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Page 14
"Yes."
"Now try to remember, Mr. Manton." Kennedy leaned over very
seriously. "Just who approached closely to Miss Lamar in the
making of that thirteenth scene? Who was near enough to have
inflicted a wound, or to have subjected her, suppose we say, to
the fumes of some subtle poison?"
"You think that--" Manton started to question Kennedy, but was
given no encouragement. "Gordon, the leading man, passed through
the scene," he replied, after a pause, "but did not go very near
her. Werner was playing the dead millionaire at her feet."
"Who is Werner?"
"He's my director. Because it was such a small part, he played it
himself. He's only in the two or three scenes in the beginning
and I was here to be at the camera."
While Kennedy was questioning Manton I had been glancing through
the script of the picture. My own connection with the movies had
consisted largely of three attempts to sell stories of my own to
the producers. Needless to remark I had not succeeded, in that
regard falling in the class with some hundreds of thousands of my
fellow citizens. For everybody thinks he has at least one motion
picture in him. And so, though I had managed to visit studios and
meet a few of the players, this was my very first shot at a
manuscript actually in production. I took advantage of Kennedy's
momentary preoccupation to turn to Manton.
"Who wrote this script, Mr. Manton?" I asked.
"Millard! Lawrence Millard."
"Millard?" Kennedy and I exclaimed, simultaneously.
"Why, yes! Millard is still under contract and he's the only man
who ever could write scripts for Stella. We--we tried others and
they all flivved."
"Is Millard here?"
Manton burst into laughter, somehow out of place in the room
where we still were in the company of death. "An author on the
lot at the filming of his picture, to bother the director and to
change everything? Out! When the scenario's done he's through.
He's lucky to get his name on the screen. It's not the story but
the direction which counts, except that you've got to have a good
idea to start with, and a halfway decent script to make your lay-
outs from. Anyhow--" He sobered a bit, perhaps realizing that he
was going counter to the tendency to have the author on the lot.
"Millard and Stella weren't on speaking terms. She divorced him,
you know."
"Do you know much about the personal affairs of Miss Lamar?"
"Well"--Manton's eyes sought the floor for a moment--"Like
everyone else in pictures, Stella was the victim of a great deal
of gossip. That's the experience of any girl who rises to a
position of prominence and--"
"How were the relations between Miss Lamar and yourself?"
interrupted Kennedy.
"What do you mean by that?" Manton flushed quickly.
"You have had no trouble, no disagreements recently?"
"No, indeed. Everything has been very friendly between us--in a
strictly business way, of course--and I don't believe I've had an
unpleasant word with her since I first formed Manton Pictures to
make her a star."
"You know nothing of her difficulties with her husband?"
"Naturally not. I seldom saw her except at the studio, unless it
was some necessary affair such as a screen ball here, or perhaps
in Boston or Philadelphia or some near-by city where I would take
her for effect--"
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