“I see what you mean,” the manager nodded. “You think there may be a fault in the machine which can only be detected by running through the film which was spoiled?”
“That’s it,” Sid agreed, thankful that the manager had taken the burden on his own shoulders. “Renters, cinema managers, and projectionists like to co-operate with each other if thereby they can raise the standard of efficiency. I’m asking you to help us out, if you will. All I need is the film, and I’ll see it’s returned the moment I’ve tested it.”
Bennet considered for a moment or two. “You say you’re the second operator. Why doesn’t your chief come instead of you?”
Sid smiled. “As a matter of fact neither he nor the manager know I’ve made this trip—and I’m hoping you won’t tell them, either. I think my own bad repair work may be at the back of the trouble, and that’s why I want to rectify the damage before a worse thing happens.”
“I see.” The manager gave a slow grin. “Your job depends on it, you might say? All right, I’ll help you, but you’ll have to give me a receipt. First of all I’d like some proof, too, that you are from the Cosy Cinema.”
“That’s easy,”’ Sid said, fully prepared, and he handed across his union card for the N.A.T.K.E. Bennet studied it.
“Right: that’s enough for me.” He handed the card back. “Have to make sure, you know. I’ve only one fear—that the film may have been returned to the stock department for scrap. Just a moment.”
Sid waited, far more anxious than he appeared. His hopes rose and fell by turns as Bennet contacted department after department in the inner recesses of the big building—then at last, after nearly ten minutes of inquiry, a circular film can was brought in by a man in a baize apron.
“Got it!” Bennet exclaimed in triumph, wrenching off the lid. “This is it, I think.”
Sid got to his feet, watching intently as Bennet pulled aside the purple protective paper. A strong odour of pear drops rose as he raised the five-hundred foot length and unravelled the start.
“This is it all right,” he confirmed. “And here’s the examiner’s tag. See....”
Sid picked up the tag-label and read: Examined by A.J. Sound Track useless owing to severe scratching. Scrap.
“How long can I keep it?” Sid asked. “I’ve no idea how long it will take me to get to the root of the trouble.”
“Long as you like, provided we do get it back. Let’s say, provisonally, a month. If you’re no nearer by then let us know and we’ll extend the time. We have to account for everything to the exhibitors, remember. I’ll have a receipt made out for you to sign, and this film had better go in a transit case. I don’t have to tell you that the law won’t let you carry it around otherwise.”
Sid nodded and said nothing. He was feeling a warm glow of satisfaction at having accomplished his object. A few minutes later he signed the receipt and then left the building with the small transit case in his hand. At a nearby restaurant he stopped and had lunch.
CHAPTER TEN
MANY A SLIP
Sid caught the 2:50 out of London and was entering his home again at four o’clock. He greeted his mother—who was under the impression that he had been to London on behalf of the cinema to get a much-needed film in a hurry—and then he went out into the woodshed where he did most of his tinkering. Here he unravelled the film before the light of the window and studied it through a pocket lens.
The scratchings on the sound track were so plainly visible that they made him whistle in amazement. No wonder the renters had raised hell! In fact they were more than scratches—the entire emulsion had been scraped away from the celluloid base, much the same way as paint blisters away from wood under heat.
Sid went doggedly from one end of the reel to the other, coming very early on the joint which Billy had made to repair the break caused by Terry. Otherwise there was not a joint in the whole length of the film. But from end to end the persistence of track damage was absolute—yet it never moved over the edge of the sound track on to the picture itself. “Which can only mean it was done as it ran,” Sid mused, his eyes narrowed in thought. “Otherwise the scratching could never have been so confined to this eighth-of-an-inch track. Looks to me as though it was done with the point of a pin, or needle. Of all the damned queer things! I don’t see either sense or reason in such deliberate mutilation. I’ll swear by everything I’ve got that there was nothing in the track, before it was ruined, that could have caused vibration. There was only Fitzpatrick’s voice and a bit of background music here and there.”
He put the film down and strolled outside to smoke a cigarette and think the business out. Very strange. He had smoked the cigarette down to the stub without coming any nearer to a solution. Returning to the film he examined it again. He could see the equidistant dots on the sprocket-hole side of the track, but thought nothing of them. They were probably ‘emulsion bubbles’ and nothing more—a common fault in a film and often the cause of sprocket hum. Slowly he wound the film back to the beginning and sighed to himself.
“At least I can hear what it sounds like,” he promised himself finally, and from a shelf he dragged out an amateur amplifier and sound-reproducer which he had built for himself at odd times. He fitted the film on to a spool and laced it through the rather rickety but quite efficient sound-gate. Then he switched on the motor and listened to the reproduction.
He had never heard anything to equal it. All the noises of a battlefield, mixed with jet planes, motor cycle exhausts, and falling bombs were all jumbled together with the announcer’s voice somewhere in the background.
“Wow!” Sid gasped, hastily switching off. “Ruined is right! It’s enough to wreck my photoelectric cell...,” and he looked at it anxiously, to find that, fortunately, it had not been damaged.
He was beaten. He sat down on the stool and stared at the film intently, turning over a variety of possibilities in his mind, but none of them seemed to lead anywhere. By no possible stretch of imagination or mechanics did there seem to be anything about the film that could bring down a globe.
“Wonder if I’m crazy?” he muttered. “If all this is just a mad coincidence? Maybe I’ve been imagining all sorts of things. Perhaps the globe did come down by accident. Perhaps Terry did only snatch at the film in a moment of panic, just as we all do at times....” Sid shook his head. “No! Too many ‘perhaps’s’ about it. And there was that design in the dust on top of the still-case...wait a minute! I wonder! I wonder if I ran this film again if the same design would appear again?”
The idea took a hold on him and then clouded before another thought.
“I don’t quite see that it would be much use trying. The track wasn’t in this awful mess that time. It was apparently quite normal. This row would make a design in a chunk of granite, I should think....” He pondered for a moment. “Or would it? Perhaps it wouldn’t. It’s only a noise, and that’s very different from a pure vibration. Most pure vibrations can’t be heard, come to think of it. Hell fire, what am I getting into? Looks as if I’m nose-diving into ultrasonics.”
He thought a bit further, chiefly upon the textbook he had read on designs.
“Fine sand or powder, plate glass, supported underneath in the centre,” he murmured. “Okay. There’s no reason why I can’t do that right here.”
He got up from the stool and began rummaging amidst the pile of odds and ends that he had in different parts of the shed, finally unearthing the glass out of an old picture frame. To find an upright block of wood and some glue was not a long job. He did not wait for the glue to set. He was satisfied that the glass would stay in place from sheer tackiness.
This done, he went into the house, borrowed the cocoa tin from his mother—to her complete astonishment—and covered the top of the glass sheet with the fine powder. It was the nearest substitute he could find for sand at the moment and ought to be every bit as satisfactory.
He placed the plate at a distance of about three feet from the reproducer’s louds
peaker, re-threaded the film, and then started it off again. He stood wincing at the noise—then he forgot all about the din as he studied the amazing convulsions taking place in the cocoa powder. In a direct line with the speaker, the powder was assuming all kinds of fantastic shapes, spilling powder over the edge of the plate—forming into stars, circles, triangles, and then such complicated, snaky patterns that Sid lost track altogether.
Finally he switched off, and the silence was a profound relief.
“Those crackles and bangs didn’t do that!” he told himself flatly. “Like hell they did! There’s something else in this film—there must be, and I haven’t found yet what it is.”
Yet again he examined it, and yet again he passed over the dots as emulsion bubbles and nothing more. Looking for something really significant, the very minuteness of the explanation escaped him. His big face was grim as he wound the film up at last and dumped it back in the can.
“Only one way out of this! I’ll try it on the same machine it ran on before. I’ll get some fine sand from one of the fire buckets and spread it on the still-case top. Then I’ll run the darned thing and see if anything happens in the cinema where the power amplifiers have more strength.” He thought for a moment. “Mmm, easy to talk. How do I do it? I can’t let Terry know anything, and I can’t do it on his day off tomorrow with Billy there and the cleaners at work. Nor do I want to stay behind at night on the pretext of doing some repair work. That’d look far too suspicious, and Terry would think things. But I have got to have the cinema to myself after a night show—and since I’ve no passkey that isn’t going to be easy. To break in isn’t practicable, either....”
For a while the problem really had him worried—then he grinned triumphantly as a natural solution presented itself. On Wednesday night the transport men would be coming at midnight as usual with a new load of film. The men had a key with which to enter the cinema. He could quite easily conceal himself in the shadows outside the cinema entrance—he knew the best spot—and, when the door opened, he could slip in and keep quiet until the coast was clear. He would be locked in the building to do as he wished, to leave later by an emergency exit, which would shut itself by simply pulling the doors to. He could tell his mother there was more late work to be done on the houselights and she would never question the fact.
As for the film—to carry it there without it being seen, he would have to wrap it round and round his body and cement the end into place to keep it from unravelling.
“I’ll do it,” he told himself. “Hanged if I won’t. Then we’ll see if anything happens.”
* * * * * * *
As Terry came down the Circle staircase after the show that evening, Billy beside him, he saw Helen Prescott’s graceful figure strolling about the foyer. She was wearing a light coat, which he had never seen before, and an exceedingly fetching hat was perched on her glossy dark hair.
“Wow!” Billy murmured, studying her as he descended the stairs. “Looks like our little Hel got a raise for herself. Nice piece, Terry—let’s face it.”
Terry lighted a cigarette and said nothing. He and Billy came to the base of the stairs and Billy gave a wide grin.
“Waiting for a street car, sweetheart?” he enquired.
Helen gave him a look. “Supposing I am? What do you propose doing about it?”
“Nothing. Only don’t mind me saying that Terry’s a sucker to let you slip the way he has. I could even fall for you myself only I like ’em blonde, and much plumper.... Well, see you tomorrow.”
“Not me you won’t,” Terry said. “It’s my day off.”
“Blimey, so it is. I’ll have to put up with the apeman all day!”
Billy went and the spring doors closed silently behind him. Terry came to a stop and looked at Helen critically. He raised one eyebrow in cynical amusement.
“It goes without saying, of course, that this getup isn’t for my edification?” he asked.
“Yes, it goes without saying,” Helen agreed. “We don’t have to go into all that again, do we? Matter of fact, I’m waiting for Mark.”
“Mark?” Terry gave a frown.
“Mr. Turner,” Helen explained deliberately, holding out her left hand. On the third finger was a circlet of gold with two glittering diamonds clawed thereon.
“I see,” Terry commented grimly. “So things have got that far!”
“Exactly!”
Terry put his cigarette back in his mouth and reflected.
“Funny thing,” he said slowly. “Five minutes—less even—and you’d not be wearing that ring....”
“Five minutes?” Helen’s eyes were frankly puzzled. “What are you talking about? What five minutes?”
“I’m thinking about Vera Holdsworth. Remember how that globe fell on her? You were there just before she got hit, weren’t you? You’d be pushing up daises now instead of her, but for that five minutes.”
“But I’m not pushing up daisies! I’m alive, and enjoying it! The thought that I just missed what Vera got did scare me at the time, but I’ve got over it now.”
Terry looked at her, his colour deepening. “Yes, you’ve got over it, because I saved your life! That’s what it amounts to! You never thought of—”
He stopped, tightened his mouth, then without another word he strode through the foyer swing doors and was gone. Helen remained motionless, his words still in her mind.
“‘Because I saved your life’,” she repeated, half aloud. “Now what did he mean by that?”
“What did who mean by what?” Mark Turner asked, coming over to her after locking his office door. “What’s the matter, Helen?”
“I—I’ve just been talking to Terry.”
“Oh? Did you show him the engagement ring?” Turner failed to keep jealous satisfaction out of his voice.
“Yes...,” Helen said slowly. “I showed it to him.”
“And did you tell him that you’re going to become my private secretary instead of chief usherette, until we’re married?”
“No. I didn’t have the time. Matter of fact, Mark, I was trying to puzzle out something he said to me. Something impulsive and angry—something he bit off at the end as though he’d never intended to say it.”
Turner said nothing. He led Helen through the main doors, locked them, and then they went down the steps together.
“What did he say?” he asked presently.
“He was remarking that had I been on the seat where Vera sat, in the Circle, when that houselight fell, I wouldn’t be here now as your future wife. He flared up and said I was only here because he had saved my life.... Don’t you see, Mark?” Helen went on, her voice quickening, “he couldn’t have known he was going to save my life unless he had known beforehand that Vera was going to be killed!”
Turner reflected for a while, then, “You’re sure he said just that?”
“Absolutely sure! It’s a horrible thought—horrible! Unless I got the wrong slant on it. You do see, Mark, don’t you?”
“Yes—I see. Stating it bluntly, it sounds as though he deliberately arranged the accident that caused the death of Vera.”
“Yes....” Helen frowned. “I must have misunderstood. He’d never do a thing like that. It’s too appalling a thing to even contemplate!”
“Helen, there is something you ought to know about.” Turner’s voice showed he had made up his mind about something. “I can tell you about it now because we mean so much to each other.... You remember the burglary, the two hundred and five pounds which was stolen? Terry was the thief.”
Helen came to a stop. “Terry was?”
“Superintendent Standish proved it to the hilt, but there was nothing we could do—no evidence on which we could charge Terry. I was in the position—and still am—of knowing the facts and yet being unable to do anything about them. I decided that Terry must have been desperate, and let it go at that. Because I knew him to be a thief I did all in my power to stop you associating with him—coupled, of course, with the fact that
I wanted you for myself.”
“Now I understand something,” Helen said slowly. “There’s always been something in his nature that I couldn’t fathom—a barrier of some sort. I’ve sensed that he has a deceitful streak somewhere. Mother was even more candid: she says she can’t bear the sight of him.”
They came to the corner of the street where Helen’s home stood.
“I’m thinking of something Superintendent Standish said to me when we agreed we should keep an eye on Terry,” Turner resumed presently. “He said that once a chap starts going on the wrong track he has a habit of getting deeper in. One thing leads to another.... And, judging from what Terry said to you in an impulsive moment, he has got deeper in. Much deeper in.”
“Honesty, Mark, I still can’t believe that he’d try to kill Vera. He couldn’t have done because he was in the projection room when the globe fell. Besides, even though he had quarrelled with Vera he surely wouldn’t want to kill her just on that score. He wouldn’t be such an idiot.”
Turner halted outside the gateway of Helen’s home.
“Before we go in, let’s agree how we stand. We haven’t an atom of proof that he committed that burglary. And even if he deliberately arranged the death of Vera, we can also be sure he’s kept himself without suspicion. Right now, we can’t do a thing.”
“But I’ve told you what he said to me. He knew Vera was going to be killed, or at any rate smashed up. We ought to tell the police—”
“It wouldn’t do any good, dear. They wouldn’t even listen. You had no witness with you who also heard what he said. There’s nothing we can do—except get rid of him from the cinema at the earliest moment. I’m placing a lot of advertisements as it is, and have been ever since I found he was a thief. Unfortunately I can’t just throw him out: without a chief projectionist I’ll be in a spot.”
“He’s a murderer,” Helen whispered.
“We don’t know he is,” Turner insisted. “Circumstantial evidence can be deadly sometimes. We’ve got to apparently forget it for the moment. And remember, not a word of what we suspect. It might even put you in danger. Whether Terry realizes the mistake he’s made, or not, we don’t know, but I imagine he’s smart enough to guess that nothing can be done without a witness. Someday things will catch up on him—and by that time I hope he’s no longer in my employ. From now on I’ll shift heaven and earth to get rid of him.”
Pattern of Murder Page 15