The haunting hand
inquisitive pests. She was glad to escape, leaving poor, harassed Mrs.
Bellew to do the honors. Of course the garrulous landlady would talk
of things she knew not, and say many things that the newspaper men
would twist to suit themselves, but Margot knew that it mattered very
little what was or was not made public in the way of news regarding
her adventure. The publicity itself was the one inescapable fact.
The morning papers had had nothing regarding the affair, so there was
as yet no need to dread an encounter with Stoner. She had decided not
to tell Gene, should she meet him at the studio, of Stella Ball’s
unexpected re-appearance, until the evening.
On her arrival at Astoria, keyed to make excuses for her late arrival,
and to remind Stoner of her fruitless and long hours of waiting the
day before, Margot found that the screening of _A Toreador’s Love_ was
held up for a few days, possibly for a week. Some blunder on the part
of the art director. The set had to be revamped. It was one of the
frequent movie comedies of errors, which they had all learned to take
philosophically. All but Stoner, who was in a condition of blasphemous
wrath. He must indeed be upset, Margot delightedly observed, not even
to notice her late arrival.
Corinne Delamar darted acid comments through the slats of her
dressing-room on wheels. The minor members of the cast had been told
to get out of the way. The girls she knew crowded around Margot,
asking if she had seen her spook the night before, and if that was why
she was so late at the studio. To all questions she smiled and said
that she believed her ghost was laid, that she had seen nothing weird
the previous night, and that she was late to the studio, merely
because she was tired from her previous adventure.
As a matter of policy and precaution, she hung around the studio until
late in the afternoon, then disappeared before the other girls were
ready to leave. Gene did not go with her, but in a hurried interview
between them it had been arranged for him to come for her later and
take her out for dinner.
The first thing she did on arrival in New York, was to buy an evening
paper. The headlines of the early edition greeted her; headlines about
herself; bantering, hateful headlines:
_SPOOKS PURSUE FILM BEAUTY--
ACTRESS AND COP GET GHOSTLY
BURGLAR--MOVIE GIRL REPORTS
ROOM HAUNTED._
Well--she had known what to expect. But at least she could put a check
on the melodramatic absurdity of it all. She wished to goodness she
had stayed at home that day and talked with all the reporters herself.
Trust foolish Mrs. Bellew to make things as absolutely ridiculous as
possible! She hurried home, called up the leading newspapers, and
requested that they send special men to interview her that evening. It
would, she believed, ensure a more rational version of the story, at
least.
Dining with Gene, she gave him a detailed description of what had
occurred the night before, but she omitted all comment as to her
impressions or deductions. She wasn’t ready yet to go into all that.
Later in the evening, after she had interviewed the newspaper men, she
would take Gene fully into her confidence.
He disapproved of her remaining in the same house. Why on earth did
she want to do that? he asked her.
“Well,” she said, with one of her cryptic smiles, “I have my reasons,
old dear. They may be foolish ones, time will tell, but in the
meantime, I’ve made up my mind to stay right in that house of
mystery.”
“All right, my dear. I always respect the results of your mental
processes, but sometimes the processes themselves leave me in the
air.”
“A very comfortable place for the present, Gene. You may wish you’d
stayed up in that safe region, before we get through with this thing.”
“Not unless you were up there with me,” he smiled back at her.
Later in the evening, after Margot had flattered and flustered and
successfully maneuvered the newspaper men, and had given each one a
cocktail with which to drink to her success as a star in filmdom and
as a detective in her field of mystery, she and Gene settled down in
her new room to a serious talk.
“As I see it,” she summed up, “this mystery is a perfectly normal one.
It’s my firm belief that it will turn out to be more important to
students of crime than to the Society for Psychical Research.
Moreover, the best detective methods are the only methods that will
solve it.”
“Meaning--Cornelius Hart and his hot-on-the-trail assistants?” His
smile expressed the scorn he shared with her as regards the
plainclothes man.
“Absurd bungler, isn’t he? First he laughed at my story, and ridiculed
Boyle. Then he woke up when Stella came on the screen, but he can’t
get a word out of her. She’s much too clever for him. And his
investigations in this house consist of watching for something new to
happen, which isn’t _going_ to happen. The dub isn’t using what brain
he happens to have.”
“What’s your idea? To go to one of the private agencies and get one of
their men? The trouble is the price, dear. They charge at least twenty
dollars a day.”
“No, nothing like that.” She laughed and struck her chest with a comic
gesture. “Little one, you see before you the real Sherlock Holmes in
the plot! _I_ am going to apply to the case the expert methods I
referred to. And of course you’re going to help me.”
“Righto!” He smiled, then grew more serious. “All very fine, Margot,
but for all your cleverness and powers of analysis, I don’t quite see
what you’ve got to go on.”
“Don’t you! Well, now listen. Get down to bedrock and to essentials. I
saw an apparently unattached arm. The next night Stella Ball sneaked
into my room. Stella Ball has comparatively recently had her right arm
amputated at the elbow. I believe that these three strange, apparently
unrelated facts, are actually, if mysteriously, related.”
Gene couldn’t control a slight shudder.
“Isn’t that going back to the spook theory you said you’d rejected?
Surely you don’t mean, Margot, that you think it was a psychic
manifestation of some sort,--the girl sending her arm ahead of her, or
something of that sort? You can’t be serious!”
“Not that way, no. That’s too absurd! But let me go on. For some
reason the hand I actually saw--for keep in mind that I _did_ see a
hand!--found it important to put out lights on the floor. Stella Ball
had lived in that same room. For all we know, she might, in the past,
have penetrated its secret. Last night she may have come either to
help or to thwart that hand.”
“What do you mean? In putting out the lights on the rug?” Gene was
making a valiant effort to treat Margot’s theories with the respect
she demanded.
“Not necessarily. I’m trying to stick to logic. It’s always so easy to
regard a sequence of odd occurrences as mere coincidence. Gene, think
me a fool if you like, but I’m dead sure that the hand had a living
owner. I’m very nearly as sure that Stella and the owner of the hand
were after something in that room of which they both have knowledge.”
“Oh! Then you don’t think the hand you saw belonged to the girl?”
“No, I don’t. Of course I have no theory as yet as to _what_ they were
after. The flames on the carpet will probably prove to have a lot to
do with it. So will the fact of Stella being armless.”
“Gosh!” Gene heaved a sigh of despair. “Frankly, Margot, you’ve got me
out of my depth. Look here! Granted that you and then Boyle saw a
human hand and arm, how do you explain the way it vanished both times?
Wouldn’t it argue a hiding place for the body belonging to the arm?”
Margot’s face glowed with enthusiasm. She put out an eager hand and
squeezed Gene’s.
“Bully for you! You’ve struck the nail on the head! Of course, it
argues just that.”
“But, good Lord, the place has been searched thoroughly. It’s the one
little thing the police have done. You can’t think anything’s been
overlooked?”
“Naturally I think it. If you’ve ever dropped your collar button,
Gene, you must realize that looking in vain for it twenty times
doesn’t prove that you only imagined you had the collar button.”
Her sense of humor was indestructible, and Gene smiled, but his own
humor expressed itself with a note of sarcasm.
“Suppose the intruder might have hidden between the spring and
mattress of your bed?”
Her merry laugh was incongruous with the sense of mystery that
increased with everything she said.
“Quinlan took that idea quite seriously, if you remember. Nothing
living or dead could have lived through the pounding he gave the bed
with his nightstick.”
“Do be serious, dear. How about the fireplace?”
“Serious! And you make a suggestion like that!” She laughed again.
“Naturally not the fireplace. It’s several feet from the bed. If the
creature could have reached the fireplace without my hearing or seeing
it, then it could have got to the door just as easily.”
“Oh, I give it up!” Gene lighted a cigarette with the air of seeking
consolation where he could reasonably hope to find it.
“Well, I don’t--not by a good deal. I don’t _know_ anything. What I’m
really doing, Gene, is to follow the Sherlock Holmes method of
discarding the alternatives that are obviously impossible.”
He looked at her sharply. “You mean--there remains an alternative--an
escape--which doesn’t strike you as impossible?”
“Yes.”
Gene got quickly to his feet. “Come on,” he said eagerly, seizing her
by the hand. “Show it to me!”
“Go easy, Gene! We mustn’t tamper with a thing. It’s best to direct
the police what to do. But we can take a look, if we can make some
excuse to get that policeman out of the room for a little while. I’m
not keen on taking _him_ into my confidence.” She got up and moved to
the door, still speaking: “You see, the _object_ of Stella’s return to
that room is what I want to----”
She was interrupted by a sharp rap on the door. Cool as Margot looked
and felt, she gave a slight start, then she stood back to let Gene
open the door. A messenger boy stood there holding out a yellow
envelope, and piping “Telegram!”
While Gene signed for her, and shut the door after the departing boy,
Margot tore open the message. Then she handed it to Gene. Her gray
eyes looked troubled and her mouth drooped at the corners.
“What do you make out of this?”
Gene read it aloud, in a slow, puzzled fashion.
“_See me at the studio to-morrow morning without fail._
“Corinne Delamar.”
“It looks as if what you said Stoner told you about her
high-and-mightiness was correct. She’s probably furious because you’ve
broken into the papers. What other reason could she have for sending
you such a message?”
“That’s it, of course, but I’ll bet Stoner put her up to it. I had a
feeling when he talked to me, that he was inventing the thing for some
purpose of his own. She isn’t a bad sort, you know. I don’t believe
she’d have dreamed of being jealous of me if someone hadn’t put her up
to it. Well, it can’t be helped. I’ll sleep on it. We’ll have to
postpone our detective work. I must be clear-eyed and clear-brained to
tackle Delamar in the morning.”
Her good-night kiss to Gene was hardly what his lover’s desire could
be satisfied with. He held her for a moment, whispering of his love
for her, but he knew her well enough to realize that until Margot
should have disposed of Corinne Delamar, and Stoner and a few other
details such as the mystery of the hand and arm, he could expect
little response to his passion. Wisely he let it go at that.
That night Margot dreamed--a strangely vivid dream--not of Stella
Ball, nor of the mystic hand and arm, nor of Corinne Delamar, still
less of Gene whom she had begun to love. She dreamed (and awoke from