Part 13 (2/2)

”It is from that fact that I hope to deduce something. Now let's follow her, figuratively, to her little dressing room. This was a part of the living room where the rest waited. It is not a certainty, but yet rather a sure guess, that if she had received a scratch behind those thin silk curtains her cry would have been heard. What is even more plausible is that she would have hurried out, or at least put her head out, to see who had p.r.i.c.ked her.

”I made a very careful examination of that little alcove with the idea that some artifice might have been used. It occurred to me that a poisoned point could have been inserted in her belongings in some way so that she would have brought about her own death, directly. To have caught herself on a needle point in her bag, for instance, would not have impressed her to the point of making a disturbance. She might have checked her exclamation, in that case, because she would be blaming herself.

”But I found nothing in her things, nor did I discover anything in the library. It seems to me, therefore, that we must look for a direct human agency.”

A thought struck me and I hastened to suggest it. ”Could some device have been arranged in her clothes, Craig; something like the poison rings of the Middle Ages, a tiny metal thing to spring open and expose its point when pressed against her in the action of the scenes?”

”That occurred to me at the time. That's why I asked Mackay to send all her clothes down here, every st.i.tch and rag of them. I've gone over everything already this morning. Not only have I examined the various materials for stains, but I've tested each hook and eye and b.u.t.ton and pin. I've been very careful to cover that possibility.”

”You think, then, she was scratched deliberately by some one during the taking of the scenes?”

”If you've followed my line of reasoning you will see that we are driven to that a.s.sumption. Perhaps later I will make tests on a given number of girls of Stella's general age and type and temperament to show that they will cry out at the unexpected p.r.i.c.k of a fine needle.

It's illogical to expect that a cry from Miss Lamar, even an exclamation, would have pa.s.sed unnoticed except during the excitement of actual picture taking.”

Another inspiration came to me, but I was almost afraid to voice it. It seemed a daring theory. ”Could death have resulted from poison administered in some other fas.h.i.+on, by something she had eaten, for instance?” I ventured. ”Couldn't the scratch be coincidental?”

Kennedy shook his head. ”There's the value of our chemical a.n.a.lysis and scientific tests. Her stomach contents showed nothing except as they might have been affected by her weakened condition. From Doctor Blake's report--and he found no ordinary symptoms, remember--and from my own observation, too, I can easily prove in court that she was killed by the mark which was so small that it escaped the physician altogether.”

I turned away. Once more Kennedy's reasoning seemed to be leading into a maze of considerations beyond me. How could the deductive method produce results in a case as mysterious as this?

”Having determined that Miss Lamar received the inoculation during the making of one of the scenes, as nearly as we can do so,” Kennedy went on, ”suppose we take the scenes in order, one at a time, from the last photographed to the first, a.n.a.lyzing each in turn. Remember that we seek a situation where there is not only an opportunity to jab her with a needle, but one in which an outcry would be m.u.f.fled or inaudible.”

I now saw that Kennedy had brought in the bound script of the story, ”The Black Terror,” and I wondered again, as I had often before, at his marvelous capacity for attention to detail.

”'The spotlight on the floor reveals the girl sobbing over the body of the millionaire,'” he read, aloud, musingly. ”H'mm! 'She screams and cries out.' Then the others rush in.”

For several moments Kennedy paced the floor of the laboratory, the ma.n.u.script open in his hands.

”We rehea.r.s.ed that, with Werner; and we questioned everyone, too. And remember! Miss Lamar, instead of crying out as she was supposed to do, just crumpled up silently. So”--thumbing over a page--”we work back to scene twelve. She--she was not in that at all. Scene eleven--”

Slowly, carefully, Kennedy went through each scene to the beginning.

”Certainly a dramatic opening for a mystery picture,” he remarked, suddenly, as though his mind had wandered from his problem to other things. ”We must admit that Millard can handle a moving-picture scenario most beautifully.”

Whether it was professional jealousy or the thought of Enid, rather than the memory of my own poor attempts at screen writing, I certainly was in no mood to agree with Kennedy, for all that I knew he was correct.

”Here!” He thrust the binder in my hands. ”Read that first scene,” he directed. ”Meanwhile I am going to phone Mackay to make sure he has had the house guarded and to make double sure no one goes near the library.

We're going out to Tarrytown again, Walter, and in the biggest kind of hurry.”

”What's the idea, Craig?” Kennedy's occasional bursts of mysteriousness, characteristic of him and often necessary when his theories were only half formed and too chaotic for explanations, always piqued me.

He did not seem to hear. Already he was at the telephone, manipulating the receiver hook impatiently. ”What a dummy I am!” he exclaimed, with genuine feeling. ”What--what an awful dummy!”

Knowing I would get nothing out of him just yet, I turned to the scene, reading as he told me. At first I could not see where the detail concerned Stella Lamar in any way. Then I came to the description of her introductory entrance, the initial view of her in the film. The lines of typewriting suddenly stood out before me in all their suggestive clearness.

The spotlight in the hands of a shadowy figure roves across the wall and to the portieres. As it pauses there the portieres move and the fingers of a girl are seen on the edge of the silk. A bare and beautiful arm is thrust through almost to the shoulder and it begins to move the portieres aside, reaching upward to pull the curtains apart at the rings.

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