you’d better, sir.’
Gaunt grimaced, took the letters and lowered himself into a chair by the writing-desk. Dikon watched him rather nervously.
Geoffrey Gaunt had spent twenty-seven of his forty-five years on the stage, and the last sixteen had seen him firmly established in the first rank. He was what used to be called a romantic actor, but he was also an intelligent one. His greatest distinction lay in his genius for making an audience hear the sense as well as the music of Shakespearean verse. So accurate and clear was his tracing out of the speeches’ content that his art had about it something of mathematical precision and was saved from coldness only by the apparent profundity of his emotional understanding. How far this understanding was instinctive and how far intellectual, not even his secretary, who had been with him for six years, could decide. He was middle-sized, dark, and not particularly striking, but as an actor he possessed the two great assets: his skull was well-shaped, and his hands were beautiful. As for his disposition, Dikon Bell, writing six years before from London to a friend in New Zealand, had said, after a week in Gaunt’s employment: ‘He’s tricky, affected, clever as a bagful of monkeys, a bit of a bounder with the temper of a fury, and no end of an egotist, but I think I’m going to like him.’ He had never found reason to revise this first impression.
Gaunt read Dr Forster’s note and then Dr Ackrington’s letter. ‘For heaven’s sake,’ he cried, ‘what sort of an antic is this old person? Have you noted the acid treatment of his relations? Does he call this letter a recommendation? Discomfort leavened with inefficient kindness is the bait he offers. Moreover, there’s a dirty little knock at me in the last paragraph. If Forster wants me to endure the place, one would have thought his policy would have been to suppress the letter. He’s a poor psychologist.’
‘The psychology,’ said Dikon modestly, ‘is mine. Forster wanted to suppress the letter. I took it upon myself to show it to you. I thought that if you jibbed at the Claires, sir, you wouldn’t be able to resist Dr Ackrington.’
Gaunt shot a suspicious glance at his secretary. ‘You’re too clever by half, my friend,’ he said.
‘And he does say,’ Dikon added persuasively, ‘he does say “the mud may be miraculous”.’
Gaunt laughed, made an abrupt movement, and drew in his breath sharply.
‘Isn’t it worth enduring the place if it puts your legs right, sir? And at least we could get on with the book.’
‘Certain it is I can’t write in this bloody hotel. How I hate hotels. Dikon,’ cried Gaunt with an assumption of boyish enthusiasm, ‘shall we fly to America? Shall we do Henry V in New York? They’d take it, you know, just now. “And Crispin, Crispian shall ne’er go by …” God, I think I must play Henry in New York.’
‘Wouldn’t you rather play him in London, sir, on a fit-up stage with the blitz for battle noises off?’
‘Of course I would, damn you.’
‘Why not try this place? At least it may turn out to be copy for the Life. Thermal divertissements. And then, when you’re fit and ready to hit ’em … London.’
‘You talk like a nanny in her dotage,’ said Gaunt fretfully. ‘I suppose you and Colly have plotted this frightfulness between you. Where is Colly?’
‘Ironing your trousers, sir.’
‘Tell him to come here.’
Dikon spoke on the telephone and in a moment the door opened to admit a wisp of a man with a face that resembled a wrinkled kid glove. This was Gaunt’s dresser and personal servant, Alfred Colly. Colly had been the dresser provided by the management when Gaunt, a promising young leading man with no social background, had made his first great success. After a phenomenal run, Colly accepted Gaunt’s offer of permanent employment, but had never adopted the technique of a manservant. His attitudes towards his employer held the balance between extreme familiarity and a cheerful recognition of Gaunt’s prestige. He laid the trousers that he carried over the back of a chair, folded his hands and blinked.
‘You’ve heard all about this damned hot spot, no doubt?’ said Gaunt.
‘That’s right, sir,’ said Colly. ‘Going to run mudlarks, aren’t we?’
‘I haven’t said so.’
‘It’s about time we did something about ourself though, isn’t it, sir? We’re not sleeping as pretty as we’d like, are we? And how about our leg?’
‘Oh, you go to hell,’ said Gaunt.
‘There’s a gentleman downstairs, sir, wants to see you. Come in over an hour ago. They told him in the office you were seeing nobody and he said that’s all right and give in his card. They say it’s no use, you only see visitors by appointment, and he comes back with that’s just too bad and sits in the lounge with a Scotch and soda, reading the paper and watching the door.’
‘That won’t do him much good,’ said Dikon. ‘Mr Gaunt’s not going out. The masseur will be here in half an hour. What’s this man look like? Pressman?’
‘Noüe!’ said Colly, with the cockney’s singular emphasis. ‘More like business. Hard. Smooth worsted suiting. Go-getter type. I was thinking you might like to see him, Mr Bell.’
‘Why?’
‘I was thinking you might. Satisfy him.’
Dikon looked fixedly at Colly and saw the faintest vibration of his left eyelid.
‘Perhaps I’d better get rid of him,’ he said. ‘Did they give you his card?’
Colly dipped his finger and thumb in a pocket of his black alpaca coat. ‘Persistent sort of bloke, sir,’ he said, and fished out a card.
‘Oh, get rid of him, Dikon, for God’s sake,’ said Gaunt. ‘You know all the answers. I won’t leer out of advertisements, I won’t open fêtes, I won’t attend amateur productions, I’m accepting no invitations. I think New Zealand’s marvellous. I wish I was in London. If it’s anything to do with the war effort, reserve your answer. If they want me to do something for the troops, I will if I can.’
Dikon went down to the lounge. In the lift he looked at the visitor’s card:
MR MAURICE QUESTING
Wai-ata-tapu Thermal Springs.
Scribbled across the bottom he read: ‘May I have five minutes? Matter of interest to yourself. MQ.’
II
Mr Maurice Questing was about fifty years old and so much a type that a casual observer would have found it difficult to describe him. He might have been any one of a group of heavy men playing cards on a rug in the first-class carriage of a train. He appeared in triplicate at private bars, hotel lounges, business meetings and race courses. His features were blurred and thick, his eyes sharp. His clothes always looked expensive and new. His speech, both in accent and in choice of words, was an affair of mass production rather than selection. It suggested that wherever he went he would instinctively adopt the cheapest, the slickest and the most popular commercial phrases of the community in which he found himself. Yet though he was as voluble as a radio advertiser, shooting out his machine-turned phrases in a loud voice, and with a great air of assurance, every word he uttered seemed synthetic and quite unrelated to his thoughts. His conversation was full of the near-Americanisms that are part of the New Zealand dialect, but they, too, sounded dubious, and it was impossible to guess at his place of origin though he sometimes spoke of himself vaguely as a native of New South Wales. He was a successful man of business.
When Dikon Bell walked into the hotel lobby, Mr Questing at once flung down his paper and rose to his feet.
‘Pardon me if I speak in error,’ he said, ‘but is this Mr Bell?’
‘Er, yes,’ said Dikon, who still held the card in his fingers.
‘Mr