XXII
THE STEM
Though my hands trembled so that I could hardly control them, I managedto close the door softly and to back away down the hall without beingdiscovered. My head was spinning and I was dizzy. With my own ears Ihad heard Marilyn Loring virtually betray the guilt of the man sheloved and whom therefore she had tried to shield. "If you have theblood of another man on your hands--" What more could Kennedy want?
I started to run toward the studio. Then recollection of my errandstopped me. Kennedy wished the blood smears and stomach contents andwas anxious to get them before the arrival of the police. At first Ithought that all such evidence would be unnecessary now, after thedialogue I had overheard, but it struck me as an afterthought that itmight be necessary still to prove Shirley's guilt to the satisfactionof a court and jury, and so I rushed to the next dressing room and toanother, until I located the doctor and the body of the dead man.
With the little package for Kennedy safely in my pocket I hurried outagain into the sweltering heat beneath the glass of the big studio, andto the side of Kennedy and Mackay in the banquet-hall set.
"You have a sample of each article of food now?" he was asking thedistrict attorney. "You are sure you have missed nothing?"
"As far as possible I took my samples from the table where Werner sat,"Mackay explained. "When the prop. boy gets here with an empty bottleand cork I'll have a sample of the wine. I think it's the wine," headded.
Kennedy turned to me. "You've got--"
"In my pocket!" I interrupted. Then, rather breathlessly, I repeatedthe conversation I had overheard.
"Good Lord!" Mackay flushed. "There it is! Shirley's the man, and I'lltake him now, quick, without waiting for a warrant."
"See!" I ejaculated, to Kennedy. "He killed Stella because she made afool of him and then, when Werner discovered that and followed him toTarrytown the other night, it probably put him in a panic of fear, andso, to keep Werner from talking--"
"Easy, Walter! Not so fast! What you overheard is insufficient groundfor Shirley's conviction, unless you could make him confess, and Idoubt you could make him do that."
"Why?" This was Mackay.
"Because I don't think he's guilty. At least"--Kennedy, as always, wascautious in his statements, "not so far as anything we now know wouldindicate."
"But his anger at Stella," I protested, "and Marilyn's remark--"'
"Miss Lamar's death was the result of a cool, unfeeling plan, not piqueor anger. The same cruel, careful brain executed this second crime."
Mackay, I saw, was three-quarters convinced by Kennedy. "How do youaccount for the dialogue Jameson overheard?" he asked.
"Miss Loring told us that Shirley suspected some one and was watching,and would not tell her or anyone else who it was. It seems most likelyto me that it is the truth, Mackay. In that case her remark means thatshe believes his silence in a way is responsible for Werner's death."
"Oh! If Shirley had taken you into his confidence, for instance--?"
"I might possibly have succeeded in gaining sufficient evidence for anarrest, 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 wayunusual for him. I wondered if he really thought the heavy man innocent.
"It's still my belief that Shirley is guilty," I asserted.
A sound of confusion from the courtyard beneath the heavy studiowindows caught Kennedy's ear and ended the colloquy. From some of thosenear enough to look out we received the explanation. The police hadarrived, fully three-quarters of an hour after Werner's death.
"I'll get the little bottle of wine, sure," Mackay murmured, picking upthe food samples he had wrapped and crowding the bulky package into apocket.
"I don't see why that would have been any easier to poison than thefood," was my objection. "Everyone was looking."
"Very simple. The food was brought in quite late. Besides, it wasdished out by the caterer before the eyes of forty or fifty people ormore 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 riseand 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 glasses were all set out empty at the variousplaces long before, and that there might easily have been a few dropsof something, if it were colorless, placed in the bottom of Werner'sglass, with scarcely a chance of its being discovered, especially by aman who had so much on his mind at the time as Werner had? He must haveindicated where he would sit when he arranged the camera stands and thelocation of the tables."
I had not thought of that.
Kennedy frowned. "If only I could have located more of that brokenglass!" As he faced me I could read his disappointment. "Walter, I'vemade a most careful search of his chair and the table and everythingabout the space where he dropped. The poison must have been in thewine, but there's not a tiny sliver of that glass left, nothing but athousand bits ground into the canvas, too small to hold even a drop ofthe liquid. Just think, a dried stain of the wine, no matter how tiny,might have served me in a chemical analysis."
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 wasthe hollow stem of a champagne glass, its base intact save for a narrowsegment. In the stem still were a couple of drops of the wine, as if ina bulb or tube.
"Can it be the director's glass?" Mackay asked, handing it to Kennedy.
Kennedy slipped it into his pocket, fussing with his handkerchief sothat the precious contents would not drip out. "I think so. I doubtwhether any other glass was broken. Verify it quickly."
The police were entering now with Manton. Following them was thephysician. Mackay and I ascertained readily that no other glass hadbeen shattered, while Kennedy searched the floor for possible signsthat the stem was part of a glass broken where we had found it.Unquestionably we had a sample of the actual wine quaffed by theunfortunate Werner. Elated we strolled to a corner so as to give thepolice full charge.
"They'll waste time questioning everyone," Kennedy remarked. "I havethe real evidence." He tapped his pocket.
The few moments that he had had to himself had been ample for him toobtain such evidence as was destroyed in so many cases by the time hewas called upon the scene.
A point occurred to me. "You don't think the poison was planted laterduring the excitement?"
"Hardly! Our criminal is too clever to take a long chance. In such acase we would know it was some one near Werner and also there would betoo many people watching. Foolhardiness is not boldness."
I took to observing the methods of the police, which were highlyefficient, but only in the minuteness of the examination of witnessesand in the care with which they recorded names and facts and made surethat no one had slipped away to avoid the notoriety.
The actors and actresses who had stood rather in awe of Kennedy, bothhere and in Kennedy's investigation at Tarrytown, developed nimbletongues in their answers to the city detectives. The result was aperfect maze of conflicting versions of Werner's cry and fall. In fact,one scene shifter insisted that Shirley, as the Black Terror, hadreached Werner's side and had struck him before the cry, while an extragirl with a faint lisp described with sobering accuracy the flight of amysterious missile through the air. I realized then why Kennedy hadmade no effort to question them. Under the excitement of the scene, theglamour of the lights, the sense of illusion, and the stifling heat, itwould have been strange for any of the people to have retained correctimpressions of the event.
The police sergeant knew Kennedy by reputation and approached him aftera visit to the dead man's body with the doctor. His glance, includingMackay and myself, was frankly triumphant.
"Well," he exclaimed, "I don't suppose it occurred to any of youSCIENTIFIC guys to search the fellow, now did it?"
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Kennedy smiled, in good humor. "Searching a man isn't always thescientific method. You won't find the word 'frisk' in any scientificdictionary."
"No?" The police officer's eyes twinkled. There was enough of the Irishin him to enjoy an encounter of this kind. "Maybe not, but you mightfind things in a chap's pocket which is better." With a flourish heproduced a hypodermic syringe, the duplicate of the one I hadappropriated, and a tiny bottle. "The man's a dope," he added.
"I knew that," replied Kennedy. "I examined his arm, where he usuallytook his shots, and found no fresh mark of the needle."
"That doesn't prove anything. Wait until the medical examiner getshere. 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, allright."
"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'ttaken any recently?"
"Well"--unabashed--"then he croaked because he hadn't had a shot--thesame 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 ofdisputing the matter?
I started to protest against the detective's hypothesis. The idea ofany drug addict ever forgetting to take his stimulant was toopreposterous. But Kennedy checked me. All were now keenly listening tothe argument. Better, perhaps, to let some one think that nothing wassuspected than to disclose the cards in Craig's hand. I saw that hewished 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 tocome along?"
"You bet I would!" The district attorney showed his delight. "I wasjust going to ask if I might do so. There's nothing for me in Tarrytownto-day and this is out of my jurisdiction."
As we turned away the police sergeant saw us and called across thefloor, 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 holdyourself in readiness to appear at the hearing."
I thought that the policeman was particularly delighted at his positionto issue orders to Kennedy, and I was angered. Again Craig held me incheck!
"We'll be glad to tell anything we know," he replied, then added alittle fling, a bit of sarcasm which almost went over the other's head."That is," he amended, "as eye-witnesses!"