The Talkie Murder
Albert Albert Ullman
Albert Edward Ullman
The Talkie Murder
Sudden Darkness—the Grim Hand of Death Strikes—And the Unknown Murderer There on the Movie Lot!
ON THE sound stage of the Ajax Picture Studios the members of the cast had resumed the exact positions they had occupied before lunch. Chalk lines, resembling the outlines of so many pairs of feet, enabled them do this to the satisfaction of the exacting Tad Boone.
It was the climax of "Processional," from the play of the Russian master, and the famous director, after six weeks of tireless effort, was confident that he had achieved the great picture of his career. Momentarily the tense look left his face, and his smile embraced the eleven characters. Then he frowned once more. "Lights!" he barked. "All set!" A dazzling shower of light fell on the stage, and from the sides a battery of Kliegs projected their blinding shafts.
"Miss Storme," he said, in more gentle tones, as he looked at the still-faced leading woman, "your cue is 'you lie!'—and then you denounce Leonid... You work yourself into a fury gradually—your motions become more violent— in the end you are like a creature demented... And then you break—the storm of your words ends in mad gibberings—you fall at the feet of the man who has betrayed you!"
HELENE STORME gazed at him somberly, but as he finished, a gleam of fire came into her dark eyes. In her lovely husky voice, she started to recite the words of her role. Slowly, then, as she faced the camera, her burning eyes uplifted, her lips parted as if about to speak the solemn words of the heroine.
But the words were never spoken. For at that instant the lights flashed out, leaving the stage and studio in pitch darkness.
For a moment there was dead silence, then out of the Stygian blackness came a piercing, shattering scream of agony, a frenzied cry that froze the blood. Then a thud, as of a falling body.
Again dead silence, timed only by wildly- beating hearts. Then another scream, smothered, this time in a different key. As it echoed, the lights flashed on, their pitiless rays revealing the frozen faces of those present.
Tad Boone was the first to partly recover his wits. With a dazed look, he lurched onto the stage to stare at the crumpled figure of his leading woman stretched on the floor! His eyes dilated with horror as a crimson splotch showed on the bodice of the snowy evening gown and slowly spread. He dropped on one knee and gropingly felt for the pulse as the life blood continued to well from the heart.
"Dead!" he choked, looking wildly about at the ring of terror-stricken faces. His eyes settled on an assistant director. "Call—call the police!" he croaked. "This—this is murder!"
He jerked to his feet and faced the company. "None of you are to move from your places!" he cried. "Some one has killed Helene Storme!"
So frozen with horror were the east that none of them had moved. Then from out of their ranks, despite the orders of the director, one of them tottered—Miriam Foye, a blonde slip of a woman who still managed to play youthful roles.
"The—the murderer brushed by me, Tad!" she quavered. "That's why I cried out. Crawling across the stage—" Her voice died out and she clutched at his arm for support.
"Some one crawled past you?" barked Boone. "When?"
"Right after that terrible scream ... I felt a body against my legs in the dark ... I was—"
"In what direction was it going?"
"Towards the left side of the set, I think," she said shakily.
"Jock!—Danny!" the director shouted to an assistant and a property man, standing woodenly behind his chair. "One of you circle the set, the other see that the gates are closed and no one allowed out!"
THE sound of running feet caused him to jerk about. Several studio executives were hurrying towards the scene, in their rear a throng of crowding players.
"Stay where you are!" yelled Boone. "No one can come on this set until the police give the word! Some one has killed Miss Storme!"
And none of that terror-stricken crowd did move for what seemed to them, in their chattering excitement, an eternity, until there came the heavy tread of feet, and two towering bluecoats forced their way through the huddle of players and came striding towards Stage A.
"Stand back, all of yuh!" vociferated one of the policemen, as he caught sight of the body. He lumbered towards the stage as if to brush aside the players with his club.
"One moment, Officer!" called Tad Boone, bolting after him. "These people were standing where they are when this happened. Some one close at hand must have attacked Miss Storme, so I thought—"
"And quite right, too," remarked a quiet voice at his elbow; then: "Officer, you and your team-mate can rope off the space about here, and keep everybody out until further orders."
INSPECTOR COROT, head of the Homicide Squad, shot a swift glance at the dead woman on the stage. Then his gray eyes swept the members of the company and returned to the pallid face of the director.
"As you were saying, Mr.—er—"
"Boone is my name. I am the director." He caught sight of a younger man behind Inspector Corot. "Oh, hello, Dawson," he said weakly. "Have the newspapers already—"
"Just happened to be calling at the precinct station with the inspector when the flash came," the Blade reporter interjected.
"Am I to understand, Mr. Boone," remarked the inspector, "that no one has left the scene since this happened?"
"Absolutely no one—except two of my men I sent on errands." He told of the precautions he had taken, gave a hasty outline of the tragic occurrence.
"In the dark—and a knife," observed Corot quietly. "I take it you have not found the weapon?"
"I have made no search," said the director jerkily. "I rather thought I might bungle things up."
"Ah!" breathed the officer. "If there were more like you, a copper's lot might be easier."
He walked across the stage and bent his slight form over the body of the dead actress. Then he straightened up, his keen eyes darting in every direction. One moment they appeared to be measuring the distance between some players and the body, the next following different angles from the cameras and batteries of standing light. The arrival of the Medical Examiner interrupted these proceedings. He walked back to where Tad Boone stood, waiting.
"I imagine your actors are about ready to drop," he commented to the director. "Suppose we assemble them somewhere where I can question them later... We may have to make a search, you know." He called two uniformed men to him. "Escort the members of the company to the room Mr. Boone shows you," he ordered "and don't let them out of your sight." To Detective Sergeant Moody, one of his aides from Headquarters, he added: "Those fellows—cameramen, electricians—so on—get them together somewhere; Detective Carroll will take charge."
THE Medical Examiner glanced up. "Death instantaneous, Inspector!" he exclaimed. "A savage wound, a thrust through the heart! Why, man, the slayer had to work the blade up and down before he could withdraw it!"
"The man?" "Only a man—with the strength of a brute— could inflict such a wound," vigorously asserted the examiner. "It's demoniacal!"
"Then that lets the women out," said Corot, with a short laugh. "Except as accessories. Can you figure out anything about the size of the knife, Doctor?"
An unusual one," was the startling answer. "If I were back in the Philippines, on my old job, I'd swear it was made by a bolo."
"A bolo!" repeated the head of the Homicide Squad.
"A. terrible weapon," explained the physician. "Really a cane-knife, but used by the Igorottes in war—and head-hunting!"
"Then it was not a knife that one ordinarily would carry?"
"Lord, no! The blade was more than a foot long—that I'd swear!"
&
nbsp; Inspector Corot appeared to be mentally mulling over the words of the Medical Examiner. Then he turned abruptly and made for the room where the members of the cast awaited him.
"Circulate about the studio," he said to the reporter who strode after him, "and see what you can learn about the Storme woman's past."
LITTLE had ever been known about the strange young leading woman who called herself Helene Storme. Tad Boone had spotted her in the cashier's cage of a side-street cafeteria in New York. She was the very type he was seeking for his new picture. So it was that the young woman, without previous experience, had found herself under contract, and in the Ajax Studios in Astoria.
Stony-faced, some had called her at her first appearance upon the lot. But under the magic touch of the director, some spark of life had kindled, to make of her a creature of flame and passion. However, when not acting, she was passive, unresponsive, like a woman buried within herself. But she had vindicated the judgment of her discoverer.
However, they were salty details of the girl's life that Inspector Corot looked for—marriages, men, morals! So the Blade man headed for the publicity department. But even Don Clark, its head, knew nothing more of Helene Storme.
"She's a mystery woman, I tell you, Dawson," he wailed. "No one, not even Tad, knows anything about her past—Lord, feller, I tried the old-home-town and mother-dear blab on her to get a story of her life, but I drew a blank, a blankety-blank. Poor sister, she's dead now, and can't help it, but she's making the first page."
Pandemonium reigned in the executive offices, as on the lot. Only one stage—Stage B— the one next to Tad Boone's—was in service, where a "western" was being made. But from the distraught attitude of the performers, it was plain that little would be accomplished that day.
The men of the company were being questioned as the Blade man rejoined Inspector Corot in the small room to which the witnesses were being admitted one at a time. However, the police learned little in the beginning. The stories of the players were as alike as two peas, only differing in their emotional points of view. That is, so far as the male performers were concerned.
The examination of the women was saved to the last. Before they were led in, Inspector Corot turned to the reporter.
"You might run out now," he suggested, with a meaningful look, "and see what Moody is about."
THE detective-sergeant was on his hands and knees behind the set of Stage A.
"No one crawled out through the left—or the back—as that Foye dame thinks," he grunted, as he scrambled to his feet. "There's no tracks below those dummy windows. The getaway was through that door on the right or the open stage front."
"It must have been the door, then," said Dawson quickly. "For the director and his assistants are certain no one could have passed between them and the players."
WELL, I don't know about that," Moody rumbled. "There was two actors in front of that door, and they're just as certain that nobody passed them in the dark. If everybody's right, then the murderer didn't lam. He's still with us!"
"How about the knife?" "Yeah!" said the detective-sergeant weakly. "Of course we've still got to find that. But once we dig it up—"
"Well, Tom," intruded the quiet voice of the inspector, unexpectedly. "Anything doing?"
"The search was a frost," admitted the assistant. "Not so much as a penknife on any of those babies, though there were plenty of corkscrews."
"Well, well," came from Corot impatiently. "What else?"
Moody hurriedly repeated his conclusions in regard to the escape of the murderer from the stage: "It looks as if he's sticking around," he said, then burst out: "Say, to hear that Miriam Foye talk, half the men around the studio were nuts about this dead woman. It's pretty sure some of 'em hated her because she wouldn't give 'em a tumble."
"Yes, I've heard about all she had to say on that score," remarked the inspector wearily, and added the gist of what Miriam Foye had told him. "But of course you realize that a lady scorned is not to be trusted too implicitly. However, I am sure that her tongue is her only weapon, and—" He wheeled as Tad Boone hurried up.
"It's okay, Inspector," panted the director. "All arrangements are made to re-enact th—er— that scene for you this evening. Of course the timing of the lights will be mere guesswork, but—"
"We may work that out—through a consensus of opinion," nodded the inspector. "By the way," he added, casually, "I've been listening to a little scandal. About this Clifford Holmes, for example—"
The director reddened, then paled. "There is Holmes, himself," he said. "Why not—"
"Let me talk to him!" blurted Moody, shoving out his jaw. "I'll tell him."
It was known that Corot used his sergeant for the rough stuff, but even the reporter was astonished at the latitude allowed the big detective-sergeant by the head of the Homicide Squad as Moody accosted the leading man of the Ajax Company.
"Look here, Holmes!" he bellowed, as he burst into the man's dressing room. "You threatened to kill Miss Storme, didn't you? We got the goods on you! What've you got to say?"
The slender, light-hearted actor appeared about to collapse.
"God!" he moaned, his face twisting. "To think I should be accused of that! Why—why— Helene meant—"
His voice died away and he slumped down onto a chair.
COROT touched his sergeant lightly on the arm, then drew a chair up in front of the agitated actor.
"Now, Mr. Holmes," he said softly, "no one is accusing you. The police have to tar that way at times to obtain information. But you can help me by answering a few questions... You were fond of Miss Storme, I believe, but quarreled with her recently."
"Good Lord, yes," Holmes half gasped. "I was in love with her, but she wouldn't take me seriously. I—I—maybe I did say some things—I never meant... Damn that little she-devil, Miriam Foye!" he burst out. "She said she would get me—when she heard—Listen Inspector, I—"
THE inspector arose and turned away with a shrug. "We may have some more to say later," he remarked coldly, "about—that lover's quarrel."
Tad Boone gave the inspector a startled look as the men went out the door. "Surely," he protested, "you don't think Holmes—"
"We might be said to suspect anybody—and everybody—at this stage," said Corot mildly. "But that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Usually a matter of elimination, you know. Holmes will be watched of course, though—like the rest." He chewed at a match for a moment. "What did Miss Storme tell you of her past?" he asked.
"Not a thing," answered Boone bitterly, "or I might be able to help you. All I could figure out was that she had gone through hell, and wanted no reminder of it. I sensed that the first time I looked at her. It was that," he said hesitantly, "rather than her strange beauty, that attracted me. It was the tragic look, coming and going in her eyes, the twisted smile that tried so hard to be real, and the voice with its harsh, almost defensive note."
"You were very much in love with her," suggested the inspector in a soft voice.
The director looked the police official squarely in the eyes.
"I was," he admitted. "I considered myself engaged to her—for a time."
"The engagement was broken?" "It was," said Tad Boone shakily. "By Miss Storme."
"And the reason?"
"She gave none," said the director, almost too quickly.
"Of course you asked her if there was— another man?" queried the man-hunter smoothly.
"She—she said," breathed Boone, after an inward struggle, "that there was. I had no wish to know who he was. All I wanted was to see her happy. I asked her, in the event she remained in pictures, to stay under my direction. For I have been all over the world, and never expected to see her like again."
"You have been in our Eastern possession, then?" queried Corot.
"Oh, yes; Hawaii, the Philippines, all that."
"You know what a bolo is?" came the casual tone.
"Of course; I have one in my rooms. I made a silent picture—Th
e Black Virgin—and—" He stopped, with a terrible thought. "I see," he faltered, "just what your questions are leading up to. Just—just what do you want of me?"
"You say you have the knife in your rooms?" remarked the inspector noncommittally. "Suppose I send Detective Carroll along to fetch it to Headquarters." The director nodded dumbly as the inspector turned to the newspaper man who still tagged him. "Think I'll take a little stroll about the lot. Anything being shot today, Dawson?"
"Not much," said the reporter. "I saw 'em at work on one picture—just a Western."
But as he strolled about the lot, Inspector Corot seemed to have little interest in picture- making. He was bored with the taking of the "Western," seemed hardly to hear young Dawson talking. He never even gave a second glance to the Ajax's new cowboy star, Ned Lane, resplendent in snow-white sombrero and jeweled belt. He did give a moment's time, though, to admiration of the cowboy's beautiful Great Dane. Corot liked dogs.
"Fine dog," he commented, and passed on, after a pat on the Great Dane's head, towards the studio gates.
"Tom," he said to the detective-sergeant who stood near the entrance, "you and Carroll had better check up on all the players present, as well as any stray visitors, first chance you get. Might as well play safe. You can tell them in the office to let the bars down now, but see that a careful tab is kept on all those leaving the studio. I'll be running down to Headquarters now, after a bite."
"Okay, Inspector," said the sergeant succinctly and lumbered away.
Dawson of the Blade was still with Corot when the police car came to a grinding halt in front of New York's sombre Police Headquarters. But all his questioning of the inspector on the way downtown had got him—exactly nothing. Not until Corot was in his swivel chair in his private office and had lighted his pipe was he ready to talk to the reporter.
"YOU say you've got to know what I think of this case?" he asked. "Well," he went on frankly, "at this minute that murder is as much of a mystery to me as it is to you, Dawson. In fact, the element of time—the lights could not have been out but a few minutes—and the whereabouts of that peculiar knife, one not easily concealed, are the things we're butting our heads on."
The Talkie Murder Page 1