Thirty Pieces of Silver: A Play in Three Acts Read Free Page B

ten weeks or so.
    FULLER You work for the Treasury Department, don’t you, Mr. Graham?
    DAVID That’s right.
    FULLER You’ve been there almost three years now.
    DAVID Since the war. I’m a statistician. But I suppose you know that?
    FULLER Yes—but don’t let me give you the impression that we have anything like a spy service. There’s too much loose talk about dossiers and things of that sort.
    ( He smiles apologetically. )
    This is simple information. We know, for example, that before the war, you worked for New York Life. But it is true that Agronsky helped you get this job with the Treasury Department?
    DAVID Well—I guess you could say that. He knew Phillips quite well. Phillips is out now.
    JANE I don’t see what this has to do with us. Dave’s record is a good one. You’re not investigating him, are you?
    FULLER ( He never loses his air of intense and self-concerned seriousness, withal there being always a note of embarrassment. ) I don’t enjoy this—it’s a job. But what would you say, Mr. Graham, that Agronsky’s politics are?
    DAVID I don’t know. I suppose he’s a Democrat. A New Dealer, I suppose. At least he was in the Roosevelt administration.
    FULLER I mean—in a deeper sense.
    DAVID I don’t know what you mean by that.
    FULLER Did you know that Agronsky wasn’t born in this country?
    JANE What has that got to do with it?
    FULLER Just in terms of information. I can understand you when you say you were never very friendly with him. He was born in Russia and he came here when he was seven years old. In addition to that, he’s Jewish. These are matters of information, and I was just curious as to whether you knew. Naturally, you wouldn’t be too friendly with him.
    JANE Why not?
    DAVID You know what he means, Jane. For God’s sake, can’t we keep our heads about this!
    JANE I’d like to keep my head. As a matter of fact, I’ve been practising all day. If Mr. Fuller wants to speak to you, I’ll be happy to go inside and sit with Hilda. If he wants to talk to me, too, I should like to know what Agronsky’s being Jewish or foreign born has to do with us being friends of his?
    DAVID I think all Mr. Fuller meant was that he’s not exactly our kind.
    JANE You know that wasn’t what he meant. Anyway, Leonard was enough your kind when you were in the service.
    DAVID All right, Jane. This isn’t getting us anywhere. Why don’t you let Mr. Fuller say what he means.
    FULLER ( placatingly ) I don’t think I meant anything in particular. It was your opinion that you were not too friendly with Agronsky. But those times when you did see him, what were his political expressions? I mean, would you call him pro-Russian?
    DAVID God knows! The few times we’ve seen him, we played bridge mostly.
    FULLER And in the service?
    DAVID Well—you could say we were all pro-Russian then, couldn’t you?
    FULLER I wouldn’t know.
    DAVID Agronsky as much as the next fellow, I suppose. We were Russia’s ally.
    FULLER How does he feel about Franco? DAVID Franco?
    JANE Yes, dear. ( caustically ) That’s the Spanish dictator.
    DAVID I’m not completely an idiot, darling. I don’t know how he feels about Franco. I’ve never talked to him about Franco. There’s one thing I think you should understand, Mr. Fuller. In the service, Agronsky was an officer. I was an enlisted man. He didn’t talk to me about these things, even if he had them on his mind.
    Fuller I see.
    ( He closes his notebook, looking from DAVID to JANE .)
    Yet you can always make inferences, would you say? I could infer that you’re not very co-operative.
    DAVID I’m trying to be co-operative, Mr. Fuller.
    JANE ( to FULLER ) Is that a threat?
    FULLER We don’t make threats, Mrs. Graham. That’s a comic book aspect of the Department. It just seems to me that if you know a man, you know what he