The Film Mystery Part 4

LOCATION.--Remsen library. Full shot.

ACTION.--The spotlight is showing into the fireplace when the girl crosses quickly into its rays. She stoops into the light, revealing her face and picking up the spotlight. She flashes it about the room, pausing as it strikes the French windows and reveals the murderer making his escape out on a balcony which is revealed in the background.

When the rays of light reach the murderer he deliberately turns.

SCENE 9

LOCATION.--Remsen library. Close foreground of French windows.

ACTION.--The intruder, now in the close foreground, pauses as he is about to shut the window and blinks deliberately into the rays of light, then laughs and closes the French windows.

SCENE 10

LOCATION.--Hallway, Remsen home. Close foreground of portieres to library.

ACTION.--The butler and maid look around hopelessly. A young man, the exact counterpart of the man who in the previous scene looked into the spotlight at the French windows, comes up to the butler and demands to know what has happened. The butler explains hurriedly that he heard his mistress cry out for help. The young man steps to the portieres and pauses.

SCENE 11

LOCATION.--Remsen library. Full shot.

ACTION.--The girl, using the spotlight, flashes it about the room and down on the floor, seeing for the first time the body of the American millionaire.

SCENE 12

LOCATION.--Exterior Remsen house. Night tint.

ACTION.--The murderer scrambles down a column from the upper porch and leaps to the ground, darting across the lawn out of the picture.

SCENE 13

LOCATION.--Remsen library. Full shot.

ACTION.--The spotlight on the floor reveals the girl sobbing over the body of the millionaire and trying to revive him. She screams and cries out. The portieres are parted and from the lighted hallway we see the young man, the butler, and the maid, who enter. The young man switches on the lights and the room is revealed. The three cry out in horror.

The young man, glancing about, leaps toward the partly opened French windows, drawing a revolver. As the girl sees him she screams again and denotes terror.

Finis.h.i.+ng the thirteenth scene, Kennedy closed the covers and handed the script to me. Then he confronted Manton once more.

"What became of the locket about the girl's neck? In the ma.n.u.script Miss Lamar is supposed to have a peculiar pendant at her throat. There was none."

"Oh yes!" The promoter remained a moment in thought. "The doctor took it off and gave it to Bernie, the prop. boy, who's helping the electrician."

"Is he outside?"

"Yes."

"Now try to remember, Mr. Manton." Kennedy leaned over very seriously.

"Just who approached closely to Miss Lamar in the making of that thirteenth scene? Who was near enough to have inflicted a wound, or to have subjected her, suppose we say, to the fumes of some subtle poison?"

"You think that--" Manton started to question Kennedy, but was given no encouragement. "Gordon, the leading man, pa.s.sed through the scene," he replied, after a pause, "but did not go very near her. Werner was playing the dead millionaire at her feet."

"Who is Werner?"

"He's my director. Because it was such a small part, he played it himself. He's only in the two or three scenes in the beginning and I was here to be at the camera."

While Kennedy was questioning Manton I had been glancing through the script of the picture. My own connection with the movies had consisted largely of three attempts to sell stories of my own to the producers.

Needless to remark I had not succeeded, in that regard falling in the cla.s.s with some hundreds of thousands of my fellow citizens. For everybody thinks he has at least one motion picture in him. And so, though I had managed to visit studios and meet a few of the players, this was my very first shot at a ma.n.u.script actually in production. I took advantage of Kennedy's momentary preoccupation to turn to Manton.

"Who wrote this script, Mr. Manton?" I asked.

"Millard! Lawrence Millard."

"Millard?" Kennedy and I exclaimed, simultaneously.

"Why, yes! Millard is still under contract and he's the only man who ever could write scripts for Stella. We--we tried others and they all flivved."

"Is Millard here?"

Manton burst into laughter, somehow out of place in the room where we still were in the company of death. "An author on the lot at the filming of his picture, to bother the director and to change everything? Out! When the scenario's done he's through. He's lucky to get his name on the screen. It's not the story but the direction which counts, except that you've got to have a good idea to start with, and a halfway decent script to make your lay-outs from. Anyhow--" He sobered a bit, perhaps realizing that he was going counter to the tendency to have the author on the lot. "Millard and Stella weren't on speaking terms. She divorced him, you know."

"Do you know much about the personal affairs of Miss Lamar?"

"Well"--Manton's eyes sought the floor for a moment--"Like everyone else in pictures, Stella was the victim of a great deal of gossip.

That's the experience of any girl who rises to a position of prominence and--"

"How were the relations between Miss Lamar and yourself?" interrupted Kennedy.

"What do you mean by that?" Manton flushed quickly.

"You have had no trouble, no disagreements recently?"

"No, indeed. Everything has been very friendly between us--in a strictly business way, of course--and I don't believe I've had an unpleasant word with her since I first formed Manton Pictures to make her a star."

"You know nothing of her difficulties with her husband?"

"Naturally not. I seldom saw her except at the studio, unless it was some necessary affair such as a screen ball here, or perhaps in Boston or Philadelphia or some near-by city where I would take her for effect--"

Kennedy turned to Mackay. "Will you arrange to keep the people I have yet to question separate from the ones I have examined already?"

As the district attorney nodded, Kennedy dismissed Manton rather shortly; then turned again to Mackay as the promoter drew out of earshot.

"Bring in Bernie, the property-boy, before anyone can tell him to hide or destroy that locket."

V

AN EMOTIONAL MAZE