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."What kind of driver didyou want?""Do I have to go over all that again? I told you last night-""I was not on duty last night, madame.""Well, whoever was here on the desk.I told him I needed someone to drive mycar to Halsingborg tomorrow, and he promised me he'd arrange it."The attendant thumbed through a large ledger of scrawled notes, and began amuttered consultation with an assistant; and the woman looked at Moldys again."I'm sorry don't let me hold you up.This is obviously going to take time!"He gave her the most dazzlingly good-natured smile that he could achieve withhis heart in his mouth, without letting it fall out.He was so staggered byhis good fortune that he almost lost all thesavoir-faire on which he pridedhimself."Please I'm not in any hurry.""This is so aggravating.I thought I'd drive across from Halsingborg and seesome of the country, instead of flying, so yesterday I have to slip in thebathtub and fall down and crack my wrist." She raised a left hand whichprotruded from a small cast which had been hidden by the foulard sling inwhich she carried it."Now I've got the* problem of taking my car back.Isuppose Icould get along by myself somehow, but I might get into trouble, andit seems foolish to take a chance.""I am sorry, madame," said the man behind the desk, "but I can find nothingabout a driver.Perhaps when the night porter comes on duty ""But if I'm going to leave at all, I've got to leave first thing in themorning.If he hasn't done anything about it, somebody else had better get onthe ball.Are you sure you looked under the right name? It's H U R L E Y.MrsEnid Hurley."Page 82ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html"Yes, madame.But there is nothing here.Would you like me to try to find youa driver?"At long last, Ernest Moldys regained full possession of his wits, andsimultaneously of his voice.Although he was still finding it hard to believethat this was not all a wonderful dream, he knew exactly what had to be doneand how to do it."Mrs Hurley," he said, "if you won't think I'm being presumptuous, you haveno problem.I'd be honored if you'd let me drive you to wherever you weregoing.""Oh, but I couldn't possibly take up your time!"Thus, after a little perfunctory argument and an interval of a few hours, shewas seated with him at a window table on the Strand Hotel's roof terrace,overlooking the lights of half the city, while they toasted each other invarious experimental flavors ofbrannvin over the prawn pancakes and debatedamiably on the merits of each.It was not even an ordeal for Mr Moldys, foralthough she was considerably older than his usual choice, she was in such asuperbly groomed and pampered state of preservation that she did not look aday older than himself.She had classic features and a Vogue-model figure, andher personality would have made the local chick whom he had sidetracked forthe occasion look insipid beside her.The only fault he had to find was that the diamonds he had heard so muchabout were not in evidence.As if sensing something critical in the way he hadstudied her evening finery, she fingered the costume necklace and bracelet setshe was wearing, and said: "I'm afraid I'm not very dressy, for a place likethis.But I only came for a couple of days, and since I was driving alone itdidn't seem very smart to load all my baubles in the car, so I left them inthe hotel safe in Copenhagen."Moldys gallantly concealed his disappointment, although it seemed as if theluck which he thought had changed was turning dangerously coy again."A woman like you doesn't need jewels as much as they need her," he said,omitting to credit the writer from whom he had swiped the line.Later in the meal, he learned for the first time that Halsingborg, theirdestination on the west coast of Sweden, lay only two and a half miles acrossa narrow strait from the similarly named Danish town of Helsingor, which waspractically a suburb of Copenhagen, a mere thirty miles from the Danishcapital."Both sides used to be fortified," explained Mrs Hurley, "and King Erik ofPomerania, who owned all the Scandinavian countries too, in those days, fiveor six hundred years ago, charged a toll on all the ships going through theSound.It must have been quite a racket, because when Frederik II got to beKing of Denmark he rebuilt the fort on his side into a fancy castle which hecalled Kronborg.It was finished about 1585, only fifteen years beforeShakespeare wroteHamlet and made it the scene of a practically prehistoriclegend.That's what they call poetic license, I guess.""You sound as if you'd made a real study of it," he said admiringly."Well, naturally I'm interested.You see, I'm putting on a productionofHamlet there of course, Helsingor is the place that Shakespeare called'Elsinore.'"Page 83ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html"What a wonderful idea, to doHamlet right in the very place where ithappened!""It probably never happened at all, and it certainly couldn't have happenedthere, as I've told you.But even the Danes have probably convinced themselvesby now that it did.It isn't a new idea to put on the play there-people havebeen doing it since 1816.The challenge is to do it better.""You know, I'd never have taken you for a producer.""Because I'm not chewing a cigar? But I'm as tough as any of them, I hope.""I refuse to believe it.At least, not like most of the ones I came across.""Don't tell me you're an actor!""I used to be, sort of." He was ad-libbing furiously now, not sure where hewas going, but inspiredly sure that he was on the right track."Nothing veryimportant, you know.But some kind critics predicted a great future for me.""What did you do?""I quit while I was ahead.I was on the verge of getting somewhere, when Iinherited quite a bit of money, and the incentive to keep struggling was gone.But even now I can feel what it would mean to speak those lines in the placethat Shakespeare himself was actually thinking of.""Lots of 'em have done it from Sir Laurence Olivier, way back in 1937 withVivien Leigh, to Sir John Gielgud in '39, Sir Michael Redgrave in 1950, andRichard Burton in '54.He doesn't need to be knighted since they made him theKing inCamelot.But I still see the part differently from any of them."Mr Moldys saluted her with another heartening measure of aromatic alcoholfollowed by the traditional beer chaser, and said:"This above all: to thine own self be true,And it must follow, as the night the day,Thou canst not then be false to any man."She looked at him with thoughtful interest."That was a nice reading," she said [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]