The Film Mystery Part 30

"I might possibly have succeeded in gaining sufficient evidence for an arrest, thus averting this tragedy. But it is only a theory of mine."

I scowled. It seemed to me that Kennedy was minimizing things in a way unusual for him. I wondered if he really thought the heavy man innocent.

"It's still my belief that s.h.i.+rley is guilty," I a.s.serted.

A sound of confusion from the courtyard beneath the heavy studio windows caught Kennedy's ear and ended the colloquy. From some of those near enough to look out we received the explanation. The police had arrived, fully three-quarters of an hour after Werner's death.

"I'll get the little bottle of wine, sure," Mackay murmured, picking up the food samples he had wrapped and crowding the bulky package into a pocket.

"I don't see why that would have been any easier to poison than the food," was my objection. "Everyone was looking."

"Very simple. The food was brought in quite late. Besides, it was dished out by the caterer before the eyes of forty or fifty people or more and there was no telling which plate would go to Werner's place.

The drinks were poured last of all. I remember seeing the bubbles rise and wondering whether they would register at the distance."

Kennedy did not look at me. "Did it ever occur to you," he went on, casually, "that the gla.s.ses were all set out empty at the various places long before, and that there might easily have been a few drops of something, if it were colorless, placed in the bottom of Werner's gla.s.s, with scarcely a chance of its being discovered, especially by a man who had so much on his mind at the time as Werner had? He must have indicated where he would sit when he arranged the camera stands and the location of the tables."

I had not thought of that.

Kennedy frowned. "If only I could have located more of that broken gla.s.s!" As he faced me I could read his disappointment. "Walter, I've made a most careful search of his chair and the table and everything about the s.p.a.ce where he dropped. The poison must have been in the wine, but there's not a tiny sliver of that gla.s.s left, nothing but a thousand bits ground into the canvas, too small to hold even a drop of the liquid. Just think, a dried stain of the wine, no matter how tiny, might have served me in a chemical a.n.a.lysis."

Very suddenly there was a low exclamation from Mackay. "Look! Quick!

Some one must have kicked it way over here!"

Fully twenty feet from Werner's place in the glare of the lights was the hollow stem of a champagne gla.s.s, its base intact save for a narrow segment. In the stem still were a couple of drops of the wine, as if in a bulb or tube.

"Can it be the director's gla.s.s?" Mackay asked, handing it to Kennedy.

Kennedy slipped it into his pocket, fussing with his handkerchief so that the precious contents would not drip out. "I think so. I doubt whether any other gla.s.s was broken. Verify it quickly."

The police were entering now with Manton. Following them was the physician. Mackay and I ascertained readily that no other gla.s.s had been shattered, while Kennedy searched the floor for possible signs that the stem was part of a gla.s.s broken where we had found it.

Unquestionably we had a sample of the actual wine quaffed by the unfortunate Werner. Elated we strolled to a corner so as to give the police full charge.

"They'll waste time questioning everyone," Kennedy remarked. "I have the real evidence." He tapped his pocket.

The few moments that he had had to himself had been ample for him to obtain such evidence as was destroyed in so many cases by the time he was called upon the scene.

A point occurred to me. "You don't think the poison was planted later during the excitement?"

"Hardly! Our criminal is too clever to take a long chance. In such a case we would know it was some one near Werner and also there would be too many people watching. Foolhardiness is not boldness."

I took to observing the methods of the police, which were highly efficient, but only in the minuteness of the examination of witnesses and in the care with which they recorded names and facts and made sure that no one had slipped away to avoid the notoriety.

The actors and actresses who had stood rather in awe of Kennedy, both here and in Kennedy's investigation at Tarrytown, developed nimble tongues in their answers to the city detectives. The result was a perfect maze of conflicting versions of Werner's cry and fall. In fact, one scene s.h.i.+fter insisted that s.h.i.+rley, as the Black Terror, had reached Werner's side and had struck him before the cry, while an extra girl with a faint lisp described with sobering accuracy the flight of a mysterious missile through the air. I realized then why Kennedy had made no effort to question them. Under the excitement of the scene, the glamour of the lights, the sense of illusion, and the stifling heat, it would have been strange for any of the people to have retained correct impressions of the event.

The police sergeant knew Kennedy by reputation and approached him after a visit to the dead man's body with the doctor. His glance, including Mackay and myself, was frankly triumphant.

"Well," he exclaimed, "I don't suppose it occurred to any of you SCIENTIFIC guys to search the fellow, now did it?"

Kennedy smiled, in good humor. "Searching a man isn't always the scientific method. You won't find the word 'frisk' in any scientific dictionary."

"No?" The police officer's eyes twinkled. There was enough of the Irish in him to enjoy an encounter of this kind. "Maybe not, but you might find things in a chap's pocket which is better." With a flourish he produced a hypodermic syringe, the duplicate of the one I had appropriated, and a tiny bottle. "The man's a dope," he added.

"I knew that," replied Kennedy. "I examined his arm, where he usually took his shots, and found no fresh mark of the needle."

"That doesn't prove anything. Wait until the medical examiner gets here. He'll find the fellow's heart all shot full of hop, or something.

I guess it isn't so complicated, after all. He was a hop fiend, all right."

"Still, there's nothing to indicate that he was a suicide."

"Not suicide; accident-overdose," was the sergeant's reply.

"How could he have died from an overdose of the drug, when he hasn't taken any recently?"

"Well"--unabashed--"then he croaked because he hadn't had a shot--the same thing. Heart failure, either way. Excited, and all, you know, making the scene. Maybe he forgot to use the needle at that."

"Perhaps you're right." Kennedy shrugged calmly. What was the use of disputing the matter?

I started to protest against the detective's hypothesis. The idea of any drug addict ever forgetting to take his stimulant was too preposterous. But Kennedy checked me. All were now keenly listening to the argument. Better, perhaps, to let some one think that nothing was suspected than to disclose the cards in Craig's hand. I saw that he wished to get away and had not spoken seriously. He turned to Mackay.

"Walter and I will have to hurry to the laboratory. Would you like to come along?"

"You bet I would!" The district attorney showed his delight. "I was just going to ask if I might do so. There's nothing for me in Tarrytown to-day and this is out of my jurisdiction."

As we turned away the police sergeant saw us and called across the floor, not quite concealing a touch of professional jealousy.

"The three of you were here at the time, weren't you?"

"No," Kennedy answered. "Mr. Jameson and myself."

"Well, you two, then! You're witnesses and I'll ask you to hold yourself in readiness to appear at the hearing."

I thought that the policeman was particularly delighted at his position to issue orders to Kennedy, and I was angered. Again Craig held me in check!

"We'll be glad to tell anything we know," he replied, then added a little fling, a bit of sarcasm which almost went over the other's head.

"That is," he amended, "as eye-witnesses!"

XXIII

BOTULIN TOXIN

Mackay drove us to the laboratory in his little car and it was dark and we were dinnerless when we arrived. Knowing Kennedy's habits, I sent out for sandwiches and started in to make strong coffee upon an electric percolator. The aroma tingled in my nostrils, reminding me that I was genuinely hungry. The district attorney, too, seemed more or less similarly disposed.

As for Kennedy, he was interested in nothing but the problem before him. He had been strangely quiet on the way, growing more and more impatient and nervous, as though the element of time had entered into the case, as though haste were suddenly imperative. Once the lights were on in the laboratory he hurried about his various preparations.

The food samples he laid out, but he gave them no attention. The blood smears and stomach contents he put aside for future reference. His attack was upon the drop or two of liquid adhering to the stem of the broken champagne gla.s.s.