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Page 81
I started to run toward the studio. Then recollection of my
errand stopped me. Kennedy wished the blood smears and stomach
contents and was anxious to get them before the arrival of the
police. At first I thought that all such evidence would be
unnecessary now, after the dialogue I had overheard, but it
struck me as an afterthought that it might be necessary still to
prove Shirley's guilt to the satisfaction of a court and jury,
and so I rushed to the next dressing room and to another, until I
located the doctor and the body of the dead man.
With the little package for Kennedy safely in my pocket I hurried
out again into the sweltering heat beneath the glass of the big
studio, and to the side of Kennedy and Mackay in the banquet-hall
set.
"You have a sample of each article of food now?" he was asking
the district 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 bottle and cork I'll have a sample of the wine. I think
it's the wine," he added.
Kennedy turned to me. "You've got--"
"In my pocket!" I interrupted. Then, rather breathlessly, I
repeated the conversation I had overheard.
"Good Lord!" Mackay flushed. "There it is! Shirley's the man, and
I'll take him now, quick, without waiting for a warrant."
"See!" I ejaculated, to Kennedy. "He killed Stella because she
made a fool of him and then, when Werner discovered that and
followed him to Tarrytown the other night, it probably put him in
a panic of fear, and so, to keep Werner from talking--"
"Easy, Walter! Not so fast! What you overheard is insufficient
ground for Shirley's conviction, unless you could make him
confess, and I doubt you could make him do that."
"Why?" This was Mackay.
"Because I don't think he's guilty. At least"--Kennedy, as
always, was cautious in his statements, "not so far as anything
we now know would indicate."
"But his anger at Stella," I protested, "and Marilyn's remark--"'
"Miss Lamar's death was the result of a cool, unfeeling plan, not
pique or anger. The same cruel, careful brain executed this
second crime."
Mackay, I saw, was three-quarters convinced by Kennedy. "How do
you account 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 likely to me that it is the truth, Mackay. In that
case her remark means that she 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 an arrest, 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 way unusual 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 studio
windows caught Kennedy's ear and ended the colloquy. From some of
those near enough to look out we received the explanation. The
police had arrived, fully three-quarters of an hour after
Werner's death.
"I'll get the little bottle of wine, sure," Mackay murmured,
picking up the food samples he had wrapped and crowding the bulky
package into a pocket.
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