The Film Mystery

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Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

THE FILM MYSTERY

BY

ARTHUR B. REEVE

AUTHOR OF

"The Soul Scar" "The Adventuress" and Other Craig Kennedy
Scientific Detective Stories

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. A CAMERA CRIME
II. THE TINY SCRATCH
III. TANGLED MOTIVES
IV. THE FATAL SCRIPT
V. AN EMOTIONAL MAZE
VI. THE FIRST CLUB
VII. ENID FAYE
VIII. LAWRENCE MILLARD
IX. WHITE-LIGHT SHADOWS
X. CHEMICAL RESEARCH
XI. FORESTALLED
XII. EMERY PHELPS
XIII. MARILYN LORING
XIV. ANOTHER CLUE
XV. I BECOME A DETECTIVE
XVI. ENID ASSISTS
XVII. AN APPEAL
XVIII. THE ANTIVENIN
XIX. AROUND THE CIRCLE
XX. THE BANQUET SCENE
XXI. MERLE SHIRLEY OVERACTS
XXII. THE STEM
XXIII. BOTULIN TOXIN
XXIV. THE INVISIBLE MENACE
XXV. ITCHING SALVE
XXVI. A CIGARETTE CASE
XXVII. THE FILM FIRE
XXVIII. THE PHOSPHORUS BOMB
XXIX. MICROSCOPIC EVIDENCE
XXX. THE BALLROOM SCENE
XXXI. PHYSOSTIGMIN
XXXII. CAMERA EVIDENCE

THE FILM MYSTERY

I

A CAMERA CRIME

"Camera!"

Kennedy and I had been hastily summoned from his laboratory in
the city by District-Attorney Mackay, and now stood in the
luxurious, ornate library in the country home of Emery Phelps,
the banker, at Tarrytown.

"Camera!--you know the call when the director is ready to shoot a
scene of a picture?--well--at the moment it was given and the
first and second camera men began to grind--she crumpled--sank to
the floor--unconscious!"

Hot and excited, Mackay endeavored to reenact his case for us
with all the histrionic ability of a popular prosecutor before a
jury.

"There's where she dropped--they carried her over here to this
davenport--sent for Doctor Blake--but he couldn't do a thing for
her. She died--just as you see her. Blake thought the matter so
serious, so alarming, that he advised an immediate investigation.
That's why I called you so urgently."

Before us lay the body of the girl, remarkably beautiful even as
she lay motionless in death. Her masses of golden hair,
disheveled, added to the soft contours of her features. Her
wonderfully large blue-gray eyes with their rare gift for
delicate shades of expression were closed, but long curling
lashes swept her cheeks still and it was hard to believe that
this was anything more than sleep.

It was inconceivable that Stella Lamar, idol of the screen,
beloved of millions, could have been taken from the world which
worshiped her.

I felt keenly for the district attorney. He was a portly little
man of the sort prone to emphasize his own importance and so,
true to type, he had been upset completely by a case of genuine
magnitude. It was as though visiting royalty had dropped dead
within his jurisdiction.

I doubt whether the assassination of a McKinley or a Lincoln
could have unsettled him as much, because in such an event he
would have had the whole weight of the Federal government behind
him. There was no question but that Stella Lamar enjoyed a
country-wide popularity known by few of our Presidents. Her
sudden death was a national tragedy.

Apparently Mackay had appealed to Kennedy the moment he learned
the identity of Stella, the moment he realized there was any
question about the circumstances surrounding the affair. Over the
telephone the little man had been almost incoherent. He had heard
of Kennedy's work and was feverishly anxious to enlist his aid,
at any price.

All we knew as we took the train on the New York Central was that
Stella was playing a part in a picture to be called "The Black
Terror," that the producer was Manton Pictures, Incorporated, and
that she had dropped dead suddenly and without warning in the
middle of a scene being photographed in the library at the home
of Emery Phelps.

I was singularly elated at the thought of accompanying Kennedy on
this particular case. It was not that the tragic end of a film
star whose work I had learned to love was not horrible to me, but
rather because, for once, I thought Kennedy actually confronted a
situation where his knowledge of a given angle of life was hardly
sufficient for his usual analysis of the facts involved.

"Walter," he had exclaimed, as I burst into the laboratory in
response to a hurried message, "here's where I need your help.
You know all about moving pictures, so--if you'll phone your city
editor and ask him to let you cover a case for the Star we'll
just about catch a train at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street."

Because the film world had fascinated me always I had made a
point of being posted on its people and their activities. I
remembered the very first appearance of Stella Lamar back in the
days of General Film, when pictures were either Licensed or
Independent, when only two companies manufactured worth-while
screen dramas, when any subject longer than a reel had to be of
rare excellence, such as the art films imported from France for
the Licensed program. In those days, Stella rose rapidly to
prominence. Her large wistful eyes had set the hearts of many of
us to beating at staccato rate.

Then came Lloyd Manton, her present manager, and the first of a
new type of business man to enter the picture field. Manton was
essentially a promoter. His predecessors had been men carried to
success by the growth of the new art. Old Pop Belman, for
instance, had been a fifth-rate oculist who rented and sold
stereopticons as a side line. With blind luck he had grasped the
possibilities of Edison's new invention. Just before the break-up
of General Film he had become many times a millionaire and it was
then that he had sent a wave of laughter over the entire country
by an actual cable to William Shakespeare, address London, asking
for all screen rights to the plays written by that gentleman.

Manton represented a secondary phase in film finance. Continent
Films, his first corporation, was a stockjobbing concern.
Grasping the immense popularity of Stella Lamar, he had coaxed
her away from the old studio out in Flatbush where all her early
successes had been photographed. With the magic of her name he
sold thousands of shares of stock to a public already fed up on
the stories of the fortunes to be made in moving pictures. When
much of the money so raised had been dissipated, when Continent's
quotation on the curb sank to an infinitesimal fraction, then it
developed that Stella's contract was with Manton personally.
Manton Pictures, Incorporated, was formed to exploit her. The
stock of this company was not offered to outside investors.

Stella's popularity had in no way suffered from the business
methods of her manager. Manton, at the least, had displayed rare
foresight in his estimation of public taste. Except for a few
attempts with established stage favorites, photographed generally
in screen versions of theatrical classics and backed by
affiliations with the producers of the legitimate stage,
Continent Films was the first concern to make the five-reel
feature. Stella, as a Continent player, was the very first
feature star. Under the banner of Manton Pictures, she had never
surrendered her position of pre-eminence.

Also, scandal somehow had failed to touch her. Those initiated to
the inner gossip of the film world, like myself, were under no
illusions. The relations between Stella and Manton were an open
secret. Yet the picture fans, in their blind worship, believed
her to be as they saw her upon the screen. To them the wide and
wistful innocence of her remarkably large eyes could not be
anything but genuine. The artlessness of the soft curves of her
mouth was proof to them of the reality of an ingenuous and very
girlish personality.

Even her divorce had helped rather than harmed her. It seemed
irony to me that she should have obtained the decree instead of
her husband, and in New York, too, where the only grounds are
unfaithfulness. The testimony in the case had been sealed so that
no one knew whom she had named as corespondent. At the time, I
wondered what pressure had been exerted upon Millard to prevent
the filing of a cross suit. Surely he should have been able to
substantiate the rumors of her association with Lloyd Manton.

Lawrence Millard, author and playwright and finally scenario
writer, had been as much responsible for the success of his wife
as Manton, and in a much less spectacular way. It was Millard who
had written her first great Continent success, who had developed
the peculiar type of story best suited for her, back in the early
days of the one reel and General Film.

It is commonly known in picture circles that an actress who
screens well, even if she is only a moderately good artist, can
be made a star with one or two or three good stories and that,
conversely, a star may be ruined by a succession of badly written
or badly produced vehicles. Those of us not blinded by an
idolatrous worship for the girl condemned her severely for
throwing her husband aside at the height of her success. The
public displayed their sympathy for her by a burst of renewed
interest. The receipts at the box office whenever her films were
shown probably delighted both Manton and Stella herself.

I had wondered, as Kennedy and I occupied a seat in the train,
and as he left me to my thoughts, whether there could be any
connection between the tragedy and the divorce. The decree, I
knew, was not yet final. Could it be possible that Millard was
unwilling, after all, to surrender her? Could he prefer
deliberate murder to granting her her freedom? I was compelled to
drop that line of thought, since it offered no explanation of his
previous failure to contest her suit or to start counter action.

Then my reflections had strayed away from Kennedy's sphere, the
solving of the mystery, to my own, the news value of her death
and the events following. The Star, as always, had been only too
glad to assign me to any case where Craig Kennedy was concerned;
my phone message to the city editor, the first intimation to any
New York paper of Stella's death, already had resulted without
doubt in scare heads and an extra edition.

The thought of the prominence given the personal affairs of
picture players and theatrical folk had disgusted me.

There are stars against whom there is not the slightest breath of
gossip, even among the studio scandal-mongers. Any number of
girls and men go about their work sanely and seriously, concerned
in nothing but their success and the pursuit of normal pleasures.
As a matter of fact it had struck me on the train that this was
about the first time Craig Kennedy had ever been called in upon a
case even remotely connected with the picture field. I knew he
would be confronted with a tangled skein of idle talk, from
everybody, about everybody, and mostly without justification. I
hoped he would not fall into the popular error of assuming all
film players bad, all studios schools of immorality. I was glad I
was able to accompany him on that account.

The arrival at Tarrytown had ended my reflections, and Kennedy's
--whatever they may have been. Mackay himself had met us at the
station and with a few words, to cover his nervousness, had
whisked us out to the house.

As we approached, Kennedy had taken quick note of the
surroundings, the location of the home itself, the arrangement of
the grounds. There was a spreading lawn on all four sides,
unbroken by plant or bush or tree--sheer prodigality of space,
the better to display a rambling but most artistic pile of gray
granite. Masking the road and the adjoining grounds was thick,
impenetrable shrubbery, a ring of miniature forest land about the
estate. There was a garage, set back, and tennis courts, and a
practice golf green. In the center of a garden in a far corner a
summerhouse was placed so as to reflect itself in the surface of
a glistening swimming pool.

As we pulled up under the porte-cochere Emery Phelps, the banker,
greeted us. Perhaps it was my imagination, but it seemed to me
that there was a repressed animosity in his manner, as though he
resented the intrusion of Kennedy and myself, yet felt powerless
to prevent it. In contrast to his manner was the cordiality of
Lloyd Manton, just inside the door. Manton was childishly eager
in his welcome, so much so that I was able to detect a shade of
suspicion in Kennedy's face.

The others of the company were clustered in the living room,
through which we passed to reach the library. I found small
opportunity to study them in the rather dim light. Mackay
beckoned to a man standing in a window, presenting him to Kennedy
as Doctor Blake. Then we entered the long paneled chamber which
had been the scene of the tragedy.

Now I stood, rather awed, with the motionless figure of Stella
Lamar before me in her last pitiable close-up. For I have never
lost the sense of solemnity on entering the room of a tragedy, in
spite of the long association I have had with Kennedy in the
scientific detection of crime. Particularly did I have the
feeling in this case. The death of a man is tragic, but I know
nothing more affecting than the sudden and violent death of a
beautiful woman--unless it be that of a child.

I recalled a glimpse of Stella as I had seen her in her most
recent release, as the diaphragm opened on her receiving a box of
chocolates, sent by her lover, and playfully feeding one of them
to her beautiful collie, "Laddie," as he romped about upon a
divan and almost smothered her with affection. The vivacity and
charm of the scene were in sad contrast with what lay before me.

As I looked more carefully I saw now that her full, well-rounded
face was contorted with either pain or fear--perhaps both. Even
through the make-up one could see that her face was blotched and
swollen. Also, the muscles were contorted; the eyes looked as if
they might be bulging under the lids; and there was a bluish
tinge to her skin. Evidently death had come quickly, but it had
not been painless.

"Even the coroner has not disturbed the body," Mackay hastened to
explain to Kennedy. "The players, the camera men, all were sent
out of the room the moment Doctor Blake was certain something
more than a natural cause lay behind her death. Mr. Phelps
telephoned to me, and upon my arrival I ordered the doors and
windows closed, posted my deputies to prevent any interference
with anything in the room, left my instructions that everyone was
to be detained, then got in touch with you as quickly as I
could."

Kennedy turned to him. Something in the tone of his voice showed
that he meant his compliment. "I'm glad, Mackay, to be called in
by some one who knows enough not to destroy evidence; who
realizes that perhaps the slightest disarrangement of a rug, for
instance, may be the only clue to a murder. It's--it's rare!"

The little district attorney beamed. If he had found it necessary
to walk across the floor just then he would have strutted. I
smiled because I wanted Kennedy to show again his marvelous skill
in tracing a crime to its perpetrator. I was anxious that nothing
should be done to hamper him.

II

THE TINY SCRATCH

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

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

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

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

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

"What do you think caused the death?"

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

"You have no hypothesis?"

"If she died from any natural organic disorder, the signs were
lacking by which I could trace it. Everything indicates the
opposite, however. It would be hard for me to say whether the
paralysis of respiration or of the heart actually caused her
death. If it was due to poison--Well, to me the whole affair is
shrouded in mystery. The symptoms indicated nothing I could
recognize with any degree of certainty."

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

In the room were the portable arcs used in the making of scenes
in an actual interior setting. The connections ran to heavy
insulated junction boxes at the ends of two lines of stiff black
stage cable. Near the door the circuits were joined and a single
lead of the big duplex cord ran out along the polished hardwood
floor, carried presumably to the house circuit at a fuse box
where sufficient amperage was available. Kennedy's eyes followed
out the wires quickly. Then, motioning to me to help, he wheeled
one of the heavy stands around and adjusted the hood so that the
full strength of the light would be cast upon Stella. The arc in
place, he threw the switch, and in the sputtering flood of
illumination dropped to his knees, taking a powerful pocket lens
from his waistcoat and beginning an inch by inch examination of
her skin.

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

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

With his eye glued to his lens he made his way about and around
her neck, and down and over her throat and chest so far as it
remained unprotected by the silk of her gown. With the aid of
Mackay he turned her over to examine her back. Next he returned
the body to its former position and began to inspect the arms.
Very suddenly something caught his eye on the inside of her right
forearm. He grunted with satisfaction, straightened, pulled the
switch of the arc, wiped his eyes, which were watering.

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

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

The library was a huge room of greater length than breadth. At
one end were wide French windows looking out upon the garden and
summer house. The door to the hallway and living room was very
broad, with heavy sliding panels and rich portieres of a velours
almost the tint of the wood-work. Between the door, situated in
the side wall near the opposite end, and the windows, was a
magnificent stone fireplace with charred logs testifying to its
frequent use. The couch where Stella lay had been drawn back from
its normal position before the fire, together with a huge table
of carved walnut. The other two walls were an unbroken succession
of shelves, reaching to the ceiling and literally packed with
books.

Facing the windows and the door, so as to include the fireplace
and the wide sweep of the room within range, were two cameras
still set up, the legs of their tripods nested, probably left
exactly as they were at the moment of Stella's collapse. I
touched the handle of one, a Bell & Howell, and saw that it was
threaded, that the film had not been disturbed. The lights,
staggered and falling away from the camera lines, were arranged
to focus their illumination on the action of the scenes. There
were four arcs and two small portable banks of Cooper-Hewitts,
the latter used to cut the sharp shadows and give a greater
evenness to the photography. Also there were diffusers
constructed of sheets of white cloth stretched taut on frames.
These reflected light upward upon the faces of the actors,
softening the lower features, and so valuable in adding to the
attractiveness of the women in particular.

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

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

While the district attorney hurried to the sliding doors, guarded
on their farther side by one of the amateur deputies he had
impressed into service, Kennedy swung the stand of the arc he had
used back into the place unaided. I noticed that Doctor Blake was
nervously interested in spite of his professional poise. I
certainly was bursting with curiosity to know what Kennedy had
found.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, sir!"

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

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

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

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

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

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