The Saint and the Happy Highwayman (16 page)

“But why?” Simon asked, with not unreasonable surprise.

“My dear fellow, anyone would take you for a professional actor! I’ve been in the theatrical business all my life—I was on Broadway for ten years, played before the King of England, produced hundreds of shows —and I’d have bet anyone I could pick out a professional actor every time. The way you walked in, the way you sat down, the way you use your hands, even the way you’re smoking that cigarette—it’s amazing! Are you sure you’re not having a little joke?”

“Absolutely.”

“May I ask what is your present job?”

“Until a couple of days ago,” said the Saint ingenuously, “I was working in a bank. But I’d always wanted to be an actor, so when my uncle died and left me twenty thousand dollars 1 thought it was a good time to start. I think I could play parts like William Powell,” he added, looking sophisticated.

Mr Quarterstone beamed like a cat full of cream.

“Why not?” he demanded oratorically. “Why ever not? With that natural gift of yours …” He shook his head again, clicking his tongue in eloquent expression of his undiminished awe and admiration. “It’s the most amazing thing! Of course, I sometimes see fellows who are nearly as good-looking as you are, but they haven’t got your manner. Why, if you took a few lessons–-“

Simon registered the exact amount of glowing satisfaction which he was supposed to register.

“That’s what I came to you for, Mr Quarterstone. I’ve seen your advertisements–-“

“Yes, yes!”

Mr Quarterstone got up and came round the desk again. He took the Saint’s face in his large warm hands and turned it this way and that, studying it from various angles with increasing astonishment. He made the Saint stand up and studied him from a distance, screwing up one eye and holding up a finger in front of the other to compare his proportions. He stalked up to him again, patted him here and there and felt his muscles. He stepped back again and posed in an attitude of rapture.

“Marvellous!” he said. “Astounding!”

Then, with an effort, he brought himself out of his trance.

“Mr Tombs,” he said firmly, “there’s only one thing for me to do. I must take you in charge myself. I have a wonderful staff here, the finest staff you could find in any dramatic academy in the world, past masters, every one of ‘em—but they’re not good enough. I wouldn’t dare to offer you anything but the best that we have here. I offer you myself. And because I only look upon it as a privilege—nay, a sacred duty, to develop this God-given talent you have, I shall not try to make any money out of you. I shall only make a small charge to cover the actual value of my time. Charles Laughton paid me five thousand dollars for one hour’s coaching in a difficult scene. John Barrymore took me to Hollywood and paid me fifteen thousand dollars to criticize him in four rehearsals. But I shall only ask you for enough to cover my out-of-pocket expenses—let us say, one thousand dollars—for a course of ten special, personal, private, exclusive lessons… . No,” boomed Mr Quarterstone, waving one hand in a magnificent gesture, “don’t thank me! Were I to refuse to give you the benefit of all my experience, I should regard myself as a traitor to my calling, a very—ah—Ishmael!”

If there was one kind of acting in which Simon Templar had graduated from a more exacting academy than was dreamed of in Mr Quarterstone’s philosophy, it was the art of depicting the virgin sucker yawning hungrily under the baited hook. His characterization was pointed with such wide-eyed and unsullied innocence, such eager and open-mouthed receptivity, such a succulently plastic amenability to suggestion, such a rich response to flattery—in a word, with such a sublime absorptiveness to the old oil—that men such as Mr Quarterstone, on becoming conscious of him for the first time, had been known to wipe away a furtive tear as they dug down into their pockets for first mortgages on the Golden Gate Bridge and formulae for extracting radium from old toothpaste tubes. He used all of that technique on Mr Homer Quarterstone, so effectively that his enrolment in the Supremax Academy proceeded with the effortless ease of a stratospherist returning to terra firma a short head in front of his punctured balloon. Mr Quarterstone did not actually brush away an unbidden tear, but he did bring out an enormous leather-bound ledger and enter up particulars of his newest student with a gratifying realization that Life, in spite of the pessimists, was not wholly without its moments of unshadowed joy.

“When can I start?” asked the Saint, when that had been done.

“Start?” repeated Mr Quarterstone, savouring the word. “Why, whenever you like. Each lesson lasts a full hour, and you can divide them up as you wish. You can start now if you want to. I had an appointment …”

“Oh.”

“But it is of no importance, compared with this.” Mr Quarterstone picked up the telephone. “Tell Mr Urlaub I shall be too busy to see him this afternoon,” he told it. He hung up. “The producer,” he explained, as he settled back again. “Of course you’ve heard of him. But he can wait. One day he’ll be waiting on your doorstep, my boy.” He dismissed Mr Urlaub, the producer, with a majestic ademan. “What shall we take first—elocution ?”

“You know best, Mr Quarterstone,” said the Saint eagerly.

Mr Quarterstone nodded. If there was anything that could have increased his contentment, it was a pupil who had no doubt that Mr Quarterstone knew best. He crossed his legs and hooked one thumb in the armhole of his waistcoat.

“Say ‘Eee.’ “

“Eee.”

“Ah.”

Simon went on looking at him expectantly.

“Ah,” repeated Mr Quarterstone.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said ‘Ah.’ “

“Oh.”

“No, ah.”

“Yes, I–-“

“Say it after me, Mr Tombs. ‘Aaaah.’ Make it ring out. Hold your diaphragm in, open your mouth and bring it up from your chest. This is a little exercise in the essential vowels.”

“Oh. Aaaah.”

“Oh.”

“Oh.”

“I.”

“I.”

“Ooooo.” “Ooooo.”

“Wrong.”

“I’m sorry …”

“Say ‘Wrong,’ Mr Tombs.”

“Wrong.”

“Right,” said Mr Quarterstone.

“Right.”

“Yes, yes,” said Mr Quarterstone testily. “I–-“

“Yes, yes, I.”

Mr Quarterstone swallowed.

“I don’t mean you to repeat every word I say,” he said. “Just the examples. Now let’s try the vowels again in a sentence. Say this: ‘Faaar skiiies loooom O-ver

meee.’ “

“Faaar skiiies loooom O-ver meee.”

“Daaark niiight draaaws neeear.”

“The days are drawing in,” Simon admitted politely.

Mr Quarterstone’s smile became somewhat glassy, but whatever else he may have been he was no quitter.

“I’m afraid he is a fraud,” Simon told Rosalind Hale when he saw her the next day. “But he has a beautiful line of sugar for the flies. I was the complete gawky goof, the perfect bank clerk with dramatic ambitions— you could just see me going home and leering at myself in the mirror and imagining myself making love to Greta Garbo—but he told me he just couldn’t believe how anyone with my poise couldn’t have had any experience.”

The girl’s white teeth showed on her lower lip.

“But that’s just what he told me!”

“I could have guessed it, darling. And I don’t suppose you were the first, either. … I had two lessons on the spot, and I’ve had another two today; and if he can teach anyone anything worth knowing about acting, then I can train ducks to write shorthand. I was so dumb that anyone with an ounce of artistic feeling would have thrown me out of the window, but when I left him this afternoon he almost hugged me and told me he could hardly wait to finish the course before he rushed out to show me to Gilbert Miller.”

She moved her head a little, gazing at him with big sober eyes.

“He was just the same with me, too. Oh, I’ve been such a fool!”

“We’re all fools in our own way,” said the Saint consolingly. “Boys like Homer are my job, so they don’t bother me. On the other hand, you’ve no idea what a fool I can be with soft lights and sweet music. Come on to dinner and I’ll show you.”

“But now you’ve given Quarterstone a thousand dollars, and what are you going to do about it?”

“Wait for the next act of the stirring drama.”

The next act was not long in developing. Simon had two more of Mr Quarterstone’s special, personal, private, exclusive lessons the next day, and two more the day after—Mr Homer Quarterstone was no apostle of the old-fashioned idea of making haste slowly, and by getting in two lessons daily he was able to double his temporary income, which then chalked up at the very pleasing figure of two hundred dollars per diem, minus the overhead, of which the brassy blonde was not the smallest item. But this method of gingering up the flow of revenue also meant that its duration was reduced from ten days to five, and during a lull in the next day’s first hour (Diction, Gesture and Facial Expression) he took the opportunity of pointing out that Success, while already certain, could never be too certain or too great, and therefore that a supplementary series of lessons in the Art and Technique of the Motion Picture, while involving only a brief delay, could only add to the magnitude of Mr Tombs’s ultimate inevitable triumph.

On this argument, for the first time, Mr Tombs disagreed.

“I want to see for myself whether I’ve mastered the first lessons,” he said. “If I could get a small part in a play, just to try myself out …”

He was distressingly obstinate, and Mr Quarter-stone, either because he convinced himself that it would only be a waste of time, or because another approach to his pupil’s remaining nineteen thousand dollars seemed just as simple, finally yielded. He made an excuse to leave the studio for a few minutes, and Simon knew that the next development was on its way.

It arrived in the latter part of the last hour (Declamation with Gestures, Movement and Facial Expression—The Complete Classical Scene).

Mr Quarterstone was demonstrating.

“To be,” trumpeted Mr Quarterstone, gazing ceil-ingwards with an ecstatic expression, the chest thrown out, the arms slightly spread, “or not to be.” Mr Quarterstone ceased to be. He slumped, the head bowed, the arms hanging listlessly by the sides, the expression doleful. “That—is the question.” Mr Quarterstone pondered it, shaking his head. The suspense was awful. He elaborated the idea. “Whether ‘tis nobler”—Mr Quarterstone drew himself nobly up, the chin lifted, the right arm turned slightly across the body, the forearm parallel with the ground—“in the mind”—he clutched his brow, where he kept his mind—“to suffer”–he clutched his heart, where he did his suffering—“the slings”—he stretched out his left hand for the slings— “and arrows”—he flung out his right hand for the arrows—“of outrageous fortune”—Mr Quarterstone rolled the insult lusciously around his mouth and spat it out with defiance—“or to take arms”—he drew himself up again, the shoulders squared, rising slightly on tiptoe–“against a sea of troubles”—his right hand moved over a broad panorama, undulating symbolically —“and by opposing”—the arms rising slightly from the elbow, fists clenched, shoulders thrown back, chin drawn in—“end them!”—the forearms striking down again with a fierce chopping movement, expressive of finality and knocking a calendar off the table.

“Excuse me,” said the brassy blonde, with her head poking round the door. “Mr Urlaub is here.”

“Tchah!” said Mr Quarterstone, inspiration wounded in mid-flight. “Tell him to wait.”

“He said–-“

Mr Quarterstone’s eyes dilated. His mouth opened. His hands lifted a little from his sides, the fingers tense and parted rather like plump claws, the body rising. He was staring at the Saint.

“Wait!” he cried. “Of course! The very thing! The very man you’ve got to meet! One of the greatest producers in the world today! Your chance!”

He leapt a short distance off the ground and whirled on the blonde, his arm flung out, pointing quiveringly.

“Send him in!”

Simon looked wildly breathless.

“But—but will he–-“

“Of course he will! You’ve only got to remember what I’ve taught you. And sit down. We must be calm.”

Mr Quarterstone sank into a chair, agitatedly looking calm, as Urlaub bustled in. Urlaub trotted quickly across the room.

“Ah, Homer.”

“My dear Waldemar! How is everything?”

“Terrible! I came to ask for your advice …”

Mr Urlaub leaned across the desk. He was a smallish, thin, bouncy man with a big nose and sleek black hair. His suit fitted him as tightly as an extra skin, and the stones in his tiepin and in his rings looked enough like diamonds to look like diamonds. He moved as if he were hung on springs, and his voice was thin and spluttery like the exhaust of an anemic motorcycle.

“Niementhal has quit. Let me down at the last minute. He wanted to put some goddam gigolo into the lead. Some ham that his wife’s got hold of. I said to him, ‘Aaron, your wife is your business and this play is my business.’ I said, ‘I don’t care if it hurts your wife’s feelings and I don’t care if she gets mad at you, I can’t afford to risk my reputation on Broadway and my investment in this play by putting that ham in the lead.’ I said, ‘Buy her a box of candy or a diamond bracelet or anything or send her to Paris or something, but don’t ask me to make her happy by putting that gigolo in this play.’ So he quit. And me with everything set, and the rest of the cast ready to start rehearsing next week, and he quits. He said, ‘All right, then use your own money.’ I said, ‘You know I’ve got fifty thousand dollars in this production already, and all you were going to put in is fifteen thousand, and for that you want me to risk my money and my reputation by hiring that ham. I thought you said you’d got a good actor.’ ‘Well, you find yourself a good actor and fifteen thousand dollars,’ he says, and he quits. Cold. And I can’t raise another cent—you know how I just tied up half a million to save those aluminum shares.”

“That’s tough, Waldemar,” said Mr Quarterstone anxiously. “Waldemar, that’s tough! … Ah—by the way—pardon me—may I introduce a student of mine? Mr Tombs …”

Urlaub turned vaguely, apparently becoming aware of the Saint’s presence for the first time. He started forward with a courteously extended hand as the Saint rose.