“Arthur!” Stephanie Vaughan spoke for the first time.

“Well,” said Surbonadier loudly, “I’ve made up my mind to stop the fun — see? No reason why you shouldn’t hear”— he turned slightly towards Nigel. “You’re a journalist. Literary man. Here’s a surprise — Gardener’s a literary man, too.”

“Arthur, you’re tight,” said Gardener. He moved towards Surbonadier, who took a step towards him. Alleyn seized his chance and shoved Nigel through the door.

“Good-bye for the moment,” he called. “See you after the show”: — and in a second or two they were back on the stage staring at one another.

“That was pretty beastly,” said Nigel.

“Yes,” said Alleyn. “Come on.”

“The brute’s drunk,” said Nigel.

“Yes,” said Alleyn. “This way.”

They crossed the stage and made for the exit door, standing aside to let an elderly woman come in; they heard old Blair say: “ ’Evening, Miss Max.” As they went out a voice in the passage behind them called:

“Overture and beginners, please. Overture and beginners, please.”

It’s amazing to me,” said Nigel, in the second interval, “how that fellow Surbonadier can play a part in the state he’s in. You’d never guess he was tight now, would you?”

“I think I would have known,” said Alleyn. “From where we are you can see his eyes — they don’t quite focus.”

“I call it a damn’ good performance,” said Nigel.

“Yes,” murmured Alleyn. “Yes. You’ve seen the piece before, haven’t you?”

“Reviewed it,” said Nigel, rather grandly.

“Has Surbonadier’s reading of the part altered at all?”

Nigel turned and stared at his friend. “Well,” he said slowly, “now I come to think of it I believe it has. It’s — it’s sort of more intense. I mean in that last scene with Felix, when they were alone on the stage. What is it he says to Felix? Something about getting him?”

“ ‘I’ll get you, Carruthers,’ ” quoted Alleyn, with an uncannily just rendering of Surbonadier’s thick voice. “ ‘I’ll get you, and just when you least expect it!’ ”

“Good Lord, Alleyn, what a memory you’ve got!” said Nigel, very startled.

“I’ve never before seen anything on the stage that impressed me so deeply.”

“All carried away like,” jibed Nigel, but Alleyn refused to laugh.

“It was uncanny,” he said. “The atmosphere of the dressing-room intensified on the stage. Intensified and bigger than life, like emotion in a nightmare. And then he said: ‘You think I’m bluffing, playing a part, don’t you?’ And ‘Carruthers’—Gardener, you know — said: ‘I think you’re bluffing, Beaver — yes. But if you’re not — lookout!’ ”

“You’re a damn’ good mimic, inspector.”

“Clap-trap stuff it is really,” said Alleyn uneasily.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“I don’t know. Got the ooble-boobles. Let’s have a drink.”

They went to the bar. The inspector was very silent and read his programme. Nigel looked at his curiously. He felt apologetic about the horribly uncomfortable scene in the dressing-room and wondered very much what was brewing between Gardener, Surbonadier and Miss Vaughan.

“I suppose old Felix has cut that bounder out?” he ventured.

“Yes,” said Alleyn. “Oh, yes — that, of course.” The warning bell set up its intolerable racket. “Come on,” said Alleyn. “Don’t let’s miss any of it.” He fidgeted while Nigel finished his drink, and led the way back to their stalls.

“The supper-party won’t be much fun, I’m afraid,” said Nigel.

“Oh — the supper-party. Perhaps it’ll be off.”

“Perhaps. What’ll we do if it’s on? Apologize and get out?”

“Wait and see.”

“Helpful suggestion!”

“I don’t think the supper-party will happen.”

“Here she goes,” remarked Nigel, as the lights slowly died away, leaving the auditorium in thick-populated darkness.

At the bottom of the blackness in front of them a line of light appeared. It widened, and in a silence so complete that the sound of the pulleys could be heard, the curtain rose on the last act of The Rat and the Beaver.

It opened with a scene between the Beaver (Surbonadier), his cast-off mistress (Janet Emerald), and her mother (Susan Max). They were all involved in the opium trade. One of their number had been murdered. They had suspected him of being a stool-pigeon in the employ of Carruthers, alias the Rat (Felix Gardener). Miss Emerald threatened, Miss Max snivelled, Surbonadier snarled. He took a revolver from his pocket and loaded it while they watched him significantly.

“What are you going to do?” whispered Janet Emerald.

“Pay a little visit to Mister Carruthers.”

The stage was blacked out for a quick change.

Carruthers (Felix Gardener) was discovered in his library among the leather chairs that Nigel and Alleyn had seen from the wings. It was still uncertain, to all but the wariest playgoer, whether he was the infamous Rat, organizer of illicit drug traffic, agent of the Nazis, enemy of the people, or the heroic servant of the British Secret Service. He sat at his desk and rapped out a letter on the typewriter, the keyboard of which was not visible.

“He pounds away at the letter Q,” whispered Nigel, full of inside knowledge.

To Gardener came Jennifer (Stephanie Vaughan), passionately in love with him, believing him false, fascinated in spite of her nobler self, by the famous Felix charm. Miss Vaughan did this sort of thing remarkably well, the audience was enchanted, especially as at any moment the bookcase might slide back revealing the Butler (J. Barclay Crammer), whom they knew to be a gun-man of gun-men. It was, as Nigel had remarked in reviewing the play, a generous helping out of the old stock-pot, but Felix Gardener and Stephanie Vaughan played it with subtlety and restraint. The lines were sophisticated if the matter was melodramatic, and “it went.” Even when the sliding bookcase slid and the gun-man did seize Miss Vaughan by her lovely elbows and pinion her, he did it, as it were, on the turn of an epigram, since as well as being a butler and a gun-man he was also an Etonian.

Miss Vaughan was borne off registering a multitude of conflicting emotions and Felix Gardener remained wrapped in the closest inscrutability. He took out his pipe, filled and lit it, gave a little audible sigh and sank into one of the leather chairs. “Isn’t he marvellous!” breathed a woman’s voice from behind Nigel. Nigel smiled a superior but tolerant smile and glanced at Alleyn. The inspector’s dark eyes were fixed on the stage.

“Positively,” thought Nigel, more tolerant than ever, “positively old Alleyn’s all het up.” Then he saw Alleyn’s eyebrow jerk up and his lips tighten and he himself turned to the stage and experienced an emotional shock.

Surbonadier, in his character of the Beaver, was standing in the upstage entrance facing the audience. With one hand he held on to the door and with the other he fumbled with his spotted neckerchief below his scrubby beard. His mouth was half open and he seemed to be short of breath.

At last he spoke. So complete was the duplication of the scene in the dressing-room that Nigel expected to hear him repeat: “Quite a jolly little party,” and got another shock when he said very softly:

“So the Rat’s in his hole at last!”

“Beaver!” whispered Felix Gardener. It was a line that most actors would have played for a laugh. Few actors could have played it otherwise, but Felix Gardener did. He made it sound horrible.

The Beaver came downstage. His right hand now held a revolver. “You’re not a killer, Rat,” he said. “I am. Put ’em up.”

Gardener’s hands went slowly above his head. Surbonadier patted him all over, still covering him with the gun. Then he backed away. He began to arraign Gardener. The intensity of his fury, repressed and controlled apparently by the most stringent effort, touched the audience like venom. The emotional contact between the players and the house was tightened to an almost unendurable tension. Nigel felt profoundly uncomfortable. It seemed to him that this was no fustian scene between the Rat and the Beaver, but a development of the antagonism of two men, indecently played out in public. “Carruthers, the Rat” was his friend Felix Gardener, and the “Beaver” was Arthur Surbonadier, who hated him. The whole business was beastly and he would have liked to look away from it, but for the life of him he couldn’t do so.