Part 8 (2/2)
Carey Drexel looked at Kennedy helplessly.
With all these troubles, how could he pilot us about? Later we learned that this was nothing new, once one gets on the inside of picture making. Props., or properties, particularly the living ones, cause almost as much disturbance as the temperamental notions of the actors and actresses. Sometimes it is a question which may become the most ridiculous.
Kennedy seemed to be satisfied with his preliminary visit to this studio floor.
”We can get back to Manton's office alone,” he told Drexel. ”We will just keep on circling the quadrangle.”
Relieved, the a.s.sistant director pointed to the door of the manufacturing building, as the four-story structure in the rear was called. Then he bustled off with the other youth, quite unruffled himself.
When we pa.s.sed through the heavy steel fire door we found ourselves in another long hallway of fire-brick and reinforced-concrete construction. Unquestionably there was no danger of a serious conflagration in any part of Manton's plant, despite the high inflammability of the film itself, of the flimsy stage sets, of practically everything used in picture manufacture.
Immediately we entered this building I detected a peculiar odor, at which I sniffed eagerly. I was reminded of the burnt-almond odor of the cyanides. Was this another clue?
I turned to Kennedy but he smiled, antic.i.p.ating me.
”Banana oil, Walter,” he explained, with rather a superior manner. ”I imagine it's used a great deal in this industry. Anyway”--a chuckle--”don't expect chance to deliver clues to you in wholesale quant.i.ties. You have done very well for today.”
A sudden whirring noise, from an open door down the hall, attracted us, and we paused. This, I guessed, was a cutting room. There were a number of steel tables, with high steel chairs. At the walls were cabinets of the same material. Each table had two winding arrangements, a handle at the operator's right hand and one at his left, so that he could wind or unwind film from one reel to another, pa.s.sing it forward or backward in front of his eyes.
There were girls at the tables except nearest the hall. Here a man stopped now and then to glance at the ribbon of film, or to cut out a section, dropping the discarded piece into a fireproof can and splicing the two ends of the main strip together again with liquid film cement from a small bottle. He looked up as he sensed our presence.
”Isn't it h.e.l.l?” he remarked, in friendly fas.h.i.+on. ”I've got to cut all of Stella Lamar out of 'The Black Terror,' so they can duplicate her scenes with another star, and meanwhile we had half the negative matched and marked for colors and spliced in rolls, all ready for the printer.”
Without waiting for an answer from us, or expecting one, he gave one of his reels a vicious spin, producing the whirring noise; then grasping both reels between his fingers and bringing them to an abrupt stop, so that I wondered he did not burn himself from the friction, he located the next piece to be eliminated.
We followed the hall into the smaller studio and there found a comedy company at work. Without stopping to watch the players, ghastly under the light from the Cooper-Hewitts and Kliegel arcs, we found a precarious way back of the set around and under stage braces, to the covered bridge leading once more to the corridor outside Manton's office.
Now the girl was absent from her place in the little waiting room.
Manton's door stood open. Without ceremony Kennedy led the way in and dropped down at the side of the promoter's huge mahogany desk.
”I'm tired, Walter,” he said. ”Furthermore, I think this picture world of yours is a bedlam. We face a hard task.”
”How do you propose to go about things?” I asked.
”I'm afraid this is a case which will have to be approached entirely through psychological reactions. You and I will have to become familiar with the studio and home life of all the long list of possible suspects. I shall a.n.a.lyze the body fluids of the deceased and learn the cause of death, and I will find out what it is on the towel, but”--sighing--”there are so many different ramifications, so many--”
Suddenly his eye caught the corner of a piece of paper slid under the gla.s.s of Manton's desk. He pulled it out; then handed it to me.
MEMORANDUM FOR MR. MANTON
Have learned Enid Faye is out of Pentangle and can be engaged for about twelve hundred if you act quickly. Why not cancel Lamar contract after ”Black Terror,” if she continues up-stage?
WERNER.
”I caught the name Lamar,” Kennedy explained. Then an expression of gratification crept into his face. ”Miss Lamar was 'up-stage'?” he mused. ”That's a theatrical word for cussedness, isn't it?”
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