The haunting hand
No papers on them, and nobody claims them at the morgue. Nothing so
mysterious about that.”
“Wait till you hear the rest of it!” Margot’s eager glance avoided the
chair where Stoner was lounging. “The very same day that the girl left
here, an elderly man named Murchison, who had a garret room on the top
floor, also disappeared, with equal finality.”
“A _really_ old man?” Lulu’s instinct for romance jumped to the
obvious conclusion.
“No, dear, just middle-aged. He was about fifty-five. Agile and wiry,
Mrs. Bellew says. Young in strength, but very unprepossessing. He was
round-shouldered, and had a thin, ugly, hatchet sort of face. No girl
could have looked twice at him. And in the evenings he stuck in his
rooms like a hermit, and he seemed to hate women.”
“Did he have a job anywhere?” someone asked.
“Nobody knows. He never gave any information about himself. Of course
landladies like Mrs. Bellew would draw blood out of a stone, in the
way of gossip, but, apparently, she never found out anything about
that particular lodger. She didn’t care, so long as he gave no trouble
and paid his rent regularly.”
“Perhaps the old bird had money, and the girl, Stella, may have fallen
for that.” Lulu’s sense of romance was not to be crushed.
“Nonsense, Lulu. He wasn’t a miser, with bags of gold in his trunk. He
went out every day, so presumably he worked somewhere, but, judging by
the way he lived, he certainly earned very little.”
“Call it a case of hypnotism, and be done with it!” Stoner’s
suggestion came flippantly.
Margot turned her head quickly, and again met Stoner’s eyes, staring
at her through the shadows of the room, and the smoke from his
cigarette.
“I thought of that. But the man’s only motive in hypnotizing the girl
would have been an immoral one, which wouldn’t have required his
taking her out of the house. No one here bothers about his neighbors.
You could literally get away with murder, and not a soul be the
wiser.”
“Gosh! Catch _me_ living in a spooky place like this!” May glanced
over her shoulder, at the darker corner of the room where the brass
bed hid its plebeian head.
“Speaking of mysteries!” Margot glanced with surprise at Gene, whose
voice had broken the momentary silence in the room.--“Any of you
happen to read about the disappearance from the Fellowe Institute, of
a fraction of a gram of radium, a few months ago?”
“Yes, I read about it,” said Margot eagerly. “They haven’t the
faintest idea who took it, but of course it was stolen. Any of you
know anything about radium?” She glanced from one to another.
“Not a damn thing. I’ll speak for the crowd.” It was Stoner’s voice,
bland, a little ironical. “We motion picture people, Margot, aren’t
wise to all that scientific stuff. Ain’t it the truth?” He laughed,
throwing his glance around the room.
“Aren’t you even interested when you read of such things in the
papers, Mr. Stoner?” Margot regarded him with curious eyes. He was
such a strange contradiction, with his unexpected knowledge along some
lines, and his equally surprising lack of it along others.
“Can’t say I am. As a matter of fact, I don’t have much time for
reading, except of course movie fan stuff, and the sports columns, and
local politics and all the bunk they write and call dramatic
criticism.”
“But a thing like the disappearance of that radium is most interesting
news. Even a tiny bit of radium is worth a lot of money, and they’ve
had detectives on the case without getting a glimmer of light or a
single clue.”
“The odd part of it is,” went on Gene, “that no one but an employee
could have access to their stock of radium, and the mystery lies in
the difficulty entailed in concealing it and getting out of the
building with it. It seems that all persons engaged in work at the
Institute are subject to search before they leave the building.”
Margot could see by their faces that, so far as the others were
concerned, the subject of radium was exhausted. But her own mystery
narrative still held interest, she felt sure.
“Well, to get back to the girl Stella, and old Murchison--” began
Margot.
“Why get back to them?” Stoner drawled the words, and rolled his eyes
in comic supplication. “Much better turn on the jazz and let me shake
another round of Bronxes.”
“Righto!” laughed Margot, getting up and going toward the victrola.
Without looking at Stoner she added:
“Evidently, Mr. Stoner, you haven’t got the detective sort of mind.”
“Have you?”
Through the high-pitched chatter of the girls, and the deeper cadence
of the men’s voices, Margot heard the brief, low-toned question. She
turned around, facing Stoner.
“Yes, I have. Ever since I’ve been old enough to read, I’ve had a
slant for mystery and detective stories. I adore unraveling
mysteries.”
“Is that so?” Stoner’s drawl expressed tolerant amusement. The slight
scorn so often shown by rather ignorant men for intelligent women.
Margot put on a record, wound the victrola, then walked slowly to
where Stoner stood. She let him light a cigarette for her as she said,
smilingly:
“Ever read ‘The House and the Brain,’ by Bulwer-Lytton? Fascinating
and gruesome. In fact quite blood-curdling.”
“Any more so than Monsieur Dupin?”
“Oh, mercy, yes.” She saw Gene approaching, and included him in the
conversation. “Who’s _your_ favorite, Gene, in detective fiction?”
“Gaboriau,” said Gene briefly, “and Maurice le Blanc.”
“They would be,” laughed Margot. “You’re of French descent, and I
suppose you read them in the original. Well, as for me, I vote for
Conan Doyle’s immortal Sherlock! Although I’ll admit that Le Blanc’s
‘Memoirs of Arsene Lupin’ are thrilling and clever.”
“You and Valery are some pair of highbrows to be in the motion picture
industry.” Stoner sounded sarcastic, and Gene frowned darkly, but
Margot answered gaily:
“I’ve never heard detective fiction called high-brow before. Except,
of course, that I take it more seriously than most readers do, Mr.
Stoner. You see, I was a medical student and specialized in chemistry
before you gave me the chance of my young life to become an actress.
I’ve had lots of fun analyzing the methods of most of the great
fiction detectives. How’s that?” Her upturned face challenged him with
a bright smile.
“Hot stuff for your press agent, when I’m directing you as a star,
some day.”
Gene turned abruptly on his heel. Margot stood, her eyes held by
Stoner’s veiled scrutiny. For veiled it was; that expressed it
exactly. For a few seconds his gaze held hers, then--again--what was
it--that sudden dilating of the pupil; the queer overtone as of a
yellowish shadow darkening the pale blue of the iris; a shimmer in the
eyeball, like dust specks seen in a sunbeam.…
Margot lowered her head, and walked slowly to the door leading to the
roof garden. Strange eyes! A little shiver shook her bare shoulders.
The night was sultry. The room was heavy with smoke and the warm
essence from many human bodies.
CHAPTER II.
THE GRISLY HAND AND THE FLAME
As Margot danced, with one man and then another, a rapt, detached,
impersonal joy, shone in her face. Gone, between her and her guests,
the feeling of inequality that her agile and probing mind, had
inspired for a short interval. Gone the sense in her of repugnance for
Stoner, even when she danced in his arms. Gone the memory of his
strange and disturbing eyes. Caught up in the rhythm of jazz, what
mattered anything but motion--to these children of the Twentieth
Century--the poetry of motion, the only poetry most of them would ever
give a brass farthing for.
What if the music were secondhand? Syncopation and the phonograph
record had come into being at the same time, and had swept away with
a single victorious gesture the sentiment of the waltz, and the
coöperation of eager fingers flying over a white keyboard. Here were
new measures, mechanical, but satisfying and inspiring to youngsters
of the Jazz Age.
But it was after midnight, and high time to respect the rule that all
noise cease at twelve o’clock. Even in free-and-easy old houses such
as this one, there was a limit. Sandwiches and salad and coffee,
appeared mysteriously from a closet, where Margot concealed an
electric plate. One more round of drinks, mutual toasts and eager
congratulations to Margot for the success of her party, then the girls
began to fumble with their wraps.
At the door, Stoner held out his hand for a second clasp. He had
already shaken her hand in good-night. He had managed to be the last
to leave the room. Even Gene had followed the others down the stairs,
although he had maneuvered a whispered entreaty into her ear, to
permit him to return in a few minutes, and she had yielded to the
unhappiness in his eyes.
Stoner, holding her hand, looked down at her with a slow smile parting
his thick lips.
“Grand success, your little party--Margot.” She smiled, without
attempting to withdraw her hand.
“Awfully glad you enjoyed it. Next time I promise to have the
cocktails strong enough to suit you, Mr. Stoner.”
“They were strong enough. Too strong, maybe, for those other little
girls. You’d already stirred them up thoroughly with your story of
mystery and murder.”
Her eyes widened. “My story didn’t include a murder.”
“Well, it was hinted at--left to the imagination.”
“Entirely so.”
“Well, see here, little girl. Take my advice and cut out all that
detective stuff. It fills your mind with truck and it’s bad for your
work. Take it from me, it is!”
“I’ll write a mystery story myself, and perhaps you’ll let me star in
it. How about that, Mr. Director?” She laughed and tried to withdraw
her hand.
“Nothing doing. Don’t like mystery pictures. Well, good-by and don’t
get nervous sleeping all alone in that big bed over there.”
For a second, Margot felt angry resentment at what, on the lips of
such a man as Stoner, might so easily contain an ugly meaning--a raw
suggestion. The next second, meeting his eyes, so mysteriously
contradictory to the insidious sensuality of his mouth, she knew that
he had meant nothing insulting by his reference to her sleeping alone
in the large bed. Perhaps he had no meaning at all, back of his words
or his eyes, but there it was again, unsuspected by him, that strange,
disturbing filming of the pale blue iris, and the dilation of the
pupil. What in Heaven’s name did it mean!
As Margot stood perfectly still, with the handle of the closed door in
her hand, listening to the sound of Stoner’s feet descending the
uncarpeted stairs, the vague wonder and unrest she had felt before,
became a concrete sensation of something very much like fear, yet fear
of what! Not Stoner himself. That would be too absurd! Besides, the
only thing a woman would have to be on her guard against with Stoner,
concerned matters wherein lay no mystery whatever. There was never any
mystery for a woman, attending the manifest gloating desire of a man.
Certainly she could handle Stoner. That wasn’t it. Well, what was it?
She felt half tempted to talk it over with Gene. But hearing his step
outside the door, she decided suddenly that she would not, could not,
discuss Stoner with Gene.
Gene threw hat and coat on a chair in the manner of one who is anxious
to dispose of superfluous incumbrance, and be strong for his swim
against the current. He stood with his back to the wall, near the
door, ignoring Margot’s gesture toward a chair. Reading determination
in his grave, young face, Margot lighted a cigarette, just to have
something to finger, and walked toward him, In comic imitation of
Carmen, arms akimbo, swaying of the torso, head tilted back, and a
tantalizing smile on her lips. It was too late for melodrama, or even
mild dramatics. She must treat Gene with friendly levity, or she’d