X
CHEMICAL RESEARCH
The following morning I found Kennedy up ahead of me, and I feltcertain that he had gone to the laboratory. Sure enough, I found him atwork in the midst of the innumerable scientific devices which he hadgathered during years of crime detection of every sort.
As usual, he was surrounded by a perfect litter of test tubes, beakers,reagents, microscopes, slides, and culture tubes. He had cut out thecurious spots from the towel I had discovered and was studying them todetermine their nature. From the mass of paraphernalia I knew he wasneglecting no possibility which might lead to the hidden truth orproduce a clue to the crime.
"Have you learned anything yet?" I asked.
"Those brownish spots were blood, of course," was his reply as hestopped a moment in his work. "In the blood I discovered some othersubstance, though I can't seem to identify it yet. It will take time. Ithought it might be a drug or poison, but it doesn't seem to be--atleast nothing one might ordinarily expect."
"How about the other spots, not the Chinese yellow?"
"Another problem I haven't solved. I dissolved enough of them so that Ihave plenty of material to study if I don't waste it. But so far Ihaven't been able to identify the substance with anything I know.There's a lot more work of elimination, Walter, before we're on theroad to the solution of this case. Whatever stained the towel was veryunusual. As near as I can make out the spots are of some proteincomposition. But it's not exactly a poison, although many proteins maybe extremely poisonous and extremely difficult to identify because theyare of organic nature."
I was disappointed. It seemed to me that he had made comparativelylittle progress so far.
"There's one thing," he added. "Samples of the body fluids of thevictim have been sent down by the coroner at Tarrytown and I haveanalyzed them. While I haven't decided what it was that killed StellaLamar, I am at least convinced that it has something to do with thesetowel spots. They are not exactly the same--in fact, I should say theywere complementary, or, perhaps better, antithetical."
"The mark wasn't made by the needle which scratched her, then?"
"That's what I thought at first, that the point used had been wiped offon the towel. Then I decided that the spots had nothing to do with thecase at all. Now I believe there is some connection, after all."
"I--I don't understand it," I protested.
"It's very baffling," he agreed, absent-mindedly.
"If the towel wasn't used to clean the fatal needle," I went on, "thenit may have been used before they went out instead of afterward."
"Exactly. As a matter of fact, if I had not been so confused yesterdayby all the details of the case, by the many people involved, I wouldhave noticed at a glance that the blood spots on the towel could notcome from some one using it to wipe the needle. And any hypothesis thatit had been used out in Tarrytown was ridiculous, because Miss Lamarwas only scratched faintly and lost no blood. If I had been a littlemore clever I might have been altogether too clever. I might possiblyhave thrown the towel away, because there certainly was no logicalreason for connecting it with the crime."
"Just when do you suppose Stella was pricked?" I asked.
"That's a vital consideration. Just now I do not know the poison and socannot tell how quickly it acted." He began to put aside his variousparaphernalia. "Suppose we go at this thing by a process of deductionrather than from the end of scientific analysis." He sat on a corner ofthe bench. "What do we find?" he began.
"While I've been working here with the test tubes and the microscopeI've been trying to reconstruct what must have happened, trying totrace out every action of Stella Lamar as nearly as it is possible forus to do so. I don't think we need to go back of their arrival at thehouse, for the present. They seem to have been there a long whilebefore the taking of the particular scene, since there were twelveother scenes preceding and since it requires time to put up theelectric lights and make the connections, as well as to set thecameras, take tests, rearrange the furniture, and all the rest of it.
"They arrived at the house in two automobiles; with the exception ofPhelps, who was there already, and Manton, who came in his ownlimousine. That means that Miss Lamar had company on the trip out, theprincipals probably riding with each other in one car. At the housethey were all more or less together. There were people about constantlyand it would seem as if there was small opportunity for anyone toinflict the scratch which caused her death. I don't mean that it wouldhave been impossible to prick her. I mean that she would have felt thejab of the point. In all likelihood she would have cried out andglanced around. Take a needle yourself, sometime, Walter, and try toduplicate the scratch on your own arm in such a way that you would notbe aware of it.
"So you see I'm counting upon some sort of exclamation from Miss Lamar.If she were inoculated with the poison with other folks about, it issure some one would have remembered a cry, a questioning glance, aquick grasp of the forearm--for the nerves are very sensitive in theskin there--"
"No one did recall anything of the kind," I interrupted.
"It is from that fact that I hope to deduce something. Now let's followher, figuratively, to her little dressing room. This was a part of theliving room where the rest waited. It is not a certainty, but yetrather a sure guess, that if she had received a scratch behind thosethin silk curtains her cry would have been heard. What is even moreplausible is that she would have hurried out, or at least put her headout, to see who had pricked her.
"I made a very careful examination of that little alcove with the ideathat some artifice might have been used. It occurred to me that apoisoned point could have been inserted in her belongings in some wayso that she would have brought about her own death, directly. To havecaught herself on a needle point in her bag, for instance, would nothave impressed her to the point of making a disturbance. She might havechecked her exclamation, in that case, because she would be blamingherself.
"But I found nothing in her things, nor did I discover anything in thelibrary. It seems to me, therefore, that we must look for a directhuman agency."
A thought struck me and I hastened to suggest it. "Could some devicehave been arranged in her clothes, Craig; something like the poisonrings of the Middle Ages, a tiny metal thing to spring open and exposeits 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 allher clothes down here, every stitch and rag of them. I've gone overeverything already this morning. Not only have I examined the variousmaterials for stains, but I've tested each hook and eye and button andpin. I've been very careful to cover that possibility."
"You think, then, she was scratched deliberately by some one during thetaking of the scenes?"
"If you've followed my line of reasoning you will see that we aredriven to that assumption. Perhaps later I will make tests on a givennumber of girls of Stella's general age and type and temperament toshow that they will cry out at the unexpected prick of a fine needle.It's illogical to expect that a cry from Miss Lamar, even anexclamation, would have passed unnoticed except during the excitementof actual picture taking."
Another inspiration came to me, but I was almost afraid to voice it. Itseemed a daring theory. "Could death have resulted from poisonadministered in some other fashion, by something she had eaten, forinstance?" I ventured. "Couldn't the scratch be coincidental?"
Kennedy shook his head. "There's the value of our chemical analysis andscientific tests. Her stomach contents showed nothing except as theymight have been affected by her weakened condition. From Doctor Blake'sreport--and he found no ordinary symptoms, remember--and from my ownobservation, too, I can easily prove in court that she was killed bythe mark which was so small that it escaped the physician altogether."
I turned away. Once more Kennedy's reasoning seemed to be leading intoa maze of considerations beyond me. How could the deductive methodproduce results in a case as mysterious as this?
"Having determined that
Miss Lamar received the inoculation during themaking of one of the scenes, as nearly as we can do so," Kennedy wenton, "suppose we take the scenes in order, one at a time, from the lastphotographed to the first, analyzing each in turn. Remember that weseek a situation where there is not only an opportunity to jab her witha needle, but one in which an outcry would be muffled 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 hismarvelous capacity for attention to detail.
"'The spotlight on the floor reveals the girl sobbing over the body ofthe millionaire,'" he read, aloud, musingly. "H'mm! 'She screams andcries out.' Then the others rush in."
For several moments Kennedy paced the floor of the laboratory, themanuscript open in his hands.
"We rehearsed that, with Werner; and we questioned everyone, too. Andremember! Miss Lamar, instead of crying out as she was supposed to do,just crumpled up silently. So"--thumbing over a page--"we work back toscene 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 otherthings. "We must admit that Millard can handle a moving-picturescenario most beautifully."
Whether it was professional jealousy or the thought of Enid, ratherthan the memory of my own poor attempts at screen writing, I certainlywas in no mood to agree with Kennedy, for all that I knew he wascorrect.
"Here!" He thrust the binder in my hands. "Read that first scene," hedirected. "Meanwhile I am going to phone Mackay to make sure he has hadthe 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 ofhurry."
"What's the idea, Craig?" Kennedy's occasional bursts ofmysteriousness, characteristic of him and often necessary when histheories were only half formed and too chaotic for explanations, alwayspiqued me.
He did not seem to hear. Already he was at the telephone, manipulatingthe receiver hook impatiently. "What a dummy I am!" he exclaimed, withgenuine 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 detailconcerned Stella Lamar in any way. Then I came to the description ofher introductory entrance, the initial view of her in the film. Thelines of typewriting suddenly stood out before me in all theirsuggestive 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.
"You think there's something about the portieres--" I began.
Then I saw that Kennedy had his connection, that something disturbedhim, that some intelligence from the other end had caught him bysurprise.
"You say you were just trying to get me, Mackay? You've something totell me and you want me to come right out--you have summoned Phelps andhe's on his way from the city also--?"
"What happened?" I asked, as Kennedy hung up.
"I don't know, Walter. Mackay said he didn't want to talk over thephone and that we had just time to catch the express."
"But--"
"Hurry!" He glanced about as if wondering whether any of his scientificinstruments would help him.