The Last Illusion

“I’m afraid Miss Sheehan is not in residence,” the hall porter said. “She has left the city for the summer. I have not been informed when she will return. If you care to leave a message?”


“Drat it,” I muttered, coming out into the warm sunshine again. So whom did I try now? Of course, how thick of me. Anyone who could afford to do so left town to escape the summer heat. My only hope was to see if Ryan O’Hare was still in the city. He knew everybody in the profession and besides, seeing him was always a pick-me-up. It also occurred to me that Ryan might prove to be useful in my current assignment. He loved to gossip and probably knew every piece of juicy scandal in the theater world. I returned posthaste to Washington Square and to the Hotel Lafayette, where Ryan had rooms.

I tapped on the door to Ryan’s suite and was greeted by a doleful voice saying, “Go away and leave me to die quietly and alone.”

I bent down and tried to see through the keyhole, but the key was in it. “Ryan,” I called through the crack in the door, “Ryan, it’s Molly. Is something wrong? Please let me in.”

After a moment I heard shuffling feet and the door was opened. A fearsome apparition greeted me and I took a step backward. Ryan was still in his nightshirt. His long dark hair stood out wildly. His eyes were bloodshot and stared me at blearily.

“Holy Mother, Ryan. What in God’s name’s the matter with you. Are you sick?”

“Dying,” he said dramatically. “Probably won’t last the day.”

“My dear man, have you seen a doctor?”

“No doctor. No hope,” he said.

I led him back into his room and closed the door. “Lie down and let me go for one.”

“No use,” he said, sinking dramatically onto the bed.

That was when I noticed an empty bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey on his bedside table.

“Did you drink all this?”

“How else was I going to drown my sorrows?” he exclaimed.

“Then I suspect that all you’ve got is an almighty hangover,” I said. “Lie there, I’ll have them send up some black coffee.”

“Don’t bother. I just want to die anyway,” he said. “There is no point in continuing to live.”

I ignored him and phoned down to the front desk.

“What on earth is wrong?” I asked.

He turned his face away, staring bleakly out of his window, where a large sycamore tree shimmered in the breeze. “Everything,” he said. “Life has no meaning.”

I waited and at last he said, “You remember the divine young man with the yacht? We went on a cruise up the Hudson?”

“I do remember,” I said.

“He’s left me,” Ryan said bleakly. “His father told him to shape up and marry a suitable girl or he was going to cut him off without a penny, so money won out over my broken heart.”

“Ryan, why did you decide to be a playwright,” I said, chuckling, “when you could have been such a marvelous tragic actor?”

“How heartless you are, Molly Murphy. I bet if that great brute of a policeman abandoned you, you’d be a little down in the dumps yourself.”

“I’m sure I would,” I said, “but I don’t fall in and out of love with someone new every few weeks like you.”

“But this time was different,” he said. “I had such high hopes. We were going to sail his yacht to the Med for the summer. He was going to back my new play.”

“Ah, I see. So maybe money did play a small part for you as well.”

“A very small part,” he agreed. “One does like to dine well and a summer on the Med sounded so delightful. Better than being stuck in this sweltering cesspool for the summer. And now what will happen to my new play?”

“I didn’t know you’d written a new play,” I said.

“Only the most brilliant thing so far this century,” he said. “It will make that oaf George Bernard Shaw look like an illiterate schoolboy.”

“What’s it called?” I asked, since he was clearly perking up.

“I don’t have a title yet. And I have to confess that most of it is still in my head, but the smattering that is on paper—sheer, unadulterated brilliance.”

“Modesty, thy name is Ryan,” I said.

“One knows one’s worth,” he said.

“Then it seems to me that you have a lot to live for right now. You need to get that play on paper before it all vanishes from your head. And I tell you what, if it’s as brilliant as you say, then we’ll take it to the impresario Tommy Byrne. He’s a fellow Irishman, isn’t he?”

Ryan sat up, clutched at his head in dramatic gesture for a moment, then reached out and grabbed my hand. “Molly, you are a true lifesaver. You’ve given me hope. If things were different, I’d fight off that horrible policeman and marry you myself. You always know how to lift my spirits.”

A knock at the door heralded the arrival of black coffee. He drank it, protesting with each sip, then lay back down again.