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Page 90
He hurried over to wash his hands. I spread the towel out on the
table and began to work in the stuff indicated by Kennedy. There
was no odor and it seemed like some patent ointment in color. At
first I was puzzled. Then, absently, I touched the back of one
hand with the greasy fingers of the other and immediately an
itching set up so annoying that I had to abandon my task.
Kennedy chuckled. "That's itching salve, Walter. The cuticle pads
at your finger tips are too thick, but touch yourself anywhere
else!--" He shrugged his shoulders. "You'd better use soap and
water if you want any relief. Then you can start over again."
At the basin I thought I grasped his little plot.
"You're going to plant the towel," I asked, "so that the
interested party will try to get hold of it?"
Evidently he thought it unnecessary to reply to me.
"Why couldn't you just put it somewhere without all the
preparation," Mackay suggested, "and watch to see who came after
it?"
"Because our criminal's too clever," Kennedy rejoined. "Our only
chance to get it stolen is to make it very plain that it is not
being watched. Whoever steals it, however, possibly will reveal
himself on account of the itching salve. In any case I expect to
be able to trace the towel to the thief, no matter what efforts
are made to destroy it."
The towel was wrapped in a heavy bit of paper; then placed with a
microscope and some other paraphernalia in a small battered
traveling bag. Climbing into Mackay's little roadster, we soon
were speeding toward the studio.
"Will you be able to help me, to stay with Jameson and myself all
day?" Kennedy asked the district attorney, after perhaps a mile
of silence.
"Surely! It's what I was hoping you'd allow me to do. I have no
authority down here, though."
"I understand. But the police, or an outsider, might allow some
of my plans to become known." He paused a moment in thought. "The
film you brought in with you consists of the scenes on the rolls
of negative in use at the time of Miss Lamar's collapse. It may
or may not include the action where she scratched herself. Now I
want the scenes up to thirteen put together in proper order,
first as photographed by one camera, then as caught by the other.
I'll arrange for the services of a cutter, and for the delivery
to me of any other negative or positive overlooked by us when we
had the two boxes sealed and given into your custody at
Tarrytown. Will you superintend the assembly of the scenes, so
that you can be sure nothing is taken out or omitted?"
"Of course! I want to do anything I can."
Upon arrival at the studio we detected this time all the signs of
a complete demoralization. The death of Werner, the fact that he
had been stricken down during the taking of a scene and on the
very stage, had served to bring the tragedy home to the people.
More, it was a second murder in four days, apparently by the same
hand as the first. A sense of dread, a nameless, intangible fear,
had taken form and found its way under the big blackened glass
roofs and around and through the corridors, into the dressing
rooms, and back even to the manufacturing and purely technical
departments. The gateman eyed us with undisguised uneasiness as
we drove through the archway into the yard. In that inclosure
there were only two cars--Manton's, and one we later learned
belonged to Phelps. The sole human being to enter our range of
vision was an office boy. He skirted the side of the building as
though the menace of death were in the air, or likely to strike
out of the very heavens without warning.
We found Kauf in the large studio, obviously unhappy in the shoes
of the unfortunate Werner. Probably from half-reasoned-out
motives of efficiency in psychology the new director had made no
attempt to resume work at once in the ill-fated banquet set, but
had turned to the companion ballroom setting, since both had been
prepared and made ready at the same time.
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