Mackay had rejoined us in time to hear the explanation. "Ingenious," he murmured. "As ingenious as the methods used to murder the girl and her director."

Breathless, Wagnalls returned with the collodion. We watched curiously as Kennedy poured it over the charred remains of the second order on the spindle. It seemed almost inconceivable that the remnants of the charred paper would even support the weight of the liquid, yet Kennedy used it with care, and slowly the collodion hardened before us, creating a tough transparent coating which held the tiny fibers of the slip together. At the same time the action of the collodion made the letters on the order faintly visible and readable.

"A little-known bank trick!" Kennedy told us.

Then he held the slip up to the light and the words were plain.

Wagnalls had been correct. The order from Manton was unmistakable. The can was to be kept in the negative vault for a week without being opened, until a certain party unnamed was to come to watch the development of the film.

The promoter wet his lips, uneasily. "I--I never wrote that! It--it's my writing, all right, and my signature, but it's a forgery!"

XXIX

MICROSCOPIC EVIDENCE

Kennedy made some efforts to preserve the forged order which he had restored with the collodion, but I could see that he placed no great importance upon its possession. Gradually the yard of the studio had cleared of the employees, who had returned to their various tasks.

Under the direction of one stout individual who seemed to possess authority the fire apparatus had been replaced in a portable steel garage arranged for the purpose in a farther corner, and now several men were engaged in cleaning up the dirt and litter caused in the excitement.

Except in the bas.e.m.e.nt there were few signs of the blaze. Manton accompanied the fire chief to his car, then hurried up into the building without further notice of us. Mackay went to McGroarty's machine to claim the traveling bag containing our evidence. Kennedy and I started for the dressing rooms.

"I want to get blood smears of Shirley and Marilyn," he confided in a low voice. "I shall have to think of some pretext."

Neither of the two we sought were in their quarters and so we continued on into the studio. Here we found Kauf at work; at least he was engaged in a desperate attempt to get something out of his people.

"Ye G.o.ds, Gordon!" we heard him exclaim, as we made our way through the debris of the banquet set to the ballroom now dazzlingly bright under the lights. "What if you do have to wear a bandage around your head?

It's a masked ball, isn't it? You've got a monk's cowl over everything but your features, haven't you?"

It struck me that the faces had never been more ghastly, although my reason convinced me it was simply the usual effect of the Cooper-Hewitt tubes. But there was no question but that the explosion had given everyone a bad fright, that not an actress or actor but would have preferred to have been nearly anywhere else but under the heat of the gla.s.s roof, now a constant reminder of the accident because of the gaping hole directly above them.

Marilyn was in the center of the revelers in the set, already in costume. Shirley I saw close to the camera men, standing uneasily on shaky legs, shielding his eyes with one hand while he clung to a ma.s.sive sideboard for support with the other. He had not yet donned his carnival clothes, nor essayed to put on a make-up.

Enid Faye, the only one in sight whose spirits seemed to have rallied at all, was offering him comfort of a sort.

"You'll get by, all right, Merle, if you can keep on your pins, and I'll say you deserve credit for trying it. There's"--she stepped back a bit to study him--"there's just one thing. Your eyes show the result of all that smoke and vapor--no color or l.u.s.ter at all. I--I wonder if belladonna wouldn't brighten them up a bit and--well, get you by, for to-day?"

"I'll go out and get some at lunch." He smiled weakly. "I'll try anything once."

"That's the spirit!" She patted him on the shoulder, then danced on into the center of the set, stopping to direct some barbed remark at Marilyn.

Kauf took his megaphone to call his people around him. There seemed to be a certain essential competence about the little man, now that Manton and Phelps and Millard were not about to bother him. While we watched he succeeded in photographing one of the full shots of the general action or atmosphere of the dance. Then he hurried to the side of Shirley, to see if the heavy man felt equal to the task of resuming his make-up once more.

I found the time dragging heavy on my hands and I wished that Kennedy would return to the laboratory or decide upon some definite action.

Though I racked my brain, I failed to think of a device whereby Kennedy could get blood smears of Shirley or Marilyn without their knowledge.

Once more my reflections veered around to the matter of the stolen towel and I wondered if that had been wasted effort on Kennedy's part; if the fire had thrown out his carefully arranged plans to trap whoever took it.

Suddenly I realized that Kennedy was following a very definite procedure, that his seeming indifference, his apparent idle curiosity concerning the scene taking, masked a settled purpose. When Phelps entered he approached him casually and turned to him with skilled nonchalance, holding up a finger.

"Will you lend me a pocket knife for a moment?" he asked, "to get a hang-nail?"

Phelps produced one, rather grudgingly. Kennedy promptly went over to the window, as though seeking better light. Thereafter he avoided Phelps. Soon the banker had forgotten the incident.

Some time later Manton rushed in from the office. Kennedy maneuvered his way to the promoter's side and waited his chance to borrow that man's pocket knife under conditions when Manton would be the least apt to remember it. Then he made his way around to Mackay and I saw that both the acquisitions went into little envelopes of the sort used to take the blood smears after the explosion and falling gla.s.s.

Kennedy now seemed rather elated. Millard entered and he borrowed the scenario writer's knife in exactly the same fashion as the others. No one of the three men noticed his loss. I thought it lucky that all three carried the article, and tried to guess how far Kennedy intended to carry this little scheme.

Kauf's announcement of lunch gave me my answer. It seemed that there would be just half an hour and that the entire cast was expected to make shift at McCann's rather than attempt to go to any better place at a greater distance. Immediately Kennedy turned to me.

"Hurry, Walter! Twenty minutes' quick work and then it's the laboratory and the solution of this mystery."

With Mackay and the bag we stole to the dressing rooms, waiting until sure that everyone was downstairs. In Enid's chamber Kennedy glanced about carefully but swiftly. When nothing caught his attention he picked up her finger-nail file, gingerly, from the blunt end, slipping it into one of the little envelopes which Mackay held open. Thereupon the district attorney put his identifying mark upon the outside and we went to the next room.

It proved to be Gordon's. The general search was barren of result, but the dressing table yielded another finger-nail file, handled in the same manner as before. Then we entered Marilyn's room and left with the file from her dressing stand. In Shirley's quarters, the last we visited, we were in greater luck, however. While Kennedy and Mackay abstracted the usual file, I discovered some bits of tissue paper used in shaving. There was caked soap left to dry just as it had been wiped from the razor. More, there was a blood stain of fair proportions.

"Here's your smear, Kennedy," I exclaimed.

"Good! Fine!" He faced Mackay. "Now I lack just one thing, a sample of the blood of Miss Loring."

"Is that all?" The district attorney brightened. "Let me try to get it!

I--I'll manage it in some way!"

"All right!" Kennedy took the bag. "Explain your marks so I'll know--"

He stopped suddenly. "No, don't tell me anything. I'll make my chemical a.n.a.lyses and microscopic examinations without knowing the ident.i.ty in the case either of the blood samples or the finger-nail files. If I obtain results by both methods, and they agree, I'll return armed with double-barreled evidence. Meanwhile, Mackay, you get a smear from Miss Loring and follow us to the laboratory. I'll coax McGroarty to drive us down, so you'll have your car and you can bring us back."

The district attorney nodded. "Me for McCann's," he muttered. "That's where she went to eat." He rushed off eagerly.

Kennedy had no difficulty persuading McGroarty to put his particular studio car at our disposal without an order from Manton or from the director who had called him. In a very brief s.p.a.ce of time we were at the laboratory.

"You expect to find the blood of one of those people showing traces of the antivenin?" I grasped Kennedy's method of procedure, but wanted to make sure I understood it correctly. Already I was blocking out the detailed article for the Star, the big scoop which that paper should have as a result of my close a.s.sociation with Kennedy on the case. "One of those samples should correspond, I suppose, to the trace of blood on the portieres?"

"Exactly!" He answered me rather absently, being concerned in setting out the apparatus he would need for a hasty series of tests.

"Will the antivenin show in the blood after four, perhaps five days?"

"I should say so, Walter. If it does not, by any chance, I will be able to identify the blood, but that is much more involved and tedious--a great deal more actual work."

"I've got it straight, then. Now--" I paced up and down several times.

"The finger-nail files should show a trace of the itching salve? Is that correct, Craig?"

For a moment he didn't answer, as his mind was upon his paraphernalia.

Then he straightened. "Hardly, Walter! The salve is soluble in water.

What I shall find, if anything, is some of the fibers of the towel. You see, a person's finger nails are great little collectors of bits of foreign matter, and anyone handling that rag is sure to show some infinitesimal trace for a long while afterward. If the person stealing the towel filed or cleaned his nails there will be evidence of the fibers on his pocket knife or finger-nail file. I impregnated the towel with that chemical so that I would be able to identify the fibers positively."

"The use of the itching salve was unnecessary?"

A quizzical smile crept across Kennedy's face. "Did you think I expected some one to go walking around the studio scratching his hands?

Did you imagine I thought the guilty party would betray his or her ident.i.ty in such childish fashion, after all the cleverness displayed in the crimes themselves?"