Death Takes a Bow Read Online Free

belief asinine. To utter them would make him at once pathetic and absurd. And they were the only words he knew!
    Because now, as Mrs. Williams rose and went to the lectern and rapped on it, Mr. North’s mind was blank. It was not merely blank in the ordinary sense; it was blank like a doorway opening on nothing. Mr. North opened the door of his mind and looked in and it opened on nothing. Even consciousness of his own identity seemed to have vanished; the world was an empty dream, with the trimmings of a nightmare. Mr. North searched desperately in his mind for an inkling of anything—he was to introduce somebody for some purpose—a man named Victor—Sproul Victor. I—
    â€œAnd now,” Mrs. Williams said, her voice corseted with assurance, “I am happy to introduce a representative of Mr. Sproul’s publishers who will, I am sure, have something to tell us about their very successful author. Mr.—Gerald North.”
    Mrs. Williams turned and smiled at the blank which was Mr. North. He felt himself smiling back. He felt himself rising and walking to the lectern. He felt himself reaching for the sheaf of notes in his pocket and watched himself spreading them out on the lectern. He knew he was raising his head and looking out over the audience and smiling faintly, and he heard his throat clear itself.
    And then, of course, that miracle occurred which always occurred; that miracle which, even when he was blankest, Mr. North had always realized would probably happen. Mr. North returned to himself. He saw the audience as a collection of reasonably friendly people, waiting without bias for him to speak; he heard the rustle behind him of Mrs. Williams sitting down and another sound which was, he supposed, Mr. Sproul shifting his feet. He could even, in the instant before he began to speak, hear Mr. Sproul breathing—breathing, it seemed, a little heavily from excitement. So it had got to Sproul, Mr. North thought, pleased—and now, almost amused, Mr. North had been through it and come out on the other side; Mr. Sproul was in it now. Before him, not any longer before Gerald North, loomed that awful moment of arising and that perilous step from seat to lecturing position.
    Mr. North began to speak. He watched the people at the rear of the shallow balcony to make sure that they could hear him; he begged them not to be frightened because of the notes, promising them that he would not use them. “Consider them,” he begged, “only as a straw which I have put ready to be clutched.”
    He would not, he promised, delay them. He might tell them one small story about Mr. Sproul. He told them one small story about Mr. Sproul and paused, with a half smile which meant that they might, if they wished, now laugh. They laughed. He capped their laugh with an inflection, and they laughed again.
    â€œWhen you come down to it,” Mr. North thought, “I’m really pretty good at this. Too bad Pam can’t hear me.”
    He looked out over the audience and for a moment confidence caught in his throat. Pam could hear him all right—assuming his voice was carrying to the fifth row on the side, as presumably it was. Pam was sitting there looking interested and when she caught his eye she smiled and nodded. Dorian Weigand was sitting beside her, and Pam turned to Dorian and made a tiny gesture of lifted eyebrows toward Jerry and Dorian smiled at him. Mr. North hesitated, fractionally, and went on.
    He had talked, now, for a little more than five minutes. He rounded it off. They had come to hear Victor Leeds Sproul, not to hear his publisher—obviously biased in Mr. Sproul’s favor. “Our bias toward anybody who sells a hundred thousand copies is boundless,” Mr. North assured the audience, which smiled. He had come, Mr. Sproul had, to tell them about a beautiful city which no longer was; about a gracious thing which had been killed. How ruthlessly, how barbarously