Buffet for Unwelcome Guests Read Online Free PDF Page A

standing there in the Green-room muttering to himself, had been to conduct a hurried review of the relevant times, in his own mind. ‘Ten-thirty, the curtain falls. Ten-fifty, having changed from their stage dress, they do or do not meet in here for a council of war. At any rate, by eleven o’clock the woman is dead: and then there is a council of war indeed… Ten minutes, perhaps, for frantic discussion, five or ten minutes’ grace before they must all be in costume again, ready to receive the police…’ But why ? His eyes roved over them: the silks and velvets, the rounded bosoms thrust up by laced bodices, low cut: the tight-stretched hose, the jewelled doublets, the melon sleeves…
    The sleeves. He remembered the laxly curved hands hanging over the head of the divan, the pointed nails. There had been no evidence of a struggle, but one never knew. He said slowly: ‘May I ask now why all of you have replaced your stage dress and make-up?’
    Was there, somewhere in the room, a sharp intake of breath? Perhaps: but for the most part they retained their stagey calm. Emilia and Iago, point counterpoint, again explained. They had all been halfway, as it were, between stage dress and day dress; it had been somehow simpler to scramble back into costume when the alarm arose… Apart from the effect of an act rehearsed, it rang with casual truth. ‘Except that you told me that “when the alarm arose” you were all here in the Green-room, having a discussion.’
    ‘Yes, but only half-changed, changing as we talked,’ said Cassio, quickly. Stage people, he added, were not frightfully fussy about the conventional modesties.
    ‘Very well. You will, however, oblige me by reverting to day dress now. But before you all do so…’ He put his head out into the corridor and a couple of men moved in unobtrusively and stood just inside the door. ‘Mr. James Dragon—would you please remove those sleeves and let me see your wrists?’
    It was the girl, Bianca, who cried out—on a note of terror: ‘No!’
    ‘Hush, be quiet,’ said James Dragon: commandingly but soothingly.
    ‘But James… But James, he thinks… It isn’t true,’ she cried out frantically, ‘it was the other man, we saw him in there, Mr. Dragon was in here with us…’
    ‘Then Mr. Dragon will have no objection to showing me his arms.’
    ‘But why?’ she cried out, violently. ‘How could his arms be…? He had that costume on, he did have it on, he was wearing it at the very moment he…’ There was a sharp hiss from someone in the room and she stopped, appalled, her hand across her mouth. But she rushed on. ‘He hasn’t changed, he’s had on that costume, those sleeves, all the time: nothing could have happened to his wrists. Haven’t you, James?—hasn’t he, everyone?—we know, we all saw him, he was wearing it when he came back…’
    There was that hiss of thrilled horror again: but Leila Dragon said, quickly, ‘When he came back from finding the body, she means,’ and went across and took the girl roughly by the arm. The girl opened her mouth and gave one piercing scream like the whistle of a train; and suddenly, losing control of herself, Leila Dragon slapped her once and once again across the face.
    The effect was extraordinary. The scream broke short, petered out into a sort of yelp of terrified astonishment. Mrs. Dragon cried out sharply, ‘Oh, no!’ and James Dragon said, ‘Leila, you fool !’ They all stood staring, utterly in dismay. And Leila Dragon blurted out: ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. It was because she screamed. It was—a sort of reaction, instinctive, a sort of reaction to hysteria…’ She seemed to plead with them. It was curious that she seemed to plead with them, and not with the girl.
    James Dragon broke through the ice-wall of their dismay. He said uncertainly: ‘It’s just that… We don’t want to make—well, enemies of people,’ and the girl broke out wildly: ‘How dare you touch me? How dare