ANNOUNCER'S HOLIDAY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23029, 5 May 1938, Page 7

ANNOUNCER'S HOLIDAY

By VAL GIELGUD

(COPT RIGHT)

Well-known radio dramatist and author of "Beyond Dover," etc.

A VOICE, KNOWN TO MILLIONS OF 8.8.C. LISTENERS, BELONGS TO A YOUNG MAN WHO HAS BEEN GRANTED A MONTH'S HOLIDAY. ON THAT VACATION MANY THINGS HAPPEN.

• CHAPTER Vl.—(Continued) "It's quite a good story," admitted Superintendent Moresby when Charles had finished. a "But you don't believe a word of it?"

"Some of it. Even quite a lot of it. I don't believe that stuff about submachine guns in Solio. Alore likely gardening tools, or bicycles in sections." "Bicycles wrapped round grapefruit? Bather rust-making surely?" To that sally, Moresby made no reply. He was frowning. "We might look into that," he said at last. "Just in ca.se —but tho rest of it—" and he shrugged his big shoulders.

"Too much like a fairy-tale?" hazarded Charles. "The wicked prince, the pure young actress, and the gallant young rescuer straight from that most modern of all Castles of Uplift, Broadcasting House?"

"Not at all," said Moresby. "It's nearly all true, as far as I know."

"What do you know about it?" "We know a bit about most things," murmured Moresby deprecatijigly, "It's our business, Mr. Bland. I know to begin with that it's true that this young sprig—we'll go on calling him Xavier, shall we?—is very much one of the boys. A nice time the Special Branch had, looking after him, last time he was over here. He wanted to ride a polo pony into his hotel at three in the morning."' "Well?"

"He's due over hero in about twentyfour hours," Moresby went on. "Coming for this Austrian girl's first> night, no doubt. We're getting ready for him. And we've been asked to bo specially careful of tho ladies he sees. I don't know anything about Miss Mahler, except that a friend of mine in tho show—"

"Moresby!" interrupted tho scandalised Charles. "I'm amazed. I really am!"

"Well, you needn't be!" said Moresby shortly. "I'm a bachelor, as you very well know, Mr. Bland. And the lady is a cousin of my tobacconist. Not a young lady, of course. She plays charwomen and duchesses as a rule—character bits. And her information about the West End stage is extremely reliable, thank you very much." "I apologise," said Charles, grinning. "You must ask mo out to meet her at supper some time," "She's careful of her company," retorted the Superintendent. "But she says that Miss Mahler is pretty and a lady, nice to the chorus-girls and all that sort of thing. Doesn't throw her weight." "Sounds too good to he true," was Bland's cynical comment. "But the main point is." said Moresby seriously, "that apart from those problematical arms, which don't seem to have any bearing, where's my crime? If your Mr. Allardyce does or does not succeed in stopping this girl from tying up with our little pet Xavier, where does the Yard come in? Oh. I know —this threat to murder her if all else fails, Mr. Blajid, that's your friend's yarn, and they may even have said it to bring him up to scratch. You'll forgive me if I doubt very much if they meant a word of it." "I see the difficulty."

"Preventing a mesalliance with nn actress seenis pretty small beer after his oilier activities," said Charles. And ho took his departure, wondering what lay behind the Superintendent's massive forehead and eyes, which ho knew were far less glazed than tliey appeared.

"that's nice of you. Of course, ,there's v the -identity of this fellow; with

the red beard and the mirror in his eye! What was his name—Beichsomething?" "Von Beichenberg, calling himself a count."

Moresby scratched his jaw. "The description's somehow," he grunted. "It brings someone to mind—but that's not the name. Wait a minute." He crossed the room and unlocked one of the filing-cabinets, from which he took a large black and yellow folder. Inside, thick sheets of officiallooking paper were carefully bound together in twos and threes. Charles noticed, as Moresby turned them over, that in most cases a photograph surmounted the top sheet. "From your pal's description," said Moresby suddenly, "would you say this was at all like Beichenberg?' "I should just say so," murmured Charles. "There couldn't be another face like that: eyeglass, genial look, breadth of shoulder, moustache and beard —is the colouring right?" "Sandy, growing thin." read Moresby from the dossier. "This looks like something. He's an Austrian Pole, too, according to this fde. Principal hobbies arc cats and claret. Very particular about, his shoes. Unmarried." "Hello! Where does the fair or rather dark Lucia come in?" "Quite. But what's more important is this business of the name." "Why?" . , "Tho name of this man," said the Superintcjident, tapping the file impressively, "is not von Beichenberg. It is Casiinir Konski. And M.I. —which by interpretation is Military Intelli'•gence —" "I know that much. Go on." "M.1.5 have a note to tho effect that he is, politically speaking, quite one of the most dangerous men in Europe!" "As a statement," said Charles, "that strikes me as comprehensive, but vague." "I don't think," said Superintendent Moresby, "that you'd be much tho wiser for the details of Casimir Konski's dossier. But you can take it from mo that he's a very complete scoundrel. I don't suppose you ever heard of 'The Broken Men'? Tlio most dangerous anarchist group that ever threatened the peace of Europe. Casimir ran that show. He was also behind last year's attempt by the Archduke Ottokar Maximilian to' regain the throne of Styria and the Islands. The Archduke was shot, you remember. The whole thing was a fiasco —and Casimir Konski as usual faded quietly and safely into the obscurity of his own underworld." "Do you mean to say, Moresby, that a man with a record like that can live under your noses in Limehouse, plotting all sorts of devilry, and you do nothing about it?" "It's not criminal to live in Limehouse. even under a false name," said the Superintendent. "Still, _if your Beichenberg is really Casimir Konski "it'll be the business of one of m.v colleagues to keep an eye on him. By jove!" And for one moment Moresby abandoned his phlegmatic calm, "Beichenberg must bo Konski. The real von Beichenberg was one of 'The Broken Men,' and was killed in an aeroplane over Breslau. 1 remember the name now. I wonder what his real game is."

CHAPTER VII. THK GIIU, FROM VIENNA All London First Nights are very much the same. Ihe same singular collection of tlioso who make a business of staring at celebrities, lines the entrance to the theatre; the same celebrities, notorieties, and nonentities pass by; the same delay takes place before curtain-rise; the same exhibition of inhibited hysteria occurs in the gallery; i the same conversation and counterhushing echo across the stalls; the actors enjoy the utmost of that same fantastic mixture of agony and satisfaction; tho author spends the same two hours and a-half in purgatory; and the samo critics writo very much tho same notices. And the next night it all happens over again in another theatre. But to Gcolfrcy Allardyce looking roallv rather distinguished in his white tio and tails, a gardenia in his buttonhole, and Lucia, admirably gowned and very elegant beside him, the first night of ''The Girl from Vienna" was something of an occasion. His job kept him from being a constant theatre-goer. Ho had frankly looked forward to seeing Lucia again. And he was more than just curious to observe Miss Greta Mahler, who was presumably the cause of all his trouble. The dinner at tho Havana had been an undoubted success. To think of Lucia as some sort of cross between a com-mon-place decoy and a foreign spy—as Charles Bland, hot from Scotland Yard had besought him to do —had been for Geoffrey quite impossible. She had sat facing him, her eyes sparkling, evidently enjoying herself no naively, that he could not see her in any role but that of a young pretty girl having a pleasant evening in agreeable company. Tho only thing that marked her out from tho other voung women in the restaurant —apart from her face and her dress —was her certainty on tho subject of what she wanted to eat and drink, and even that certainty resolved itself into a meal conventional to the degree of grilled sole and chicken a l'Americaino. In admirable seats—to be exact, stalls in tho fifth row —they sat and waited for the piece to begin. Geoffrey's heart was beating considerably faster than normal, and as the house lights dimmed ho felt a firm little hand slip into his own large moist one. Ho glanced sideways at Lucia, but her profile was only a blur in the dimness, and she looked fixedly to her front. But when Geoffrey closed his fingers over her hand, she made no move to withdraw it. From a perch high up in the very corner of tho gallery, Charles Bland peered down through excellent opera glasses to see how Geoffrey was carrying off his role. "Curse Geoff—and myself as far as that goes," he murmured, to the surprise and indignation of a middle-aged spinster next to him, who was eating an apple out of a string bag, and whose eyes seemed about to pop from their sockets. "Why, the girl's a raving beauty, and he's flirting with her under my name!" But at that moment the curtain went up and Charles temporarily forgot Lucia in the excitement of seeing no less than 32 blonde beauties prance blithely onto the stage, wearing bathing suits and singing of the delights of Dalmatia at the tops of their voices. The first act proceeded very much according to the immemorial plan of all musical comedies. The girls were pretty, the colouring was brilliant and gav, tho plot was perfectly imbecile, and the comedian had the time of his life. Charles —a theatre-goer from his youth up —was beginning to yawn, when there sounded "off" very convincingly the ronr of an aeroplane, and there descended from "the flies" in a bright pink parachute, the heroine, Greta Mahler herself, making the most effective of entrances, and displaying effectively the legs which had made her-internationally; famous.

When Miss Mahler had been released from the parachute, had settled her frock and established herself against the background of blonde bathing beauties to sing her first number in comfort, Geoffrey had leisure and full opportunity to study her face. And at once the whole of the rest of thp elaborate production ceased to exist as far as he was concerned. It was a charming face: rather impudent, gay, debonair; the nose a trifle tip-tilted, the eyes large and blue, the lips deliciously curved but firmly set and guaranteeing the character which was implied by a stubborn little chin. Naturally fair hair, soft and wavy, curled back from a broad and generous forehead. She was exquisite. And Geoffrey, staring at her a little unhappily, could not find it in his heart to blame Trince 'Xavier.' Automatically his hand lost its grip of Lucia's. It was her turn now to glance uneasily at his profile, and to see enough of its expression to make her bite her lip, blink once or twice, and wish that she were not wearing eye-black, which cannot be guaranteed not to run. "The Girl from Vienna" proceeded on its melodious way. Most of the critics had already jotted down "an evening typical of the convention of Central Europe with an attractive new leading lady" as quite sufficient to give them a bap is for the morrow's story. Some had even been rash enough to leave the theatre —and heard about it the next day from their editors. _For at the end of the wcond act a sensation occurred, rendering "The Girl from Vienna" memorable in the monotonous series of first nights. The usual misunderstanding had taken place. The hero —wearing the becoming, if improbable, uniform of the Dalmation Horse-Marines —had suspected Miss Mahler of casting eyes of love upon a stout and monocled Highness of Styria—who was in reality her blameless uncle. A duet had assisted them —at a range of approximately three feet —to part for ever in the presence of the complete chorus, male and female. Miss Mahler was loft near the front of the stage. Ihe chorus wept artistically into Dalma-tian-coloured handkerchiefs in the background under a perfect kaleidoscope of coloured limelights. Miss Mahler, looking so woe-begone and simultaneously so graceful and appealing that Geoffrey Allardyce could hardly bear it, drooped elegantly toward the boards. The orchestra wailed sentini'ntally, tugging at the heart-strings. The curtain began to descend in the slowest possible time. And at that moment one of those heavy pieces of metallic apparatus inseparable from lighting-rails in theatres and film-studios, crashed down on to the stage within a foot of Miss Mahler's pretty head! Her faint was entirely in the part and passed practically unnoticed. But the best will in the world could not ignore the hideous discords that marred the orchestra's finish of the act, nor the startling crash of splintering wood that the hastily dropped curtain could not entirely smother. • The stage-manager knew his business, for the house lights went up and the curtain remained down without explanation. Accordingly the faint. stir of curiosity in the audience, which might easilv have led to a panic, was promptly killed. Charles Bland found himself standing on his feet in the gallery, and becoming a figure of»some unpopularity in his immediate surroundings. He only had time to notice that Lucia and Geoffrey wore no longer in their seats, before he was compelled to sit down again. He did not notice that a slim masculine figure, which had been sitting well back in one of the boxes, had also risen, paled to the lips, and vanished into the darkness. "What the devil is it all about?" asked Geoffrey, with pardonable heat, !(To bo-continued -dailyi