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Page 24
VII
ENID FAYE
Behind Werner was the assistant director, to whom I had given
little attention at the time of the examination of the various
people in the Phelps library. Even now he impressed me as one of
those rare, unobtrusive types of individuals who seem, in spite
of the possession of genuine ability and often a great deal of
efficiency, to lack, nevertheless, any outstanding personal
characteristics. As a class they are human machines, to be
neither liked nor disliked, never intruding and yet always on
hand when needed.
"This is Carey Drexel, my assistant," Werner stated, forgetting
that Kennedy had questioned him at Tarrytown, and so knew him.
"There are a few people I simply must see and I'm tied up,
therefore, for perhaps half an hour; and Manton's downstairs
still trying to locate Millard for you. But Carey's at your
disposal, Mr. Kennedy, to show you the arrangement of the studio
and to cooperate with you in any way if you think there's any
possible chance of finding anything to bear upon Stella's death
here."
If Werner was the man who had used the towel, I could see that he
was an actor and a cool villain. Of course no one could know,
yet, that we had discovered it, but the very nonchalance with
which it had been thrown into the basket was a mark of the nerve
of the guilty man. It was more than carelessness. Nothing about
the crime had been haphazard.
Kennedy thanked Werner and asked to be shown the studio floor
used in the making of "The Black Terror." Carey led the way,
explaining that there were actually two studios, one at each end
of the quadrangle, connected on both sides by the other
buildings; offices and dressing rooms and the costume and
property departments at the side facing the street; technical
laboratories and all the detail of film manufacture in a four-
story structure to the rear. Most of Werner's own picture was
being made in the so-called big studio, reached through the
dressing rooms from the end of the corridor where we stood.
I had been in film plants before, but when we entered the huge
glass-roofed inclosure beyond the long hallway of dressing rooms
I was impressed by the fact that here was a place of genuine
magnitude, with more life and bustle than anything I had ever
imagined. The glass had, however, been painted over, because of
late years dark stages, with the even quality of artificial
light, had come into vogue in the Manton studios in place of
stages lighted by the uneven and undependable sunlight.
The two big sets mentioned by Manton, a banquet hall and a
ballroom, were being erected simultaneously. Carpenters were at
work sawing and hammering. Werner's technical director was
shouting at a group of stage hands putting a massive mirror in
position at the end of the banquet hall, a clever device to give
the room the appearance of at least double its actual length. In
one corner several electricians and a camera man were
experimenting with a strange-looking bank of lights. In the
ballroom set, where the flats or walls were all in place, an
unexcited paperhanger was busy with the paraphernalia of his
craft, somehow looking out of his element in this reign of
pandemonium.
It seemed hard indeed to believe that any sort of order or system
lay behind this heterogeneous activity, and the incident which
took Carey Drexel away from us only added to the wonder in my
mind, a wonder that anything tangible and definite could be
accomplished.
"Oh, Carey!" Another assistant director, or perhaps he was only a
property boy, rushed up frantically the moment he saw Drexel.
"Miss Miller's on a rampage because the grand piano you promised
to get for her isn't at her apartment yet, and Bessie Terry's in
tears because she left her parrot here overnight, as you
suggested, and some one taught the bird to swear." The intruder,
a youth of perhaps eighteen, was in deadly earnest. "For the love
of Mike, Carey," he went on, "tell me how to unteach that
screeching thing of Bessie's, or we won't get a scene today."
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