The War of the Worlds Murder - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,22

could ever hope for, despite a lack of cock and balls.”

Gibson wondered if he’d actually heard that....

From the doorway, Judy Holliday said, “Oh Mr. Welles, that’s terrible,” and burst into tears.

Welles went to her, put an arm around her shoulder, and said, “There, there...you mustn’t let such boy talk upset you so. I had no idea a gentle flower had planted itself in this doorway.”

“Can I...can I have the food sent up?”

“I’ll fire your little ass if you don’t!”

She disappeared, her feet travelling down the iron steps sounding like a barrage of bullets, punctuating Welles’s roar of hearty laughter.

The other men were smiling and chuckling, except for Gibson, an Alice still trying to get used to Wonderland.

Within minutes, a skinny, put-upon waiter in a white shirt and dark pants brought up a picnic basket, and left without waiting for a tip that he seemed to already know wasn’t going to come. Houseman played host and opened the basket on his card-table desk, lifting the metal hats covering each plate, passing out the food to its intended recipient. Miss Holliday reappeared with a coffeepot and cups, and distributed those as well. Welles disappeared with his two plates—two large steaks, one in the company of a single sour-cream-and-butter-slathered baked potato—behind the partition, to sit at the secretary’s desk there and eat unobserved.

The table was a good height for both Houseman and Gibson to eat their breakfasts, while Koch and Stewart—still seated on the daybed—seemed at ease eating off the plates in their laps, old hands at this.

Welles did call over a complaint about the single potato, until Houseman reminded him: “Your diet—remember?” To which Welles mumbled an unintelligible answer, a pouting child responding to a firm parent.

Then Welles, from behind the partition, ordered: “Well, play the goddamned thing, Housey!”

And Houseman placed the record on the record player, turned up the volume and they all ate while they listened to the rehearsal recording.

Minus the excitement of the studio, Koch’s “War of the Worlds” adaptation played even less excitingly, seeming terribly flat and uncompelling to Gibson. They finished their breakfast about halfway through—Martians were killing people at Grovers Mill—and suddenly Miss Holliday materialized again, to gather the plates and put them into the picnic basket, and vanish once more.

Gibson hardly noticed that Welles had taken the chair next to him again. The boy genius showed no emotion as he listened, sitting with arms folded, his expression as distant as it was blank.

When the recording reached its conclusion, and Bill Alland was signing off pretending to be Welles, the listener’s “obedient servant,” Houseman lifted the tone arm and the needle scratched just a bit. Then their host returned the acetate to its sleeve and looked at Welles, arching an eyebrow as if to say, “Well?”

“It stinks,” Welles said.

From the corner of his eye, Gibson saw Koch essentially collapse into himself; and Stewart closed his eyes, as if he’d chosen to respond by going to sleep.

“It’s corny,” Welles went on, shrugging grandly. His voice was soft, no longer filling the room, making Koch and Stewart listen carefully to hear their work dismissed. “Unbelievable. Dull as dishwater. Also ghastly—no one’s going to believe a word of it.... Paul, what does the cast think?”

Stewart swallowed. “They think it’s pretty thin.”

“And John Dietz? He’s been a good judge.”

“Our esteemed sound engineer thinks it’s weak. One of our worst shows.”

Welles turned to Gibson. “What’s your opinion, Walter?”

“It starts well,” Gibson managed.

Welles exploded off the chair. “Exactly right! Precisely right!”

Then the big man somehow managed to move around the little area, waving his arms, his eyes wild.

“Goddamnit, Howard, how you could blow this opportunity! I give you the key to this thing, and you throw it away! Threw it out the window!”

“Orson,” Koch said, “I don’t know what you mean—”

“And you, Paul,” Welles said to the man who was doing his directing for him, “how you could betray me like this?”

Stewart didn’t seem hurt or impressed, merely asked, “How so?”

Welles’s tone shifted entirely, became genteel as he said to Gibson, “Walter, would you mind moving over for me?”

Gibson did.

“There’s a dear.” With a huge arm, Welles violently swept the chair Gibson had been sitting in and it clattered against the wall. Welles then filled the space the chair had inhabited, and loomed over the two men seated on the daybed, as if he were parent and they wayward children.

Voice booming, he said, “How many times have I told the two of you that the Mercury’s responsibility is to bring experimental techniques