The War of the Worlds Murder

Chapter NINE





TIMES AT MIDNIGHT





WALTER GIBSON AND JACK HOUSEMAN, along with everyone else in the control booth, watched agape in astonishment as a dozen cops, billy clubs in hand, poured into the studio, like raiders in Prohibition days rushing a speakeasy.

Welles remained on his podium, a king surprised by revolting peasants, as his actors instinctively moved away, backing up almost against the far studio wall, and the blue invaders swarmed the platform. The police said nothing, but they were breathing hard, nostrils flared, nightsticks poised.

Then a plainclothes officer in a raincoat and fedora pushed through and looked up indignantly at the confused-looking figure and demanded, “Are you Welles?”

“Guilty as charged. What is—”

Gibson was following Houseman and Paul Stewart, who were on the heels of the CBS executive, Davidson Taylor, out of the control booth and down the handful of stairs onto the studio floor. The four men knifed through the small mob of blue uniforms.

The tall, slender, patrician exec faced the plainclothes officer, who was chewing on an unlit cigar.

“I’m in charge here,” Taylor said. “May I ask who you are, sir?”

“Inspector Kramer,” the copper said, flashing a badge, rolling the dead cigar around. “Don’t you people know you’ve incited a riot?”

Alland helping him on with his suitcoat, Welles came down off the podium, men in blue parting grudgingly to make way, and his expression remained confused though indignation was edging in. “Inspector, we’ve just finished a broadcast, of a fantasy piece. How in God’s name could we—”

The inspector had the remarkable faculty to squint and bug his eyes simultaneously. “You fake an invasion, with real-sounding newscasts, and you have the nerve to ask that?”

“How could anyone mistake what we were doing for reality?” Welles demanded. “It was little green men from Mars! We announced several times it wasn’t real!”

Taylor put himself between the two men like a referee, hands outstretched. When he spoke, the exec’s faint, gentlemanly Southern accent seemed suddenly more prominent. “Inspector, I understand you are responding to a genuine public crisis—”

Welles frowned. “Public...?”

The executive threw his star a quick hard look, then his face softened as he turned toward the stogie-chomping detective. “But this building and this studio remain private property, and I do not believe you have a warrant.”

The inspector had a water-splashed-in-the-face expression; the fragment of cigar almost fell out. “Warrant! Are you kidding?”

“No. I’m not. I’m going to advise Mr. Welles and everyone else involved not to answer any more of your questions until Mr. Paley arrives.”

“Who the hell is Mr. Paley?”

“The president of the network. He lives in Manhattan, and he’s on his way. These are our employees, and they have legal rights, like any other American.”

The inspector poked a thick finger at Welles. “Well, you keep these jokers handy, understand? Till we can talk to ’em. The citizens they terrorized have rights, too!”

“Fair enough,” Taylor said. “Would you mind taking your people out into the lobby, for the time being?”

The inspector frowned. “What, downstairs?”

“No—just right outside. The area by the elevators on this floor will do nicely.”

The inspector twitched a scowl, but he herded his nightstick troop back out again. Though space was again available for the actors to move back up, they stayed put, apparently hoping that they were bystanders and not accomplices.

Welles said, “Dave, what the hell is this?”

Taylor reached a hand into a suitcoat pocket and came back with a fat pile of notes. “This is just a sampling, Orson, of what the switchboard’s been getting since you finally broke in, after forty minutes, and identified the broadcast as fiction—outrage, indignation, death threats. You may especially enjoy the most recent one—it’s from the mayor of Cleveland.”

“Whatever have I have done to the fine city of Cleveland?”

“Oh, nothing much—apparently just unleashed mobs into the streets, sent women and children huddling in church corners, incited violence, looting. His Honor says he’s coming to pay you a visit, Orson—to punch you in the nose.”

Welles looked pale, much as he had when he spotted the body of the murdered woman. “I...I admit I thought we might light a firecracker under a certain lunatic fringe, but I...I apparently seriously underestimated the size of that group. And, Dave, I never dreamed it would go all across the country!”

Arching an eyebrow, Taylor waggled a finger in Welles’s face and let him know what company policy was going to be: “You never dreamed anything like this—on any scale—would happen. Correct?”

Welles swallowed. “Correct.”

“Now, brace yourself...”

“There’s more?”

“Some of these calls indicate there may have been deaths—something about a fatal stampede in a New Jersey union hall, a suicide, some automobile fatalities as people fled the city...”

“My God. Is that possible?”

“None of it’s confirmed, but I mention it so that you grasp the seriousness of the matter—none of your cheek, understand? You could face criminal charges—criminal negligence, even homicide.”

“...for a radio broadcast?”

“For a hoax. A kind of fraud on the public trust.”

Welles said nothing; his eyes were unblinking, his mouth a soft pucker, as if he were about to kiss someone or something—perhaps his future—good-bye.

Taylor looked around and caught Paul Stewart’s mournful gaze. “Paul! Front and center, please.”

Stewart came to Taylor’s side, as Welles faded back.

“Paul,” the executive said, “you’re in charge of rounding up every script and scrap and every record.... Were we making a transcription?”

“Yes,” Stewart said.

“Is there a rehearsal acetate?”

“Yes.”

Taylor pointed a stern finger at the assistant director. “You find every piece of paper and recording involved with this broadcast, timing sheets, casting calls, the works.”

“What do I do with them?”

“I don’t want to know.”

Stewart frowned disbelievingly. “You want them destroyed?”

“No. Just...make them go away. Make them go somewhere these police can’t find. And, oh by the way—Ben Gross of the Daily News is out in the lobby, and seven or eight other newshounds are with him.”

Stewart’s smile was sickly. “You know what they say—any publicity is good publicity.”

Taylor’s eyes were hooded. “Then ‘they’ are insane. Paul, get to it, and don’t let that material fall into enemy hands—and I don’t mean the Martians. Is the author around?”

Shaking his head, Stewart said, “No, Howard was beat—he heard the start of the show, then took off to catch a cab. He’s probably asleep back in his apartment by now.”

“Give him a call and warn him what’s up. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Stewart rushed off to call Koch, and do the assigned housecleaning.

Taylor pointed to Welles, Herrmann, Houseman and Gibson, tic tic tic tic. “Your four—come with me.”

Gibson, touching a hand to his chest, said, “I’m not part of this.”

“You were in on the rewrites, and you were around for everything, as I understand. Let’s keep you off the firing line with these others, all right?”

Gibson nodded.

Taylor turned to face the actors and crew, who were quietly hugging the far studio wall, looking like Lusitania passengers waiting for a shot at a lifeboat.

“You people—if anyone from the police asks you a question, just say you reserve the right to speak to your lawyer, first. We have a whole fleet of Perry Masons to back you up.”

Ray Collins stepped forward. “We didn’t do anything wrong, Dave.”

“None of us did—understand? None of us did. But not a peep to a cop, and any actor who talks to a reporter, looking to get his name in the paper, I’ll see to it that you never appear on CBS radio again.” He gave them a Southern gentleman’s smile and nod. “Thank you.”

Welles was standing like a big slope-shouldered lump. Gibson found it odd to see Welles in a situation where someone else had taken charge, particularly a seemingly mild-mannered sort like Davidson Taylor.

But right now Taylor was taking Welles by the arm like a naughty child being dragged to sit in the corner, and the exec looked over his shoulder and said, “You other three—come along.”

Soon Taylor was leading Welles down the hall, Houseman, Herrmann and Gibson tagging after.

“We need to stow you four out of the way,” the executive was saying. “You keep put till I come back for you—understood? If you need to use the john, that’s permissible, otherwise...consider yourselves under house arrest.”

Then Taylor came to a dead stop in front of Studio Seven.

Welles looked back desperately at Houseman, who patted the air with calming palms, as if to say, The body was gone, remember? Nothing to worry about....

The door was locked, however, and Taylor said, “Damn! I suppose we have to go after that idiot janitor Louis to be let in it.”

Gibson stepped forward. “No, Mr. Taylor. I believe Jack has a passkey.”

Houseman gave the writer a look that could be fathomed only by the two of them, then said, “I do indeed,” and got it out of his pocket and unlocked the door.

Herrmann—who had not been part of the evening’s earlier adventures involving the outdated studio—went in first. Gibson followed, and a shaken Welles entered tentatively, Houseman stepping in after.

From the doorway, Taylor said, “Lock yourselves in.”

Houseman nodded, Taylor disappeared, the door was shut and locked, and chairs from the sidelines were put into use. Herrmann pulled his up at the table, ignorant of a corpse having sat there earlier.

Welles conferred with Gibson and Houseman, away from the composer.

“Jack,” Welles whispered, “when I saw those blue uniforms, I thought surely—”

Houseman held up a hand. “Let’s keep this to ourselves. Benny doesn’t know anything about the, uh, other matter; and neither, apparently do the gendarmes.”

Welles was shaking his head, obviously trying to fight off despair. “But if they search the building, Housey, who knows what they’ll find? The body dumped somewhere? That bloody knife, with my signature?”

Houseman took Welles by the arm. “You have to trust me on this, Orson. Look at me. Do you believe me when I say there is no immediate danger?”

“Well, I...but...”

Houseman glanced at Gibson. “Walter, would you reassure him, please?”

Gibson said, “I can back Jack up on this. Those cops won’t stumble onto anything; they have their hands full.”

From the table, Herrmann stared over at the private trio with his owlish eyes wide behind the thick lenses. “Can anyone join the party? Aren’t I as guilty as the next guy in this conspiracy?”

Houseman managed a small strained smile and called over, “Just a bit of business to deal with, Benny! Patience, please.”

Gibson said, “You’ll have enough to deal with, Orson, if this panic is bad as it sounds.”

Welles sighed. “Housey, are we ruined?”

“We must weather this night, Orson. You must not say a word about...the other affair to that inspector, or to any reporters, should we encounter them. And Dave Taylor is right—you can’t grant even the most qualified admission to the prank you’ve pulled. If there’ve been deaths...”

Welles smiled faintly, bitterly. “Isn’t one murder enough?”

Houseman squeezed his friend’s arm. “You just steel yourself. No admissions, no flippant remarks. Yes?”

“Yes.”

Herrmann’s voice had an irritated edge as he called to them from his seat at the table, where earlier blood had pooled. “Why am I the odd man out? We’re all in this thing together, right?”

The confab over, the three pulled chairs up near Herrmann, but none of them could quite bring themselves to actually sit at the murder table.

“Maybe it’s in bad taste,” Herrmann said, hands folded on the tabletop like a schoolboy at his desk, “but I find this exciting.”

“It is poor taste,” Welles said.

“Still, it is exciting. Can’t wait to call Lucille.” His wife. “Jack, do you think they’ll arrest Orson?”

Houseman said, “I should hope not.”

“Would they arrest me?”

“Why, Benny?” Houseman said dryly. “Would you like them to?”

Herrmann chuckled. “Well, it might be an interesting experience. Composers don’t often get tossed in the clink, you know.”

Welles said, “Benny, shut up.”

Herrmann, blinking behind the glasses, got to his feet; his face flushed, he said, “You can’t talk to me like that!”

Houseman said, “Of course he can. He does it all the time. Sit down and do, please, shut up.”

Herrmann huffed and puffed, but sat himself down.

Perhaps fifteen endless minutes of silence had dragged by, when Gibson stood and stretched. “Jack, did you leave that connecting door unlocked?”

Houseman frowned. “I believe so.”

“I’ll be back in a moment.”

The writer got up.

Welles and Houseman both frowned at him, but Gibson said, “Don’t worry about it,” and a few moments later he was standing in the adjacent studio.

Something had been nagging him, and he went to the pile of painter’s tarps along one side and knelt. He sorted through them, and wrapped in one on the bottom, he found a heavy towel—large, like a beach towel—caked with dark red.

Obviously, this cloth had wiped up the blood on the table and been stowed here, before an escape had been made....

Gibson sniffed the bloody stain, then returned the cloth to its hiding place, grunted a single laugh, rose and reentered Studio Seven.

He’d barely reached his chair when a knock on the door was followed by Taylor’s voice, “I’m back—time to go, fellows.”

Houseman rose and unlocked the door and let the executive in.

“I have a cab waiting,” Taylor said. “We’ll use the service elevator, and we should head off the press.”

Welles said, “The police told us not to leave....”

“Bill Paley’s out there—in his pajamas and slippers with his topcoat over them, is how fast he came—and he’s told the police that we will fully cooperate over the coming days, but that the network would not stand for the browbeating of its staff in this atmosphere.”

Houseman said, “Really, unless they’re prepared to arrest us, we have every right to go.”

The exec nodded. “So it’s the reporters who are the threat, now. Orson, they’ll make you their whipping boy, given half a chance—the papers have been looking for a way to give radio a black eye, and this may be it.”

Herrmann was sent back to Studio One, to leave the building with the other musicians, actors and staff. The reporters would be after bigger fish than the man who conducted that sluggish “Stardust” tonight.

Through the rabbit’s warren of hallways, Davidson Taylor led Welles, Houseman and Gibson to the service elevator. What no one had counted on was Ben Gross’s familiarity with the building.

The Daily News reporter had anticipated the backdoor route, and he—and half a dozen other reporters, who knew enough to follow Gross’s lead—were waiting armed and ready with questions.

As they waited for the elevator to arrive, Gross used his lead position to get out the first query: “How many deaths have been reported to CBS? We hear thousands....”

Welles said nothing, swallowing, eyes darting from unfriendly face to unfriendly face.

Another reporter shouted, “How about traffic deaths? We have reports of the Jersey and upstate New York ditches teeming with corpses.”

Gibson felt a sudden surge of claustrophobia as the faces and waving pencils and the sea of fedoras with press passes stuck in the hatbands surged forward....

Another voice: “What word about rioting? How about that fatal stampede in Jersey...?”

Hands up in surrender, Welles said, “Please...”

And another: “How about suicides? Have you heard about the one on Riverside Drive?”

Taylor said, “Call my office tomorrow for a statement, gentlemen.”

Gross asked, “Don’t you have any statement to make tonight, to the reading public, Mr. Welles?”

“None whatsoever!”

The elevator, thankfully, was there, and they stepped aboard and shut the gate on the hungry newshound horde.

Within minutes, Taylor had ushered the trio through the alley to the cab waiting out front, and they were en route to the Mercury Theatre. After all that fuss, life seemed to be going on as usual in late-night Manhattan—cars stopping for traffic, pedestrians out strolling, no riots, no stampedes to speak of....

At the theater, the company had gone ahead and started rehearsing under the direction of one of Welles’s assistants—Danton’s Death would open shortly, and life (and the show) went on, whether their director deigned to drop by or not. The company was used to their leader being absent in battle, due to this radio show or that romantic rendezvous or just a restaurant meal that had gotten out of hand.

So no otherworldly sense of drama seized the auditorium—other than the cast half-falling downstairs as they were singing “Carmagnole”—and the only sign that something special was up were the several resourceful newspaper photographers who’d figured out that this was where Orson Welles would wind up, tonight.

The cast froze in the midst of their song as Welles climbed to the stage and asked them to take a break and take seats at the front of the auditorium.

When they had, he stood with the expressionistic sets as a bold backdrop, with its blankly staring and accusatory array of masks, and told them what had happened this evening. He told the story briefly but melodramatically, and Gibson could not tell whether the contrition in his voice and manner were sincere—particularly when he seemed to be posing for the photographers below, eyes raised to heaven, arms outstretched in crucifixion mode, an early Christian saint in need of a shave...and as Welles’s beard tended to grow in most heavily in the goatee area, a paradoxical satanic aspect cast its shadow.

On the other hand, Gibson had no doubt that all the talk of deaths—with the threat of multiple murder charges hovering—had made both Welles and Houseman genuinely remorseful, not to mention confused and frightened.

Finally, the boy-genius smiled a little, shrugged, and said, “Well, let’s just say I don’t think we’ll choose anything quite like ‘War of the Worlds’ again.”

Standing next to Houseman in the aisle, Gibson had been watching the actors. He whispered to the producer, “Why is the company taking this so...so lightly?”

“They don’t believe him,” Houseman said.

“Why not?”

“He’s the boy who cried wolf—this is simply the most outrageous of his many outrageous excuses for keeping them waiting.”

Gibson chuckled. “Well, I can see that, actually.”

Houseman turned his head, raised an eyebrow. “You can, my boy?”

“Yes—you see, Jack, those three ‘thugs’ that accosted us last night, outside the Cotton Club?... They were actors Orson hired.”

“Ah. You’re starting to understand how he thinks.”

Gibson nodded. “Yes, I heard somebody mention that he once hired actors to play police, as a practical joke on an actor friend with outstanding warrants.”

“Yes indeed.”

“So he hired those actors—knowing I wouldn’t recognize them—to give validity, through me, an outsider, to that wild excuse he made to you and the cast, based on a nonexistent grudge between him and Owney Madden, over some dancer.”

Houseman’s head tilted to one side. “Well-analyzed—though the dancer exists, she just wasn’t Madden’s protégée. You are proving yourself quite a Shadow-worthy detective, Mr. Gibson.”

“You know why I left our little temporary prison cell back at CBS, don’t you? And slipped back into Studio Eight?”

“I can’t say that I do. I was, frankly, wondering.”

“I found your bloody towel. The one that was used to wipe up all that blood. I sniffed it, by the way. Sickly sweet. Karo syrup, I’d say. Standard ingredient in stage blood.”

Houseman bestowed a tiny smile. “How did you become aware that I had a passkey of my own?”

“Louis the janitor told me—I almost missed it, when he said you’d returned the key ‘first thing.’ But then that seemed an odd way to put it, unless you had borrowed the key the day before, to have a duplicate made, and then returned it to Louis—‘first thing.’ ”

Houseman bowed slightly. “And with that piece of the puzzle, there was little left to solve.”

Gibson gestured with an open hand. “Your accomplice was free to clean up and slip out, while we played out our part of the charade. By the way, Leo the elevator ‘boy’ told me of the woman who left the building, obviously not wanting to be recognized, not long after your accomplice would have made her getaway; he thought she might be Mrs. Welles, but then of course neither Mrs. Welles nor Balanchine were ever at the Columbia Broadcasting Building today. You had their names written into the reception book, knowing Welles’s habit to check up on who’d dropped by, natural enough with all the affairs of the heart he’s been juggling—and easy enough to find a Virginia Welles signature to copy. So I was sent scurrying after suspects who hadn’t even been present when the crime was committed. Classic use of the first tactic of magic—misdirection.”

Onstage Welles was sensing the disbelief around him.

“What is this skeptical murmur?” he said. “Every word is factual—it’s all true!”

“Tell us another one,” somebody said from the audience.

Laughter and catcalls followed, even a little light sarcastic applause.

One of the press photographers in the pit called something up to Welles, and the director leaned over at stage’s edge to hear what the photog had to say. Smiling, the wunderkind got to his feet.

“So you don’t believe me? Come with me, my flock of doubters—follow me, boys! And girls....”

All of them—cast members still in full Danton’s Death French Revolution drag—marched up the aisle after their leader and out into the crisp October night, as if looking for a Bastille to sack.

Gibson walked alongside Houseman. “So you wanted to teach him a lesson—and you enlisted someone else who wanted to get back at Orson, huh?”

With a sideways glance, Houseman said, “You understand, of course, I never imagined this panic would be so extensive—I would not have put Orson through that horror show, had I known—”

“Sure.” Gibson fired up a Camel as they walked, waved out the match, sent it gutterbound. “But I think you did anticipate some kind of panic, otherwise you wouldn’t have tried to talk our bumptious boy out of doing the show in so overt a ‘newscast’ fashion.”

“Granted—had I foreseen the extent of it, however, I wouldn’t have found it necessary to provide him that other opportunity for a comeuppance....”

“So where’s the murder weapon?”

“Back on the Mercury office wall.”

In Times Square, on southeast corner of Broadway and 42nd Street, awash in neon and with a good view of the Times Building and its lighted bulletin, the so-called Moving News sign that circled the venerable paper’s building, Welles assembled his Revolutionary army.

“There,” he said, and pointed, as if to a star. In a way, he was: his own.

ORSON WELLES CAUSES PANIC, the sign flashed. MARS INVASION BROADCAST FRIGHTENS NATION.

His company, believers again, emitted ooohs and aaaahs, then began to applaud. And Welles, despite all that hovered over him, began to smile, and took a small, humble bow.

A shapely figure in one of the French low-cut peasant dresses slipped an arm through Welles’s. “Hi, Orson. Hope you don’t mind—Jack gave me a part in the chorus.”

Welles’s eyes narrowed, then widened, as he realized who was standing beside him. “Dolores?”

“No hard feelings?” Dolores Donovan said, with mischievous malice, and perhaps some affection.

For a moment he looked stricken, as if the lovely blue-eyed strawberry-blonde might be an apparition; then his eyes searched for Houseman, who ambled up to his other side, Gibson following. Everyone was doused in the red of a dancing neon advertising soap flakes.

Sounding like a little boy, Welles said, “Housey—it was just a...?”

“ ‘Hoax’ is the word, I believe.” Houseman touched Welles’s sleeve. “And my dear Orson, I would never have subjected you this terrible practical joke, had I known—”

Welles hugged Dolores, kissed her on the mouth. Then he looked at her tenderly and said, “I’m so glad you’re alive—and by God, I’m glad, too, to have an actress of your caliber in my company.”

Then he turned her loose, and—giving Houseman a hard look—said, “Is this that lesson you promised?”

“It was meant to be, but—”

“But I’ll need more than one, right?”

“Very possibly,” Houseman granted.

And Welles slipped an arm around his friend and began to laugh and laugh and laugh, a Falstaffian roar of a laugh that seemed to relieve Houseman a great deal. But Gibson sensed some hysteria in it.

Which was only fair, after all, considering the hysteria Orson Welles had launched tonight.

The Times sign was announcing the time: twelve A.M.

Midnight.

“It’s Hallowe’en, everyone,” Welles thundered. “It is finally...at long last, really and truly...Hallowe’en.”