“Sure, sure,” said Thumm, striving to speak pleasantly. “But then you retired people haven’t the headaches we working people have. For instance - who killed Wood? After all, Mr. Lane, I won’t ask you again about this X guy of yours - you know who killed Longstreet already.”

  “Inspector Thumm!” murmured the actor. “Do you compel me to reply in the words of Brutus? ‘I will with patience hear, and find a time both meet to hear and answer such high things. Till then, my noble friend, chew upon this.’ “ Lane chuckled. “Have you the autopsy report on Wood’s carcass?” Thumm looked at Bruno and Bruno looked at Thumm, and they both laughed, restored somehow to good humor. The Inspector picked up Dr. Schilling’s paper and handed it to Lane without comment.

  Drury Lane held it high before his eyes, studying the report with grave intentness. It was a laconic document, written with scrupulosity and Germanic flourishes in ink. Occasionally as Lane read he stopped to close his eyes in candid concentration.

  The report stated that Wood had been unconscious, not dead, at the time he was thrown overboard. This, it went on, from unmistakable signs of assault on that part of the head which had not been crushed. The theory of unconsciousness, wrote Dr. Schilling, was substantiated by the fact that a small quantity of water was present in Wood’s lungs, indicating that the man had been alive for a few seconds after plunging into the water. The inference was, then, continued the report, that Wood had been struck over the head with a blunt instrument, stunning him into unconsciousness, that he had been thrown overboard, had struck the water, still alive, and had in a very short period of time been crushed to death between the side of the Mohawk and the loose pilings.

  The report went on to state that traces of nicotine in the lungs were not abnormal, being due in all probability to a mild tobacco addiction. That the scar on the left leg was estimated to have been at least twenty years old; it had been an ugly deep curving gash; it had been rather unprofession- ally treated. That the slight trace of sugar in the blood was not sufficient to have made the victim diabetic. That there were definite evidences of alcoholism probably induced by strong-liquor addiction in a mild form. That the body was that of a middle-aged man of rugged constitution, with red hair; fingers splayed; nails irregular, indicating manual labor. That there was osseous evidence of a broken right wrist which was quite old and had knit well. That there was a small mole of the birthmark variety on the left hip; a two- year-old appendicitis scar; also evidences of a cracked rib which had been at least seven years old and had knit satisfactorily. That the body weighed two hundred and two pounds and was six feet and a half-inch tall.

  Drury Lane concluded his study of the document and, smiling, returned it to Inspector Thumm.

  “Get anything out of it, Mr. Lane?” asked Bruno.

  “Dr. Schilling is a meticulous workman,” replied Lane. “A most commendable report. It is remarkable that he was able to make such a comprehensive examination of that poor mangled body. And how are your suspicions of John DeWitt faring this morning?”

  “Very much interested?” parried Thumm.

  “Very much interested, Inspector.”

  “His movements yesterday,” said Bruno quickly, as if this answered the question, “are being traced.”

  “You are not withholding anything from me, Mr. Bruno?” murmured Lane, rising and settling his cape about his shoulders. “But then, I’m sure you are not… Thank you, Inspector, for having sent me a clear photograph of Longstreet. It may prove useful before the curtain comes down.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” said Thumm in an instantly pleasant tone. “Look here, Mr. Lane, I think it only fair to tell you that Bruno and I both have our minds set on DeWitt.”

  “Indeed?” Lane’s gray-green eyes swept from Thumm to the District Attorney. Then they clouded, and he grasped his stick more firmly. “I shall leave you to your work, gentlemen. I have myself something of a crowded itinerary today.” He strode across the room and turned at the door. “Let me earnestly advise you, however, to take no specific action against DeWitt at this time. We are face to face with a crucial moment, gentlemen. I say ‘we’,” and he bowed, “literally, believe me.”

  They shook their heads in a futile sort of way as Lane closed the door gently behind him.

  Scene 5

  THE HAMLET

  THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 12:30 P.M.

  If Inspector Thumm and District Attorney Bruno had been present at The Hamlet at half-past noon on Thursday, they would have challenged the evidence of their senses.

  They would have seen an amorphous Drury Lane - a Lane who was only half a Lane, whose eyes and speech were normal to the Lane composition, but whose dress was ludicrously unlike the normal Lane dress and whose face under the cunning hands of old Quacey was undergoing an amazing transformation.

  Drury Lane sat bolt-upright in a hard, straight-backed chair, before a triple mirror that reflected his image in full face, three-quarter face, profile and rear views at different angles. A brilliant bluish-white electric lamp shone directly on his face. The two floor-windows in the room were covered completely by dull-black shades, so that not the tiniest ray of the gray outdoor light penetrated into this chamber of wonders. The hunchback knelt on a bench facing his master, leather apron smeared with rouge and speckled with powder. On a solid table to Quacey’s right were scores of pigment jars, powders, rouge pots, mixing pans, delicate almost invisible brushes, bundles of varicolored human hair. Lying on the table was the photograph of a man’s head.

  They sat under the streaming glare like actors in a tableau out of the Middle Ages. The room they were in might have served as Paracelsus’s laboratory. It was large, littered with work-benches and débris; quaint battered old closets with shelves of queer articles stood open; the floor was strewn with wisps of hair and pied with varicolored putties that had been ground into the wood by the ancient’s heel. A peculiar apparatus, the caricature of an electric sewing-machine, stood in a corner. Along one wall was strung a thick wire, and from the wire depended at least fifty wigs of different sizes, shapes and colors. In a recess of one wall, each in its separate niche, were dozens of plaster-cast human heads, life-size - Negroid, Mongolian, Caucasian - some with hair, others bald, some with features in repose, others with features contorted into expressions of fear, glee, surprise, sadness, pain, mockery, anger, determination, affection, resignation, evil.

  Except for the one giant lamp above Drury Lane’s head there was no illumination in the laboratory. Flexible lamps of all sizes were scattered about the room but they were dark now; and the monstrous shadows cast by the single great bulb told a weird story. Lane’s figure was motionless; his shadow, large out of all proportion, did not waver on the wall. On the other hand, the small hunched fore-shortened figure of Quacey hopped about like a flea, and his shadow mingled and separated from Lane’s on the wall with the fluency of dark liquid.

  It was all odd, sinister, and somehow theatrical. The steaming open vats in the corner did not seem real; the thick lazy smoke that floated across the walls might have come from the caldrons of the Three Witches - as macabre as Macbeth and as pseudo-supernatural. From the story the shadows told, the lean fixed figure might have been that of a person entranced; the quicksilver shadow that of a humped Svengali, a dwarfed Mesmer, a Merlin without his starry robes.

  Actually, little old Quacey was in the most matter-of-fact fashion performing his ordinary duty - the metamorphosis of his master by the guileful art of paints and powders and manual skill.

  Lane stared at his reflection in the triple mirror - he was dressed in common street clothes of undistinguished cut and a well-worn air.

  Quacey dropped back, wiping his hands on his apron. He surveyed his handiwork with critical little eyes.

  “The eyebrows are too heavy - a minim too realistically heavy, Quacey,” said Lane at last, patting them with his long fingers.

  Quacey screwed up his brown gnome’s face, cocked his head, shut one eye in the manner of a portrait-painter standing off and evaluating the proportions of his model. “Maybe yes. Maybe yes,” he squeaked. “The curve of the left eyebrow, too - it does not droop so much.”

  He snatched a small scissors hanging from his belt by a cord and began to snip slowly, carefully, at the artificial hair on Lane’s eyebrows. “There. That’s better, I should say.”

  Lane nodded. Quacey busied himself again with a palmful of flesh-colored putty, caressing his master’s jawline…

  Five minutes later he stepped back, dropping his scissors, and put his puny hands on his hips. “That’s good, for the time. Eh, Mr. Drury?”

  The actor studied himself. “We must not fall into the error, you ugly Caliban, of artificializing this particular task.” Quacey grinned an elfin grin. Mr. Drury Lane was pleased - that much was self-evident; he used the name Caliban only when he was especially appreciative of Quacey’s work. “But - it will do. The hair now.”

  Quacey retreated to the other side of the room, switched on a lamp and began to eye the wigs on the wire. Lane relaxed in his chair.

  “Caliban,” he murmured argumentatively, “I’m afraid we will never agree on the fundamental.”

  “Ha?” demanded Quacey, without turning his head.

  “The true function of make-up. If you err anywhere in your uncanny manipulation of your tools, it is in the direction of overperfection.”

  Quacey selected a bushy gray wig from his line, snapped off the lamp and returned to his master. He squatted on the bench before Lane, produced a peculiarly shaped comb and went to work on the wig.

  “There can be no such thing as a too perfect make-up, Mr. Drury,” said Quacey. “The world is full of poor workmen as it is.”

  “Oh, I’m not reflecting on your genius, Quacey.” Lane was watching the swift movements of the old man’s clawed hands. “But I repeat - the superimposed elements of a make-up are in a way the least important. They are, in a manner of speaking, the props.” Quacey snorted. “Very well. You do not take into consideration the panoramic instinct of the normal human eye. The average observer gets a mass rather than a detailed impression.”

  “But,” shrilled Quacey heatedly, “that’s the very point! For if one of the details is wrong - how shall I say it? - off the key, then there is a disturbance to the eye in the mass impression, and the eye searches out the detail that has disturbed it. So I say - perfect details!”

  “Excellent, Caliban, excellent.” Lane’s voice was warm and affectionate. “You defend yourself well. But the subtlety of the argument evades you. I have never said that the details of a make-up should be so slurred as to call attention to themselves. It is true - the details should be perfect. However, all the details aren’t necessary! You see my point? The painful correctness of a make-up… it’s like viewing a seascape with every wave faithfully painted, a tree with every leaf sharp in outline. Every wave, every leaf, every wrinkle on the human physiognomy make for bad art.”

  “Well, maybe,” said Quacey grudgingly. He held the wig up closer to the light, studied it, shook his head, began a rhythmic rite with the hand that held the comb.

  “We arrive then at the conclusion that paints, powders, and the other implements of deception contrive to create the semblance of a make-up, not the make-up itself. You know that some elements of a face should be accentuated more than others: if you were to disguise me as Abraham Lincoln you would be inclined to emphasize the mole, beard and lips, and subdue the other elements. No, it is life, motion, gesture that make for complete characterization, for realism that convinces. For example, a wax dummy faithful to the last detail of feature and coloring is still an obviously unlifelike object. If the dummy however could move his arms smoothly, talk chromatically with his wax lips, do natural things with his glass eyes - you see what I am driving at.”

  “It’s all right now,” said Quacey calmly, holding the wig up to the brilliant light again.

  Drury Lane’s eyes closed. “That is what has always fascinated me in the histrionic art - to create by movement, voice, gesture, the semblance of life, the illusion of a real personality… Belasco had an uncanny grasp on the art of re-creating life, even on the untenanted stage. There was that production in which he managed to bring out the feeling of coziness in a set, not trusting his flickering firelight, the peace and quiet of the physical scene, not satisfied with these products of his scenic-designer. He trussed a cat before each performance so that the little creature could not move; just before the curtain he had the cat released from its bonds; the curtain rose on the intimate scene, the cat got to its feet on the stage, yawned and stretched its protesting muscles before the fire… and the audience knew, without a word having been spoken and merely by this simple homely act familiar to all of them, that this was a warm, cozy room. All the art of Belasco’s designer could not create that impression so well.”

  “An interesting anecdote, Mr. Drury.” Quacey pressed close to his master and delicately adjusted the wig on Lane’s symmetrical skull.

  “But he was a great man, Quacey,” murmured Lane. ‘This business of breathing life into manufactured drama - after all, for decades the Elizabethan drama relied on the words of the play and the actor’s pantomime to produce the illusion of life. All plays were given on the naked stage - one supernumerary creeping along the boards holding up a shrub, was sufficient to get over the idea that Birnam Wood was come to Dunsinane. And for decades the pit and the boxes understood. Sometimes I think the modern art of staging has overreached itself - that the drama has suffered…”

  “It’s done, Mr. Drury.” Quacey prodded the actor’s shins. Lane opened his eyes. “It’s done, Mr. Drury.”

  “So it is. Away from the mirror, imp.”

  Five minutes later Mr. Drury Lane rose, no longer Mr. Drury Lane in dress, appearance, carriage, or air. He was another individual altogether. He stamped across the room and switched on the main light. He was wearing a light overcoat and had jammed a gray fedora hat on his differently arranged gray hair. His lower lip thrust forward.

  Quacey howled, holding his sides for glee.

  “Tell Dromio I’m ready. Get ready yourself.”

  Even the tone of his voice had changed.

  Scene 6

  WEEHAWKEN

  THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2 P.M.

  Inspector Thumm stepped off the ferry in Weehawken, looked about, nodded curtly to a New Jersey policeman who, lounging on guard near the entranceway to the deserted Mohawk, had snapped erect in salute, and strode through the ferry waiting-room into the open.

  He crossed the cobbled approach to the ferry and began to climb the steep hill which led from the wharves and piers to the top of the precipitous cliffs buttressing the waterfront. Automobiles crept by, feeling their way down the incline as he toiled upward; he turned and studied below him an ever- widening panorama of the river and the turreted city beyond. Then he resumed his ascent.

  At the top he approached a traffic officer and in his gruff baritone inquired the way to the Boulevard. He continued on foot across the wide drive and through quiet, shabby, old tree-shaded streets until he reached a busy intersection which proved to be the thoroughfare he sought. He turned north.

  He found finally the house which was his destination - Number 2075. It was a wooden frame building, squeezed between a dairy and an automobile accessories store - ill-painted, crumbling, beaten out of shape by the slow blows of time. There was a sagging porch equipped with three ancient rockers and a tottering bench; a mat before the door welcomed visitors in faded script; a yellowed sign on one of the porch-posts pathetically announced Rooms for Gentlemen.

  Inspector Thumm looked up and down the street, pulled his coat straight, settled his hat more firmly on his head, and mounted the creaky steps. He pressed the bell marked Housekeeper. There was a faint jangle from the recesses of this battered hive, and the shuffle of carpet-slippers. The door stirred inward and a carbuncular nose protruded from the crack. “What d’ye want?” demanded the peevish female’s voice. Then a deep gasp, a titter, and the door swung inward, revealing a stoutish middle-aged woman in a frumpy housedress - a lady as ramshackle as her establishment. “It’s the police gentleman! Come in, Inspector Thumm, come in! I’m so sorry - I didn’t know…” She babbled excitedly as she attempted to smile, succeeding only in producing a fanged smirk. Standing aside, bobbing, twittering, she allowed the Inspector entrance to her tomb.

  “We’ve had the awfulest time!” she was chattering. “Reporter men and men with big cameras all over the place all morning! We-”

  “Anybody upstairs, madam?” demanded Thumm.

  “And he sure is, Inspector! He’s still there, clutterin’ up my carpets with his cigarette-ashes,” the woman shrilled. “I had my picture took four times this morning… And were you wantin’ to see that poor man’s room again, sir?”

  “Take me upstairs,” Thumm growled.

  “Yes, sirl” The old shrew smirked again, lifted her bedraggled skirt delicately with two worn fingers, and waddled up a flight of thinly carpeted stairs. Thumm grunted and followed. A bulldoggish sort of man confronted them on the top step.

  “Who’s that, Mrs. Murphy?” he asked, peering down in the half-light.

  “All right. Keep your shirt on. It’s me,” snapped the Inspector. The man brightened; he grinned. “Didn’t see you good at first. Glad you’re here, Inspector. Dull work.”

  “Anything stirring since last night?”

  “Not a thing.”

  He led the way along the first-floor hall to a rear room, Landlady Murphy shuffling behind. Thumm stopped at the open door.

  The room was small and bare. There were cracks in the discolored ceiling, the walls were stained with age, a threadbare carpet covered the floor, the furniture was dilapidated, the plumbing of an open washstand was antiquated, the chintz curtain of the single window had seen fresher days - but there was a clean smell about the room and it seemed well enough tended. An old-fashioned iron bedstead, a chest of drawers standing higher on one side than the other, a heavy little table with a marble top, a wire-braced chair, and a clothes-closet comprised the furnishings.