The men of the company were being questioned as the Blade man rejoined Inspector Corot in the small room to which the witnesses were being admitted one at a time. However, the police learned little in the beginning. The stories of the players were as alike as two peas, only differing in their emotional points of view. That is, so far as the male performers were concerned.
The examination of the women was saved to the last. Before they were led in, Inspector Corot turned to the reporter.
"You might run out now," he suggested, with a meaningful look, "and see what Moody is about."
THE detective-sergeant was on his hands and knees behind the set of Stage A.
"No one crawled out through the left—or the back—as that Foye dame thinks," he grunted, as he scrambled to his feet. "There's no tracks below those dummy windows. The getaway was through that door on the right or the open stage front."
"It must have been the door, then," said Dawson quickly. "For the director and his assistants are certain no one could have passed between them and the players."
WELL, I don't know about that," Moody rumbled. "There was two actors in front of that door, and they're just as certain that nobody passed them in the dark. If everybody's right, then the murderer didn't lam. He's still with us!"
"How about the knife?" "Yeah!" said the detective-sergeant weakly. "Of course we've still got to find that. But once we dig it up—"
"Well, Tom," intruded the quiet voice of the inspector, unexpectedly. "Anything doing?"
"The search was a frost," admitted the assistant. "Not so much as a penknife on any of those babies, though there were plenty of corkscrews."
"Well, well," came from Corot impatiently. "What else?"
Moody hurriedly repeated his conclusions in regard to the escape of the murderer from the stage: "It looks as if he's sticking around," he said, then burst out: "Say, to hear that Miriam Foye talk, half the men around the studio were nuts about this dead woman. It's pretty sure some of 'em hated her because she wouldn't give 'em a tumble."
"Yes, I've heard about all she had to say on that score," remarked the inspector wearily, and added the gist of what Miriam Foye had told him. "But of course you realize that a lady scorned is not to be trusted too implicitly. However, I am sure that her tongue is her only weapon, and—" He wheeled as Tad Boone hurried up.
"It's okay, Inspector," panted the director. "All arrangements are made to re-enact th—er— that scene for you this evening. Of course the timing of the lights will be mere guesswork, but—"
"We may work that out—through a consensus of opinion," nodded the inspector. "By the way," he added, casually, "I've been listening to a little scandal. About this Clifford Holmes, for example—"
The director reddened, then paled. "There is Holmes, himself," he said. "Why not—"
"Let me talk to him!" blurted Moody, shoving out his jaw. "I'll tell him."
It was known that Corot used his sergeant for the rough stuff, but even the reporter was astonished at the latitude allowed the big detective-sergeant by the head of the Homicide Squad as Moody accosted the leading man of the Ajax Company.
"Look here, Holmes!" he bellowed, as he burst into the man's dressing room. "You threatened to kill Miss Storme, didn't you? We got the goods on you! What've you got to say?"
The slender, light-hearted actor appeared about to collapse.
"God!" he moaned, his face twisting. "To think I should be accused of that! Why—why— Helene meant—"
His voice died away and he slumped down onto a chair.
COROT touched his sergeant lightly on the arm, then drew a chair up in front of the agitated actor.
"Now, Mr. Holmes," he said softly, "no one is accusing you. The police have to tar that way at times to obtain information. But you can help me by answering a few questions... You were fond of Miss Storme, I believe, but quarreled with her recently."
"Good Lord, yes," Holmes half gasped. "I was in love with her, but she wouldn't take me seriously. I—I—maybe I did say some things—I never meant... Damn that little she-devil, Miriam Foye!" he burst out. "She said she would get me—when she heard—Listen Inspector, I—"
THE inspector arose and turned away with a shrug. "We may have some more to say later," he remarked coldly, "about—that lover's quarrel."
Tad Boone gave the inspector a startled look as the men went out the door. "Surely," he protested, "you don't think Holmes—"
"We might be said to suspect anybody—and everybody—at this stage," said Corot mildly. "But that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Usually a matter of elimination, you know. Holmes will be watched of course, though—like the rest." He chewed at a match for a moment. "What did Miss Storme tell you of her past?" he asked.
"Not a thing," answered Boone bitterly, "or I might be able to help you. All I could figure out was that she had gone through hell, and wanted no reminder of it. I sensed that the first time I looked at her. It was that," he said hesitantly, "rather than her strange beauty, that attracted me. It was the tragic look, coming and going in her eyes, the twisted smile that tried so hard to be real, and the voice with its harsh, almost defensive note."
"You were very much in love with her," suggested the inspector in a soft voice.
The director looked the police official squarely in the eyes.
"I was," he admitted. "I considered myself engaged to her—for a time."
"The engagement was broken?" "It was," said Tad Boone shakily. "By Miss Storme."
"And the reason?"
"She gave none," said the director, almost too quickly.
"Of course you asked her if there was— another man?" queried the man-hunter smoothly.
"She—she said," breathed Boone, after an inward struggle, "that there was. I had no wish to know who he was. All I wanted was to see her happy. I asked her, in the event she remained in pictures, to stay under my direction. For I have been all over the world, and never expected to see her like again."
"You have been in our Eastern possession, then?" queried Corot.
"Oh, yes; Hawaii, the Philippines, all that."
"You know what a bolo is?" came the casual tone.
"Of course; I have one in my rooms. I made a silent picture—The Black Virgin—and—" He stopped, with a terrible thought. "I see," he faltered, "just what your questions are leading up to. Just—just what do you want of me?"
"You say you have the knife in your rooms?" remarked the inspector noncommittally. "Suppose I send Detective Carroll along to fetch it to Headquarters." The director nodded dumbly as the inspector turned to the newspaper man who still tagged him. "Think I'll take a little stroll about the lot. Anything being shot today, Dawson?"
"Not much," said the reporter. "I saw 'em at work on one picture—just a Western."
But as he strolled about the lot, Inspector Corot seemed to have little interest in picture- making. He was bored with the taking of the "Western," seemed hardly to hear young Dawson talking. He never even gave a second glance to the Ajax's new cowboy star, Ned Lane, resplendent in snow-white sombrero and jeweled belt. He did give a moment's time, though, to admiration of the cowboy's beautiful Great Dane. Corot liked dogs.
"Fine dog," he commented, and passed on, after a pat on the Great Dane's head, towards the studio gates.
"Tom," he said to the detective-sergeant who stood near the entrance, "you and Carroll had better check up on all the players present, as well as any stray visitors, first chance you get. Might as well play safe. You can tell them in the office to let the bars down now, but see that a careful tab is kept on all those leaving the studio. I'll be running down to Headquarters now, after a bite."
"Okay, Inspector," said the sergeant succinctly and lumbered away.
Dawson of the Blade was still with Corot when the police car came to a grinding halt in front of New York's sombre Police Headquarters. But all his questioning of the inspector on the way downtown had got him—exactly nothing. Not until Corot was in his swivel chair in his private office and had lighted his pipe was he ready to talk to the reporter.
"YOU say you've got to know what I think of this case?" he asked. "Well," he went on frankly, "at this minute that murder is as much of a mystery to me as it is to you, Dawson. In fact, the element of time—the lights could not have been out but a few minutes—and the whereabouts of that peculiar knife, one not easily concealed, are the things we're butting our heads on."