The Long and the Short and the Tall/The Dumb Waiter/A Resounding Tinkle [antikvár]

ACT ONETime: Late afternoon.The curtain rises on the wooden-ivalled, palm-thatched, dingy interior of a deserted store-hut in the Malayan jungle. The hut is set back a few hundred yardsfrom a tin mine which is now deserted. There is a door in the rear wall with windows on either side looking out on to the veranda and jungle beyond. The hut has been stripped of everything of any value by the mine-workers before theyfled - all that remains are a rickety table and two chairs, centre-stage, and a form, right.[We hear a short burst of heavy gunflre in the distance - and then silence. A pause and then ive hear the chirruping of crickets and the song of a bird in the jungle. Afigure appears at the left-hand window, looks cautiously inside and ducks away. A moment later the door is kicked open öní/johnstone standsframed in the doorway holding a sten at his hip. When the door was kicked open the crickets and the bird ceased their song. johnstoneglances around the room and, finding it to be unoccupied, makes a hand signal from the veranda, johnstone returns into the room and is joined a few seconds later by mitchem, u>ho alsó carries a sten.]johnstone [shifts his hat to the back ofhis headandplaces his sten on thetable]: All Clear. Stinks like something's dead. mitchem [piacing his sten beside Johnstone's]: It'll do. To be going on with. [He crosses to the door andmotions to the rest of the patrol.] Come on, then! Let's have you! . . . Move it! Move![One by one the members of the patrol double into the room. With the exception of whitaker, who carries the radio transmitterjreceiver on his back, the men are armed with rifies. smith carries Whitaker s rifle. They are tired and dishevelled.] johnstone: Moveyourselves! Gillo! Lacas! Lacas![As the last member of the patrol enters the room mitchem slams the