what I said.�

�Bad labor relations?�

�Communism.�

�You mean the Communists are going to picket you?�

The impresario of the Grand Saint Petersburg Ballet looked at me sadly, as though once again his faith had been unjustified. Then he began at the beginning. �I called you over here this morning because I was told that you were one of the best of the younger public relations men in New York, and I prefer to work with young people. As you may or may not know, my company is going to premi�re an important new ballet tonight. The first major modern ballet we have presented in many years and the choreographer is a man named Jed Wilbur.�

�I�m a great admirer of his,� I said, just to show that I knew something about ballet. As a matter of fact, it isn�t possible to be around the theater and not know of Wilbur. He is the hottest choreographer in town at the moment, the most fashionable���not only in ballet but also in musical comedies.

�Wilbur has been accused of being a Communist several times but since he has already been cleared by two boards I have every confidence in him. The United Veterans Committee, however, have not. They wired me yesterday that if we did his new ballet they would picket every performance until it was withdrawn.�

�That�s bad,� I said, frowning, making it sound worse than it was: after all I had a good job at stake. �May I see their telegram?� Mr. Washburn handed it to me and I read:

1

I don�t know when I�d seen so many gloomy faces as I did that morning in Eglanova�s dressing room. Mr. Gleason of the Police Department had assembled the company�s brass there, with the exception of Eglanova herself and Louis, neither of whom had yet arrived. But the others were there���including Miles Sutton who looked as though he hadn�t slept in a week, his eyes glassy with fatigue, and Jed Wilbur who kept cracking his knuckles until I thought I�d go crazy and Mr. Washburn in a handsome summer suit, very grave, and Alyosha looking fairly relaxed, as well as the stage manager and a few other notables who stood about the room while Detective Gleason, a round pig of a man with a cigar, obligingly revealed to us the full splendor of the official mind.

�Where are those two dancers���Egg-something and Giraffe?�

Egg and Giraffe���pretty good, I thought, giving him an A for effort.

�They will be along shortly,� said Mr. Washburn soothingly. �After all, this is very early for them to be up.�

�Early!� snorted Gleason. �That�s a funny way to run a business.�

�It is an art, not a business,� said Alyosha mildly.

Gleason looked at him suspiciously. �What is your name again?�

�Alyosha Petrovich Rudin.�

�A Russian, eh?�

�Originally.�

The detective scowled a xenophobe�s scowl but made no comment. He had us where he wanted us but then again we were pretty hot stuff, too, and we had him if he got too frisky. I was quite sure that Mr. Washburn was in hourly contact with City Hall.

�Well, we�ll start without them. First, I think you should all know that there�s been a murder.� He consulted a piece of paper which he held in his hand. �Ella Sutton was murdered last night at ten-thirty, by falling. The cable which was holding her thirty-eight feet above the stage was severed, except for one strand, by a party or parties as yet unknown, between the hours of four-thirty and ten P.M.� We have, by the way, what we believe to be the murder weapon: a pair of shears which are now being tested for fingerprints and also for metal filings, to see if they correspond with the metal of the cable.� He paused and fixed us with a steely eye, as though expecting the murderer to burst into hysterical sobs and confess everything; instead it was I who almost burst into hysterical sobs, thinking of those damned shears and how I had handled them. I had several very bad minutes.

�Now, I�ll be frank with you,� said Gleason, who was obviously going to be no such thing, now or ever. �We could close down your show while we investigate but, for one reason and another, we�ve decided to let you finish up your last two weeks here, just as you planned, and we�ll investigate when we can. Believe me when I say it�s a real break for you.� I looked at Mr. Washburn, the intimate of Kings and Mayors, but he was looking very bland indeed. �I want to warn you folks, though, that none of you is to take French leave, to disappear from the scene of the crime during your last week, or later, if we haven�t wound this case up by then���and I think we will have, by then,� he added ominously, looking, I swear, right at me, as though he�d already found my fingerprints on what was now called The Murder Weapon. I felt faint. Love and a possible accusation of being a murderer need a full stomach, coffee anyway.

�To be frank with you,� said Gleason, obviously bent on being a good fellow, �it seems very likely that the murder was committed by someone closely connected with the theater, by someone who knew all about the new ballet and who had a grudge against Miss Sutton��� Bravo, I said to myself. You are cooking with gas, Gleason. I began to insult him in my mind���for some reason I was perfectly willing to let the murderer go undetected. Sutton was no great loss but then, of course, I am callous, having been an infantryman at Okinawa (wounded my first day in action, by a bullet in the left buttock���no, I was not running away; the bullet ricocheted, I swear to God, and I was carried from the field, all bloody from my baptism of fire).

�I will,� said Mr. Gleason, �interview each and every one of you, starting right now and continuing through the entire company, including the stagehands���every one, in short, who was backstage.� He unfolded a long sheet of paper, a list of names. �Here is the list in the order in which I want to see you people. Will you have it put some place where the other members of the company can see it?� Mr. Washburn said that he would and motioned for the stage manager to take it outside and put it on the bulletin board.

When the stage manager returned, he was accompanied by Eglanova and Louis. Eglanova looked very distinguished in a black lace dress of mourning with a white feathered hat on her head, while Louis wore a pair of slacks and a sport shirt like the Tennis Anyone? juvenile he occasionally resembles.

�So sorry,� said Eglanova, swooping down upon the Inspector. �You are the police? I am Madame Eglanova���this is my dressing room,� she added, intimating that we had all better get the hell out of there.

�Pleased to meet you,� said Gleason, obviously impressed.

�And I am Louis Giraud,� said Louis with great dignity, but it didn�t come off because Gleason was too busy explaining things to Eglanova who was carefully maneuvering him to the door, like a stalking lioness. In a few minutes we were all out of there and Gleason repaired to an office on the second floor to commence his interviews���the first, naturally enough, was Miles Sutton. I was number seven on the list, I noticed. Lucky seven?

I cornered Mr. Washburn outside in the street; we both had gone out, automatically, for the afternoon papers. �I�ve got something to tell you,� I said.

�I want to hear only good news,� said Mr. Washburn warningly. �I have had enough disaster to last me the rest of what, very likely, will be a short life. My heart is not strong.�

�I�m sorry to hear that, sir, but I think you should know something about those shears.�

�Those what?�

�The things the police thought the murderer cut the cable with.�

�Well, what about them?�

�It just so happens that I found them last night in the wastebasket in Eglanova�s room.�

�What were they doing there?� Mr. Washburn was deep in The Journal-American���we were still on the front page.

�Somebody put them there.�

�Very likely���I wonder why they always spell Eglanova�s name wrong? According to this account, it�s all a Communist plot.�

�Mr. Washburn, I moved those shears���I picked them up and I took them out of that dressing room and put them on top of the toolbox backstage.�

�Very tidy. You�d be surprised at the size of our bill for tools every month���especially things getting lost. By the way, the box office reported that we�re sold out until closing night. You better get that in the papers tomorrow.�

�Yes sir, but I���

�You know this may not be such a bad thing���I mean, of course, it�s perfectly awful and God knows where I�m ever going to get a ballerina for next season���but it�s certainly put Eclipse on the map. Everybody will want to see it from here to San Francisco, a real draw.� At this moment, I found Mr. Washburn a trifle materialistic, even for an old-fashioned opportunist like me.

�Maybe Eglanova will go with the company again next year,� I suggested, forgetting my own peril for a brief moment.

�But she wants to retire and we should let her,� said Mr. Washburn, starting in on The World-Telegram and Sun; he made Eglanova�s retirement sound like her choice rather than his.

�I hear Markova is tied up with her new company.�

�True���she�s too expensive anyway.�

�And so are Toumanova, Alonso, Danilova and Tallchief,� said I, repeating what Jane had told me the night before.

�Editorial in the Telegram,� said Mr. Washburn gravely. �They want to know if Wilbur is a Communist.�

�I had forgotten all about that,� I said truthfully.

�Well, I haven�t. The Veterans Committee telephoned to say that their pickets would be back tonight and that they would have new placards, calling us the Murder Company as well as the Red Company.�

�That�s a laugh!�

�I am not sure on whom, though,� said Mr. Washburn, studying the Post which had by far the best and sexiest pictures of Sutton, and no mention of the Red menace.

�Is Wilbur worried?�

�He seems to be. I�m supposed to have a talk with him this afternoon. Well, that�s that,� he said, handing the papers to me.

Outside the stage door a policeman in plain clothes lounged; he looked at us suspiciously as we entered.

�An armed camp!� exclaimed my employer with more gusto than I for one thought proper under the circumstances; our roles were reversed now: I was the one bothered by the publicity and investigation while he was the one who was meditating happily on free promotion and the coming tour with the customers flocking to see the �murder� ballet.

�By the way,� I said, �who�s going to dance the lead in Eclipse tonight���you have it scheduled, you know, and I should get a release out for the morning papers.�

�Good God! Where�s Wilbur?� The stage manager, hearing this, went to find the beleaguered choreographer.

�How would this Jane Garden do? I�m told she�s very fine,� I said, getting in a plug for the home team.

�It�s up to him���after all we�ve got three soloists.�

�I think she�d be great in it.� Then, changing from my youthful, eager manner to that somewhat more austere manner which is more nearly me, I said, �About those shears that I found in Eglanova�s room.�

�What about them?� We went through the whole thing again and, for the second time in five minutes, he was upset.

�What I want to know is should I tell the police right now that I found the shears in her room and put them outside on the tool chest, or should I wait until the Inspector arrests me for murder, after finding my prints all over The Murder Weapon.�

Mr. Washburn looked exactly like a man being goosed by the cold horns of the biggest, roughest dilemma this side of the Bronx Zoo. Needless to say, between sacrificing his star and his temporary press agent, he chose yours truly, as I suspected he would, to be offered up as a possible sacrifice to Miss Justice, that blind girl with the sword. �You can do something for me, Peter,� he said, in the cozy voice of an impresario talking to a millionaire.

�Anything, sir,� I said, very sincerely, looking at him with honest cocker spaniel eyes���little did he suspect that I was contemplating blackmail, that my mean little mind had seized upon a brilliant idea which would, if it worked, make me very happy indeed and if it didn�t���well, I could always take a lie-detector test or something to prove that I hadn�t eased Ella Sutton into a better and lovelier world.

�Say nothing about this, Son. Not until the season is over���just a week away. That�s all I ask. I�m sure they won�t go after you���absolutely sure. You have no motive. You didn�t even know Sutton. On top of that���well, I have a little influence in this town, as you know. Believe me when I say there won�t be any trouble.�

�If you say so, Mr. Washburn, then I won�t tell the police.� I then asked that Jane Garden be given the lead in Eclipse (she was understudy anyway), and she got it. Perfidy had paid off.

�I suppose she�ll be all right,� said Wilbur a few minutes later when he�d been advised of this casting. �She�s up in the part at least. I�d much rather have a dark-haired girl, but���

�Garden should be very good,� said Mr. Washburn. �You�d better rehearse her and Louis this afternoon.�

�I�ll go telephone her,� I said, and I did. At first, she didn�t believe it but then, when she did, she was beside herself and I knew we were going to have a pleasant time���champagne in bed, I decided, as I hung up.

My second official interview with the Inspector went off well enough.

�How old are you?�

�Twenty-eight.�

�Where were you born?�

�Hartford, Connecticut.�

�In the service?�

�Three and a half years���Pacific Theater of Operations���Army.�

�What sort of work did you do upon discharge?�

�Went back to college���finished at Harvard.�

�Harvard?�

�Yes, Harvard.� We glared at one another.

�What sort of work after that?�

�I was assistant drama critic on the Globe until a year ago when I opened my own office���public relations.�

�I see. How long have you known, did you know, the deceased?�

�Who?�

�Miss Sutton���who do you think I meant? Mayor La Guardia.�

�I�m sorry if I misunderstood you, Mr. Gleason.� Oh, I was in splendid form, putting my head right into the noose, but what the hell���tonight there�d be champagne. �I met Miss Sutton the day I came to work for the ballet���yesterday afternoon.�

�As what?�

�As special public relations consultant���that�s what it says on that paper in front of you.�

�Are you trying to get funny with me?�

�Certainly not.� I looked offended.

�How well did you know the���Miss Sutton?�

�I met her yesterday.�

�You never saw her outside of work then?�

�Not very often.�

�How often?�

�Never, then.�

�Well, which is it, never or occasionally?�

�Never, I guess, to speak of���maybe now and then at a party before I�d met her���that�s all I meant.�

�It would help if you say what you mean the first time.�

�I�ll try.�

�Did she have any enemies that you know of?�

�Well, yes and no.�

�Yes or no, please, Mr. Sargeant.�

�No���not that I know of. On the other hand, I gather that nobody liked her.�

�And why was that?�

�I�m told she wasn�t very easy to work with and she was unpleasant to the kids in the company, especially the girls. She was set to be the big star when Eglanova retired.�

�I see. Does Egg���lanova look forward to retiring?�

�Wouldn�t you after thirty years in ballet?�

�I�m not in ballet.�

�Well, neither am I, Mr. Gleason. I know almost as little about this as you.�

Gleason gave me an extremely dirty look but I was full of beans, thinking about how I had handled Washburn.

�Was her marriage to Miles Sutton a happy one?�

�I suggest you ask him; I�ve never met him.�

�I see.� Gleason was getting a little red in the face and I could see that I was amusing his secretary, a pale youth who was taking down our conversation in shorthand.

�Now then: where were you at the dress rehearsal yesterday afternoon?�

�Backstage mostly.�

�Did you notice anything unusual?�

�Like what?�

�Like���never mind. What were your movements after the rehearsal?�

�Well, I went out and had a sandwich; then I called up the different newspapers���about the Wilbur business. I got back to the theater about five-thirty.�

�And you left it?�

�Not until after the murder last night.�

�Who did you see when you returned at five-thirty, who was backstage?�

�Just about everyone, I suppose: Mr. Washburn, Eglanova, Giraud, Rudin���no, he wasn�t there until about six, and neither was Miles Sutton now that I think of it.�

�Is it customary for all these people to be in the theater such a long time before a performance?�

�I don�t know���it was a premi�re night.�

�Eglanova was not in the premi�re, though, was she?�

�No, but she often spends the day in the theater���so does Giraud. He sleeps.�

�By the way, do you happen to know who will take Sutton�s place tonight?�

I paused just long enough to sound guilty; I kicked myself but there was nothing to be done about it. �Jane Garden���one of the younger soloists.�

But he missed the connection, I could see, and not until all the interviews had been neatly typed up and my fingerprints had been discovered on the shears would he decide that I had cut the cable so that Jane could dance the lead in Eclipse.

He asked me a few more questions to which I gave some mighty flip answers and then he told me to go, very glad to see the last of me, for that day at least. I have a dislike of policemen which must be the real thing since I�d never had anything to do with them up until now, outside of the traffic courts. There is something about the state putting the power to bully into the hands of a group of subnormal, sadistic apes that makes my blood boil. Of course, the good citizens would say that it takes an ape to keep the other apes in line but then again it is piteous indeed to listen to the yowls of those same good citizens when they come afoul the law and are beaten up in prisons and generally manhandled for suspected or for real crimes: at such moments they probably wish they had done something about the guardians of law and order when they were free. Well, it was no problem of mine at the moment.

I found Jane already downstairs in her rehearsal clothes. I gave her a big kiss and then, when she asked me if I had had anything to do with her getting the lead in Eclipse and I said that I certainly had, I got another kiss. She asked me all about the investigation.

�Everybody�s being pumped,� I said. �They just got through with me. You better go look on the bulletin board and find out what time they�ll want to see you.� We looked; and she was to be questioned at six o�clock.

�What did he want to know?�

�Just stuff. Where I was when it happened���who else was around, and gossip.�

�What did you tell him?�

�Not much of anything���in the way of gossip: it�s his job to find out those things.�

�I suppose it is.�

Wilbur and Louis appeared, both in work clothes. �Come on, Jane,� said Louis. �We got work.� He winked at me. �How�re you doing, Baby?�

I called him a rude but accurate name and marched off to telephone the newspapers about Jane�s coming debut as a soloist���it wouldn�t get in till tomorrow but then, perhaps, we might be able to get a few of the critics out to report on her the next night. Needless to say, we were scheduled to do Eclipse at every single performance until we closed. After I had made my calls and arranged for some photographs of Jane to be sent around by messenger, I left the building with every intention of going to get something to eat���I was getting light in the head from hunger and the heat. I was so giddy that I almost stepped on Miles Sutton who was lying face down in the corridor which leads from the office to the dressing rooms.

1

�And then I told him that I thought I�d stumbled over the shears backstage, on my way to the dressing rooms.�

�Good boy.� Mr. Washburn was properly appreciative, having no reason yet to regret that favor he�d granted me the day before at the point of a gun or, rather, of a pair of shears.

�I wish, however, to record my serious unease, Mr. Washburn. I didn�t like Gleason�s questions. Just between us and the New York Globe he is about to pull something.�

�But, my dear boy, that�s what he�s paid for. He will have to make an accusation soon or the city will be angry with him. That�s the price of office.�

�I think he suspects me.�

�Now don�t be melodramatic. Of course he doesn�t.�

�I don�t mean of the murder, but���well, of being connected with it. My story about finding what is officially known as The Murder Weapon just didn�t go down. He knows it was left some place else.�

�You don�t think��� My employer looked alarmed.

�I just don�t know.� And we left it at that.

On the way back to the office, I stopped off at Eglanova�s Fifty-second Street apartment. She had invited me to come see her and I knew that she was always at home to those she liked, which was almost anyone who would pay a call on her.

She had the whole second floor of a brownstone to herself; it had been her home for twenty years and, consequently, it seemed now like a room from a Chekhov play: Czarist Russian in every untidy detail, even to the bronze samovar and the portraits of the Czar and Czarina, signed, on the piano, a grand affair, covered with an antique lace shawl and decorated with several more silver-framed photographs, of Karsavina, Nijinski and Pavlova. �They are my family,� Eglanova was accustomed to say to casual visitors, waving her long sinewy hand at the photographs, including the Russian Royal Family as well as the dancers. Over the mantel was the famous painting of Eglanova in Giselle, her greatest moment in the theater���1918.

Her maid opened the door and, without comment, ushered me into the presence.

�It is Peter!� Eglanova, wearing an old wrapper, sat by the bay window near the piano, looking out at a bleak little garden in the back where one sick tree grew among the tin cans and torn newspapers. She put down the copy of Vogue she was reading and gave me her hand. �Come sit by me and keep me company.�

I sat down in a papier m�ch� Victorian chair and she said something in Russian to her maid who appeared, a moment later, from the kitchen with two ordinary drinking glasses full of hot tea and lemon. �It is just right thing for hot day,� said Eglanova and we toasted each other gravely. Then she offered me some candy, rich creamy chocolates which made me sick just looking at them. �All boys like candy,� she said emphatically. �You sick maybe? or drink too much? American boys drink too much.�

I agreed to that all right���if anything causes this great civilization of ours to fall flat on its face it will be the cocktail party. I thought of those eighteenth-century prints of Rowlandson and Gilray and Hogarth, all the drunken mothers and ghastly children wallowing in gin in the alleys���it makes you stop and think. I thought longingly for several seconds of a gin and tonic.

�I couldn�t take class again today���too hot. I perish.� Contrary to vulgar legend the lives of great ballerinas are not entirely given up to a few minutes of graceful movement every night followed by champagne drunk out of their toeshoes till dawn, in the company of financiers���no, most of their time is spent in filthy rehearsal halls, inhaling dust, or else in class, daily, year in year out, practicing, practicing even after they are already prima ballerinas. It occured to me, suddenly, irrelevantly, that Eglanova was the same age as my mother.

�I think Jane Garden is taking class this afternoon.�

�Such darling girl! I hear she is your petite amie. So good for both of you.�

�Oh sure���it�s wonderful.� News travels fast, I thought.

�I�m so happy to see good children happy. Every night?�

�What?� for a moment I didn�t understand; then I blushed. �Except on Wednesday, I guess, when she�s too tired.�

�Just like me!� Eglanova laughed, a wonderful deep peasant laugh. �My husband Alexey Kuladin (he was prominent lawyer in Russia before) could never understand about Wednesday���I tell him about matinee but he would say: what difference?� She chuckled; we drank tea and Eglanova asked me more questions about what Jane and I did and what my habits had been previous to our affair. I told her a number of stories, mostly true, and she loved them. She was like one of those old women you read about who brood over an entire village and are never shocked no matter what happens���good witches. She made everything seem completely natural which, of course, it is or should be���she even regarded Louis with delight. �Where does he get the energy? where?� I had just told her about my run-in with him. �He works hard most of the day and at performance. Then he goes out and he drinks, oh, like an American, or maybe Russian���then he picks up one tough boy; then maybe another later on, not counting the people in the theater. It is wonderful! Such vitality! So manly!�

I wasn�t convinced of the manly end of it but then it all depends on how you look at such things���he certainly acts like a man and there may be, who knows, not much difference between nailing a boy to the bed and treating a girl in like manner; it�s all very confusing and I intend one day to sit down and figure the whole thing out. It�s like that poem of Auden�s, one of whose quatrains goes:

Louis is telling Anne what Molly

1

Once a Lady always a Lady, as the saying goes; especially in the case of Alma Shellabarger of Chicago who married the Marquis of Edderdale when she was twenty and then at twenty-four married someone else and after that someone else and so on until now, at fifty, she had no husband, though she still uses the title of Marchioness in spite of all the other names she has been called along the way. No one seems to mind, however, because she gives great parties even though her income is not as large now as it was when she appeared in the fashionable world with a face like a bemused horse and all that Shellabarger cash, from slaughtered pigs and sheep. Nevertheless, her blood-drenched income is adequate���though there is no longer the Paris house or the Amalfi villa or the Irish castle���only the Park Avenue mansion and the Palm Beach house, where lavish parties are given, in season. I am told that at her dinners neither pig nor sheep is served, only poultry, fish and game���real sense of guilt as any analyst would tell you at the drop of a fee.

Mr. Washburn and I arrived before the rest of our company. As a rule, he waits until Eglanova is ready and then he escorts her; but tonight, for some reason, he couldn�t wait to get out of the theater. Both of us were hot in our tuxedos���his white and mine black, an obvious clue to our respective incomes. Fortunately, the house was cool���a gust of freshened air met us in the downstairs hall, a vast room with grey marble columns, marble floor and Greek statuary in niches. A footman took our invitations and led us up a flight of stairs where, so help me, a butler announced our names to a hundred or so decorative guests in a drawing room which looked like the waiting room at Penn Station redecorated by King Midas���the guests looked as though they might be waiting for trains, too, I thought, as we moved toward our hostess who stood beneath a chandelier at the room�s center, all in green and diamonds, receiving her guests with a half-smile and mumbled greetings as though she weren�t quite sure why she was there, or why they were there.

�Dear Alma,� said Mr. Washburn, beginning to expand as he always does in the presence of money.

�Ivan!� They embraced like two mechanical toys, like those figures which come out of old-fashioned clocks every hour on the hour. I bowed over her hand in the best Grand Saint Petersburg Ballet style.

�You poor dear,� said Alma, fixing my employer with yellow eyes. �What a disaster!�

�We must take the good with the bad,� said Mr. Washburn gently.

�I was there!� breathed Alma Edderdale, shutting her eyes for a moment as though to recall, as vividly as possible, every detail of that terrible night.

�Then you know what it was like���

�I do���I do.�

�The ghastly fall���

�Can I ever forget?�

�The end of a life���a great ballerina�s life.�

�If there was only something one could do.� That did it, I thought. Mr. Washburn would immediately suggest an Ella Sutton Memorial Ballet, sets, costumes and choreographer�s fee to be paid by that celebrated patroness, the Marchioness of Edderdale. But Mr. Washburn is as tactful as he is venal.

�We all feel that way, Alma.� Then he paused significantly.

�Perhaps���but we�ll talk of that another time. Tell me about him.�

�About whom?�

�The husband. The���well, you know what they say.�

�Ah���quite broken up,� said Mr. Washburn evasively, and I withdrew, moving toward the bar in the next room where, among other things, they were serving a Pommery �29 worth its weight in uranium. I knocked off two glasses before Jane arrived, looking very young and innocent in a plain white dinner dress, her hair drawn severely back ballerina-style. She was like the daughter of a country minister at her first grown-up party, only she looked perhaps too innocent to be the real thing. She caused a mild stir, her appearance at least: this gang hadn�t absorbed her yet, made her a legend the way they had Eglanova who now stood, between Alyosha and Louis in the doorway, like some bird of paradise poised on the edge of a hen coop. In the excitement of Eglanova�s entrance, Jane and I met near the bar and toasted one another in Pommery.

�How did you like it tonight?� she asked, breathless and young, like a bride in an advertisement (and, like the model in question, well paid for her characterization).

�Wonderful party,� I said, enjoying myself for the first time, publicly at least, since my wild ballet season began. �Best stuff I�ve ever tasted. And the air-conditioning! Wonderful job���like an autumn day.�

�You misunderstood,� said Jane firmly, with the bright monomaniacal stare of a dancer discussing the Dance. �I meant my performance.�

�I�m afraid I didn�t catch it. I was at the office most of the night, before I came here.�

She rallied bravely. �You���didn�t see me tonight?�

�No, I had to get some pictures off to the papers���the new ones of you, by the way,� I added.

�I got eight curtain calls.�

�That�s my girl.�

�And three bouquets���from strangers.�

�Never take candy from strange men, little girl,� I chanted as we moved toward a tall French window which looked out on an eighteenth-century garden, all of five years old.

�I wish you�d seen it. Tonight was the first night I really danced, that I forgot all about the variations and the audience and that damned cable���that I really let go. Oh, it was wonderful!�

�You think you�re pretty good, huh?�

�Oh, I didn�t mean that!� She was anxious: nowadays in the theater good form (or actors� notion of good form) is everything. Everyone dresses carefully and quietly, no practical jokes, no loud voices and, above all, no reference to self���just smile and blush if you are congratulated for having won a Donaldson Award, look blank when someone mentions the spread on you in Life, murmuring something about not having seen it yet. In a way, I prefer the grand old egotists like Eglanova: she hardly admits that there is another ballerina in all the world���and even Louis has been known to ask reviewers: �Who is this Youskevitch you talk to me about?� But anyway Jane had a storm of modesty which quickly passed and then, the Dance taken care of for the rest of the evening, we cruised the party.

About one o�clock we separated with an agreement to meet back at her apartment at two-thirty on the dot. Neither of us is very jealous���at least not in theory, and I wandered about the drawing room, saying hello to the few people I knew. I was pretty much lost in this crowd. It�s not the gang I went to school with, the sons of those dull rich families who seldom entertain and who traipse off to Newport, Southampton, Bar Harbor and similar giddy places this time of year; nor is it the professional newspaper and theater world wherein I sing for my supper���rather, it is the world of unfixed money: obscure Europeans, refugees from various unnamed countries, the new-rich, the wilder old-rich, the celebrated figures in the arts who have time for parties and finally the climbers, mysterious and charming and busy, of all ages, sexes, nationalities, shapes and sizes. It takes a long time to straighten everybody out. I haven�t even begun to see my way clear yet but I probably will in a few more years. Some people of course never do add things up right. Lady Edderdale is still among the more confused, after thirty years of high life.

Beneath a portrait of the lady of the house (the work of Dali) stood Elmer Bush with whom I have a nodding acquaintance���through no fault of mine I am not his bosom buddy: his column, �America�s New York,� is syndicated in seventy-two newspapers as well as being the New York Globe�s biggest draw on the subway circuit. He was of course too important ever to visit the office, so the only time I met him was at first nights when he would always come up to Milton Haddock and say: �It looks like a bomb from where I sit. What do you think, boy?� and Milton would grumble a little and sometimes I would be introduced and sometimes not.

�Hello there, Mr. Bush,� I said with more authority than usual since I was, after all, sitting in the middle of the best piece of news in town.

�Why if it isn�t old Pete Sargeant himself,� said Mr. Bush, his face lighting up as he saw his next column practically composed already. He gave a polite but firm chill shoulder to a blond middle-aged star of yesteryear who had obviously got the Gloria Swanson bug; then we were alone together in the middle of the party.

�Haven�t seen you in a coon�s age!� said Elmer Bush, showing a row of capped teeth: he has the seventh highest Hooper in television with a program called �New York�s America� which is, they tell me, a combination of gossip and interviews with theater people���I never look at television myself because it hurts my eyes. Anyway, Elmer is big league, bald and ulcerous, the perfect symbol of metropolitan success for an earnest hard-working boy like me trying to get ahead in �the game.�

�Well, I�ve been pretty busy,� I allowed in my best bumpkin manner.

�Say, what about that murder you got in your company?� and the benign features of Elmer Bush (�just a friend of the family in your own living room giving you some real stories about real people in the news,����just old horse-shit Bush, I thought) shone with friendship and interest.

�Some mess,� I said, because that�s exactly what he would have said had our roles been reversed.

�Well, it keeps the show in the news���that�s one thing. Hear my broadcast about it Wednesday night?�

�I certainly did,� I lied. �Just about the best analysis I�ve seen so far.�

�Well, I didn�t really try to analyze it���just straight reporting.�

Had I blundered? �I mean the way you put it, well, that was some job���

�Get the facts,� said Mr. Bush, smiling mechanically. �When are they going to arrest the husband?�

�I don�t know.�

�He did do it?�

�Everyone thinks so. He certainly had a good enough reason.�

�Bitch?�

�Very much so.�

�I saw the man who�s on that case yesterday. What�s his name? Gleason? Yes. Used to know him years ago when I was covering the police courts. He was mixed up in the Albemarle business���but that was before your time. Anyway, he made it pretty clear to me, unofficially of course, that Sutton would be arrested in the next twenty-four hours and indicted as quick as possible���while public interest is high. That�s the way they work.� And he chuckled. �Politicians, police���the worst hams of all. But I still don�t know why they�ve held off so long.�

�Pressure,� I said smoothly, as though I knew.

He pursed his lips and nodded, everything just a bit more deliberate than life, made sharp for the television camera. �I thought as much. Not a bad idea to string it out as long as possible either���for the good of all concerned. Are you sold out? I thought so. Take a tip from me! This will put ballet on the map.� And with that message he left me for a dazzling lady who looked like Gloria Swanson and who, upon close inspection, turned out to be Gloria Swanson.

�How�re you doing, Baby?� inquired a familiar voice behind me���needless to say I gave a bit of a jump and executed a fairly professional pirouette���never turn your back on the likes of Louis, as Mother used to say.

�I�m doing just fine, killer,� I said, showing my upper teeth.

�Such good boy,� said Louis, holding my arm for a minute in a vise-like grip. �Some muscle!�

�I got it from beating up faggots in Central Park,� I said slowly; he doesn�t understand if you talk fast.

Louis roared. �You kill me, Baby.�

�Don�t tempt me.�

�Come on out on that balcony���just you and me. We look at moon.�

�Not on your life, killer.�

�Why�re you so afraid of me?�

�Just two guesses.�

�But I tell you you won�t feel nothing. You�ll like it fine.�

�I�m a virgin.�

�I know, Baby, that�s what I go for. Last night��� But before he could tell me some lewd story concerning his unnatural vice, Jed Wilbur approached us, pale and harried-looking, like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. He too was got up in a dinner jacket���it was the first time, I think, that I had ever seen him in a suit, wearing a tie. I was not able to continue my sartorial investigation, however, for Louis broke off what had promised to be our big balcony scene and rushed off in the direction of the main hall, as though he had to get to the john real fast. I could see that Wilbur was in some doubt as to whether to chase his beloved and corner him in some barricaded lavatory or to tarry a bit with me instead. He chose the latter course.

�I wonder where Louis is off to?� he asked.

�Call of the wild, I guess.�

�What was he talking to you about?�

This was abrupt and I was almost tempted to remind Jed Wilbur that it was none of his business. But then he is the leading choreographer of the minute and I am, for this minute at least, a minion of the ballet and so I swallowed my thimble-sized pride and said, �Just idle chatter.�

�In other words making a pass.� Wilbur sounded bitter.

�But that�s natural. I mean for him it is. He has to get into everything he sees.�

�Male and under thirty.� Wilbur sighed and I felt sorry for him���unrequited love and all that. He fidgeted with his ready-tied bow tie.

�Well, that�s the way he gets his kicks,� I said, idly dropping into an Army attitude; while I talked to Jed I looked over his shoulder at the room, recognizing several famous faces, one of whom, belonging to a Senator, was talking very seriously to Jane who obviously had no notion of who he was. I smiled to myself as I recalled the day before when she asked me, very tenderly and shyly, whether Truman was a Democrat or Republican.

�Why does everyone at parties look over everyone else�s shoulder?� asked Wilbur suddenly, capturing my attention with a bang.

�Oh.�� I blushed. �Bad manners, I guess.�

�Some commentary on our society,� said Wilbur, in a voice which smacked a little of the soapbox. �Everyone trying to get ahead every minute of the day���rushing, rushing, rushing, afraid of missing a trick.�

�This is a competitive town,� I said with my usual profundity, sneaking a glimpse over his shoulder at Eglanova who was surrounded by some rich-looking bucks, laughing as though she was quite prepared to slip off a shoe and guzzle champagne from it.

�You�re telling me,� said Wilbur and he looked over his own shoulder in the direction that Louis had taken���but our Don Juan was nowhere in sight. No doubt he was having his way with one of the busboys behind a potted palm downstairs. Thinking of Louis always puts me into a good mood���that is when he�s not around to make me nervous���he just makes me laugh, for no particular reason. But then Lady Edderdale, surrounded by outriders, rode down on us, diamonds whispering against green satin.

�Mr. Wilbur? We haven�t met. I must have been in the other room when you arrived. I�ve so much wanted to meet you.�

Jed took her outstretched hand, bewildered. �Yes���

�I am Alma Edderdale,� she said, smiling a blinding smile, like sun on a glacier; she withdrew her hand.

�We�ve met,� I said quickly, to cover the moment�s confusion. �With Mr. Washburn.�

�Of course. Can I ever tell you in words, Mr. Wilbur, my reaction to Eclipse?�

Wilbur suggested in a confused voice that she give it a try���stated more politely of course.

�It was my one wonderful, mystical experience in the ballet���not including the classics which I have seen so long that I can no longer remember how they first affected me. But in modern ballet���ah!� Words failed her. They failed Jed, too.

�It�s generally thought to be Mr. Wilbur�s best work,� I gabbled.

�And of course what happened that first night! Mr. Wilbur, I was there. I saw.� She opened her eyes very wide, great golden orbs, swimming in jaundiced tears.

�Very awful,� mumbled Wilbur.

�And to have had it happen then���at that wonderful moment! Ah, Mr. Wilbur��� The passage of several boisterous guests made escape possible; I slipped through them and wandered off to find Jane. But she had vanished���the Senator, too. I settled for Eglanova who was seated on a love seat with an old man and surrounded by younger ones, all rather sensitive I noted with my shrewd and merciless eyes���I can tell one of our feathered friends at twenty paces: a certain type anyway. The Louis kind nobody can spot until they�re coming at you���then flight is in order, if they�re bigger than you.

�My darling Peter!� Eglanova was mildly lit, not yet weepy and Czarist the way she gets when she is really gone on vodka���twice a year: at Russian New Year and backstage the last night of every season in New York���her last season, she always moans, so they say. She gave me her hand to kiss and, feeling good on all the Pommery I had drunk, I kissed it soulfully.

�I have had such good time with young men.� She waved to include them all. They giggled. �I never go home now.�

�It�s late, Anna,� said Alyosha, suddenly joining us.

�Tyrant! Tomorrow I do one pas de deux�� no more.�

�Even so.� Then he spoke in Russian and she answered in Russian, both speaking rapidly, seriously, the good humor of the party-mood gone. I thought Eglanova�s face went quite pale though it was impossible to tell since her make-up was like spar varnish���perhaps, it was the way her eyes opened very wide and her face fell, literally sagged, as though whatever force had been holding it tight across the bone suddenly gave way. Then, with a stage gesture, she got up, swept a half-curtsy to her admirers and, without saying a word to any of us, left the room on Alyosha�s arm. I saw them at the door saying good night to Lady Edderdale.

I looked about the room for Jane but she was gone. I wondered if she had gone home early���or perhaps had decided in a puckish mood to have a Senatorial fling. Well, she could look out for herself, I decided, and went downstairs to the bathroom. I was just about to go in when I saw Mr. Washburn come trotting across the black and white marble floor.

�I was looking for you,� he said, stopping short, breathing hard. �We�ve got to get out of here.�

�Why? What�s the matter?�

�I�ll tell you outside. Come on.� He looked furtively about as though afraid the footmen were eavesdropping. They were not. Even so, as we went out the door, he looked back over his shoulder, like a man fearing pursuers; I looked, too, and saw no one except Louis coming out of the head with a blond footman, both looking pleased as hell. They did not see us.

We headed east on Seventy-fifth Street, toward Lexington Avenue.

�What�s going on? What�s up? Where�re we walking to?�

�It�s quicker, walking,� said Mr. Washburn grimly, prancing ahead of me like a fat mare. �But where?�

�To Miles Sutton�s apartment. He lives just the other side of Lexington.�

�What�s the matter?� But I knew: Gleason had arrested him at last, or was about to.

�He�s dead,� said Mr. Washburn.

I think I said: �Sweet Jesus!�

1

The last night was a triumph. The box office reported that we had beaten all previous standing-room records for the Met and the audience was in a frantic mood, drowning out the music with almost continual applause for the stars who danced, I must say, with more skill than usual. If the audience was disappointed that the cable didn�t break in Eclipse, they didn�t show it for they called Jane back on stage seven times after the ballet. Swan Lake was magnificent in spite of several veterans who saw fit to heave a couple of firecrackers onto the stage���as well as a stink bomb which fortunately didn�t go off.

Backstage, after the audience had left the theater, a great deal of vodka was stashed away by the Russian contingent���those members of the company born in Europe and their hangers-on���all singing and laughing and drinking vodka among the trunks and costumes. Eglanova was roaring drunk, weeping and laughing, her talk a mixture of Russian and English, all very confused.

Jane and I left early. Mr. Washburn caught us at the door and grandly gave me the next day off���after extending my contract another week. Jane, however, had to report at three-thirty the next day for rehearsal with Wilbur.

We spent the morning in bed, reading the newspapers and talking to people on the telephone, to dancers who were also spending this wonderful morning in bed, in various combinations. It was very cozy, like being part of a large family with, at the moment, no serious feuds to shatter the pleasant mood.

None of us could get over the fact that the investigation was finished, that Gleason was no longer a part of our lives.

�But,� as Jane said in her most professional voice over the telephone to one of the boy soloists, a Greek god with a voice like Bette Davis, �where are we ever going to get another conductor as good as Miles?�

�I think Gold�s working out fine,� I said, when she had hung up the telephone and was sitting cross-legged beside me on the bed, idly pinching my belly, trying to find a serious fold of flesh to complain about: she has always thought I do too little exercise���the reason, I always tell her, why I can eat everything and stay slim while she exercises, eats like a horse and has to watch her weight.

�You don�t have to follow him,� she said irrelevantly, breathing deeply, rib-cage thrust forward, chin held high, breasts moving all of a piece, not quivering like jello the way most breasts do in this age of starch.

I grunted and shook her hand off my stomach as I read about our company, on page twenty-seven, in the Globe: �Murdered Dancer�s Husband Dead�����Suspected of Murder.� An interview with Gleason followed, on page twenty-eight, without photograph.

�Kind of nice not to be on the front page,� I said.

�Don�t say that or you�ll be thrown out of the press agents� guild or whatever it is that makes people like you the way they are.�

�The bitch goddess.�

�The what?�

�The ignoble concern with ephemeral reputation which has created people like me���professional criers, drum-beaters, trumpeters of brazen idols with feet of clay.�

�Oh, shut up. Does John Martin say anything in the Times about us?�

�He says that the Grand Saint Petersburg Ballet is leaving town next week for a five-month tour.�

She grabbed the Times away from me and read the column on �Dance� with the desperate concentration of a ballerina hunting for a good notice.

�Certainly a plug for Eglanova,� she said at last, critically.

�Well, she�s had a lot of them in her day.�

�Wouldn�t it be wonderful if she retired of her own free will?� said my good-hearted girl.

�I don�t see why. She�d be miserable. She doesn�t want to teach. I think it�s real fine the old woman can keep going like this���and still be a big draw all over the map.�

Jane scowled. �It�s so hard on the rest of us���I mean, it keeps everybody back.�

I snorted. �Listen to her! A week ago you were one of those lousy cygnets in Swan Lake pounding up and down the stage with three other girls in a Minsky routine and now you�re thinking of the day when you�ll succeed Eglanova.�

With one long liquid line as a certain ballet critic might have described it, Jane Garden dealt me a thunderous blow with the pillow. After a stiff fight, I subdued her at last���quite a trick considering she is a solid girl and, in spite of her lovely silklike skin, all muscle.

�It�s not true!� she gasped, her hair like a net over the white sheet as I held her tight on her back.

�Delusions���that�s what it is.�

�Everybody feels the same way. Ask any of the girls.�

�Vicious group���ambitious, untalented.�

�Oh!� And she twisted away from me and sat up in bed, breathing hard as she pushed her hair out of her face.

�It wouldn�t surprise me one little bit if you knocked off Ella just to get her place in the company.�

Jane laughed mournfully. �I don�t need to tell you that our company works on the caste system. I was number seven ballerina before Ella died.�

�But now you�re number two because you knew that if Ella was out of the picture I�d see to it you got her part.�

�Everything has worked out nicely,� said Jane, beaming.

�You have no conscience.�

�None at all. Especially now that the case is over.�

�Were you afraid of being caught?�

�Well, seriously, I didn�t feel so good when poor Miles died.�

�Why?�

�Well, darling, I was there.�

�There?�

�I saw him about an hour before he died���I stopped off on my way to the party.�

�Good God!� I sat up in bed and looked at her����Did you tell Gleason that?�

�No, I didn�t. I���I suppose I was afraid.�

�You little fool.�� I was alarmed. �Don�t you realize that he had that building watched, that Miles was being watched every minute of the day and night no matter where he was? Did you go in the front way?�

�Did I go in �? Of course I did. What do you think���

�Then he knows that you were there and that you didn�t mention it when he questioned you. What do you think he�ll make of that?�

�But���Miles did do it, didn�t he? The case is closed?� she asked in a small voice. I sometimes think that dancers have less brains than the average vegetable.

�I don�t know that he did and neither do the police. I have a hunch he didn�t but I may be wrong. Even so, no matter what the papers say or Gleason says, those boys are still interested in what happened to Ella���and maybe to Miles, too.�

�I think you�re exaggerating.� But she was scared.

�By the way, if I�m not being indiscreet, just what were you doing at Miles� apartment that night?�

�I had a message for him, from Magda.�

�Who paid a call on him later, after he was dead.�

�I know���but she wanted me to see him and tell him something. Her family was watching her like a hawk and she told me she wasn�t able to get away and would I please go and see him.�

�This was before Don Ameche�s invention of the telephone or the establishment of a national post office.�

�I wish you wouldn�t try to be funny.�

�I couldn�t be more serious.�

�Then act like it.�

�I am acting like it���God damn it.�� We snarled at each other for several minutes; then she told me that Magda had not been able to leave her room for several days, that her family did not let her near the phone. Except for one stolen visit, Miles was not allowed to see her; as a matter of fact, the family had been reluctant to let her see even Jane.

�What did Magda want you to tell him?�

�What difference does it make now?���the whole thing�s finished.�

�Come on���what did she want you to tell him?�

�It was about the child. She wanted to know if Miles would like her to have an abortion.�

�What did he say to that?�

�He said no, that they were going to get married as soon as the trial was over.�

�How was he when you saw him?�

�High as a kite���he didn�t make much sense���he kept rambling about the new ballet���I mean about Eclipse and Mr. Washburn���he was angry at him. I don�t know why.�

�Had Washburn been to see him?�

�No, not then.�

�How did you know he did see him that night?� I was like a district attorney, ready for the kill. But it didn�t work.

�Because I saw Mr. Washburn outside in the street when I left and he asked me how Miles was, if he was high or not.�

�That was an awfully busy street that night, with half the company running in and out of Miles� apartment.�

�Oh, stop trying to be smart. You sound like a movie.�

�That may be,� I said somberly. �Was Mr. Washburn upset when he saw you?�

�He was surprised; after all, we were both supposed to be at the party.�

�He didn�t swear you to secrecy���

�Oh, stop it, will you? I don�t think it�s funny.�

�I don�t either. As a matter of fact it may be very serious���your having gone there without telling Gleason about it.�

�He didn�t ask me. After all, I didn�t lie to him.�

�What did he ask you?�

�Just a lot of questions���general things.�

It was no use; when Jane decides to be vague it is like collecting fragments of quicksilver from a broken thermometer to get a straight story out of her.

�You better go and tell Gleason what you told me.�

�I certainly won�t now that everything�s finished.�

�Then don�t say I didn�t warn you.�

At three o�clock I went to the office of the ballet and she went to rehearsal and neither of us was in a good mood. I was both angry and worried at what she had done. I wondered whether or not I should tell Gleason myself. For a number of reasons I decided not to. I did wonder if Mr. Washburn had told Gleason. This possibility had not occurred to me before; now, when I thought of it, my worry turned to alarm.

I found Mr. Washburn in his office playing with some silly putty which an admirer had given him; in case you haven�t come across it, silly putty is a pink substance which, if rolled in a ball, will bounce better than rubber, which will shatter if you hit it with a hammer and which will stretch to an unbelievable length if you pull it���there is no point to silly putty and I took it as a serious sign that Mr. Washburn should now be stretching a long pink rope of it, like bubble gum, across his Napoleonic desk.

�I told you you could have the day off,� said my employer, unabashed, beginning to plait the substance. Had his mind snapped under the strain?

�I thought I�d drop by and take care of a few things. Toledo wants some photographs, so I thought��� I watched, fascinated, while Mr. Washburn made a hangman�s noose.

�Wonderful house last night,� said Mr. Washburn. �The best so far.�

�Good press this morning.�

�Gratifying���gratifying. Did you ever see this stuff before?�

�Yes.�

�Wonderful idea���relaxes the nerves.� He rolled the putty into a ball and bounced it on the carpet where it sank deep; Mr. Washburn had to duck under his desk to retrieve it.

�By the way,� I asked, �have you decided if you�ll open the Chicago season with the new Wilbur ballet?�

�Mid-season���we�ll do it our third week. I haven�t picked the day yet.�

�Shall we do anything about Miles� funeral tomorrow?�

Mr. Washburn draped the silly putty over his upper lip like a mustache, only it looked more like some awful cancerous growth; he frowned. �Better do nothing about it, Peter. The quicker this business is forgotten the better. Besides, it�s going to be a family affair. A couple of aunts and a grandmother appeared on the scene, from Jersey, and they�re in charge.�

�Are you going?�

Mr. Washburn shook his head and returned the silly putty to its egg-shaped plastic container. �I don�t think I will. I passed word on to the others that I thought it might be a good idea for them not to go either���papers would be sure to print a picture of Eglanova at the funeral, and give it space.�

�Then I won�t go either.� I was relieved. I don�t like funerals. Then I asked him, very casually, if he had said anything to the police about seeing Jane at Miles� apartment the night he died.

Mr. Washburn looked at me gravely. �She was a very unwise young lady not to tell the police she was there.�

�Did you tell them?�

�No, I didn�t. Which was unwise of me I suppose, but I have no intention of losing Garden just as she�s begun to dance like a real ballerina. Under the circumstances I don�t think the police are very much interested. After all, it�s to their advantage to have the case finished.�

�I suppose you�re right.�

�By the way, what did you tell that man from the Veterans� Committee yesterday?�

�I told him that it was up to them to prove Wilbur was a Communist.�

Mr. Washburn chuckled. �You will be happy to know that you have been accused of being a Communist-sympathizer, a party-liner, a fellow-traveler and a degenerate by one Abner Fleer���have you got anything to say in your defense?�

�Nothing at all���except that I was driven into the hands of the enemy by Mr. Fleer and his kind in the days of my youth; even before my America First button had begun to tarnish, I found myself disenchanted with the keepers of the flame.�

�I sympathize with you. The charges against Wilbur are getting serious, though. The columnists are beginning to take up the question, and, frankly, I�m worried about Chicago. It�s not like New York. The Veterans� Committee is a joke here but out there it carries a lot of weight and we may be in trouble if they decide to blackball us.�

�What can we do?�

�I wish I knew.�

�Couldn�t we take an ad and say that he�s already been cleared twice?�

�We�ll have to do something like that. Think about it, anyway. That�s your big assignment for the next week���getting Mr. Wilbur, and us, off the hook.�

�I�ll think of something,� I said with that same air of quiet confidence which has made a fortune for any number of movie actors, con-men and politicians.

Eglanova, in a summer dress and a set of sables (the day was hot but she wouldn�t be Eglanova without sable), swept into the office. We both rose and Mr. Washburn leaned across the desk and kissed her hand.

�Such wonderful last night!� she exclaimed, glowing with pleasure. �Such applause! Such loyalty! I weep to remember it.�

But her narrow mascaraed eyes were dry, the lashes as artfully curled as ever.

�Darling Anna! You are the prima of our time���the ultimate.�

�Such nice thing to say, Ivan. Of course last night I tried. That makes difference. But those awful people!� She scowled, looking like Attila the Hun or maybe Genghis Khan contemplating traitors. �Who are these people anyway? Who are people who throw things when Eglanova dances? Ivan, you must do something.�

�They weren�t throwing things at you, Anna. They were throwing them at Wilbur.�

�Even so they hit me when I dance Swan Queen. If they don�t like Jed why don�t they throw things during Eclipse?�

Mr. Washburn laughed. �I expect they intended to but they got their signals mixed. In any case, we won�t have trouble with them in Chicago���rest assured.� Eglanova did not look as though she were resting assured but she changed the subject.

�Dear Peter,� she said, turning to me and smiling a dazzling smile, �I must thank you for not telling police about those big scissors. It was sweet of you���very brave. I thank you.� And she patted my arm.

�I told her,� said Mr. Washburn. �I told her that you didn�t want to incriminate her.�

I mumbled something graceful and incoherent.

�So strange,� sighed Eglanova. �Why would Miles want to put scissors in my room? I who am last person to harm fellow artist.�

Both Mr. Washburn and I expressed wonder at the murderer�s intention; then, aware that some ballet plot was afoot, I excused myself. I was sure, even then, that Mr. Washburn had told the police about having seen Jane at Miles� apartment.

1

Medical examination, inquest, more questioning���it promised to be a long day. When I was not participating in the official rites of investigation, conducted as solemnly as a church service by Gleason, I was at the office holding Mr. Washburn�s hand and battling some thirty newsmen who had appeared at nine o�clock in the morning (proving we were news) and stayed in the anteroom chatting with our duo-typists most of the day, complaining about the meager handouts they got from me. The police were saying nothing and I had silenced the members of our company. Even so there were a dozen wild theories in the air and the editorial in the afternoon Globe demanded that the murderer be instantly produced���if not, the Globe suggested balefully, there might be some changes made in the office of the Commissioner.

I was almost afraid to read the columns that afternoon. The news stories were all right: they just reported the facts, which were few���Third Murder in Ballet Mystery. But the columnists, in their own libelous way, were hinting pretty strongly that someone highly placed in the ballet world, in our company, had done the three murders. Needless to say, in spite of the official theory, everyone was convinced that there was a connection between the deaths of Miles and Ella and Magda. The Globe had the inside story. Beloved Elmer Bush had seen to that. His column made the front page���an exclusive report by An Eyewitness.

�Little did I think, as I talked with the beauteous Magda, that a few moments later she would lie broken and alone in the street below. She must have known even then what fate had in store for her. There was something other-worldly in her manner, a remoteness, a true serenity. I think she wanted to join her friend Miles Sutton in a better world, to be as one with the father of her unborn child. Yet as we stood talking to one another in that busy rehearsal studio, a murderer was watching us, plotting her destruction. Did she know his (or her?) identity? Yes, I have reason to believe she did���

�I don�t want to hear any more,� said Mr. Washburn, draining his third shot of brandy.

�It�s more of the same,� I said, putting the paper down on the floor, to join the pile by my chair. We were in his office. One of the duo-typists had brought us sandwiches for lunch and the newsmen had momentarily deserted us. We were taking no calls and reading no mail.

�I wonder if we shouldn�t take that South American tour���we could leave next week���well, in two weeks� time anyway. First Guatemala City then Panama, Bogot�, Rio, Buenos Aires��� Naming these remote places seemed to soothe my employer who sat now sniffing his empty brandy glass, his eyes bloodshot and glazed.

�I�m afraid the police wouldn�t let us go,� I said gently.

He pulled himself together with a visible effort. �You take over,� he said, as though I hadn�t been in charge all along, since nine anyway. �I�m going down to City Hall. After that, I�ll be at the studio in case you want me.�

�The rehearsals still going on?�

�Oh yes. Gleason was very decent about that. In fact, he�s moved into one of the classrooms���the one where��� He stopped. �I suppose he wants to be on the scene.�

�Try and stop them,� I said, as Mr. Washburn placed his panama squarely on the center of his long head, the grim parallel to the floor.

�Stop who?�

�The police���when you see them. I think they�re going to make an arrest.�

�What makes you think so?�

�First, because I�ve read the papers today. They want an arrest. And, second, because Jane is being watched by the police.�

�I�m sure they don�t suspect her.�

�It�s a toss-up, Mr. Washburn, between her and Eglanova.�

He shuddered. �Don�t say that. Don�t even think it.�

�I�m perfectly willing not to think it but some of these columnists won�t be so obliging. They�ve done everything except name names. �Jealous ballerina����that�s their line, and that could mean only one of two people.�

�Let�s wait until we come to this bridge,� said Mr. Washburn, with the air of a man ready to fall into a river. Then he left the office.

But I couldn�t wait. I wasn�t really worried about Jane. She was obviously innocent and if they indicted her they wouldn�t be able to convict. I was confident of that. But even if justice prevailed she would be marked all her life as the girl who had been accused of a murder. I can still remember what happened to a certain musical comedy star back in the Thirties.

I sat at Mr. Washburn�s desk for several minutes, more worried than I�d ever been in my life. Idly, with a pencil stub, I began to write names: Eglanova, Wilbur, Alyosha, Washburn, Louis���I stopped; then I wrote Jane�s name at the bottom. I made a box around it, carefully, an elaborate doodle, like a wall protecting her. I was confident that one of those six had been responsible for the murders. But which one? I had to admit to myself that for all I cared the murderer could go free. The Suttons and Magda meant nothing to me; if someone disliked them or feared them enough to want to kill them, well, that was hardly my business. A callous way of looking at things but you must remember that I liked the suspects, most of them anyway, and I wished them no harm���I�m not a crusader or a reformer and I have no passion for justice: not the crazy way the world is now at least. Official murder, private murder���what�s the difference? Not much, except when you�re involved yourself or someone you care about is. The more I thought about it the madder I got.

I was very grim when I wrote �Why?� at the top of the page; then, next to it, I wrote �How?� Just trying to be methodical made everything seem much better. At least it was all in front of me���like a crossword puzzle, or a double acrostic. If I could only fill in the blanks under each column I might be able to figure it out without leaving my desk���as you see, I have that happy faith in logic which only a liberal arts education can give.

Eglanova. Why? Well, she didn�t want to retire. She knew that Mr. Washburn could not get another ballerina with her pull at the box office for at least a year���except Ella Sutton. That was motive enough for someone of Eglanova�s dedication. As for Miles and Magda, I was convinced that their deaths were connected with Ella�s, that they had been killed because they knew who the murderer was���which took care of the �Why?� of their deaths. So the only important motive was the original one: who wanted to kill Ella Sutton; who had the strongest known motive? The answer was Eglanova. When could she have done the murders? Presuming that Miles had been murdered in some mysterious way. Well, she was at the theater from dress rehearsal to performance, almost continuously. She could have cut the cable any time. And Miles? She was at the party Alma Edderdale gave and she could have left at any time, gone to his apartment and climbed the fire escape without being seen by the police. But even as I checked her in, made it possible for her to have visited Miles, I felt a certain misgiving: it was not in character. Anna Eglanova might in a rage eliminate a rival, but I could hardly see the great ballerina skulking up a fire escape in the middle of the night. Of course everything is possible. As for Magda���well, any of my six suspects could have pushed her out of that window. There was such confusion when the rehearsal broke up that someone could have followed Magda into the classroom, grabbed the purse, shoved her out the window and slipped back into the studio, all undetected.

Sadly, I crossed out �How?� at the top of the page. It wouldn�t work, or rather it worked too well: no one had an alibi. Each time the doughty six had been in the same place at more or less the same time and all had equal opportunity to commit the murders. So, instead of �How?� I wrote a large question mark over the column next to �Why?� Here I recorded the mysteries.

Opposite Eglanova�s name I wrote �Shears.� If she had sliced the cable, why did she leave the shears in her own dressing room? That was a problem which I left unsolved as I moved on to the next name on the list.

Wilbur. Why? God knows. He didn�t get on with Sutton but obviously if he hated her, for some reason as yet unknown, he would hardly have come to work in the same company with her, create a whole new ballet around her. Was he jealous of her? No. He didn�t like women to begin with; nor did their love interests overlap. Professional jealousy? None that I could see. Something in the past, perhaps? Mysteries? Why did he quarrel with Ella the afternoon of the day she was killed?

Alyosha. Why? Love for Eglanova and hatred of Ella his ex-mistress. That was clear-cut, a perfect crime of passion. He had been married to Eglanova, left her for Ella who had deserted him; then he went back to Eglanova, as official slave and acolyte, and now, seeing that Eglanova was soon to be succeeded by Sutton, he lost his head and removed Ella from this vale of tears. Mysteries? Why would he put the shears in Eglanova�s dressing room, implicating her if he�d done the murder for love of her? My head began to ache. Those god-damned shears���they made a mess of every theory. Then a new idea occurred to me. Suppose the person who had done the murder had put the shears some place else and then another villain had, for malicious reasons, put them in Eglanova�s room from which I moved them again���button button who�s got the button?

Washburn. Why? Well, he is the most devious man alive. For all I know he may have wanted to get rid of both Sutton and Eglanova, and he saw this as a perfect way to take care of them. Among the mysteries was the fact of that letter I found from Armiger, the English ballerina. Why had Mr. Washburn wanted to engage a big star when the succession had already been arranged, when it had been all but announced that Sutton was to succeed Eglanova for the next season? And what was Mr. Washburn really up to at Miles� apartment that night?

Louis. Why? I could think of no reason. There was an old rumor in the company that Ella fancied him but since he was so obviously interested in the other side he could hardly have been disturbed by her love for him, presuming that glacier had ever experienced such a tender emotion. I made a note to ask Louis about Ella; it was possible that he had some unsuspected slant on her character. More and more I was convinced that her character would provide the clue to the puzzle.

Jane? Well, despite the mysterious visit to Miles and her incriminating presence in the classroom with Magda, she had no motive. She was not in line to succeed Sutton even though she was the understudy in Eclipse. She had no professional reason for wanting Ella out of the way and after living a while with her, I was fairly sure she had no private reason as well; their private lives had never touched, as far as I knew.

Gloomily, I studied the page, awaiting revelation. None came. The thought that my hypothesis might be wrong was chilling. I was going on the theory that X had killed Ella, that Miles had found out and was on the point of revealing X�s identity to the police when X, getting wind of this, jammed Miles� head into that gas burner, not knowing that Miles had somehow gotten a letter or document off to Magda, his proof that X had done the murder. Then X had made a date with Magda to meet her at the studio to discuss the letter���perhaps, even to buy it from her. When she wouldn�t hand it over X had seized the purse which contained whatever it was the murderer wanted and shoved Magda through the window. That was my theory, the police�s theory, too. But suppose Miles had killed Ella and then died of a heart attack and that Y, for reasons unknown, killed Magda? Or suppose���But I made up my mind not to think of any more difficulties. First, I would follow the obvious line; if that failed���well, it wouldn�t fail. As I look back on it now, I think my confidence in myself at that point was remarkably unjustified.

I had reason to believe from Gleason�s behavior that morning at the inquest that he was planning to make an arrest in the next twenty-four hours���Elmer Bush had said as much in his column and he had undoubtedly got it from the horse�s ass. I looked at my watch. Three-thirty. I had less than a day in which to find the murderer.

I spent about twenty valuable minutes on the telephone, lining up the suspects, making appointments for spurious reasons. Then I told the duo-typists that they would see me no more that day. If the press wanted news, I recommended they contact Gleason, or Elmer Bush. Miss Flynn wished me luck.

Eglanova�s maid let me in without comment. I sometimes wonder if she knows any English. From the bathroom I heard Eglanova�s voice above a Niagara of bathwater. �Peter! I am right out in one minute!�

The maid withdrew and, feeling like a Pinkerton man, I covered the living room and the bedroom with the speed of an Electrolux vacuum cleaner. Needless to say, I found nothing of interest. The rooms were an old-fashioned clutter of photographs and bric-a-brac and antimacassars, establishing, as her legs did not, that Eglanova was an Edwardian, a displaced person in time.

�If I keep you waiting, I am sorry,� she said, sweeping down on me in a creation of mauve satin, her head wrapped in a towel. �I wash my hair. First, soap and water. Then gasoline. Gives marvelous luster. Even during the war I use gasoline. I tell authorities Eglanova�s hair important, too. They give me little coupon book���so nice of them. And people say Americans are barbarians!� She sat down in her usual place by the window. I sat opposite her. The inevitable hot tea and lemon was brought us.

�You like nougat?�

I shook my head and watched, fascinated, while she devoured two large awful-looking pieces of nougat. �From admirer,� she said, her mouth full. �He sends me nougat from Rome, Italy. Only place for nougat���and Parma violets: I eat pound of violets at one sitting once when I dance in Florence.�

�I�ll stick to tea.�

�You never be big and strong,� she said and took a swig of tea. Outside the sun glared, like a globe of brass in the afternoon.

I decided the direct approach was best. �I think they�re going to arrest Jane.�

Eglanova blinked, as though I had made a move to strike her. Unsteadily, she put her tea beside the gaily painted nougat box on a marble-topped table. �What���why you think this?�

�She�s being watched every second by a plain-clothes man���the way they watched Miles when he was to be arrested.�

Eglanova smiled wryly. �They watch me, too, Peter. I am no fool. I know all along they suspect me. I have engaged two lawyers���in case.�

�Yes, they suspect you, too, but they�re making a case against Jane. Like a fool, she went to see Miles the evening he was killed, or died. She was with Magda in that classroom before Magda died.�

�But, child, she is so safe! She had no reason to kill Sutton. She never has reason. Surely even that brute who asks questions must know this thing.�

�I�m sure he knows it and I�m also sure that he has to arrest somebody or there�ll be trouble for him and the police department, from the papers, from the public.�

�So they give her trial and she is innocent.�

�In the meantime her reputation is ruined. All her life people will say: �Oh, yes, she was mixed up in that ballet murder.� Because by the time the case falls flat, the real murderer will have covered his tracks and the case might never be solved and she�ll always be suspected. People will say a smart lawyer got her out of it. You know the way they talk. They always want to believe the worst.�

�Poor little Jane.�

�I want to stop it before we really have to say poor little Jane.�

Eglanova laughed. �And I help you? They arrest poor Anna Eglanova instead?�

�They would never arrest you.�

�I am not so sure of that. Of course I did not kill this vile woman but I tell you one thing: if I did kill her I would do such good job there be no talk of murder. I know ways,� and looking like a real murderess she shut those Asiatic eyes of hers until they were like black slanting lines drawn on her white face.

�Then who did kill her?�

�Meaning if I did not? Ah, you are not gallant.�

�No, I didn�t mean that.�

�I don�t know. I think sometimes I know but I am afraid���very afraid.�

�Think back to that night at the theater. Can�t you remember anything which might help us, you and Jane and me?�

�I try. God how I try all time! I go to Greek church and pray something happen���that whole thing be forgotten by a miracle. But no miracle, and I remember nothing. I am in dressing room almost all time. I go for little dinner across the street. I come back. I stay in dressing room. Why I never even know where cable is until afterward. After all, I am not in ballet. I pay no attention to ballets in which I am not dancing. I had no idea I was connected with whole thing until Ivan told me about shears and how you save me embarrassment. For which I am so grateful.�

�Then try and help now.�

�I pray for miracle. Otherwise I can do nothing.� She had never seemed so oriental to me before���like a peasant woman in Samarkand.

�Who do you think killed Ella?�

She looked away, very pale. �Don�t ask me this question.�

�But you want to help.�

�Not like this���not to hurt people I care about.�

�If you don�t help, Jane will be hurt���maybe you will be, too.�

�I have good lawyers,� she mumbled, looking away, out the window at the sunlit yard, at the garbage pails gleaming dully in the light.

�And so has Jane,� I lied. �We�ve already discussed what their strategy will be if she is indicted. They intend to incriminate you as the person with the greatest single motive.� This was wild but it had the effect I wanted.

Her head jerked around toward me and the narrow eyes opened wide���I saw, I think for the first time, that Eglanova�s eyes were as gray as metal, as silver as steel.

�Let them. I am not afraid.�

�Not even of the publicity, of the months in and out of court? Because they won�t be able to convict her and they�ll indict you next and maybe they�ll be able to make the conviction stick, lawyers or no lawyers.� It is not possible for a white face to turn pale but if it were I could have seen the change right then and there���as it was her face sagged.

�Then they find out truth,� she said at last, slowly, looking at me all the time with those silver cat�s eyes of hers.

�And the truth?�

�Don�t you know? Can�t you guess? It is so plain. It is why I have not slept for weeks. Why I grow sick. Why I almost fall off arabesque in Swan Lake on the last night���I am so weak���not because those terrible men throw things at stage, like I said, but because I am frightened for some person I adore!�

�For whom?�

�For Alyosha.�

I said nothing for several minutes and Eglanova, as though shocked herself by the enormity of what she had said, drank tea quickly, a thin trickle of it on her chin.

�Why did he do this?� I asked at last, softly, respectful of the panic which had brought her to make such an admission.

�We were married,� she said at last. �For a number of years. I am bad on time. I don�t remember how many years, but a long time, in this country, after I come with Grand Saint Petersburg from Paris. Then we grow apart. He is old man and I am young woman. He is tired and I am in my prime so we part, on good terms. I have my private life but I do not marry again. Alyosha falls in love with Ella and he loves her a long time, but like an old man���a mistake I tell him but he doesn�t listen, no, he thinks he can hold this little corps de ballet girl, but of course, she sees better opportunity and marries Miles, poor stupid Miles, who is fooled by tricks as old as woman. Then she becomes great star and Alyosha hates her, worse even than Miles. And he comes to me and I comfort him���we have no bitterness, Alyosha and I. He is like a brother to me always. When Washburn tries to replace me with Sutton, Alyosha is just like a madman���

�And Alyosha killed Ella?�

She nodded, not looking at me. �I think that is what happened.�

�Do you mean to tell me that after he killed Ella he put the murder weapon in your room���to throw suspicion on you?�

�I don�t know���I don�t know���I don�t know what happened after that���maybe he uses something else to cut with. I only tell you all this now because I have very little time, because I can dance only one two more seasons and because I have so little time I cannot be involved for many months in courts, with lawyers. I put dance ahead of Alyosha���ahead of me, child, ahead of everything. It is the big thing���and though I love Alyosha I never ask him to kill this Sutton.� She stopped abruptly and put her empty tea glass on the table with a click. �He was not wise but he is old man and very bitter. You should have seen him the way he was in Russia���yes, I am almost old myself. I remember him when he was young dancer���so handsome, such man! you have never seen such man! Women, men, children they fall in love with him, follow him in streets everywhere he goes. Then we leave Russia and go on tour and all Europe loves him. Not because he is such good dancer like Nijinski but because he is so beautiful, because he is so good���but that was a long time ago, child. We are old now.� And I saw the tears in her eyes. She did not speak to me again and so, with a murmured good-by, I left her.

1

I doubt whether I will ever forget that evening I spent with Louis; we did New York from the Village to Harlem in something under nine hours, from eleven-thirty that night to eight-thirty the next morning when I crawled off to bed.

We met at the Algonquin. From there we went to a bar in the Village���Hermione�s I think it�s called.

I thought I knew a great deal about our feathered friends, the shy, sensitive dancers and so on that I�ve met these last few years in New York, but that night with Louis was an eye-opener���it was like those last chapters in Proust when everybody around starts turning into boy-lovers until there isn�t a womanizer left on deck.

�You�ll like this bar,� said Louis with a happy grin as he marched me into a long blue-lit tunnel, an upholstered sewer, with a number of tables in back and a bar in front. Heads turned to look at us; there was a hiss of recognition when they saw Louis. He�s hot stuff in these circles.

We pushed our way to the back of the bar and a mincing youth, a waiter, found us a table right by the stage, a wooden platform about four feet square with a microphone in front of it and a piano beside it. The stage was empty. A tired little man sat at the piano, banging away.

�They have a swell show here,� said my guide.

�What will it be, big boy?� said Mae West, behind me; I turned and saw that it wasn�t Miss West���only our waiter who despite his debutante slouch managed to give a vivid impersonation of that great American lady.

Louis ordered gin and I ordered a coke, to Louis� horror but I was firm���I had no intention of getting tanked tonight, for a number of reasons, all good.

The pianist, getting a look at Louis, played a hopped-up version of Swan Lake in his honor and a more godawful noise I�ve never heard. He was rewarded with a big smile from the French Nijinski.

�Nice, isn�t it? They know me here even though I only get down this way maybe once twice a season.�

�Tell me, Louis, how does it feel to be famous?� And believe it or not he told me; it was the last time I ever tried irony on that boy���on any dancer because, for some reason or another, they are the most literal-minded crew in the world.

When he had finished telling me what it was like at the end of a ballet when the applause was coming up out of the darkened house (�like waves�), our waiter eased by with the drinks as I watched, fascinated. Most queens walk in a rather trotting manner with necks and shoulders rigid, like women, and the lower anatomy swiveling a bit; not our waiter, though���he was like Theda Bara moving in for a couple of million at the box office, in the days when a dollar was a dollar.

�Here�s your poison,� he said in that slow Mae Western manner of his.

�That�s a boy,� said Louis and he swallowed a shot of gin which he immediately chased with a mouthful of water. He grimaced. �Lighter fluid,� he said.

�What did you expect, lover, ambrosia?� Obviously a literary belle, our waiter���and what a joy it was to hear her say �ambrosia�!

�Just a little old-fashioned gin.�

�You want some more?�

�The real stuff.�

The belle looked at him beneath sleepy lids which even in the dim light I could see had been heavily mascaraed. �Are you that dancer?�

�That�s me.� And Louis flashed the ivory smile.

�That�s what Mary said when you came in but I said, no, this one�s too old.�

One for the belle, I said to myself, as Louis� smile vanished. �Get the gin,� he said, suddenly rough and surly.

�I didn�t mean any offense,� said the belle, with a smile of triumph; she ambled off swaying like some tall flower in a summer breeze.

�Bitch,� said Louis, in a bad temper. But then two admirers came over, college boy types, very young and drunk.

�Hey, you Louis Giraud aren�t you?� asked one of them, a crewcut number, short and stocky. The other was a gentle-looking blond.

�Yes,� said Louis, obviously taking no chances after his experience with the waiter.

�See, what did I say?� said the short one to the tall one.

�He�s kidding you,� said the blond.

�No, he�s not,� I said, just to be helpful; Louis was beginning to look very tough indeed.

�Giraud�s right calf is about half an inch thicker than his left,� said the blond.

I could tell by the gleam in his eye that he was a balletomane.

�Please show us,� said the short one. �I got a bet.��

Louis, exhibitionist to the last, pulled up his trouser legs to reveal those massive legs, like blue marble in this light; sure enough one calf was bigger than the other. They both touched him very carefully, like children in a museum. �I win,� said the short one and he pulled the taller one away, with some difficulty now that Louis� identity had been established.

�Nice boys,� said Louis, with his old good humor. �Like little pussycats, fuzzy and nice.�

�They don�t look much like pussycats to me,� I said austerely.

�Why don�t you come off it, Baby? Stop all this girl-business.�

�I can�t help it, Louis. I got a weak character.�

�I could teach you a lot,� said Louis with a speculative look; before he could start the first lesson, however, the belle returned with another shot of gin.

�Compliments of the management, Miss Pavlova,� said the belle insolently.

�Why don�t you go stuff���

�That�s no way to talk to a lady,� said the belle, with a faraway Blanche Dubois smile.

But then the chief entertainer Molly Malloy came over, a man in his late thirties with small regular features; he was wearing a crimson evening gown and a blond wig like Jean Harlow.

�Hi, there, Louis, long time no see,� said Molly in a husky voice, not precisely female but on the other hand not very male either. He sat down at our table, drawing all eyes toward us. I felt very self-conscious.

�How�re you doing, Molly? I�ve been tied up all season���haven�t been able to get out once.�

�That�s not what I hear. This your new chick?� asked Molly, giving me the eye.

�Yeah,� said Louis, beaming, �Pretty cute piece, huh?�

�Well you always get the best, dear. And I know why.� There was much vulgar laughter and I looked politely away, looked toward the bar where youths and old men of every description were furtively nudging one another, all engaged in the maneuvers of courtship. It was a very interesting thing to watch.

�You still doing the same act, Molly?�

�Haven�t changed it in ten years���my public wouldn�t let me���even if I could. Tell me, dear, about all that excitement you�ve been having uptown: all those dancers murdering each other. Who did it?�

�Damned if I know,� said Louis, and he changed the subject, the way he had with me all night whenever I tried to get the conversation around to the murders, tried to question Louis about one or two things which had to be cleared up before I could get the proof I needed. But Louis wasn�t talking. And I wasn�t giving up���not if I had to get him drunk, a hard job but, under the circumstances, a necessary one since I�d heard he talks a lot when he�s drunk and there�s truth in the grape, as the ancients used to say.

�Well, dear, it�s been a real sensation���let me tell you. And such publicity! If it doesn�t sell tickets my name isn�t Molly Malloy.� I couldn�t help but wonder whether or not his name really was Molly Malloy. �Come here, Miss Priss,� said Molly sternly to our waiter who obeyed with the air of a royal princess dispensing favors, or maybe Saint Theresa scrubbing floors. �Another gin for Louis Giraud the dancer, another coke and a Tom Collins���understand?�

�You don�t have to act like I was deaf,� said the aggrieved, petulantly; another round was brought us and when Louis finished his third shot of gin he was definitely in a joyous mood���just next door to drunkenness and indiscretion. I bided my time.

Then Molly Malloy went into his act, to the delight of the initiates though it was pretty bewildering to me, full of references to people I never heard of, and imitations of celebrated actresses which weren�t remotely like the originals, or anything else for that matter. He finished the act with a torch song and, when that was over, disappeared through a door behind the stage to much applause. Beneath clouds of blue smoke the pianist continued to play; voices sounded louder and the mating at the bar grew more intense and indecorous.

During Molly�s last number, Louis had taken my hand in his and held it like a vise. After a while I stopped trying to pull away; it wouldn�t last forever I knew. That�s what I always tell myself in difficult situations, like the war���fortunately he soon got tired of kneading my palm and let it drop. I sat on my hands for the next half hour.

�Swell place,� said Louis, after Molly left the stage. �Swell,� I said.

�I came here on my first night in New York���maybe ten years ago. I was just a kid from Europe���didn�t know a word of English. But I got by.� He laughed. �Right away a nice old gentleman took me home and since any French boy can make better love than any American, I got me a home real quick; then, later, I go into ballet here���to keep busy. I like work���work, sleep and��� He named his three passions.

�When did you meet Mr. Washburn?� I asked casually.

�When he came backstage at the old ballet company where I was working. I had done one beautiful Bluebird; I guess maybe the best damned Bluebird since Nijinski. Every company in America was after me. Washburn had the most money so I joined him and he made me premier danseur. I like him fine. He treats me like a king.�

�Don�t you ever get tired of those old ballets?�

�I hate all new dancing,� said Louis, diverted momentarily from his usual preoccupation with pussycats and such like.

�Even Jed Wilbur�s?�

Louis shrugged. �He�s the best of that kind, I guess. I don�t get much kick out of dancing in them, though���in Eclipse and now the new one.�

�Where the father kills the girl, isn�t it?�

�I think that�s the story. To tell you the truth I don�t pay much attention. I just do what they tell me. At least he let�s me do things I like to do���tours en l�air, that kind of thing. He keeps me happy.�

�I wonder what the story means?�

�Why don�t you ask Jed? He�ll talk your ear off about it. I just go to sleep when he starts getting arty with me.�

�You sound like Eglanova,�

He snorted. �We got that in common then. I love her. She�s like a mother to me, ever since I�ve known her: Louis, you do this, Louis, you do that���Louis, don�t go out with sailors, Louis, don�t snap your head when you finish pirouette, Louis, don�t take such deep bows after ballet���I never had any mother,� said Louis, and for a minute I thought he was going to have a good cry.

�It�s terrible,� I said, �the way Mr. Washburn tried to get rid of her before Sutton was killed.�

�He�s a bastard,� said Louis, gloomily licking the edge of his gin glass. �He can�t help it. He was just made that way���all the time doing somebody dirty���not that he isn�t good to me, as long as I�m hot with the audience. The second I have a little trouble, get bad reviews or something awful, good-by Louis, I know him.�

�He�s a businessman.�

�Ballet is art not business,� said Louis making, as far as I knew, his first and last pronouncement on ballet. �But you should�ve seen his face when he came to find out if me and Ella were going to quit the company for sure and go into night clubs. He looked like somebody had just belted him one. �Now, Louis, you know we�re old friends �� that was his line to me; so I strung him along awhile then I told him that Ella was just bluffing him.�

�Do you think she was?�

�At least as far as I was concerned. I didn�t have any intention of leaving the company, even though I�ve thought about it a lot. We had talked a little about it then and just lately Jed has been trying to talk me into doing that big musical of his this fall, but I said no; I mean the money�s very nice except that the government gets it all ���then you�re out of a job maybe six months of a year with no money coming in and it isn�t so swell. No, I like to know I got a regular amount coming in every week, ten months a year.� I hadn�t realized before that Louis was quite so money-conscious, so shrewd.

�I wonder why Ella told Washburn that, about your quitting the company together?�

�Just to worry him a little, to raise her price. She knew he couldn�t find another dancer to take her place. As a matter of fact, just between you and me, I think she was planning to leave ballet in a year or so, but alone. I think she wanted to go in musicals and I got a feeling that was why she was so keen on getting Jed to join the company. Oh, she wanted to do a real modern ballet and all that but she wanted to work on him to get her a Broadway job. She had an eye for all the angles.�

�I thought Jed joined the company because of you.�

�You�re pretty fresh, petit gosse,� said Louis with a grin, pinching my thigh until I just about yelled with pain. �I wasn�t talking about why Jed joined us; I was talking about why Ella wanted him to, why she sold Washburn on the idea.� I rubbed my leg until the pain went away. One day I am going to beat the hell out of Louis, if I can; if I can�t I�ll do a lot of damage first.

�Jed�s sure got it bad for you,� I said in an earnest, slightly breathless tone of voice.

�Funny, isn�t it?� said Louis, with a sigh, stretching his arms and controlling a yawn���it was stifling in the bar, a single fan made a racket but did not cool the warm smoke-filled air. �He�s been after me for years. Used to write me crazy letters even before we started working together.�

I waved to the waiter who, without asking, brought us another round; before he left he gave Louis a lightning grope and Louis didn�t like it but, as I pointed out, he was just getting some of his own medicine. He didn�t think that was very funny but after he�d swallowed some more gin he was in a better mood. I tried to get him to talk about Mr. Washburn but he wanted to talk about Jed. �I�m a lone wolf,� he said, wiping his sweaty face with the back of his hand. �Lots of guys get themselves a nice pussycat and settle down but not me���I used to be a pussycat for some older guys, when I was real young, but I didn�t like it much and besides it isn�t dignified for a man like me to be kept by somebody else, and that�s what Jed�s got in mind. He wants me to settle down with him and be his boy while he makes dozens of ballets for me until I�m too old to get around a stage. Even if I liked the idea of going to bed with him, which I don�t and never have, I couldn�t go for that kind of life and, as for his making ballets for me, well, that�s what he�s doing right now with Mr. Washburn paying for them in cash, not me paying for them in tail���I tell him all this a thousand times but he doesn�t listen. He�s made up his mind I�m his big love and there�s nothing I can do about it. You�d think somebody who�d been around dancers as long as he has wouldn�t feel that way, like a little girl, but he�s got a one-track mind. He came to us just because I was in the company���not because Ella wanted him or because Washburn offered him a lot of money. Believe me it�s been hell dodging him, too. I can�t take my clothes off but what he isn�t in the dressing room wrestling around. I finally convinced him that Ella, who was making eyes at me this season, and me were having a hot affair and I suppose he fell for it since I�ve been known to play the other side, too. I let Ella in on the secret and so we pretended we were having an affair which was fine until I found out she expected to have a real one���you could�ve knocked me over with a feather when she suggested the idea one afternoon, right after the season opened. I said no and from that time on till she died we were having trouble and I mean trouble. She used to do everything she could to break me up on stage and off. I hate to admit it but I was kind of relieved when that cable broke.�

So were a lot of people, I thought, sipping my third coke���I was getting more and more wide awake and, perhaps as a result of the caffein I was drinking, more and more keyed up.

Molly, in black satin and a dark wig, joined us. �Going to make a real night of it, dear?� he asked.

�First real bender this season,� said Louis, looking happy.

�Well, I must say you couldn�t pick a better place, and in better company,� said Molly giving me the eye. �You a dancer, honey?�

I said that I was, in the corps de ballet.

�My, they�re much more butch than they used to be,� said Molly, turning to Louis. �What�s happened to the mad girls who used to be in your company?�

�Flew away,� giggled Louis. �Spread their wings and flew away.� psst! like that, all gone.�

�Well, it�s a new look,� said Molly, giving me a tender smile. We had a great deal more to drink and then we left Hermione�s. I was wide awake and a little jittery while Louis was roaring drunk, throwing passes almost as fast as I could catch them and throw them back.

At four in the morning we ended up in a Turkish Bath in Harlem. I was very innocent; I figured that if Louis tried to give me a rough time I�d be safe in the baths since they were, after all, a public place with a management which would come to my help if he got too horny. I was mistaken.

We undressed in separate lockers, like a beach house, then we went upstairs to the baths: a big swimming pool, then steam rooms and hot rooms and, beyond these, a dark dormitory with maybe a hundred beds in it where you�re supposed to lie down and take a nap after your pores have been opened by the heat. Only nobody takes a nap.

Standing by the pool in a strong light, I was very embarrassed not only by what was going on but by Louis who was staring at me, taking inventory. �Where�d you get those muscles, Baby?� he asked, in a low husky voice.

�Beating up dancers,� I said evenly. But I wasn�t too sure of myself. Louis looked like one of those Greek gods with his clothes off, all muscle and perfect proportions, including the bone head. Our presence caused even more of a stir than it had in the different bars. Fat old gentlemen came strolling by; one old fellow could hardly walk he was so old���he wheezed and puffed and he looked like a banker, very respectable, very ancient yet here he was, operating like mad, or wanting to.

�Let�s go in the steam room,� said Louis and, ignoring the pinches and the pawing, we got through the old gentlemen to the steam room where a number of youths, black and white and tan, were carrying on, dim shapes in the steam which hid everything over a foot away. All around the steam room was a concrete ledge or shelf on which the various combinations disported themselves, doing a lot of things I never thought possible. It was like being in hell: the one electric bulb in the steam room was pink and gave a fiery glow to the proceedings. For the first time that night I was tempted to give up, to run away, to let the whole damned murder case take care of itself. Only the thought of Jane kept me in that steam room.

We climbed up on the ledge out of the way. Louis stretched out beside me while I sat straight up, legs crossed, and he made love noises. It was pretty terrible. Fortunately, he was drunk and not as quick as usual and I was able to keep his hands off me. For several hours I had been trying to clear something up but I couldn�t. He was either on to me or else he was too drunk to make sense.

�Come on, Baby, lie down,� he mumbled through the steam as dark shadows moved by us, shadows which would abruptly become curious faces; then, seeing us together, seeing my furious scowl, would recede into the ruddy mist.

�I told you one million times, Louis, I don�t like it,� I said in a low voice.

He sat up, his face so close to mine that I could make out the little red veins which edged the bright blue irises of his eyes. �You don�t think I don�t know all about you,� he said. �You think I don�t know about Jane?�

�What about Jane?�

�You know as well as I do. Everybody in the company knows���no use your trying to bluff.�

�What�re you talking about?�

�About Jane and Ella.�

�What about them?�

�Stop looking so dumb���Ella had a big thing with Jane, didn�t you know that? Just last year. Everybody knew. Ella was crazy for Jane. As long as I knew Ella, Jane was the only person she ever got excited over, except maybe me and that was just because I wouldn�t have anything to do with her.�

�I don�t believe it.�

�Then go ask Jane���she�ll tell you. Maybe she�ll tell you about the fight they had���if she doesn�t, the police will.�