Curtain for a Jester Read Online Free PDF Page A

strange things happened, or Pam thought they did.
    She could not be sure that Wilmot, just perceptibly, nodded to Monteath. But of the next thing, she could be sure—they could all be sure.
    Wilmot teetered back on his heels, caught himself with his hands, sat on the floor. And then Byron Wilmot laughed. Byron Wilmot roared with merriment.
    It was shocking for only a moment. Then it was obvious. What was on the floor was only the replica of a man. The red on the shirt came from one of Wilmot’s ingenious devices. The—
    â€œHo, ho, HO!” Wilmot laughed. “Ha-ha, ha-ha, WHOAH!”
    Someone in the group who looked down at him laughed. But it was nervous laughter. Another tried to laugh, and then another. Wilmot laughed on.
    Arthur Monteath did not laugh at all. He stood, rather rigid, and looked down at Wilmot and Wilmot, red of face, leaned back on his hands and laughed up at him. He seemed, Pam thought, to laugh for Monteath.
    It lasted only a moment. Wilmot got to his feet then, and his laughter died away. After a moment he reached down and took the mannequin by the coat collar and dragged it into the room.
    In the room, except for the face, it was merely a clothing dummy. But even in the light, the face was surprising. It was not a face well-shaped and meaningless, the conventional mask of a face. It was individualized—a thin face, with slightly twisted lips. The wig which crowned the mannequin—and was now somewhat askew—was a wig of red hair, unnaturally smooth, to be sure, but losing by that nothing of its incongruity. Clothing dummies just don’t have red hair, Pamela North thought. Why would anybody go to the trouble?
    â€œLifelike, ain’t he?” Wilmot said. He turned to Monteath, who had come into the doorway and stood looking down at the plastic face. “Hell, Artie,” Wilmot said. “Sure they were blanks. Think I want you banging away in my direction?” Monteath said nothing. “Hell, man,” Wilmot said, “you can take a joke, can’t you?”
    Monteath spoke then, after a further pause.
    â€œWhy yes, Wilmot,” he said. “I can take a joke.” He paused and looked again at the mannequin’s face. “You did a very convincing job,” he said.
    â€œWell,” Wilmot said, “so did you, old man. So did you.” He paused. “Know what I mean?” he said, making the meaningless phrase more meaningless with a chuckle. Monteath did not chuckle in return; he did not speak. He merely nodded.
    The murder of the dummy was the climax of the evening. Mr. Wilmot did, to be sure, explain it all—how the dummy had been rigged to wires and so made movable, how Frank had been primed to turn off the lights at the appropriate moment, how Wilmot had had the blank-loaded revolvers ready to hand; how he had fired first, hoping that Monteath, thinking the man between had fired at them, would himself fire by reflex, knowing he would not kill.
    â€œHad to get a man who would do something,” Wilmot explained. “That’s good old Artie.”
    If good old Artie appreciated this compliment, his face did not reveal it. Good old Artie laid down the gun, moved farther into the big living room, away from Wilmot, from the prostrate dummy.
    Mr. Wilmot explained it all, being evidently pleased with all of it. He was listened to with politeness, rather than with avidity, and when he had finished, or nearly finished, his guests began to make the discovery that it was growing late. A fine party, a wonderful party. But tomorrow—no, today—was a working day. The blond girl and her Tommy were the first actually to leave, although there was nothing about either to suggest there were alarm clocks in their lives. Thereafter, there was a general collection of wraps, a series of congregations in the foyer—and not all Wilmot’s jovial assertion that it was early yet, not all his proffer of newer tricks and more