The haunting hand

By Walter Adolphe Roberts

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Title: The haunting hand

Author: Walter Adolphe Roberts

Illustrator: George W. Gage


        
Release date: March 2, 2026 [eBook #78094]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: The Macaulay Company, 1926

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78094

Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAUNTING HAND ***




 [caption:
 Stricken with terror, Margot watched a small, thin hand,
 then a forearm reach from under her bed.]




 THE
 HAUNTING HAND

 By
 W. ADOLPHE ROBERTS

 Frontispiece by
 GEORGE W. GAGE




 NEW YORK
 THE MACAULAY COMPANY




 [COPYRIGHT]

 _Copyright, 1926
 By The Macaulay Company_




 [DEDICATION]

 DEDICATED TO
 FLORENCE M. OSBORNE.




 CONTENTS

 I. Movie Men and Mannequins
 II. The Grisly Hand and the Flame
 III. A Creature Without a Body
 IV. Mounting Mystery
 V. Weird Suspicions
 VI. The Midnight Prowler
 VII. Spooks and the Press
 VIII. The Claws of Jealousy
 IX. Hidden Motives
 X. A Witness from the Dead
 XI. Whose Hand?
 XII. Stella’s Story
 XIII. Will-o’-the-Wisp
 XIV. Love’s Alarm
 XV. Stoner’s Share
 XVI. A King’s Ransom in Radium
 XVII. “Better Than Brotherly!”




 THE HAUNTING HAND

 CHAPTER I.
 MOVIE MEN AND MANNEQUINS

Mid October, with its tang, and the blazoned glory of its skies and
sun and tawny trees! Margot Anstruther thanked a kind fate that she
could live these brilliant, exhilarating days out of doors. Had she
been confined to office or classroom, her restless spirit would have
carried her body with it, in reckless escape. Long Island--where the
Superfilm Company studio spread over the landscape--although not
precisely the Maine woods or sea, or the open spaces of her own
wide-flung West, at least spelled trees and grass and fresh air.

Margot stood on the diminutive roof-garden of her New York home,
watching the moon rise over the house-tops. It was eight o’clock and
her guests would soon arrive. She hoped that Gene Valery would come
before the others. It was pleasant to be loved so ardently by Gene,
but she surmised that it would be pleasanter if she could love as
ardently in return. At any rate, his friendship was invaluable. He was
the only one with whom she could share her mental gymnastics, the
aspect of her mind which others would regard as rather too serious for
human nature’s daily food.

She had Gene to thank for her tiny roof-garden. It was one of those
quaint affairs, a covering built over the yard, to be found in many an
old New York house. Gene had rigged up a trellis and had brought
potted palms and a South American hammock. For to-night he had hung
Japanese lanterns. Margot had already lighted them. That small, mock
garden took the curse, so to speak, off her lodging-house quarters,
which consisted of one large, high-ceilinged room, in which she slept,
ate--her breakfasts--and had her being.

She cut short her transport over the moon, stepped across the
door-sill into the room, and cast critical eyes over her domain. A
brass bed in one far corner was concealed by a screen, which Gene had
made and she had decorated. The effect was rather good. She had
recently acquired a divan, with many cushions, large and soft and
gaily colored. Against one wall was a chest of drawers, a Chinese
scarf over its battered top, a brass jar at one end, and a pewter
candlestick with orange candle, at the other. The walls were a muddy
gray, but there was a Japanese print here and there, and bright
cretonne at the windows and on the wicker chairs.

Flanking the old-fashioned fireplace were her bookcases, built and
painted by Gene. As catholic in her literary tastes as in her choice
of friends, Margot’s books presented a varied diet; fiction ranging
from Kipling to Anatole France, poetry from Dante to Millay. A
desk-table and an old console table--her own acquisitions--with carved
wood book-racks for a few modern novels, and a bit of brass or copper;
and two much worn but softly blended Oriental rugs thrown over the
antiquated carpet, almost hiding its ugliness. Margot had achieved
distinction, beauty and a subtle charm, in a room which previous
tenants of the old lodging-house must have accepted as irretrievably
barren and sordid.

She glanced in her four-foot mirror and patted her hair. It looked
redder than usual in the light from the candles and from the
yellow-shaded electric lamp over by the table. She flicked a speck of
dust from the mirror-frame, gave a little twist to her soft, straight
hung dress of corn color silk, then glanced toward the lanterns
swinging in the evening breeze. Yes--it was all rather nice, but she
was especially grateful for the roof-garden. Of course, a chilly
October night could not be expected to lend exotic warmth to the
scene, but in the room, the logs would be burning.

Six weeks since she had first met her expected guests: Frederick
Stoner, the director of the Superfilm Company, with his strange, pale
eyes; May Cheshire, the little blond girl who had been the first to
inspire Margot with a desire to get into pictures; Lulu Leinster, the
prize-beauty-contest winner from Texas, whose large brown eyes,
beautifully chiseled lips and exquisite skin and yellow hair would
have been assets in any profession. These three, and others, men and
girls of the company, whose admiring friendship Margot had won during
the past six weeks of work in the great studio of the Superfilm
Company. Gene Valery was an older friend. That he happened to be an
efficient young camera man with the same company was a pleasing
coincidence.

Six weeks! A mere point in time, but they had been constructive weeks.
To her own satisfaction and to that of her director, it had been
proved that she had histrionic talent of a high order and that she
screened admirably. Of no less significance the fact that she knew
now, beyond all doubt, not only what she could do, but what she wanted
to do. The absurd thing was that she should originally have chosen
science as her profession! Mentally equipped she might be for
scientific work, but oh, how much more interesting it was to act!
Certainly more remunerative. That morning in June, when she had
applied for work and been taken on as an “extra” by the International,
had supplied not only a little extra cash for her summer vacation but
the fillip to her vague ambition to be a screen actress. And here she
was, at twenty-five, launched on her career.

Her laboratory work would not be wasted; nothing excellent was ever
wasted, she knew, and she was grateful for any acquisitive experience
which she owed to her college course. But mental activities on the
side, she would regard as a hobby; for an actress she was by
temperament, and a good actress she proposed to be by intelligent use
of her powers.

Funny, how Stoner had engaged her that day, and given her a real part
in the new picture, _A Toreador’s Love_! Funny how he had chosen her,
instead of the lovely Lulu, for apparently no good reason! When Lulu
proceeded to weep and look like a piece of broken Dresden china, he
had weakened to the extent of giving the latter a very small rôle,
but it was still a mystery to Margot why he had given _her_ the
important part for which she and Lulu--and many others--had applied,
in response to an advertisement. She had forgotten, or hadn’t had
time, to tell Gene about it. She must remember to tell him sometime.
It would amuse him and perhaps he’d be able to dispel the vague sense
of mystery aroused in her by Stoner, with his strange pale eyes, from
that first moment when she had given him her name and address.

Margot smiled, recalling Gene’s absurd jealousy of Frederick Stoner.
Ridiculous to suppose that she could ever give the director a second
thought except in relation to her work. He wasn’t a bad sort, really,
but his rather brutish good looks repelled her. And he was a good
director, although, as everyone had told her, he belonged to the old
school of directors; very old-fashioned in his methods. There were
few, if any, of his kind left in the motion picture industry, for
which those working under him were devoutly thankful. Stoner’s notion
of discipline was to shout his orders and conduct himself generally as
if everything were melodrama.

Gene was rather annoying with his jealous suspicions. She didn’t dare
tell him that she endured Stoner’s boring attentions as much for
Gene’s sake as for her own. Stoner had never liked Gene, and now he
made his dislike very evident. If she were to let it become obvious
that she preferred Gene’s friendship to Stoner’s, the director would
be quite capable of discharging him and queering him with other
directors and managers. Men often did contemptible things out of
jealousy. If she explained all this to Gene, ten to one he would
resign, just when his chances for promotion were so good. Gene was a
rank outsider. He had been taken on almost by accident and retained
because he was so amazingly clever with the camera. But all the
cleverness in the world wouldn’t help you if you were an outsider and
an influential director considered you undesirable.

Speaking of jealousy! She smiled again, remembering that the only
member of the cast of _A Toreador’s Love_, who had declined her
invitation for to-night, was the star, Corinne Delamar. To be sure,
she was younger than Corinne--somewhat--and perhaps prettier, but
there was no reason for fearing that she had designs upon the
director. Margot had treated Corinne with consistent and amiable
courtesy, but had made no attempt to overcome her antagonism, by
catering to her up-stage exactions. In token of her good-will and to
celebrate her success in the Superfilm’s new picture, she had asked
them all to her informal home for a “party.” The word covered a
multitude of sins--of excess or boredom. Silly of Corinne not to come!
Silly of her to advertise her jealousy of Margot! There had been
gossip about it already, some of it a trifle malicious.

At that point in her rapid reflections, Gene appeared, carrying a
bunch of yellow roses. He brought candy also, and cigarettes, and a
bottle or two under his arm. Gene was tall, clear-skinned and plain of
feature, except for his blue eyes. He was well knit, had brilliant
teeth and a smile which made one forget that his mouth was too wide
and his nose crooked--it had been broken in a football game. At times
his smile quickened his face to actual beauty.

With bright eyes smiling in unison with her red, parted lips, Margot
watched him unwrap his packages. Then he stood looking at her, longing
to take her in his arms, and daring only to stare at her adoringly.

“You _are_ a darling, Gene!” Her voice cooed at him, and she took a
step nearer, smiling at him.

Well, that wasn’t so bad in the way of a greeting, his expansive smile
told her.

“And _you_ are a darling--an exquisite darling!”

She went a little nearer to him.

“If you won’t muss me, and won’t get too rapturous, I’ll let you kiss
me--_once_--just to give you a good start for the evening.”

“Sweetheart!” Impetuously he tried to put an arm around her, then,
gingerly, as she drew away with a laugh of warning, he put his hands
on her shoulders and bending down, kissed her lips. It was a kiss
pregnant with emotion but short-lived, as she freed herself, with
another gay laugh.

“Look, Gene! You haven’t even noticed my new divan and my lovely
cushions.”

He glanced at the divan without interest, turned his gaze back to
Margot, and seeing her mouth droop in disappointment, he made an
effort to smile approval.

“Bully, darling! It adds fifty per cent to this room.” His eyes roved
about. “Color scheme’s fine!” His wandering glance reached the corner
where the screen did not entirely conceal the large brass bed. “Why on
earth don’t you get rid of that incubus?”

Margot’s smile clouded. “Now, you don’t imagine I keep it for sheer
love of the beastly thing? I told Mrs. Bellew that I was going to buy
a divan, and she promised to remove that monster over there. But when
the divan arrived the other day, she told me I’d have to keep the bed
till she could have one of her rooms done over. I can’t throw the darn
thing out the window. It makes me _so_ mad!”

“Sorry I mentioned it, dearest. Don’t bother about it. That screen
hides it and the room’s so huge you can forget that corner.”

“Anyway,” she smiled cheerfully, “I’ve managed to cover her hideous
old Wilton, except in spots, especially that torn place near the bed.
Dad sent the Orientals from home. Worn a bit, but the coloring’s
lovely. She wouldn’t take up her old carpet. Says the paint’s off the
floor and the boards cracked and rough. I don’t believe she’s had that
carpet up for years.”

“By the way,” said Gene irrelevantly, “Stoner coming to-night?”

“Why, of course he is!”

“Precisely--_why_--‘of course’?”

“How silly of you, Gene! I can’t snub Stoner, and it would have been
worse than a snub not to ask him to-night. Why, _he_ gave me the job
I’m celebrating! How _could_ I leave him out?”

“Suppose you’re right.” Gene’s agreement was sulky. “But I don’t like
Stoner and I hate to see him hanging around you.”

She went up to him and gave him a light, swift kiss on the end of his
chin, then ran back before he could seize her.

“Be a good sport, Gene, dear. A man of Stoner’s type couldn’t possibly
hurt me in anyway, for I’d never want him as a friend, let alone as a
lover. But it’s policy to be decent to him, and I’m not a fool.”

“All the same I hate to see his familiar manner with you. All the
logic in the universe isn’t going to change that.”

“And I can’t help _that_! If you _will_ be jealous of an inferior,
then you just prove an inferiority complex.” Her smile sweetened the
words, then she added with a laugh: “The same kind of complex that
made Corinne Delamar decline my invitation for to-night.”

Before Gene could reply, the door-bell rang. To Margot’s relief, the
first arrivals were May Cheshire and Lulu Leinster, with several other
girls and men from _A Toreador’s Love_. She was glad that Stoner had
not come in time to make an embarrassing trio with Gene and herself.

Amid the chatter and laughter and admiring exclamations regarding
Margot’s room and the tiny roof-garden, the bell rang again. This time
it would be Stoner, she knew. She ran to the door to admit him,
standing with her back to the room.

Stoner was tall and heavily built, with thick eyebrows that gave him a
fierce expression when he frowned. He was handsome, of a crude,
slightly brutal type. He possessed, at least, that illusive quality,
personality. He smiled down at Margot and extended a large,
well-groomed hand.

Her cordial but impersonal greeting of: “Why, hello, Mr. Stoner!
Awfully glad to see you!” sounded innocent enough, which was for
Gene’s benefit, but only Stoner saw the roguish, upturned corners of
her mouth, and the smile of challenge in her lovely eyes. After all,
one must play a game with finesse. If she didn’t coquette a _little_
with Stoner, just to keep the ball rolling, either she’d antagonize
him, or run the risk of bringing on a crisis by goading him to a less
oblique attack.

Before she turned and sauntered with him across the room, the color
had deepened in her cheeks. Whenever Stoner looked at her with his
critical, predatory eyes, Margot always grew uncomfortably conscious
of her physical assets: of the long, gently curved lines of her body;
of the clearness of her white skin, with its pink shadings; of the
golden auburn of her bobbed hair; of her nose, straight, except for a
slight uptilt at the end, which harmonized with the way her lips
deepened and lifted at the corners of her mobile mouth. She had no
unwarranted conceit, but the trained appraisal of Stoner’s glance had
brought to her to-night, as on previous occasions, the conviction that
she was more beautiful than she had supposed.

An hour later, Margot, sitting Turk-fashion on her divan, and flashing
a smile over the rim of her cocktail glass at the girls and men
standing or lolling about the room, answered their toast to her
success, with one of her own.

“If Shakespeare were alive to-day, he’d be writing scenarios, and
instead of saying: ‘The play’s the thing!’ he’d say: ‘The movies are
the _only_ thing!’ Drink to the drama of the screen! May it live long
and prosper, and have lots of--of offspring!”

“Taking liberties with the famous old toast of Rip Van Winkle. Very
clever of you, Margot, I’ll tell the world!” It was Stoner speaking.

Surprising, Margot thought, that Stoner, with all his crudities,
should have recognized her paraphrasing of the toast of Rip Van
Winkle. She was sure that no one else but Gene in that room had
education enough for that. She studied Stoner through lowered eyes. He
was standing by the table, compounding bright-colored cocktails with
much orange juice and not much gin. The bottles were emptying rather
early in the evening.

Stoner, liking to be in evidence wherever there were pretty women
about, had insisted upon presiding over the mixing of drinks. He swung
the big shaker with a loud tinkling of ice, and boisterous jests
thrown carelessly to one or another. He smiled, it seemed to Gene’s
watchful and jealous eyes, a little possessively at Margot, as he
said, with a laugh:

“I’ll hand it to you, Margot, for knowing how to maneuver the drinks
so that we’ll stay sober and yet enjoy ourselves. Most women, when
they entertain, can’t strike that happy medium. They’re either stingy
with the booze, or they turn on the hose and send you home wall-eyed.
You’re the perfect little entertainer, I’ll tell the world.”

“And why on earth, Margot, did you think you had to apologize for this
room of yours?” Lulu glanced about with wondering admiration. “I call
it a swell room, and fine for a party!”

Margot smiled, and her gray eyes twinkled.

“It’s really just a bedroom, Lulu, as I warned you. I can’t pretend
it’s anything else, while that monstrous brass bed stands over in that
corner.”

“Well, you’ve got it screened, haven’t you?” Lulu argued.

“That’s a weak camouflage. And when I go to bed, of course I remove
the screen, and then, when I look around the room, I feel as if I were
in a regular movie bedroom. They’re always so funny, you know. Aren’t
they, Mr. Stoner?”

For a second his expression showed that he thought she might be making
fun of him.

“We have to rig up those fancy bedrooms, to please the fans who’ve
never seen a really swell bedroom in their lives. They think they’re
getting the real dope when we show them beds all covered with lace and
satin and the Lord knows what not.”

“Beds don’t scare _me_,” laughed May Cheshire, shaking her little
blond, bobbed head. “Ain’t they among our best little props? Ain’t we
jumpin’ in and out of ’em in half the scenes?”

Margot laughed with the others. Hers was too human a sense of humor to
resent the obviousness of such an exhibition of another girl’s wit. It
was spontaneous at least.

“As to beds,” Stoner evidently thought the subject not yet exhausted;
“you aren’t the only young actress, Margot, who’s living in one room.
Lots of them in the ‘Roaring Forties.’ I’ve seen rooms that weren’t a
patch on this one for looks and comfort, and I’ve sat on more beds
than I could count, when there weren’t enough chairs to go round.”

“At least you won’t be put to that trouble in my room.”

Gene exulted at the slight coolness in her tone. Damn cheeky Stoner,
with his remarks about sitting on beds. Stoner gave her a sharp look,
then stared across the room to where the brass bed peeked around a
corner of the screen.

“Wouldn’t be any trouble, I assure you.” What was it, in his voice?
Irony, ridicule, effrontery or just plain nerve?

For the first time in weeks, Margot had a vivid memory of the look in
Stoner’s eyes when she had first given him her address, and the
following day, when he first suggested calling on her. The impression
of something vaguely sinister, had faded with more familiar knowledge
of the man, and his amiable crudities of mind and manner.

“Guess you’ll soon be movin’ up town into some big swell flat on
Riverside Drive. You’ll be a star I bet, in the next picture they
shoot.” There was faint envy in Lulu’s big blue eyes.

“If I move up town,” said Margot, with a laugh, “it certainly won’t be
to Riverside Drive. Too many murders of young actresses and dancers in
that neighborhood. And I’m in no hurry to move away from here. This
house has atmosphere, hasn’t it, Gene?” She turned her head to smile
directly into Gene’s watchful eyes. “It was built in the sixties, you
know, Mr. Stoner.” Her glance shifted to the director, who was sitting
on the arm of an old chair, and imperiling its usefulness.
“Picturesque old moldings, high ceilings and all that sort of thing.
Don’t you like these brownstone relics, Mr. Stoner?”

“Gene, there, knows more about them than I do. He has to shoot them
every now and then. But the inside dope on architecture and periods is
the bluff of the art director. ‘Ain’t it the truth,’ Valery?”

Gene disdained to attempt the sort of repartee which Stoner could have
understood. He got up, and poured himself a drink, and drank it
unsociably, except for a glance over his glass at Margot. She decided
hastily to make conversation of a kind that would entertain the crowd,
and avoid personalities, and danger of sword crossing between Gene and
Stoner. She would strike the note of mystery. That would intrigue them
all, at a minimum of effort.

“Listen, people,” she began, her mouth widening in a smile which
included everyone. “The best thing about this house is that it makes
good on its appearance. Mysterious lodgers have lived here. Strange
things have happened here.”

In her roving glance from one guest to the other, her eyes met
Stoner’s. Their pale blue looked dark in the shaded lighting of the
room. He sat quite still, staring intently at her. Certainly the man
had strange eyes. One moment colorless and without expression, even
when his mouth suggested significant things when he smiled or spoke to
her; the next moment taking on depth and color and a vague suggestion
of mystery. She was conscious of a slight effort in withdrawing her
glance from his arresting gaze.

Lulu dragged her chair closer, and May sprang to the divan, and
cuddled close to Margot.

“Do go on!” May’s voice shrilled excitedly. “_What_ strange things
have happened here?”

“I only heard about it yesterday.” Margot determined to keep her
glance carefully away from Stoner’s direction. He made her nervous for
some reason. “I was talking to the landlady--trying to get her to take
away her old brass bed. She told me that a girl who was living in this
very room, disappeared in the funniest way, about three months ago.
She didn’t just walk out, bag and baggage. She disappeared--literally.
Left all her belongings, even her comb and tooth brush. _And_--she’s
never come back!”

“That’s interesting!” Stoner’s comment came as he walked to the table
and poured a drink. His back was turned to Margot. “What sort of a
girl was she?” He stood now facing the others, and looking at Margot.
He frowned as if mentally groping with an abstract problem. “Anybody
have a drink?” he added genially.

Cries from the girls, begging for silence, and telling the men to pour
drinks, if they must, without talking about it or interrupting
Margot’s story; then silence and absorbed attention as Margot
continued:

“The girl’s name was Stella Ball. She was supposed to be working at
Macy’s, half time, in the afternoons. But Mrs. Bellew communicated
with the manager at Macy’s, after the girl left here, and they’d never
even heard of her!”

Stoner leisurely blew rings of smoke from his cigarette, and said
lazily:

“She may have been run over in the street. Obscure people often
disappear that way. Sudden accident, and no identification possible.
No papers on them, and nobody claims them at the morgue. Nothing so
mysterious about that.”

“Wait till you hear the rest of it!” Margot’s eager glance avoided the
chair where Stoner was lounging. “The very same day that the girl left
here, an elderly man named Murchison, who had a garret room on the top
floor, also disappeared, with equal finality.”

“A _really_ old man?” Lulu’s instinct for romance jumped to the
obvious conclusion.

“No, dear, just middle-aged. He was about fifty-five. Agile and wiry,
Mrs. Bellew says. Young in strength, but very unprepossessing. He was
round-shouldered, and had a thin, ugly, hatchet sort of face. No girl
could have looked twice at him. And in the evenings he stuck in his
rooms like a hermit, and he seemed to hate women.”

“Did he have a job anywhere?” someone asked.

“Nobody knows. He never gave any information about himself. Of course
landladies like Mrs. Bellew would draw blood out of a stone, in the
way of gossip, but, apparently, she never found out anything about
that particular lodger. She didn’t care, so long as he gave no trouble
and paid his rent regularly.”

“Perhaps the old bird had money, and the girl, Stella, may have fallen
for that.” Lulu’s sense of romance was not to be crushed.

“Nonsense, Lulu. He wasn’t a miser, with bags of gold in his trunk. He
went out every day, so presumably he worked somewhere, but, judging by
the way he lived, he certainly earned very little.”

“Call it a case of hypnotism, and be done with it!” Stoner’s
suggestion came flippantly.

Margot turned her head quickly, and again met Stoner’s eyes, staring
at her through the shadows of the room, and the smoke from his
cigarette.

“I thought of that. But the man’s only motive in hypnotizing the girl
would have been an immoral one, which wouldn’t have required his
taking her out of the house. No one here bothers about his neighbors.
You could literally get away with murder, and not a soul be the
wiser.”

“Gosh! Catch _me_ living in a spooky place like this!” May glanced
over her shoulder, at the darker corner of the room where the brass
bed hid its plebeian head.

“Speaking of mysteries!” Margot glanced with surprise at Gene, whose
voice had broken the momentary silence in the room.--“Any of you
happen to read about the disappearance from the Fellowe Institute, of
a fraction of a gram of radium, a few months ago?”

“Yes, I read about it,” said Margot eagerly. “They haven’t the
faintest idea who took it, but of course it was stolen. Any of you
know anything about radium?” She glanced from one to another.

“Not a damn thing. I’ll speak for the crowd.” It was Stoner’s voice,
bland, a little ironical. “We motion picture people, Margot, aren’t
wise to all that scientific stuff. Ain’t it the truth?” He laughed,
throwing his glance around the room.

“Aren’t you even interested when you read of such things in the
papers, Mr. Stoner?” Margot regarded him with curious eyes. He was
such a strange contradiction, with his unexpected knowledge along some
lines, and his equally surprising lack of it along others.

“Can’t say I am. As a matter of fact, I don’t have much time for
reading, except of course movie fan stuff, and the sports columns, and
local politics and all the bunk they write and call dramatic
criticism.”

“But a thing like the disappearance of that radium is most interesting
news. Even a tiny bit of radium is worth a lot of money, and they’ve
had detectives on the case without getting a glimmer of light or a
single clue.”

“The odd part of it is,” went on Gene, “that no one but an employee
could have access to their stock of radium, and the mystery lies in
the difficulty entailed in concealing it and getting out of the
building with it. It seems that all persons engaged in work at the
Institute are subject to search before they leave the building.”

Margot could see by their faces that, so far as the others were
concerned, the subject of radium was exhausted. But her own mystery
narrative still held interest, she felt sure.

“Well, to get back to the girl Stella, and old Murchison--” began
Margot.

“Why get back to them?” Stoner drawled the words, and rolled his eyes
in comic supplication. “Much better turn on the jazz and let me shake
another round of Bronxes.”

“Righto!” laughed Margot, getting up and going toward the victrola.
Without looking at Stoner she added:

“Evidently, Mr. Stoner, you haven’t got the detective sort of mind.”

“Have you?”

Through the high-pitched chatter of the girls, and the deeper cadence
of the men’s voices, Margot heard the brief, low-toned question. She
turned around, facing Stoner.

“Yes, I have. Ever since I’ve been old enough to read, I’ve had a
slant for mystery and detective stories. I adore unraveling
mysteries.”

“Is that so?” Stoner’s drawl expressed tolerant amusement. The slight
scorn so often shown by rather ignorant men for intelligent women.

Margot put on a record, wound the victrola, then walked slowly to
where Stoner stood. She let him light a cigarette for her as she said,
smilingly:

“Ever read ‘The House and the Brain,’ by Bulwer-Lytton? Fascinating
and gruesome. In fact quite blood-curdling.”

“Any more so than Monsieur Dupin?”

“Oh, mercy, yes.” She saw Gene approaching, and included him in the
conversation. “Who’s _your_ favorite, Gene, in detective fiction?”

“Gaboriau,” said Gene briefly, “and Maurice le Blanc.”

“They would be,” laughed Margot. “You’re of French descent, and I
suppose you read them in the original. Well, as for me, I vote for
Conan Doyle’s immortal Sherlock! Although I’ll admit that Le Blanc’s
‘Memoirs of Arsene Lupin’ are thrilling and clever.”

“You and Valery are some pair of highbrows to be in the motion picture
industry.” Stoner sounded sarcastic, and Gene frowned darkly, but
Margot answered gaily:

“I’ve never heard detective fiction called high-brow before. Except,
of course, that I take it more seriously than most readers do, Mr.
Stoner. You see, I was a medical student and specialized in chemistry
before you gave me the chance of my young life to become an actress.
I’ve had lots of fun analyzing the methods of most of the great
fiction detectives. How’s that?” Her upturned face challenged him with
a bright smile.

“Hot stuff for your press agent, when I’m directing you as a star,
some day.”

Gene turned abruptly on his heel. Margot stood, her eyes held by
Stoner’s veiled scrutiny. For veiled it was; that expressed it
exactly. For a few seconds his gaze held hers, then--again--what was
it--that sudden dilating of the pupil; the queer overtone as of a
yellowish shadow darkening the pale blue of the iris; a shimmer in the
eyeball, like dust specks seen in a sunbeam.…

Margot lowered her head, and walked slowly to the door leading to the
roof garden. Strange eyes! A little shiver shook her bare shoulders.
The night was sultry. The room was heavy with smoke and the warm
essence from many human bodies.




 CHAPTER II.
 THE GRISLY HAND AND THE FLAME

As Margot danced, with one man and then another, a rapt, detached,
impersonal joy, shone in her face. Gone, between her and her guests,
the feeling of inequality that her agile and probing mind, had
inspired for a short interval. Gone the sense in her of repugnance for
Stoner, even when she danced in his arms. Gone the memory of his
strange and disturbing eyes. Caught up in the rhythm of jazz, what
mattered anything but motion--to these children of the Twentieth
Century--the poetry of motion, the only poetry most of them would ever
give a brass farthing for.

What if the music were secondhand? Syncopation and the phonograph
record had come into being at the same time, and had swept away with
a single victorious gesture the sentiment of the waltz, and the
coöperation of eager fingers flying over a white keyboard. Here were
new measures, mechanical, but satisfying and inspiring to youngsters
of the Jazz Age.

But it was after midnight, and high time to respect the rule that all
noise cease at twelve o’clock. Even in free-and-easy old houses such
as this one, there was a limit. Sandwiches and salad and coffee,
appeared mysteriously from a closet, where Margot concealed an
electric plate. One more round of drinks, mutual toasts and eager
congratulations to Margot for the success of her party, then the girls
began to fumble with their wraps.

At the door, Stoner held out his hand for a second clasp. He had
already shaken her hand in good-night. He had managed to be the last
to leave the room. Even Gene had followed the others down the stairs,
although he had maneuvered a whispered entreaty into her ear, to
permit him to return in a few minutes, and she had yielded to the
unhappiness in his eyes.

Stoner, holding her hand, looked down at her with a slow smile parting
his thick lips.

“Grand success, your little party--Margot.” She smiled, without
attempting to withdraw her hand.

“Awfully glad you enjoyed it. Next time I promise to have the
cocktails strong enough to suit you, Mr. Stoner.”

“They were strong enough. Too strong, maybe, for those other little
girls. You’d already stirred them up thoroughly with your story of
mystery and murder.”

Her eyes widened. “My story didn’t include a murder.”

“Well, it was hinted at--left to the imagination.”

“Entirely so.”

“Well, see here, little girl. Take my advice and cut out all that
detective stuff. It fills your mind with truck and it’s bad for your
work. Take it from me, it is!”

“I’ll write a mystery story myself, and perhaps you’ll let me star in
it. How about that, Mr. Director?” She laughed and tried to withdraw
her hand.

“Nothing doing. Don’t like mystery pictures. Well, good-by and don’t
get nervous sleeping all alone in that big bed over there.”

For a second, Margot felt angry resentment at what, on the lips of
such a man as Stoner, might so easily contain an ugly meaning--a raw
suggestion. The next second, meeting his eyes, so mysteriously
contradictory to the insidious sensuality of his mouth, she knew that
he had meant nothing insulting by his reference to her sleeping alone
in the large bed. Perhaps he had no meaning at all, back of his words
or his eyes, but there it was again, unsuspected by him, that strange,
disturbing filming of the pale blue iris, and the dilation of the
pupil. What in Heaven’s name did it mean!

As Margot stood perfectly still, with the handle of the closed door in
her hand, listening to the sound of Stoner’s feet descending the
uncarpeted stairs, the vague wonder and unrest she had felt before,
became a concrete sensation of something very much like fear, yet fear
of what! Not Stoner himself. That would be too absurd! Besides, the
only thing a woman would have to be on her guard against with Stoner,
concerned matters wherein lay no mystery whatever. There was never any
mystery for a woman, attending the manifest gloating desire of a man.
Certainly she could handle Stoner. That wasn’t it. Well, what was it?
She felt half tempted to talk it over with Gene. But hearing his step
outside the door, she decided suddenly that she would not, could not,
discuss Stoner with Gene.

Gene threw hat and coat on a chair in the manner of one who is anxious
to dispose of superfluous incumbrance, and be strong for his swim
against the current. He stood with his back to the wall, near the
door, ignoring Margot’s gesture toward a chair. Reading determination
in his grave, young face, Margot lighted a cigarette, just to have
something to finger, and walked toward him, In comic imitation of
Carmen, arms akimbo, swaying of the torso, head tilted back, and a
tantalizing smile on her lips. It was too late for melodrama, or even
mild dramatics. She must treat Gene with friendly levity, or she’d
have a heavy discussion to deal with.

“Why so black in your looks, milord? You frighten me with your
beetling brows and acid smile?”

“Smile! I’m far from smiling, Margot.”

She shrugged her shoulders. Gene in this mood had no more sense of
humor than a clam.

“Don’t be so darn literal, my dear boy. Of course you’re not smiling.
What I want to know is, why aren’t you?”

“Because I’m too miserable, that’s why, if you want to know.”

“Now see here, Gene. In plain language, what’s eating you? Haven’t I
been sweet to you to-night? I danced with you more than with any other
man, and I talked with you a lot.”

“It’s that man Stoner. I’m not exactly blind.”

“What is there not to be blind to?”

“He’s a loud-mouthed motion picture man of the old school. Out of your
class a thousand miles. But he’s your director, and he’s got the gall
to have fallen in love with you, and makes no bones about letting us
all know it.”

“Rot! Tommy Rot! I suppose he admires me--in a way--but I’ve a hunch
that his interest in me isn’t really as _personal_ as it seems to be.”

Gene frowned at her. “Now what do you mean by that cryptic remark?”

Margot did not answer at once, then she said slowly:

“I don’t know myself exactly what I mean. But the main thing for you,
Gene, to get into that otherwise intelligent head of yours is, that
even if Stoner _is_ in love with me, I’m not and never could be, in
love with _him_.”

Gene looked neither convinced nor comforted.

“Men like Stoner aren’t easily discouraged. I’ve seen him go after
women before. It’s just possible you might succumb to his cave-man
technique in the end.”

“‘Technique’!” Margot laughed. “That’s funny. He hasn’t got any,
that’s one reason why I’ve got no use for him. He’s awfully crude.
Never lets me forget that he gave me my job. And speaking of
technique, old dear, you’d better improve your own. It’s terribly
flattering, of course, to have a man jealous of you, but it’s almost
insulting to think that I could care for Stoner.”

Gene studied her morosely for a moment, then he turned away and walked
the length of the room. Margot’s eyes, watching him, softened and she
said gently:

“I forgive you, Gene.”

Quickly he turned on his heel and approached her, his hands
outstretched. He seized hers and held them close.

“Jealousy is always stupid, dear, but when a man’s as much in love as
I am, things get out of focus. I’m obsessed by a very human male
desire to take care of you, Margot. To protect you against the world
in general and men like Stoner in particular.”

Margot smiled into his eager face.

“But, my dear. I can look after myself at present, as well as you
could look after me.”

He frowned and dropped her hands.

“I wasn’t speaking in terms of dollars and cents. I meant a different
sort of protection, the kind marriage to a decent man, gives a girl.
And as to the rest of it: With fair luck I’ll be a director before
long.”

Margot put her hand on his arm and gave it a little squeeze.

“That was crude of me, Gene. Forgive me. I really meant that we’re
both too young and unsettled to marry. I want to make good first,
quite on my own. If I don’t make the grade--a star, you know--and if I
grow old and ugly,” the very thought of it made her laugh gaily, “why
_then_ I really might need you, Gene, but by that time, being a mere
man, of course you wouldn’t _want_ me.”

He drew her nearer to him and his eyes darkened with emotion.

“I’d always want you, darling, and you could never be old or ugly to
me.”

“Where oh where have I heard those words before! Something strangely
familiar about them.” She laughed, then sobered quickly as Gene drew
back, hurt by her levity.

“I’m only teasing, dear, but you must admit, if you’ve got a sense of
humor, that it _is_ awfully funny how every man when he’s in love,
always tells the woman that she could never be old or ugly to _him_.”

“You can’t imagine that an occasional man might mean it when he says
it?” Gene spoke a little coldly.

“Why, my dear, they _all_ mean it! That’s the funniest part of it.”

Gene reached for his hat and coat.

“You seem determined to squelch any sentiment between us to-night.”

“To-night--yes. It’s fearfully late, Gene, dear, and you must go,
really.”

He turned toward the door without a word, nor any attempt to caress
her. A cynical man of the world could not have chosen a surer way of
putting the initiative into the woman’s hands. Margot moved a little
nearer to him, then she said:

“You may kiss me good-night, Gene.”

Gene was too much in love to play the game dexterously. He dropped hat
and coat and took her eagerly into his arms. For a short moment she
relaxed in his embrace and even kissed him with instinctive response
to his passion. Then, as she turned her head away from his encroaching
kisses, a sudden thought stilled his passion. He looked at her with
troubled eyes.

“Darling, I can’t bear to think of you living alone here, after what
you told us about this house. You’re taking chances and it worries me
horribly.”

“Don’t be absurd, Gene. And remember, I have my own telephone, right
by my bed. I’m indebted for that to the women who occupied this room
after Stella Ball left. It’s expensive but convenient.”

“I’m glad it’s by your bed. Easy to get at, if you wanted to call the
police.”

“‘Police’!” she echoed with a laugh. “You’re determined to stage a
melodrama. If it got to the point of having to call the police I guess
I’d be beyond help.”

“Seriously, Margot, I’m anxious. Let me give you a ring in the next
half hour. I shan’t sleep unless I hear your voice before you drop off
yourself.”

“Idiot!” She gave him a playful shove in the direction of the door.
“Don’t you dare call me this time of night--morning, really. I’ll be
in bed before you’ve turned the corner, and sound asleep before you’ve
used your latchkey.”

An hour later, Margot, with a weary sigh disposed of the last plate
and spoon, and emptied the ashes out of the last overflowing ash tray.
She undressed and tip-toed to the bathroom for a shower. It would be a
cold one at that hour, and it would make her wakeful, but she felt
stuffy and cigarette smoke seemed to have penetrated right through her
clothes. A few strokes of the brush over her thick bobbed hair, then
she gave another sigh, of comfort this time, as she propped up her
pillows, took a book from the night table and lighted a cigarette. She
was so wide awake she knew that she would have to read herself into a
relaxed state of mind. She kept a dull novel on hand to act as a
sleeping potion, for often she found it difficult to quiet her active
mind.

The book wobbled in her hand, and her eyelids drooped. But she wasn’t
quite sleepy enough yet, so she clutched the book a little tighter.
The cigarette trembled between her lips and almost fell. She put it on
the ash tray, squeezing the lighted end. Then--droop, droop of the
eyelids, and she let the book fall to the coverlet. But the electric
light! Oh, dear! She must reach out and snap the thing off. Perhaps
the very slight muscular exertion of moving her arm, and pulling the
chain, stirred the nerves at the base of her brain. Darkness, and
stillness, yet that delightful drowsiness was gone.

A faint ray of light came through the window opening on the
roof-garden. It was from a distant street lamp. It left the shadows on
either side of it the more dense. Perhaps another puff at her
cigarette would be enough to soothe her wakefulness. She reached out
and took it from the tray, picked up a match and lighted what was left
of her cigarette.

A puff as she held the match to it then, more asleep than awake,
Margot stretched her arm over the side of the bed, and dropped the
still burning match to the floor. The next second and she was once
more alert. A lighted paper match on a thin, worn old rug! She had
seen the evil little things burn holes in tables, and the edges of
mantels, and she had ruined the handle of a good knife with the
careless dropping of a lighted match. Vaguely these things went
through her mind as she leaned over the side of the bed and looked for
the match.

Her outstretched hand was poised above the coverlet. She had located
the match and had put out her arm to reach down for it. Then--without
sound, almost it seemed to her petrified gaze, without movement--a
small, thin hand, then a forearm, reached out from under her bed.

Stricken with terror, her heart first missing a beat, then seeming to
be in her throat, strangling her, Margot watched the hand reach to the
match and tap it softly with thin fingers, crushing the burning end.
Then--back, without sound, back whence it had come, disappearing under
the bed.

Margot lay rigid, eyes staring into the darkness, lips parted and
stiff. The first paralysis of horror at the incredible thing she had
seen, quickened to a definite and agonized fear--a personal and
feminine fear.

Someone--a man of course--was under the bed. He must have been there
all the evening. He had tapped the lighted match because it might have
set fire to the rug, and led to his discovery. He didn’t think she had
seen him reach out for the flame. He’d wait till he was sure she was
asleep, then he’d come creeping out--creeping--creeping----

Burglary! Ridiculous! Margot’s clever brain could function, in spite
of her fear. Surely no New York burglar would hide in a house for
hours where all the rooms were occupied! He would break in when all
was still and safe. Besides, what had she, or anyone living in such a
house, that a burglar would want? It was not theft. She felt sure of
that. A maniac--an escaped maniac, a paranoiac, who had picked her out
as the one on whom to avenge an imagined grievance. As a medical
student she had come to know the possibilities where paranoiacs were
concerned.

Murder! That’s what it was. Murder! God in Heaven, how long would the
creature wait? She dared not scream, and who would hear her if she
did? Walls and doors in that old house were so thick as to be almost
sound-proof. She’d go mad if she had to endure this suspense much
longer! If she were to break down and become hysterical, that would be
the end, right there! Whatever she did, she _must_ keep a cool head!

A violent wrench of nerves and muscles and will, then she raised a
hand that was icy cold and stiff, and switched on the light on the
night table.




 CHAPTER III.
 A CREATURE WITHOUT A BODY

The intense relief of sudden light in a dark room, when one has felt
the grip of deadly fear, brought from Margot a long drawn breath that
her quick wits changed to a yawn--an audible convincing yawn,
convincing to whatever, whoever, waited with the stillness of death,
under her bed.

Determined not to lose self-control, rapid and coherent thought
brought a sequence of small acts calculated to ward off immediate
danger and arrest suspicion in the maniacal creature whose hand and
arm she had seen. By this time Margot was convinced that she had to
deal with a maniac of some description.

She followed up her yawn with a restless twist of her body on the
mattress, a bang to her pillows, and finally a low grunt of physical
discomfort which ended in a self-addressed murmur of:

“Gosh! Wish I could get to sleep!”

Her next move was to seize her book and turn the pages noisily. Would
it be possible, she wondered, to keep on turning pages until
dawn,--possible for her to retain her self-control as the suspense
grew more and more unbearable, and would it be possible so far as the
patience of her lurking enemy was concerned. Would It--she thought of
the living thing as It--wait indefinitely for its proposed attack?
Surely not. Then this was merely a respite. It might wait for hours
for the light to be switched off again, but It would not wait for
daybreak and the consequent danger of discovery.

She measured the distance to the door leading into the hall. It wasn’t
so far, and if she didn’t get muscle-bound with fear, she could make
it with one long spring. But even so, before she could open the door,
there would be another spring--from the Other One under the bed, and
It would catch her before she could turn the handle. And if not a
spring, then a shot at her, for of course the creature must be armed.
No! Even if she were to get out of bed in a leisurely, unsuspicious
fashion, for whatever apparent purpose, she would be attacked as
surely and swiftly as if she were to scream for help.

Horrible, this waiting and thinking and planning! Horrible this unseen
menace--man or woman, sane or insane, violent or craven! There was a
limit to what even her healthy nerves could endure without snapping.

A sudden memory of Gene begging to let him call her up. If only she
had told him he might do so. Ridiculous! He would have rung her up an
hour ago at least, and by now he was probably sound asleep. He had
supposed that she was going immediately to bed, and would not have
dared to risk disturbing her after this long interval, even if she had
consented to let him call her.

A sudden alternative, a desperate expedient occurred to her with a
quickening of her pulse. Why couldn’t she call Gene! She would be
taking a fearful chance, for the mere calling of Central might be the
signal for an attack. To be sure, when calling for the police one had
merely to say the one word to the operator, therefore an ordinary
number would sound innocent enough. But how could she be sure that any
such reasoning would occur to the mind of a maniac? The mere sound of
her voice might be enough to bring that creeping, ghostly arm from
under the bed, and the body to which the arm belonged. But she _must_
do something! She’d call Central and get Gene’s number. After
that--God knew what!

Her hand trembling so that she very nearly dropped the instrument, she
lifted the telephone from the table to the bed. She put the receiver
to her ear and after the usual interval at such an hour, when night
operators often seem to be sound asleep, she heard Central’s weak and
far away reply. Nothing stirred in that room of horror except her
trembling body and her anguished breathing. So far, her plan was not
bringing her lurking enemy from hiding.

She heard the distant ringing of Gene’s bell,--ringing, ringing. Again
her heart seemed to be in her throat, choking her. Suppose that Gene
slept so soundly that no mere telephone bell could arouse him! Many
men slept like that. How did she know where Gene had the instrument!
It might be in his closet or his bathroom, anywhere but in his
bedroom! These possibilities flashed through her tortured brain and
made the few seconds seem like hours. Then came a still worse fear.
Perhaps Gene had changed his mind and not gone home at all! She
remembered that often he had told her of taking long midnight walks in
Central Park, when he was unhappy about her and knew that he could not
sleep because of her. Perhaps that was where he was, right that
moment!

Fear weights time with lead, even when thoughts fly in whirling
rapidity through one’s brain. Perhaps Central wasn’t calling the right
number! Her suspense--by this time, acute agony--was unbearable. She
signalled for the operator, started to repeat the number, and
then--God, the relief! Gene’s voice, dull and clouded with sleep,
saying “Hello!” as if he’d like to murder somebody if he were not too
sleepy to take the trouble.

She almost screamed with the easing of tension. Using what little
control she had left, she modulated her voice to a pitch of casual
friendliness and unconcern. Her inspiration had come! She knew,
suddenly, just what she was going to say to Gene.

“I suppose you’ll curse me for waking you up, Gene.”

“For Heaven’s sake, Margot!”

All sleepiness and latent irritation gone; an eager, naïve joy in his
tone, struck her as ludicrous, considering her desperate need of him.

“Awfully sorry to disturb you, but I’ve been trying to read myself to
sleep with a French book, and I’ve struck a passage I can’t
understand. Will you translate it?”

“Translate--French!” His voice sounded flat with disappointment.
Apparently the absurdity of her request did not strike him. Gene was
like that--so darn literal. And he was accustomed to her being erratic
at all times and seasons.

“Yes. Now listen carefully, Gene! These are the phrases that I don’t
understand:

“_Il y a un homme au-dessous de mon lit. Venez tout de suite!_”

She pronounced each word with slow distinctness. Her blood tingled in
her veins and pricked her skin with the realization that if her enemy
happened to know French, it would be all up with her in a few seconds.
He might wait until she hung up the receiver, knowing that a sudden
outcry of fear from her would give the alarm over the wire, but
_after_ that----

For an instant Gene was silent, apparently too surprised to answer
her. He knew well enough that she read French with ease. Then a laugh
came to her over the wires.

“What’s the joke, Margot? Surely you know what those phrases mean.”

Oh, Heavens! Gene, with his literal mind, and his slow imagination!

“I’ll repeat what I said, dear. Guess you didn’t hear me.”

She had all she could do this time to control the trembling of her
voice.

She repeated the foreign words slowly, striving to cut through space
to where Gene seemed to exist only as a voice. By the color in her own
voice and sheer force of will, she must get her meaning over to him.

Sleepiness perhaps made Gene dense. He translated a little flippantly:

“‘_There’s a man under my bed. Come at once!_’”

A third time she repeated the words, then said in English with
cautious urgency:

“Get it now, don’t you, Gene?”

He got it! She heard his gasp of horror.

“Good God! Be there in five minutes!”

“Wait a second, Gene!”

Another swift thought had come to her. The door to her room was not
locked. Thank God for that! She could never have left the bed and gone
to the door, even to open it for Gene. She recalled distinctly having
put the lock on the catch, early in the evening, and had forgotten to
change it. Gene could walk right in!

“Just one more phrase I can’t understand. _Pas besoin de frapper. Ma
porte est ouverte._”

“All right, all right. Be right over!”

“Thanks for translating,” she said quietly, to complete the pretense,
if indeed it were still that. The receiver at Gene’s end had already
been hung up. “Good night!”

Then--seconds that were years of waiting for _It_ to come forth! It
would surely come now if her French had been understood. Nothing! Not
a sound--not a movement. Only the beating of her own heart, so loud it
sounded to her that she wondered if it could not be heard by whatever
it was that waited beneath her.

Gone, that particular and immediate danger! _It_ had _not_ understood
French! She relaxed on her pillow with a sigh that was almost a groan
of relief. Odd that she should still be safe, she reflected vaguely.
Only a few minutes and Gene would be here! Thank Heaven that he lived
in the same block! He would have to ring the house bell, but it
connected with the basement and could not be heard upstairs. Again
thank God for all small mercies.

Hours! Days! Weeks! Then--upon the deathly stillness came a faint
sound of creaking wood. Gene was on the stairs! He was on the landing!
She could hear the shuffle of his feet! Then--the handle of her door
turning without sound, and the next second the door was thrown open,
literally hurled back against the wall. She saw Gene standing there, a
revolver in his hand. She saw him glance at her as if to be sure of
her safety before he could think of anything else. His face was
deathly white. Margot lay under the bed covers as stiff and still as
if she were dead.

Then she heard Gene’s quiet command:

“Get out from under that bed!”

Silence--a silence so thick with suspense that it seemed a part of the
living menace which remained invisible.

Good God! Gene was a target as he stood there waiting, his revolver
leveled toward the floor.

Margot watched with staring, helpless fear, she too waiting, for
Heaven knew what!

Gene advanced slowly into the room, still keeping eyes and revolver
pointed to the floor near the bed. Then he spoke again:

“Get out from there if you don’t want to get shot!”

Silence, a silence that pressed on Margot’s heart like a living thing.
She watched Gene take a few more steps closer to the bed. Then
suddenly he dropped to his knees, facing the foot-board of the bed,
bent until his head almost touched the rug, and aimed the revolver in
a quick motion back and forth. Margot could only see the curve of his
back over the foot of the bed. She felt she could breathe once more.
The fear, for Gene and for herself, had suddenly lifted, for some
strange reason.

Gene got quickly to his feet, and stood looking at Margot. His
expression of utter amazement would have struck her as comic in a
saner moment.

“There’s nothing under that bed.”

He made the announcement with the calmness of a mind suddenly stunned
by surprise and emptied of emotion.

For a second she thought that fear had unbalanced him. Then came a
dazed confusion to her own brain. Of course Gene was right! There
could be nothing under the bed or it would have attacked him.
But--where could the creature have gone--where and how and when, while
she lay there watching and waiting in frozen horror?

“I saw a hand--a hand and arm, come out from under the bed, and put
out a match on the rug.” The mystery which seemed to augment the
horror, made her whisper the words.

Gene lifted the small electric lamp to the floor, raised the
overhanging coverlet, and looked again under the large brass bed. Then
he got to his feet, more slowly this time.

“Nothing there!” His glance at Margot, seeming to raise the doubt as
to there having been anything there at any time, made her spring from
the bed, oblivious to the fact that she stood before him in her
pajamas.

The look she threw him was a challenge and defiant assurance that he
was--must be--mistaken. She knew there was something under that bed!
She dropped to one knee and stared at the empty space extending to two
sides of the wall. Nothing! Absolutely nothing!

She stood up, staring at Gene with a dazed expression, and still
innocently unconscious of her attire.

“Something _was_ under that bed! I was wide awake so it wasn’t a
dream. How could I have _imagined_ what I saw!”

“What did you think you saw--I mean, what did you see?” Gene hastily
corrected himself.

“I’ll tell you what I saw.” She shivered in remembrance of creeping
horror, and her voice trembled with excitement as she tried to tell
him what happened.

“I couldn’t sleep, and I lighted a cigarette to take a few more puffs.
I dropped the match to the floor, then remembered suddenly the danger
on this old rug, I reached over the side of the bed to find the match.
Just at that instant a thin white hand and arm crept out, oh so softly
and quickly and deliberately tapped the lighted match and put it out,
then withdrew back under the bed. _That’s_ what I _saw_, I tell you,
and God knows why I didn’t die of fright.”

Something in Gene’s eyes--a puzzled wonder perhaps--made her say
eagerly:

“You look as if you think I’m crazy, Gene. When I called you my life
was in danger. Don’t you _believe_ me?”

“Of course, of course, dear. But it’s all right now. Whatever it was
you saw isn’t there now, and I’m here instead.”

His smile was meant to be soothing, but it angered her.

“You’re acting as if you thought I were hysterical. I’m never
hysterical. And I’m not the kind to get any man out of bed in the
middle of the night, just on a wild goose chase!”

The tenderness that filled his eyes and his tentative move toward her,
as if to express his tenderness, brought sudden consciousness to
Margot of her unclad condition. She was too well bred to apologize or
refer to it in words, but she reached to the foot of the bed, seized a
silk kimono that lay there, and slipped it on quickly. Then she looked
at him almost impersonally, her eyes bright with the keenness of the
thought that had come to her.

“Gene! There’s a mystery, sure enough, about this room, and we’re
going to solve it. At least I am, and I’d like to have your help.”

Whatever he may have thought about mysteries which brought Margot
nearer to him in dependence and trust, he was wise enough to keep to
himself. All he said was:

“Righto! I’m keen about detective stuff. You furnish the Sherlock
Holmes end of it, Margot, and I’ll attend to any scrapping that may
form part of the game.”

Her face softened and her voice deepened with a throaty note, as
always when she was deeply stirred.

“You’re _such_ a brick, Gene, dear!” Then her lips quivered into a
smile which made his heart beat faster. “You’re--you’re wonderful to
me. I don’t know what I’d have done without you to-night.”

Her eyes filled with sudden tears and she shivered, drawing the kimono
closer about her. He took an eager step toward her.

“Margot--darling--you’re all in. You’ve had a fearful nervous shock.”

The sympathy in his voice broke down her last reserve. She had poise,
and character and a clever brain, but first and last she was feminine
and she had been badly frightened.

“You--you don’t know what I’ve been through!” She bent a little toward
him as if her own strength were not enough for her.

In the next few minutes, as Margot’s head lay against his shoulder,
and dry, nervous sobs shook her slight body, Gene had the sort of
struggle that few women understand, to compel his arms to express the
tenderness and protective gentleness that was what she wanted of him,
and restrain their passionate yearning to crush her against his heart.

Margot understood perfectly. She felt the trembling that went over him
like a wave, from head to foot, and she felt his soft kiss on her
hair. For the first time she wondered if she didn’t love Gene well
enough for--well, for marriage and all the rest.

His protective strength gave her back her self-control, and it gave
her something else--a realization that it would be good to have Gene’s
love and strength to depend upon. Still clinging to him with one hand,
with the other she rubbed her eyes, then gave a tremulous laugh.

“For an independent female who wants no man’s help, I’m doing rather
well, don’t you think, Gene?”

She looked up into his eyes, and their smile invited his caress. He
bent his lips to hers and for the first time since he had loved her,
Margot’s kiss told him that she cared more for him than any words of
hers had admitted.

He kissed her hair, her temple, her throat, just under her ear where
her hair swept back. Then he whispered into her ear.

“Darling--you do love me--just a little, don’t you?”

“Just a little,” she whispered back. As if afraid that she had
surrendered too much and too quickly, she drew gently out of his arms,
with a glance that told him he mustn’t press the advantage gained.
Then a frown drew her eyes together, as if to remind him that the
situation demanded concentrated thought and action, unrelated to
love-making.

“Gene, whether I ever sleep again in this room or not, I’ve _got_ to
know what was under my bed and where it went to. You said you’d help
me?”

“You bet I will!” His smile was apparently as unemotional as his
words.

She stared at the rug where the match had fallen, as if to seek there
the first clue in the unraveling of the mystery. Suddenly she ran to
the spot, across the few feet of space intervening. She threw herself,
literally, to her knees and bent her head close to the rug. Then,
excitedly she called to him, without lifting her head.

“Gene! Come here! Look at this!”

He got down on his knees beside her and looked where she pointed. What
he saw was a distinct hollow in the nap of the rug, a hollow the size
of the tip of a human finger. Into this the black char from the
burning match had been pressed and smudged.

Slowly they got to their feet and stood in silence for a few seconds,
looked at each other with widened eyes. Gene, for the first time since
he had reached the room, looked sincerely puzzled and uncertain.

“I guess that settles it,” Margot said slowly. “I wasn’t just ‘seein’
things at night.’ Not even a real ghost could have made that mark on
the rug. Now, what?”

“Now,” Gene said thoughtfully, “with your permission, I’m going to
call the police.”

She hesitated. Her glance wavered from the spot on the rug, to the
telephone, then to Gene.

“I think we’d better. It would be foolish to wait till daylight. Of
course they may think us a couple of idiots. Policemen haven’t much
imagination.”

Gene walked to the telephone and called up the police.

“And now, my dear,” said Margot, “I’ve got to put on some clothes
before they get here. I’ll have to do it here, for I’m scared to go
into the bathroom--it might be tenanted.” She gave a nervous laugh.
“So shut your eyes, old dear, or turn your back, and have your
revolver ready in case I have to throw shame to the winds and yell for
help.”

It took her only a few moments to get into a house dress and comb her
ruffled hair. The comb dropped from her hand to the top of the chest
of drawers, as a loud banging at the front door resounded through the
old house. She stood close to Gene as they listened to the heavy
trampling of feet downstairs. Gene ran to the door and flung it open.
The officers of the law came up to the landing with a rush, and behind
them scurried Mrs. Bellew, in a half-buttoned wrapper and curl papers.
For all the excitement and her own nervous tension, Margot’s lips
twisted with the smile she tried to control as she saw her landlady.

Patrolmen Michael Quinlan and Shane Boyle, stood each of them nearly
six feet. Their pugnacious but kindly faces, their clean wholesome
skins, suggesting a life spent in the open, their broad blue-coated
chests, and their nightsticks, swung with just the right suggestion of
authority and force, made Margot’s room seem suddenly and
incongruously, about the safest place in New York.

Quinlan glanced sharply from Margot to Gene. His voice was as sharp as
his words.

“Speak up! What’s wrong here?”

Gene, not wishing to dominate the situation, unless Margot wished him
to, looked at her enquiringly. She nodded quickly with a smile, then
addressed Quinlan, briefly and a little crisply.

“This is _my_ room. I occupy it alone.” Slight emphasis on the last
word. “I’d had a party here. Everybody had gone home and I went to
bed. After I’d switched off the electric light, I lighted a cigarette
and threw the match on to the floor. It struck me suddenly that it was
a dangerous thing to do, so I leaned over the side of the bed to make
sure the match wasn’t still burning. As I did this, I saw a hand and
arm reach out from under the bed----”

“Sneak thief, eh?” Quinlan couldn’t wait for the end of her narrative.
“Think he’s still around here?” He made a movement to approach the
bed, but Margot stopped him with a slight gesture of her hand.

“Wait, please! Let me finish. The hand reached out to the match and
tapped the burning end of it. I was too frightened to move or make a
sound. Then the hand and arm were drawn back under the bed. I made
sure, as soon as I could control my thoughts, that I had a maniac to
deal with. I screwed up my courage and switched on the light. Nothing
happened, but I fully expected to be murdered any minute. Then I
telephoned to my friend Mr. Valery, made up a yarn about wanting him
to translate some French I was reading, and got it over to him in
French that a man--or something--was under my bed. He came right over
in five minutes. When he looked under my bed, there was nothing to be
seen.”

Painfully conscious, as she neared the end of her story, that it must
sound absurd and unconvincing to others, she threw a brightly
challenging look from one policeman to the other. Their friendly Irish
faces expressed a struggle between doubt of her sanity and amusement
at the situation. Then Boyle said bluntly:

“Sounds like a pipe dream to me, lady.”

“It’s neither a pipe dream nor a nightmare,” she said gently. Her
common-sense told her that it would be absurd to get up on her dignity
because these two unimaginative but kindly disposed policemen, showed
frank disbelief of her statements. “Look here, please!” She walked to
where the match had been smudged into the rug. “Just bend down and
take a good look at that and tell me what you both think of it.”

What they both thought of it was not evident in the scowling,
bewildered scrutiny they bent upon the rug. Then a thick, red finger
went out to touch the spot.

“Don’t please!” Margot’s sharp command caused the finger to draw back
slowly. “We may want to examine that later again,” she said more
gently. “It must not be touched by anyone.”

The officers stood erect and exchanged glances that showed an
uncertain state of mind that they were determined to conceal, but
Margot’s keen eyes saw and understood.

Said Quinlan, squaring his shoulders: “Well, Miss, what do you want us
to do?”

“Investigate thoroughly, please.” Something in her quiet assurance and
dignity went further to convince the two men, that here was something
not so easily disposed of as they had thought, stranger than even that
queer mark on the rug.

“Sure,” Quinlan said, swinging shoulders and nightstick as he
approached the bed. “Where’s that door lead to?” He indicated the one
opening upon the roof-garden.

“There’s a roof out there.” It was Gene who gave the information. He
pointed to another door. “That’s a closet, and the bathroom’s next to
this. Opens into the hall.”

Boyle walked to the door opening on the roof, and Quinlan dragged the
heavy bed aside, remarking comfortingly to Margot:

“Never a sniff or sign of a living soul’ll escape us, Miss, so don’t
you worry!”

He moved the bed out into the room, then rapped the floor with his
stick. There was no cupboard behind the bed, nor any aperture in the
wall except a small register protected by a grill through which a
mouse could scarcely have passed. He gave a scornful prod to the
mattress and struck the bed springs, just by way of not omitting
anything. Then he walked to the closet. It was a deep closet and wide,
hung with many clothes. It required a few seconds to give the closet
its due portion of attention. Quinlan turned back into the room just
as Boyle returned from his inspection of the roof and bathroom.
Quinlan stood a little awkwardly, swinging his stick. His lips were
tight shut in a sort of pursed smile, and he lowered his head a little
as he looked at Margot.

“Look here, Miss. Do ye mind telling me what business you’re in?”

Slightly taken aback, and throwing a glance at Gene to which he
responded by moving closer to her, she said:

“I’m a motion picture actress.”

Quinlan lifted his head and the pursed smile widened to good-natured
amusement.

“Say! That don’t surprise me, at all at all. You movie queens sure
like to pull anything to make a story for the papers, don’t ye now?”
His smile was ingratiating.

For the first time Margot felt angry resentment.

“I’ve given you my story, told you the absolute truth. I _saw_ a hand
put out that match. Just because the case is full of mystery is no
reason to insult my intelligence.”

Quinlan had probably heard of insulting a good many things in the
course of his career, but to insult someone’s ‘intelligence’ was a new
one on him, evidently. He frowned, then smiled sheepishly.

“Sure, I meant no harm, Miss. Now, just tell me once more, quiet like.
You were scared out of your boots, as you might say. Then you phoned
this young man.” He glanced at Gene. “Now, did you have to get out of
bed to let him in?”

“No. The door was unlocked. He walked right in.”

“Humph!” Quinlan’s brain found this almost too easy. His smile
widened. “Sure, don’t you see, Miss, didn’t it strike you at all, that
whoever was under that bed could have crawled to the hall door or the
door leadin’ to the roof, and made his get-a-way?”

“There was a streak of light from a street lamp, coming through that
door.” She pointed to the roof-garden exit. “It made a faint shaft of
light across the room. I could have seen anything moving over by that
door.”

“But maybe now, you weren’t lookin’ in that direction all the time.
And it was black, wasn’t it, at this end of the room?” Margot nodded.
“Well, he could have got to the hall door easy. Too dark to see him,
and your heart, likely as not, Miss, was beating too loud for you to
_hear_ him open and shut the door.”

For a moment Margot was staggered by the apparent simplicity of the
explanation. Then once more she knew beyond all doubt, that,
fear-distraught as she had been during those awful minutes,
nevertheless her hearing had been made more acute by her very fear,
and she could not have failed to hear the slightest movement in the
room. Before she could reply to Quinlan, Mrs. Bellew who had been
standing all this time, too overcome by astonishment and fear and
Heaven knew what other mixed emotions, to do anything but stare
open-mouthed and listen spellbound, suddenly broke forth.

“Oh, my God, my God!” She was almost hysterical from cumulative fear.
“That thief or that crazy man or whatever it is, is roaming through my
house. I know he is! He’s hiding in some empty room. Find him, oh my
God, find him!”

Margot went quickly to her distraught landlady and put a hand on her
arm.

“Don’t get excited,” she said gently. “If there’s anything--I mean
anybody--roaming around in the house, these officers will find him.
I’ll see to that. So don’t you worry, my dear.”

Mrs. Bellew’s mouth quivered, and tears came into her eyes.

“I’m that nervous,” she said tremulously. “What with that girl
disappearing the way she did, and that man Murchison, and now this
maniac loose in my house, I’m terribly upset, Miss Anstruther.”

Quinlan had heard what she said. He went closer to her.

“What’s that you said about a girl disappearing and a man?”

Margot, realizing that these other happenings, which might or might
not have bearing on her own experience, would only confuse the present
issue for Quinlan, said quickly:

“Oh, it’s got nothing whatever to do with what happened to me
to-night. A girl lodger here some months ago, walked out suddenly and
never came back, that’s all. And a man living up stairs disappeared at
the same time.” Her smile at Quinlan was deliberately calculated to
mislead him, and it succeeded. He gave a knowing smile and
comprehending nod.

“Sure! I get you!” His good-nature was reinforced by the beautiful
young lady’s confiding manner.

Mrs. Bellew was too self-centered and upset to observe details. She
had not caught Margot’s smile nor the subtle suggestion in her words,
but Gene, delighted at the quick wit of this girl whom he adored,
swallowed a laugh with difficulty.

Margot turned more seriously to Quinlan.

“Now, please Officer, search the house thoroughly. But whatever you
do, don’t leave _this_ room unguarded. I swear to you that I saw a
hand and arm creep out from under that bed and put out the match. And
I _know_--” she raised her hand with a solemn gesture, almost as if
taking an oath, “I am as sure as I am that I’m alive, that whatever
was under my bed _didn’t_ get as far as the door.”

Quinlan’s shrewd look of questioning doubt grew more serious. He
turned to Boyle.

“You stick here till I get back. After we’re all out, just switch off
the light. That’ll bring action if there’s anything round this
neighborhood. Here, give me a hand with the bed.”

They shoved the bed back into place, then Quinlan, again swinging his
stick and his shoulders, went to the hall door.

“Come on, you people. Better find somewheres else to sleep till
mornin’, Miss Anstrooter.” He got the name out with difficulty.

Margot, Gene and Mrs. Bellew went downstairs and waited in the dimly
lighted front hall. From time to time they caught the chittering
voices of lodgers who were being disturbed by Quinlan’s search.
Finally he joined them below, remarking that he had still to take a
look at the front and back parlors. He struck the parlor door with his
stick. The blow against the heavy wood resounded in the silent house.

“Not but what he’d have ducked for the street, right off, and----”

His sentence was never completed. A roar of sheer terror thundered
through the house. Mrs. Bellew gave a scream, and Margot seized Gene’s
arm.

“Mother Mary!” Quinlan almost whispered the words, and his eyes
bulged.

The door of Margot’s room, which could be seen from the foot of the
stairs, burst open, and Boyle dashed down the stairs, face ghastly
white and eyes staring. He seemed oblivious of the four figures in the
hall, and made a spring for the front door. Quinlan threw out his arm
and caught him.

“For the love of God, what’s eatin’ ye?”

“The hand! The hand!” Boyle was beyond lucid speech.

“_What_ hand?” Quinlan shook him and shouted at him.

“The hand from under the bed!”

“You saw it too?” Margot seized Boyle’s arm with trembling fingers.
Her flesh was cold and tingling.

Boyle crossed himself. He spoke in a choked undertone.

“Standin’ there--in the dark--the Holy Saints take witness--it came
out--from under the bed--and doused a flame on the rug!”




 CHAPTER IV.
 MOUNTING MYSTERY

Dawn streaked the eastern sky with orange and gold. A crispness in
the air made Margot draw her cape closer about her. She and Gene had
spent the intervening hour in Mrs. Bellew’s basement room, and now
they stood on her own roof-garden, reveling in fresh air after the
stuffy atmosphere below, and watching the beauty of the dawn through
an open space between two houses to the east of them.

Margot had more than a stuffy atmosphere to get rid of. She wanted,
for a brief moment, to shake off the memory of nerve-racking hours,
first in the room with the creature of the hand and arm, and, since
Boyle’s sensational climax, the bored depression of listening
patiently to Mrs. Bellew’s wailings, and warnings of still more
trouble to come. The landlady could conceive of no human agency in the
appearance of the ghostly hand and arm. No speculation as to human
motives or mystery were of interest to her. The only explanation that
seemed to fit the case for Mrs. Bellew, was a spiritual one. In plain
simple vernacular, the house was “haunted,” and would continue to be
haunted, therefore bad luck would attend it and her. She had a
ten-year lease and the law would not release her because of ghostly
visitations. It was equally certain that no tenants would remain with
her once the truth should become known.

Margot had always been interested in psychic phenomena, and was too
open-minded to be skeptical as regards any psychic manifestation. But
in this instance she stuck to her belief that the amazing hand
belonged to the body of a living--a sinister--human criminal.

Quinlan and Boyle were at this moment prowling heavily about Margot’s
room, and wrangling as to whether anyone had seen anything come out
from under the bed. They had reported to the station house by
telephone, after Boyle had steadied his shaken nerves, and had been
ordered to remain where they were and get to the bottom of the matter
if possible.

Margot turned from the narrowed but close view of the East River,
glistening in the first sun-rays of early morning, and motioned to
Gene to listen to the policemen inside the room.

“Listen to them, Gene! They’re awfully amusing.”

Argument and rehearsal of the night’s drama, ended each time with
something like this:

“The young lady maybe was dreaming, as you say, Quinlan, and maybe she
_wasn’t_ dreaming. All _I_ know about it is that _I_ seen it with me
mortal--me wakin’--eyes,--a thin, white hand it was,--the hand of a
ghost, God have mercy on us!”

“Ghosts!” Margot gave a low chuckle as she heard the disgust and scorn
in Quinlan’s voice. “Ghosts, is it? Ain’t ye ashamed to have such a
heathen thought!”

“Heathen, am I? Well, tell me this, if ye’re so smart ye are! The
young lady saw a hand put out a match she had dropped on the floor.
The light she saw was a match burning. Get that don’t ye? How about
the flame of light I seen with me own eyes? It wasn’t a match, I’ll
tell ye that, for I hadn’t lighted no match, and that ye know as well
as I do.”

Quinlan’s reply was a grunt that scorned further argument. Margot’s
smile faded as she turned serious eyes to Gene.

“That’s just it, Gene! Even that ignorant man in there, sees something
there that can’t be explained by ordinary theories. That’s what would
make almost any intelligent person feel sure that the mystery has a
psychic meaning. But nevertheless, I’m sure it’s something else.”

“See here, Margot darling. Don’t be angry with me if I say--what it’s
easier to say in the cold light of morning--that you _may_ have had a
sort of waking dream--a realistic staging of your imagination which
fooled you into thinking that--well, that it wasn’t your imagination
at all. I happen to know that such things have occurred even to
unimaginative persons.”

“All right, old dear, granted, for the sake of argument.” Her smile
accepted his skepticism without the resentment she had felt a few
hours before. “And granting that, of course it’s quite simple to
explain what Boyle experienced as the fevered imagination of a
superstitious Irishman. But there still remains the smudge on the rug.
You can’t suppose that I got out of bed, terrorized as I was, before
you got there, and it is certain that neither of us made that mark
_after_ your arrival.”

“Dearest, that match might have fallen there before you went to bed,
and been stepped on by you, unobserved.”

“Now, see here, Gene! I know that ‘evening thoughts grow cold at
night,’ to quote some philosopher, or, to paraphrase him, midnight
thoughts freeze up entirely before daylight. Before you called the
police you were ready to concede that I wasn’t _imagining_ things. And
you agreed to help me get to the bottom of what I consider a
mystery--a human mystery, not a psychic one. Now, are you going back
on your offer?”

“Absolutely not! I’ll do anything you want, and not express a doubt to
anyone.”

“Righto! Then stop expressing them to me, from now on. And now let’s
go out and rustle some breakfast. After I’ve braced up with some
strong coffee I’ll come back here and dress to go to the studio.”

“And by the way,” she added, “if you get to the shop before me, don’t
you breathe a word to anyone! It’s _my_ story and I want the fun of
telling it.”

When Margot returned to her room a half hour later, she found Quinlan
a trifle dubious about leaving her alone in the room. She told him
that she had to dress for the day--bathe, etc.--and asked them to wait
on the landing, if they absolutely wouldn’t go down stairs.

Daylight--sunlight--made of her room so cheerful and normal, even so
commonplace a setting--so absurd a setting for mystery and mystic
marauders--that she laughed at the notion of keeping two policemen
there all day on guard. Of course there was nothing queer or inimical
lurking about now in broad daylight! Time enough to watch the room
after nightfall.

She felt weary, utterly let down, now that the excitement of her
midnight adventure had abated. Young as she was, and pretty, she could
not afford to go to the studio looking fagged, with unbecoming shadows
beneath the eyes and the iris clouded from lack of sleep. A hot tub, a
cold shower, setting-up exercises, and a moderate disposal of rouge
and powder over her clear skin, and she was ready for the fray.
Instinctively she always half expected it to be some sort of a fray
with Stoner as director and would-be lover.

Arriving at Astoria about nine o’clock, she hurried to the main
production floor. Her big scene in _A Toreador’s Love_, was to be shot
to-day, she remembered, with a faint thrill of anticipation. She
couldn’t possibly, in the present circumstances, feel more than a mild
thrill over anything unrelated to the mystery she was so eager to
unravel. However--it behooved her to forget it for a while, charm
Stoner if need be, and certainly to fulfill the promise she had shown
in previous scenes of making good in her big scene.

Tall scenic creations--the sides of buildings, garden walls embowered
in greenery, the prows of ships--were jumbled together, leaned against
each other in stacks. The place suggested that mysterious region
behind the curtain, stage and backstage, of many opera houses thrown
into one fantastic whole. Carpenters and mechanics hammered and
hauled. In the midst of the confusion, here and there, were completed
sets where scenes were being shot; rooms furnished to the last detail,
with only one or two walls apiece, rooms where actors strolled and
mimed, and upon which blazed the batteries of assembled Kleig lights.

Margot knew that the movies have a doctrine of efficiency to which
they seldom adhere. Promptness was an unwritten law, but when you were
told to be on hand at nine o’clock sharp for the filming of a scene
prepared the day before, if you were in costume by eleven it would be
too early because the cast would probably have luncheon before
settling down to work. The amount of time wasted throughout the day
was truly remarkable. Margot knew her set was not even ready, and that
the instructions given her to be on time were little more than an
official gesture.

However--might as well be ready! She changed her clothes then picked
her way through the tangle of props to where May Cheshire, Lulu
Leinster and other girls were chatting. They were all in their street
clothes, Margot observed with a smile. Through the slats of a cabin on
wheels--Corinne Delamar’s dressing-room--shone electric lights
indicating that the star was “making-up.” Frederick Stoner, for once,
lounged silently, while the stage hands adjusted a Spanish balcony.
What was the matter with Stoner, Margot wondered, with amused
indifference! She had never before seen him so restfully
quiescent--restful for all the rest of them.

A quick glance at the incurious faces of the girls assured her that
Gene had kept silent as to what had happened. But of course Gene
would, even if he hadn’t promised her to do so. Gene, who had
maneuvered to be the camera man on this particular job, stood apart
from the crowd, tinkering with his camera. His back was turned to her.
Margot had a sudden impulse to go up and speak to him. It would be
incautious, perhaps, to indicate the very faintest friendly interest
in Gene while they were in the shop. It might irritate Stoner but--to
perdition with Stoner! She’d do what she wanted to, such a little
thing anyway. And Gene was _such_ a brick!

She approached him with a gentle:

“Hello, Gene!”

He swung around at the sound of her voice, almost dropping what he
held in his hand. His eager eyes swept her from head to foot. He
hadn’t seen her in this Spanish rig before.

“By the Lord, Margot, you’re stunning! Beautiful Andalusian, except
for that glimpse of your hair.” He lowered his voice to a whisper.
“You’re as fresh and lovely as if you hadn’t been up all night.”

“All depends, you know, what you’re about, when you’re up all night.
They say that when you’re keenly interested in something or somebody,
you don’t show fatigue, and you’ll have to admit that I was keenly
interested in _something_--_and somebody_!” She laughed, looking at
him out of the corners of her roguish eyes.

“I suppose you’re endowing a myth--an apparition--with personality,”
he said a little somberly.

“Take care!” She shook a finger at him. “You promised not to express
the least doubt in future, even to me. But, as a matter of fact, old
dear, when I used the word ‘somebody,’ I really _meant_ you.”

The sudden light in his eyes warned her that it was no place in which
to play with fire, the fire being in Gene’s eyes. She whispered that
she’d see him later in the day, and turned to join the other girls.
Just then Stoner saw her. He stood only a few feet away, but he
approached nearer, where she stood next to Lulu Leinster.

“Hello!” he greeted her, appraising her with his quick, shrewd eyes.
“Top of the morning! Sleep well, after that grand little party of
yours?”

“Not a wink!” Her bright glance was friendly enough, but she did not
smile. She often gave the impression of smiling when actually her
mobile lips remained closed.

“What on earth--” he began, sincerely mystified. “You don’t mean that
the mild drinks and our milder society, made you as wakeful as all
that?”

“Oh no, I don’t mean that!” Her smile was vaguely irritating to him.
“I didn’t sleep a wink because I was rehearsing the first scene in New
York’s greatest detective mystery.”

For a second his eyes narrowed, or she thought they did, and seemed to
probe back of her words. Then his expression changed swiftly to an
amused understanding of her light mood. A mere jest, of course, he
seemed to say with the smile on his full lips.

He stepped a little closer to her, but did not raise his voice.

“Trying to call attention to your youth and beauty by pretending that
they’re proof even against a sleepless night? You don’t need to, my
dear.” His bold glance was like an unwelcome caress.

The unexpected twist he had given her remark, annoyed her, and his
glance was an affront.

“Nothing of the sort! I _was_ awake all night, and it _did_ concern a
mystery.”

Again he studied her, a little puzzled.

“Guess it would take a good live mystery to keep _you_ awake, Margot.
You couldn’t work yourself up to such a pitch just by telling or
listening to a tale like the one you gave us about that girl who
disappeared, and the old fellow.”

She had almost forgotten the story about Stella Ball and the man
Murchison. Odd, too, because she recalled that when Mrs. Bellew had
nearly gone into hysterics when the policemen were examining the room,
it had struck her as remotely possible that there might be a
connection between the old and the new mystery. Now, she felt
suddenly, with a little shudder, that it might be more than remotely
possible.

“You’ve said it, Mr. Stoner! That’s just what it was and is--‘a good,
live mystery.’ And something new to fact and fiction. A creature
without a body or a face. It was in my room for hours.”

The other girls were crowding around her, pushing and buzzing like a
swarm of insects. She smiled at one and the other, then, with another
glance at the director, she said calmly:

“A policeman saw it, too!”

In the midst of the chirping and excited cries of the girls, she
distinguished Stoner’s low exclamation of astonishment.

“A policeman! What on earth were you doing with a policeman?”

“Nothing wrong, I trust.” She could not resist the facetious retort,
nor control the smile of amusement that almost broke into a laugh at
Stoner’s angry dignity. The girls, at least, had the sense to giggle,
but that only made Stoner more indignant.

“See here, my dear young friend, I’ve got a busy day ahead of me, and
so have you. Can’t waste time with foolish cracks. You made a
statement regarding a policeman. Was that your little joke?”

“No it wasn’t!” she snapped, her eyes suddenly flashing. Stoner
annoyed her. “Something darn queer happened last night--_so_ darn
queer, that I called Gene Valery on the phone, because, frankly, I was
frightened out of my wits, then we called the police.”

Open-mouthed and speechless interest greeted her on the part of the
girls, and a few men standing by now, on the edge of the circle around
her. To her surprise, Stoner also was silent, watching her intently
out of half-closed eyes. She gave them the story from beginning to
end, repeating the high spots for the emotional avidity of the May and
Lulu types of mind. She hardly expected very intelligent or
constructive comment from any of them, but Stoner’s first remark
surprised her. She had counted on him for a bit of racy skepticism.
But he said, with a dark frown:

“Rotten thing to have happened--rotten!”

“Why rotten?” Her sense of irritation with him increased. “I may have
to wait a long time for another such break in the monotony of my
life.”

“Should think you’d rather have some other kind of diversion than a
low-down burglar sneaking in and out of your room at night.”

“Who said it was a burglar?” Again she snapped at him. “Nothing so
commonplace as that, I assure you, or I shouldn’t have taken the
trouble to talk about it.” She caught Gene’s eyes over the heads of
the excited girls. He had approached and stood outside the circle. She
addressed him directly.

“I’d call it an extraordinary mystery, wouldn’t you, Gene?”

“Decidedly extraordinary,” he said quietly.

Stoner’s quick glance at Gene warned her that she might dare much in
personal encounters with the director, but that for Gene’s sake and
her own, she must be more cautious where he was concerned. She
contrived to smile more pleasantly at Stoner.

“Yes, it’s a mystery, and what’s more, _I’m_ going to solve it!”

“Want to be a female Sherlock Holmes, eh?” he said sullenly. “Well,
I’d advise you not to. There’s danger, meddling with that sort of
thing.”

Something in his tone and manner warned the girls that their director
would prefer to talk alone with Margot. They faded away regretfully,
their curiosity by no means sated. The men strolled off and Margot
found herself facing Stoner’s eyes in which there lurked, or she
fancied it, a faint menace--the menace of a will opposed to her own.
She took up the gauntlet.

“What do you mean by danger, Mr. Stoner?”

“Danger of your melodramatic story breaking into the newspapers.”

“I don’t understand,” she frowned at him. “What if it did? I’m neither
a society bud nor a sister of mercy. I am--or trying to be--a motion
picture actress. If publicity ever hurt any woman in _this_
profession, it’s news to me.” Her smile was a little mocking.

“See here, Margot!” He threw off suddenly his aggressive manner. “You
know I’ve done all I could to give you a chance,--shove you ahead.
I’ve no object in giving you a wrong lead. When I advise you to lay
off of freakish publicity, it’s only for your own good.”

Mollified, but still dubious and puzzled, she said:

“But I’m not planning to do _anything_ just for the sake of a
write-up. My investigation of my little mystery is going to be dead
serious. If the papers get hold of it and send reporters to me, I’ll
give them a straight story. What’s wrong about that? They make up what
you don’t tell them, anyway.”

Stoner seemed to hesitate, then he said quietly:

“I see I’ve got to be frank with you, Margot. You’re not a star _yet_,
my dear girl, and you can’t afford to pull front page stuff that would
make the leading lady sore.”

Taken by surprise, Margot stared at him.

“You mean--Corinne Delamar?”

“Think she’d like to see _you_ head-lined, when _she_ hasn’t been able
to make the papers in a big way since we started this picture?”

“Why--I hadn’t thought of her at all.”

“Well, girlie, you’ve got a think coming. She’d be sore as hell, take
it from me. I know her.”

“Of course,” Margot began doubtfully, “I don’t wish to antagonize Miss
Delamar. But how do you know she wouldn’t get interested herself, if
she knew what a strange experience I’ve had! Suppose I tell her about
it?”

“No! Drop the whole business--please!” Stoner’s face was flushed and
there was sharp command in his voice.

More annoyed with him than she had ever been before, Margot flashed
angry rebellion at him, then she turned away with brusque indifference
to appearances, walked off the floor and went upstairs to the dressing
room she shared with a few other girls.

She was more than annoyed at Stoner’s unsympathetic attitude, and what
struck her as an attempt to bully her. The more she pondered the
matter, the more puzzled she grew. If he were sincere in his stand
regarding publicity, why had he vacillated in argument? First he had
warned her against the harm of freakish notoriety, then he had
switched to the possibility of arousing the star’s hostility.

Suddenly the absurdity of it all struck her--her own absurdity above
all, for it _was_ ridiculous of her to have taken Stoner so seriously,
and not seen below the surface to his real motive. The simple truth,
so she felt, was that Stoner was indulging unreasoning and petty
jealousy of Gene. He hated the thought that Gene and not himself had
been associated with her in an adventure. He hated still more the idea
of this association becoming public news. She recalled his glum
demeanor when she had told of Gene coming to her supposed rescue.
Obviously, Stoner would go far to prevent a sensational sequel to the
adventure, which would bracket her name with that of the man whom he
regarded as an impudent rival. It would be most galling to a man of
Stoner’s character.

Finally she resolved that nothing should induce her to discuss the
matter in the studio again that day--or any other day, for that
matter! And she stuck to her decision in the face of a regular
bombardment of feminine questions. Stoner was less easy to avoid. He
had more approaches than one. He led her aside about an hour after she
had reappeared on the set. His first remark was so blunt and
apparently sincere, that it took her off guard.

“So you won’t credit me with being in love for the first time in my
life?”

Her stare of surprise was as frank as his question.

“Why--really,” she stalled, with a faint smile. “I never consider such
things in working hours.”

“Be serious!” he commanded frowning. “You’d better understand, first
as last, that we’re both in a game where love and work are often mixed
up, pretty close sometimes.”

She loathed him for his implication of favoritism at a price. With a
cool little smile, she said:

“I’ve told you several times, Mr. Stoner, that I’m not the least
interested in the game of love, just at present, with you or any other
man. I mean what I say. Why insist?”

“Because I want to get it well into your head that I really am
seriously in love with you. I’d like you to believe in me, even if you
can’t love me--yet. Now, take that question of my advice about
publicity. You acted as if you thought I was trying to injure you.”

“Oh, no,” she said sweetly. “I’m quite willing to acknowledge your
good intentions.” She could not control the touch of sarcasm in her
smile. But he seemed not to notice it, which was as well.

He grew more cheerful. His smile was ingratiating.

“I’ve been thinking that it mightn’t do any harm to make a cautious
investigation of your spook. Suppose we go over it together. Have
dinner with me, then, afterwards, we could look through your quarters
for clues.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Stoner, and thank you very much, but I have an
engagement to-night.”

His face clouded instantly. “As usual,” he growled.

She passed that up, then said gently:

“Even if I could dine with you, to-night, Mr. Stoner, my mystery
wouldn’t form part of your entertainment. Second thoughts are not
always best. Not in this case anyway. You told me emphatically to drop
my mystery--not investigate it. And that’s that!”

They stood looking at each other, Margot serene and smiling, Stoner
scowling and affronted. Then, her eyes, with their uncanny power to
detect thought or emotion in other eyes superficially inexpressive,
witnessed for the third time since she had first met him, that strange
dilating of the small pupil; that queer overtone as of a yellowish
shadow darkening the pale blue of the iris; that shimmer in the
eyeball, like dust specks seen in a sunbeam. She had once more that
sensation of hearing something she could not understand; something
that he was unconscious of saying.

Then Stoner walked away, and Margot stood motionless, with an
intangible, vague wonder in her groping mind.

Hours later, Margot, standing on the side lines, dressed as
_Conchita_, felt no surprise that her director had so manipulated
matters during the balance of the day, that her scene was not called.
As she watched the filming of secondary shots, she felt relief that
her first important scene had been postponed. She was in no mood to do
herself credit, and she was glad that Stoner’s petty resentment had
given her such a good chance to rest and wait. If he had intended to
make her regret her treatment of him, how disappointed he would be, if
he knew the truth.

Suddenly she was aware of Corinne Delamar’s rather arrogant stare from
across the lot. A scene had just been finished, and the star stood at
ease, smoking a cigarette. For the moment Stoner was busy and
unobservant. Margot stared back, but without impudence. It was rather
as if she said to Corinne: Well, sorry you don’t like me. Suppose you
tell me why!

The unspoken challenge reached perhaps to the brain of Miss Delamar.
Deliberately and slowly she crossed to where Margot stood. She went
close to her before she spoke. Then she said:

“I want to talk with you, Miss Anstruther. Will you come to my
dressing-room?”

Surprised, but not averse to an encounter--she felt vaguely that it
would be that--with the star, Margot smiled her willingness to follow
Corinne to her dressing-room. A couple of uncomfortable chairs, two
cigarettes, a slight pause over the ponderous matter of lighting them,
and then:

“What’s your little game?” drawled Corinne, lazily puffing and
inhaling and blowing smoke through her small nose.

Margot, with a gasp and the flashing thought that never would she
learn to cope with women of the star’s type, said gently:

“I’m sorry if I’m stupid, Miss Delamar, but I’m afraid I don’t
understand what you mean.”

“Oh--_don’t_ you?”

Vague suggestion of insolence made the blood mount swiftly in Margot’s
face. It showed through her make-up.

“Frankly, I don’t,” she repeated gently. “I might imagine many things,
but I prefer not to.”

“Well, I’d hate to have you overwork your imagination, so I’ll help
you out. Are you playing Frederick Stoner just on general business
principles, or is it something more--personal?”

Quick resentment flamed into Margot’s gray eyes, but she controlled
herself to say gently:

“Will you tell me what right you have, Miss Delamar, to assume that
I’m ‘playing’--as you call it--the director, from any motive
whatsoever?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, please! Try to talk as if you gave me credit for
having at _least_ as much intelligence as yourself.”

Margot half rose from her chair, on the impulse to leave Corinne
forthwith, not condescending to give her a reply, rude or courteous.
But another impulse followed and held her in her chair. For some
reason too vague to analyze, she wanted to conciliate Corinne, if this
could be done without loss of dignity.

“Miss Delamar, please try to believe me when I tell you that I am
_not_ making use of the director, either for professional purposes or
personal ones. I’ve tried, of course, to be friendly with him. Who
doesn’t? I’m quite sure that a girl can’t expect to get very far in
pictures, without favoritism or some sort of pull or backing, unless
maybe she has extraordinary talent.”

“Tell me--which of us two--you or I--has ‘extraordinary talent’?”
Corinne’s pretty lips twisted in a smile of malice and irony.

Margot detested flattery, but she caught the implication in Corinne’s
question--unexpectedly clever of Corinne!--and realized that she was
treading on thin ice. Corinne was a violent little thing. Better not
arouse her.

“Well, I’m fairly sure _I_ haven’t got extraordinary talent,
nevertheless I have hopes of getting on without influence, so I’ll
modify what I said. A girl _may_ get on if she’s fairly good-looking,
screens well, can act pretty well, and has a personality that helps to
get her over.”

Corinne gave her a grudging smile.

“You’re smarter than I thought you were. You’ve summed up things
flatteringly for both of us. I have all the assets you mention, so
that lets _me_ out. No suggestion that _I’ve_ had any favoritism to
boost me. And it lets you out too! Miss Anstruther, if I didn’t
dislike you so much, I could almost find it in my heart to love you.”
Her smile was not unamiable.

Frankly surprised, Margot said quickly:

“Why do you dislike me so much? I know you’ve avoided me, and I know
that you think I’ve flirted with Stoner and--and--all that,” she
fumbled with slight confusion, remembering the ridicule in the remarks
of girls who had told her that the star was jealous of her and Stoner.

“Well, I’ll take your word for it. I kind of thought I saw signs of
your having come over into my yard to play--when I haven’t been
around. Understand, my dear? But if you say you’ve just kind of
wandered in by mistake, and if you’ll agree to sort of leave my--my
yard alone, why I guess I won’t hate you.”

If Corinne had used the word “property” instead of “yard,” her meaning
could not have been clearer, Margot reflected, with eyes lowered to
conceal her reflection. She rose and tried to smile cordially.

“I hope that you and I will be friends before this picture’s finished.
I admire Mr. Stoner for his ability and for his jolly good nature
which doesn’t often get spoiled. But, frankly, Miss Delamar, he isn’t
at all my type, nor am I his. He’s interested, of course, in the
talent he believes I have, but naturally--and _obviously_--he’s far
more interested in _your_ talent.”

That ended the strange little interview, but not Margot’s reflections
upon it. Late that afternoon Gene contrived hurriedly to make an
appointment with her for dinner. They left the studio separately and
met in New York at a specified restaurant. Afterwards they went to
what Margot facetiously called the house of mystery.




 CHAPTER V.
 WEIRD SUSPICIONS

During dinner Gene had made several attempts to swing Margot into a
mood which would be at least gracious to his love-making, but she had
been distrait, which was more disconcerting than a frank rebuff. On
the way home he held her arm with a pressure that evoked only a light
laugh.

“Funny old dear,” she said teasingly. “You’re determined to be amorous
to-night, but really, Gene, I can’t take my mind off my mystery, even
for a minute. Do you know, I haven’t telephoned home all day, just
because I didn’t want to take the edge off my return. Let’s hurry and
see if there have been any new developments.”

Gene followed her lead, but took a silent oath to kiss her before the
evening should be over, mystery or no mystery.

Once over the threshold of the house on Forty-ninth Street, they felt
at once the atmosphere of suspicion and jangled nerves, as embodied in
the person of Mrs. Bellew. In Margot’s room they found Quinlan and
Boyle, both on guard, with the landlady hovering about, babbling
theories that no one was interested in.

The policemen told Margot that a plainclothes detective from
headquarters had been there to interview her, and would shortly
return. A few minutes later he appeared, a cold, shrewd officer, who
answered to the top-heavy name of Cornelius Hart. He seemed like an
intelligent type, but intolerant. Evidently he had brushed aside all
second-hand reports, insisting upon getting Margot’s story from her
own lips.

For the fourth time she gave her narrative without embellishments.
Hart listened attentively and prodded her with occasional questions.
Finally he said:

“Miss Anstruther, I think you have a powerful imagination.”

It was what she might have expected, but she felt the same unreasoning
resentment which all skepticism regarding her experience seemed to
evoke. She said quietly:

“This policeman,” she glanced at Boyle, “saw what I saw.”

“Sure! Boyle’s an Irishman. He’ll see anything anybody else sees. They
believe in the Banshee, where _he_ comes from.”

Boyle growled an indignant but indistinguishable protest.

“Many mysterious happenings which have been explained in the end, have
appeared just as fantastic in the beginning as what I’ve told you.”
Margot tried logic on Hart, without success.

“The chief difficulty, Miss Anstruther, in accepting the arm and hand
you describe, is that they were attached to no body.”

“How do you _know_ that?” she came back at him quickly.

“Well, looks that way, doesn’t it?”

“All right, let it go at that, but don’t you think it’s a problem
worth at least _trying_ to solve, that an arm _apparently_ attached to
no body, nevertheless did certain definite things? Put it that way.”

Hart shrugged his thin shoulders. He glanced around the room.

“This place has been searched thoroughly, and more than once. There
are no traces of anyone having hidden under the bed.”

“How about the hollow in the nap of the rug where a finger-tip pressed
down the match?”

“Maybe. It’s fluffed out now. I can only say that there isn’t the
slightest evidence that a crime was committed or attempted. So it
doesn’t seem to concern the police department.”

Margot regarded him with serious eyes. He was as cold and impersonal
as a fish.

“Then you are finished with the case?”

“Not quite. Sleep somewhere else to-night. I’ll leave Quinlan to watch
this room. If there’s nothing to report by to-morrow, we’ll be
through.”

Hart left, and Boyle, heaving a great sigh of relief, went with him.
Margot asked Quinlan to wait downstairs for a half hour, as she had
something to talk over with her friend. She went down with the
policeman and asked Mrs. Bellew’s permission for him to remain in her
sitting-room. Quinlan’s expression of despair at the prospect of half
an hour of uninterrupted conversation with the landlady was comic. But
Mrs. Bellew smiled happily at the prospect, oblivious of Quinlan’s
unflattering scowl.

Alone with Gene in the brightly lighted room, Margot threw herself
with a sigh of relief, on the divan. She let him sit beside her, but
she refused even to let him hold her hand.

“Gene, old dear, my brain’s on the rampage. I haven’t an emotion
to-night capable of sitting up and taking notice of the love-making of
a veritable Valentino.” She laughed and patted his hand. “But I do
need your sympathy and advice--dreadfully.”

“I have a vision of you taking my _advice_.”

“Well--perhaps that isn’t exactly what I mean, but I want to talk
things over with you,--get a few trifles off my mind.”

She told him of Stoner’s peculiar behavior and comments on hearing of
her ghostly adventure. She repeated laughingly his warnings about
Corinne Delamar, but she omitted his avowals of devotion, and his
anger because she had refused to dine with him that night. It would be
unwise to give Gene any additional reason for suspicion and jealousy
of Stoner. She decided to refrain even from telling Gene of her
conclusions as to the director’s motives for begging her to drop the
matter of the mystery. Gene would be enraged at the bare idea of
Stoner having the impudence to be jealous where Margot was concerned.
And as to his motives,--she had begun to wonder if her conclusions
hadn’t carried her far afield of the truth. That was just what she
wanted to discuss with Gene--Stoner’s _motive_ in being apparently so
upset about her having publicity.

“Do you know,” she ended her recountal with a fixed stare across the
room; “at times I feel as if there were something queer about
Stoner--something vaguely sinister and disturbing. At other times I
laugh at myself for such an idea, especially when he’s in one of his
boyish, boisterous and entirely simple-minded moods.”

“What first gave you such an idea about Stoner? He seems to me the
crudest, most obvious type of male.”

“I guess it’s his eyes--mostly.” Margot’s own eyes looked full of the
enchantment of mystery. “They certainly have a weird expression at
times.”

“What do you mean by ‘weird’? The way he looks at _you_?”

She smiled at Gene’s quickly aroused suspicion and resentment.

“No, it’s nothing personal. That’s the odd thing about it. There are
moments when he looks at me but doesn’t really see me for a second.
And his eyes seem to be saying something that he’s unconscious of
saying and that I can’t understand. It’s happened more than once.”

Gene’s adoring smile was then a little quizzical.

“That’s a little trick of yours, Margot, darling, to read things in
eyes that are really quite without expression.”

“That’s where you’re all wrong, old dear,” she said quickly. “Often
when a person’s eyes look positively blank to others, they tell _me_
something in total contradiction to what their lips are saying. It’s
most embarrassing at times.”

“When did you first notice this _weird_ expression in Stoner’s eyes?”
Gene looked as if Stoner as a subject for conversation might be
improved upon.

“Oh,” she said eagerly, “that reminds me. I’ve never told you about
the day I first went to the Superfilm studio for a job. Maybe after
I’ve told you certain things, you may be clever enough to throw light
on Stoner’s pale eyes.”

She laughed at Gene’s exclamation of disgust, and began her narrative.

She told him of her embarrassed entry into the waiting-room of the
casting director, when she had run the gauntlet of rows of feminine
eyes--eyes of the other girls on the same errand as herself, and
waiting in various degrees of irritation and boredom. She laughed in
amused reminiscence.

“Every head in the room bobbed--including my own. Just a difference in
color and cut. Lipsticks, powder-pads, tiny mirrors--rows of them. And
their poor, pathetic little faces, Gene. Vacuous smiles on carefully
painted lips, and hardened eyes that should have been young and
weren’t. And pair after pair of flesh-colored silk stockings--mine
were tan that day, and I was glad of it. And their attenuated skirts
adjusted modestly an inch or two above the knee. I wanted to scream
with laughter, but suddenly I wanted to cry, they were so pathetic.”

Gene interrupted her with a quick pressure of her hand.

“Just like you, Margot. Your sense of humor gets a good fillip out of
something, then suddenly your desire to be helpful comes uppermost.”

“Oh, it wasn’t that. Don’t sentimentalize about me, Gene. It was only
that I felt that those girls, with their stereotyped prettiness and
vacuous vanity, probably needed work and money, far more than I did.
Then I laughed at myself realizing that they’d stand a better chance
of getting it in that place than I would. Then, my dear, we all got a
shock. Lulu Leinster, with that wonderful little head and body of
hers, walked into the room. _Her_ hair _wasn’t_ bobbed, and it was
glorious, hanging in two huge braids. Primitive hair, hurled at one’s
vision that way, was provocative--almost indecent.” Margot laughed
again, and stroked her own shorn locks.

“It’s a wonder, with your excessive modesty, that you didn’t depart at
once, leaving Lulu without a competitor.” Gene teased her with his
broad grin.

“My dear, that’s _just_ what I was on the point of doing, while Sam,
Stoner’s bodyguard, was flinging his questions at her, and she coolly
informed him that she’d been sent by a beauty contest committee in
Texas, she having won the prize. Then, before I knew it, Sam stood in
front of _me_, asking the same fool questions. The next thing I knew,
every girl in the room, except Lulu and me, was marching out, having
been told by Sam that they needn’t wait. He was so suave I wanted to
kick him. And the girls filed out, tossing their heads and clicking
their heels, and curling their angry lips. A few minutes later Sam
ushered us into Stoner’s august presence.”

Margot interrupted her story to let Gene light a cigarette for her.
She took a few abstracted puffs, the smoke winding slowly upward from
her parted lips, then she told Gene how the director stood by his
desk, frowning at the two girls as they entered his sanctum. How he
then sat before his desk and addressed himself first to Lulu, asking
her name and address. How he disposed of Lulu and turned to Margot
with the same questions. Margot’s eyes darkened with excitement as she
stressed this part of her narrative.

“I gave him my name, then my address. The minute I said 809 East
Forty-ninth Street, Stoner’s head jerked up, and his light blue eyes
looked straight into mine. He repeated the number of the house--not
the street--and his face was impassive, but suddenly I noticed his
eyes. The pupil dilated, and a sort of yellowish shadow darkened the
iris. I caught a strange shimmer in the eyeball, like dust specks seen
in a sunbeam. Of course I may have imagined it all, but that was the
very first time when I seemed to dread something in his eyes that
confused and mystified me.”

Gene studied her reflectively. “What did he say after that?”

“Oh, he looked down at his desk, then up again at me, quickly, then he
remarked that I must have one foot in the East River. His eyes were as
blank as pale blue eyes can be, even in an intelligent head. I told
him that it was an easy step down, but not quite over. Then he stood
up and calmly told us that they only needed one more girl and that he
couldn’t decide which of us would screen the best without a test. He
told us to come back the following day. And oh, Gene, I never told you
what Lulu said to me.” Margot chuckled in gleeful remembrance. “When
we parted in New York she announced that she’d probably not see me
again. For a second I didn’t get it. I looked my surprise, then she
said: ‘Why--er--you ain’t going back there to-morrow?’ Then I
understood, and I asked her why not. She got a bit rattled and said
that she didn’t suppose I’d want to go to the bother. I smiled and
remarked that it wouldn’t be any more bother for me than for her. She
had the grace to stumble as she said: ‘Maybe my funny face is more
what they want than yours.’ I remarked that that fine point remained
to be proved, and that perhaps we’d _both_ be chosen and become rival
stars. Poor little Lulu is short on humor. She didn’t see the joke.
Anyway, we met in the studio next day, and now, my dear Gene, I’ve
come to the really interesting part of my story.”

“Tell me first, Margot, if you got the impression from the way Stoner
looked at you, that he admired you personally?”

“Oh,” Margot shrugged indifferently. “I don’t suppose he regarded me
as a piece of bric-a-brac, but what I mean had nothing to do with me
as a woman or an actress. Of course the impression faded and I felt,
afterwards, that I’d been over psychic or suspicious, as usual. But
that night the impression returned stronger than before. It even made
me hesitate about going back.”

Margot told of being escorted by Sam--together with Lulu--to the stage
where a close-up of some scene was being registered. Margot had seen
interest flash in Stoner’s eyes when he saw the two girls waiting to
be noticed by him. He had chucked Lulu under the chin but had
refrained from a like playful greeting with Margot after one glance
into her eyes.

He had again asked her name, then he had said:

“So you live on Forty-ninth Street, in one of those ramshackle houses
built before the flood? What did you say the number was?”

Margot had told him.

“What floor do you live on?”

“For a second,” said Margot, “I thought he meant to be impudent, but I
decided he meant nothing offensive, so I told him that I lived on the
first floor. Then he asked if my room was front or back. I had another
impulse to glare at him, but instead, I said politely that I had the
large room in the rear, and added that he seemed to know the house. It
was then that I thought I caught that queer glint in his eyes again,
and a slight challenge in his glance. He said indifferently that a
friend of his had lived in this house and that he hadn’t seen it for
years. He remarked that I must find the place uncomfortable and
inconvenient. I told him I didn’t. Then he announced that he would
make a test of Lulu first.”

The two girls had been directed to put on make-up, and when they had
appeared properly mascaraed and powdered, he had indicated a place for
Lulu to stand. He had told her, with a good-natured grin, to think
hard of her “sweetie,” and to imagine she was meeting him by the light
of the moon, and that he was going to take her in his arms and hug
her. Lulu had smiled in full understanding and self-assurance and had
proceeded to spoil her beauty by a forced and absurd expression of
rapturous parted lips. Stoner had groaned.

“Oh, Lord, that won’t do! Think again, not so hard, maybe. Relax! Try
to feel what you’d really feel if the fellow you love stood right in
my boots!” Stoner had laughed boisterously at his little joke.

That time Lulu had done much better. Margot, watching her, had decided
that Lulu had the making of a good movie actress--above the
average--and this impression was followed by the humble assurance that
she would certainly not register as well in this silly test as the
little beauty-contest girl, whose egoism was of so different a
variety. If Stoner had needed two girls, perhaps she could have passed
muster, but not in competition with Lulu.

“Then,” Margot went on with a laugh, “I heard Stoner calling me. I
remembered what I’d been asked when I was a kid:--which would I
prefer, be a greater fool than I looked, or look a greater fool than I
be. I knew I’d explode if he invoked the figure of an absent lover.
But Stoner isn’t a fool. He took me by surprise by telling me to
imagine that I’d just seen--was still looking at--something that froze
my blood with horror. Somebody run over or murdered. Or, better still,
I must register the emotion that would overcome me if I were alone in
the dark, and suddenly saw something that didn’t belong
there--something spooky, with an agonized face, calling for mercy.
Wasn’t it uncanny, his striking that note of fear and horror,
considering what happened so soon afterwards?”

“Yes, it was,” agreed Gene quickly. “You don’t need to tell me how you
registered those faked emotions. The results speak for themselves. He
selected _you_ instead of Lulu.”

Margot leaned forward excitedly, and put her hand on Gene’s arm.

“That’s just the odd part of the whole performance--something I’ve
never told you before, Gene. As to how I registered, I guess I didn’t
do badly. Either Stoner’s surprising eloquence or the memory of a
ghost story heard years ago, that had made my blood run
cold--literally--or whatever it was, my imagination took fire and I
actually saw before me, for that moment, the thing of horror. Funny,
but I never thought of that odd coincidence until to-day. Well, Lulu
told me afterwards that my eyes dilated, and my lips quivered. In
short I ‘registered,’ and Stoner gave an expression of approval. Then
he looked from Lulu to me, and finally he said:

“‘You’re all right!’” He shifted his gaze back to Lulu, and said: “‘So
are you, girlie. Damned if I know which of you is the best. Have to
wait and see the proofs. Come back to-morrow morning or stick around
now for a few hours.’”

“Of course we told him we’d return the next day. Lulu’s rapturous
smile seemed to indicate that she was sure of what the proofs would
show. We started to leave and at the far end of the stage, within a
few feet of the entrance, we heard Stoner’s stentorian call, asking us
to go back a minute. He was whispering to Sam and one of the camera
men. Then he came up to us and said:

“‘I’ve decided not to wait for those pictures. ’Tisn’t necessary. I
can tell just from looking at you two, which one is the best--the
best, anyway, for _my_ purposes.’”

“I felt Lulu tremble with excitement. I thought I saw again that faint
glitter in Stoner’s pale eyes. Then, looking at me he said:

“‘It’s you I want, Miss Anstruther. Come back to-morrow to start work.
The part you’ll get isn’t a small one. It’ll mean work.’”

Margot told Gene of poor little Lulu’s sobbing disappointment, and of
Stoner’s attempt to console her by advising her not to be soft, and
not to mind, as it was all in the game, and it was a hard, hard world
anyway. He had ended by saying that he had chosen Margot because she
suited the part in the picture, better than Lulu. He had been speaking
to Lulu, but Margot had caught his gaze fixed upon herself. Intuition
told her that he had chosen her for personal reasons. She had
registered fairly well, but so had Lulu, and Lulu was decidedly more
the screen type of beauty, with her fine profile and wonderful hair.

“You see, Gene,” Margot summed up eagerly, “my first conclusion was
that I’d made a strong appeal to Stoner. Perhaps I saw that much in
his eyes, but there was something else in his eyes. It eluded and
mocked me, but it was there--something that was neither admiration nor
desire. I felt half inclined to refuse his offer, when I heard him
telling Lulu that since she was so unhappy, he’d fix her up. There was
a girl on the lot who needed a rest. He’d give her a vacation on full
pay and Lulu could have her part in _A Toreador’s Love_. Only the part
of a lady’s maid, but if Lulu wanted it--etc., etc. And then he said
to me--while Lulu was washing her face, that he hoped we’d be friends,
and that he hoped I’d let him call on me some evening soon.”

Margot could not resist a dramatic pause, just to give Gene a chance
to frown in angry indignation. He did not disappoint her.

“Damn nerve! What did you tell him?”

“Well, I was on the point of giving him a sharp retort, when he said,
casually:

“‘What was that number again? 809 East 49th Street?’”

“Once again I was arrested by the look in his eyes--that strange
yellowish shadow covering the blue of the iris, and the dilating of
the pupil. That’s all, Gene, but I’d like to know what you make of
it?”

Gene looked puzzled and uncertain. “You mean--why he chose you instead
of Lulu Leinster?”

“Yes, of course, that’s what I mean.”

“Search _me_, Margot. You make it all sound very mysterious, and you
draw a picture of old fat Stoner that’s far more interesting and
thrilling than anything he can ever hope to be in the flesh.”

“Perhaps you think my imagination’s gone wild along with my brain. No,
old dear. Just think hard, a minute. Don’t you honestly think it
rather strange--in all the circumstances--that he should have chosen
me? And remember all I’ve told you about his eyes, especially in
connection with my living in this house!”

Gene threw back his head with a jerk of sudden astonishment.

“You think Stoner’s connected in some way--in the past--with this
house--with what’s happened here?” Gene’s blue eyes were troubled and
mystified.

“Well,” said Margot slowly, “I’m not _sure_ of anything, and it’s too
soon to draw any definite conclusions about Stoner or anything else,
but I do feel that in some way that I can’t fathom, Stoner has a
personal reason for wanting me to drop the investigation of my little
mystery.”

Gene pondered that a moment, then he said abruptly:

“Can’t get it at all, Margot. I’m convinced that all those weird
expressions you’ve been seeing in Stoner’s eyes, can be boiled down to
just one thing--his mad admiration for you, my dear girl.”

Margot jumped to her feet, and seized Gene’s hand with a laugh.

“That’s about enough from you for one night, old silly. I’m tired out
anyway, and poor Quinlan’s half hour has stretched out till I dare say
he’s ready to kill me. So off with you, Gene! See you to-morrow, and
here’s hoping you’ll have done some heavy thinking in the meantime!”

She let him kiss her good-night, then she ran down stairs to tell
Quinlan that he could return to his official duties.




 CHAPTER VI.
 THE MIDNIGHT PROWLER

Margot was to sleep on a cot in Mrs. Bellew’s basement. She made a
rite of brushing her thick reddish hair, and invariably let her mind
wander while she did it. Mrs. Bellew’s chatter had the effect of
dripping water. It made her sleepy, and she was horribly tired. Some
sixth sense told her that sleep was not for her that night; that the
mystery would soon take a new and fantastic turn.

With bored disgust she discovered that she had forgotten to bring down
her pyjamas. She started for the stairs, then turned back into the
basement room. She told Mrs. Bellew that she didn’t want to go up to
her room alone. No reason whatever, Quinlan being so decent, but she
felt nervous, and would Mrs. Bellew mind going up with her? Mrs.
Bellew cheerfully assured her that she didn’t mind at all.

They climbed the stairs and knocked lightly on the door. Quinlan let
them in and they stood for a moment with him in the dark. Margot, her
voice instinctively pitched very low, explained her errand. Then she
whispered to Quinlan:

“Seen or heard anything?”

“No, Miss.” Quinlan’s was a veritable stage whisper.

Suddenly he stiffened and threw his arm out to bar Margot’s way, as
she started in the direction of her closet.

“Shh!” he admonished tensely.

Margot stood stock still, as she heard Mrs. Bellew’s stifled cry of
fear. They heard a faint scraping sound. It seemed to come from the
roof-garden, the door leading to which was open a few inches. Quinlan
had left it so. Then, the shadow of a human being fell slantwise on
the curtain over the door, and loomed large against the rift of light
from the street lamp. Faint creaking of the door pushing inward; a
figure, indistinct, crouching uncertainly; then upright, stepping more
boldly into the room, and moving slowly toward them.

Mrs. Bellew’s terror broke in a shriek. Quinlan lunged forward and
seized the intruder. Margot dashed for the switch-button in the wall,
and flooded the room with light.

A girl stood there, her shoulders pinioned from behind by Quinlan’s
big hands; a girl with white, drawn face; a black-browed, sullen young
creature, who uttered no sound of fear or pain. Too astonished to move
or speak, Margot stared. Then another shriek resounded in the room.

“It’s Stella--Stella Ball!” Mrs. Bellew managed to gasp the words.

Margot trembled with excitement. Her breath came short.

“The girl who lived in this room?”

“Herself--oh, my God!” The landlady was on the verge of frenzied
hysteria.

Margot swung fiercely about to the girl.

“Tell us what it all means!” she commanded sternly.

“I’ll tell you nothing!” The retort was almost vicious in its quick
intensity.

“We’ll make you talk quick enough,” growled Quinlan.

“I haven’t committed any crime.” She made the assertion unwhiningly.
“You can’t do anything to me!”

“I arrest you for unlawful entry, with intent to commit a burglary.
Guess that’ll do for the present.”

The girl’s lips clamped stubbornly. There was a touch of pride in her
defiance. Margot was conscious of it, and sudden pity gave her the
impulse to ask Quinlan to release the girl. Her connection with the
mystery seemed remote indeed, if not highly improbable. Her coming was
merely coincidental. Then----

Margot’s glance fell to the girl’s right arm. The grip of Quinlan’s
fingers had pulled the sleeve up. The arm had been cut off at the
elbow! Margot’s gaping eyes saw the scar of a freshly healed wound. It
made a grim patch of color against the white of her arm.

Mrs. Bellew’s frightened eyes went from Stella Ball’s blanched face to
the stub of her right arm. A horrified, fixed stare, then a third
shriek from the landlady. “My God! She had both arms when she left
this house!”

Stella’s thin little face lost its expressionless rigidity. She
smiled; a strange, twisted ghost of a smile, on one side of her mouth,
yet it had humor, that smile, humor wasted of course on Mrs. Bellew,
but startling to Margot.

“Hell of a lot you know how I looked when I left your shanty. Didn’t
happen to see me light out, did you?”

Mrs. Bellew was too far overcome with nervous excitement to have any
other emotion, so she did not resent the girl’s impudence. Margot,
watching intently, saw the smile on Stella’s face vanish as quickly as
it had appeared. Her face hardened again, her lips grew tight with a
bitterness in tragic contrast to the youth of her face, as she looked
at the lurid scar which had riveted Margot’s attention. Then she gave
an angry hitch to her right shoulder, twisting her sleeve out of
Quinlan’s grip, so that it fell over and covered her disfigured arm.

“Let go of her, please, Mr. Quinlan!” Margot’s quick command was
spoken gently enough, but Quinlan removed his hands from Stella’s thin
shoulders.

Being momentarily deprived of action, Quinlan found release for his
tongue. He stood with arms crossed, regarding the girl with an angry
scowl.

“Think ye’re smart, don’t ye now, disturbin’ honest folks, and scarin’
this nice young lady out of a year’s growth and raisin’ hell
generally, just to do a little stealin’ where there ain’t nothin’ to
steal, far as I can make out.”

The girl flashed a defiant look at him.

“Who says I came to steal?”

“_I_ says it, for one!” Quinlan gave her look for look. “Your kind--or
any other kind--don’t come sneakin’ in other people’s windows and
doors, just for their health. They come to get something--that’s what
they come for--or maybe,” he bent a threatening scowl upon her, “maybe
they come to murder somebody.”

Mrs. Bellew gave a low cry and shuddered closer to Margot.

“Ain’t you the smart Alec!” Stella’s twisted smile at Quinlan was not
flattering. “Maybe I did come to get something. This used to be my
room. Maybe I came to get something I left behind, when I beat it on
such short notice.” Her smile of mockery went from the policeman to
the landlady.

“I took all your things down stairs, Stella. I’ll give them to you.”

“Didn’t have to sneak back to get what belongs to ye. There’s a front
door to this house, if ye know how to use it.” Quinlan’s sarcasm was a
little heavy. He was no match for the girl, Margot thought, amused in
spite of all that the scene evoked and might well signify.

“Front doors are good ’nough for some people--the kind that wouldn’t
dare come in any other way. ’Fraid for their precious skins, maybe.”

“Say, look a-here, Miss Smartie! If you’d come back on the level, to
get your belongin’s, why didn’t ye tell this young lady so, when ye
found the room was occupied?”

“Saa-y!” The girl’s sweeping scorn of Quinlan, was comic. “Hell of a
chance you gave me to tell anybody anything, grabbing me with those
dainty mitts of yours, in the pitch dark, before you saw who or what I
was!”

“I’m not talkin’ about your little stunt to-night, comin’ in from that
roof, and gettin’ caught red-handed, I might say. I’m talkin’ about
night before last when ye honored this young lady with a call and
pretty near frightened her to death.”

Stella’s eyes opened and stared in a surprise that struck Margot as
strangely genuine.

“Don’t know what you’re trying to celebrate, Mr. Officer-of-the-Law.
This is the first time I’ve come to this room since I left it when I
was living here. I wasn’t in this room night before last.”

It was Quinlan’s turn to retaliate with a scorn as scathing as her
own.

“No, you wasn’t here night before last! Yes, we have no bananas!
I--don’t--_think_!”

“I wasn’t! Think what you damn please!” A flash of anger quickened the
tired lifelessness of Stella’s blue eyes.

Quinlan moved a step nearer to her, and thrust his head out at her.

“You wasn’t hidin’ under that brass bed, for the Lord knows how long
before Miss Anstruther went to bed, and you didn’t stick your hand and
arm out from under the bed and put a burnin’ match out, after the
young lady had switched off her electric light?”

The surprise in Stella’s eyes changed slowly to astonishment, then
another, more subtle change came to them. Margot, with active brain
and unwavering, watchful gaze, and uncanny power to read back of the
human eye, saw in Stella’s something that she could not analyze, but
something that convinced her as no words could have done, that the
girl was telling the truth and that Quinlan’s remarks had quickened a
wondering speculation in her mind, concerning something of sinister
import to Margot’s mystery.

“I wasn’t in this room night before last. Take that or leave it! I
should worry!”

Sudden inspiration came to Quinlan.

“Then if ye wasn’t here yerself, ye know damn well who _was_ here!”
Intuition or reason, whichever it was, Margot thought, Quinlan was
less “dumb” than he had appeared up to now.

Stella threw him a startled, questioning look, then her lips grew
sullen and her eyes hard.

“Let’s get a move on,” she said laconically. “Don’t suppose you want
to entertain me here for the night. Ain’t you just bursting to show me
your hospitality somewheres else?”

“See here, Miss Stella Ball, if that’s yer name. Suppose ye spill a
little information about the friend of yours that hid under Miss
Anstruther’s bed the other night. Give us the dope--the real dope and
all of it, and we’ll see what we can do about lettin’ ye off with a
minimum sentence, maybe none at all.”

“I’ve got nothing to say about anything, because I don’t know nothing
about nothing! See?” Stella gave Quinlan another of her twisted
smiles, touched with an ironic humor.

“Won’t save yerself by squealin’, is that it?” Quinlan’s naturally
good-humored mouth had a more kindly expression.

“No, that ain’t it!” Her reply was as enigmatic as it was brief and
final.

They could get nothing more out of her. She remained stubbornly
silent, her face reverting to its original hard blankness. Quinlan
told her she’d have to go with him, arrested on the charge of unlawful
entry. Then he turned to Margot, with the air of being the Heaven-sent
sleuth and unraveler of mysteries which the case had so urgently
required.

“Guess you can come right back to this room and have a good night’s
sleep, Miss Anstruther. Guess no more spooks is goin’ to disturb your
rest, from now on. There’ll be those as’ll know how to get the truth
out of this girl, to-night or to-morrow. Guess ye’re safe enough now.”

“Wait a minute, Mr. Quinlan.” Margot addressed the policeman but her
eyes were on Stella Ball. “You seem to be sure that either this girl
or some confederate of hers, was under my bed night before last, and
put out the match I dropped on the rug. But how about the hand and arm
that Boyle saw, when _he_ was alone in this room, putting out a light
that didn’t even exist?”

Margot saw a quickly suppressed shudder, a swift lifting then closing
of lids over startled blue eyes, then stillness on the impassive face
of Stella Ball. Quinlan saw nothing. He was busy preparing a reply to
Margot’s question.

“It’s a friend I am of Shane Boyle’s, Miss Anstruther, but it’s only
tellin’ the truth I am, when I say that Boyle bein’ born in the auld
country, and comin’ here when he was full grown, is as full of
superstition as a dog is full of flees. It stands to reason, Miss,
that whoever it was put the match out when you lay in that brass bed,
wasn’t doin’ the self-same thing for Boyle’s benefit, because whoever
it was, got out of this room before ever any of the rest of us set
foot in it. That’s as sure as that I’m standin’ on me two feet this
very minute. So it stands to reason, don’t it, that what Boyle saw,
came out of the square Irish head on him.”

“Do you think so, Mr. Quinlan?” Again she spoke to Quinlan but looked
at Stella.

“Sure, I think so. What else could I think?”

At Margot’s simple question, Stella again lifted heavy lids and
dropped them as quickly. In her tired blue eyes Margot caught a vague
question and challenge directed at herself. Then Quinlan departed with
his prisoner.




 CHAPTER VII.
 SPOOKS AND THE PRESS

Margot and Mrs. Bellew returned to the basement for the night,
locking Margot’s room on the outside. Another sleepless night would
play the mischief with her looks, but Margot found sleep an
impossibility. She wished she could call Gene and tell him what had
happened since he left the house, but she decided to wait until the
following day.

With tired brain and thoughts spinning around as actively in sleep as
when awake, and far more fatiguingly so, Margot had about three hours
of unconsciousness. Then, as on the previous morning, a hot tub, a
cold shower, setting-up exercises, a little make-up, and she looked,
even if she didn’t feel, as good as new, she decided, after careful
scrutiny of her face.

She decided to be late to the studio, and move all her belongings from
the room she had occupied, to one which Mrs. Bellew had offered her,
on the floor above. The landlady and her housemaid helped Margot in
the process of moving up the one flight. She said that for the
present, she would take with her only her personal effects. It was
best, she told Mrs. Bellew, to leave the room intact, in case any
further inspection should be deemed advisable by the police
department. Therefore she did not remove her rugs, nor hangings, nor
other articles of room adornment, which belonged to her. She rather
expected to hear further from the police before the morning was over,
she told the landlady.

About ten o’clock, the plainclothes man Hart arrived, asked Margot a
few superfluous questions, then gave his orders that Margot’s
room--the room of the bodiless hand from under the bed--was to be
turned over to the police department. A man from the Force was to be
left there, day and night, and the key would be kept by the police.
Hart assured Margot that although theft was probably the motive for
the midnight visitation--granted that there had been any such
appearance as she had described--he was sure that criminal intent to
do bodily injury was not involved, and as to anything of a
supernatural nature, that was of course ridiculous.

It struck Margot as ridiculous that the police should occupy her old
room as a field for research in a case which they insisted was neither
criminal nor supernatural. But she refrained from telling Hart what
she thought about it.

Before she left the house at one o’clock, already two reporters and
three news photographers had made their unwelcome appearance. It was
evident that the rest of the day would bring other relays of the
inquisitive pests. She was glad to escape, leaving poor, harassed Mrs.
Bellew to do the honors. Of course the garrulous landlady would talk
of things she knew not, and say many things that the newspaper men
would twist to suit themselves, but Margot knew that it mattered very
little what was or was not made public in the way of news regarding
her adventure. The publicity itself was the one inescapable fact.

The morning papers had had nothing regarding the affair, so there was
as yet no need to dread an encounter with Stoner. She had decided not
to tell Gene, should she meet him at the studio, of Stella Ball’s
unexpected re-appearance, until the evening.

On her arrival at Astoria, keyed to make excuses for her late arrival,
and to remind Stoner of her fruitless and long hours of waiting the
day before, Margot found that the screening of _A Toreador’s Love_ was
held up for a few days, possibly for a week. Some blunder on the part
of the art director. The set had to be revamped. It was one of the
frequent movie comedies of errors, which they had all learned to take
philosophically. All but Stoner, who was in a condition of blasphemous
wrath. He must indeed be upset, Margot delightedly observed, not even
to notice her late arrival.

Corinne Delamar darted acid comments through the slats of her
dressing-room on wheels. The minor members of the cast had been told
to get out of the way. The girls she knew crowded around Margot,
asking if she had seen her spook the night before, and if that was why
she was so late at the studio. To all questions she smiled and said
that she believed her ghost was laid, that she had seen nothing weird
the previous night, and that she was late to the studio, merely
because she was tired from her previous adventure.

As a matter of policy and precaution, she hung around the studio until
late in the afternoon, then disappeared before the other girls were
ready to leave. Gene did not go with her, but in a hurried interview
between them it had been arranged for him to come for her later and
take her out for dinner.

The first thing she did on arrival in New York, was to buy an evening
paper. The headlines of the early edition greeted her; headlines about
herself; bantering, hateful headlines:


                _SPOOKS PURSUE FILM BEAUTY--
                ACTRESS AND COP GET GHOSTLY
                BURGLAR--MOVIE GIRL REPORTS
                      ROOM HAUNTED._


Well--she had known what to expect. But at least she could put a check
on the melodramatic absurdity of it all. She wished to goodness she
had stayed at home that day and talked with all the reporters herself.
Trust foolish Mrs. Bellew to make things as absolutely ridiculous as
possible! She hurried home, called up the leading newspapers, and
requested that they send special men to interview her that evening. It
would, she believed, ensure a more rational version of the story, at
least.

Dining with Gene, she gave him a detailed description of what had
occurred the night before, but she omitted all comment as to her
impressions or deductions. She wasn’t ready yet to go into all that.
Later in the evening, after she had interviewed the newspaper men, she
would take Gene fully into her confidence.

He disapproved of her remaining in the same house. Why on earth did
she want to do that? he asked her.

“Well,” she said, with one of her cryptic smiles, “I have my reasons,
old dear. They may be foolish ones, time will tell, but in the
meantime, I’ve made up my mind to stay right in that house of
mystery.”

“All right, my dear. I always respect the results of your mental
processes, but sometimes the processes themselves leave me in the
air.”

“A very comfortable place for the present, Gene. You may wish you’d
stayed up in that safe region, before we get through with this thing.”

“Not unless you were up there with me,” he smiled back at her.

Later in the evening, after Margot had flattered and flustered and
successfully maneuvered the newspaper men, and had given each one a
cocktail with which to drink to her success as a star in filmdom and
as a detective in her field of mystery, she and Gene settled down in
her new room to a serious talk.

“As I see it,” she summed up, “this mystery is a perfectly normal one.
It’s my firm belief that it will turn out to be more important to
students of crime than to the Society for Psychical Research.
Moreover, the best detective methods are the only methods that will
solve it.”

“Meaning--Cornelius Hart and his hot-on-the-trail assistants?” His
smile expressed the scorn he shared with her as regards the
plainclothes man.

“Absurd bungler, isn’t he? First he laughed at my story, and ridiculed
Boyle. Then he woke up when Stella came on the screen, but he can’t
get a word out of her. She’s much too clever for him. And his
investigations in this house consist of watching for something new to
happen, which isn’t _going_ to happen. The dub isn’t using what brain
he happens to have.”

“What’s your idea? To go to one of the private agencies and get one of
their men? The trouble is the price, dear. They charge at least twenty
dollars a day.”

“No, nothing like that.” She laughed and struck her chest with a comic
gesture. “Little one, you see before you the real Sherlock Holmes in
the plot! _I_ am going to apply to the case the expert methods I
referred to. And of course you’re going to help me.”

“Righto!” He smiled, then grew more serious. “All very fine, Margot,
but for all your cleverness and powers of analysis, I don’t quite see
what you’ve got to go on.”

“Don’t you! Well, now listen. Get down to bedrock and to essentials. I
saw an apparently unattached arm. The next night Stella Ball sneaked
into my room. Stella Ball has comparatively recently had her right arm
amputated at the elbow. I believe that these three strange, apparently
unrelated facts, are actually, if mysteriously, related.”

Gene couldn’t control a slight shudder.

“Isn’t that going back to the spook theory you said you’d rejected?
Surely you don’t mean, Margot, that you think it was a psychic
manifestation of some sort,--the girl sending her arm ahead of her, or
something of that sort? You can’t be serious!”

“Not that way, no. That’s too absurd! But let me go on. For some
reason the hand I actually saw--for keep in mind that I _did_ see a
hand!--found it important to put out lights on the floor. Stella Ball
had lived in that same room. For all we know, she might, in the past,
have penetrated its secret. Last night she may have come either to
help or to thwart that hand.”

“What do you mean? In putting out the lights on the rug?” Gene was
making a valiant effort to treat Margot’s theories with the respect
she demanded.

“Not necessarily. I’m trying to stick to logic. It’s always so easy to
regard a sequence of odd occurrences as mere coincidence. Gene, think
me a fool if you like, but I’m dead sure that the hand had a living
owner. I’m very nearly as sure that Stella and the owner of the hand
were after something in that room of which they both have knowledge.”

“Oh! Then you don’t think the hand you saw belonged to the girl?”

“No, I don’t. Of course I have no theory as yet as to _what_ they were
after. The flames on the carpet will probably prove to have a lot to
do with it. So will the fact of Stella being armless.”

“Gosh!” Gene heaved a sigh of despair. “Frankly, Margot, you’ve got me
out of my depth. Look here! Granted that you and then Boyle saw a
human hand and arm, how do you explain the way it vanished both times?
Wouldn’t it argue a hiding place for the body belonging to the arm?”

Margot’s face glowed with enthusiasm. She put out an eager hand and
squeezed Gene’s.

“Bully for you! You’ve struck the nail on the head! Of course, it
argues just that.”

“But, good Lord, the place has been searched thoroughly. It’s the one
little thing the police have done. You can’t think anything’s been
overlooked?”

“Naturally I think it. If you’ve ever dropped your collar button,
Gene, you must realize that looking in vain for it twenty times
doesn’t prove that you only imagined you had the collar button.”

Her sense of humor was indestructible, and Gene smiled, but his own
humor expressed itself with a note of sarcasm.

“Suppose the intruder might have hidden between the spring and
mattress of your bed?”

Her merry laugh was incongruous with the sense of mystery that
increased with everything she said.

“Quinlan took that idea quite seriously, if you remember. Nothing
living or dead could have lived through the pounding he gave the bed
with his nightstick.”

“Do be serious, dear. How about the fireplace?”

“Serious! And you make a suggestion like that!” She laughed again.
“Naturally not the fireplace. It’s several feet from the bed. If the
creature could have reached the fireplace without my hearing or seeing
it, then it could have got to the door just as easily.”

“Oh, I give it up!” Gene lighted a cigarette with the air of seeking
consolation where he could reasonably hope to find it.

“Well, I don’t--not by a good deal. I don’t _know_ anything. What I’m
really doing, Gene, is to follow the Sherlock Holmes method of
discarding the alternatives that are obviously impossible.”

He looked at her sharply. “You mean--there remains an alternative--an
escape--which doesn’t strike you as impossible?”

“Yes.”

Gene got quickly to his feet. “Come on,” he said eagerly, seizing her
by the hand. “Show it to me!”

“Go easy, Gene! We mustn’t tamper with a thing. It’s best to direct
the police what to do. But we can take a look, if we can make some
excuse to get that policeman out of the room for a little while. I’m
not keen on taking _him_ into my confidence.” She got up and moved to
the door, still speaking: “You see, the _object_ of Stella’s return to
that room is what I want to----”

She was interrupted by a sharp rap on the door. Cool as Margot looked
and felt, she gave a slight start, then she stood back to let Gene
open the door. A messenger boy stood there holding out a yellow
envelope, and piping “Telegram!”

While Gene signed for her, and shut the door after the departing boy,
Margot tore open the message. Then she handed it to Gene. Her gray
eyes looked troubled and her mouth drooped at the corners.

“What do you make out of this?”

Gene read it aloud, in a slow, puzzled fashion.


 “_See me at the studio to-morrow morning without fail._

                                       “Corinne Delamar.”


“It looks as if what you said Stoner told you about her
high-and-mightiness was correct. She’s probably furious because you’ve
broken into the papers. What other reason could she have for sending
you such a message?”

“That’s it, of course, but I’ll bet Stoner put her up to it. I had a
feeling when he talked to me, that he was inventing the thing for some
purpose of his own. She isn’t a bad sort, you know. I don’t believe
she’d have dreamed of being jealous of me if someone hadn’t put her up
to it. Well, it can’t be helped. I’ll sleep on it. We’ll have to
postpone our detective work. I must be clear-eyed and clear-brained to
tackle Delamar in the morning.”

Her good-night kiss to Gene was hardly what his lover’s desire could
be satisfied with. He held her for a moment, whispering of his love
for her, but he knew her well enough to realize that until Margot
should have disposed of Corinne Delamar, and Stoner and a few other
details such as the mystery of the hand and arm, he could expect
little response to his passion. Wisely he let it go at that.

That night Margot dreamed--a strangely vivid dream--not of Stella
Ball, nor of the mystic hand and arm, nor of Corinne Delamar, still
less of Gene whom she had begun to love. She dreamed (and awoke from
the dream, trembling and longing to cry out, as one feels on awaking
from a nightmare) of Stoner; not Stoner attempting to force his coarse
passion upon her; not Stoner enraged at her for disobeying his orders
to drop all probing into the mystery of her room; but Stoner, looking
at her as he had looked that first day when she had given him her
address, looking at her with pupils dilated, the overtone as of a
yellowish shadow darkening his pale blue eyes; the shimmer in the
eyeball like dust-specks in a sunbeam!

Wide awake, she shivered and lay thinking for hours… thinking.…




 CHAPTER VIII.
 THE CLAWS OF JEALOUSY

Margot arrived at Astoria at about ten o’clock on the following
morning. She raised clear eyes to the zenith, praising, whatever it
was she was accustomed to praise deep in her soul, that the sky in its
blue immensity was there above her, promising unseen glorious things
beyond her ken. Mere joy of living made her face sparkle in response
to the sparkle of the sun, and she took in deep breaths of tingling
air, which quickened the flow of blood in her young body, and brought
a brighter color to her cheeks.

Probably the one precious gift of the gods which should have meant
more to her than beauty or vigor or quick wits, was the one on which
she placed the least value, taking it for granted, as those who are
very young invariably regard the short-lived possession of _youth_. In
spite of three successive sleepless nights, much excitement and
considerable nerve strain, youth had refreshed itself from unguessed
sources. No one would have imagined, to look at Margot, that she had
anything more weighty to consider than whatever immediate and trivial
objective might lie before her.

Nevertheless she was conscious of an increasing annoyance as she
approached the studio. The impertinence of Corinne Delamar’s
imperative dispatch, created an irritation which was close to angry
indignation by the time she entered the big edifice. A sudden decision
not to appear too hasty in her response to the star’s command, made
her take a roundabout way to the dressing-room which she shared with
other girls.

A confusion of props and other scenic paraphernalia, stood about near
the stairway leading up to the girls’ dressing-room. The place seemed
momentarily deserted. She heard hammering and voices over at the end
of the vast stage, but at the end near the stairway there appeared to
be no one.

With one foot on the bottom step, she heard a slight sound that
arrested her. Deliberately she stood still and listened. The sound
referred to was the use of her own name in the voice of Miss Delamar,
and the voice came from the other side of a large piece of scenery
which completely cut off the view of the stairs. Margot had no idea
what Corinne had said about her; she heard only her name, but
forthwith she determined to know what further the star intended to say
about her. The old saying about listeners, might well apply in this
case, but Margot felt that in all the circumstances--and the fact that
she felt an instinctive mistrust of Stoner--she was justified in using
whatever self-defensive weapons chance might offer her.

Then she heard a man’s voice--in a second she recognized it as
Stoner’s--saying:

“Don’t let her put anything over on you. She’ll have her own story to
tell, of course, but just you stick to the main fact--the only one
that cuts any ice with you--that being that she’s got herself in the
limelight just when you need all you can damn well get for yourself.”

“What do you want me to say to her? The harm’s done. She’s been
headlined in all the papers. That _can’t_ be undone.” Corinne sounded
a little querulous.

“You can raise merry hell with her, can’t you? Make her sorry she
didn’t put the lid on tight to this idiotic mystery stuff, as I warned
her to. Make her sorry she’s alive, if you have to. Sorry so far as
her job here is concerned, or any other job in pictures. Between us we
could queer her with any other company.” Stoner’s voice was rasping
with irritability.

A slight pause, then Corinne said:

“You’ve got a bee in my bonnet and you’re determined to make it keep
on buzzing. If you hadn’t put it into my head, I’d never have thought
that Margot Anstruther having a mysterious adventure which has got
into the papers, could have a thing to do with _my_ getting press
publicity. As a matter of fact, why haven’t you seen to it yourself,
Fred?”

“Good Lord, I’ve done every damn thing I can to push you, my dear
girl, and you know it.”

Strangely familiar words, Margot thought with a smile.

“I’ll tell you flat what I _do_ know!” Corinne’s rather light voice
vibrated with sudden feeling. “You’re more interested in that girl
than you’re willing to admit. Don’t think me a fool, my dear Fred.
Both my eyes and ears are normal, and I’ve seen and heard things.”

Margot heard Stoner’s low laugh of amused contempt.

“Oh, you women! The girl’s got talent of course, and the artist I
flatter myself I am, recognized it and made use of it. Why not, will
you tell me? All women have to be flattered to get good results,
whether it’s work or play.” His laugh was teasing, patronizing. “But
as to my feeling any deeply _personal_ interest in Miss Anstruther,
why you’re a fool to imagine it for a moment.”

“Of course, my dear Fred, don’t get away with the idea that I would
make any fuss or try to force an issue with you, where there isn’t
one. I mean this. It’s been no question of marriage between you and
me. I’d bow to the woman who could inspire you to want to get married.
But--and it’s a big one--I’ll not stand for your having an affair with
Margot Anstruther or any other girl, and let things go on as before
between you and me, no matter how much I happen to be indebted to you
for being a star so early in the game.”

“Laying down the law, is that it, my dear?”

“Yes, that’s precisely it. If you can get that girl to take my place
to your complete satisfaction--in or out of marriage--why go to it,
old dear, but count me out--not only of your personal life but out of
your picture.”

“You’re not such a fool as to threaten to quit work on this picture in
the middle of it, just out of jealous spite over another woman?” He
had raised his voice and it vibrated angrily.

“No, you big nut, I don’t mean that. I’m not going to cut off my nose
to spite my face just out of jealousy, but I’ll do it in a jiffy if
there’s real foundation for that jealousy.”

“You mean, if you found out that I’m interested in Margot
Anstruther--let’s say, for the sake of argument, in love with
her--you’d leave me and my big picture high and dry, and I’d have to
begin the thing all over again with another actress?”

“Exactly!” Corinne’s voice was crisp and cool. “And I have a sweet
picture, dear Freddie, of what you’d hear from the Superfilm
production manager when he would find out that your infatuation for a
new girl cost the company thousands of dollars.”

“You little devil!” There was nothing jocular in the remark. “Well,
now listen to _me_! If I really cared a damn about this girl Margot,
I’d see you or any other woman in Jericho, before I’d be threatened or
dictated to. But if it’ll smooth your feathers to know the truth, here
it is, little one. Personally, Margot means nothing to me. I’m
interested in her work, and I’ve got a certain curiosity about this
mystery story of hers. Detective stuff _always_ interests me. So if
you see me talking to her, you can be sure it’s either about work in
the studio or about her ghosts. But as to this publicity stunt, we’ve
got to choke it off, and I depend on you, Corinne, to do what you can
with her. Give her a scare, and see what _that’ll_ do.”

The tone of finality in Stoner’s long-winded speech, made Margot run
lightly away from the staircase. The interview between Corinne and
Stoner was probably ended, and the quicker Margot got out of the
danger zone, the better. She hurried back to the front entrance, and
came sauntering in, again walking directly to the end of the stage
where work was going on. She had a vague plan to encounter the
director first, see what he might have to say, then go on to the
interview with the star.

Funny, Stoner telling Corinne that he liked detective mysteries! Just
the opposite of what he’d told Margot.

Coming around the corner of a chrome yellow plaster wall of a Spanish
farmhouse, she almost ran into Stoner. He stared, then bent over her,
with a surly expression.

“You would do it, wouldn’t you! You _would_ be written up, in spite of
what I told you!”

Margot smiled, an enigmatic smile that brought an angry flush to
Stoner’s face. Then she said quietly:

“Don’t you think that the initiative was taken out of my hands by the
arrival upon the scene of the mysterious girl, Stella Ball?”

“That’s got nothing to do with what I mean, Miss Anstruther. You gave
interviews to the reporters, didn’t you?”

“Naturally. They got hold of the story from the police, and they
published a lot of bunk that I went to some pains to contradict.
You’ll find a much more sane story in to-day’s papers.”

“Makes it all the worse. If you’d let the whole thing drop as a silly
pipe dream, after that first night, and sent the police packing,
_nothing_ would have got into the papers.”

“O--h!” Margot opened wide her large gray eyes. “You wish I’d taken
possession of my room as if nothing had happened, and been all alone
to receive and entertain Stella Ball on her informal visit to my
quarters?”

“How could _she_ have hurt you, a thin little thing like that?”

“Thin little thing, like that,” Margot repeated, staring at him.

For a second something flashed in his eyes, or she imagined it, then
he frowned and said testily:

“Well, that’s the way the papers described her, wasn’t it?”

“Oh--yes, of course, I forgot!”

Surely her thoughts were taking erratic twists and turns. Why had she
been struck by an undefined familiarity with the appearance of the
girl Stella, in Stoner’s casual comment? A vague impression, going as
quickly as it had come, and leaving her with the sense of being
somehow a trifle foolish.

“Can’t see,” Stoner went on with the argument, “what there’d have been
particularly scary about having a girl sneak thief come into your
room. You don’t strike me as a coward, Margot. Probably the girl would
have been more scared of you than you of her.”

Margot laughed. Stoner was unconsciously amusing.

“You certainly have it all doped out what I should have done, Mr.
Stoner, under any and all circumstances. But what I did is done, and I
can’t see why all this fuss about it now.”

“You can’t, eh!” He grew threatening. His anger was evidently not far
beneath the surface. “Well, you say that to Miss Delamar. She’s wild.
She’s all primed to give you a good calling down.”

Margot studied him with a deliberately judicious stare.

“Are you _quite_ sure, Mr. Stoner, that Miss Delamar is as wild as all
that?”

“Am I quite sure! Say, how do you get that way?” He seemed to become
slangy in proportion as he grew angry or amorously familiar. “Go on in
and see her, and find out for yourself just how wild she is. She’s
likely to tell you you’re fired.”

She felt that he had over-reached himself, and she took quick
advantage.

“Oh, really! I thought that no one but you had the power to engage or
discharge members of this cast. But if it’s in Miss Delamar’s province
to do what you hint that she may do, why I’ll save her and myself the
boredom of an interview. I can tender my resignation right here and
now.”

“Oh, come on!” He hadn’t expected her to call his bluff, and she
almost grinned into his blustering countenance. “Don’t take a fellow
up so sharp. Don’t be so literal. What I was going to say is this: No
matter how mad she is or what she says, I can calm her down
afterwards. But you’ll have to meet me half way. I’m not going to let
myself in for a scrap with Corinne Delamar, unless you promise me two
things.”

Sheer curiosity to see to what lengths Stoner could conceivably go,
made Margot say with a faint smile:

“_Two_ things! What are they, Mr. Stoner?”

“First, cut loose from this haunted house bunk. It’s going to do you
and all of us harm if you persist in being connected with it. I’d like
to have you forget the thing ever happened.” His words were spoken
calmly enough, but she noted a slight twitching of his face.

Certainly the man was nervous. Probably he drank and smoked too much.
Most persons did.

“I might possibly be persuaded to buy the security of my job in your
picture at that price, although I’d lose a lot of fun.” Her levity
brought no smile to his lips. Then she said: “And what is the other
condition?”

“Well, I suppose you’ll think I’ve got my nerve, but I want you to let
me be your friend, and see you often. I’m not asking to make love to
you--though God knows I’m crazy about you, Margot--but at least give
me the chance to help you as I can’t while you’re running around with
Valery.”

This last offer of selfish patronage of her career was more bald than
previous offers or hints had been, but why let it anger her, she
wisely concluded, giving a non-committal smile.

“You’re very kind, Mr. Stoner. I’ll give the matter thought when I
have more time, and not so many absorbing things to think about. Then
I’ll let you know what I decide to do.”

Her delicate irony did not altogether miss its mark. He scowled
heavily, but apparently could think of no effective retort, so he
stood with shoulders thrown back, and head in air, as she walked off
and left him.

A negro maid edged out of the narrow compartment as Margot entered
Corinne’s dressing room. The star was sitting in a wicker chair beside
a table strewn with cosmetics. A disproportionately large mirror hung
above the table, flanked by hooks on which were draped a variety of
startlingly gaudy Spanish bolero-jackets and shawls. There seemed to
be no place for a visitor to sit, so Margot stood, in graceful and
well-bred disregard of having to stand.

Corinne was certainly beautiful, Margot thought, looking down at her.
Margot was always generous in her enthusiasm over another woman’s
beauty or charm. The star might be somewhat over thirty, but her
strange gold-colored eyes, her ivory-palid cheeks and throat, and her
fierce red pouting lips, had all the splendor of early youth.

For an appreciable moment, Corinne did not even turn her head. Then
she twisted slowly around in her chair, and looked up at Margot out of
narrowed eyes. Her voice was modulated to the velvet softness of the
woman whose pose is to appear better bred than she is.

“Miss Anstruther,” she began softly, “I understand that this wild
story about you in the papers is the result of a play for publicity.
Doesn’t it strike you as taking an unpardonable liberty, while you
have a part supporting me?” At least she had gone directly to the
point.

“Who has given you to understand such a thing, Miss Delamar? It’s Mr.
Stoner, isn’t it?”

“Yes. What of it?” Corinne’s voice was a trifle less suave.

Of a sudden, and most unexpectedly, Margot wanted intensely to
convince Corinne, even to propitiate her, not at all for professional
reasons, but because of some deep and mysterious urge to make a friend
of the young woman, whose antagonism she had so unwittingly aroused. A
swift decision came to her. She would tell the star her so-called
ghost story, from beginning to end, or rather to the point it had
reached. She would offer neither explanations nor excuses, she would
stick to narrative and description of the persons in her little drama.

“Miss Delamar,” she began gently, “will you be kind enough to let me
tell you frankly just what has happened? I’m sorry if I’ve done
anything to annoy you, but I’d really like you to know the facts at
first hand.”

Corinne stared at her intently, then she said, pulling out a stool
from under the table:

“Please sit down. I’m sorry I haven’t a comfortable chair. I’ll be
glad to hear what you have to say, Miss Anstruther.”

Margot’s shrewd and watchful eyes did not miss the brightening of
Corinne’s eyes, or the eager play of her lips, as she listened to the
odd and arresting tale. She had held the star’s interest and she had
won her trust, at least, so far as her mysterious adventure was
concerned.

“You certainly put the whole thing in a different light, Miss
Anstruther. I’ll talk to you again later in the week. I want to think
over the matter.”

Margot could not restrain the impulse that made her bend over, with an
eager smile, as she stood up to go, and say:

“Please do your own thinking, unassisted by Mr. Stoner. For some
reason he’s determined to put me in the wrong in this matter and make
me drop the investigation. I don’t know what it’s all about, but I
can’t see why he’s so keen about it.”

At her first words, Corinne’s eyes flashed angrily, but it became
clear to her that Margot meant no personal offense, and she nodded a
good-by with the first amiable smile that she had ever conferred upon
Margot.

On the trip back to town, Margot felt suddenly tired and depressed.
Such a fuss and bother and so much confusion to face in the immediate
future. She hated rows. She hated having people dislike her or suspect
her of mean motives. A sudden overwhelming yearning rushed over her,
for the mother who had died when she was sixteen. She had loved her
mother, and she had needed her always, but the years in their swift
passing, had made her more self-reliant and less given to lonely
meditation.

With a return to her normal cheerfulness, Margot put her key in the
lock of the front door, and ran up to her room. Gene, the dear boy,
was coming to take her to dinner. Her glance fell on a yellow telegram
on the table. She ran to it, tore it open and read:


 _Terribly sorry. Can’t come for dinner. Stoner requires that I work in
 the studio to-night. Been transferred to another unit. See you
 to-morrow night without fail._

                                                   Gene.


Now, what in creation did that mean! It was most unusual to transfer a
camera man to another unit, in the middle of a picture. Of course it
was done occasionally, but rarely. Besides, why did Stoner call upon
Gene at such short notice! He seemed to be under her feet at every
turn.

She had dinner alone, then returned to her room, after a brief but not
to be avoided conversation with Mrs. Bellew, on the subject of
reporters and other kindred matters. Margot had some mending to do,
and it struck her with ironic force, that, in the midst of so much
mental confusion, she should be sitting alone in the so-called
“haunted” house, mending her stockings.

About a half hour later a tap sounded on her door. Wondering if it
could be Gene, after all, or another message from him, she opened her
door. On the threshold stood Stoner, the landlady vaguely and
apologetically in the dim background of the hall.




 CHAPTER IX.
 HIDDEN MOTIVES

Frederick Stoner stood on the doorsill, holding hat and stick, and
striving to smile as if his presence on the threshold of Margot’s room
was the most natural of all natural happenings.

In Margot’s gray eyes, surprise changed swiftly to a cold dismissal.
Her aloofness and her obvious disinclination to make the most
perfunctory gesture of welcome, brought the landlady forward from
where she stood in the shadows of the hall. She put a nervous,
apologetic hand on Margot’s arm.

“The gentleman said that he was a friend of yours, and your boss, out
where you do your play acting. And he said he must see you most
particular to-night. And I saw him when he come to your party, so I
thought it was all right and I brought him up stairs, my dear.”

“It’s all right, Mrs. Bellew. Wait a minute, please,” she added
hastily seeing the landlady’s gentle movement toward the head of the
stairs. Margot turned steely eyes on Stoner. “What is it you wish to
see me about, Mr. Stoner?”

He fumbled his hat and he fumbled his reply.

“Why--er--it’s about--in relation to--this matter of the--the mystery
you’re trying to solve, Margot.”

“What do you mean? Another warning such as you gave me this morning?”
Her gaze did not waver nor grow less coldly repellent. It was one
thing to use diplomacy with Stoner on his own ground, the studio, but
when he had the impudence to force himself upon her privacy, without
permission or even warning, no diplomacy was required.

“Not that at all,” he said hastily. “Nothing of that sort, Miss
Anstruther. I’ve taken the liberty of calling on you to tell you of
something that’s occurred to me that may be helpful to you.”

She frowned, a little puzzled by his manner and his remark. Odd of
Stoner, the aggressive, self-sufficient Stoner, to conduct himself in
so Uriah Heepish a manner. No unbending came to her reception of him.
She stood guard over her threshold with senses alert and watchful.

“I don’t think I quite understand. Helpful in what way? Just what do
you mean, may I ask?”

He drew himself up and took a firmer grip of his position. Margot read
in the pursing of his thick lips, his realization that his deference
to her wasn’t getting him anywhere.

“After seeing you to-day, Margot, I had a brainstorm, I guess you’d
call it. Or call it a hunch, or anything you like. Anyway, something
came into my head, and I couldn’t wait to tell you all about it. I’ve
got an idea it may go far to clear up your mystery.”

Mrs. Bellew’s shuddering gasp and quick approach to Margot made her
smile. She decided to ask Stoner to come into the room, but the
landlady must come also.

“Very well, if you’ve something interesting to tell me, Mr. Stoner,
I’m willing to listen to it. Won’t you come in? You also Mrs. Bellew.”
She stood aside to let them enter, but Stoner drew back.

“Sorry,” he said quickly, “but what I have to say is strictly
confidential.”

Perhaps it was the terseness of his refusal to talk before Mrs. Bellew
that decided Margot to interview him unchaperoned. If he had
expostulated with excuses or supplications, she would have let him go.
He seemed in earnest, and determined, and her quickly aroused
curiosity where he was concerned, decided her to dismiss Mrs. Bellew.
She turned to the eager dame with a kindly smile.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Bellew, but if Mr. Stoner feels that he can’t discuss
the matter except with me, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to let me
withdraw my invitation.”

With the door closed on the landlady’s retreating figure, Margot
wished for a second that she had refused to receive Stoner alone.
However, what did it matter! What could he do to her anyway! She
indicated a place for the bestowal of his hat and coat, then sat down,
pointing to a chair a few feet from her. The preliminary rites of
asking permission to smoke, and lighting his and her cigarette, left
them at last with the blue haze of smoke and an awkward silence
between them. Then Margot asked him what it was he had thought might
be of significance in the clearing up of her mystery.

“Well, Margot, by the time I’ve told you what I’ve doped out, I hope
I’ll be able to share honors with you and Mr. Sherlock Holmes. I
didn’t know I had it in me, but from what I’ve heard of the details of
your story, I believe I’ve hit on something that you haven’t even
thought of.”

“What _is_ it?” She was growing impatient.

“Just a minute now. I don’t want to make a fool of myself. I’ve got a
theory and I believe it’s workable, but I’m not going to spill it
without having some chance to verify it for my own benefit. Of course
I’ve read the stuff in the papers, but I want to see the room for
myself, and make certain observations before telling you what I
think.”

Margot’s reasoning powers and sense of justice told her that either
she must dismiss Stoner and his theories forthwith, or, if curious to
learn what his theory was, and willing to believe in his sincerity in
the matter, then she must let him do what he suggested doing, for
obviously one couldn’t be sure of a theory holding water if it was
built on hearsay and second-hand descriptions. It would do no harm to
show him the room, in any case. The policeman on guard wouldn’t care
whom she brought. So she told Stoner that she would show him the room,
but that he would have to make his inspection in the presence of the
policeman.

They went to the floor below, knocked and were admitted by one of the
men who alternated with Quinlan and Boyle. The room was dimly lighted.
Evidently it had been decided not to keep guard in the darkness, at
least during what the Irishman called the “shank of the evening.”

Margot watched Stoner throw a swift, appraising look over the room. He
turned to her saying:

“You’ve left all your own things down here, haven’t you?”

“Everything but my personal effects. It seemed best that way.”

Stoner addressed the cop with genial familiarity.

“Mind if I give this place the once over? Here, have one?” He gave the
cop a fat cigar. “I’ll have a squint behind the bed first off the bat,
I guess.”

Margot couldn’t repress a smile of vast amusement, seeing the heavy
bulk that was Stoner, get down on all fours and look under the bed. He
got to his feet and pulled out the brass bed. Then again he got down
on the floor, looked at the walls and along the baseboard. He had the
air of doing all this as a matter of form, because all the rest had
done the same thing. He turned to Margot with a wave of his arm at the
bed, then said, as he pushed the bed back in place:

“Just eliminating. Have to look at every detail of course, the way the
rest of the Sherlocks have been doing. Now for something more to the
point.”

He walked to the door leading to the roof-garden, then walked back to
the bed, slowly pacing off the distance. Then he returned to the door,
opened it and went out on the roof. Margot could see him gazing at the
houses across the way, whose rear windows could be seen with curtains
drawn back and bright lights shining. He re-entered the room and went
to the window, looked out, then squatted down as he was accustomed to
do when looking from certain angles at scenes he was about to have
shot. He peered through his hands at the bed and at the floor beside
the bed, and again he looked out of the window.

By that time the policeman was gaping in sheer astonishment at the
antics of this strange man. Margot, not in the least impressed but
wondering what Stoner was getting at, waited in silence. Then he
walked to the bed and stood looking down at the rug.

“Show me exactly where you saw that light--where you saw the hand tap
the light out.”

Margot showed him.

“Do you sleep with your shade up?”

“Yes, usually, so it won’t flap with the window open.”

“When you leaned over the side of the bed to look for the match you
dropped, did you reach your arm over the side a ways before you saw
the hand?”

Wondering what he had in his mind, but convinced now that he had
something more than an idle curiosity, or a ruse to visit her against
her will, Margot told him that so far as she remembered, she did
stretch out her arm over the side of the bed before she saw the hand.

“Humph! I thought as much.” He grinned with satisfaction, and gave the
policeman another cigar. “Now, Margot, I’ve got every reason for
feeling sure of my little theory. Come over here a minute.” He walked
to the window, opened it, and pointed across the way.

“See that house over there, directly in line with this window?”

“Yes,” said Margot, vaguely, standing behind him.

He turned, looking back at the bed.

“See that place on the rug where you saw the light? Right in a line
with this window, isn’t it?”

Margot nodded, seeing that his comment was correct. A dim suspicion of
what he had in mind, had come to her, and with it a slight quickening
of interest in what more he had to say.

“Well, go on. What’s the answer?”

“My dear young lady, not here. In your present abode, if you don’t
mind.”

Simple and natural of course. No reason why he should air his theory,
good or bad, before the policeman. Again Margot’s reason made it
impossible for her to refuse his request. As the door closed on them,
and he sat once more in her easy chair, he smiled, a long, slow smile
of utter contentment.

“Don’t keep me in suspense,” she said with a little laugh.

“Now listen carefully. Anyone standing at the window of that floor in
that house I pointed out to you, could flash a light straight into
your room. With the clever use of a burning-glass, a spot from a
calcium light backed by a reflector could be made to move about and do
queer stunts on that rug where the policeman saw the light. You were
half asleep you said, and it all happened in a jiffy. I’ve seen queer
things done with a mirror.”

She listened, amazed at the ingenuity of his theory.

“But the arm and hand. Calcium light and a burning-glass can do a good
deal, but they can’t manufacture hands and arms.”

“Why, my dear girl, I’m surprised at you. You’re too smart to ask such
a question! You put your arm over the side of the bed, to reach for
the match. Well, it’s so simple it’s funny! The light and the mirror
threw the reflection of your own arm and hand on the rug.”

“But,” Margot gasped, half convinced. “I _saw_ a hand _tap_ the
match.”

“Sure you did. You saw your own hand tap that match. Don’t you
understand? You saw an apparently ghostly arm and hand on the floor.
You were scared stiff, and you didn’t know after that _what_ you did
or didn’t do. Automatically you did the very thing you’d started out
to do--put out the match. Of course you thought you saw another hand
do it. Isn’t it clear?”

Margot almost thought it was, but she wasn’t quite sure.

“How about the hand and arm seen by Boyle?”

“Good Lord! That doesn’t need much explaining, seems to me. Case of
superstitious fear. You’d told how _you_ saw the hand, so when the
calcium light flashed again--pleasant little practical joke, by the
way--it stands to reason, doesn’t it, that Boyle imagined the same
thing you saw, even to tapping out the light.”

The logic of the argument was evident, and the theory as to the
calcium light and the mirror fairly reasonable. Margot felt sure of
that. But deep down in her consciousness was a strange conviction, and
it grew as she listened to Stoner and watched his face. It was the
conviction that his theory was actually false, that Stoner knew it was
false, and that for some reason too obscure to imagine, he was intent
upon convincing her of its validity. The queer sensation of distrust
of the man was stronger than ever before.

She knew what she must do. She must not let him guess her distrust of
him--foundless as it actually was--nor let him realize that every
instinct she possessed was ranged against the sincerity or
plausibility of his amazing theory. So she smiled sweetly and said:

“You’re tremendously clever, Mr. Stoner. I’d never have thought of
such a thing in a thousand years. I shall certainly follow up your
theory. It will be easy to find out who lives in that house and in
that apartment, and look into the matter of the calcium light.”

“Good Lord, you wouldn’t be so foolish. You don’t suppose anyone given
to practical jokes like that is going to admit it. You’d never find
out or prove a thing. My only idea in telling you about it is to help
you eliminate other theories that may lead you into all sorts of
trouble and waste of time.”

“I see,” she said softly, watching his face through the smoke from her
parted lips, her eyes half closed. “And of course, even if we did
succeed in proving that the lights were a practical joke, and even if
I were convinced that I saw my own hand put out the match, in a moment
of hysteria, that wouldn’t any of it explain the entrance into my room
by way of the roof, of Miss Stella Ball, would it, Mr. Stoner?”

His thick lips pouted. His eyes glowered at her.

“You don’t think much of my theory, after all, do you?”

“Yes,” she said quickly. “I think it’s a marvelous theory, and I think
it ought to be given due consideration. But I think that there are
other things to consider also.”

“What, for instance?”

“Well,” she said slowly, “I’ve still got a little theory of my own
about Stella Ball being in some way connected with what I saw.”

“Ridiculous!” His exclamation was almost savage in its disgust. “What
in the name of God _could_ she have to do with it--a common midnight
marauder--a little sneak thief!”

“Well, that’s all got to be proved, Mr. Stoner.”

“Do you mean to say,” he stared at her, “that you persist in going on
with this silly investigation?”

Quickly she decided to lie to him.

“Well, perhaps you’re right. Perhaps it would be a waste of time, and
do me harm. Perhaps I’d better take your advice, Mr. Stoner.”

She hadn’t imagined what her sudden meekness would bring forth. He
sprang to his feet, went toward her with outstretched arms and bent
over her murmuring:

“You’re a darling. You do care a little for me, don’t you?”

Margot got to her feet without confusion or haste. She stepped out of
his reach and said quietly:

“Mr. Stoner, you must really understand that I don’t permit any man to
come to my room alone to make love to me. I let you in because you had
something important to tell me. Now please leave this love business
out of it altogether.”

For a moment he stood still looking at her. Then he said:

“Look here, Margot! Is this stuff about being alone in your room, the
truth, or are you stalling because you won’t let me make love to you
here or anywhere else?”

She hesitated. “Let’s talk about that some other time,” she said
gently.

“No! You’ll tell me here and now. Valery comes to your room, doesn’t
he! I’m crazy about you, girl. I can’t stand it, I tell you.”

There was no mistaking the look in his eyes. No matter what he had
come for, nor what his motives might be for elaborating the theory
about the lights, she had now to deal with a man whose passions were
something to be reckoned with. She moved a step farther away from him.
It was an unwise move. Suddenly, and without warning, he sprang across
the space between them, seized her, and crushed her in his big arms.
She struggled, but he was stronger than she, and he pinned her arms to
her sides, and kissed her with furious, pent-up desire; kissed her
mouth, her throat, her shoulder, all the time drawing her over to the
couch against the wall.

Margot would not scream. It would be a senseless thing to do. With all
her rage and strength she fought him. She tore one hand free and with
all her force struck him across the mouth. The pain of the blow was
nothing, but the fact that she would strike him seemed to change the
current of his passion. He let her go and stood looking at her, wiping
the blood from his cut lips with his handkerchief.

“Some men,” he said slowly, “like to be hit and even bitten by a woman
when she’s angry. I don’t, not when it’s clear that the woman hasn’t
any use for me. I’m through trying to make love to you, Miss Margot
Anstruther. And I’m through with a few other things too.”

“You had no right to force your kisses on me,” she said quietly.

“Let that pass. I’ll give you one more chance. Will you or will you
not, try to like me and promise to marry me later on?”

“Good Heavens, no!” she said, with so much sincerity that it was like
a dash of cold water in his face. He stared angrily, then he said:

“Just one thing more. Will you or will you not, drop this damn
foolishness about this mystery stuff?”

“I will not drop it,” she said with quiet defiance.

He walked to where he had thrown his hat and coat, and picked them up.
Then he stood glowering at her across the room.

“That’s all, then. Consider yourself fired from the Superfilm Company.
And Valery will find a notice for himself to-morrow morning. I’m damn
sorry I gave you the job that day, instead of Lulu.”

“You had your good reasons for that, Mr. Stoner.” Before he could
speak, she added quickly: “Why punish Gene for what I’ve done?”

“Because I can get at you through him. Also because I’m sick of the
very sight of him. But any time you change your mind about marrying
me, just let me know. You’ll get your job back if you do.”

With that he stalked out of the room.

For a long time after Margot put out her light, she lay in the
darkness thinking. Strange and ingenious that theory of Stoner’s, but
far stranger still the motive under the theory. She knew now, she felt
it deeply, that he had some motive, other than his desire to force her
to drop the case. At least--her thoughts grew a little confused as she
grew less wakeful--it wasn’t like that exactly. His motive for
advancing the theory was obviously to make her drop _her_ theories,
and the motive back of that was what she couldn’t fathom. Well--if for
a moment she had been intrigued by Stoner’s theory, even to the point
of taking it seriously, she had swung back to a rational contemplation
of him and his theories. As to her own, they were something to take up
with Gene the next day. Poor Gene! It was a shame. But he’d get a job
with some other company, and so would she. But not till she’d solved
the mystery of the arm that tapped the lighted match--the arm that
most positively was _not_ her own.

As on the night before, her last waking memory was of those strange,
pale eyes of Stoner’s, looking at her through a mist of hidden thought
and motive and desire.




 CHAPTER X.
 A WITNESS FROM THE DEAD

A long night because of long, long thoughts, then a few hours of
sleep and then waking, to see the sun shining through her window.
Margot wondered, as she examined her face in the two foot mirror, just
how many more sleepless nights she could stand without showing the
effects of it. Well, at least she didn’t have to rush over to the
studio and be irritated by Stoner. It was a shame of course, that she
was the cause of Gene being fired, for Stoner would undoubtedly put as
many spokes in Gene’s wheel as possible. But he already had the
reputation of being a clever camera man, and he’d make another good
connection in spite of Stoner.

As to herself, Margot worried not at all. She was sorry to leave the
charming “Conchita” to the mercy of some substitute who might not
understand her passionate Latin temperament as well as
she--Margot--understood it, but, oh, what did it all matter! The
reflection of herself as a passionate Spanish girl made Margot grin in
delighted mockery of her own conception. Of course--she had no doubt
about it--she was quite capable of feeling intensely when the right
man and the right hour should come along, but Spanish girls didn’t
have to have the scene so carefully laid. Was it that American women
were really cold, or that Spanish women were less fastidious? As to
dear old Gene, was he the right one, and was she waiting only for the
hour to strike?

She had reached that point in her reflections, over her coffee and
rolls, in her room, when she was called to the telephone.

As she heard Gene’s voice over the wire, she wondered if it were a
case of thought transference. That very moment as he was calling her,
she was thinking intently about him.

“Hello, that you, Margot? Say, there’s the devil to pay out here. I’m
calling from Astoria. I’ve been given the sack and not a reason
offered. And the report out here is that you’ve had the same dirty
deal. Is it true?”

She told him it was, and asked him to come to her house as soon as
possible; that she had much to tell him, and something for him to do.
His voice sounded more cheerful when he told her that he’d be right
over as quick as he could make train connections.

When Gene arrived she gave him both hands and reached her face up for
his kiss. He gave it eagerly enough, his eyes glowing with joy at the
sight and touch of her. He tried to take her in his arms, but she held
him back and smiled an entreaty that he be patient with her.

“We’ve such a lot to talk about, dear, and so much to do. I promise,
Gene, that just as soon as we clear up the mystery of that old room of
mine, I’ll take your love-making seriously, or else--” She hesitated,
striving to be fair and honest with him.

“Or else you’ll cut out the love-making altogether, is that it,
Margot?”

“Yes, old dear, that’s what I meant, but don’t get humped about it.
Plenty of other bridges to cross first. Who knows, I may discover that
I’m desperately in love with you, when I get all the débris out of my
mind collected there in the last few days.”

Her mood was lightening. Gene always cheered her up. Good sign, she
thought, but she refrained from calling his attention to it. Then she
told him of Stoner’s unexpected call the previous evening. Before she
could expatiate on his avowed reason for coming, Gene exploded.

“So _that_ was his game, keeping me at work in the studio, and
changing me to another unit! I thought it was queer, but I was too
dense to connect it with you, Margot.”

“No denser than I was. It never occurred to me till after he’d gone.
As a matter of fact, he kept my brain too busy with his remarkable
theories, until just before he left, and _then_ he kept _me_ too
busy.”

Gene stared at her, uncomprehending. She laughed at his expression,
then she frowned, remembering with an access of disgust, Stoner’s
physical attempt to force her hand.

“See here, Gene, if he hadn’t fired you I’d not dream of telling you
just what happened last night. But as you’re no longer under his heel
it doesn’t matter _what_ you know. I’ll tell you about my personal
encounter with him first. That’ll clear the deck for the rest of it,
which is really the only interesting thing about last evening.”

She described Stoner’s attack upon her, his love-making, and his cold
fury when she struck him across the mouth. Gene listened with burning
eyes and twitching lips, striding up and down the room as Margot
talked.

“So that’s that, and a jolly good riddance so far as I’m concerned. I
was getting awfully fed-up with his overbearing ways. Until recently
I didn’t dislike Stoner. Of course I could never have been fond of
him, but I liked him--rather--until he antagonized me by his attitude
regarding what occurred, and publicity, and all that. He’s interesting
in a queer, mysterious way. He’s got me guessing as to his real
motives for working up his elaborate theory and coming here with it.
There’s _something_ I can’t reach with my mind, although my
imagination plays with it continually.”

She described to Gene the visit to the “haunted” room, and Stoner’s
antics, which filled the policeman with wondering awe, and made Margot
want to laugh, up to the moment when he explained his theory.

“And the funny thing about it is that on the surface it sounds
reasonable, and it makes you wonder why you hadn’t thought of it
yourself.”

“I suppose,” said Gene thoughtfully, “that such a light _could_ be
sent into a dark room, through an uncurtained window. But it seems to
me that unless you’d lost your wits completely, you’d have known the
difference between a small circular dancing light, and the tiny upward
flare of a lighted match.”

“Of course I would,” she agreed eagerly. “And as to my hand and arm,
really, you know, I’d have to have been utterly mad not to have known
the difference between the shadow of an arm and hand, and the real
thing crawling over the rug.”

“As a matter of fact, it’s all bunk, that idea of a calcium light and
a burning glass being manipulated so as to throw the shadow of your
arm on to the floor.” Gene’s literal type of mind was more inclined to
eliminate the impossible than to consider the possible.

“All the same, there are moments when I wonder a little if it’s not
stupid of me to take such a negative attitude. After all, Gene, mighty
strange things happen, and they’re only strange to those who can’t
understand. I don’t know--I’m not dead sure--that a light couldn’t be
thrown just as he described, and work the same odd tricks. If I were
as sure of Stoner himself as I am of my limited knowledge along such
lines, I’d be inclined to accept his theory, at least to prove or
disprove it, with an open mind.”

“You mean that you think he had a hidden motive for propounding his
theory?”

“Yes, and besides, he admitted to having given me his theory,
expecting that it would clear up the mystery and cause me to drop
further investigation, or words to that effect. Now, what puzzles me
is whether he wants me to drop the whole thing because of the
publicity, or whether he’s using that reason as a screen to his real
one.”

“Good Lord! You make him out a man of mystery with a subtle brain.
That’s far-fetched, dear girl. He’s the most obvious person I know. He
probably concocted that ingenious theory with the hope of convincing
you and making you drop the whole thing, but I’ll bet a good deal that
he’s incapable of anything more intricate or sinister than that.”

“May--be!” Margot puckered her forehead, and her eyes had a far-seeing
expression in their gray depths.

“Well, let’s drop that man for five minutes, him and his theories.”
Gene sat down with an impatient sigh, and lighted a cigarette with
nervous fingers. “I think it’s about time you gave me the benefit of
your own theories, Margot. I’d be grateful to you if you’d give me
something to think about besides Stoner and his damn nerve coming here
and trying to make love to you. Nice picture before me of his kissing
you against your will!”

Margot’s sudden laugh brought an angry light to Gene’s somber eyes.
She leaned toward him and put her hand over his with a little pressure
of her fingers, and a smile that strove to express contrition, and
failed.

“Silly old thing! Where’s your logic, even if you’ve mislaid your
sense of humor. If he’d kissed me _not_ against my will, then you
_would_ have something to groan over. And it’s darn lucky for you,
little one, that you make it _very_ clear that you believe it _was_
against my will, for if you didn’t, you know what would happen, don’t
you, Gene?”

“I believe you,” he said sullenly, “but if Stoner and I had to meet
very often, with you between, something would break sooner or later.”

“Well, don’t worry. I’m through with Stoner, and so are you. Now, as
to my theories. I’ve got something first I want you to do for me. If
you can spare the time I want you to go personally to police
headquarters, and make arrangements for Hart and his crowd to meet
here at five o’clock. Hart hasn’t been here himself for some time. He
scorns the case. But you argue that brilliant sleuth into coming.
Flatter, cajole him. Tell him I want to call his attention to
important new evidence. Make positively sure that he’ll be here
himself!”

“You’ve actually got something up your sleeve?”

“If my powers of deduction haven’t failed me--yes.”

“All right. I’ll have Hart here if I have to blackjack him and hire a
wheelbarrow. And right now, I’m off to look for another job.” He rose
and went toward her, holding out his hands.

“Oh, Gene, listen.” She was on her feet beside him. “Have you enough
to rub along on for a short time?”

“Sure I have, but I don’t want to give Stoner the satisfaction of
thinking I can’t land another job as good as or better than the one he
dished me out of, hot off the reel.”

“Oh, bother Stoner or what he thinks. In the first place, Gene, I may
need every bit of your time in the next few days, and secondly I’ve
got a sort of feeling that you’d better hold off about another job.
It’s just one of my queer hunches, but if you don’t mind very much,
and if you can rub along for a while, I do wish you would--dear.”

When she said “dear” with precisely that intonation, he would have
agreed to commit murder, and he told her so.

Margot spent the intervening hours writing letters and getting mental
relaxation in a moving picture house. Nothing, she had found, was
quite to be compared with the average movie for complete lulling of
all the senses, not to mention the brain.

At a quarter to five Gene came to her room and told her with boyish
glee that he had corralled Hart and the others, and brought them to
the house in a taxi. They had even stopped at the station house of the
district to pick up Quinlan and Boyle. They were all downstairs in her
old room, waiting for her.

Eager and impulsive, Margot flew to Gene, threw her arms around his
neck and gave him a little hug and a quick kiss on his mouth. No use
to hold her, and prolong the kiss. Like a firefly she was off and
away, running down the stairs while Gene caught his breath and darted
after her.

Hart stood by the mantelpiece, a sarcastic grin and a stiff bow, his
greeting to Margot.

“Understand you’ve got something for us that we weren’t bright enough
to find for ourselves, Miss Anstruther.”

“I believe I have, Mr. Hart.” Her smile was as sweet as her low voice.
“But I’m wondering if you’ll take orders or even suggestions from a
mere woman.” Her sarcasm was on a par with his, so could not fail to
reach him.

“You mean you’re going to ask us to do certain things?”

“Well--yes,” she said meditatively, “I rather think I am, if you don’t
mind.”

“Anything in reason.”

“There are places I want you to examine.”

“Places we haven’t already searched?”

“Yes. You’ll have to get a crowbar.”

“We shouldn’t wreck this woman’s house, Miss Anstruther.”

“It won’t be necessary,” she said quietly.

Hart’s scorn became more obvious, but he sent one of his men to borrow
the implement at a nearby hardware shop. Then Margot, who had remained
silent while the man was out getting the crowbar, pointed to the brass
bed.

“Please move that aside and turn back the rug. I don’t think you’ll be
disappointed, Mr. Hart.”

“Trapdoor, eh,” Hart muttered. “That your idea?”

“Go ahead and look,” she said quickly.

Hart made no move toward the bed. He stood looking at Margot with
shrewd, quizzical eyes. Then he said:

“You had a man up here last night, I understand, taking measurements
and giving the place an inspection.”

“Yes.” Margot’s monosyllable was spoken with a friendly inflection.

“Private detective?”

“Oh, dear no!” She could not suppress a smile at thought of Stoner in
the rôle of private detective.

“What’s the joke?” Hart neither looked nor spoke as if he considered
it one.

“No joke at all, Mr. Hart.” She became suddenly very grave. “Merely a
casual visitor who had heard what happened to me and wanted to look
over the ground himself. Just curiosity.”

“My man who was here last night, said that your friend did certain
things and made comments that sounded as if he had some theory about
your ghost. Was it your friend who suggested the trapdoor?”

“No. He did have a theory, but it followed very different lines.”

“Well, give us his theory. I’d like to hear it,” Hart spoke a little
brusquely.

“It’s an entirely personal matter, Mr. Hart, and in my opinion doesn’t
bear on this case at all. At any rate, I’m conceited enough to prefer
my own theory. If nothing comes of it, then we can look into the one
advanced by my caller last night.”

Hart gave her a long, speculative look, then, without another word, he
told two of his men to push back the brass bed.

The men pulled out the rug which covered the drab old carpet that
extended to the wall on both sides. Then they ripped at the carpet
where it was tacked down around the edges. In a few minutes they had
bared the planking. A thick layer of dust covered the floor, yet even
through the dust, dark stains were visible. Clearly defined as well,
was a square outline some two feet each way, near the wall where the
head of the bed had been.

Hart turned abruptly to Margot.

“Have you known about this all along?”

“No, I haven’t. I merely reached the conclusion that some such thing
must be there.” Her steady look at him seemed to say that such a
conclusion was too simple and obvious to have evaded any mind trained
to such analysis.

Hart went down on his knees and began to prod with his fingertips.

“Seems to be stuffed with some kind of wadding. Looks as if it hadn’t
been touched for months.” Hart spoke without looking up. He was intent
on the discovery they had made.

“Suppose you open it,” Margot suggested quietly.

An atmosphere of mystery amounting to horror pervaded the room. Gene
stared from Hart on his knees, to Margot standing erect and watchful.
Quinlan and Boyle frowned fiercely and strove to preserve a stoicism
which made Margot want to laugh, even though she trembled with
excitement. Eager to a point where it was difficult to restrain her
mad desire to find what lay under all that dust and wadding or
whatever it was, nevertheless she felt a cold, shuddering dread of
what they might discover.

Hart rose to his feet and asked for the crowbar. With the help of one
of his men he drove it down into a crack. They heaved and wrenched,
then with so little final effort that it seemed as if mystery and
horror laughed and mocked their struggles with the crowbar, a trapdoor
lifted and fell over on the floor; an indubitable trapdoor it was.

For once, Hart lost his superior air of composure. He spoke quickly,
with excited gasps.

“There’s a big compartment here. Looks as if it’s hollowed from the
central stone support of the house.”

Margot was on her knees beside him, and Gene was standing over her.

“Look and see what’s in it,” she commanded.

Hart reached into the hole and drew out a fire ax, such as hangs
beside a bucket of water in the hallways of public buildings.

“There’s that,” he muttered, holding the ax up for inspection.

He reached again into the hole, probed eagerly, then gave a sudden cry
of surprise and loathing. He drew his hand out with a desperate jerk
and dropped a horrifying object on the floor. Margot suppressed a
scream, and Boyle didn’t. His cry was almost a wail as if he had seen
the Banshee in his own country. Gene bent swiftly and drew Margot to
her feet, holding her against him. No one looked at anyone else. There
was something else to look at.

On the floor, where Hart had dropped it, was the severed and withered
arm of a woman. A desiccated, mummy-like arm. The hand was tightly
clenched. On the upper side it was marred from wrist to knuckles by a
huge burn resembling a chocolate-colored birthmark.

No one spoke, no one stirred, no one removed his gaze from the object
on the floor--a gaze of horror and utter confusion of thought and
emotion. Margot shuddered and pressed closer to Gene. Then she
whispered to him. The power of reasoning had returned with a flash of
insight. The silence of the room was broken by a low, agonized moan.

“God have mercy on us all!” It was Shane Boyle, down on his knees in
an attitude of prayerful supplication. “Sure, it’s the ghost of this
arm we’ve been seein’.”

“The arm it is, I say, of Stella Ball.” Strange that it should have
been the material-minded, slow-witted Quinlan who spoke.




 CHAPTER XI.
 WHOSE HAND?

For a few seconds no one spoke, either to contradict or agree with
Quinlan. And no one stirred or removed his gaze of stunned surprise
and fascinated loathing from the severed arm, with its hand clenched
and disfigured by so unsightly a scar.

Hart turned a sudden look upon Margot, a look of penetrating
suspicion, that made Gene frown angrily, taking a step forward and
holding firmly to Margot’s arm. Hart’s expression was easy to
interpret, but it was such an unexpected turning of the tables that,
for a second, she could not cope with it.

“May I inquire, Miss Anstruther, if this is a pleasant little
practical joke you’ve staged for our benefit, with the obvious
intention of keeping yourself in the limelight, or if it’s just the
last act in a comedy you began a few nights ago, from the same
motive?”

Margot’s face flamed with an intensity of anger she had not supposed
herself capable of. Gene gave a low exclamation of indignant disgust,
and made a threatening movement nearer to Hart. She drew him back and
whispered to him to let her handle Hart. Her breath came short and
fast, as she struggled for self-control. It was too outrageous of the
detective, but why should she care what he thought or said? The facts,
so far as they had gone, would prove themselves, and she felt
thrillingly competent to handle the situation from this point to
whatever climax might be lurking in mystery. The hot flow of blood
receded from her face, leaving her calm and very cool, physically and
mentally. She returned Hart’s exasperating stare with an expression as
mild as it was compelling.

“Mr. Hart,” she began quietly, “it will probably be impossible, and
certainly it’s quite unnecessary, for me to convince you of anything
which you’ve made up your mind not to believe. To be quite frank, I
honestly do not think that your opinion of me or of my motives will
make any more difference in the conduct of this case, or its ultimate
disposal, than your opinion makes a difference to me personally.”

Gene squeezed her arm in excited admiration for her spirit and her
clever retort. The other men looked down at the floor, or at the
ceiling or out of the window; anywhere but at Hart. He grew a little
paler, and his mouth twisted with an ugly sneer. Then he seemed to
think better of it, or sudden change came to his mood. His level look
into her eyes was less antagonistic, and his manner conveyed more
respect for the girl who stood so quietly regarding him.

“You still claim that every word you told Quinlan and Boyle that first
night, and all you said subsequently to me, was absolutely true?”

“If my word is of any consequence to you, Mr. Hart, yes, I do still
claim just that.”

“And you knew absolutely nothing about this trapdoor or what I found
down in that hole?”

“Absolutely nothing, Mr. Hart.” Her quiet statement was more
convincing than an oath.

“Well,--I’ll be damned!” Hart sounded quite sincere, and more
mystified than Margot had ever hoped to have him admit, even tacitly.

“Gene, please go downstairs and ask Mrs. Bellew to come up here right
away. And prepare her mind about--that--” she glanced toward what lay
on the floor; “so she won’t get hysterical up here.”

Gene knew from the sudden darkening and widening of her eyes, that her
keen brain had swiftly adjusted itself to the facts, had seized upon
whatever was concrete, and was intent upon pursuing her deductions
without loss of time. As he went quickly to the door, she turned again
to Hart.

“Have you any explanation, Mr. Hart?”

Hart shrugged his thin shoulders, and stared down at the gruesome
object.

“Not yet,” he said laconically. Then he added a little sulkily.
“You’ve sprung a bit of mysterious dirty work on me, and you can’t
expect me to hand out an explanation till I’ve followed up the clues.”

“Surely you regard this discovery as part of the investigation, don’t
you? It isn’t a _new_ case.”

“It’s the first proof I’ve had that there’s anything you could call a
case,” he said doggedly.

“Well, at least you’ll agree with me that sane persons in a strictly
material world, couldn’t possibly conduct this case on the basis of
its having any element of the supernatural.”

Little did Hart suspect that Margot was actually, at that moment,
fighting the temptation to let precisely that element creep into her
emotions if not into her reflections. To speak so scornfully to Hart
of things supernatural, was the best way, she felt, to harden her own
mental attitude.

“I’ve never said or thought that any such foolishness should be taken
seriously for a minute.” Hart was certainly sanely balanced.

A low murmur from Shane Boyle focussed attention on him. He was
crossing himself, his expression between ecstasy and despair. Margot
exchanged a smile with Hart, then she said:

“You agree with Quinlan, don’t you, Mr. Hart, that that horrible arm
down there belonged to the girl Stella Ball?”

“Good God! What next. I’d like to know!”

“It seems clear enough to me,” she pursued slowly. “In fact, that dead
and mutilated thing is as eloquent as if it were a live thing talking
to me.”

“So far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t mean a thing, except that a woman
had her arm cut off.”

“How long ago, could you form any idea?”

Hart stooped and scrutinized the grim relic. He studied the interior
of the recess in the flooring, as well as he could without putting his
head down into it. He stood up finally and spoke with respect for
Margot’s mystery, for the first time since he had come on the case.

“That arm hasn’t decayed. As far as I know anything about it, I’d say
it’s because it’s been in that hole close to the main chimney of the
house, which has preserved a very high temperature and kept the hole
dry.”

Margot followed his deductions with eyes and lips expressing intensity
of interest and the first respect for Hart’s intelligence which he had
so far inspired in her.

“Sounds absolutely logical,” she said excitedly. “How long has the arm
been in the hole, would you say?”

“Well, judging by the condition of the flesh, I’d say about three
months.”

“Good!” She was trembling now from head to foot. “My training in
medical college leads me to agree with you.” She turned at the sound
of the door opening, and swept a quick glance over Mrs. Bellew, whose
eyes were red, her face quivering with nervous fear. Then Margot,
looking from Mrs. Bellew to Hart, and back again to the landlady, said
quietly:

“Stella Ball disappeared from this room exactly three months ago,
didn’t she, Mrs. Bellew?”

“Three months--yes, yes, three months,” the poor woman mumbled, almost
beyond speech as her horrified gaze fixed itself on the desiccated
arm.

“Damn queer coincidence.” Hart seemed to find it difficult to accept
Margot’s deductions.

“Please, Mr. Hart,” she said impatiently, “just for the sake of
argument, admit that there’s more than a coincidence in this. Just
follow me closely. Admitting that this arm was once a part of Stella
Ball’s body, there’s something else to explain. Up to the date of the
crime--of course there’s been a crime! Just look at the way that arm
was severed from the body! Well, up to that time, or, to put it
differently, up to the time she disappeared, so far as Mrs. Bellew can
tell us, neither of her hands was marked in this extraordinary way.
Isn’t that true, Mrs. Bellew?” Margot put her hand gently on the
woman’s trembling arm, trying to soothe her.

“No, no, dearie,” Mrs. Bellew’s voice, weak from shock, dropped to a
whisper. “Her hand was just like yours and mine, dearie.”

Hart stood contemplating the scarred hand. Then he met Margot’s
inquiring eyes.

“What do you make out of it, Mr. Hart?” she asked courteously.

“Granting, as you said, for the sake of argument, that the arm and
hand down there belong to the girl Stella, then I’d say that she must
have been fooling with some sort of acid. Poisoned the hand.”

Margot gave Mrs. Bellew’s arm an encouraging pat, then she went over
and stood looking down at the ugly scar. Suddenly she bent closer.
Someone started to speak and she threw out her hand with a quick
gesture compelling silence. Gene moved closer to her, then he touched
her shoulder and said softly:

“What is it, Margot?”

She stood up slowly, her fine eyes bright with the effort of
concentrated thought and sudden inspiration.

“It’s not an acid burn. I’m sure of that,” she said slowly.

“How can you be sure without a chemical analysis?”

In Hart’s limited way he was certainly more intelligent than she had
supposed.

“You’re right, of course, Mr. Hart, or rather you would be if it
wasn’t for the fact that in my laboratory work I made a special study
for a time, of the effect on skin and flesh of certain acids. Also, I
was much interested in the study of radium burns.”

She stopped, looking significantly from Hart to the hand on the floor.

“You don’t mean--you can’t think that’s a radium burn, Margot!” It was
Gene and not Hart who challenged her obvious deduction; Gene, with
wide, astonished eyes staring at her.

“Yes, Gene, that’s just what I do mean. That’s a radium burn or I know
nothing at all about radium, and I ought to know a good deal about
it,” she asserted calmly.

Hart seemed nonplussed. He looked helplessly from Margot to the floor,
and finally he said:

“Most people know something about radium, enough anyway to realize
that it does very queer things. But this does seem a little too queer
even for radium.”

“Why?” Margot questioned him eagerly. “If you admit or accept all the
other much queerer things about this weird case, I can’t see anything
especially remarkable in Stella Ball having burned her hand with
radium. If you hold it in your hand long enough, it does burn, you
know,” she ended with a smile.

“Held it in her hand long enough,” he repeated vaguely. “What do you
mean? Held it in her hand before her hand was cut off?”

A sound that suggested that someone in the room was choking, brought
Hart’s head around with a jerk to where his men were standing, at
rigid attention. But every face was composed to expressionless
immovability, except that if he had looked a little closer, he would
have caught the faintest quiver at the corners of Quinlan’s broad
mouth--Quinlan with his Irish humor up his sleeve. Margot struggled
desperately with a laugh, then she said, with a conciliating smile:

“Mr. Hart, you’re not Irish, I know, but you’ll have to admit you made
an Irish bull that time. How in the name of glory could the girl have
gotten radium into her hand _after_ it was severed?”

Hart managed a smile. Not so bad for Hart, Margot thought, watching
him. Then he returned to his subject with a new attack.

“Aren’t you running a little wild, Miss Anstruther? Radium! Why,
that’s stuff for scientists! How could people living in a rooming
house get hold of any of it?”

“Such a person might conceivably have stolen it,” she said smoothly.

Of a sudden Hart’s eyes narrowed and his eyebrows met over his eyes.
He stared ahead of him, at nothing apparently, then he met Margot’s
intense scrutiny.

“I’ll tell you what you’re thinking, Mr. Hart, for it’s what I’m
thinking myself. You’ve just remembered that a while ago, the Fellowe
Institute lost some radium, a fraction of a gram in weight, but valued
at $75,000. You’re remembering also that every other particle in the
world is accounted for. I happen to know that the police have been
trying for months to find the thief. May I ask if you haven’t had
orders to watch out for him yourself?”

He stared at her, divided between amazement at what she had said, and
wondering, if slowly dawning, admiration for the girl herself.

“You’re right, I have been. I suppose there’s some connection, but I
can’t see it.” That he should be willing to concede the logic of any
deduction of hers struck Margot as amusing.

“This is what I make out of it,” she said, looking from Hart to Gene.
“Of course I know nothing about the theft from the Fellowe Institute,
except what I read in the papers--what I suppose you both read at the
time. But I’ve got this advantage. I’ve been a medical student.
However, it seems to me if you accept my judgment that the burn is
from radium, you ought to feel as if the trail were fairly hot.”

“Granting that you’re right about the burn, then all I’ve got to say,
Miss Anstruther, is that you’re a clever young woman.”

The detective’s low bow gave Margot a pleasant little thrill. At last
she had conquered his cynical distrust of her, of her motives, and her
theories. It was a gesture of mental as well as physical obeisance.

“I suppose the next thing on the cards,” he said, moving toward the
door, “is to grill the girl Stella--I mean in connection with the
Institute job.”

“Wait a minute!” Margot said eagerly. “Have you a clear idea how a
radium burn is produced, Mr. Hart?”

“Not exactly.”

She told him as simply and briefly as possible that radium eternally
dissipates itself in infinitesimal particles. These pass, she
explained, through anything they encounter; steel or stone are no
obstacles to this stream of atoms. At long range, they are harmless to
human tissues, but if the contact is close, they scorch and kill.

“I get you,” he said, obviously trying to grasp something that eluded
him.

“Not quite,” she said gently. “But you will in a minute, as soon as
you pry open those withered fingers.” She looked down at the thing on
the floor.

Hart stared from her to the hand, and Mrs. Bellew and Boyle gave vent
to low groans, and crossed themselves. In silence--a silence that
vibrated with tense excitement--Hart bent down and tried to open the
tightly clenched hand. It had long been rigid, and Margot saw his
shoulders shake with sudden shrinking disgust. Then he bent back the
fingers just enough to draw from the palm a small object which he held
up to the light. It was a metal container about as large as the
capsule in which druggists sell a dose of quinine.

More dazed than elated, he said doubtfully:

“Looks like what the Institute’s been trying to find.”

“That’s exactly what it is,” Margot said excitedly, taking it from him
and examining it. She handed it back to Hart saying: “Better be
careful of it, Mr. Hart!” She smiled at the nervous haste with which
he laid it in an empty ash tray. “Oh, it’s not that bad. You could
hold it for a while without getting burned. What I meant is to be
careful because it’s so precious. And it’s so small it’s easy to
lose.”

“_Now_, what, Miss Anstruther? I’m inclined to take your orders in
this case from now on.”

“I should say, now go and get Stella Ball and confront her with this
evidence. This may shock her into telling us her story.”

“I’ll have her here right after supper,” said Hart.

“Fine! You’ll find me here, too.”

Margot smiled at Gene, took Mrs. Bellew gently by the arm, and
together the three of them left the room of mystery.




 CHAPTER XII.
 STELLA’S STORY

A comforting assurance to the nervous and anxious landlady, a
promise to let her be present at the grilling of Stella Ball, later in
the evening, and an impulsive little kiss on the poor woman’s pale
cheek, then Margot led Gene to her room, saying that she had something
to tell him.

“Gene, I’ve got a little plan, and it includes you, old dear. We’ve
got two hours before Hart brings that girl here. Of course we’ll have
to have a bite to eat. I’m not hungry--too excited--but you must be,
and I ought to eat anyway. _Then_--” She paused with dramatic
suspense. “Then, my dear, we’ll go to see a motion picture!”

If she had suggested a casual trip to the moon, he couldn’t have
looked at her with more astonishment.

“A motion picture! I thought you hated them, and of all things
to-night, when you’ve got so much on your mind.”

“That might be reason enough, seeing that they usually put me to
sleep. Just what I need right now, to rest my nerves.”

“Oh, all right,” he agreed amiably.

“But,” she said with a laugh, “that _isn’t_ the reason I want to go to
a picture to-night. I want to go to a very _special_ picture. One that
was directed by Stoner.”

“What’s the big idea?” Gene was more mystified than before.

“I’ll tell you later. I missed the first showing of this picture, but
I’ve heard that it contains a curious feature. You know how one idea
gives birth to another, when your mind’s all keyed up? Well, in the
last fifteen minutes, while I’ve been concentrating on what we found
down there in that room, my poor, weak brain’s been literally flooded
with some new and very strange thoughts. Very strange indeed,” she
repeated dreamily.

“You mean--thoughts connected with Stoner?”

“Oh, yes,” she said softly, “very much connected with Stoner. Of
course they’re only _thoughts_--they’re too vague yet to be even
speculations, let alone deductions. Just thoughts, but such very
intriguing ones, Gene.”

“I daresay, when you get ready to, you’ll let me have the benefit of
your precious thoughts.” Gene was just a trifle impatient and she
laughed at him.

“Hold your horses, old darling. All in good time, I’ll share my
thoughts with you, and perhaps other more important things as well.”
She threw him a provocative smile, but evaded his arms, as he plunged
at her, trying to seize her.

“_Perhaps_, I said. In the meantime, as I told you before, my brain’s
fairly reeking with mystery. Come on! Let’s go eat!”

“Just a minute, Margot,” he urged. “Tell me about the picture. What
picture is it? I mean, what’s so curious about it?”

“I can’t tell you now. I want you to see it and get your own fresh
impression from it, without being influenced by any reflection of
mine.”

“What the deuce can a picture directed by that boob have to do with
the mystery of Stella Ball, and your room, and the radium! You’re a
funny kid! Well, come. I’m starved, even if I am madly in love, and
almost insane with curiosity.”

An Italian dinner with red wine served in teacups, made Margot more
irrepressibly tantalizing and irresistibly alluring than usual. The
food was negative, but youth and red wine in a teacup leave the spirit
aloof from such gross material considerations.

They spent only a half hour in the little restaurant, then walked
quickly over to Eighth Avenue, where they found seats in a small
theater for _The Masque of Life_. It was a photoplay of pretentious
melodrama, verging on the grotesque, which had been completed for the
Superfilm Company, some weeks before. It had had a short
run--unhonored and unsung--on Broadway, and was now making the round
of the smaller houses.

Through the tiresome opening reels, Margot sat, sleepily content, her
hand held fast in Gene’s. Then, toward the close of the picture, she
aroused to sudden interest, and gave Gene’s hand a violent squeeze.
She whispered something to him, then she sat very still and intent,
watching the action develop along strange lines.

An inventor was shown at work upon a devilish contraption with which
he planned to destroy New York. Its motive power was to be--_radium_.
The single word was flashed in huge letters across the screen. This
time it was Gene who tightened his clasp on the fingers he held. The
authority of science was acclaimed as the basis for the weird results
obtained by the villain. Certainly there was an uncanny thrill in his
first experiment with his diabolical machine.

It was shown as functioning at night. A mysterious aura glowed about
it. Rays like forked lightning darted from its entrails.

“Good Lord!” Gene’s excited whisper was close to Margot’s ear. “I see
your point!”

“Do you?” she whispered back. “Then work out a theory, but don’t tell
me till later. I want to get a grip on my own ideas first.”

They sat to the end of the picture, and through a Sennett comedy,
because, as Margot explained, she wanted to sit quietly where she was,
until it was time to return to the house. He told her that he’d
probably explode if she didn’t let him tell her something that he was
as sure of as that he held her hand in his. But she whispered, with a
low laugh, that if exploding would relieve his feelings, she’d hate to
stand in his way. As far as comparing notes was concerned--nothing
doing, she said sternly, until later.

At eight o’clock they returned to Margot’s house of mystery. In the
hallway they found Cornelius Hart and Quinlan. Between them stood
Stella Ball. Her eyes were dull and sullen, her mouth bitter. A
handcuff was fastened to her left wrist, while the other end dangled
uselessly.

“You said you wished to speak to this girl, Miss Anstruther,” said
Hart casually. “She’s at your service.” Margot accepted his veiled
remark as a suggestion that she take charge of Stella.

Evidently Hart had been careful to raise no suspicion in Stella’s mind
that she was to be subjected to a test of any kind. Black-browed and
fierce, her glance swept over the faces of the men, then rested on
Margot’s with defiant scorn. Margot, open-minded at all times, and
generous in her estimates, found it quite natural that this young
thing--potentially a criminal perhaps, but certainly not a coward in
spirit or flesh--should regard a girl of Margot’s class with the
disdain that those who dare much feel for those who are sheltered from
all daring.

Stella had grown thinner and paler in jail. Her stubborn will seemed
unbroken. Her thin lips parted as if the impulse moved her to protest
against she knew not what. Then her mouth shut stubbornly, and she
gave Hart an ugly look. She promised to be a difficult subject, that
much was sure. Margot tingled at the prospect of the encounter. It
would be even more thrilling than she had anticipated.

“I’m sure,” she said gently, “that Stella Ball will be able and
willing to help us clear up certain things.” Her tone was
noncommittal, but her penetrating look into the girl’s eyes was
kindly. “I’ll go up ahead,” she said to Hart. “I just want to take a
look around.”

He understood her intent--to make sure that nothing had been
disturbed--and he, together with the girl, Gene and Quinlan, followed
slowly up the stairs.

Margot found Boyle and another man standing solemnly on guard in the
room where so many fateful things had occurred. How many more were
destined to happen there? she wondered vaguely. Mrs. Bellew was
already in the room. Margot smiled, understanding that the inquisitive
and excited creature was determined not to lose a moment of the new
scene soon to be enacted.

Margot took quiet charge of the situation. She cautioned the landlady
not to speak unless addressed, and asked her to sit still in one
corner of the room, not too far away from the center of the
stage--meaning the brass bed and the trapdoor and the gruesome object
on the floor. She told the two policemen to stand on either side of
the trapdoor. Then she called to Hart to bring in Stella Ball.

The girl had been directed to walk a little ahead of the three men,
thus blocking her only way of retreat. It was inevitable that she
would see the bed pushed out from the wall, the hole in the floor, and
the withered arm lying on the bare planking, on reaching the threshold
of the room. Her foot was scarcely on the doorsill when she jerked
back on her heels and stared with distended eyes.

No one spoke. If what she saw could not shake her, words would be
wasted. The moment of hostile silence was calculated to force
confession, but she seemed unconscious of it. All her senses were
concentrated upon the thing on the floor and its significance to her.
Horror and fear were the emotions most clearly expressed on her
hitherto impassive face. Then it hardened, and her lips grew tight.
She paid no attention to anyone but Hart. At him she looked
accusingly.

“Done me dirt, aint you?” she said coolly. “Got the goods on me, then
brought me here to spring it on me, and watch me jump. Well--whacher
goin’ to do about it?”

Margot came quickly nearer to the girl.

“We won’t do anything about it--I mean we won’t do _you_ any harm if
you’ll tell us what you know. Why did you do it?”

“Do what?” she asked sharply, staring at Margot.

“Oh, of course, you don’t know that we found the radium in that hand
on the floor--_your_ hand, Stella. How did you get hold of it?”

“I’ve been a fence for a long time, that’s how,” she said sulkily.

Margot exchanged a glance of surprised understanding with Gene and
with Hart, then she said gently:

“Tell us how you got mixed up with a crook who stole radium, and how
you lost your arm?”

“I lost it all right,” she said with an expression of such acute
distress that Margot said quickly:

“We’re all awfully sorry for you. But you really must help the law in
every way. If you don’t, I’m afraid it may go hard with you.”

“I told ya before, I aint committed a crime. The law can’t do nothin’
to me.”

“See here, my girl!” Hart spoke impatiently. “Maybe you haven’t done
away with anybody, but being a professional receiver of stolen goods
isn’t one of the things the law smiles at. Better come across and give
us all the dope!”

“We know a good deal about you already,” Margot prompted gently. “We
know that you lived in this room and we know why.” (Margot had jumped
to a certain conclusion in the last few seconds.) “That trapdoor leads
to a place that’s fine as a receptacle for stolen radium, or anything
small like that. We know that you took this room for that sole
purpose.”

“How d’you know?” Stella could not be tripped so easily. “Oh, well,”
she added disgustedly, “I guess it don’t take much savvy to know that
much. But I wasn’t the first one to do it. The woman who was here
before gave me the tip.”

Mrs. Bellew gave a low cry, quickly stifled in her handkerchief.

“You had a confederate in this house, didn’t you?” Margot held the
girl’s eyes as she added slowly: “An elderly man by the name of
Murchison, who lived on the top floor?”

“By jove, Margot, you’re wonderful!” It was unprofessional, but Gene
could not restrain his joy at her acumen. It was easy now to follow
her deductions step by step.

“I got to know him after I come here,” Stella said, staring at the
floor. “He worked in some sort of a hospital, he told me.”

“You mean, don’t you, the Fellowe Institute?” Margot corrected her
gently.

“Yeah, guess that was it. He was a pretty slick pickpocket. Used to
bring me watches and things to keep. Then one day he said he’d swiped
a tube of stuff that was worth more’n fifty thousand dollars. I
thought he was lying till I saw the fuss in the papers about the
radium.”

A gentle question or two from Margot, and the girl told her how she
had hidden the radium in the secret chamber, Murchison having promised
her a big commission when he should sell the stuff. He had told her
that it might take a long time to sell it, because only doctors and
professors would want to buy it, and most of them would be leery about
stolen goods.

Suddenly Stella’s voice trailed off and her face grew very white. She
closed her eyes and a long shudder shook her thin shoulders.

“What’s the matter?” The sympathy in Margot’s voice brought a quick
response.

“I was just thinkin’,” Stella mumbled, “of the night when things went
on the blink.”

“You mean--” Margot took her up quickly, “the night you
disappeared--three months ago?”

“Yeah.” The girl gave her head a sudden upward jerk. Fixing her
haggard young eyes on a spot where the light reflected on the footrail
of the brass bed, she finished her astounding narrative. Her words
came in a quick-running monotone, almost without punctuation. The
substance of her story was this:

Her acquaintance with Murchison had developed during several weeks.
One day he told her to expect him that night at ten o’clock, with a
customer. She had things ready when they arrived. She had turned back
the carpet and opened the trapdoor with an ax. Murchison brought with
him a fat man whom she had never seen. An argument took place between
the two men. The fat man, it seemed, had no idea of buying the radium.
He wanted only to rent it for a week, and he offered Murchison five
hundred dollars. Murchison objected and ended by getting very “sore,”
as Stella expressed it. He told his customer that the deal was off.

Then Stella took a hand in the fray. She was dead broke at the time
and had counted on the commission promised her by Murchison. She took
the part of the strange man, with the result that a real scrap
started. Murchison, although elderly, was strong and wiry, and a match
for the fat man, whose muscles were soft. But between the two of
them--Stella and the stranger--Murchison was kept busy, and Stella
managed to grab the little tube of radium out of his hand. At that
point of her narrative, she moved her gaze from the bedrail to
Margot’s intensely interested eyes.

“The old fool went crazy mad when I did that. He was a sort of a nut,
anyway. The next I knew, he’d got ahold of the fire ax and chopped at
me. I went down on the floor. The blade nicked me at the elbow joint
and went clean through. I started to scream, but somebody put his hand
over my mouth and I fainted. I came to in a private hospital. Never
found out who took me there, but somebody paid the bills and kept me
there till I got well. That’s all I know for sure.”

No one spoke for a brief instant, then Hart said judiciously:

“One or the other of those two crooks must have known something about
putting a tourniquet above the elbow, or you’d have bled to death
through the artery.”

“Of course it must have been one of them who took you to the hospital.
Have you any suspicion at all which of them it was--although it
doesn’t really matter,” Margot added quickly.

“I’d take a bet it wasn’t the old fellow. He was so sore at me I guess
he’d have liked to stick me down that hole along with my arm. Then
too, I don’t believe he’d have dared go to a place like a hospital.
The other guy wasn’t a real crook, or I miss my guess.”

“Did you realize when Murchison chopped off your arm, that the radium
was clasped in that hand?” Margot asked her.

“Well--s’pose I did, if I thought of anythin’ but the pain and the
bleedin’. But when I got my head clear, in the hospital, I figured
they’d be too scared to check up on that. I figured they’d throw the
arm and the ax into the hole, and put back the carpet so’s to hide the
bloodstains.”

“And figuring that way, you broke in here by way of the roof, to get
the radium?” Hart spoke rapidly, then turned to Margot with a slight
inclination of his head. “Excuse me, Miss Anstruther, but my curiosity
got the better of me.”

“It really doesn’t matter who asks the questions, Mr. Hart, or rather
who asks them _first_,” she added with a smile.

“What did you suppose I’d come for?” Stella threw Hart a glance of
amused scorn. “Me health maybe, or maybe me arm? _Sure_, I come for
the seventy-five-thousand-dollar goods. Couldn’t pass up a little
thing like that,” she said with a twisted smile. “There was a good
chance the old devil’d beaten me to it, but it was worth a try.”

Hart asked her if she knew the present whereabouts of Murchison. She
said she didn’t. Then Margot asked her to describe the customer who
had started all the trouble.

“Well,” said Stella, doubtfully, “I can’t just remember what he looked
like, except he was fat--too fat. I hate fat men.” Her gamin sense of
humor made her throw a quick glance from man to man, and add, with a
boyish grin: “Guess I aint steppin’ on anybody’s toes in this room.”

Margot smiled to note the unconscious preening of Hart, who was the
thinnest man of them all. Then she asked Stella if that was positively
all she could remember and to tell them of the events leading up to
and following the dramatic incident of the fight over the radium.

“I’ve told you all I know, s’help me God!”

The thin, worn face of the girl, and her tragic eyes, carried
conviction as no words could have done. Again there came a silence
which Hart waited for Margot to break, but she only stared with dark,
thoughtful eyes, straight before her. Then Hart said respectfully:

“You’ve done a fine piece of work, Miss Anstruther. The rest of this
case should be plain sailing.”

“You think so?” she said gently. “How about the lights on the floor
and the hand that put them out?”

“That seems clear to me,” Hart said confidently. “The radium shone
through the floor and the carpet. You explained to us, you remember,
that radium rays can pierce through anything. I take it that these
rays also revealed an outline of the dead arm--a sort of mirage in the
dark, which, naturally, seemed to you and to Boyle, to extinguish the
flame.”

Margot turned quickly to Gene. “Do you see it that way, Gene?”

“Yes,” he said with conviction. “That part of the mystery was cleared
up, so far as I was concerned, while we were looking at that queer
picture to-night--Stoner’s picture. I took for granted that was what
you wanted me to deduce from it.”

“I’m sorry, Gene, but that _wasn’t_ what I wanted you to get from that
picture. I rather hoped you’d get something else out of it.”

“I did,” he said eagerly, “or rather I _do_, looking back at it in the
light of what’s been thrown on the mystery here, to-night.”

“Righto! We’ll take that up later.” She gave him a warning look, then
turned to Hart.

“It sounds convincing, the way you put it, Mr. Hart, but I’ll have to
tell you that radium cannot project a mirage. Its rays are invisible
to the naked eye, except with the aid of a special apparatus. The hand
and the lights had nothing whatever to do with radium.”

“Holy Mother Mary!” Boyle, indifferent to the stares of his audience
and callous to their amused grins, crossed himself for the third time.
“Then it was a ghost, after all, Miss?”

“That all depends on just what you mean by a ‘ghost’.” Margot’s smile
at Boyle was enigmatic, as she intended it to be, not only to poor
Boyle but to every other person in the room.




 CHAPTER XIII.
 WILL-O’-THE-WISP

The love of drama which lay back of Margot’s histrionic talent, and
which had always made her create situations out of material from which
the unimaginative could weave nothing, now made her eyes shine with
the sheer delight of the artist who first creates and then interprets.
The scientist was in the background for the moment; only the actress
stood smiling and looking from one mystified face to another.

Gene’s puzzled frown changed suddenly to a smile of encouragement and
understanding. He caught her mood and threw it back to her, with a
humorous sympathy that quickened a tenderness for him which flashed in
her eyes and curled the corners of her mouth. It was rather thrilling
to have such an absorbed audience, inclusive of Gene with his adoring
belief in her powers of analysis, and cleverness in general.

“If it won’t bore any of you,” she began, her smile broadening at
their eager denials, “I’ll tell you just what my process of deduction
has been in this case, up to this point. Mr. Hart, what puzzles you
most of all?”

“The matter of the lights on the carpet,” he said quickly.

“Isn’t that funny,” she said, her smile solely for Hart. “That’s just
where I was going to begin my explanation. Well--first of all, the
flame _I_ saw was my own match, of course. But the one Boyle saw was
of a very different character--a most singular character, in fact.
Moreover, if there had been witnesses here at favorable moments, both
before and after, I believe they would have seen it too.”

“Sure, it was just like me own poor luck. I’ll be thinking, that it
was meself was seein’ the quare lights!” Boyle was far too engrossed
with his subject to be conscious of Hart’s glance of disapproval.

“That _was_ a question of luck, you’re right.” Margot smiled at Boyle.
“It was the merest chance that others didn’t see the same thing. Have
any of you ever heard of what is called in Latin the _ignis fatuus_?”

Gene nodded his head, and Hart said: “You mean what’s commonly called
the will-o’-the-wisp?”

“Glory be!” It was Boyle again, irrepressible and oblivious of his
superior’s scowl. “It’s what you’ll be seein’ in graveyards of a dark
night!”

“Some call it a ‘corpse-candle,’” contributed Quinlan, not to be
outshone by his comrade. “There’s many in the auld country that’s seen
it, I’m tellin’ you, Miss.”

“Surely,” agreed Margot. “Millions of people in all quarters of the
world believe in it, and many have seen the thing called
will-o’-the-wisp, but not necessarily in graveyards. I saw it once
myself. I was riding a horse through a dark patch of woods, and the
weird thing came out from the underbrush and shot across the road
right in front of my horse. He shied horribly and almost threw me.”

“What did it look like, Margot?” Gene was trying vainly to make his
own deductions.

“Like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was like a small, live thing,
made of fire, or charged with electricity. It rolled and danced its
way along, keeping close to the ground. The encyclopedias admit that
dead animal and vegetable matter exhales a phosphorescent glow under
certain conditions. They are not sure that it ever seeps up from a
coffin, through several feet of tightly-packed earth, but they don’t
deny the possibility.”

“Anything’s possible, I suppose,” muttered Hart. “I’m just coming to
that conclusion. Well, go on, Miss Anstruther. You’ve certainly got me
guessing.”

“A great French writer once said that ‘he who pronounces a thing
impossible, commits an imprudence,’ so you’re playing safe, Mr. Hart,”
she said with a laugh. “Of course, all great mysteries raise the
question, ‘Can such things be?’ I fully believe that, within the
bounds of physical law, unproved and amazing phenomena may occur. And
I believe that the light that flickered on this floor--the one Boyle
saw--was a will-o’-the-wisp, from the severed arm of Stella Ball.”

Everyone stared at her, and Boyle heaved a great sigh of relief. It
was as if her explanation had dispelled the shadow of the
supernatural, which was all that concerned or interested him. Then
Quinlan, as superstitious as Boyle, but with a quicker mind, or a more
practical one, asked a question which Margot had expected to come from
Hart.

“What about the hand that doused the flame, Miss?”

“Oh, that’s quite simple. It was the hand of a person very much alive
and, I believe, dangerous.”

“Came to that conclusion myself,” said Hart. Well, well, she thought,
for the third time, Hart wasn’t at all a fool. Then he asked her
sharply: “Whose hand? Have you got that far?”

“Sure, if she could tell you that, Chief, the Mayor ought to make her
Police Commissioner!” Quinlan’s sarcasm was heavy, but it amused
Margot.

“The hand,” she began solemnly, “was the hand of the man Murchison,
who stole the radium in the first place, and who is, in my opinion,
the only major criminal in the whole affair.”

“Sure, it was the old devil,” Stella agreed eagerly. “Just like the
old crook to come snoopin’ round. He couldn’t bear to lose it. But how
the hell did he get in here without your seein’ him?”

No one objected to the girl’s swearing. It seemed rather to give vent
to the general sentiment.

“Yes, how?” Hart was frowning again. “You don’t mean you think he was
in the room while you were in bed, and while Boyle was watching later?
Where could he have hidden, I’d like to know?”

“Just a _minute_!” Margot couldn’t control a low laugh at Hart’s
impatience. “Murchison was _not_ in this room. If he _had_ been he’d
have been caught. But his _hand_ was! Look! I’ll show you.”

She pointed to the small register with its iron grill-work, a few
inches above the level of the floor, in the wall against which the
head of the bed had stood. Mrs. Bellew, up to that moment obediently
silent and motionless in her corner, came across the room with dilated
eyes. She stood, as did the others, staring at the spot indicated by
Margot, who was asking Hart to test it and telling him that he would
find it loose. Murchison, she asserted, had loosened it.

“Do you see?” she said eagerly. “The hole’s big enough to let through
a hand and arm. It would be quite possible for a long arm to reach to
the spot where the lights appeared.”

“And it’s a long arm he had. I remember it well!” Mrs. Bellew could no
longer keep silent.

Hart fumbled with the grill-work. It gave way under his fingers and
slid to one side. A dark hole gaped in the wall.

“I’ll be damned if you’re not right!” Hart exploded. “But I still
don’t get the part about the lights.” He stood up and stared at Margot
inquiringly.

“It’s like this, Mr. Hart. Murchison has been tunneling through from
the adjoining house. I calculate that he’d almost finished his job the
night the trouble started--trouble for me, I mean,” she added with a
laugh. “Of course it’s been awfully slow work. Once he got the grill
loosened, he was able to reach in and suppress the lights on the
rug--over and over again. He must have thought that the light from my
match was like the others he’d seen. The point is, he couldn’t risk
letting _any_ flame or light, call attention to the secret chamber
underneath.”

“Fine!” Hart’s thin face glowed with satisfaction and understanding.
“But there’s just one thing, Miss Anstruther, which I don’t get. Why
didn’t Murchison pick some quiet afternoon when he could have felt
fairly sure the room wasn’t occupied, and sneak in by the roof, the
way the girl did?”

“I think I’ve checked up on that,” Margot said quietly. She turned to
the landlady. “Isn’t it a fact, Mrs. Bellew, that between Stella’s
tenancy and mine, this room was occupied by two women?”

“Yes, dearie, a couple of cranky old maids they were, hipped on the
subject of thieves breaking in and stealing their valuables, although
I never could see what they had that anybody’d want.”

“So one or the other of these women was always in the room? Is that
right?”

“You’re right, Miss Anstruther. It was that roof they were most scared
of. They wouldn’t trust no locks or bars.”

Margot turned shining eyes to Hart. “Isn’t that your answer?” she
asked him eagerly. “Aren’t you convinced?”

“I sure am.” His dry, inexpressive face showed a degree of enthusiasm
that flattered Margot more subtly than his admiring: “There aren’t
many detectives on the Force as good as you are, Miss Anstruther. I’m
here to tell the world that!”

“I don’t believe, Hart, that you’ve got one quite so good!” Gene’s
eulogy was accompanied by a glance of such mute admiration that Margot
had to stifle a mad desire to run to him and throw her arms around his
neck, regardless of her audience.

Then the natural-born pessimist in Hart came to the front.

“It’s too bad,” he said gloomily, “that we didn’t have this
information three days ago. The old fellow’s had plenty of time to
make his getaway. He won’t be easy to find.”

“You may be right, but my opinion of Murchison is that he simply
couldn’t tear himself away and leave that radium behind.”

“You’re right, Miss!” Stella once more became articulate.

“I’m almost sure he’s still living right next door. He wouldn’t start
tunneling till late at night. I suggest that you go and take a look.”
She pointed to the wall.

“Ask whoever owns the house next door to let you examine the room
corresponding to this one.”

Hart, full of doubts, but ready by now to follow any lead suggested by
Margot, marshaled his men, and departed, taking Stella with him.
Before they left the room, Margot went up to Stella, and put her hand
with a kindly pressure on the girl’s thin shoulder.

“My dear,” she said softly, “I don’t know anything about you; where
you came from, or what. But I do believe that you’ve been more sinned
against than sinning, from the very beginning--whatever that beginning
was. Perhaps you’ll tell me some day. In the meantime, my dear, try to
believe in my sincere sympathy. I’m going to stand by you and see that
you get a square deal, first and last. I don’t mean merely the trial
which I’m afraid you’ll have to stand. I mean _after_ that. I’m going
to help you every way I can--a good job, a decent home, all the rest
of it.”

She took Stella’s left hand in hers and gave it a little squeeze. She
smiled into her eyes--eyes as naturally distrustful as a cat’s, but
into which came a quivering light of gratitude and animal affection
such as a child feels for those who give it tenderness and love. The
beauty of trust and tenderness in Margot’s lovely face, had conquered
the girl’s ugly spirit.

Margot dismissed or rather escaped the landlady and her inevitable
bombardment of questions and excited conjectures by telling her that
her head ached from the long strain, and that she must rest, then go
for a walk and fresh air. In her room upstairs, to which she had
beckoned Gene, she dropped wearily into an armchair, let him light a
cigarette for her, and closed her eyes, slowly inhaling and blowing
the smoke out from her parted lips. Gene sat quite still, smoking and
watching her, but venturing no word nor caress. It was the most
complete demonstration he could have made, of unity with her, and
intelligent devotion.

When Margot finally opened her eyes and looked at him, she said
softly:

“Gene, dear, I didn’t realize what a brick you are--just the _kind_ of
a brick I like best,” she added with one of her humorous twists to
commonplace things, and a twinkle in her gray eyes.

“You flatter me,” he said smiling, but not moving from his chair.
Again she was astonished at his understanding of her. She wasn’t quite
ready for any demonstrative expression of his feeling for her, and he
knew it. Suddenly she felt that she would be ready for it sooner than
she had supposed possible.

“The thing I like best,” she went on, “is that you’ve let me rest
here, and haven’t asked me a single question, and all the time I know
you’ve just been seething with a desire to ask one _particular_
question, ‘ain’t it the truth?’” She laughed at the surprised widening
of his eyes.

“If you know that much, I won’t have to ask it,” he said, his smile
warming to a grin of appreciation of her quick wit.

“Question and answer--I’ll supply both. You’re wondering if I have the
least idea, or rather an _opinion_, as to who the man was who came
with Murchison the night Stella was injured. Well, my dear old scout,
I certainly have--more than either an idea or an opinion. I’ve got a
life-sized conviction--otherwise known as a _hunch_!”

“And _I’m_ thinking,” Gene said quickly, “that either I’m reading your
mind with uncanny ease, or else I’m more of a sleuth than I supposed,
for I know whom you mean--your mystery-man, with the pale eyes--your
Superfilm director, Frederick Stoner.”

“By jove!” she said with boyish eagerness. “You certainly are getting
on! I’m thrilled, I’m proud of you, Gene!”

“Well, I’ve gotten that far, but I’m damned if I see just how he’s
been actually mixed up in it, except that I’ve followed your
deductions pretty closely, and perhaps thought transference had
something to do with it. I knew you meant Stoner, and that’s all I do
know.”

“Didn’t his picture, _The Masque of Life_, give you a clue--I mean
something more than your first wrong guess about the powers of
radium?”

“Certainly! The impression was vague at first, but afterwards, when I
listened to some of the things you brought out, I made sense out of
two things: Stoner’s evident knowledge, superficial though it might
be--of radium, and his attitude from the beginning, of being so eager
to have you drop the mystery. Those two things seem to join up in my
mind to indicate that Stoner must have had some connection with the
theft of the radium. Is that what you mean, Margot?”

“No, not that he was involved in the theft of it. He would be too
cautious for anything like that, and besides, impossible as he is in
some ways, he’s _not_ a crook, whether from lack of nerve or
inclination, I don’t know. I’ll give you another guess,” she
challenged him.

“My mind’s a blank. Go on, dear. My curiosity threatens to overpower
me.”

“Well--here’s the dope, as Stella Ball would put it. For days my
suspicion regarding Stoner has been growing. That picture merely
confirmed it. I felt instinctively that his _blah_ about publicity was
just that--blah--bunk. I knew that he was afraid of _something_. It
was for his own sake, not mine, that he wanted me to drop the case.
That meant he had something to conceal. And then, don’t forget that
queer look I used to see in his eyes, every now and then. The look I
first noticed when I gave this house as my address. But still I was
vague as to the real motive back of it all.”

“And that picture supplied the missing link of cause and effect?” Gene
asked with quick grasp of her chain of thought.

“Righto! That first, then Stella’s story about the mysterious ‘fat
man,’ who didn’t want to buy the radium but only _rent_ it. Now _why_
would a movie director want to rent radium from a crook? Again, answer
and question, both supplied while you wait.” Her laugh was infectious.
“Now listen carefully, old dear. Stoner’s of the old school--full of
notions about impressing the poor, long-suffering public, with the
wildest sort of hoakum. And he’s rather ignorant, outside of his
business. What he knew about things such as radium, you could stuff
into a thimble.”

“I get you,” Gene interrupted eagerly. “That radium machine in the
picture! He must have been working on that picture just at the time
Stella disappeared. He got to a certain point, then he was
stumped,--couldn’t get the effects he wanted, so he decided to try to
get hold of some radium. Must have read about the theft from the
Fellowe Institute, but how the devil did he tie up with Murchison?”

“That’s something we may or may not find out. All depends on what we
_do_ with Stoner.” Again she laughed, overcome with humor at
remembrance of Stoner’s weak attempts to fake radium. “Wasn’t it
_funny_ the way he made that diabolical machine glow in the dark, and
shoot out rays like forked lightning? He must have thought that it had
those properties. About as much like _radium_ as mud! But how sore he
must have been, with his bug about realism, when events forced him to
get his effects by hoakum, and rotten hoakum at that!”

“Speaking of ‘hoakum,’ may I be permitted, my dear girl, to outrage
your feelings by applying just that word to most of your eloquence on
the subject of ‘ignis fatuus’--‘corpse
candle’--‘will-o’-the-wisp’--whatever it’s called?” Gene grinned at
her teasingly.

“You’d outrage my _intelligence_--and your own--if you didn’t regard
my eloquence on the subject in just that light. Of course there’s more
than a grain of truth as to the unproved yet undeniable possibilities
regarding the phosphorescence from dead animal and vegetable matter.
But in this case I skimmed lightly over thin ice--weak logic--in
certain places.”

“Notably,” Gene interjected quickly, “in your ignoring of the fact
that if the desiccated arm had been preserved from decay by heat and
dryness, no exhaling of phosphorescence would be possible. I had to
laugh at the way Hart swallowed whole all you said.”

“Perhaps he didn’t, really, but he seemed to. He’d been so darn
skeptical, that when finally I got him on the run in my exposition of
events, and he was eating right out of my hand, I couldn’t resist the
temptation to see how far I could go. Besides, Gene, I think my
imagination took the bit in its teeth. I almost believed what I was
saying, once I’d started.”

“Briefly, as I see it, Margot, the light you saw was a match, and
Boyle, with his superstitious fears, might have seen anything, and you
don’t actually _know_ that there _were_ any lights at any time, for
Murchison to tap out. Isn’t that it?”

“Certainly. The night I got the scare, undoubtedly he saw my match and
thought it safer to put it out while waiting for a propitious moment
for what he planned to do.”

“Well, to return to Stoner. I can’t see why you’re in doubt as to what
to do with _that_ bird.”

“Just because, dear, Stoner’s more of a fool than a knave, in my
humble opinion. If Murchison is caught--which I’m sure he’ll be--and
if Murchison squeals, as they call it, on Stoner--which I’m not so
sure of, for rogues sometimes have strange spasms of honor--then of
course he could be punished for trafficking in stolen goods. But _I’m_
not going to be the one to denounce him to the police. After all, he
hasn’t committed a _crime_.”

“Good Lord! You’re not going to let him go scot free!”

“No--not exactly.” The smile on Margot’s lips was a trifle feline in
quality. “I have a subtle revenge and punishment planned, which I’m
going to start going to-morrow. My unseen weapon is to be Corinne
Delamar. Can’t you picture the rumpus she’ll start? First a personal
one with her quondam lover, then one staged on a larger scale with the
entire Superfilm organization as props, actors and camera men.”

“By George, Margot! You’d have been invaluable to the subtle gentlemen
at the time of the Inquisition!”

“Not quite so bad as that, am I?” She asked, laughing.

She read his answer in his eyes, and his sudden spring from his chair,
as he came toward her. At that most inopportune moment--her heart said
it was inopportune--the telephone rang. She had had a connection put
in her new quarters. She ran to the instrument, brushing by Gene’s
outstretched arms, and took up the receiver.

“Hello! Yes… yes… Fine! All right!” He heard her call into the
mouthpiece, then she turned to him, and seized his arm excitedly.

“They’ve arrested Murchison!”




 CHAPTER XIV.
 LOVE’S ALARM

Cornelius Hart surprised and delighted Margot with his unsuspected
power for dramatic narrative. It was almost as exciting, she told him
sweetly, as if she had been present at the pursuit, discovery and
final capture of Murchison.

“… and so, after we’d smashed in his door, and searched everywhere in
his almost empty room, I knew there was only one place he could be.
He’d locked himself into the room, for the lodging-house woman next
door was positive she’d seen him go up a short time before. She was
equally sure he hadn’t come down again. Funny, the way those dames
keep track of their lodgers!” The amused reflection cut into his
narrative.

“Yes, isn’t it!” Margot laughed, with a sudden picture of her own
landlady snooping around in halls and outside of doors.

“Well, as I was saying, I knew he was inside that room. There was no
roof, like outside that room of yours, for him to get out on and no
fire-escape either. I took one look at the hole he’d dug to get into
this house, and I had a pretty good hunch where the old fellow was
hiding. So we poked into it. I’ll be damned if he hadn’t crawled so
far in, and was so tightly wedged in the tunnel, that it took two of
us to drag him out by his heels.”

“Poor old thing, I’m a little sorry for him, after all.” Margot’s
tender heart was not proof even against the menace of a criminal who
might have threatened her own safety.

“Don’t waste your pity, Miss Anstruther! He’s a hard old nut. But I’ll
say this much for him--he didn’t squeal on the man involved with him
the night the girl had her arm chopped off.”

“I didn’t think he would,” Margot said, smiling at Gene. “Honor among
thieves, Mr. Hart.”

“He may tell yet. We haven’t grilled him yet. Wait till he’s brought
to trial. That’ll be the test, when he’ll have a chance to get off
light by squealing.”

“Rotten ethics, I should say!” Margot’s lips curled with scorn for the
strange and devious ways of the law and of what is called justice.

“Well, that’s the way it’s always been, and always will be, I guess.
Of course you’ll have to be present at the trial, Miss Anstruther.” He
looked at her as if expecting a feminine protest, but Margot only
laughed.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world! And besides,” she added seriously,
“I’m sincerely interested in that poor girl, so I’d want to be on hand
for her sake, even if I didn’t have to be.”

When Hart had gone, Margot stared thoughtfully at Gene.

“I do hope,” she said anxiously, “that I’ll be able to get a light
sentence for that poor girl. Wish I could get her off altogether, but
I’m afraid there’s no hope for that.”

“Guess not. But if _anyone_ can influence the judge in her favor, you
can, Margot, in the circumstances. Shouldn’t be surprised if she’d go
straight after this, if they give her half a chance.”

“I’m _sure_ of it. She’s got a real brain in that small head of hers,
but she’s had a rotten run for her money all her young life. ‘_Nous
allons changer tout cela_’, as the French say. But my _next_ job is to
tackle our friend Stoner, through Corinne. And then--well, there’ll be
time for another matter of importance before the trial.”

“Now what the devil have you up your sleeve?” Gene frowned
impatiently.

“Oh, a most important and thrilling affair that will demand all my
thought and time--for a few weeks.”

Gene’s despair was obvious. It would appear that the mystery,
apparently cleared up, had fallen again. Apparently Margot was not yet
ready to give him--and his love for her--their due place in the scheme
of things.

“Don’t you wish you knew?” she teased him. “All in good time, old
dear.”

“But, Margot, there’s a limit to my endurance. I’m madly in love with
you, and you promised to face that particular tragedy--and it most
certainly is a tragedy for me until I can end this suspense--as soon
as you cleared up the mystery. Now it’s cleared up, and you actually
have the nerve to tell me that when you’ve cleaned up Delamar and
Stoner, you’ve still got another important matter to adjust!”

“I did say that, didn’t I?” Her eyes tried to look dreamily absent, in
a mist of uncertainty, but she couldn’t prevent the spark of laughter
and roguish dart of mischief as her glance met his.

“You _are_ a little devil!” He made a rush at her, but she was too
quick for him.

“Come on, now, Gene! I’m famished and I’m sure you are too. Let’s
celebrate with a good dinner somewhere which includes the privilege of
buying as many cocktails as we can swallow. I feel just like it, and I
know just the place. Come on!”

Cocktails and dinner and jazz! It was the cheeriest, jolliest evening
Margot had enjoyed since the night of her now famous party. The late
editions of the evening papers gave a grotesquely lurid account of the
arrest of Murchison and of the events leading up to it, events in
which Margot Anstruther, the beautiful and clever young screen star--a
star, mind you!--had played the rôle of detective in the most
thrilling of mystery stories since the time of Sherlock Holmes. Some
particularly enterprising reporter had got hold of a picture of
Margot--a “still” from the studio--in the costume of “Conchita.” The
morning papers would of course have additional details--most of them
Simon Pure inventions, unless she interviewed the reporters, which she
did, later in the evening, before going home.

Margot and Gene took bets as to what Stoner would do on reading the
news about Murchison and the stolen radium. Gene bet that he would
give himself away by his consciousness of guilt. Margot believed that
he would bluff it out, and would try to get word to Murchison, to
attempt to bribe the old man not to drag him into it.

“Of course,” Margot said, “he’s been on pins and needles for fear I’d
unearth something. But now that the story of the radium and Stella’s
arm has come out, and Stoner’s name hasn’t been remotely referred to,
I think he’ll feel quite safe except for Murchison. You wait and see
if I’m not right.”

“As you’ve been right about everything else to date, I’ll take your
word for it, Margot.”

She refused throughout the evening to talk about herself. When Gene
took her home, she let him go into her room to smoke a cigarette, but
love-making seemed to be taboo. She was tired, she was nervous, she
was sleepy--any one of the hundred things a woman can be when she
doesn’t want a man’s caresses. Finally Gene, baffled and a little
resentful, rose to go.

He bent over her, his eager eyes and lips demanding at least a
good-night kiss. She rose slowly and put both hands on his shoulders,
looking him squarely in the eyes, without the suspicion of a smile.
She said solemnly:

“You may kiss me good night, Gene--as a _brother_. It may be for the
very last time,” with which vague threat she kissed him herself, on
the lips, in a frankly sisterly manner, and she laughed suddenly into
his puzzled eyes.

Puzzlement changed quickly to resentment. She saw his eyes darken and
flash, and his lips tighten. He drew back and shook off her hands from
his shoulders. Then he said quietly:

“You’re making a fool of me, Margot, and I don’t particularly relish
it. If my love for you strikes you merely as a joke, or something to
be sisterly about, it’s time I got out from under. I’m getting a
little tired of mysteries and of a game which amuses only one of us.”

Surprised, then suddenly angry at his impatience and failure to
respond to her mood, Margot spoke coldly.

“Your remark about getting out from under would seem to imply that
I’ve been trying to _hold_ you. That’s a little far-fetched, isn’t it,
Gene?”

He took a step nearer to her, his eyes glowing with suddenly released
passion. With a sweep of his arm he seized her and crushed her against
him. He bent his head and kissed her eyes and then her mouth as he had
never dared to kiss her before. She was too startled to struggle in
his arms, and as suddenly as he had seized her he let her go. His
lips, trembling from their passionate contact with hers, formed words
that tumbled brokenly, one over the other.

“_That’s_--just how--_brotherly_--I feel--for you. That’s the way--I’m
going to kiss you--if at all. I’ll never kiss you again--I’ll never
_see_ you--again--unless you send for me--to be your husband--or your
lover.” He seemed to fling the last word at her in bitter defiance.

“Your--technique--hasn’t improved.” She knew that it had, but she said
that, urged by a vague, primitive desire to see what he would do if
further exasperated. She might have known that he would take her a
little too literally.

“No,” he said, with slow bitterness. “I don’t suppose it has,” and
with that, and before she could detain him with a word or look, he
tore open her door and slammed it behind him.

Silly--silly, of them both, Margot reflected, as she undressed. Of
course Gene would get over his extraordinary burst of angry
resentment, and, of course, when he understood just what she had meant
by saying that he could give her a brotherly kiss for the last time,
he would be sorry he had been so fierce. However, it was rather
interesting and exciting to find that Gene _could_ be fierce like
that.

She touched her lips softly, still feeling the pressure of his. She
smiled and a little thrill of genuine emotion made her tremble. For
the first time in several nights, Margot slept the dreamless sleep of
a happy, healthy girl who is in love with life and in love with a man.
Gene’s outburst had made very clear to her that she loved him. She
would call him back, oh, yes, nothing would be easier, but she would
wait until.… Into unconsciousness she carried the vision of his face
with its dark, flashing eyes, and the touch of his lips on hers.




 CHAPTER XV.
 STONER’S SHARE

Margot made an early start for Astoria. Her impatience to talk with
Corinne Delamar would have brought her to the studio still earlier if
there had been any hope of finding the star on the lot before eleven
o’clock. Very different, this voluntary call upon Corinne, to Margot’s
last visit, solicited by the star and made by Margot with bored
distaste. She laughed softly to herself, remembering her eavesdropping
and the advantage it had given her over Stoner. It might be true that
listeners never hear good of themselves, but at least it would appear
that sometimes what they heard in this unapproved manner gave them the
whip-handle in dealing with crooks, or, to be more charitable, those
who followed crooked ways.

She went straight to Corinne’s dressing-room. The colored maid said
that her mistress was doing a scene a short distance from the studio,
but would return in a half hour, she thought. Margot waited an hour,
amusing herself with a movie periodical she found in the
dressing-room. Among other diverting matter it contained an interview
with Miss Delamar, which gave a word picture of the actress as a
person of high ideals, strict views on love and marriage, and a belief
that the moving picture industry was the greatest symbol of art for
art’s sake, and morality for the world, that had so far been
discovered. Very clever of Corinne! And clever of the interviewer, who
had carefully avoided the slightest suggestion of irony. That was the
sort of thing the movie fans ate up, and what the moving-picture
industry hoped that they would digest and thrive on. There was also a
“still” of Corinne, which indicated a beauty as ravishing as it was
pure and noble. Well, well! Margot wondered if she would ever have
such a chance to laugh at a description of herself.

Corinne stood in the small doorway looking at Margot with curious but
not antagonistic eyes. Margot rose quickly and asked her pardon for
having taken the liberty of waiting for her in her dressing-room. She
particularly did not wish to see anyone else, she carefully explained.
Corinne, dressed as the heroine in _A Toreador’s Love_, and looking
prettier than usual--a purely fleshly prettiness--was gracious in a
stilted way (the only way possible to her, when she felt socially
inferior to another woman), told Margot please to sit down, and
offered her a cigarette. Margot, remembering that her father had once
told her that in any interview the first advantage lies with the one
who speaks last, deliberately waited for Corinne to begin the
conversation. Margot could be silent, with a beaming smile, and gentle
repose of manner, most misleading to strangers.

“What can I do for you, Miss Anstruther?” That wasn’t so stupid of
Corinne, Margot thought, smiling sweetly, for it put her at once in
the position of one dispensing patronage. Margot’s smile became still
more friendly and confidential.

“That’s awfully nice of you, Miss Delamar, but you see, I’ve come to
do something for _you_!”

Corinne’s cigarette hung loosely from her painted lips, as she stared
at Margot.

“I don’t quite see what _you_ can do for _me_, Miss Anstruther--in the
circumstances.” Nasty dig that, thought Margot, still smiling.

“Nevertheless,” she said gently, “I’m going to try to. And one of my
reasons for doing so, Miss Delamar, is that I have always liked you.”
Naughty Margot! What more subtle way of patronizing than to assure an
acquaintance that you’ve always liked them? Yet the genuine ring of
friendliness in her voice made Corinne say quickly:

“And, as a matter of fact, I’ve liked you, although there seemed to be
plenty of reason why I shouldn’t.”

“You’re mistaken. There hasn’t been any such reason--not for a
moment.” This time there was no doubt of Margot’s sincerity.

“You mean--what you said the last time you were here--about having no
particular use for Fred Stoner, in a personal way, I mean?”

“Yes, that, and all that stuff he filled your head with about my
working publicity in order to get an advantage over you. What I told
you that day--just the other day, but it seems ages ago--I’ve come
here to-day to prove to you, Miss Delamar.”

Corinne frowned, looking from Margot to the floor, out into space and
back at Margot as if trying to piece together disconnected facts. Then
she said:

“I don’t know what you have to tell me, but I suppose it has something
to do with your mystery story. Although I can’t imagine how _that_ can
concern Stoner or me, now that you’re no longer in the cast, Miss
Anstruther.”

“Did you read what the papers published last night and this morning?”
Margot asked quickly.

“I read this morning’s story. How much of it is true?”

“All of it! I got hold of some newspaper men last night, and made them
agree to write it up for to-day’s papers with some idea of sticking to
facts. But of course there’s a lot they didn’t print because they know
nothing about it. And it’s _that_ I’ve come here to tell you. You
remember the reference to the fat man whom Stella Ball said had come
to her room that night, with Murchison, offering to pay a certain sum
for the rental for a week of the radium stolen by Murchison?”

“Yes. The one who is supposed to have paid the girl’s hospital bill?”
Corinne seemed to make no connection yet, in her mystified brain.

“Well, that fat man--as the girl described him--was--is--a would-be
famous film director, by name Frederick Stoner!”

Corinne stared at her without speaking. The ashes from her cigarette
fell over her breast, and she threw the cigarette into a corner of the
room. Finally she said slowly:

“I suppose--Miss Anstruther--you wouldn’t dare--make such a
statement--without being able--to give proof?”

“Hardly!” Margot gave a short laugh, a hard little laugh, recalling
Stoner’s contemptible treatment of her and of Gene.

“What _is_ your proof?”

“The ‘proof’ will speak for himself.”

“You mean the man Murchison, but he’s refused, the police say, to
squeal on his customer, as he calls him. You mean you know that
Murchison will give it away in court?”

“No, I don’t mean that at all. I mean that the man himself--the one
who was there _with_ Murchison, will be the living proof, and to
_you_, Miss Delamar.”

Corinne studied her with narrowed, suspicious eyes. She seemed trying
to take the measure of the quiet, self-contained girl who sat in front
of her, throwing out vague hints, that perhaps weren’t so vague after
all. An expression flashed suddenly in her green eyes, which told
Margot that Corinne’s intelligence had risen to the occasion.

“I suppose you’re insinuating, Miss Anstruther, that you’ve got enough
on Fred Stoner to force his confession?”

“Precisely! And his confession to you in my presence, if you’ll be so
kind as to send for him. And just one thing more, before he comes. I
don’t believe that Stoner is always aboveboard in his affairs with
women. I want to confess something myself. The other day, when you
sent for me, I started to go to my dressing-room before seeing you. As
I reached the foot of the stairs, I heard your voice talking about me.
I felt no hesitancy in listening, after hearing my own name, in view
of your sending for me and of the attitude Stoner had taken about my
investigating the mystery of my room.”

“Do you mean to say you heard the whole conversation?” Corinne’s red
lips trembled and her eyes darkened with anger.

“Hardly that, for I’ve no idea how long it was going on before I
arrived. Also I ran off after I’d heard enough to prove what I’d
already suspected, that he was trying his best to start something
between you and me.”

“You didn’t hear anything--anything of a more--personal nature?”

“Personal, you mean, Miss Delamar, as between you and Stoner? I’m
afraid I did. I heard enough to understand that you thought--as you
implied to me in our _first_ short interview--that I was flirting with
him, and that he was interested in me. I heard also enough to know
that he has either lied to you or lied to me or--as is quite as
likely--lied to both of us. I heard him assure you of his loyal
devotion, or something like that, and of his utter indifference to me.
And I want to tell you, because I really like you, that his advances
toward me, whatever his motives may have been, took the form of forced
love-making in my room, when he had come unbidden, with the excuse of
having a theory to give me about my mystery. And not only did he force
his physical attentions, but he begged me to marry him, took away my
job because I refused--incidentally I struck him across the
face--because I lost my temper--and told me he’d give the job back to
me any time I might decide to marry him.”

Corinne had not interrupted by a word or a gesture, merely watching
with eyes that glinted like a cat’s. Then she said:

“I believe what you say, for if your statement about his being the man
who wanted to rent the radium is true, then you can punish him enough
in that direction without revenging yourself by lying about his asking
you to marry him.”

Margot, rather amazed by Corinne’s ability to reason so logically,
said eagerly:

“That’s absolutely right. My only reason for telling you that part of
the story which concerns Stoner and myself in a personal way, is
because it concerns you also, in so much as I have reason to believe
that you’ve felt an interest in Stoner which I’m afraid he doesn’t
appreciate. As one woman to another, I want to warn you.”

In spite of the makeup on cheeks and lips, Corinne had turned very
white. Margot felt a chill disgust, tempered by pity, that so pretty,
and, she believed, decent a girl as Corinne, should have fallen for a
man like Stoner. Corinne moistened her dry lips and called to her
maid. She told her to find the director and tell him that Miss Delamar
must see him at once on an urgent matter. Then she cautioned the maid,
in no circumstances to let Stoner suspect that she had a caller in her
dressing-room.

Corinne turned to her dressing-table, studied her face in the mirror,
and carefully rubbed in some cold cream, rubbed it off, added a soft
liquid powder, then a cream rouge on lips and cheeks, then a soft
dusting of powder. Also she put some drops in her eyes. Then she
forced a smile and told Margot that she was ready to receive the
“would-be famous film director.” Strange, Margot thought, that
although Corinne had been loath to believe ill of Stoner when it
concerned crooked outside dealings, she seemed to have accepted
Margot’s arraignment of him regarding their personal relations,
without question!

Margot would never forget Stoner’s expression when he stood just
inside the small dressing-room, and met her amused and calmly accusing
eyes. Corinne, watching him with her green eyes, did not miss the
quick batting of his eyelids, the drawing in of his thick lips, and
the yellowish film that covered, for an instant, the iris of his pale
blue eyes, when his first glance discovered Margot sitting at ease in
the star’s dressing-room.

Again Margot conferred the disadvantage on her antagonist, by giving
him the first chance to speak, and Corinne intuitively did the same.
Stoner, his eyes half covered by his heavy lids, looked with surly
assurance from one woman to the other. Instinctively he seemed to feel
their alignment, and antagonism to him.

“What do you want?” he said with gruff abruptness, his expressionless
eyes fixed on the star.

Before Corinne could answer him, Margot said quietly:

“_She_ doesn’t really want anything of you, Mr. Stoner. _I’m_ the one
who wants to see you.” She held his eyes with a gaze so keen and
masterful that his glance wavered and fell.

“I just wanted to tell you, Mr. Stoner, in the presence of Miss
Delamar, that I know, beyond any possibility of doubt or denial on
your part, that you were the man who went to the room of Stella Ball
and who wanted to rent that radium!”

As if against his will, his eyes once more met Margot’s. There was no
mistaking that look of fear, followed swiftly by a gleam of anger.

“Hell of a lot you know about me!”

His language, though inelegant, made Margot smile in his face, which
enraged him still further. He glared at her venomously.

“I was a fool to choose _you_ that day, instead of Lulu Leinster.”

Margot’s irritating smile broadened.

“I believe I’ve heard you express those sentiments before, Mr. Stoner.
In view of what I know about you, your reason for choosing me that
day, for the picture, is quite obvious. I repeat my accusation about
Stella Ball and the radium.”

Stoner’s face grew purple. “What the devil do you mean by telling such
lies? Don’t you know you can be sued for libel--defamation of
character?” His threat held so much bluster that it made Margot smile
again.

“Not by you, Mr. Stoner, for what I accuse you of isn’t libel or
defamation of character. It’s God’s truth. Quite apart from the way
you aroused my suspicions by all that rot about publicity, and your
evident eagerness to make me drop the matter of my mystery--not to
mention a very strange expression I caught in your eyes several times,
notably when I first gave you my address; your behavior the night you
called on me (your call was merely a ruse to examine that room), your
extraordinary antics in the room where the policeman was keeping
guard, and your still more extraordinary and utterly unconvincing
theory about the lights and the hand putting them out--merely an
attempt to choke off my theories, or an excuse for your call; all this
set the stage beautifully for the final curtain.” She stopped,
watching him with amusement overlaying her serious intent to corner
him.

“What do you mean?” Sheer curiosity forced the quick question.

“I mean, Mr. Stoner, the remarkable kick I got out of your picture
_The Masque of Life_, with its weird and absurd portrayal of the magic
properties of radium!”

She saw his lips twitch and his pale eyes grow darker as the pupils
dilated. She knew that what she saw, Corinne must also see, but she
would not shift her glance from Stoner’s self-accusing face.

“I’m a damn fool to stand here talking to you,” he said, wetting his
lips. “But since you’ve started things, you might as well finish. What
in all creation has that picture got to do with that girl Stella and
the man Murchison?”

“Everything in creation,” Margot said, smiling. “I’m not accusing you
of having a thing to do with the _theft_ of the radium, Mr. Stoner,
but I do assert that when you wanted to get more realism into your
picture, you thought it would be a fine idea to get hold of some
radium. I haven’t _yet_ mastered all the details of your acquaintance
with Murchison, but I know beyond all doubt, that you tried your best
to get the radium _he’d_ stolen, _knowing_ he’d stolen it, which of
course, makes you an accessory after the crime, Mr. Stoner.”

He worked his mouth into a twisted, scornful smile, as he said
threateningly:

“You just try, young lady, making any public charge like the one
you’ve just made.”

“She won’t have to! _I’ll_ do the charging--to our board of
directors!” Corinne stood up and glared into his astonished eyes.

Surprise changed to insensate rage as he stared back at his star.

“You will, will you! Well, you just try it, and see where _you_ get
off!”

“Oh,” she said calmly, “I expect to get off very well, thank you. I
expect to get a new director for our company who won’t have to consort
with crooks in order to put on pictures and make himself famous.”

“You’re crazy!” He looked a little that way himself, as his lips and
hands worked convulsively. “What do you think you can prove of this
girl’s wild story? Nothing--absolutely nothing!”

“Oh, yes she can, Mr. Stoner.” Margot’s voice had velvet in it, and
her smile was sweeter than ever. “You seem to have forgotten that the
girl Stella Ball, although deprived of one arm, thanks to the quarrel
between you and Murchison, still has the perfect use of her eyes--both
of them. She says she could pick you out anywhere, at a single glance.
She’ll never forget you, she says.”

Lie, little Margot, lie in a good cause! Why not! It was a good and a
safe card to play, for without doubt Stella _would_ recognize Stoner
at a glance, even if she failed to describe him accurately. And the
wild shot went straight home. Stoner seemed to crumble, morally, right
before their eyes. Margot, quick to follow up an advantage, went on
with quiet assurance.

“You see, Mr. Stoner, you can do one of three things. You’re really
lucky to have so much to choose from, and you really owe that to me.
You can make a break for the open; get out while the getting’s still
good, prove--to our satisfaction--your guilt beyond question, but
escape, perhaps, its penalty. Or you can face your board of directors
and deny my accusations, which will enable _me_ to prove them to
_every_one’s satisfaction. Or--and permit me to suggest that this last
would be your wisest course--you can admit the facts to your board of
directors, plead clemency, which Miss Delamar and I will also plead
for you, take what’s coming to you, so far as getting out of this
company is concerned, and escape the penalty of the law, also the
ignominy of having other film companies hear the truth about you. I’m
sure that if you make it easy for everyone concerned, your board of
directors will agree to keep the story from spreading.”

Corinne’s large and expressive eyes stared at Margot with an
admiration as sincere as it was obvious. Then the star turned a
haughty glance of dismissal at Stoner.

“That’s about all, Fred Stoner, except that I’d like to tell you that
I’m fully aware of all the lies you’ve told me, first and last, and if
I do agree to do what Miss Anstruther suggests, and ask the Board to
give you clemency, I want you to understand that it will be because
I’d be afraid that otherwise, your vast and ridiculous conceit would
imagine I was trying to wreak vengeance on you for personal reasons.
And now, please go!”

He went--without another word--and Margot returned in full measure,
the admiration Corinne had given her.

“That was very, very clever of you,” she said earnestly. “That last
remark, I mean. I think that between us, Miss Delamar, we’ve been just
a little too much for the gentleman.”

“Gentleman!” Corinne’s scorn lay too deep for humor or irony.

“Just a form of speech, my dear. And now let me tell you how very glad
I am that you and I are going to be friends, as of course we shall be
after this. And, by the way, could you fix it up so that I can be
present at the meeting of the board of directors?”

“Certainly,” Corinne said warmly. “I wouldn’t miss having you there.
In fact, it’s quite necessary that you should be. And I am glad too
that we can be friends. And I’m grateful to you for showing me what an
awful fool I’ve been for taking any stock in that man, or anything
that he’s ever said to me.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean it that way,” Margot said hastily. “I don’t think
you’ve been a fool at all, but I didn’t want to see you in danger of
being put in a false position.”

“Very nice of you to put it that way. Well, good-by!” And she took
Margot’s outstretched hand in a friendly clasp of good-fellowship and
trust.

And that was that, as Margot said to herself, with her ironic and
characteristic manner of disposing of a situation or a problem.




 CHAPTER XVI.
 A KING’S RANSOM IN RADIUM

A telegram from Corinne Delamar, later in the day, advised Margot
that the strategically planned directors’ meeting was to take place
the following morning at eleven, and would Margot please be on hand
without fail. Not that Corinne so described the meeting, but Margot
knew her well enough by this time, to be sure of the strategy implied.

She decided to telephone Gene to ask him to come to see her the
following evening. For the moment she was weary of discussion and
analysis, and not in the mood for an interview with Gene which was
likely to be rather strenuous, everything considered. Besides, she
would prefer to clean up her “job” as amateur detective--dispose
finally of Stoner--before coming to an understanding with Gene. It did
not occur to her that he might be sulking, or that he could be
anything but eager to answer her summons.

Her telephone call brought no response. Strange, because Gene was
invariably in his room at that hour, waiting for a call from her. She
rang his number twice more before going to bed. She wondered where he
could be, and a vague uneasiness possessed her. Could he actually be
angry with her to the point of not answering the phone? Funny old
Gene! Well, she’d explain things to-morrow night.

The next morning she met Corinne in her dressing-room. It was getting
to be a habit, Margot told the star, with her customary whimsicality.

“Funny, isn’t it!” Corinne laughed, making Margot welcome. “If
anybody’d told me a week ago that you and I would be getting chummy
about anything under the shining sun--Stoner least of all--I’d have
told them to go to an alienist. But here we are, actually in cahoots
to see that our friend gets his just deserts.” She offered her guest a
cigarette, then lighted it for her, adding: “And the funniest part of
the whole thing is that I’m not a bit unhappy about it. It was a shock
at first, but that’s all. I find I’m not really one little bit in love
with Stoner, and I thought I was, you know.”

“I’m mighty glad you’re not!” Margot said earnestly. “He isn’t fit to
clean your shoes, Miss Delamar.”

“He never would have.” Corinne looked down at her shoes and laughed
contemptuously. “He’s the kind who, after a few months of marriage,
would let his wife clean _his_ shoes. It’s strange, once you begin
shedding your illusions about a person, how clearly you see every
fault.”

“Too clearly, I think,” Margot said thoughtfully. “If you’ve begun by
exaggerating a person’s good points, when you begin to wake up you
almost always exaggerate the bad points. I’m quite sure that no man is
ever as good as the woman who loves him believes him to be, and never
as bad as the woman who hates him considers him to be. It’s the same
the other way round.”

“You’re some little philosopher, aren’t you, Miss Anstruther? No
wonder you ferreted out Stoner’s connection with your mystery. You’re
awfully clever. I wish I were!”

“If it’s that bad,” laughed Margot, “I’ll have to become a little
_more_ clever and disguise the fact that I _am_ clever. Clever girls
aren’t popular, you know.”

“Well, _you’re_ popular, so there must be exceptions.” There was no
mistaking Corinne’s sincerity. She was not simply flattering Margot,
with or without design.

“Everyone here has been awfully kind to me.” It was so trite a remark
that Margot chuckled inwardly at her concession to the commonplace.

Corinne glanced at her watch. “About ten minutes more, then we’ll have
to go to the board room. Won’t it be amusing seeing Stoner make a fool
of himself--as of course he will, trying to worm himself out of the
corner we’ve got him in!”

“Does he know about this directors’ meeting?”

“He does not,” said Corinne with a vicious little dab at her nose with
her powder pad. “Or rather, if he’s heard about it it’s by snooping
round, for he hasn’t been officially notified. You see”--she gave a
sudden laugh--“the directors don’t know themselves. I didn’t want
anything to leak out, so I merely sent a note to our manager, Marx
Klein, saying that there was something of the utmost importance which
I wished to take up with the board of directors to-day, and would he
please call a meeting. He sent back word that he would.”

“You’ve certainly got the power to make them sit up and take notice,
Miss Delamar.” Margot smiled with frank approval.

“I’ve got my nerve, perhaps you mean, but it’s this way. When you get
to be a star, you can have as much ‘temperament’ as you like. They
don’t dare squelch it. So when I ask for anything special, they take
for granted that a refusal will mean some kind of a blow-out on my
part, and they don’t dare risk it. I’ve never asked for a board
meeting _before_, so they’re sure it’s something out of the ordinary.”

“Which it certainly is,” laughed Margot.

“Well--at least it will mean the official removal of Stoner’s fat
head. A sore head it’ll be before we get through with him.”

A tap on the door, and the black face of Corinne’s maid, with bright,
bulging eyes, whispering to her mistress that the director would like
to have a few minutes’ conversation with her. Could he come in?

“Now, what the devil!” Corinne scowled, looking from the maid to
Margot.

“Do you suppose he’s come to beg for mercy?” Margot whispered.

“A lot of good it’ll do him! Shall we see him or not?” She seemed to
depend on Margot’s judgment.

“I think we might as well,” Margot said thoughtfully. “It’s always as
well to hear whatever your enemy--or your victim”--she suppressed a
giggle--“has to say for himself.”

“All right. Tell him to come in,” Corinne said to the maid.

Stoner stepped into the small inclosure. If the girls had expected to
see a browbeaten, anxious or suppliant Frederick Stoner, they were
disappointed. His shoulders were straight, his head erect, and his
eyes clear and direct in their gaze, first at one girl, then at the
other. In sheer astonishment at his expression and attitude, Corinne
kept silence. Her face showed her surprise, but Margot’s expression
was not so easy to read. She wondered if he’d come with any sort of a
threat up his sleeve. It would serve no purpose if so.

“Well,” he said, slowly. “I hear a board meeting is to take place
shortly. I heard of it last night. I’ve got something to say to you
two. I’m not a fool, whatever else you may think me, and I know damn
well that I gave myself away in this very room, yesterday.” He looked
at Margot as he spoke.

“You certainly did,” she said quickly.

“But that wouldn’t cut much ice, Miss Anstruther, if you didn’t have
the goods on me in the person of that skinny little thing, Stella
Ball.” Again he paused and stared at her.

Humph! That impromptu shot of hers had certainly gone home! It was a
good shot, anyway. A legitimate shot! She said quietly:

“Of course I knew, Mr. Stoner, that you were intelligent enough to
realize just what Stella Ball’s recognition of you and testimony would
mean.”

“Right. But if I’d been smart enough to bluff you out on your
deductions, and all that tripe that didn’t and couldn’t _prove_
anything, you’d probably never have thought of the Stella end of it.”

Margot merely smiled, but her instant thought was that he had more
logic than she had supposed.

“Did you come here now just for the pleasure of telling us what we
know already--that we’ve got the goods on you?” Corinne’s voice rasped
sharply and baneful yellow lights shone in her green eyes.

“No, I didn’t,” Stoner snapped at her. “I’ll tell you what I came for.
To tell you that you won’t have the satisfaction of making a fool of
me before any company directors.” He turned to look again at Margot.
“I decided last night to choose an alternative _not_ suggested by you.
I’m going to get out while the getting’s good, but I’m not _sneaking_
out. And, by the way, Miss Anstruther, you may be interested to hear
that the lovely Lulu is coming out there too.”

Corinne gave a start, and her eyes drew together in a quick frown as
she stared at Stoner. There was something in his smile that suggested
malice.

“Why should I be interested particularly in Lulu’s plans?” Margot
asked the question with cool impudence because his smile affected her
unpleasantly.

He shrugged one shoulder. “Thought you’d be glad to know she’s getting
out of your way.”

“Out of _my_ way!” Irritation gave way to astonishment. “Just what do
you mean by that, Mr. Stoner?”

“We--ll----” He rubbed the back of his head in affected embarrassment.
“Valery, you know. Thought you’d be glad to have her out of _his_
way.”

Margot regarded him with puzzled eyes, but Corinne’s lips smiled
sneeringly.

“What perfect rot!” she said disgustedly.

Stoner turned to her angrily. “Where do you come into this thing?
Margot’s no fool. She must know that Gene Valery is rushing the
Leinster kid. Why, I saw them together at a night club, about one
o’clock this morning.”

“I believe you’re lying.” Corinne spoke with deceptive gentleness.
“Just when, may I ask, did you engage Lulu to go out to the coast?”

“Oh--recently,” Stoner said, indicating vagueness of time and space
with a wave of his fat hand.

From narrowed eyes Corinne watched him, gave a low sound that
suggested a grunt of contempt and disbelief, then turned a friendly
glance upon Margot.

“Of course, Miss Anstruther, neither you nor I have the slightest
interest in Lulu Leinster’s movements. But we’re very much interested
in Stoner’s. You say,” she said sternly, looking at the director,
“that you’re getting out of here. Just when, may I ask?”

“Mailed my resignation to the president last night. He got it this
morning. I don’t know what you told them, but from what I gather, you
merely asked to have a meeting called. Well, I’ve got a ticket and
Pullman reservation to California” (he dug into his pocket, brought
forth the tickets and swung them lightly in front of him). “I’m going
straight to Hollywood. Made arrangements at that end by wire. I’m
taking a train in about an hour, at the Penn station. As your idea
seemed to be to get rid of me, I take it you’ll be satisfied with the
little plan I’ve made.” His smile at Corinne was sardonic.

For a moment she was at loose ends. She threw a worried glance at
Margot.

“You _did_ tell him you wouldn’t do anything to him if he’d get out,
but what in God’s name will I tell the directors, not to speak of
Klein and the president, Joseph Livingstone.”

“You can tell ’em anything you please!” Stoner spoke with sudden
fierceness. “Spill _all_ the beans, for all I care! They won’t be able
to get hold of me. Margot said she’d see that the matter’d be dropped
if I’d admit to the directors that what she says is true, and leave
the company. What’s the use taking the president into your sweet
confidence,” his thick lips curled bitterly, “if it’s on the books
that he won’t punish me? I’m going anyway, in five minutes, and nobody
can stop me that I know of.”

“I agree with Mr. Stoner,” Margot said quietly. “Let him go as he
plans to. Call off the meeting. They’ll just think your temperament’s
working over-time.” She gave Corinne a friendly little smile.

Deep puckers filled the space between Corinne’s two, rather lovely,
green eyes. Her mouth drew into a straight line, and she took a few
nervous puffs at her cigarette. Then, surprisingly, the expression of
anxious uncertainty changed to a sparkling of the eye, and a smile of
almost childish satisfaction. She threw away her cigarette with a
gesture as of having more vital matters to deal with.

“I know _just_ what I’ll say to the president and directors! It’s come
to me like a flash!”

Stoner studied her with dislike in his eyes.

“Don’t try to spring anything that’ll mean the breaking of Miss
Anstruther’s word to me!”

“Oh, _you_!” Contempt unspeakable in Corinne’s face and voice. “I
wasn’t even _thinking_ of you that minute!”

Blank amazement in Stoner’s face and on Margot’s. Then Stoner said,
addressing Margot:

“I guess that’s about all. As for you, Miss Anstruther, I believe
you’ll do exactly what you said you would--give me a chance to get
out, and drop the case against me. You’re too clever to be anything
but square.”

She looked at him thoughtfully. His remarks about Gene had obviously
been inspired by jealous malice, and she was inclined to agree with
Corinne that he had lied, although it seemed like rather a silly and
superfluous lie. Well--time for Gene later. No use getting upset by
anything Stoner said. So far as leaving without springing any new
tricks on them was concerned, she decided that he was acting in good
faith. Better let him go and drop everything, although what Corinne
suddenly felt inspired to tell the directors she couldn’t imagine. She
addressed Stoner quietly.

“All right, Mr. Stoner. You can count on my word. Hollywood is a
comfortably long ways off. You’re wise in going there. But I’d like to
ask you to tell me something before you go. Two questions. First, how
did you first get in touch with Murchison? I’d like to know.”

Stoner hesitated, then said slowly: “Might as well tell you. He came
to me a year ago, with some stones he wanted to sell. Heard I was
staging a costume play, and offered me a ruby for such a nominal sum
that it made me suspicious at once. I didn’t want anything to do with
stolen goods, and told him so, flat. He pulled a long, sad face, and a
long, unconvincing story. Said a rich friend had died and left him the
stones. Then he told me he was employed at the Fellowe Institute, and
said I could call up and verify that fact. I told him I’d do that and
then get in touch with him if I wanted to buy anything from him. So I
called up the Institute, found he was employed there all right--their
description of the old duck tallied with mine. But somehow that didn’t
convince me that he hadn’t stolen those stones. It sounded phony and
what he asked for them was ridiculous. Why, any jeweler would have
given four times as much and I told him so. He said he didn’t want to
bother with jewelers. So I dropped the matter.”

Stoner stopped to light a cigarette, and Margot said quickly:

“And when you read in the papers about the theft of the radium you
remembered Murchison, and you had a hunch he’d taken it?”

“Right. But Murchison came to my mind in connection with radium, only
because I got stumped trying to make a realistic scene in that picture
of mine, _The Masque of Life_. So I looked him up, and at first he
denied all knowledge of the radium. But I offered such a whacking
price for it--I thought at first I wanted to buy, but decided that
would be too dangerous, it was a veritable king’s ransom in
radium--that he weakened and admitted that he had it. The rest I guess
you know.”

“Second question, Mr. Stoner. What makes you suppose that you won’t be
brought back here from California, when Murchison’s trial takes place,
about six weeks from now? Are you so sure he won’t peach on you?”

“Dead sure!” Stoner spoke with conviction. “I’ll tell you why. I
arranged with Murchison in the beginning, that if anything happened
about the radium and he got caught, if he’d agree to keep me out of
it--never mention my name to a soul--I’d put ten thousand in the bank
for him. And I’ll do just that. In fact it’s done. I made all
arrangements the day after he was arrested. The minute the trial’s
over, if he’s kept his mouth shut, he’ll get notice that the money’s
in the bank in his name. If he squeals, he’ll get nothing, and it
won’t do _him_ any good to drag me into it. No matter what they could
do to me, it wouldn’t go easier with him for having dragged me into
it. _He_ stole the radium. I had nothing to do with that. He’ll go up
for that anyway, and a wad in the bank at his convenience, when he
gets out of jail, won’t be anything to sneeze at. So _that’s_ why I’m
so sure I won’t be dragged back from Hollywood--that is, if _you_ play
the game as I believe you will, Miss Anstruther.”

“I’ll play it just that way,” she said quietly. “Good-by, Mr. Stoner.
I advise your sticking to romance in the pictures you direct. It won’t
require the assistance of science to aid realism.” The smile she gave
him, although conveying a mocking taunt, was not unfriendly. He struck
her suddenly as so much more a fool than a knave, even in his
childishly malicious gossip about Gene.

Abruptly he stuck out his large hand. “Will you shake on it, Miss
Anstruther, just to show there’s no hard feeling?”

“Certainly!” She gave him her hand and he shook it with a great show
of sexless cordiality. That was for Corinne’s benefit.

He turned to go, without so much as a glance at Corinne. She said
sharply:

“You’re darn lucky you have to deal with a girl as square as Margot
Anstruther. Even if I wanted to play you a mean trick, she wouldn’t
let me do it.”

“Don’t need to remind me,” he said, with an ugly look at the star,
“that you’d play me a dirty trick if you dared. But _she’ll_ see to
that!” And the next instant the door closed behind him.

“Dirty dog!” It was Corinne’s irrepressible but final disposal of the
man for whom her love had turned to hate.

Margot, with her unquenchable sense of humor, said, with a smile she
tried to keep from spreading into a roguish grin:

“That gives you the last word. Now forget him! He’s really occupied
more time and space in my young life than he’s worth, except that he’s
furnished me with considerable amusement, first and last.”

“Well, I don’t see it--the amusement part. But, as you say, forget
him! Only there’s one little matter I’m not quite through with, that
is about Lulu Leinster. I signed her up last week, for a part in my
new picture. She may have played me a nasty trick, but I doubt it. I
believe Stoner sprung that stuff about her going out to the coast,
just to spite you, because you’d cornered him. I’m pretty sure it’s a
lie, and I’m dead sure the part about seeing her with Gene _was_ a
lie.”

Margot moved restlessly. “That’s of no importance, is it, but it is
important whether she’s broken her contract with you.”

“I’ll soon find out. I’ll send for her to come here.”

Corinne summoned her maid and directed that she request Miss Leinster
to meet Miss Delamar in her dressing-room within a half hour.

“And now for the board meeting,” she said cheerfully, rising. “We’re
late, of course, but they’ll wait. Just watch them jump to their big
flat feet, and bow and scrape as if I’d done them an honor by keeping
them waiting.”

“But, Miss Delamar,” Margot hung back, “whatever your business is with
the directors, you won’t need _me_ now.”

“I most certainly will!” Corinne put her hand on Margot’s arm, and
pushed her toward the door. “Now, more than before, if you only knew!”
And then she laughed into Margot’s questioning eyes.

“But--I don’t understand. You’re going to drop the case of Stoner
altogether, you said?”

“I am! But I didn’t say I was going to drop _your_ case, did I?”

Margot was puzzled. She didn’t know Corinne well, after all. What on
earth was she driving at? However, she, Margot, had nothing to
conceal--except for the sake of her promise to Stoner--and her
curiosity was aroused. Also she wasn’t a quitter. If Corinne wanted
her to go with her to that board meeting, why she’d go!

“You won’t tell me why you want me to go with you,” she temporized
once more.

“You’ll find out quick enough. Come on, please, Miss Anstruther! Have
a heart and don’t let us keep the poor things waiting any longer!”

So they hurried--until they reached the door of the board room. Then
Corinne put on her most nonchalant manner, and walked into the room as
if royalty itself had arrived with, as it were, a blowing of silver
trumpets and a tinkling of silver bells. Even Margot was impressed,
not by the star’s importance, but by the way she got away with it.
Every man in the room rose to his feet, bowing obsequiously, with
broad and admiring smiles centered on Corinne. A few glances wavered
in Margot’s direction, and all eyes were focussed on her, as their
star, with a little wave of her hand in Margot’s direction, said very
sweetly:

“Some of you have had the pleasure of meeting Miss Anstruther, some of
you haven’t, but of course you’ve _all_ heard about her fine work as
_Conchita_, in _A Toreador’s Love_!”

The men bowed to Margot, who gave to each of them a frank, personal
smile of acknowledgment, and a slight inclination of her head.
Corinne, without another glance at anyone, sat herself on the chair
put forward for her, crossed her knees, and beckoned to Margot to sit
beside her. It really was amusing, this stardom! If Corinne hadn’t
acquired the status of star, even her talent--and she had
talent--would not have commanded any particular respect from these
men, accustomed as they were to rather cavalier methods with the girls
in their employ. But Corinne was not only a good little actress; she
had her own increasing number of fans, and she was an asset to the
Superfilm Company. Margot felt that it was a definite accomplishment,
and she looked at Corinne with new respect.

“Well, Miss Delamar, you wished to have a meeting called to transact
some important business. But first let me tell you that Frederick
Stoner has run out on us. His resignation reached us this morning.”

Joseph Livingstone’s small eyes focussed on Corinne. Margot,
accustomed to reading human eyes, and finding it easy in so heavy a
countenance as that of Livingstone, understood that he was wondering
if a love-quarrel between the star and the director were the cause of
his sudden resignation.

Corinne turned upon the president a wide, innocent gaze of such
complete astonishment--such convincing surprise--that Margot bit her
lip, and looked quickly down at her lap. It would be awful if she were
to giggle or even smile in the august presence, and at that particular
moment. Corinne appeared far too amazed for speech. Joseph
Livingstone, apparently afraid of some temperamental outburst, said
hurriedly:

“Of course we’ll go on just the same. We’ve got plenty of good
directors. And now, Miss Delamar, what can I do for you?”

Corinne’s expression changed to frank and disarming friendliness. She
said sweetly:

“By doing what I ask, Mr. Livingstone, you will be doing something for
your company. I haven’t come here to ask a favor for myself. First, I
wish to call your attention to the marked talent Miss Anstruther has
shown in her work with us. You will agree with me, I’m sure?”

Margot looked at Corinne with an amazement which she had difficulty in
disguising. Joseph Livingstone rubbed his beringed hands, and said:

“I certainly agree with you, Miss Delamar. The young lady shows
decided promise. We think she has considerable talent.”

“Well, Mr. President,” Corinne smiled directly at him. “I now want to
call your attention to another important point. Miss Anstruther has
acquired, in the last few days, much publicity, of a kind that does an
actress a lot of good with the public. This publicity will be
invaluable, not only to her, but to me and to the whole company. Do
you understand, Mr. Livingstone?”

“I get your point.” Livingstone’s eyes looked suddenly more alive.

“I’m sure you do,” Corinne said warmly. “And I’m sure you’ll _all_
agree with my suggestion that you star Miss Anstruther, just as soon
as _A Toreador’s Love_ is finished!” She threw bright, eager glances
around the room.

Margot stared at Corinne in a surprise so intense that she forgot to
disguise it, but all eyes were fixed on the star.

“But,” gasped Joseph Livingstone, “I was thinking--we all
thought--that you and this young lady were not good friends.”

“How funny!” Corinne’s smile was genius--pure and simple genius,
Margot decided. “We’re the very _best_ of friends, and I admire Miss
Anstruther so much that I made up my mind to have a frank talk with
you, and try to make _you_ see what _I_ see so clearly.”

“Well, well, you take me by surprise, Miss Delamar. But, after all,
why not? Only we’ll have to find a picture for her.”

“Oh, that’s easy!” Corinne threw her beaming smile once more around
the room, then let it rest on Margot. “The title of the picture will
be _The Haunting Hand_, and the story will be the mystery of the arm,
and the strange lights in her room. It will make a _wonderful_
picture!”

“Fine! Fine!” The President again rubbed his white, short-fingered,
carefully manicured hands.

There were murmurs of approval, and glances of admiration bestowed on
Margot, who sat without a word, far too overcome with genuine
gratitude to Corinne for any casual acceptance of her kindness and
generosity. A few more remarks, a few more smiles and bows, and the
two girls left the board room. Outside they stood still and looked at
each other. Margot put out her hand and gripped Corinne’s.

“I don’t know why you did it, but you’re a little brick and I’m
honestly so grateful that I haven’t words to tell you how I feel about
it, Miss Delamar!”

Corinne returned the pressure of Margot’s fingers, then she said
slowly:

“Well, to be honest, I do like you immensely, and I admire you and
your work. You’ve got real talent. But I suppose--and an honest
confession is good for the soul--I suppose that I’m so darn glad you
put it all over Stoner, and opened my eyes for fair, regarding his
conduct in general, that I felt there wasn’t anything too much I could
find to do for you. That’s the God’s truth about it!”

And Margot knew that it was, looking into those strange green eyes
with their yellow lights.

In Corinne’s dressing-room they found Lulu Leinster smoking a
cigarette, stretched at ease in the one comfortable chair. She rose
languidly and smiled greetings to the star and to Margot.

Without preamble Corinne went to the point.

“Are you going out to the coast engaged by Stoner?”

The utter amazement in Lulu’s large blue eyes was sufficient reply to
Corinne’s question, without the astonished “No!” that followed.

Corinne flashed a look at Margot, then she said:

“He told me he’d signed you up to go out there. I was sure you
wouldn’t play me such a trick, but I thought I’d put it right up to
you.”

“Why, he must be a terrible liar, Miss Delamar, to say such a thing.
He _asked_ me to go out there and offered me something good if I’d go,
but I told him I’d signed up with you and that I’d rather stay here
with you.”

“Good child!” Corinne patted her hand. “As he’s such a picturesque
liar, I dare say he lied when he told us he’d seen you and Gene Valery
in a night club last night--or rather early this morning.” Corinne’s
inflection seemed to state a fact rather than ask a question.

Lulu’s fair skin grew slowly pink and she made a nervous pretense of
flicking the ashes from her cigarette. Without raising her eyes she
said a little unevenly:

“Mr. Stoner did see me last night with Gene Valery.”

Margot’s pulse beat suddenly very fast, but her eyes and mouth were
under control when Corinne’s astonished gaze flew to her, in
embarrassed uncertainty.

“Well----” The exclamation came from Corinne in a gasp of annoyance at
being put in a false position. “That’s funny! Since when have you and
Gene Valery been such friends?”

“Why, we’re _all_ good friends,” Margot broke in eagerly, “aren’t we,
Lulu?”

Lulu gave her a sidelong glance, then she said laconically:

“Sure thing.”

“I didn’t know,” persisted Corinne with a frown, “that you and Gene
were _particular_ friends.”

Lulu said nothing for a second, then she threw Margot an enigmatic
little smile.

“Suppose you ask Gene what sort of ‘particular’ friends we are,
Margot. I’m sure he’ll tell you. Well----” she turned to the star, “if
that’s all you want of me, Miss Delamar, guess I’ll run along.”

Margot gave her an unusually bright smile, but Corinne said rather
crossly:

“Run along, by all means.”

After Lulu had gone, Corinne threw herself into the easy chair,
lighted a cigarette, and asked Margot to sit down.

“Thanks, but I’ll have to be running along myself. I can’t tell you,
Miss Delamar, how I appreciate your interest in me. You’re really
awfully good to me.” The look in her eyes conveyed to Corinne the fact
that her loyalty to Margot in the matter of Gene and Lulu had not been
wasted.

“See here, my dear.” Corinne spoke slowly between puffs on her
cigarette. “I wouldn’t, if I were you, pay any attention to that
‘tripe’--to borrow one of Stoner’s pet vulgarities--about Gene and
Lulu. If he was with that little mutton-head last night, there was
some good reason for it, which he’ll tell you quick enough. Don’t take
it seriously.”

“Why should I!” Margot laughed, with a gaiety that did not deceive
Corinne. Then she said good-by and departed.

On her way to the train she deliberated whether or not to take any
initiative where Gene was concerned. The suspicion had come to her,
that he was angry and hurt, far more seriously than she had imagined
possible--that is, assuming that he was sincere in his protests of
love for her. A faint doubt on this point pricked her consciousness
with uneasy reminders of Lulu’s enigmatic smile. Could it be possible
that Gene was like the majority of men!

At last Margot faced the unpleasant conviction that she was miserable
at the very idea of Gene’s insincerity being a possible factor in the
situation. She shrank from acknowledging to herself that she felt
jealousy of Lulu Leinster, for jealousy is an admission of
inferiority. But it actually came to that, if she were to be honest
with herself. She _was_ jealous--horribly jealous--and miserable as
she had never supposed she could be over a man.

Well--she’d been rather silly, playing a waiting game with Gene, and
pretending not to take him seriously, and it was up to her to give him
the benefit of the doubt. She’d send for him and ask him frankly about
Lulu. If, in so doing, she would run a risk of showing Gene how much
she really loved him, surely it was worth the risk. She sent him a
telegram from Astoria to come and take her out to dinner, then she
hurried back to town.




 CHAPTER XVII.
 “BETTER THAN BROTHERLY!”

The door of Margot’s room shut out the rest of the world, and she
and Gene stood looking at each other.

He had come at her bidding, a little reluctantly it had seemed to her,
but she had greeted him with gay insouciance and had delicately
skirted the edge of personalities during the dinner hour.

She had told him of the encounter with Stoner the preceding day; of
his unexpected appearance that morning, and his frank avowal of guilt;
of Corinne’s amazing attitude toward herself, and of the final outcome
so far as the president and directors were concerned. She had actually
made him laugh with her humorous treatment of events and the persons
motivating them. She had caught a quick frown at her description of
Stoner’s friendly parting with her in Corinne’s dressing-room, and her
heart had beaten a little faster. Why should Gene frown at mention of
Stoner unless he were actually in love with her?

It was all told, and as they stood facing each other, behind her
closed door, there was nothing between her and Gene except mutual
doubt and suspicion.

“Well,” she began lightly, sparring for time, “I hope I didn’t butt
into any of your plans for this evening by sending for you, Gene.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?” he said sternly, looking at her with
unhappy eyes.

“‘Funny!’” She gave a nervous laugh. “Why, no. I’m quite serious. Come
on, let’s sit down. I hate talking standing up.”

She moved to the divan and he took a chair a few feet away and sat
down a little stiffly, Margot thought.

She saw that he was not going to help her out, and with sudden
irritation she said abruptly:

“I thought _possibly_ you might have an engagement for to-night with
Lulu Leinster.”

He bent forward and looked at her intently.

“So--that big stiff, that cad, told you he saw us last night.”

“He mentioned it--casually.” Margot tapped the end of an unlighted
cigarette with elaborate unconcern. Then she flashed him a sudden
glance of assumed surprise. “Why was it such a horrible faux-pas for
him to have mentioned it?”

“You know that wasn’t what I meant,” Gene said quietly. “Some other
man might have mentioned a thing like that--‘casually,’ as you call
it--but not Stoner. He had some mean motive or he wouldn’t have
bothered to talk about us.”

“Well--perhaps,” Margot conceded slowly. “However, the interesting
fact is that you _were_ with Lulu last night. You see, Stoner told us
that Lulu was going out with him, or after him, to the coast, and it
seems that Corinne had signed her up for her next picture, so she was
sure Stoner had lied. She sent for Lulu and questioned her, and to my
annoyance asked her if it were true that Stoner had seen you two
together last night. Lulu said it was. So that was that. I’m just
amused, you know, for I hadn’t supposed you cared enough for the
little prize beauty to spend an hour with her, voluntarily.”

“You know damn well I don’t.” Gene’s unexpected violence was rather
startling. He stared at her with somber eyes.

“Then what, may I ask, just in passing, happened to bring about the
little party last night?”

“See here, Margot, I don’t know that you have the right to question
me, considering your _sisterly_ interest in me, but I’ll tell you what
there is to tell, because I’m fool enough to care tremendously what
you think of me, regardless of loving me.”

Margot lowered her eyes quickly. She was afraid of what Gene might
read in them, and she wasn’t quite ready for her own confession.

“When I left you, night before last, I made up my mind that I couldn’t
stand your little cat-and-mouse game any longer. Something rose up in
me against your treatment of me. I couldn’t stand it any longer,” he
repeated himself helplessly. “It seemed to be clear enough that you
didn’t and never would care for me as I wanted you to. I was pretty
miserable. Last evening I happened to run into Lulu on Broadway. It
struck me she wasn’t looking very cheerful herself. On a sudden
impulse I asked her to spend the evening somewhere with me. She
agreed. I admit, frankly, I tried desperately hard to work up a
flirtation with her. She realized just what an effort I was making and
she laughed at me. Finally she got me started about you and I spilled
over, told her everything and she gave me the sympathy I needed.
That’s all there was to it, Margot.”

She studied him for a moment, then she said gently:

“Are you sure that’s all there was to it, on her side?”

Gene gave a sudden laugh. “_Ask_ her,” he said briefly. “Why, she’s so
in love with some nut in the company, who’s got a wife and three kids,
that she can’t _see_ any other man. I gave a little good advice and I
believe it got under her skin. Hope so, anyway.”

With her heart beating faster and her eyes glowing with excitement,
Margot tried to speak calmly.

“Do you remember my saying that after disposing of Stoner and my
mystery, there was something else of importance I had to attend to?”

“Yes, I remember,” he said, frowning at her. “Something of vital
importance, before you could pay any attention to _me_.”

She smiled at him, mockery on her lips, tender challenge in her deep
gray eyes. He got up quickly and stood looking down at her, where she
lay against the cushions.

“For God’s sake, Margot, stop playing with me!”

“Silly, silly old thing!” she said softly. “It never remotely occurred
to you that the ‘important’ thing I hinted at so mysteriously
was--well, my dear, just--you and me.”

He threw himself beside her and leaned over her, speaking fiercely.

“You said you’d let me kiss you as a _brother_, and for the last time.
What the devil did you mean?”

“I meant--that the next time you kissed me, I’d want it to be as--my
lover. Then you became a caveman, and--and I _liked_ it, but you
banged out of the room without waiting to find out.”

He stared at her a second, then he gave a low cry and seized her in
his arms. He kissed her, eyes and throat and mouth, in an ecstasy of
joy and of passion long restrained.

“Darling--darling! I never dreamed--I was afraid even to hope. I love
you so, Margot, I adore you.”

Between his kisses she managed to tell him that she had known beyond
all possibility of doubt, just how deeply she loved him, when he had
given way to his emotions, in that very room two nights before, and
had kissed her as no man had ever kissed her before and as, she could
assure him, no _other_ man would ever kiss her.

“I didn’t have to kiss you to know what I felt for you.” He studied
her face with rapturous intentness. “Women are funny. A man wants to
kiss a woman _because_ he loves her, or rather _if_ he loves her, and
a woman loves a man because he kisses her.”

Margot laughed. “Not quite that, dear. Stoner didn’t arouse my passion
by kissing me.”

Gene drew her closer with a sudden access of possessive jealousy.

“Damn Stoner. Don’t remind me that he ever touched you.”

“That reminds me,” she said softly. “Another awakening I had in regard
to my love for you, Gene, was when I suddenly realized I was miserably
jealous of Lulu. Then I _knew_, even better than I did after your
caveman exhibition, how much I loved you.”

“I’m terribly flattered, darling, but it does strike me as grotesque,
being jealous of that girl. However, I’m mighty glad I ran into her
the other night, if it made you a little surer of your love for me.”

The first hour of love’s abandonment to the joy and thrill of mutual
understanding, made the blood tingle in Margot’s cheeks, and her lips
were tremulous and moist with the first tempest of emotion she had
ever experienced. At last she drew a little out of her lover’s arms
and studied his eager, sensitive face. Suddenly a smile drew up the
corners of her mouth, and she put soft fingers against his lips.

“I’ll believe anything, anything at all you tell me, about adoring me
and how beautiful I am, but don’t you dare ever tell me again that I
could never grow old or ugly in your eyes.”

He laughed and pressed his lips against her hair.

“But it’s the truth. Perhaps we’ll both live long enough for me to
prove it to you, sweetheart.”

“And there’s just one other thing I’d rather not have you say, Gene.
Tell me you love me, as often as you like, but never say you’ll
_always_ love me. Men are always telling women that, and how can
anyone promise such a thing! Live it, Gene--by all means _live_
it--but don’t _say_ it. It might spoil our luck.”

“Fat chance,” he said, with more eloquence of tone than of language.

“By the way, Gene.” She gave him one of her brilliant roguish smiles.
“It’ll be rather nice, after we’re married--I won’t have to call you
by phone if I should get scared by a spook.”

“You little devil!” He gave her a quick hug. “You whimsical darling!”

“‘Whimsical,’” she repeated softly. “That’s rather nice. You never
called me that before.”

“Haven’t I? Well, I’ve often thought it. It describes you better than
anything else. It’s the thing about you that will never let you grow
old or ugly. I _will_ say it, for it’s true. It’s the thing so few
women possess, and that charms and holds a man longer than beauty or
wit or even,” he added with a laugh, “a good disposition, and God
knows that’s important enough.”

“Here, here! I guess, after all, if that’s the way you feel about it,
I’ll let you say--just this once--that you’ll love me forever and
ever.”

And Gene’s reply, swift and silent, far better than a brotherly kiss,
was more eloquent than any words could have been.

 [The End]




 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. caveman/cave-man, dressing
room/dressing-room, etc.) have been preserved.

Alterations to the text:

Fix one quotation mark pairing.

[Chapter VII]

Change “The headlines of the early _editon_ greeted her” to _edition_.

 [End of text]






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