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—The 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 head of the Homicide Squad puffed thoughtfully at his pipe.
"Of course there must be a motive for murder," he continued. "But there are motives— and motives! For admission, we have the admission of the director, Boone, that he was in love with his leading lady, had thought her favorably inclined to his proposal of marriage, until she suddenly turned him down. And she did tell him there was another man! Moreover, there's the bolo. We'll learn about that later."
"On the other hand we have Holmes—also in love with the leading lady—though he admits his case was hopeless from the beginning. He quarreled with her—threatened her that if he couldn't have her nobody else should. Likewise, he stood near the victim."
"IT'S one of them!" put in Dawson. "It looks like it would have to be!"
"There's still another," interjected the inspector softly, "if we're to believe Boone, the other man! Who was he? When did he come on the scene?"
"But he's out!" exploded Dawson. "If she gave the others the gate for him, everything would be jake. Why should he want to bump her off? Think the guy was nutty?"
Corot only smiled and shook his head.
"You've only Boone's word for it that there was another man," objected the reporter eagerly. "And who wouldn't lie to save himself from the hot seat?"
The buzzing of the phone interrupted them. Corot picked up the instrument near his hand. He listened for some minutes, snapped "Good-bye," and looked at the reporter. "Carroll just reported," he said. "Boone can't find his bolo—said he must have loaned it to some one or forgotten."
"Why don't you arrest him, then, and—"
"And depend on getting a confession to clinch the case, eh?" drily remarked the astute man-hunter. "No, Dawson," he went on between puffs on his pipe, "those methods won't do in this case. We are not dealing with an ordinary murder—or an ordinary murderer!"
WALTER DAWSON had just reported to his office the next day when Inspector Corot called him on the phone.
"Promised to keep you posted on the talkie murder, Dawson," he laughed. "Always try to keep my word. Can you meet me uptown?"
A mad dash for the subway, and twenty minutes later the reporter was facing the police official over a table in a modest chop house in the West Forties.
"The murder scene at the studio last night," smiled Corot grimly, "was not what is termed a smash hit so far as the police were concerned. A lot of nerves were shot to blazes, a couple fainted, but our eagle eyes failed to discover a guilty face. However," he went on, dropping this sardonic humor, "we did learn one thing, which was the main purpose, and that was the time element. The consensus of opinion, as we clocked the time, was that the lights were not out more than three minutes, though one or two estimated as much as five.