Free Death in the Fifth Position by Gore Vidal

of rushing about with side shows like this, trying to get the freaks into look at some more freaks. Well, another day another dollar as the soldiers in the recent unpleasantness used to remark.
    “How is the investigation coming?” I asked Mr. Washburn as we drove back to town; Alyosha sat silently on the back seat with us while two girl soloists sat up front with the driver.
    “I’m afraid I’m not in Mr. Gleason’s confidence,” said Mr. Washburn easily. “They seem very busy and they seem quite confident … but that’s all a part of the game, I’m told … to pretend they know who it is so that the guilty party will surrender. Not that I, for one minute, think any member of the company is involved.”
    Mr. Washburn’s unreality had a wonderfully soothing effect on me; I responded just like a prospective patron.
    We both were rudely jolted out of this quiet mood when, upon arriving at the theater, a plain-clothes man announced that Gleason would like to see me. I exchanged a startled glance with Mr. Washburn who turned visibly gray, thinking no doubt of those shears, of Eglanova’s being involved in a scandal, of no season this fall because of no star.
    Gleason, smoking a slobbery, ill-smelling cigar, looked every inch a Tammany man. His secretary sat at another desk, shorthand pad before him.
    “Come in, Mr. Sargeant.” Oh, this was bad I thought.
    “How are you today, Mr. Gleason?”
    “I have some questions I want to ask you.”
    “Anything you want to know,” I said graciously.
    “Why didn’t you mention at our previous interview that you had handled those shears?”
    “What shears?”
    “The Murder Weapon.”
    “But I don’t remember handling them.”
    “Then how do you explain the fact that your fingerprints are on them … yours and no one else’s?”
    “Are you sure they’re my fingerprints?”
    “Now look here, Sargeant, you’re in serious trouble. I suggest for your own good you take a more constructive attitude about this investigation or …” He paused, ominously, and I saw in my mind’s eye the rubber hose, the glaring Klieg lights and finally a confession thrust under my bloody hand for that shaky signature which would send me to the gates of heaven for the murder of a ballerina I had never known, much less killed. It was too terrible.
    “I was just asking, that’s all. I mean you never did fingerprint me …”
    “We have ways,” said the Inspector. “Now what were you doing with those shears between dress rehearsal and the murder?”
    “I wasn’t doing anything with them.”
    “Then why …”
    “Are my fingerprints on them? Because I picked them up off the floor and put them on top of the tool chest.”
    Gleason looked satisfied. “I see. And are you in the habit of picking up tools off the floor—is that your job?”
    “No, it’s not my job, but I
am
in the habit of picking things up … I’m very neat.”
    “Are you trying to be funny?”
    “I don’t know why you keep accusing me of trying to amuse you … it’s the last thing I’d try to do. I’m justas serious about this as you are. More so, because this scandal could louse up the whole season,” I added, piously, speaking the language of self-interest which men of all classes and nations understand.
    “Then will you kindly explain why you happened to pick up The Murder Weapon and place it on that tool chest.”
    “I don’t know why.”
    “But you admit that you did?”
    “Of course … you see I stepped on them and almost fell,” I lied: how many years for perjury? threescore and ten; can I get there by amber light? yes, and back again.
    “Now, we’re getting somewhere. Why did you step on them?”
    “Don’t you mean where?”
    “Mr. Sargeant …”
    I spoke quickly, cutting him short, “I’m not sure just where I was.” (This uncertainty might save me yet, I thought, watching that grim youth take down my testimony … well, I wasn’t under oath yet.) “Somewhere