|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 6
All this I had learned from visits to a studio with the Star's
photoplay editor. I was anxious to impress my knowledge upon
Kennedy. He gave me no opportunity, however, but wheeled upon
Mackay suddenly.
"Send in the electrician," he ordered. "Keep everyone else out
until I'm ready to examine them."
While the district attorney hurried to the sliding doors, guarded
on their farther side by one of the amateur deputies he had
impressed into service, Kennedy swung the stand of the arc he had
used back into the place unaided. I noticed that Doctor Blake was
nervously interested in spite of his professional poise. I
certainly was bursting with curiosity to know what Kennedy had
found.
The electrician, a wizened veteran of the studios, with a bald
head which glistened rather ridiculously, entered as though he
expected to be held for the death of the star on the spot.
"I don't know nothin'," he began, before anyone could start to
question him. "I was outside when they yelled, honest! I was
seeing whether m'lead was getting hot, and I heard 'em call to
douse the glim, an'--"
"Put on all your lights"--Kennedy was unusually sharp, although
it was plain he held no suspicion of this man, as he added--"just
as you had them."
As the electrician went from stand to stand sulkily, there was a
sputter from the arcs, almost deafening in the confines of the
room, and quite a bit of fine white smoke. But in a moment the
corner of the library constituting the set was brilliantly,
dazzlingly lighted. To me it was quite like being transported
into one of the big studios in the city.
"Is this the largest portion of the room they used?" Kennedy
asked. "Did you have your stands any farther back?"
"This was the biggest lay-out, sir!" replied the man.
"Were all the scenes in which Miss Lamar appeared before her
death in this corner of the room?"
"Yes, sir!"
"And this was the way you had the scene lighted when she dropped
unconscious?"
"Yes, sir! I pulled m'lights an'--an' they lifted her up and put
her right there where she is, sir!"
Kennedy paid no attention to the last; in fact, I doubt whether
he heard it. Dropping to hands and knees immediately, he began a
search of the floor and carpet as minutely painstaking as the
inspection he had given Stella's own person. Instinctively I drew
back, to be out of his way, as did Doctor Blake and Mackay. The
electrician, I noticed, seemed to grasp now the reason for the
summons which undoubtedly had frightened him badly. He gave his
attention to his lights, stroking a refractory Cooper-Hewitt tube
for all the world as if some minor scene in the story were being
photographed. It was hard to realize that it was not another
picture scene, but that Craig Kennedy, in my opinion the founder
of the scientific school of modern detectives, was searching out
in this strange environment the clue to a real murder so
mysterious that the very cause of death was as yet undetermined.
I was hoping for a display of the remarkable brilliance Craig had
shown in so many of the cases brought to his attention. I half
expected to see him rise from the floor with some tiny something
in his hand, some object overlooked by everyone else, some
tangible evidence which would lead to the immediate apprehension
of the perpetrator of the crime. That Stella Lamar had met her
death by foul means I did not doubt for an instant, and so I
waited feverishly for the conclusion of Kennedy's search.
As it happened, this was not destined to be one of his cases
cleared up in a brief few hours of intensive effort. He covered
every inch of the floor within the illuminated area; then he
turned his attention to the walls and furniture and the rest of
the room in somewhat more perfunctory, but no less skillful
manner. Fully fifteen minutes elapsed, but I knew from his
expression that he had discovered nothing. In a wringing
perspiration from the heat of the arcs, but nevertheless glad to
have had the intense light at his disposal, he motioned to the
electrician to turn them off and to leave the room.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|