Part 43 (2/2)
The lights went out, then the picture flashed on the screen before us, revealing the gloom and mystery of the opening scene of ”The Black Terror.” We saw the play of the flashlight, finally the fingers and next the arm of Stella as she parted the curtains. In the close-up we witnessed the repet.i.tion of her appearance, since the film was simply spliced together, not ”matched” or trimmed. Following came all the action down to the point where she collapsed over the figure of Werner on the floor. Before the camera man stopped, Manton rushed in and was photographed bending over her.
Kennedy's voice was dramatically tense, for not one of us but had been profoundly affected by the reproduction of the tragedy.
”Did you notice the terror in her face when she cried out? Was that terror, really? If you were watching, you would have detected a slight flinch as she brushed her arm up against the silk. For just a moment she was not acting. It was pain, not pretended terror, which made her scream. The devilish feature to this whole plot was the care taken to cover just that thing-her inevitable exclamation. Now watch closely as I signal the operator to run the same action from the other camera.
Notice the gradual effect of the poison, how she forces herself to keep going without realization of the fact that death is at hand, how she collapses finally through sheer inability to maintain her control of herself a moment longer.”
During the running of the second piece the tense silence in the room was ghastly. Who was the guilty person? Who possessed such amazing callousness that an exhibition of this sort brought no outcry?
”Now”--Kennedy glanced around in the dim light, switched on between the running of the different strips--”I'm going to project the banquet scenes and show you the manner of Werner's death.”
Scene after scene of the banquet flashed before us. Here the cutter had not been sure just what Kennedy wanted and had spliced up everything.
We saw the marvelous direction of Werner, who little realized that it was to be his last few moments on earth, and we grasped the beauty and illusion of the set caused by the mirrors and the man's skill in placing his people. Yet there was not a sound, because we knew that this was a tragedy, a grim episode in which there was no human justification whatever.
Werner rose at his place. He proposed his toast. He drank the contents of his gla.s.s. Then, his expression changed to wonderment and from that to fear and realization, and he dropped to the floor.
Kennedy's voice, interrupting, seemed to me to come from a great distance, so powerfully was I affected by the bit of film.
”The poison used to kill Mr. Werner was botulin toxin, selected because its effects could not be diagnosed as anything other than ordinary food poisoning. When we look at the print from the second camera's negative you will notice how quickly it acted. It was the pure toxin, placed in his gla.s.s before the wine was poured.”
Once more the unfortunate director's death was reproduced before us.
”Struck down,” exclaimed Craig, ”as though by some invisible lightning bolt, without mercy, without a chance, without the slightest bit of compunction! Why? I'll tell you. Because he suspected, in fact knew, who the guilty person was. Because he followed that person out to Tarrytown the night the needle was removed from the portieres. Because he was a menace to that person's life!”
Kennedy turned to the operator. ”Have those other scenes come down?”
”Yes, sir!”
”All right!” Kennedy faced the rest of us again. ”There was, or rather is, another person who suspects the ident.i.ty of the criminal. To-day an attempt was made upon the life of s.h.i.+rley. s.h.i.+rley will not tell whom he suspects because he has no definite proof, yet for the mere fact that he suspects he narrowly escaped the fate of Stella Lamar and Werner.” Kennedy pressed the b.u.t.ton. ”Witness the effort to kill the man playing the part of the Black Terror.”
The print was terribly bad, in appearance almost a ”dupe,” due to the speed with which it had been made. Nevertheless the two very brief scenes rushed through for this showing were more absorbingly thrilling, more graphic than anything ever to be seen even in a news reel at a movie theater.
”Notice!” Kennedy exclaimed. ”He puts his hand in one pocket, he fumbles, hesitates, then finds the bottle in the other. Whoever put the poison in the vial replaced it in the wrong pocket. The film shows that very clearly. The camera proves that it was not an attempt at suicide.
Yet the poison used was belladonna, selected because this victim had purchased some and because it would seem sure, therefore, that he had committed suicide.”
We sat in silence, listening, horrified.
”There is still another matter,” Kennedy went on, after a moment. ”The fire in the negative vault this morning was incendiary. I have proved to the satisfaction of several of us that a bomb was constructed of wet phosphorus and old film and placed in the vault by trickery four days ago, the same day Stella Lamar was killed. Through a miscalculation the phosphorus was slow in drying and the fire did not occur until to-day.
Thanks to that fact I have in my possession a bit of negative which the murderer very likely wished to have destroyed; in fact, I believe its destruction to be the motive in planning the fire in the vault.” He faced the operator. ”Ready to run the negative?”
”Yes, sir!”
Kennedy pressed the b.u.t.ton and when the projection machine threw its picture upon the screen I saw something such as I had never imagined before. Everything was black which should have been white and everything white which should have been black. The two extremes shaded into each other in weird fas.h.i.+on. In fact it was uncanny to watch a negative projected and I followed, fascinated.
”This is a film made with the co-operation of Doctor Nagoya of the Castleton Inst.i.tute and I am told by Mr. Manton that it is one of the finest snake pictures ever made.” Kennedy spoke fast, so that we would get the full benefit of his explanation and so that it would not be necessary to subject the negative to the wear and tear of the sprocket wheels in the projection machine again. ”I am running this for you to show you the action of the rattlesnake, whose venom was used to kill Miss Lamar, and to give you an idea of the source of the murderer's knowledge of snake poison.”
At this moment Doctor Nagoya, whom I could barely recognize in the inverted photography, seized one of the rattlers. It was a close-up and we could see the reptile dart out its forked tongue, seeking to get at the hands of the j.a.panese, locked firmly about its neck. Then another man walked into the picture, holding a jar. At once the snake struck at the gla.s.s. As it did so it was possible to see drops of the venom projected into the jar.
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