Curtain for a Jester Read Free Page A

in agony over the many voices, over the music, and there was nothing funny in the scream. No knowledge that an actress had once mimicked agony to make a record, that the record was on a turntable which pressure on a bell-push actuated, made the anguished cry a cause for laughter. For an instant it seemed to transfix those in the room. The dancers broke step, caught at uneasy balance. Glasses raised to lips were checked there; voices broke off as if speech were brittle.
    This held only a moment, while everyone remembered. By then Wilmot was beaming at all of them, was telling Frank that he would get it, was crossing the living room to the foyer.
    The dancers returned to dancing, but with heads turned toward the foyer. Those not dancing, talked and drank again, but waited too, only half listening to what was said. From the foyer, the scream was cut to silence and the resounding laughter of Mr. Byron Wilmot replaced it. Nothing, Pam North thought—nothing in the world—could be comic enough to match such laughter. As if knowing itself outdone, unheard, the music stopped and those who were dancing stopped with it. For an instant one voice went on against the off-stage laughter. A woman’s voice said, “—would be the best joke of—” and then the speaker heard her lonely voice and the voice died.
    â€œSo you’re at it again,” a man’s voice which was not Wilmot’s said from the foyer. “I might have known you would be.”
    There was anger in the voice; it was as if the voice went naked in bitterness. Speaking so, not knowing how many heard him, the speaker was exposed, defenseless, and Pamela North, to defend him, spoke to Monteath, saying something, anything—that through the wide windows of the penthouse one beautifully saw New York. But Wilmot’s laughter surged again and, when it ended, Wilmot said, “Joke’s on you, eh? Thought you were—” But then a needle clicked on a record somewhere and the high-fidelity system hurled music through the living room, so that what Wilmot said further was lost in the rush of sound. As if that had been a signal, conversation began again in the crowded room.
    But Pam North and Monteath—Jerry was somewhere else; Jerry was talking to the gray-haired woman who had almost screamed when the glasses fell—did not talk again. Monteath, for the moment without diplomacy, had turned toward the door from the foyer, and Pam, after looking up at him for a moment, turned too. Monteath’s eyes were narrowed a little; he openly waited, listened without pretense. Pam listened too, and the man who was not Wilmot said, “Sure I’ll stay. You bet I’ll stay.”
    Then a slight tall man in his twenties—a man with a thin white face and black hair—came out of the foyer with Wilmot behind him. In the doorway, Wilmot put a plump hand on the younger man’s shoulder and the man turned his head momentarily and looked at the hand. Wilmot left it there. Wilmot beamed past him and, seeing them watching, beamed at Pam North and Arthur Monteath. He seemed to propel the black-haired man toward them. The man had not dressed for the party. He wore a gray suit, the jacket open. One end of a narrow blue tie dangled below the other. Wilmot put his other hand on the thin man’s other shoulder and guided him to Pam North.
    â€œWant you to meet my nephew,” Wilmot said, over the other. “Clyde Parsons, Mrs. North. This is Mrs. North, Clyde. Mrs. Gerald North.” Having said this, Mr. Wilmot chuckled. “Have to get the boy a drink. Quite a shock he’s had. Oh—this is Arthur Monteath, Clyde. Thought I was dying, he says.”
    Wilmot’s plump hands offered Clyde Parsons to Pam North, to Monteath. Mr. Wilmot himself departed.
    â€œSorry,” Parsons said. His voice was low, now. “He took me in—again.” He pulled his coat together, buttoned it. His fingers went to his