The Old Die Young Read online

  It was true that New Yorkers no longer often dress for opening nights, and that early curtains prevail. And the big lounge clock showed eight forty.

  They finished coffee and cognac, and Rachel raised inquiring eyebrows.

  “I guess so,” Tony said. “I would like to stop by the desk for a minute.”

  Rachel did not ask why. She merely nodded.

  “Only a moment,” Tony said, and got up and went to the desk and Mr. Campbell.

  Campbell recognized him, but without any special enthusiasm. Cases have taken Tony to the Algonquin before. Police inquiries may be disturbing to hotels and possibly to hotel guests. Campbell said, “Good evening, Mr. Cook,” his tone noticeably detached.

  Tony said, “Evening,” and, to put things on a more comfortable basis, “Nothing official, Mr. Campbell. Purely personal. Checking up on myself, you might put it. In my trade, you need to remember faces. Yours too, I’d think.”

  Melvin Campbell nodded. He said, “It helps. People like to be recognized.”

  “Sure,” Tony said. “Thing is, Mr. Askew lives here, doesn’t he? Bret Askew, the playwright?”

  “Yes. Has a suite on the sixth floor. Why?”

  “Happen to notice whether he was in the lounge this evening? Thing is, we’ve met several times, and I was pretty sure it was Askew came into the restaurant an hour or so ago. We, Miss Farmer and I, were sitting at the table by the bar, and he couldn’t help seeing us. Looked right at us, matter of fact. And obviously didn’t recognize me. No reason he should, of course; we’re not palsy, anything like that. Still—well, I wondered whether my memory was going bad. Memory for faces, I mean. I thought, maybe it wasn’t Askew at all. See what I mean? Worrisome, sort of.”

  “Probably no reason to worry,” Campbell said. “Probably was Mr. Askew. Anyway, he was in the lounge for a drink. I said good evening to him. Usually comes down around six thirty or so, has a quick one in the lounge, then goes into the restaurant. Not every night, of course. But pretty often. Did tonight, anyway. Could be he—well, had something on his mind. Thinking about something else and—well, didn’t really see you, Mr. Cook. Friendly sort of guy, usually. Wait a minute. Didn’t the star of this play of his die suddenly last night? Clive Branson. That was it, wasn’t it? Branson, the movie actor?”

  “I believe that’s right,” Tony said. “Probably upset Bret. Explain why he wasn’t noticing much, wouldn’t it? His first play on Broadway, he told me once. Counting on a big hit, probably. Well, relief to find out I’m not losing my memory for faces. Thanks for setting me straight, Mr. Campbell. In the lounge about seven, at a guess? Had a quick one and went in to eat.”

  “That’s right. Only it wasn’t such a quick one tonight. He had a friend with him. Man who lives here too. Called him up on the house phone, Mary says. The girl at the switchboard. Arranged for Mr. Price to have a drink with him. I was checking some people in about then. When I’d got them settled, I noticed Mr. Askew and Mr. Price were sitting over there. Where you and the lady have been sitting.”

  Tony turned and looked at the sofa. Rachel should have been on it. Rachel wasn’t. For an instant, Tony was disturbed. Then she came out of the corridor which leads to, among other places, including the small barroom, the women’s-room. She started back toward the still-unoccupied sofa, but Tony said, “Rachel,” and she joined him in front of the desk.

  He said, “Apparently it was Bret Askew after all,” which, understandably, meant nothing whatever to Rachel. She did not show that it meant nothing. “Had a drink with Price,” Tony told her. He turned again to Campbell. “That was Ken Price, wasn’t it?” he said. “The actor?”

  “Yes,” Campbell said, “Mr. Kenneth Price.”

  The telephone on his desk rang. He spoke into it. “Of course, Mary,” he said. “Put Mr. Askew on.”

  9

  Tony is a tall, lean man, not built for inconspicuous loitering in front of a hotel desk. But loitering, within earshot, seemed to be indicated. He whispered to Rachel, so softly that for a moment she looked as if she were about to say, “Huh?” She didn’t. Obedient to what she had half heard, she went back to their table and tinkled its little bell. Not, she thought, that we really need another round.

  Tony was not looking at her. He was looking at the opening of the corridor out of which she had just come, as if he were still waiting for a date to reappear.

  “Can I help you, Mr. Askew?” Campbell said. “This is the front desk. Campbell, sir.”

  Then he listened. Tony could hear the rustle of a voice, but not the words in it.

  “I’m very sorry, Mr. Askew,” the desk clerk said. “On vacation, you say? Never around when we need them, are they?” As if, Tony thought, Askew were asking for a policeman.

  “No, Mr. Askew, we don’t have a house physician. Not what you’d call that. But there is a doctor we can call on sometimes when guests need one. A Dr. Knight. Has offices across the street. I can—” He stopped abruptly. “The doctor is just coming through the lobby,” he told the telephone. “I’ll ask him.” He raised his voice a little. He said, “Oh, Doctor Knight.”

  The man he summoned was not knightly in appearance. He was rather short and somewhat pudgy. He was not carrying a doctor’s black bag. But he said, “Yes?”

  “One of our guests isn’t feeling well,” Campbell said. “Would like you to have a look at him. A regular guest, Doctor. Suite Six-oh-one, Mr. Askew.”

  “After office hours,” Knight said. “A hell of a lot. What does he think’s the matter with him? Stomachache?”

  “He just says he feels queer,” Campbell said. “But if you wouldn’t mind, Doctor. He’s a playwright Lived here for several months.”

  Dr. Knight said, “Hmm,” as if he didn’t think much of playwrights. But he went to the elevators.

  Tony heard Campbell tell the telephone, “The doctor is on his way up.” He went back to their table and sat again beside Rachel. After a few minutes a waiter brought their cognacs. They sipped and waited, waited for about half an hour, Tony with his eyes on the elevators. Finally, Dr. Knight came out of one of them. He went to the desk and, rather briefly, talked to Campbell. Then he went out of the hotel. Campbell tapped the desk bell, and a bellman responded. The bellman got instructions. They led him across the lobby, among the tables already beginning to fill for the after-theater buffet. He stopped in front of Tony and Rachel. He said, “Mr. Cook, sir?” Tony admitted it. Would he come to the desk for a moment, sir?

  Tony finished his cognac and went to the desk.

  “It’s Mr. Askew, Mr. Cook,” Campbell said. “He asked whether you were still in the hotel, and if you were, would you come up and see him. What he said was, ‘I want to report something.’ I’m not sure what he meant.”

  Tony wasn’t either. He said, “I take it he’s feeling better?”

  Bret Askew hadn’t mentioned how he was feeling. He was in Suite 601. You went left down the corridor from the elevator. Tony went back to the table and explained to Rachel, who said “Damn!” She finished her drink. She said, “You can put me in a cab, mister.” She almost never called him “mister” anymore. He was sorry about it. He would be along as soon as he could.

  “All right,” Rachel said. “It’s what I get for going around with a policeman. Stood up. I ought to be getting used to it.” Then she smiled at him. “I don’t deny there are compensations, Tony,” she said.

  He put her in a cab, which was readily available. Cabs were dropping supper people at the Algonquin.

  Tony Cook went up to the sixth floor and, to the left, along the corridor. It ended in a closed door with “601” on it. Tony knocked on the door and heard “Come in,” in a rather hoarse voice.

  Bret Askew was in shirt sleeves, his shirt open at the neck. He was sitting in a chair, with a coffee cup on a table beside him. There was also a coffeepot on the table, and Askew refilled his cup. There was only one cup, but plenty of coffee. If Detective Cook wanted to join him, he could get a glass from the
bathroom. Tony didn’t.

  “Supposed to keep pouring it down,” Askew said. “What this doctor told me to do. Said I ought to go to the hospital and have stomach lavage, but I’d come along all right with caffeine. At least, he was pretty sure I would.”

  He drank from his refilled cup. “They do send you up good coffee,” he said. He still sounded hoarse, as if his throat were dry. His pupils were still dilated.

  “Thing is,” Askew said, “apparently somebody tried to kill me. Didn’t use enough of the stuff, luckily for me … just the four tenths of a milligram or so you’d get in a prescription. Maybe a little more. Takes a good many times that if you want to be sure, you know.”

  “The stuff?” Tony said. “You know what this stuff was? The doctor told you?”

  “More like I told him,” Askew said. “He agreed I probably was right. Said the symptoms fitted and that the only way to be sure was to have my stomach pumped out. But that he was pretty sure I’d be all right—the symptoms weren’t all that extreme. Blurred vision, dryness of the throat, some burning sensation, but nothing too bad. And that a lot of coffee ought to help. Whoever put it in my drink hadn’t done his research, is what it comes to.”

  “Look, Mr. Askew,” Tony said, “so far it hasn’t come to anything. Not to me, anyway. What do you think was put into your drink?”

  “One of the alkaloids. Belladonna group, probably atropine sulfate. Doctors do prescribe it. Sometimes, anyway. Not as often as they used to, this doctor says, but sometimes, to check excess secretions. For ulcers of the stomach, mostly. And for irritable colon, Dr. Knight says. You ever been to an eye doctor, Cook? They put stuff in your eyes to dilate the pupils. So they can look in.”

  Tony had been to an ophthalmologist. He hadn’t needed glasses. “This atropine?” he said.

  “One of the related alkaloids. They come from plants, you know. Atropine from deadly nightshade. Kids eat berries from it. Enough berries and poof—no more kid.”

  “You seem to know a good deal about this poison,” Tony said. “But the point is, how it got into your glass. That’s why you wanted to see me, I take it.”

  “Couple—three years ago I was working on a play. Mystery—mystery comedy, you’d have to call it. I looked up some poisons for it. Only the damn thing never would jell. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Happens in your line of work too, I shouldn’t wonder. I don’t know how it got into my glass, Cook. Job for the police, I’d figure.”

  To whom, Bret Askew was not, at the moment, being of any great help. He was hard to pin down.

  “What drink?” Tony asked. “And where, do you think?”

  “Double martini. In the lounge, I suppose, where I was having a before-dinner drink.”

  “With Kenneth Price, I understand.”

  “Yes. How’d you know?”

  “Desk clerk told me; said you called Price up. Asked him to join you in the lounge. It was your idea, apparently.”

  “Yes. About the reading of a line in the second act. He’s taking over for poor old Branson, you know.”

  “Yes, I know he’s taking the role Clive Branson had.”

  “Damn bad thing about Branson. Rumor around he took an overdose. Bad thing all around. Bad for the play, bad for Rolf Simon, and probably bad for me. Looked like it was rolling. Now, who knows?”

  “To get back to what we were talking about, Mr. Askew. This alkaloid in your drink; how it got there. What is it? A liquid?”

  “Granular powder, the book says. Probably dispensed in capsules. Never been given it myself. Haven’t got an ulcer, apparently. God knows why, the trade I’m in. You could call ulcers an occupational hazard, I guess. For all writers, but playwrights most of all. Will it get produced? Will the actors get the faintest idea what you were shooting at? Will the critics? Crickets, Edwin Booth used to call them. In spite of the fact that they gave him raves. Not a bad line for an actor. Will it run? Sure we get ulcers.”

  “But you haven’t. And so never had this drug—atropine sulfate, you think—prescribed by your doctor. Who isn’t Dr. Knight, I take it.”

  “Hell, no. Never saw him before. Dr. Benjamin’s my man. Dr. Cyrus Benjamin. Funny combination of names, wouldn’t you say? Sure you don’t want some coffee while it’s still warm?” He poured coffee into his cup and drank a little of it. “Well,” he said, “warmish, anyway.”

  Tony Cook was sure he didn’t want coffee. He wanted Bret Askew to stick to one subject, if only for a moment. He was beginning to give up hope he’d ever get what he wanted. “You asked Mr. Price to come down to the lobby and have a drink with you. And to talk about his reading of a line.”

  “Several lines, actually. In the first act, and the second and third, come to that.”

  “You aren’t satisfied with the way he’s playing the part?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. Another Clive Branson he isn’t. But who is? The run-through this afternoon was O.K. Seemed so to me, anyway. Oh, Kirby was sort of fussy, but I thought it went all right. Ken went up a couple of times, but nothing to worry about.”

  “You and Mr. Price sat at one of the tables in the lounge and had your drinks. And talked about the way he was reading lines. And you think it was while you two were having your drinks that somebody put this alkaloid in your glass. Broke open a capsule, probably, and sifted this powder into your martini. And—Mr. Price was closest, wasn’t he? At the same table.”

  “At the same table. But it wasn’t Ken. I’d have seen him. Anyway, why would he?”

  “Why would anyone, Mr. Askew? You any idea about that?”

  “No. Hell, no. Nobody’s got it in for me. Why would anybody have? What I do is sit in a room with a typewriter and write plays. No harm to anybody. Maybe no good to anybody, either. What I’m getting at—I don’t get around much, and if you don’t get around you don’t bump into people, do you?”

  “This evening, while you and Mr. Price were having drinks, did you see anybody you knew in the lounge?”

  “Knew by sight. I have dinner here rather often, and a drink in the lounge first. So do a good many people. Theater people, writers, that sort. You get to know faces. Even get to nodding at people you don’t really know. If you mean, people I do really know, no, I don’t remember any this evening. Friends or enemies. Not, as I just said, that I have any enemies I know of. Oh, Martha came in. Martha Abel, the agent. Ken was expecting her, he’d told me when I suggested our getting together for a drink. We were sitting where we could see when she came in. On a sofa across the lounge from the desk.”

  “The one near the dining-room entrance, Mr. Askew?”

  “Yes. One of the ones, anyway.”

  “So people going in to dinner would walk close to it?”

  “I suppose so. But, no, Cook. I didn’t see anybody I really know. Friend or foe.”

  “You and Mr. Price had drinks. What did you have, by the way?”

  “Martini. Up. Ken had bourbon on the rocks, way I remember it. I was just starting on my second when Martha showed up. We both saw her, and both stood up. Ken sort of waved and she came over. I said wouldn’t she join us, but she said she and Ken had to be getting along.”

  “Your drinks were on the table while you were talking to Mrs. Abel?”

  “Sure, I guess so. Hell, man. Who remembers every move? Every detail?”

  “Nobody, I suppose. Did you have your back to the table while you were talking to Mrs. Abel? Asking her to join you?”

  “Could be. You mean, could she have put the stuff in my drink without my seeing her? I suppose she could have. But—having a capsule of atropine handy? Just on the chance she might want to poison somebody? Come off it, Cook. She didn’t even know I’d be with Ken. How could she have?”

  Ken Price could have told her, after he had agreed to meet Askew in the lounge for a drink and a few words about the reading of lines, Tony thought. But didn’t say.

  Was there anything else about his session with Price that Askew could remember? Anything t
hat, looked back on, stood out, seemed a little odd? Askew shook his head. His movements, now, seemed more certain, his voice less strained.

  Askew poured from the coffeepot again. Half a cup emptied the pot. He got up from the chair, having no apparent difficulty, and went across the room to the telephone on the bedside table. The bed was a couch. Instead of returning to his chair, Askew sat on the couch. He leaned back on cushions propped against the wall and used the telephone to order a pot of coffee from room service.

  Then he said, “I don’t remember anything, Cook. We talked. I read a couple of lines to show him what I meant, what I’d meant when I wrote them. One requires a little action, and I stood up and walked a couple of steps while I read it.”

  “Back to the table? And Mr. Price?”

  “Maybe—I was thinking about the line. How I’d meant it to be said. Anyway, it was only a couple of steps, to show the business I wanted. A couple of seconds, at the outside. Then—wait a minute—Ken got up and read it my way, with the business I’d asked for. And said, yes, he saw what I was driving at. And he’d remember at the next run-through, which will be tomorrow morning. I’ll be sitting in, if I’m up to it. Smooth out rough spots in the script, if any show up. What I’ve been doing all along. Tomorrow afternoon, too, probably. Simon wants to open again tomorrow night, you know; wants to get McClay to cover it—to cover Price in it, actually. And wants the Drummond dame, too, of course. Though the Chronicle is the one that counts. It’s McClay carries the weight, you know. The Sentinel—well.” He shrugged.

  Tony didn’t, precisely. He nodded his head to show he did.

  “Mrs. Abel showed up, but wouldn’t join the two of you for a drink. Then?”

  Price had taken the final sip of his bourbon on the rocks, and he and Martha Abel had left the hotel. Askew had half a martini left and had finished it and had begun to feel “a little funny.” He had gone into the dining room and been taken to a table. No, he hadn’t noticed Tony Cook and Rachel at the table at the end of the bar. Not then. He had started to order and found there was something the matter with his throat. “Seemed to have dried up, you know.” He had decided to go up to his room and lie down for a bit instead of having dinner.