Part 19 (2/2)
”Oh!” She skidded about a corner skillfully. ”And--”
”Well, we b.u.mped into an additional piece of evidence and I thought Jameson and I ought to hurry in to my laboratory instead.”
”I bet”--Enid giggled, readjusting her hat in the breeze--”I bet she wanted to know what you'd found, right away. Didn't she?”
”Yes!” Kennedy's face was noncommittal, ”Why do you say that?”
”Because she came into my room, just as we were getting ready for work this morning. Perhaps I'm wrong, but from the way she kept asking me questions about everyone from Manton down I got the idea she was quizzing me, to see how much I knew. Of course this is only my first day, but it seems to me that Marilyn is talking a great deal, without saying very much. I've come to the conclusion she knows a good deal more than she is telling anyone, and that she'd like to find out just how much everyone else knows.”
Kennedy nodded almost absent-mindedly, without responding further.
”Well”--Enid speeded up a bit--”not to change connections on the switchboard, I think I'm going to like it with Manton Pictures.”
”Will they do justice to your work,” Kennedy inquired, ”putting you in a partially finished picture in this way?”
”That's where I'm in luck, real bang-up luck. Werner has directed me before and knows just exactly how to handle me.”
”What about the story? That was built for Stella, wasn't it?”
”Yes, but they're changing it here and there to fit me. Larry knows my work, too! That's luck again for little Enid.”
”How long have you known Millard?” In a flash I realized Kennedy's cleverness. This was the fact he had wished to unearth. The question was as natural as could be. He had led up to it deliberately. I was sure of that.
”Four, nearly five years,” she replied, unsuspiciously. Then suddenly she bit her lip, although her expression was well masked. ”That is,”
she added, somewhat lamely--”that is, in a casual way, like nearly everyone knows nearly everyone else in the film game.”
”Oh!” murmured Kennedy, lapsing into silence.
XV
I BECOME A DETECTIVE
Important as it was to watch Enid and Marilyn, Werner and the rest, Kennedy decided that it was now much more important to hold to his expressed purpose of returning to the laboratory with our trophies of the day's crime hunt.
”For people to whom emotion ought to be an old story in their everyday stage life, I must say they feel and show plenty of it in real life,” I remarked, as Enid set us down and drove off. ”It does not seem to pall.”
”I don't know why the movie people buy stories,” remarked Craig, quaintly. ”They don't need to do it--they live them.”
When we were settled in the laboratory once more Kennedy plunged with renewed vigor into the investigation he had dropped in the morning in order to make the hurried trip to the Phelps home in Tarrytown.
I had hoped he would talk further of the probabilities of the connection of the various people with the crime, but he had no comment even upon the admission of Enid that she had known Millard for a period long antedating the trouble with Stella Lamar.
It seemed that, after all, he was quite excited at the discovery of the ampulla and was anxious to begin the a.n.a.lysis of its scale-like contents. I was not sure, but it struck me that this might be the same substance which had spotted the towel or the portieres. If that were so, the finding of it in this form had given him a new and tangible clue to its nature, accounting for his eagerness.
I watched his elaborate and thorough preparations, wis.h.i.+ng I could be of a.s.sistance, but knowing the limitations of my own chemical and bacteriological knowledge. I grasped, however, that he was concentrating his study upon the spots he had cut from the portieres, in particular the stain where the point of the needle had been, and upon the incrustations on the inner surface of the tube. He made solutions of both of these and for some little time experimented with chemical reactions. Then he had recourse to several weighty technical books. Though bursting with curiosity, I dared not question him, nor distract him in any way.
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