picked her up? And this White Priory — hold on! I'm thinkin' Look here, it seems to me I remember reading about some house there; a pavilion or the like, attached to the White Priory, that they won't let tourists see… '
'That's it. They call it The Queen's Mirror. Bohun says that the mania for importing marble into England and building imitation temples on ornamental sheets of water is traceable to the Bohuns who built the place. That's not true, by the way. The craze didn't start until a hundred years later, in eighteenth-century fashions. But Bohun violently believes it. Anyhow, it seems that ancestor George Bohun built it about 1664 for the convenience and splendor of Charles's all-alluring charmer Lady Castlemaine. It's a marble pavilion that contains only two or three rooms, and stands in the middle of a small artificial lake; hence the name. One of the scenes of Maurice's play is laid there.
'John described it to me one afternoon when he and Marcia and I were sitting on deck. He's a secretive sort, and-I should think — nervous. He always says, 'Maurice has the intelligence of the family; I haven't; I wish I could write a play like that,' and then smiling casually while he looks at people (especially Marcia) as though he were waiting for them to deny it. But he's got a flair for description, and an artist's eye for effect. I should think he'd made a damned good director. When he got through talking, you could see the path going down through lines of evergreens, and the clear water with the cypresses round its edge, and the ghostly pavilion where Lady Castlemaine's silk cushions still keep their color. Then he said, as though he were talking to himself, `By God, I'd like to play the part of Charles myself. I could and stopped. Marcia looked up at him in a queer way; she said, quietly, that they had got Jervis Willard, hadn't they? He whirled round and looked at her. I didn't like that expression, I didn't like the soft way she half-closed her eyes as though she were thinking of something from which he was excluded; so I asked La Tait whether she had ever seen Queen's Mirror. And Bohun smiled. He put his hand over hers and said, `Oh, yes. That was where we first met.'
'I tell you, it didn't mean anything, but for a second it gave me a creepy feeling. We were alone on the deck, with the sea booming past and the deck-chairs sliding: and those two faces, either of which might have come out of canvas in an old gallery, looking at me in the twilight. But the next minute, along came Tim Emery, looking a little green but determined. He tried to be boisterous, and couldn't quite manage it. But it closed Bohun's mouth. Bohun detested both Emery and Rainger, and didn't trouble to conceal it.'
'About,' observed H. M. in a thoughtful rumble, 'about Messrs. Rainger and Emery. Do you mean to tell me that a highly paid director, well known in his own name, threw up a good job to chase across the ocean with this wench?'
'Oh, no. He's on leave after two years without a vacation. But he chose to spend his vacation trying to persuade Marcia not to be a fool.' Bennett hesitated, remembering the fat expressionless face with its cropped black hair, and the shrewd eyes that missed no detail. 'Maybe,' Bennett said, 'somebody knows what that man thinks about. I don't. He's intelligent, he seems to guess your thoughts, and he's as cynical as a taxi-driver.'
'But interested in Tait?'
'Well possibly.'
'Signs of manifest doubt. You're very innocent, son,' said H. M., extinguishing the stump of his cigar. 'H'm. And this fella Emery?'
'Emery's more willing to talk than the others. Personally, I like him. He buttonholes me continually, because the others like to sit on him and he frankly detests 'em. He's the hopping, arm-flinging sort who can't sit still; and he's worried, because his job depends on getting Tait back to the studio. That's why he's there.'
'Attitude?'
'He seems to have a wife back in California whose opinions he brings into every conversation. No. Interested in Tait as the late Mr. Frankenstein was interested: as something he'd created or helped create. Then, yesterday -
The poisoned chocolates.” As he began to speak, the heavy gong-voice of Big Ben rose and beat in vibrating notes along the Embankment. It was a reminder. Another city, with its blue dusks and deathly lights where top-hats made faces look like masks, and where Marcia Tait's welcome had been as tumultuous as in New York. The liner had docked day before yesterday. In the crush as the boat-train drew into Waterloo station, he had not had the opportunity for a leave-taking. But John Bohun had elbowed through the corridor for a parting handshake. 'Look here,' he said, scribbling on a card, 'here's the address.' Once in London atmosphere, he was himself again; brisk, efficient, humorous-eyed, because he was at home. 'Marcia will go to the Savoy for one night, as a blind; she'll slip away tomorrow morning to this address. Nobody else knows it. We, shall see you, of course?'
Bennett said of course. He knew that Bohun and Marcia had had a sharp battle about that address before it was given to Rainger and Emery. 'But it will go to Lord Canifest,' said Marcia Tait, 'of course?' As he fought his way to a taxi, Bennett looked back to see Tait leaning out of a trainwindow in the sooty dimness, smiling, receiving flowers, and shaking hands with some man who had his back turned. A voice somewhere said, 'That's Jervis Willard'; and flashlights flickered. Lord Canifest, very benign, was being photographed with his daughter on his arm.
Speeding along Waterloo Bridge in a yellow December afternoon, Bennett wondered whether he would see any of them again. Ship's coteries break up immediately, and are forgotten. He went to the American Embassy, where there was solemn pomp and handshaking; then to fulfill his mission at Whitehall, amid more of the same. It was all done in a couple of hours. They put a two-seater Morris at his disposal, and he accepted two or three invitations that were his duties. Afterwards he felt lonely as the devil.
The next morning he was still more depressed, with Marcia Tait haunting his mind. In contrast to the easy comradeship of the liner, this dun-colored town was even more bleak. He was hesitating whether to go out to 16a Hamilton Place, the address on the card, and prowling aimlessly round Piccadilly Circus, when the matter was decided for him. At the mouth of Shaftesbury Avenue he heard a voice bellow his name, with friendly profanity, and he was almost run down by a big yellow car. People were staring at the car. From its massive silvered radiator-cap to the streamlined letters CINEARTS STUDIOS, INC., painted along the side, it was conspicuous enough even for the eye of Tim Emery, who drove it. Emery yelled to him to climb aboard, and Emery was in a bad humor. Bennett glanced sideways at the sharp-featured face, with its discontented mouth and sandy eyebrows, as they shot up Piccadilly.
'God,' said Emery, 'she's batty. The woman's gone clear batty, I tell you!' He hammered his fist on the steeringwheel, and then swerved sharply to avoid a bus. 'I never saw her like it before. Soon as she gets to this town, she goes high-hat. No publicity, she says. No publicity, mind you.' His voice rose to a yelp. He was genuinely bewildered and worried. 'I've just been round to see our English branch. Wardour Street bunch. Swell lot of help they are! Even if she did walk off the lot, I've still got to see she gets the breaks in the papers. Can you imagine, now-can you just imagine, I ask you-any woman who…'
'Tim,' said Bennett, 'it's none of my business, but you must realize by this time she's determined to put on that play.'
'But why? Why?'
'Well, revenge. Did you see the papers this morning?'
'Say,' observed Emery in an awed voice, 'she's sure got it in for these Limey managers, hasn't she? That won't do her any good. But why bother about what they say in this town, when she can pull down two thousand a week in a real place? God, that's what burns me up! As though she'd got a…h’mm,' said Emery, muttering to himself. 'Woman With A Purpose. That'd make a swell lead. You could get a great publicity story out of it. If I could shoot the works on that but I can't. I've got to stop it.'
'Short of hitting her over the head and kidnapping her,' said Bennett, 'I don't see what you can do about it.'
Emery peered sideways. The rims of his eyes were red, and his breath in the sharp air was heavily alcoholic. Bennett saw the signs of an embarrassing and theatrical, if honest, attack of sentimentality.
«Listen,' said Emery, breathing hard. He had treated the suggestion with the utmost seriousness. 'Kidnap her? Man, I wouldn't ruffle a hair of that girl's head, I wouldn't hurt her little finger so much as, for one split second in the world; and Lord help the man who tries it, that's all I've got to say. Yes. I love that woman like she was my own Margarette, and I want to see her have everything in the world…'
'Watch the road,' said Bennett sharply. 'Where are we going?'
'Out to reason with her, if she's there.' 'His white, fiercely earnest face turned away again. 'She went shopping this morning — in a wig, mind you. A wig. But I was telling you: if she wants to make a picture of this Charles-the-Second thing, all right. Why not? It's swell box-office. Radiant Pictures did one like that last year, and it
