The Film Mystery | Page 8

silk hangings, drawn now and pinned together

so as to assure her the privacy she wished. The one window was high and fitted with
leaded glass, but it was raised and afforded the maximum of light. Stella's traveling bag
sprawled wide open, with many of her effects strewn about in attractive disarray. Her suit,
in which she had made the trip to Tarrytown, was thrown carelessly over the back of a
chair. Her mirror was fastened up ruthlessly, upon a handsome woven Oriental hanging,
with a long hatpin. Powder was spilled upon the couch cover, another Oriental fabric, and
her little box of rouge lay face downward on the floor.
As we pulled the curtains aside I caught the perfume which still clung to her clothes in
the library beyond. As Mackay sniffed also, Kennedy smiled.
"Coty's Jacqueminot rose," he remarked.
With his usual swift and practiced certainty Kennedy then inspected the extemporized
dressing room. He seemed to satisfy himself that no subtle attack had been made upon the
girl here, although I doubt that he had held any such supposition seriously in the first
place. In my association of several years with Kennedy, following our first intimacy of
college days, I had learned that his success as a scientific detective was the result wholly
of his thoroughness of method. To watch him had become a never-ending delight, even in
the dull preliminary work of a case as baffling as this one. Mackay also seemed content
just to enact the role of spectator.
Kennedy thumbed through the delicate intimacies of her traveling bag with the keen,
impersonal manner which always distinguished him; then he found her beaded handbag
and proceeded to rummage through that. Suddenly he paused as he unfolded a piece of
note paper, and we gathered around to read:
MY DEAR STELLA: Have something very important to tell you. Will you lunch
Tuesday at the P. G. tearoom? LARRY.
"Tuesday--" murmured Kennedy. "And this is Monday. Who--who is Larry, I wonder?"
I hastened to answer the question for him. It was my first opportunity to display my
knowledge of the picture players. "Larry--that's Lawrence, Lawrence Millard!" I
exclaimed. Then I went on to tell him of the divorce and the circumstances surrounding
Stella's life as I knew it. "It--it looks," I concluded, "as if they might have been on the
point of composing their differences, after all."
Kennedy nodded. I could see, however, that he made a mental note of his intention to
question the girl's former husband.
All at once another thought struck me and I became eager. It was a possible explanation
of the mystery.
"Listen, Craig," I began. "Suppose Millard wanted to make up and she didn't. Suppose
that she refused to see him or to meet him. Suppose that in a jealous fit he--"
"No, Walter!" Kennedy headed me off with a smile. "This wasn't an ordinary murder of
passion. This was well thought out and well executed. Not one medical examiner in a
thousand would have found that tiny scratch. It may be very difficult yet to determine the
exact cause of death. This, my dear Jameson"--it was playful irony--"is a scientific
crime."
"But Millard--"
"Of course! Anyone may be the culprit. Yet you tell me Millard did not contest her
divorce and that it would have been very easy for him to file a counter-suit because
everyone knew of her relationship with Manton. That, offhand, shows no ill-will on his
part. And now we find this note from him, which at least is friendly in tone--"

I shrugged my shoulders. It was the same blind alley in which my thoughts had strayed
upon the train on our way out.
"It's too early to begin to try to fasten the guilt upon anyone," Kennedy added, as we
returned to the library through the living room. Then he turned to Mackay. "Have you
succeeded in gleaning any facts about the life of Miss Lamar?" he asked. "Anything
which might point to a motive, so that I can approach the case from both directions?"
"If you ask me," the little district attorney rejoined, "it's a matter of tangled motives
throughout. I--I had no sword to cut the Gordian knot and so"--graciously--"I sent for
you."
"What do you mean by tangled motives?" Kennedy ignored the other's compliment.
"Well!" Mackay indicated me. "Mr. Jameson explained about her divorce. No one heard
whom she named as corespondent. That's an unknown woman in the case, although it
may not mean anything at all. Then there's Lloyd Manton and all the talk about his affair
with Miss Lamar. Some one told one of my men that Manton's wife has left him on that
account."
"Did you question Manton?"
"No, I thought I ought to leave all that to you. I was afraid