“Memorizing?”
“Yes, sir. I’m a student of mnemonics, you know, the art of memory perfection. My real ambition is to develop absolute recall. All my reading and memorizing have been just exercises to expand my power of complete recall.”
“You mean that playwriting is just a hobby?”
“Not—exactly. I need money, lots of it, to continue my research. Psychiatrists come high.”
Well, I suppose good plays have been written for screwier reasons, and I was in no mood to look a gift-author in the mouth. I did passUpdraft around to a brace of critics, and none of them could hang a plagiarism charge on Hardy. So I wrote out his check and started the wheels going on the production.
The boy prodigy dropped out of sight for the time being, taking no further interest in his brain-child. Updraft did all right in the sticks, but it was when we opened on Broadway that it began to coin money.
*
In ten performances we were playing to capacity crowds, and within a month we had to take in the S. R. O. sign. A lucky hit? I thought so at the time. Updraft had a dash of humor, a bit of adventure, a dollop of romance and a gentle little heart tug at the conclusion, but damned if the critics could put their fingers on its money-making essence. They gave it pleasant little reviews and mild compliments, but no more. The cash customers, however, came and kept coming and kept coming!
The morning after the 100th performance I told Ellie to hunt up Hardy and see what he was doing about another play. I could stand to have another hit ready when Updraft petered out.
That afternoon my secretary reported, “He’s in a sanitarium over in Hoboken.”
“Nuts! I knew we should have held back on his royalties,” I exclaimed. “I suppose he’s drunk himself into a—”
“It’s a mental hospital,” Ellie said, “but Mr. Hardy told me he is just there for some experimental psycho-therapy. He sounded quite normal and cheerful.”
Hillary Hardy showed up next morning at my request, and he did, indeed, appear in good spirits. I demanded, “What’s this business of locking yourself up in a looney-bin? Don’t you realize that’s bad public relations?”
He chuckled. “I thought of that. So I’m going under an assumed name. Your girl said you had something very important to tell me.”
“Sure. I want another play,” I told him. “Updraft won’t run forever, you know.”
“Oh, I have plenty of money now, so I won’t have to bother. The people at the sanitarium have become interested in my project, and all I’m spending is board and room there. Thanks to your royalty checks I’ve got quite a pile in the bank.”
“Won’t have to bother?” I yelled. “Here I launch you on Broadway, and that’s all the gratitude I get. Now’s the time to cash in on the reputation of your first play. It’s setting attendance records.”
“Sorry, Mr. Crocker,” he said. “I’m in a critical stage of my experiments. I just can’t afford the time at the moment.”
“Experiments! Experiments! What is this business?”
He brightened. “Would you believe it? I’ve contacted memories back to three months after my birth. And at this rate I’ll reach birth itself within a few weeks.”
I shuddered. What a nasty ambition! “What’s the percentage?”
“You don’t understand,” he said warming to his subject. “The further back I go the more nearly I approach total recall. At present I can contact any memory in my experience back to six months, day by day, minute by minute. I can run off these memories like colored movies, recalling every sight, sound, smell, feel and taste.”
“So what happened earlier than six months that’s so important?”
“Probably nothing of great interest,” Hardy granted, “but the further back I go, the more intense is the reality of all my memories. For instance, right now I can return to the day, hour, minute and second I went to school for the first time. I can remember the look on the teacher’s face and hear the screams of twenty-six kindergarten kids. I can smell the freshly oiled floors and the newly painted walls. I can feel the wart on my mother’s finger, the one I was holding onto for dear life.”
The almost fanatic glow in his eager, young face impressed me. Realism of memory! Could that be the essence of his successful first play? Did his down-to-earth touch account for Updraft’s surprising audience appeal?
I pleaded, “Don’t let me down now, Hillary. I gambled thousands of dollars on your first play. If you can repeat we’ll both enjoy an even better pay-off. Besides, have you looked into what your taxes will be?”
“Taxes? No, I really haven’t, but I’m sure I have enough to last another year. Sorry, Mr. Crocker. Maybe later, but right at the moment—”
His broad-shouldered, lean athletic form drifted through my door and was gone.
Two weeks later Parodisiac arrived, typed on fools-cap, uncorrected, with pencil notations and coffee-spots on it, but it was by-lined, “Hillary Hardy,” and after a single, quick scanning I was overjoyed to pay the expense of transcribing it to more durable paper. The play was powerful, witty and emotion-stirring. It was a work of art.
And on the last page was scribbled in the border: “I looked into my tax bill, and found you were right. I’m almost broke after Uncle Sam takes his cut, so here is the play you asked for. Hope you like it. (signed) H. H.”
There was a P.S. “Expect to hit birth this week.”
When I phoned him at the sanitarium, asking for Sam Buckle, the name he had left originally with Ellie, he refused to come to the phone. So I wired him. “Quit worrying about taxes. I accept your earlier offer to be your agent as well as producer. Good luck on your experiments.”
Parodisiac was much too good to hold for the closing of Updraft. Indeed, the first play was showing no signs of weakening, so I began rounding up talent outside the original cast. This was a cinch. Meredith Crawley finished Act I, Scene I, and accepted the male lead without turning another page. So did Alicia Pennington, even though it meant giving up a personal appearance tour to publicize her latest Hollywood release that was supposed to win her an Oscar.
Not that I had to go after talent like this to put Parodisiac across. It was so potent I believe I could have made it a hit with a cast out of a burleycue revue.
The season was getting late, so I did the unthinkable. I cut normal rehearsal time in half and slammed it at the big town without even a trial run in the back-country. Nobody connected with the show objected—not even Hec Blankenship, my publicity manager. In fact it was he who suggested the sleeper treatment.
With nothing more than last-minute newspaper notices we opened the box-office to a completely uninformed public, and did it knock the critics for a loop! Only a couple showed up for the first performance, along with less than a third-full house of casual first-nighters.
*
People wandered out stunned. A substitute drama-critic from the Times looked me up after the show, and there were tears of gratitude in his eyes. “My review of this play will establish my reputation,” he told me. “If the boss had had any notion of what you were pulling, he’d have been here himself. But what about the author? I thought you were going to have to call the police when you failed to produce the author.”
*
It had been rough. The skimpy crowd had milled about for a half hour screaming “Author, author!” Meanwhile, I was too choked up after the last heart-wrenching scene to get up and make a speech.
Everything had gone perfectly. Even the brief rehearsal time failed to leave any rough edges.