CHAPTER XTHE OPEN WINDOW
Thedynamo wagon was humming as he walked down the garden path, and with a hiss and a splutter from the arcs, the front of the cottage was suddenly illuminated by their fierce light. Outside on the road a motorist had pulled up to look upon the unusual spectacle.
“What is happening?” he asked curiously.
“They’re taking a picture,” said Michael.
“Oh, is that what it is? I suppose it is one of Knebworth’s outfits?”
“Where are you going?” demanded Michael suddenly. “Forgive my asking you, but if you’re heading for Chichester you can render me a very great service if you give me a lift.”
“Jump in,” said the man. “I’m going to Petworth, but it will not be much out of my way to take you into the city.”
Until they came to the town he plied Michael with questions betraying that universal inquisitiveness which picture-making invariably incites amongst the uninitiated.
Michael got down near the market-place and made his way to the house of a man he knew, a former master at his old school, now settled down in Chichester, who had, amongst other possessions, an excellent library. Declining his host’s pressing invitation to dinner, Michael stated his needs, and the old master laughed.
“I can’t remember that you were much of a student in my days, Michael,” he said, “but you may have the run of the library. Is it some line of Virgil that escapes you? I may be able to save you a hunt.”
“It’s not Virgil, maestro,” smiled Michael. “Something infinitely more full-blooded!”
He was in the library for twenty minutes, and when he emerged there was a light of triumph in his eye.
“I’m going to use your telephone if I may,” he said, and he got London without delay.
For ten minutes he was speaking with Scotland Yard, and, when he had finished, he went into the dining-room where the master, who was a bachelor, was eating his solitary dinner.
“You can render me one more service, mentor of my youth,” he said. “Have you in this abode of peace an automatic pistol that throws a heavier shell than this?”
And he put his own on the table. Michael knew Mr. Scott had been an officer of the Territorial Army, and incidentally an instructor of the Officers’ Training Corps, so that his request was not as impossible of fulfilment as it appeared.
“Yes, I can give you a heavier one than that. What are you shooting—elephants?”
“Something a trifle more dangerous,” said Michael.
“Curiosity was never a weakness of mine,” said the master, and went out to return with a Browning of heavy calibre and a box of cartridges.
They spent five minutes cleaning the pistol, which had not been in use for some time, and, with his new weapon weighing down his jacket pocket, Mike took his leave, carrying a lighter heart and a clearer understanding than he had enjoyed when he had arrived at the house.
He hired a car from a local garage and drove back to the Dower House, dismissing the car just short of his destination. Jack Knebworth had not even noticed that he had disappeared. But old Mr. Longvale, wearing a coat with many capes, and a soft silk cap from which dangled a long tassel, came to him almost as soon as he entered the garden.
“May I speak to you, Mr. Brixan?” he said in a low voice, and they went into the house together. “Do you remember Mr. Knebworth was very perturbed because he thought he saw somebody peering in at the window—something with a monkey’s head?”
Michael nodded.
“Well, it is a most curious fact,” said the old gentleman impressively, “that a quarter of an hour ago I happened to be walking in the far end of my garden, and, looking across the hedge toward the field, I suddenly saw a gigantic form rise, apparently from the ground, and move toward these bushes”—he pointed through the window to a clump in a field on the opposite side of the road. “He seemed to be crouching forward and moving furtively.”
“Will you show me the place?” said Michael quickly.
He followed the other across the road to the bushes, a little clump which was empty when they reached it. Kneeling down to make a new skyline, Michael scanned the limited horizon, but there was no sign of Bhag. For that it was Bhag he had no doubt. There might be nothing in it. Penne told him that the animal was in the habit of taking nightly strolls, and that he was perfectly harmless. Suppose . . .
The thought was absurd, fantastically absurd. And yet the animal had been so extraordinarily human that no speculation in connection with it was quite absurd.
When he returned to the garden, he went in search of the girl. She had finished her scene and was watching the stealthy movements of two screen burglars, who were creeping along the wall in the subdued light of the arcs.
“Excuse me, Miss Leamington, I’m going to ask you an impertinent question. Have you brought a complete change of clothes with you?”
“Why ever do you ask that?” she demanded, her eyes wide open. “Of course I did! I always bring a complete change in case the weather breaks.”
“That’s one question. Did you lose anything when you were at Griff Towers?”
“I lost my gloves,” she said quickly. “Did you find them?”
“No. When did you miss them?”
“I missed them immediately. I thought for a moment——” She stopped. “It was a foolish idea, but——”
“What did you think?” he asked.
“I’d rather not tell you. It is a purely personal matter.”
“You thought that Sir Gregory had taken them as a souvenir?”
Even in the half-darkness he saw her colour come and go.
“I did think that,” she said, a little stiffly.
“Then it doesn’t matter very much—about your change of clothing,” he said.
“Whatever are you talking about?”
She looked at him suspiciously. He guessed she thought that he had been drinking, but the last thing in the world he wanted to do at that moment was to explain his somewhat disjointed questions.
“Now everybody is going to bed!”
It was old Jack Knebworth talking.
“Everybody! Off you go! Mr. Foss has shown you your rooms. I want you up at four o’clock to-morrow morning, so get as much sleep as you can. Foss, you’ve marked the rooms?”
“Yes,” said the man. “I’ve put the names on every door. I’ve given this young lady a room to herself—is that right?”
“I suppose it is,” said Knebworth dubiously. “Anyway, she won’t be there long enough to get used to it.”
The girl said good night to the detective and went straight up to her apartment. It was a tiny room, smelling somewhat musty, and was simply furnished. A truckle bed, a chest of drawers with a swinging glass on top, and a small table and chair was all that the apartment contained. By the light of her candle, the floor showed signs of having been recently scrubbed, and the centre was covered by a threadbare square of carpet.
She locked the door, blew out the candle and, undressing in the dark, went to the window and threw open the casement. And then, for the first time, she saw, on the centre of one of the small panes, a circular disc of paper. It was pasted on the outside of the window, and at first she was about to pull it off, when she guessed that it might be some indicator placed by Knebworth to mark an exact position that he required for the morning picture-taking.
She did not immediately fall asleep, her mind for some curious reason, being occupied unprofitably with a tumultuous sense of annoyance directed towards Michael Brixan. For a long time a strong sense of justice fought with a sense of humour equally powerful. He was a nice man, she told herself; the sixth sense of woman had already delivered that information, heavily underlined. He certainly had nerve. In the end humour brought sleep. She was smiling when her eyelids closed.
She had been sleeping two hours, though it did not seem two seconds. A sense of impending danger wakened her, and she sat up in bed, her heart thumping wildly. She looked round the room. In the pale moonlight she could see almost every corner, and it was empty. Was it somebody outside the door that had wakened her? She tried the door handle: it was locked, as she had left it. The window? It was very near to the ground, she remembered. Stepping to the window, she pulled one casement close. She was closing the other when, out of the darkness below, reached a great hairy arm and a hand closed like a vice on her wrist.
She did not scream. She stood breathless, dying of terror, she felt. Her heart ceased beating, and she was conscious of a deadly cold. What was it? What could it be? Summoning all her courage, she looked out of the window down into a hideous, bestial face and two round, green eyes that stared into hers.
CHAPTER XITHE MARK ON THE WINDOW
TheThing was twittering at her, soft, bird-like noises, and she saw the flash of its white teeth in the darkness. It was not pulling, it was simply holding, one hand gripping the tendrils of the ivy up which it had climbed, the other hand firmly about her wrist. Again it twittered and pulled. She drew back, but she might as well have tried to draw back from a moving piston rod. A great, hairy leg was suddenly flung over the sill; the second hand came up and covered her face.
The sound of her scream was deadened in the hairy paw, but somebody heard it. From the ground below came a flash of fire and the deafening ‘tang!’ of a pistol exploding. A bullet zipped and crashed amongst the ivy, striking the brickwork, and she heard the whirr of the ricochet. Instantly the great monkey released his hold and dropped down out of sight. Half swooning, she dropped upon the window-sill, incapable of movement. And then she saw a figure come out of the shadow of the laurel bush, and instantly recognized the midnight prowler. It was Michael Brixan.
“Are you hurt?” he asked in a low voice.
She could only shake her head, for speech was denied her.
“I didn’t hit him, did I?”
With an effort she found a husk of a voice in her dry throat.
“No, I don’t think so. He dropped.”
Michael had pulled an electric torch from his pocket and was searching the ground.
“No sign of blood. He was rather difficult to hit—I was afraid of hurting you, too.”
A window had been thrown up and Jack Knebworth’s voice bawled into the night.
“What’s the shooting? Is that you, Brixan?”
“It is I. Come down, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
The noise did not seem to have aroused Mr. Longvale, or, for the matter of that, any other member of the party; and when Knebworth reached the garden, he found no other audience than Mike Brixan.
In a few words Michael told him what he had seen.
“The monkey belongs to friend Penne,” he said. “I saw it this morning.”
“What do you think—that he was prowling round and saw the open window?”
Michael shook his head.
“No,” he said quietly, “he came with one intention and purpose, which was to carry off your leading lady. That sounds highly dramatic and improbable, and that is the opinion I have formed. This ape, I tell you, is nearly human.”
“But he wouldn’t know the girl. He has never seen her.”
“He could smell her,” said Mike instantly. “She lost a pair of gloves at the Towers to-day, and it’s any odds that they were stolen by the noble Gregory Penne, so that he might introduce to Bhag an unfailing scent.”
“I can’t believe it; it is incredible! Though I’ll admit,” said Jack Knebworth thoughtfully, “that these big apes do some amazing things. Did you shoot him?”
“No, sir, I didn’t shoot him, but I can tell you this, that he’s an animal that’s been gunned before, or he’d have come for me, in which case he would have been now fairly dead.”
“What were you doing round here, anyway?”
“Just watching out,” said the other carelessly. “The earnest detective has so many things on his conscience that he can’t sleep like ordinary people. Speaking for myself, I never intended leaving the garden, because I expected Brer Bhag. Who is that?”
The door opened, and a slim figure, wrapped in a dressing-gown, came out into the open.
“Young lady, you’re going to catch a very fine cold,” warned Knebworth. “What happened to you?”
“I don’t know.” She was feeling her wrist tenderly. “I heard something and went to the window, and then this horrible thing caught hold of me. What was it, Mr. Brixan?”
“It was nothing more alarming than a monkey,” said he with affected unconcern. “I’m sorry you were so scared. I guess the shooting worried you more?”
“You don’t guess anything of the kind. You know it didn’t. Oh, it was horrible, horrible!” She covered her face with her trembling hands.
Old Jack grunted.
“I think she’s right, too. You owe something to our friend here, young lady. Apparently he was expecting this visit and watched in the garden.”
“You expected it?” she gasped.
“Mr. Knebworth has made rather more of the part I played than can be justified,” said Mike. “And if you think that this is a hero’s natural modesty, you’re mistaken. I did expect this gentleman, because he’d been seen in the fields by Mr. Longvale. And you thought you saw him yourself, didn’t you, Knebworth?”
Jack nodded.
“In fact, we all saw him,” Mike went on, “and as I didn’t like the idea of a coming star (if I may express that pious hope) being subjected to the annoyance of visiting monkeys, I sat up in the garden.”
With a sudden impulsive gesture she put out her little hand, and Michael took it.
“Thank you, Mr. Brixan,” she said. “I have been wrong about you.”
“Who isn’t?” asked Mike with an extravagant shrug.
She returned to her room, and this time she closed her window. Once, before she went finally to sleep, she rose and, peeping through the curtains, saw the little glowing point of the watcher’s cigar, and went back to bed comforted, to sleep as if it were only for a few minutes before Foss began knocking on the doors to waken the company.
The literary man himself was the first down. The garden was beginning to show palely in the dawn light, and he bade Michael Brixan a gruff good morning.
“Good morning to you,” said Michael. “By the way, Mr. Foss, you stayed behind at Griff Towers yesterday to see our friend Penne?”
“That’s no business of yours,” growled the man, and would have passed on, but Michael stood squarely in his path.
“There is one thing which is a business of mine, and that is to ask you why that little white disc appears on Miss Leamington’s window?”
He pointed up to the white circle that the girl had seen the night before.
“I don’t know anything about it,” said Foss with rising anger, but there was also a note of fear in his voice.
“If you don’t know, who will? Because I saw you put it there, just before it got dark last night.”
“Well, if you must know,” said the man, “it was to mark a vision boundary for the camera-man.”
That sounded a plausible excuse. Michael had seen Jack Knebworth marking out boundaries in the garden to ensure the actors being in the picture. At the first opportunity, when Knebworth appeared he questioned him on the subject.
“No, I gave no instructions to put up marks. Where is it?”
Michael showed him.
“I wouldn’t have a mark up there, anyway, should I? Right in the middle of a window! What do you make of it?”
“I think Foss put it there with one object. The window was marked at Gregory’s request.”
“But why?” asked Knebworth, staring.
“To show Bhag Adele Leamington’s room. That’s why,” said Michael, and he was confident that his view was an accurate one.
CHAPTER XIIA CRY FROM A TOWER
Michaeldid not wait to see the early morning scenes shot. He had decided upon a course of action, and as soon as he conveniently could, he made his escape from the Dower House, and, crossing a field, reached the road which led to Griff Towers. Possessing a good eye for country, he had duly noted the field-path which ran along the boundary of Sir Gregory Penne’s estate, and was, he guessed, a short cut to Griff; and ten minutes’ walk brought him to the stile where the path joined the road. He walked quickly, his eyes on the ground, looking for some trace of the beast; but there had been no rain, and, unless he had wounded the animal, there was little hope that he would pick up the track.
Presently he came to the high flint wall which marked the southern end of the baronet’s grounds, and this he followed until he came to a postern let in the wall, a door that appeared to have been recently in use, for it was ajar, he noted with satisfaction.
Pushing it open, he found himself in a large field which evidently served as kitchen garden for the house. There was nobody in sight. The grey tower looked even more forbidding and ugly in the early morning light. No smoke came from the chimneys; Griff was a house of the dead. Nevertheless, he proceeded cautiously, and, instead of crossing the field, moved back into the shadow of the wall until he reached the high boxwood fence that ran at right angles and separated the kitchen garden from that beautiful pleasaunce which Jack Knebworth had used the previous morning as a background for his scenes.
And all the time he kept his eyes roving, expecting at any moment to see the hideous figure of Bhag appear from the ground. At last he reached the end of the hedge. He was now within a few paces of the gravelled front, and less than half a dozen yards from the high, square grey tower which gave the house its name.
From where he stood he could see the whole front of the house. The drawn white blinds, the general lifelessness of Griff, might have convinced a less sceptical man than Mike Brixan that his suspicions were unfounded.
He was hesitating as to whether he should go to the house or not, when he heard a crash of glass, and looked up in time to see fragments falling from the topmost room of the tower. The sun had not yet risen, the earth was still wrapped in the illusory dawn light, and the hedge made an admirable hiding-place.
Who was breaking windows at this hour of the morning? Surely not the careful Bhag—so far he had reached in his speculations when the morning air was rent by a shrill scream, of such fear that his flesh went cold. It came from the upper room and ended abruptly, as though somebody had put his hand over the mouth of the unfortunate from whom that cry of terror had been wrung.
Hesitating no longer, Michael stepped from his place of concealment, ran quickly across the gravel, and pulled at the bell before the great entrance, which was immediately under the tower. He heard the clang of the bell and looked quickly round, to make absolutely sure that Bhag or some of the copper-coloured retainers of Griff Towers were not trailing him.
A minute passed—two—and his hand was again raised to the iron bell-pull, when he heard heavy feet in the corridor, a shuffle of slippers on the tiled floor of the hall, and a gruff voice demanded:
“Who’s there?”
“Michael Brixan.”
There was a grunt, a rattle of chains, a snapping of locks, and the big door opened a few inches.
Gregory Penne was wearing a pair of grey flannel trousers and a shirt, the wristbands of which were unfastened. His malignant glare changed to wonder at the sight of the detective.
“What do you want?” he demanded, and opened the door a few more inches.
“I want to see you,” said Michael.
“Usually call at daybreak?” growled the man as he closed the door on his visitor.
Michael made no answer, but followed Gregory Penne to his room. The library had evidently been occupied throughout the night. The windows were shuttered, the electroliers were burning, and before the fire was a table and two whisky bottles, one of which was empty.
“Have a drink?” said Penne mechanically, and poured himself out a portion with an unsteady hand.
“Is your ape in?” asked Michael, refusing the preferred drink with a gesture.
“What, Bhag? I suppose so. He goes and comes as he likes. Do you want to see him?”
“Not particularly,” said Michael. “I’ve seen him once to-night.”
Penne was lighting the stub of a cigar from the fire as he spoke, and he looked round quickly.
“You’ve seen him before? What do you mean?”
“I saw him at the Dower House, trying to get into Miss Leamington’s room, and he was as near to being a dead orang-outang as he has ever been.”
The man dropped the lighted spill on the hearth and stood up.
“Did you shoot him?” he asked.
“I shot at him.”
Gregory nodded.
“You shot at him,” he said softly. “That accounts for it. Why did you shoot him? He’s perfectly harmless.”
“He didn’t strike me that way,” said Michael coolly. “He was trying to pull Miss Leamington from her room.”
The man’s eyes opened.
“He got so far, did he? Well?”
There was a pause.
“You sent him to get the girl,” said Michael. “You also bribed Foss to put a mark on the window so that Bhag should know where the girl was sleeping.”
He paused, but the other made no reply.
“The cave man method is fairly beastly, even when the cave man does his own kidnapping. When he sends an anthropoid ape to do his dirty work, it passes into another category.”
The man’s eyes were invisible now; his face had grown a deeper hue.
“So that’s your line, is it?” he said. “I thought you were a pal.”
“I’m not responsible for your illusions,” said Michael. “Only I tell you this”—he tapped the man’s chest with his finger—“if any harm comes to Adele Leamington that is traceable to you or your infernal agent, I shan’t be contented with shooting Mr. Bhag; I will come here and shoot you! Do you understand? And now you can tell me, what is the meaning of that scream I heard from your tower?”
“Who the hell do you imagine you’re cross-questioning?” spluttered Penne, livid with fury. “You dirty, miserable little actor!”
Michael slipped a card from his pocket and put it in the man’s hand.
“You’ll find my title to question you legibly inscribed,” he said.
The man brought the card to the table-lamp and read it. The effect was electrical. His big jaw dropped, and the hand that held the card trembled so violently that it dropped to the floor.
“A detective?” he croaked. “A—a detective! What do you want here?”
“I heard somebody scream,” said Michael.
“One of the servants, maybe. We’ve got a Papuan woman here who’s ill: in fact, she’s a little mad, and we’re moving her to-morrow. I’ll go and see if you like?”
He looked toward Michael as though seeking permission. His whole attitude was one of humility, and Michael required no more than the sight of that pallid face and those chattering teeth to turn his suspicion to certainty. Something was happening in this house that he must get to the bottom of.
“May I go and see?” asked Penne.
Michael nodded. The stout man shuffled out of the room as though he were in a hurry to be gone, and the lock clicked. Instantly Michael was at the door, turned the handle and pulled. It was locked!
He looked round the room quickly, and, running to one of the windows, flung back the curtain and pulled at the shutter. But this, too, was locked. It was, to all intents and purposes, a door with a little keyhole at the bottom. He was examining this when all the lights in the room went out, the only illumination being a faint red glow from the fire.
CHAPTER XIIITHE TRAP THAT FAILED
Andthen Michael heard a faint creak in one corner of the room. It was followed by the almost imperceptible sound of bare feet on the thick pile carpet, and the noise of quick breathing.
He did not hesitate. Feeling again for the keyhole of the shutter, he pulled out his pistol and fired twice at the lock. The sound of the explosion was deafening in the confined space of the room. It must have had an electrical effect upon the intruder, for when, with a wrench, the shutter opened, and at a touch the white blind sprang up, flooding with light the big, ornate room, it was empty.
Almost immediately afterwards the door opened through which the baronet had passed. If he had been panic-stricken before, his condition was now pitiable.
“What’s that? What’s that?” he whimpered. “Did somebody shoot?”
“Somebody shot,” said Michael calmly, “and I was the somebody. And the gentlemen you sent into the room to settle accounts with me are very lucky that I confined my firing practice to the lock of your shutter, Penne.”
He saw something white on the ground, and, crossing the room with quick strides, picked it up. It was a scarf of coarse silk, and he smelt it.
“Somebody dropped this in their hurry,” he said. “I guess it was to be used.”
“My dear fellow, I assure you I didn’t know.”
“How is the interesting invalid?” asked Michael with a curl of his lip. “The lunatic lady who screams?”
The man fingered his trembling lips for a moment as though he were trying to control them.
“She’s all right. It was as I—as I thought,” he said; “she had some sort of fit.”
Michael eyed him pensively.
“I’d like to see her, if I may,” he said.
“You can’t.” Penne’s voice was loud, defiant. “You can’t see anybody! What the hell do you mean by coming into my house at this hour of the morning and damaging my property? I’ll have this matter reported to Scotland Yard, and I’ll get the coat off your back, my man! Some of you detectives think you own the earth, but I’ll show you you don’t!”
The blustering voice rose to a roar. He was smothering his fear in weak anger, Michael thought, and looked up at the swords above the mantelpiece. Following the direction of his eyes, Sir Gregory wilted, and again his manner changed.
“My dear fellow, why exasperate me? I’m the nicest man in the world if you only treat me right. You’ve got crazy ideas about me, you have indeed!”
Michael did not argue. He walked slowly down the passage and out to meet the first sector of a blazing sun. As he reached the door he turned to the man.
“I cannot insist upon searching your house because I have not a warrant, as you know, and, by the time I’d got a warrant, there would be nothing to find. But you look out, my friend!” He waved a warning finger at the man. “I hate dragging in classical allusions, but I should advise you to look up a lady in mythology who was known to the Greeks as Adrastia!”
And with this he left, walking down the drive, watched with eyes of despair by a pale-faced girl from the upper window of the tower, whilst Sir Gregory went back to his library and, by much diligent searching, discovered that Adrastia was another name for Nemesis.
Michael was back at the Dower House in time for breakfast. It was no great tribute to his charm that his absence had passed unnoticed—or so it appeared, though Adele had marked his disappearance, and had been the first to note his return.
Jack Knebworth was in his most cheery mood. The scenes had been, he thought, most successful.
“I can’t tell, of course, until I get back to the laboratory and develop the pictures; but so far as young Leamington is concerned, she’s wonderful. I hate predicting at this early stage, but I believe that she’s going to be a great artiste.”
“You didn’t expect her to be?” said Michael in surprise.
Jack laughed scornfully.
“I was very annoyed with Mendoza, and when I took this outfit on location, I did so quite expecting that I should have to return and retake the picture with Mendoza in the cast. Film stars aren’t born, they’re made; they’re made by bitter experience, patience and suffering. They have got to pass through stages of stark inefficiency, during which they’re liable to be discarded, before they win out. Your girl has skipped all the intervening phases, and has won at the first time of asking.”
“When you talk about ’my girl,’ ” said Michael carefully, “will you be good enough to remember that I have the merest and most casual interest in the lady?”
“If you’re not a liar,” said Jack Knebworth, “you’re a piece of cheese!”
“What chance has she as a film artiste?” asked Michael, anxious to turn the subject.
Knebworth ruffled his white hair.
“Precious little,” he said. “There isn’t a chance for a girl in England. That’s a horrible thing to say, but it’s true. You can count the so-called English stars on the fingers of one hand; they’ve only a local reputation and they’re generally married to the producer. What chance has an outsider got of breaking into the movies? And even if they break in, it’s not much good to them. Production in this country is streets behind production either in America or in Germany. It is even behind the French, though the French films are nearly the dullest in the world. The British producer has no ideas of his own; he can adopt and adapt the stunts, the tricks of acting, the methods of lighting, that he sees in foreign films at trade shows; and, with the aid of an American camera-man, he can produce something which might have been produced a couple of years ago at Hollywood. It’s queer, because England has never been left behind as she has been in the cinema industry. France started the motor-car industry: to-day, England makes the finest motor-car in the world. America started aviation: to-day, the British aeroplanes have no superior. And yet, with all the example before them, with all the immense profits which are waiting to be made, in the past twenty years England has not produced one film star of international note, one film picture with an international reputation.”
It was a subject upon which he was prepared to enlarge, and did enlarge, throughout the journey back to Chichester.
“The cinema industry is in the hands of showmen all the world over, but in England it is in the hands of peep-showmen, as against the Barnums of the States. No, there’s no chance for your little friend, not in this country. If the picture I’m taking makes a hit in America—yes. She’ll be playing at Hollywood in twelve months’ time in an English story—directed by Americans!”
In the outer lobby of his office he found a visitor waiting for him, and gave her a curt and steely good morning.
“I want to see you, Mr. Knebworth,” said Stella Mendoza, with a smile at the leading man who had followed Knebworth into his office.
“You want to see me, do you? Why, you can see me now. What do you want?”
She was pulling at a lace handkerchief with a pretty air of penitence and confusion. Jack was not impressed. He himself had taught her all that handkerchief stuff.
“I’ve been very silly, Mr. Knebworth, and I’ve come to ask your pardon. Of course, it was wrong to keep the boys and girls waiting, and I really am sorry. Shall I come in the morning? Or I can start to-day?”
A faint smile trembled at the corner of the director’s big mouth.
“You needn’t come in the morning and you needn’t stay to-day, Stella,” he said. “Your substitute has done remarkably well, and I don’t feel inclined to retake the picture.”
She flashed an angry glance at him, a glance at total variance with her softer attitude.
“I’ve got a contract: I suppose you know that, Mr. Knebworth?” she said shrilly.
“I’d ever so much rather play opposite Miss Mendoza,” murmured a gentle voice. It was the youthful Reggie Connolly, he of the sleek hair. “It’s not easy to play opposite Miss—I don’t even know her name. She’s so—well, she lacks the artistry, Mr. Knebworth.”
Old Jack didn’t speak. His gloomy eyes were fixed upon the youth.
“What’s more, I don’t feel I can do myself justice with Miss Mendoza out of the cast,” said Reggie. “I really don’t! I feel most awfully, terribly nervous, and it’s difficult to express one’s personality when one’s awfully, terribly nervous. In fact,” he said recklessly, “I’m not inclined to go on with the picture unless Miss Mendoza returns.”
She shot a grateful glance at him, and then turned with a slow smile to the silent Jack.
“Would you like me to start to-day?”
“Not to-day, or any other day,” roared the old director, his eyes flaming. “As for you, you nut-fed chorus boy, if you try to let me down I’ll blacklist you at every studio in this country, and every time I meet you I’ll kick you from hell to Halifax!”
He came stamping into the office, where Michael had preceded him, a raging fury of a man.
“What do you think of that?” he asked when he had calmed down. “That’s the sort of stuff they try to get past you! He’s going to quit in the middle of a picture! Did you hear him? That cissy-boy! That mouse! Say, Brixan, would you like to play opposite this girl of mine? You can’t be worse than Connolly, and it would fill in your time whilst you’re looking for the Head-Hunter.”
Michael shook his head slowly.
“No, thank you,” he said. “That is not my job. And as for the Head-Hunter”—he lit a cigarette and sent a ring of smoke to the ceiling—“I know who he is and I can lay my hands on him just when I want.”
CHAPTER XIVMENDOZA MAKES A FIGHT
Jackstared at him in amazement.
“You’re joking!” he said.
“On the contrary, I am very much in earnest,” said Michael quietly. “But to know the Head-Hunter, and to bring his crimes home to him, are quite different matters.”
Jack Knebworth sat at his desk, his hands thrust into his trousers pockets, a look of blank incredulity on the face turned to the detective.
“Is it one of my company?” he asked, troubled, and Michael laughed.
“I haven’t the pleasure of knowing all your company,” he said diplomatically, “but at any rate, don’t let the Head-Hunter worry you. What are you going to do about Mr. Reggie Connolly?”
The director shrugged.
“He doesn’t mean it, and I was a fool to get wild,” he said. “That kind of ninny never means anything. You wouldn’t dream, to see him on the screen, full of tenderness and love and manliness, that he’s the poor little jellyfish he is! As for Mendoza——” he swept his hands before him, and the gesture was significant.
Miss Stella Mendoza, however, was not accepting her dismissal so readily. She had fought her way up from nothing, and was not prepared to forfeit her position without a struggle. Moreover, her position was a serious one. She had money—so much money that she need never work again; for, in addition to her big salary, she enjoyed an income from a source which need not be too closely inquired into. But there was a danger that Knebworth might carry the war into a wider field.
Her first move was to go in search of Adele Leamington, who, she learnt that morning for the first time, had taken her place. Though she went in a spirit of conciliation, she choked with anger to discover that the girl was occupying the star’s dressing-room, the room which had always been sacred to Stella Mendoza’s use. Infuriated, yet preserving an outward calm, she knocked at the door. (That she, Stella Mendoza, should knock at a door rightfully hers was maddening enough!)
Adele was sitting at the bare dressing-table, gazing, a little awe-stricken, at the array of mirrors, lights and the vista of dresses down the long alleyway which served as a wardrobe. At the sight of Mendoza she went red.
“Miss Leamington, isn’t it?” asked Stella sweetly. “May I come in?”
“Do, please,” said Adele, hastily rising.
“Pleasedosit down,” said Stella. “It’s a very uncomfortable chair, but most of the chairs here are uncomfortable. They tell me you have been ‘doubling’ for me?”
“ ‘Doubling’?” said Adele, puzzled.
“Yes, Mr. Knebworth said he was ‘doubling’ you. You know what I mean: when an artiste can’t appear, they sometimes put in an understudy in scenes where she’s not very distinctly shown—long shots——”
“But Mr. Knebworth took me close up,” said the girl quietly. “I was only in one long shot.”
Miss Mendoza masked her anger and sighed.
“Poor old chap! He’s very angry with me, and really, I oughtn’t to annoy him. I’m coming back to-morrow, you know.”
The girl went pale.
“It’s fearfully humiliating for you, I realize, but, my dear, we’ve all had to go through that experience. And people in the studio will be very nice to you.”
“But it’s impossible,” said Adele. “Mr. Knebworth told me I was to be in the picture from start to finish.”
Mendoza shook her head smilingly.
“You can never believe what these fellows tell you,” she said. “He’s just told me to be ready to shoot to-morrow morning on the South Downs.”
Adele’s heart sank. She knew that was the rendezvous, though she was not aware of the fact that Stella Mendoza had procured her information from the disgruntled Mr. Connolly.
“Itishumiliating,” Stella went on thoughtfully. “If I were you, I would go up to town and stay away for a couple of weeks till the whole thing has blown over. I feel very much to blame for your disappointment, my dear, and if money is any compensation——” She opened her bag and, taking out a wad of notes, detached four and put them on the table.
“What is this for?” asked Adele coldly.
“Well, my dear, you’ll want money for expenses——”
“If you imagine I’m going to London without seeing Mr. Knebworth and finding out for myself whether you’re speaking the truth——”
Mendoza’s face flamed.
“Do you suggest I’m lying?”
She had dropped all pretence of friendliness and stood, a veritable virago, her hands on her hips, her dark face thrust down into Adele’s.
“I don’t know whether you’re a liar or whether you are mistaken,” said Adele, who was less afraid of this termagant than she had been at the news she had brought. “The only thing I’m perfectly certain about is that for the moment this is my room, and I will ask you to leave it!”
She opened the door, and for a moment was afraid that the girl would strike her; but the broad-shouldered Irish dresser, a silent but passionately interested spectator and audience, interposed her huge bulk and good-humouredly pushed the raging star into the corridor.
“I’ll have you out of there!” she screamed across the woman’s shoulder. “Jack Knebworth isn’t everything in this company! I’ve got influence enough to fire Knebworth!”
The unrepeatable innuendoes that followed were not good to hear, but Adele Leamington listened in scornful silence. She was only too relieved (for the girl’s fury was eloquent) to know that she had not been speaking the truth. For one horrible moment Adele had believed her, knowing that Knebworth would not hesitate to sacrifice her or any other member of the company if, by so doing, the values of the picture could be strengthened.
Knebworth was alone when his ex-star was announced, and his first instinct was not to see her. Whatever his intentions might have been, she determined his action by appearing in the doorway just as he was making up his mind what line to take. He fixed her with his gimlet eyes for a second, and then, with a jerk of his head, called her in. When they were alone:
“There are many things I admire about you, Stella, and not the least of them is your nerve. But it is no good coming to me with any of that let-bygones-be-bygones stuff. You’re not appearing in this picture, and maybe you’ll never appear in another picture of mine.”
“Is that so?” she drawled, sitting down uninvited, and taking from her bag a little gold cigarette case.
“You’ve come in to tell me that you’ve got influence with a number of people who are financially interested in this corporation,” said Jack, to her dismay. She wondered if there were telephone communication between the dressing-room and the office, then remembered there wasn’t.
“I’ve handled a good many women in my time,” he went on, “and I’ve never had to fire one but she didn’t produce the President, Vice-President or Treasurer and hold them over my head with their feet ready to kick out my brains! And, Stella, none of those hold-ups have ever got past. People who are financially interested in a company may love you to death, but they’ve got to have the money to love you with; and if I don’t make pictures that sell, somebody is short of a perfectly good diamond necklace.”
“We’ll see if Sir Gregory thinks the same way,” she said defiantly, and Jack Knebworth whistled.
“Gregory Penne, eh? I didn’t know you had friends in that quarter. Yes, he is a stockholder in the company, but he doesn’t hold enough to make any difference. I guess he told you that he did. And if he held ninety-nine per cent. of it, Stella, it wouldn’t make any difference to old Jack Knebworth, because old Jack Knebworth’s got a contract which gives him carte blanche, and the only getting out clause is the one that getsmeout! You couldn’t touch me, Stella, no, ma’am!”
“I suppose you’re going to blacklist me?” she said sulkily.
This was the one punishment she most feared—that Jack Knebworth should circulate the story of her unforgivable sin of letting down a picture when it was half-shot.
“I thought about that,” he nodded, “but I guess I’m not vindictive. I’ll let you go and say the part didn’t suit you, and that you resigned, which is as near the truth as any story I’ll have to crack. Go with God, Stella. I guess you won’t, because you’re not that way, but—behave!”
He waved her out of the office and she went, somewhat chastened. Outside the studio she met Lawley Foss, and told him the result of the interview.
“If it’s like that you can do nothing,” he said. “I’d speak for you, Stella, but I’ve got to speak for myself,” he added bitterly. “The idea of a man of my genius truckling hat in hand to this damned old Yankee is very humiliating.”
“You ought to have your own company, Lawley,” she said, as she had said a dozen times before. “You write the stuff and I’ll be the leading woman and put it over for you. Why, you could direct Kneb’s head off. Iknow, Lawley! I’ve been to the only place on God Almighty’s earth where art is appreciated, and I tell you that a four-flusher like Jack Knebworth wouldn’t last a light-mile at Hollywood!”
“Light-mile” was a term she had acquired from a scientific admirer. It had the double advantage of sounding grand and creating a demand for an explanation. To her annoyance, Foss was sufficiently acquainted with elementary physics to know that she meant the period of time that a ray of light would take to traverse a mile.
“Is he in his office now?”
She nodded, and without any further word Lawley Foss, in some trepidation, knocked at his chief’s door.
“The truth is, Mr. Knebworth, I want to ask a favour of you.”
“Is it money?” demanded Jack, looking up from under his bushy brows.
“Well, it was money, as a matter of fact. There have been one or two little bills I’ve overlooked, and the bailiffs have been after me. I’ve got to raise fifty pounds by two o’clock this afternoon.”
Jack pulled open a drawer, took out a book and wrote a cheque, not for fifty pounds, but for eighty.
“That’s a month’s salary in advance,” he said. “You’ve drawn your pay up to to-day, and by the terms of your contract you’re entitled to one month’s notice or pay therefore. You’ve got it.”
Foss went an ugly red.
“Does that mean I’m fired?” he asked loudly.
Jack nodded.
“You’re fired, not because you want money, not because you’re one of the most difficult men on the lot to deal with, but for what you did last night, Foss.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I am taking Mr. Brixan’s view, that you fastened a white label to the window of Miss Leamington’s room in order to guide an agent of Sir Gregory Penne. That agent came and nearly kidnapped my leading lady.”
The man’s lip curled in a sneer.
“You’ve got melodrama in your blood, Knebworth,” he said. “Kidnap your leading lady! Those sort of things may happen in the United States, but they don’t happen in England.”
“Close the door as you go out,” said Jack, preparing for his work.
“Let me say this——” began Foss.
“I’ll let you say nothing,” snarled Knebworth. “I won’t even let you say ‘good-bye.’ Get!”
And, when the door slammed behind his visitor, the old director pushed a bell on his table, and, to his assistant who came:
“Get Miss Leamington down here,” he said. “I’d like contact with something that’s wholesome.”