Free Heaven and Hell by John Jakes Page A

Trump's a decent man. He'd be a successful actor if he hadn't gone overboard for Forrest's physical technique. Sam turned the heroic style into a religion. He doesn't tear a passion to a tatter; he shatters it beyond repair--''
    Another thoughtful pause, then a nod. "Yes, Sam's theater would do nicely." Who knows? You might even straighten him out."
    Exhausted and unhappy, Willa said, "Must I decide right now?"
    "No. Only when we find out what Wood's up to. Come." He extended his hand in a smooth, flowing move worthy of a performance.
    "I'll show you to your room. A long sleep will help immensely."
    On the way out, he glanced at Johnny's picture again. Poor Eddie, she thought, still hiding from the world because so many bayed for revenge, even though Johnny had been tracked down and shot to death near Bowling Green, Virginia, almost two months ago. Thinking of Booth's plight instead of hers helped her fall asleep.
    She woke at two the next afternoon to find her friend gone. The skies outside were still stormy. A light meal of fruit, floury Scotch baps, and jam was set out downstairs. She was eating hungrily when his key rattled and he walked in, looking rakish in his slouch hat and opera cl«ak, and carrying an ebony cane.
    Bad news, I'm afraid. Wood swore out a warrant. I'll buy your 2t and advance you some traveling money. You don't dare visit your bank. Or your lodgings."
    T ^die, I can't leave my things. My collection of Mr. Dickens. : sides from all the parts I've played since I first started acting-- Very side is signed by all the actors in the play."
    Page 52

    Booth flung his hat aside. "They may be precious to you, but they rent worth imprisonment."
    'Oh, dear God. Did he really--?" Yes. The charge is attempted murder."
    ¦I
    48 HEAVEN AND HELL
    A day later, after dark, he spirited her out of the townhouse and into a cab, which rattled swiftly over cobbles and through mud to a Hudson River pier. He handed her a valise containing some clothing he'd bought for her, kissed her cheek long and affectionately, and murmured a wish for God to guard her. She boarded the ferry for New Jersey and on the crossing didn't look back at him or at the city. She knew that if she did, she'd break down, cry, and take the return boat-- and that could lead to disaster.
    When she left the train in Chicago, she telegraphed Sam Trump.
    She stayed in an inexpensive hotel and waited for his reply, which came to the telegraph office the following morning. The message said he would happily provide board, lodging, and a premier place in his small permanent company. For a man in the throes of alcoholic failure, he certainly sounded confident. She was under such stress that she overlooked the obvious: He was an actor.
    Like Willa's father, Mr. Samuel Horatio Trump had been born in England, at Stoke-Newington. He'd lived in the United States since the age of ten, but he diligently maintained his native accent, believing it contributed to his considerable and fully merited fame. Self-christened America's Ace of Players, he was also known in the profession, less kindly, as Sobbing Sam, not only because he could cry on cue, but because he inevitably did so to excess.
    He was sixty-four years old and admitted to fifty. Without the special boots to which a cobbler had added inserts to lift the heels an inch and a half, he stood five feet six inches. He was a round, avuncular man with warm dark eyes and a rolling gait that jiggled his paunch. His wardrobe was large but twenty years out of date. Managers who flung plagiarized adaptations of Dickens on the stage always wanted to cast him as Micawber. Trump, however, saw himself as a Charlemagne, a Tamerlane, or, truly straining the credulity of his audiences, a Romeo.
    In his lifetime Trump had known many women. When sober or even slightly tipsy, he was a blithe and winning man. To anyone who would listen, he confessed to many cases of a broken heart, but the secret truth was that Trump himself had ended