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Some Wake
From a Collection of Crowley's Plays and Scenarios
John Dooley is a professor of chemistry, aged 35, well known throughout the country as State Analyst. He is the mild, spectacled, inoffensive, shy type of scientist.
Maggie, his wife, very pretty, aged 30.
Pete Hennessy, 36, a very small but fierce bantam type of man, in love with Mrs. Dooley, who amuses herself with him, without compromising herself. Dooley is jealous.
Jim, man servant to Dooley. Negro.
Bridget, his wife; also servant. Negro.
Betty Gnaggs, a vampire; big, blonde, coarse, virago type, aged 40.
Goodman, son of the Governor of Dooley's State, has often seen him at official receptions, etc., and knows his house, having driven his father there to visit.
At the Club, Hennessy dominating a group of younger men, sports a flower in his coat, telling an amusing story about it. The men laugh. Dooley enters: dead silence and embarrassment. Dooley at one suspects that the flower comes from Maggie, and that Hennessy has been boasting. Dooley approaches Hennessy, makes a scoffing compliment and asks how his wife is. The men titter. Dooley is annoyed and forbids Hennessy his house, threatening him —
“Keep away from my wife or . . . . . !”
(The setting of this scene is to be made very important and memorable.)
Hennessy, after Dooley turns on his heel and walks off, is chaffed by the men. He promises to show them that his boast was true.
That night Dooley goes to a learned Society. Mrs. Dooley, in the library, which is partially fitted up as a laboratory, telling her fortune, a few cards before her. She places another:
“A dark man!”
Another!
“Death of a friend ! !”
Another:
“A tall building at night ! ! !”
She grows more interested and excited.
Hennessy, reacting against Dooley's threat, takes some men from the Club to the vicinity of the house as witnesses, leaves them to watch, and enters the library by a French window; Maggie receives him gladly and furtively; he pursues his suit. Maggie playfully eludes him.
The men outside go off, chuckling that Hennessy has made good.
At the learned Society, Dooley learns that the paper which interests him most is postponed, and returns home early. The men meet him, and nudge each other. Dooley gets suspicious. The two inside hear his latch key, and Maggie, in terror, thrusts Hennessy into a closet, turns the key on him, and looks for a hiding place for the key. But in her agitation she drops it near the door, just in time to escape her husband's notice.
Hennessy in the dark overturns a bottle. Fumes issue from the cracks in the door.
Dooley enters. She tries to get him to go to bed. He wants his supper, which she gets for him, hoping to release Hennessy while Dooley is eating. Dooley eats, Maggie steals down the passage. Dooley seems to take sudden alarm, and sniffs the air.
He rushes after Maggie, thrusts her back from the door and dashes into the Library with his handkerchief to his face, throwing open the window which Hennessy had closed behind him. He then rushes out to Maggie, crying that it is certain death to enter the room, that a bottle containing a fluid with poisonous fumes must have burst. Maggie faints, which her husband attributes to the effects of the gas. He carries her to bed and works to restore her. She comes to herself, and tells him about Hennessy. He does not believe that Hennessy is there, and thinks she is raving; but (to quiet her) promises her to go and let him out. He merely leaves the room for a sufficient length of time and returns, saying: “It's all right!”
Maggie goes off to sleep from exhaustion.
Dooley wakes early and leaves her asleep. He goes to the library, sees the closet door locked, discovers the key and opens it.
At this moment his first patient, a fellow clubman, who witnessed the scene at the Club, enters the room by the French window, which is a short way to the House, used habitually by Dooley's more intimate friends. Dooley does not see him, but opens the closet door and discovers his patient, then hastily closes the cabinet, hoping that its contents have not been seen.
He gets rid of his patient, brings a wardrobe trunk from another room and throws away the hangers, hides body in it, calls negro servant Jim who puts box on taxi. Dooley drives to station, takes ticket for Pott's Hole, a “pleasure city” of a vulgar type, and checks trunk.
In the train is Betty Gnaggs, a “Stage vampire” type. She wanted to go to Pott's Hole, but had only money enough for a ticket to a nearer station, where she hoped to make enough to complete the trip. She ogles Dooley, to his horror. He reflects that there is no point in his going on — it is simpler and safer to abandon the corpse. The train slows up at a station, he throws down his ticket and baggage checks, gets out, and returns to his suburb.
Meanwhile Hennessy's absence has alarmed his sisters, who keep house for him. They notify the police. They are old maids, one tall and scraggy, the other obese, a waddler.
The police are intent on a very interesting game of crap. The 'phone is finally answered, the message jotted down, but the game proving more interesting, and the men being somewhat lazy, the hours go by. The clock is shown every half-hour; the game continues. The sisters, hearing no news, go to the station and make a scene. Towards evening, their detective gets ‘cold feet’. He begins to lose, and uses the case as an excuse to clear out with his winnings. He stirs himself and learns of the quarrel at the club. The men testify to having seen Hennessy enter the house. Dooley's patient, happening to drop in there, tells casually that he saw a corpse in Dooley's closet. Detective hears story, lazily and sleepily indifferent.
Maggie, alarmed at her husband's absence, consults cards.
“Journey with a blonde ! !”
Dooley's ticket and check have been picked up by the vampire. She decides to use them; arrives at the station, claims trunk, puts up at a small and disreputable inn. Breaks open trunk, but cannot close it again. It is now dark. She supports the corpse of Hennessy and takes him out of the inn as if he were a drunken friend, puts him on a roadside seat in a dark corner, and makes herself scarce.
Goodman approaches in a misbehaving car; stops opposite seat, asks Hennessy for assistance in mending car. Getting no reply he hits him. Hennessy tumbles off seat. The motorist is horrified, thinking that he has killed the man. He sees a policeman approaching, a long way off. He bundles Hennessy into the car, and asks the policeman to lend him a hand in mending it. This is soon done. He then drives off, his one thought being how to get rid of the body. Several futile attempts.
Dawn is almost approaching when he passes through the village where Dooley lives. He remembers that chemists can get rid of corpses, and thinks it will be a good joke on Dooley to throw the corpse through the window. This he does.
Maggie, sleepless, tells cards.
“Unexpected return from a journey !”
“Dark man — annoyance ! !”
“A tall building — danger ! ! !”
Next morning.
Jim's wife, Bridget, comes to clean Dooley's room. Finding the body, she grumbles that:
“Master is always leaving his specimens about,” and puts it away in the closet.
Detective comes out of sleep with a vision: Dooley — Hennessy, fight — “corpse in closet . . .”
COULD IT BE —————?
Bright idea. Hops out of bed, very brisk. Something doing ! ! He calls upon Dooley, who laughs heartily (as a bluff) when the detective tells his patient's story, and — thinking the corpse safe at Pott's Hole — flings the closet door open with a wide sweep. The detective instantly arrests him. After re-locking the closet and pocketing the key, he marches him off to the station. The Coroner's office is notified, and the order given to go for the body.
Meanwhile Maggie goes to the closet. She uses a key from another box upstairs, which opens closet. She gets the laundry bag, puts the corpse into it, and gives it to Jim, telling him: “HIDE IT: LOSE IT, QUICK!”
He catches her excitement, shoulders the bag, and rushes wildly out of the house at top speed. She replaces the key. Maggie promptly tells the cards. They repeat exactly the last outlay, and add:
“Your attempt will not be successful!”
Officers now arrive, open the closet, find the body gone. Maggie maintains that they have had an hallucination. After searching the house they leave. They leave the key in the closet door.
Jim does not know where to take his bundle. Then a bright idea strikes him. He will hide it in the library closet! He returns to the house and does so, with a consciousness of having been very clever.
Dooley is released, as the body cannot be found; comes back, and explains the whole affair to Maggie, so far as he knows it. To illustrate the story, he goes to the closet and opens it. They are both amazed to find the body there. They determine to destroy it, and drag the body out on the floor, and fill the bath with carboys of acid.
Hennessy at last, comes out of his trance, very dazed. Hearing footsteps approaching, he seems to reconstruct his last remembered situation (flashback to flirtation surprised by Dooley), so he goes back to the closet and pulls the door to.
The others come in and find him gone. They argue and quarrel. They open the closet. Hennessy keeps still. They flee in terror. He then peeps out. Finding the coast clear, he gets out as quickly as possible; hearing steps, hides behind curtain.
The Dooley's cautiously return, draw nearer and nearer, and finding the closet empty, are still more terrified. This terror ends in another quarrel.
Dooley goes off to the Club. Hennessy appears! Fear and rage. Quarrel. Hennessy, worsted, goes off. Dooley forgiven by Maggie, who puts a flower in his coat. “I'll go down to the club, and amuse the boys with the yarn.”
Hennessy arrives at the Club. The opening scene is exactly reproduced in essence, e x c e p t that Hennessy threatens Dooley, saying:—
“KEEP YOUR WIFE AWAY FROM ME, OR ————— ! ! !”
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