The Film Mystery Read online

  II

  THE TINY SCRATCH

  Kennedy, before his own examination of the body, turned to DoctorBlake. "Tell me just what you found when you arrived," he directed.

  The physician, whose practice embraced most of the wealthy families inand around Tarrytown, was an unusually tall, iron-gray-haired man ofevident competency. It was very plain that he resented his unavoidableconnection with the case.

  "She was still alive," he responded, thoughtfully, "although breathingwith difficulty. Nearly everyone had clustered about her, so that shewas getting little air, and the room was stuffy from the lights theyhad been using in taking the scene. They told me she droppedunconscious and that they couldn't revive her, but at first it did notoccur to me that it might be serious. I thought perhaps the heat--"

  "You saw nothing suspicious," interrupted Kennedy, "nothing in theactions or manner of anyone in the room?"

  "No, when I first entered I didn't suspect anything out of the way. Ihad them send everyone into the next room, except Manton and Phelps,and had the doors and windows thrown open to give her air. Then when Iexamined her I detected what seemed to me to be both a muscular andnervous paralysis, which by that time had proceeded pretty far. As Itouched her she opened her eyes, but she was unable to speak. She wasbreathing with difficulty; her heart action was weakening so rapidlythat I had little opportunity to apply restorative measures."

  "What do you think caused the death?"

  "So far, I can make no satisfactory explanation." The doctor shruggedhis shoulders very slightly. "That is why I advised an immediateinvestigation. I did not care to write a death certificate."

  "You have no hypothesis?"

  "If she died from any natural organic disorder, the signs were lackingby which I could trace it. Everything indicates the opposite, however.It would be hard for me to say whether the paralysis of respiration orof the heart actually caused her death. If it was due to poison--Well,to me the whole affair is shrouded in mystery. The symptoms indicatednothing I could recognize with any degree of certainty."

  Kennedy stooped over, making a superficial examination of the girl. Isaw that some faint odor caught his nostrils, for he remained poised amoment, inhaling reflectively, his eyes clouded in thought. Then hewent to the windows, raising the shades an additional few inches each,but that did not seem to give him the light he wished.

  In the room were the portable arcs used in the making of scenes in anactual interior setting. The connections ran to heavy insulatedjunction boxes at the ends of two lines of stiff black stage cable.Near the door the circuits were joined and a single lead of the bigduplex cord ran out along the polished hardwood floor, carriedpresumably to the house circuit at a fuse box where sufficient amperagewas available. Kennedy's eyes followed out the wires quickly. Then,motioning to me to help, he wheeled one of the heavy stands around andadjusted the hood so that the full strength of the light would be castupon Stella. The arc in place, he threw the switch, and in thesputtering flood of illumination dropped to his knees, taking apowerful pocket lens from his waistcoat and beginning an inch by inchexamination of her skin.

  I gained a fresh realization of the beauty of the star as she lay underthe dazzling electric glow, and in particular I noticed the smallamount of make-up she had used and the natural firmness of her flesh.She was dressed in a modish, informal dinner dress, of embroideredsatin, cut fairly low at front and back and with sleeves of somegauzelike material reaching not halfway to her elbow, hardly sleeves atall, in fact.

  Kennedy with his glass went over her features with extreme care. I sawthat he drew her hair back, and that then he parted it, to examine herscalp, and I wondered what infinitesimal clue might be the object ofhis search. I had learned, however, never to question him while he wasat work.

  With his eye glued to his lens he made his way about and around herneck, and down and over her throat and chest so far as it remainedunprotected by the silk of her gown. With the aid of Mackay he turnedher over to examine her back. Next he returned the body to its formerposition and began to inspect the arms. Very suddenly something caughthis eye on the inside of her right forearm. He grunted withsatisfaction, straightened, pulled the switch of the arc, wiped hiseyes, which were watering.

  "Find anything, Mr. Kennedy?" Doctor Blake seemed to understand, tosome extent, the purpose of the examination.

  Kennedy did not answer, probably preoccupied with theories which Icould see were forming in his mind.

  The library was a huge room of greater length than breadth. At one endwere wide French windows looking out upon the garden and summer house.The door to the hallway and living room was very broad, with heavysliding panels and rich portieres of a velours almost the tint of thewood-work. Between the door, situated in the side wall near theopposite end, and the windows, was a magnificent stone fireplace withcharred logs testifying to its frequent use. The couch where Stella layhad been drawn back from its normal position before the fire, togetherwith a huge table of carved walnut. The other two walls were anunbroken succession of shelves, reaching to the ceiling and literallypacked with books.

  Facing the windows and the door, so as to include the fireplace and thewide sweep of the room within range, were two cameras still set up, thelegs of their tripods nested, probably left exactly as they were at themoment of Stella's collapse. I touched the handle of one, a Bell &Howell, and saw that it was threaded, that the film had not beendisturbed. The lights, staggered and falling away from the cameralines, were arranged to focus their illumination on the action of thescenes. There were four arcs and two small portable banks ofCooper-Hewitts, the latter used to cut the sharp shadows and give agreater evenness to the photography. Also there were diffusersconstructed of sheets of white cloth stretched taut on frames. Thesereflected light upward upon the faces of the actors, softening thelower features, and so valuable in adding to the attractiveness of thewomen in particular.

  All this I had learned from visits to a studio with the Star'sphotoplay editor. I was anxious to impress my knowledge upon Kennedy.He gave me no opportunity, however, but wheeled upon Mackay suddenly.

  "Send in the electrician," he ordered. "Keep everyone else out untilI'm ready to examine them."

  While the district attorney hurried to the sliding doors, guarded ontheir farther side by one of the amateur deputies he had impressed intoservice, Kennedy swung the stand of the arc he had used back into theplace unaided. I noticed that Doctor Blake was nervously interested inspite of his professional poise. I certainly was bursting withcuriosity to know what Kennedy had found.

  The electrician, a wizened veteran of the studios, with a bald headwhich glistened rather ridiculously, entered as though he expected tobe held for the death of the star on the spot.

  "I don't know nothin'," he began, before anyone could start to questionhim. "I was outside when they yelled, honest! I was seeing whetherm'lead was getting hot, and I heard 'em call to douse the glim, an'--"

  "Put on all your lights"--Kennedy was unusually sharp, although it wasplain he held no suspicion of this man, as he added--"just as you hadthem."

  As the electrician went from stand to stand sulkily, there was asputter from the arcs, almost deafening in the confines of the room,and quite a bit of fine white smoke. But in a moment the corner of thelibrary constituting the set was brilliantly, dazzlingly lighted. To meit was quite like being transported into one of the big studios in thecity.

  "Is this the largest portion of the room they used?" Kennedy asked."Did you have your stands any farther back?"

  "This was the biggest lay-out, sir!" replied the man.

  "Were all the scenes in which Miss Lamar appeared before her death inthis corner of the room?"

  "Yes, sir!"

  "And this was the way you had the scene lighted when she droppedunconscious?"

  "Yes, sir! I pulled m'lights an'--an' they lifted her up and put herright there where she is, sir!"

  Kennedy paid no attention to the last; in fact, I doubt whether heheard
it. Dropping to hands and knees immediately, he began a search ofthe floor and carpet as minutely painstaking as the inspection he hadgiven Stella's own person. Instinctively I drew back, to be out of hisway, as did Doctor Blake and Mackay. The electrician, I noticed, seemedto grasp now the reason for the summons which undoubtedly hadfrightened him badly. He gave his attention to his lights, stroking arefractory Cooper-Hewitt tube for all the world as if some minor scenein the story were being photographed. It was hard to realize that itwas not another picture scene, but that Craig Kennedy, in my opinionthe founder of the scientific school of modern detectives, wassearching out in this strange environment the clue to a real murder somysterious that the very cause of death was as yet undetermined.

  I was hoping for a display of the remarkable brilliance Craig had shownin so many of the cases brought to his attention. I half expected tosee him rise from the floor with some tiny something in his hand, someobject overlooked by everyone else, some tangible evidence which wouldlead to the immediate apprehension of the perpetrator of the crime.That Stella Lamar had met her death by foul means I did not doubt foran instant, and so I waited feverishly for the conclusion of Kennedy'ssearch.

  As it happened, this was not destined to be one of his cases cleared upin a brief few hours of intensive effort. He covered every inch of thefloor within the illuminated area; then he turned his attention to thewalls and furniture and the rest of the room in somewhat moreperfunctory, but no less skillful manner. Fully fifteen minuteselapsed, but I knew from his expression that he had discovered nothing.In a wringing perspiration from the heat of the arcs, but neverthelessglad to have had the intense light at his disposal, he motioned to theelectrician to turn them off and to leave the room.

  "Find anything, Mr. Kennedy?" queried the physician once more.

  Kennedy beckoned all of us to the side of the ill-fated actress.Lifting the right arm, finding the spot which had caused hisexclamation before, he handed his pocket lens to Doctor Blake. After amoment a low whistle escaped the lips of the physician.

  Next it was my turn. As I stooped over I caught, above the faint scentof imported perfume which she affected, a peculiar putrescent odor.This it was which had caught Kennedy's nostrils. Then through the glassI could detect upon her forearm the tiniest possible scratch ending inan almost invisible puncture, such as might have been made by a verysharp needle or the point of an incredibly fine hypodermic syringe.Drawing back, I glanced again at her face, which I had already notedwas blotched and somewhat swollen beneath the make-up. Again I thoughtthat the muscles were contorted, that the eyes were bulging slightly,that there was a bluish tinge to her skin such as in cyanosis orasphyxiation. It may have been imagination, but I was now sure that herexpression revealed pain or fear or both.

  When I looked at her first I had been unable to forget my impression ofyears. Before me there had been the once living form of Stella Lamar,whom I had dreamed of meeting and whom I had never viewed in actuallife. I had lacked the penetration to see beneath the glamour. But toKennedy there had been signs of the poisoning at once. Doctor Blake hadsearched merely for the evidences of the commoner drugs, or the usualdiseases such as cause sudden death. I recalled the cyanides. I thoughtof curare, or woorali, the South American arrow poison with whichKennedy once had dealt. Had Stella received an injection of some newand curious substance?

  Mackay glanced up from his inspection of the mark on the arm.

  "It's an awfully tiny scratch!" he exclaimed.

  Kennedy smiled. "Yet, Mackay, it probably was the cause of her death."

  "How?"

  "That--that is the problem before us. When we learn just exactly howshe scratched herself, or was scratched--" Kennedy paced up and down infront of the fireplace. Then he confronted each of us in turn, suddenlyserious. "Not a word of what I have discovered," he warned.