Curtain for a Jester (2 page)

Pamela North tried a necklace and discarded it, and tried another. Jerry, at the last moment, retied his tie and Pam, ready, said only, “See, darling?” They went from the bedroom and it was late. In the living room the cats arose from resting places and preceded the Norths to the door. The Norths, Pam first, slid through the smallest of negotiable openings, and Jerry warded cats away with a foot. The seal points swore; Sherry assured the world that her heart was broken. The Norths crossed to the elevator.

Party or no party, the elevator became fully automatic after nine. Jerry pressed the button; the elevator gave off sounds of its approach. It stopped and the door opened and a tall, dark man, with a neatly trimmed mustache, started to get out. He stopped, however, almost at once and said, “Not the penthouse, is it? I must have—”

“I'll be damned,” Jerry North said. “Art Monteath. I thought you were in London. Or somewhere.”

Arthur Monteath would be as damned as Jerry, as Pamela might be supposed to be. They were the last people he could imagine running into, there of all places.

“But Mr. Monteath,” Pam said. “We live here. We—”

The elevator door attempted to close itself, having waited its appointed time. The Norths stepped in, as Monteath stepped back.

“You're not going to this do of Wilmot's?” Monteath said.

“But we are,” Pam said. “In spite of rubber spiders.”

The elevator, as if shrugging off this nonsense, started up. It had the twelfth floor to reach; instructions had been given.

“I was going to get in touch with you,” Monteath told Jerry North.

“A book?” Jerry said. There was something in his voice, and Monteath laughed.

“Don't let it scare you,” Monteath said. “Not mine. The old man's. The ambassador's. I'll give you a ring about it. I didn't realize you knew Wilmot.”

The elevator stopped, sighed, and opened its door. They emerged in the twelfth floor corridor.

“We still have to climb a flight,” Pam said, and held her skirt a little from the floor, and walked toward the flight to be climbed. Monteath and Jerry walked with her. “We don't really know Mr. Wilmot,” Pam said. “Except in the elevator, of course. I suppose you—?”

“Haven't seen him for years,” Monteath said. “I did go to school with him.”

Pam stopped.

“Don't tell me you helped turn the windows inside out,” she said. “Or—”

“None of them,” Monteath said. He smiled, with some detachment. “Not my dish of tea, I'm afraid.” He paused. “In fact,” he said, “I'm not certain I'll know him now when I see him. It's been—it must be a dozen years since I've seen him. Something of a surprise to get—” But he did not finish. Pam turned her head to show that she listened, but Arthur Monteath merely smiled. It was, Pam decided, a diplomatic smile, which was appropriate. Diplomacy was Mr. Monteath's business, if one could call it a business. There must have been many times in—how many years? she wondered—when it had been better to smile than to speak.

“You're back for a while?” Jerry asked, and to that Monteath shrugged. He said one never knew.

“Back for consultation,” he said, as they started up the stairs which led to penthouse level. “May mean a new assignment. May not.”

“You've been in London?” Jerry said.

“Among other places,” Monteath said. He smiled again. “They get us around, y' know,” he said.

They went up a flight of stairs to a landing, and to a quite ordinary door. Jerry reached around Pam to the bell-push. He touched it. For a moment there was no response. Then, from behind the door, there was the scream of a woman in anguish—a woman on a rack, all hope abandoned. The scream rose and fell and rose again; Pamela, recoiling, stepped back against her husband, who took her shoulders. Arthur Monteath, who seemed to pale in the soft light of the landing, said, “My God!” The door opened, and a man stood before them, carrying his head under his arm. The carried head spoke, its lips moving. “Killed her, that's what,” the head said. “Killed all of them.” Then the scream was repeated. “Do you want to come in?” the head enquired, and bowed at them. Arthur Monteath, again, said, “My God.”

“Mr. Wilmot is expecting us,” Pamela North told the head, which said, “Then I suppose you'll have to come in.”

The body which held the head stepped back and a plump man beamed at them across a small foyer. The plump man looked at three faces and laughed resoundingly. He held both hands against his chest and laughed. When he was able, the plump man said, “Gives you a start, doesn't it?” The scream came again, and came from a portable record player on a table just inside the door. “Turn it off, Frank,” Byron Wilmot said. “Set it again.”

The body put its head on a table, and moved to the record player. “Sees through his shirt front,” Wilmot said. “Quite an effect, eh?”

He came across the foyer, then, holding out both hands. He said, “Delighted, Mrs. North, Mr. North” and then, heartily slapped Arthur Monteath on the back and said, as heartily, “Good old Artie.” Monteath, for an instant, looked as if he doubted it, doubted everything. “How's the boy?” Wilmot demanded. “Good old striped-pants Artie?”

Monteath made a sound without words. Then he said, “Nice to see you, Wilmot.” He paused. “Quite a welcome,” he added, and was told he hadn't seen the half of it. Wilmot then seemed to encircle the three of them, absorbing them across the foyer, into a big, oblong room with three sides almost altogether of glass. There were many people in the room. Some danced to music which seemed to pour from the solid wall; others stood with drinks, sat with drinks. They were people to be met.

They were met. They had names; they smiled; they were delighted—and Pam North was delighted, and Jerry charmed and Arthur Monteath suave. He's remembering all the names, Pam thought, and I'm not and Jerry isn't. There was a man named Jenkins (or Jameson?) who said to Pam, “I've heard of you, haven't I?” and a pretty, dark girl in a strapless white dress-could her name really be Writheman?—who said, “Dear Mr. Wilmot gives such wonderful parties, doesn't he?” But the man who might be named Jenkins did not wait to be told whether he had heard of Mrs. North and the girl said, “Oh Tommy, of
course
” before Pam could agree that Mr. Wilmot seemed to, certainly, and was gone to Tommy for a dance.

The man named Frank, who was now wearing his own inconspicuous head, was beside Pamela North with a tray of filled glasses and thrust it at her. Then as she said, “Scotch and water, please,” the tray seemed to slip from his fingers and the glasses cascaded to the green-tiled floor. But from the floor they merely bounced, their contents no more liquid than Frank's carried head had been his own. Everybody laughed, except one gray-haired woman who gasped and seemed about to scream. But then she smiled instead.

Mr. Wilmot laughed harder than anyone. His pink face became a red face with merriment. But he said, “Get some real drinks, Frank.”

“Get 'em yourself, Wilmot,” Frank said, but that was funny, too, and Frank did get the drinks. Jerry's was in a glass which, whatever one did, dribbled its contents to the chin and Monteath's glass appeared to be melting drunkenly to one side. Both smiled politely and made the best of things.

“To all fools,” Wilmot said, holding up his glass, raising his voice. “‘Laugh and the world laughs—'”

But the world did not laugh. There was the woman's scream again, rising in agony over the many voices, over the music, and there was nothing funny in the scream. No knowledge that an actress had once mimicked agony to make a record, that the record was on a turntable which pressure on a bell-push actuated, made the anguished cry a cause for laughter. For an instant it seemed to transfix those in the room. The dancers broke step, caught at uneasy balance. Glasses raised to lips were checked there; voices broke off as if speech were brittle.

This held only a moment, while everyone remembered. By then Wilmot was beaming at all of them, was telling Frank that he would get it, was crossing the living room to the foyer.

The dancers returned to dancing, but with heads turned toward the foyer. Those not dancing, talked and drank again, but waited too, only half listening to what was said. From the foyer, the scream was cut to silence and the resounding laughter of Mr. Byron Wilmot replaced it. Nothing, Pam North thought—nothing in the world—could be comic enough to match such laughter. As if knowing itself outdone, unheard, the music stopped and those who were dancing stopped with it. For an instant one voice went on against the off-stage laughter. A woman's voice said, “—would be the best joke of—” and then the speaker heard her lonely voice and the voice died.

“So you're at it again,” a man's voice which was not Wilmot's said from the foyer. “I might have known you would be.”

There was anger in the voice; it was as if the voice went naked in bitterness. Speaking so, not knowing how many heard him, the speaker was exposed, defenseless, and Pamela North, to defend him, spoke to Monteath, saying something, anything—that through the wide windows of the penthouse one beautifully saw New York. But Wilmot's laughter surged again and, when it ended, Wilmot said, “Joke's on you, eh? Thought you were—” But then a needle clicked on a record somewhere and the high-fidelity system hurled music through the living room, so that what Wilmot said further was lost in the rush of sound. As if that had been a signal, conversation began again in the crowded room.

But Pam North and Monteath—Jerry was somewhere else; Jerry was talking to the gray-haired woman who had almost screamed when the glasses fell—did not talk again. Monteath, for the moment without diplomacy, had turned toward the door from the foyer, and Pam, after looking up at him for a moment, turned too. Monteath's eyes were narrowed a little; he openly waited, listened without pretense. Pam listened too, and the man who was not Wilmot said, “Sure I'll stay. You bet I'll stay.”

Then a slight tall man in his twenties—a man with a thin white face and black hair—came out of the foyer with Wilmot behind him. In the doorway, Wilmot put a plump hand on the younger man's shoulder and the man turned his head momentarily and looked at the hand. Wilmot left it there. Wilmot beamed past him and, seeing them watching, beamed at Pam North and Arthur Monteath. He seemed to propel the black-haired man toward them. The man had not dressed for the party. He wore a gray suit, the jacket open. One end of a narrow blue tie dangled below the other. Wilmot put his other hand on the thin man's other shoulder and guided him to Pam North.

“Want you to meet my nephew,” Wilmot said, over the other. “Clyde Parsons, Mrs. North. This is Mrs. North, Clyde. Mrs.
Gerald
North.” Having said this, Mr. Wilmot chuckled. “Have to get the boy a drink. Quite a shock he's had. Oh—this is Arthur Monteath, Clyde. Thought I was dying, he says.”

Wilmot's plump hands offered Clyde Parsons to Pam North, to Monteath. Mr. Wilmot himself departed.

“Sorry,” Parsons said. His voice was low, now. “He took me in—again.” He pulled his coat together, buttoned it. His fingers went to his tie. “Not dressed for this,” he said.

There was little to say to that and Clyde Parsons did not wait.

“I didn't know anything about all this,” Parsons said. He was plainly uneasy, anxious to explain. “Got a message he was sick. Wanted to see me. Fix things—” He stopped and shook his head. Black hair fell over his forehead. He pushed it back. “One of his jokes,” he said. “His damn funny jokes.”

“Your uncle likes jokes,” Pam said. This is really too embarrassing, Pam thought. Clyde Parsons looked at her as if she had not spoken what she thought.

“Sorry,” he said. “I guess it's funny. Anyway, it's not your worry, is it? I—”

But Wilmot was back. He had a drink in his hand and held it out to Parsons; told Parsons to drink up, said it would do Parsons good. Parsons looked at the glass, for a long moment looked over it at Wilmot. Then with a movement oddly abrupt, Parsons took the glass and drank from it, thirstily. Almost at once, color came to his pale face.

“Take you around,” Wilmot said, and put a hand again on his nephew's shoulder. Parsons seemed to hesitate. Then he drank from the glass again and said, “Why not, Uncle Byron?” in a different voice. “Have fun,” Wilmot told Pam North and Monteath, and pushed Parsons from them.

“Well,” Monteath said. “Wilmot hasn't—” He stopped. He looked down at Pam North and smiled, faintly, “—hasn't changed much,” he said. “Tough on the kid.”

“You know him?” Pam said.

“Of him,” Monteath said. “Wouldn't you like to dance?” The change of subject was final. They danced.

It was not for some time, then, more than a moderately odd party. It was true that Frank, the comic butler, was at intervals unbridled, but as time passed his production of curious food and drink, his gay insults, his employment of a succession of improbable dialects, became, through repetition, almost commonplace. The music continued to pour from the concealed speaker; Frank, however impishly, continued to provide whatever was desired that had alcohol in it. It occurred to Pam, after an hour or so, that she was drinking more than she commonly did—which after dinner was commonly nothing at all—but this was partly because, as the evening progressed, it was Wilmot's whim to serve all drinks in glasses with rounded bottoms. It is difficult to mislay a drink in a round-bottomed glass.

There were, as Pam had anticipated, rubber spiders from time to time. Mr. Wilmot, while dancing with her—rather bouncingly—abruptly acquired a green lizard (of which he seemed unaware) and the lizard ran up and down his arm. It was true that, while ostensibly making a note of something, Mr. Wilmot produced a fountain pen which, apparently by accident, squirted a substantial stream of black fluid on Jerry North's white shirt front. But it was also true that, not long after Jerry's sharp yelp of unhappiness, the black stain faded gradually until it was hardly perceptible. (It was further true that, some weeks later, a faint brown stain remained where black had been, as a memento of a somewhat strange evening—and of Mr. Byron Wilmot.)