A Night in the Byzantine Palace

A monarch is dying. Today, a thin quiet man stands and watches through a gauze of dust as its faceless enemies pull it down -- or, rather, begin to pull it down, for its splendor even now is too ranging for any foe to demolish in a single day. Immense, it resists with every ton of its mass, with every dome, with every wall and pier, every cornice and buttress, every pierced balcony, every apse and nave and arched recess. Each little corbel resists, each metal finial, each glass mosaic, each softly modulated moulding. Its entablature resists, its lacelike carving, the intricate decoration of its arcade spandrels. Stolid, it ignores its conquerors with the passivity of a captive barbarian prince scornful and stoic under gross torture.

It has already been disemboweled, curetted, its inwards stripped away: all that tarnished gilt and worn velvet; those deep carpets that softened the sound of how-many-hundreds of feet on its far-reaching floors and wide winding stairs of veined marble; those objets d'art with which it had been cluttered -- heroic sculptures of naked gods and goddesses, Romantic paintings in ormolu frames, colored lanterns, pillars writhing with dense adornment, great chandeliers of blinding crystal, vast tapestries and lush drapes, cumbrous mahogany tables, colossal chairs that made the thrones of most kings seem plain and mean -- all the interior gaudery has been scooped out and shipped off to auctioneers and dealers in miscellaneous junk, and now the huge empty husk echoes with the relentless boom of the swinging iron ball that cracks and sunders the stout walls, tumbling them into ignominious rubble.

The destruction was opposed. There were some who deplored the assassination of this eccentric architectural monarch. Preserve it, they said, make of it a school or a convent, a museum, a convention hall, subdivide it into apartments even, but let it stand. Such voices were called reactionary by those who worshiped the two-faced god of Progress, and the demolition went ahead as ordered. Under other circumstances, the think quiet man would have lent his voice to the small chorus of civic objectors, for in such things -- the rape of the past in the pious name of the future -- he has always been a confirmed conservative. But today as he stands in the hot sun and listens to the hard clangor and watches the giant edifice begin to fall, there is the faint quivering embryo of a smile upon his face ...

• • •

On Vine Street, in Hollywood, there is a large market that never closes. It is open for business 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and to underscore this fact it displays a colossal clock, gone mad. The two hands whirl ceaselessly in opposite directions, as if to say, "Time doesn't exist." It is not a thing to see when very drunk and desirous of knowing the hour of the day or the night.

Horst Graustein, the film director, was not drunk, nor did he care to know the time, that evening as he drove past the market. Still, while his Jaguar sedan was stopped for a red light, he looked at the clock. As the gigantic hands spun crazily, he might have been thinking: You're a liar, clock. Time does exist. It exists in the absence of hair on my head; it exists in the lusterless eyes of this patient old woman next to me, meine gnädige Frau. But he was thinking none of these things, although he had thought them many times before at the sight of the clock. He was thinking, instead, of the man he would soon greet as his host, a man named Sidney J. Freemond.

On Laurel Canyon Road, which is a serpentine ribbon, the writer Clayton Horne was driving his red Corvair just a fraction too fast for the comfort of his pretty young wife. Clayton Horne, his eyes on the road, was thinking not of his wife but of Sidney J. Freemond. He stepped on the accelerator pedal. His wife closed her eyes and inaudibly muttered a Hail Mary.

The Rolls-Royce called attention to itself, even on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. For one thing, it was gold. For another thing, it was a convertible (rare in a Rolls) and the top was down. For yet a third thing, the stunning stimulatrix at the wheel was Laura Benedict, blonde, firm-bosomed, thrice-married, thrice-divorced, once an Academy Award winner; and the man at her side, the dagger-cruel beauty of his profile slicing the air, was Norman Keith, 15 years a leading man, and currently the escort of Miss Benedict. The liaison had been dutifully recorded by Mike Connolly between casting news and a cryptic quote from Rilke: "La Benedict and Norm Keith are definitely in The Torrid Zone." At the present moment, both were temporarily isolated in their own Tepid Zones, and the uppermost thought in the mind of each was a tight close-up, in Technicolor and Cinemascope, of Sidney J. Freemond.

The three cars arrived at Bel Air within minutes of one another. Each one, in its turn, took the slow, ascending curve of the Freemond driveway, past the famous approaches of suffocating greenery, baleful statues and xylophonic fountains, coming at length to a stop at the main entrance of the massive pile which a wag had once, not with precise accuracy, described as belonging to the Middle Dracula Period. Since the recent death of his wife, Sidney J. Freemond had lived alone here, with his domestic staff. Taxes feasted like ravening carnivores upon the immense mansion and grounds, but Freemond had never, not even for a moment, considered the possibility of moving out, despite the earnest counsel of lawyers and business managers.

Now, in the cavernous reception hall, a manservant quietly greeted the guests and collected the ladies' wraps. "Mr. Freemond will be down presently," he murmured.

"How are you, Peters?" said Graustein.

"Very well, Mr. Graustein, thank you."

"You're taking good care of our friend?"

"I do what I can to make Mr. Freemond comfortable, sir."

"That's fine. May we expect a good dinner tonight?"

"I think I might say, sir, that Mr. Freemond has planned a memorable weekend, and that tonight's dinner will be simple but excellent. But, Mr. Graustein ..."

"Yes?"

The manservant's voice became a touch conspiratorial. "A word to the wise, sir. The salad dressing, if you don't mind my mentioning it, is made with anchovies: very delicious of course, but ..."

Graustein chuckled. "You're thinking of my gout, eh? Quite right, anchovies are bad for me, I'll avoid the salad dressing. You're a good friend, Peters."

"Thank you, sir."

The manservant's lean form flickered out of visible range, to dispose of the wraps. Clayton Horne walked up to Graustein. "I couldn't help overhearing," he said.

"Hello, Clayton. About the dressing?"

"Yes. It suggests a script. A despotic millionaire -- misanthropic, hated, played by, oh, James Mason? -- decides to murder a half dozen of his enemies and so he invites them to a lavish dinner. The salad dressing has been poisoned -- but very discreetly, by the artful introduction of a botulism, let's say, and the millionaire, of course, will avoid it, while his guests will die agonized deaths which the coroner will call food poisoning. His butler, Peter Sellers, who hates him, inadvertently learns of the scheme. Instead of calling the police, however, or overtly warning the victims, he has a more subtle revenge -- he has one guest that the dressing is bad for his gout, another that it's loaded with calories and no good for her figure, another that it's not kosher, another that it contains meat juices and it's Friday, and so on. The would-be murderer then has to sit and watch his whole plan slowly collapse as each of his guests politely declines the stuff. Not too bad is it, Horst?"

Graustein smiled and patted the younger man's arm. "It's a cinch for Hitchcock," he said. Then, as Peters reappeared with a tray of cocktails, he added, "But it needs a finish. The tables are only half turned on your millionaire. You must destroy him completely or you will leave your audience unsatisfied. Ah, thank you, Peters."

Laura Benedict joined the two men. "Talking shop so soon?"

"No, Wunderschön. Our young friend here suspects that Sidney plans to poison us tonight."

"All writers have nasty minds," drawled Laura, bestowing a casual kiss on Horne's cheek. "I read your novel, darling, it's a kick. But there's no part in it for me!"

"Don't worry, Laura, it won't make a film anyway. It's not that kind of novel."

"More fool you," said Norman Keith good-naturedly, walking up to them.

"Hello, Norman," Horne said. "I thought you'd be in Spain buy now."

"Sidney's decided to fake it here. All this 'runaway production' talk intimidates him. If you ask me ---"

But now their host was descending the marble stairs, silently, with portent, each step a production. All eyes were fixed upon him, and that was exactly the way he wanted it.

Sidney J. Freemond, at 65, was a squat, raniform man of emphatic ugliness. Sparse white hair was plastered patchily to his balding skull. The skin of his face, victim of rich diet and too many Palm Springs sojourns, had the folded, purple look of congealed lava. He reached the bottom step, stopped, and elaborately blinked. His eyes, under their heavy hoods, were as dark and as hard as carborundum. "Everybody here?" was his greeting. His voice was a croak from the swamp.

Graustein elected himself to answer. "All present or accounted for, Sidney. How are you?"

Freemond ignored the question. His eyes cursorily examined each guest, but sparkled with interest at the sight of Mrs. Horne. "I don't think I've had the pleasure," he said.

"Oh," Horne said, stepping forward, (continued overleaf) "Sid, this is my wife, Pat."

Pat Horne said, "Pleased to meet you at last, Mr. Freemond."

"She's very pretty, Horne. You're a lucky fella. Young lady, you're married to one hell of a writer."

Turning away from their smiles, he said, "Everybody got drinks?" Not waiting for an answer, he said to his manservant, "Pete, bring another round."

Norman Keith, nothing if not proper, inwardly winced at the name "Pete." Freemond's egalitarian discomfort at the man's full name, and his attempt at what he thought was a more democratic form of address, offended Keith in a way that only trivial things can offend. It nagged him, like a pebble in a shoe, and he was angry at himself for allowing it to nag him so.

Freemond, a glass of plain tonic water and lime in his hand, led the procession circuitously in the general direction of the dining room, passing through magniloquent chambers. Young Mrs. Horne was awed. "It's fantastic," she said.

"Built in the old days," Freemond said. "By Gilbert Rodolfo, the silent star. I bought it right after he was killed. It's very authentic. It's ---" He glanced toward Graustein.

"Byzantine," said Graustein, who then added, with a tint of satire, "It's not true, Mrs. Horne, that the Xanadu sections of Citizen Kane were filmed here."

Missing the jocose intent, Freemond said, "No, that was all shot over at RKO. Desilu now."

They paused before an enormous oil portrait of a placid matron, her own simple beauty beclouded by flattering prettification. "My late wife," said Freemond, sanctimoniously. He took Mrs. Horne's arm and entered the dining room.

Dinner was unpretentious, straightforward, and very good. Turtle soup, duckling aux cerises, wild rice, a bracing salad (the dressing shunned by Graustein), Bavarian cream. Appropriate wines all the way. "Darling, really! Our waistlines!" Laura said to Freemond.

"Listen," he replied, "a square meal never hurt anyone."

Throughout dinner, Freemond disgorged his repertoire of jokes and stories, long and short, true and false, usually a bright cobalt blue. At one point, even Laura was obliged to say, "Please, darling, not while we're eating."

At meal's end, Freemond instructed Peters to serve coffee in his private theater. There, the versatile factotum assumed the role of projectionist, as Freemond and his guests, sunk in heavily upholstered seats, sipped coffee or brandy, smoked, and watched a rough cut of the latest Sidney J. Freemond production, A Kiss in Time, starring Laura and Norman, written by Horne, directed by Graustein. Photography had been completed a few weeks before.

The film, a romantic comedy in Technicolor, still lacked credit titles, music and dubbing. Frequently, the screen was occupied by printed messages -- Insert missing, fade out, fade in. Vertical editing marks often skittered across the image at the end of a scene, indicating a dissolve. Many exterior sequences, having been shot soundless, or "M.O.S.," were at this stage totally silent and the room was filled only with the soft whirr of the projector. During these sequences, Graustein would murmur, more or less to himself, comments such as, "Car door slamming. Maybe birds. Shoes on gravel." Or: "Big love theme right here."

"M.O.S.," said Laura at one point, "what does that mean exactly? I know it means filmed silent, but what do those letters mean?"

No one, apparently, knew, until Freemond tonelessly said, "It started as a joke, back in the old days, and it stuck. It means Mit Out Sound."

"Really?"

"I wouldn't kid you."

A Kiss in Time was overlong and in need of cutting. By the time it was finished, the members of the miniature audience -- denizens of an early-to-bed town -- were fatigued. Freemond therefore kept discussion of the film to a minimum and mercifully bade his guests goodnight. "Get a good sleep," he said. "I want to see you at breakfast bright and early." Then, smiling, he left them.

"I don't like it when he smiles like that," said Graustein to no one in particular. "I don't like it at all ..."

• • •

Subtropical morning exploded cold and smogless. For a brief moment, the brilliance of the weather deceived Graustein and he thought he was in Majorca, but soon time and place clicked into position like jigsaw pieces and he remembered he was in Byzantium, U. S. A. If this were a weekday, he would probably arise, breakfast lightly, and drive to the studio before the glut of traffic, arriving ahead of the secretaries and messenger girls. He would part the drapes and raise the blinds of his office's north-facing window, and he would see the Hollywood Hills, flattened and blurred by a scrim of smog, the word Hollywood spelled out on them in giant white letters. He would see Griffith Observatory if he turned his head to the right; and if he turned it just a little to the left, he would see the cylindrical, stylus-topped Capitol Records Building. Much nearer, just down the street, he would see the neon sign of the restaurant where he often studied the handsome faces of easeful stars and nervous starlets, while incidentally eating lunch. Then he would sit down at his desk, open his script, and begin for the hundredth time to revise and refine his penciled marginalia: memos to himself, crude sketches of shot composition, simplifying of thorny dialog.

This morning, however, he would be forced to breakfast grandly and look upon the smile of Freemond. With a groan of effort, he arose.

Down in the dining room, the sideboard glittered with the silver of trays and chafing dishes. On display was an English breakfast: eggs, kidneys, haddock, bacon, crumpets; a platoon of food, at the ready. Two by two, the guests assembled and were joined by their host.

A curious silence had entered with them. There were the usual murmurs of good morning, a few pleasantries, but these were delivered in a vacuum and fell dead as soon as they were uttered. The silence was a solid thing that sat at the table like an embarrassing guest, like Banquo. Before long, Freemond took in Norman and Laura in a single glance and said, "You two enjoy yourselves last night?"

Norman said, "Sure thing, Sidney. Great dinner. And I think we're going to have a really fine picture ---"

"Dinner, picture. That's not what I mean. Laura knows what I mean, right, baby?"

Banquo's corpse, swelling with decay, grew and floated over the room, choking the air with the stink of silence. Finally, Laura said, "I'm not sure I do, darling."

"Oh, come on. Come on. Norman's a good-looking guy, you don't have to be ashamed."

Norman said, "Now look, Sidney, a joke's a joke, but ---"

Freemond did not acknowledge the objection. He went on speaking to Laura. "They're all good-looking fellas now, ain't they?"

"Sidney," she said, "please ..."

"Once, though, looks didn't matter with you, did they? Old guys, bald guys, fat guys. Useful guys, right?"

Horne attempted to restore civilization to the breakfast. "Sidney, don't you think you should ---" But he stopped short, because Freemond suddenly had a book in his hand, a book Horne recognized.

Freemond said, "I shouldn't talk about Laura? Better I should talk about you? Sure. By you I'm an illiterate, right, Horne? A -- what was it you called me? -- a verbal cripple?"

"Sidney, I never ---"

"You never, you never. You think I didn't see this novel you wrote, this pile of garbage? Where you talked about me? So you made me into a magazine editor and gave me an Irish name -- you think I didn't know it was me? You think half this town didn't know it was me? Here. Catch." Freemond threw the book at Horne. "Page 195. Where I marked an (continued on page 60) Byzantine Palace (continued from page 56) X. Start reading."

"Look, Sidney, I assure you ---"

"You'll assure nothing, you'll just read, like I said. I'd read it myself but I'm a verbal cripple, it wouldn't sound so nice. Read."

Horne, his voice quavering, read from the book. "'There is a breed of creature which ---'"

"Creature. Cripple. Beautiful words, ain't they? Keep reading."

"'-- which apparently has never been told that words have definitions. They grope their way through language by connotations only; and there is nothing less precise than connotation, which changes from person to person and is based on associations, many of which are below the conscious level, in that place where Chaos reigns. Such a creature was Stanley Doran. Tap-tapping his way blindly through a piece of somebody else's writing, he would call certain words or phrases "stoppers." "It stopped me" he would say: to him, a damning accusation and reason enough to change the offending word. It would not have occurred to him that he may have been "stopped" because of his own ignorance of meaning or lack of familiarity with idiom. "I don't get the right feeling from this word," he would say, his unconscious associations darkly churning, and he would be hurt if he were gently told that it didn't matter what "feeling" he got from the word: the word meant one certain thing and that's all it meant and it did not mean all those amorphous things sloshing around in the damp cellar of his connotations ...'"

Horne looked up from the book. "Sidney," he said, but Freemond cut him dead with a cold eye and a rigid finger which pointed to the book. Horne read on:

"'You would get nowhere telling this verbal cripple that Anoint meant no more than to smear or rub over with oil or an unctuous substance: Anoint was forbidden in anything but ecclesiastical contexts because it was "a religious-type word." Perhaps it might be suggested that this was no more than the single lovable chink, the tragic flaw in an otherwise noble soul. However ---'"

"That's enough," snapped Freemond. "That's plenty. Pretty smart, ain't you? You couldn't say that stuff to my face, so you shove it into a book and think you can get away with it. Writers!" He leaned forward. "Well, I got news for you, Mr. Writer. This verbal cripple is gonna cripple you with your own stinking words!"

"Sidney," Horne said, "what words?"

Freemond smiled. "Who knows? That's what we're here to find out. What you really think of me." He looked at Graustein. "And what you think." He turned to Norman Keith. "And you." Finally, he looked Laura up and down. "And you too, baby. You too."

During the reading, Peters had materialized again and was standing discreetly in a corner. Freemond turned to him and said, "Get it, Pete." Peters left the room.

Freemond settled back in his chair. "Relax," he said. "Get comfortable. Eat your breakfast. We're gonna have a little entertainment." He chuckled, thickly. "A little show with an all-star cast." His own jape pleased him very much. "Nothing but the best, folks. Strictly Class-A. A real Sidney J. Freemond production."

Graustein sighed. It was an eloquent sound, with 50 centuries of resignation in it. "Sidney," he said softly, "whatever it is you've got up your sleeve -- don't do it."

"You're giving orders, Graustein?"

"I'm asking. In the name of decency."

"What decency? What is it you think I'm going to do?"

Graustein shook his head. "I don't know, Sidney. But knowing you, and knowing that special tone in your voice, that special smile on your face, I know it must be something appalling."

Freemond laughed. "Remember that time in the commissary?" he said, gleefully.

"I remember, Sidney."

Everybody remembered. It had become a legend. It happened on Graustein's first day at the studio. Freemond welcomed the famous refugee into his office with expansive arms, with admiring words, with lambent promises, with costly cigars. Then he led him to the commissary for a ceremonial luncheon with the other studio executives. There was a short speech by Freemond, a brief murmur of thanks from Graustein, and then the great director sat down on a chair rigged to emit a slight electric shock and a very loud buzz. A harmless, childish trick, and everyone was puzzled at Graustein's outsized reaction to it. Everyone but Sid Freemond. He knew about Graustein's experiences with the Gestapo, about the days and nights of relentless interrogation to the calculated accompaniment of special electrical appliances.

"You should have seen the look on your face!" Freemond was saying now.

Graustein disregarded him. "Sid, I ask you now, and for the last time, whatever awful thing you have planned, don't. Not for my sake, not for Laura's sake or Norman's or Clayton's or our wives. For your sake, Sid. For your own good."

Freemond's palm came down upon the table with a jarring smack. "Nobody tells me what's for my own good! You, Graustein, you just be quiet." His eyes swept around the table. "Everybody be quiet. And listen for a change." He blinked, once. "So smart, all of you. So stinking smart. But I'm smarter! I know what you say about me behind my back -- and this time, I'm going to know it to my face. We're all going to know it. Mit sound! You begin to get the picture?"

"Oh no," Laura said in a whisper. "It's too dreadful. You wouldn't do a thing like that, Sidney."

"Wouldn't I, baby?"

Norman looked at Freemond, then at Laura, then back at Freemond again. "Sidney," he said, "you don't mean to say you ---"

"That's right, pretty boy. I had your rooms bugged."

The word was unfamiliar to Mrs. Graustein. "Bugged?"

Freemond turned to her. "Wired for sound, Mrs. Graustein. Hidden mikes. Every word you said, all of you, after you went to your rooms last night. On tape, all of it." He smiled at her husband. "Surprised?" he said.

"Not really," said Graustein. "You're very good at wiring things."

Peters returned, carrying a tape machine and a large plastic reel packed to the rim with tape. Setting the machine on the floor, he plugged the cord into the nearest outlet and deployed the portable twin speakers so as to achieve the most effective stereophony. Freemond's guests dumbly watched his actions. The butler now began to thread the tape onto the empty reel.

"Pete," said Freemond, "you spliced all the tapes together?"

"Yes, Mr. Freemond. They're all on this spool, one right after the other."

"Good, good." Freemond's eyes glittered. To his guests, he said, "I ain't heard this stuff yet. Wouldn't have been polite not to wait for the rest of you. Right?"

Horne noted, with horror, that Freemond now actually licked his lips. What was he thinking, the writer wondered. Was the lip-licking relish caused by anticipation of the expected anti-Freemond remarks only? Or was he additionally looking forward to a bonus of connubial intimacies, extramarital dalliance, sexual deviation?

Horne, rising, spoke softly to his wife. "Come on, dear, let's go."

"Go?" The word sprang like a harpoon from Freemond's mouth. "You're going nowhere! You're staying! All of you are staying! You walk out that door and you never work in this town again! You heard of black lists? I'll give you black lists! Sit down."

Horne sat. Freemond continued to fix him with his eye. He then looked at each of his other guests, in turn. At last, casually, he said, "All right, Pete, roll." The butler snapped on the machine.

There was a crackle and the gentle (concluded on page 108)Byzantine Palace(continued from page 60) hum of silent tape for a few moments. Then, an invisible door opened, and two pairs of unseen feet walked into the room. Breathing was heard. A throat was cleared. "Well," said the voice of Mrs. Graustein, "that was a very lovely dinner." The corporeal Mrs. Graustein started and reflexively put a hand to her lips.

"Sidney knows how to live well," replied Graustein's voice.

"Oi, I'm tired, Horst."

"So am I."

"We're not so young anymore, Liebling."

"Speak for yourself, old lady!" The two voices chuckled at each other. Graustein was heard to grunt, and a large shoe was dropped to the floor. "Actually," he said after a moment, "when you think about it, we shouldn't mind getting old."

"Not mind?"

"We ought to be thankful we were given the opportunity to grow old." The other shoe fell.

"Ja, Horst," his wife said, sleepily.

"Our friends, so many, were not as lucky. Klaus . . . Johanna . . . Nathan ..."

"Werner and Lise ..."

"Yes. Gone, every one. Almost, we went with them. Almost. But a hand reached out and saved us."

His wife's voice was muffled, as if her face were half-buried in her pillow. "The Hand of God, Horst."

"The hand of Sid Freemond. Some people say he helped us because it was a million dollars' worth of publicity for him. Maybe. But I don't care. To me, that man is the instrument of God ..." Soon, the room was filled with the sound of slow, steady breathing.

Freemond's face was impenetrable. He did not look at Graustein. He watched the tape reel turn, as if hypnotized by the movement. Before long, the group around the table heard the voice of Clayton Horne:

"See what I mean about his stories?"

"You mean those jokes he told?" said his wife's voice. "Some of them were a little rough, don't you think?"

"Sure, but he's a rough-hewn guy. No, my point is, he has an unerring sense of drama. Each of his little stories is like a play in miniature. Vivid characters, clearly defined. A methodical build-up. An almost classic hint of foreboding -- what theorists call 'the expected unexpected' -- Sophocles had it, and Shakespeare. The calculated delays, to build suspense. The seeming digressions, each one with a purpose. And then, pow!"

"He certainly does hold your interest. Unhook me in back, will you?"

"There. You should see him in a story conference. He has an uncanny ability for putting his finger on the weak spots in a script. Plot clinkers I've sweated over for days, characters who won't stay in character. He sits there, chewing on that cigar of his, and then he says, 'That girl wouldn't say that. What she'd say is this ...' And, you know, he's right? Ninety-nine out of a hundred times, he's absolutely right."

"Doesn't it get annoying after a while?

He being so right?"

"With somebody else, it could. But Sid is humble about it -- no, don't laugh -- Sid is really a very humble man. This one we saw tonight, you know that Sid is responsible for damn near half of that script? I told him: I said, 'Sid, I ought to share the screen credit with you.' You know, like Wilder and Diamond, Welles and Mankiewicz. But he just smiled. 'Don't be an idiot,' he said. A very generous guy ..."

Freemond swallowed, visibly, audibly. His purple face seemed pale. The reels continued to turn, producing this time a long interval of high-heeled walking and feminine humming. Finally, there was a knock on the door. Laura Benedict's voice was heard to say, "Yes?" A male voice faintly replied, "It's Norman." The door opened. An exchange of dreary trivia followed, and then the sound of a bottle and glasses. At length, there was an embarrassing pause, after which Laura was heard to say, "No, Norman."

"What's with you?" said Keith's voice.

"Nothing. Just -- not tonight."

"But I thought ---"

"I'm sorry to be such a bore, darling, but tonight I would just feel . . . wrong."

"Wrong? This is Norman you're talking to. How come the cornball dialog all of a sudden?"

"I mean it, Norman. Please go back to your own room."

"Goddamnit, Laura ---"

"Darling, this has nothing to do with you. It's just that ..."

"Just what?"

"I couldn't. Not here. Not under his roof."

"Under his ---!!"

"Don't you understand, darling? It would seem almost . . . callous. Unfeeling. And I'm not an unfeeling woman, Norman."

"Of course you're not, honey, but ..."

"I love that man."

"Sid?"

"Sid."

"But I thought you and he -- I mean I thought it was just ---"

"I've always loved him. But I never let him know, not even when we were . . . together. I couldn't make him bear the weight of my love, it wouldn't have been fair, not while his wife was alive. And now it's too late. So I let him think what all the rest of you thought -- that I was using him. The old casting couch bit. But all the time, I loved him more than any other man I'd ever known. I still love him. I feel his presence in every room of this house, strong, masterful . . . but like a little boy underneath that gruff mask. You do understand, don't you, darling? That's why I . . . I mean, not in his own house . . . I couldn't ..."

Sidney Freemond was weeping. His eyes were closed now, but tears glistened on his cheeks. Graustein stood up, slowly. To the others he very softly said. "I think perhaps we should go now." He turned to the butler. "Peters, would you kindly get the ladies' coats? We'll wait in the reception hall."

"Yes, Mr. Graustein."

They began to file out of the room. Graustein lagged behind for a moment. Bending over, he snapped off the recorder. Freemond's eyes had not opened; and now, his body shuddered with inaudible sobs. Gently, Graustein said, "You see, Sid? Why I asked you not to do this? For your own good?" Freemond did not reply. After a moment, Graustein left the room.

• • •

A roar resembling thunder went up as a great, mosaic-covered wall crumbled and crashed in a billowing of atomized plaster. The sound nourished Peters as the watched the demolition. Die, palace, he said to himself; I will not mourn you. Freemond himself was dead now for almost a year and a half. It was a little over two years ago that Peters had played those tapes at his command. And yet he remembered with sharp focus how he had brought the coats to the reception hall; how he had watched the Jaguar, the Corvair and the gold convertible Rolls drive off; how, returning to the dining room, he had delicately asked his master if he was in need of anything. Freemond, his eyes still closed, had shaken his head. Peters had walked upstairs to tend to the guest rooms, opening the windows, checking for any articles of clothing or other effects that might have been mistakenly left behind, and carefully removing the small white cards tied with string to the wall switches just inside the doors. He had torn the cards into tiny pieces and burned them in an ashtray. He had flushed the charred residue down a toilet. On each card had been typed: "A word to the wise. The walls have ears. A friend." Then he had poured himself three fingers of Sidney J. Freemond's finest brandy.

Chuckling at the memory, which sweetly alkalized the acid memories of several hundred indignities borne and planned minor cruelties suffered silently in the name of service, Peters turned from the scene of destruction and, with a spring in his step, walked toward his parked and patiently waiting car.