Chapter V: Weird Suspicions

During dinner Gene had made several attempts to swing Margot into a mood which would be at least gracious to his love-making, but she had been distrait, which was more disconcerting than a frank rebuff. On the way home he held her arm with a pressure that evoked only a light laugh.

“Funny old dear,” she said teasingly. “You’re determined to be amorous to-night, but really, Gene, I can’t take my mind off my mystery, even for a minute. Do you know, I haven’t telephoned home all day, just because I didn’t want to take the edge off my return. Let’s hurry and see if there have been any new developments.”

Gene followed her lead, but took a silent oath to kiss her before the evening should be over, mystery or no mystery.

Once over the threshold of the house on Forty-ninth Street, they felt at once the atmosphere of suspicion and jangled nerves, as embodied in the person of Mrs. Bellew. In Margot’s room they found Quinlan and Boyle, both on guard, with the landlady hovering about, babbling theories that no one was interested in.

The policemen told Margot that a plainclothes detective from headquarters had been there to interview her, and would shortly return. A few minutes later he appeared, a cold, shrewd officer, who answered to the top-heavy name of Cornelius Hart. He seemed like an intelligent type, but intolerant. Evidently he had brushed aside all second-hand reports, insisting upon getting Margot’s story from her own lips.

For the fourth time she gave her narrative without embellishments. Hart listened attentively and prodded her with occasional questions. Finally he said:

“Miss Anstruther, I think you have a powerful imagination.”

It was what she might have expected, but she felt the same unreasoning resentment which all skepticism regarding her experience seemed to evoke. She said quietly:

“This policeman,” she glanced at Boyle, “saw what I saw.”

“Sure! Boyle’s an Irishman. He’ll see anything anybody else sees. They believe in the Banshee, where _he_ comes from.”

Boyle growled an indignant but indistinguishable protest.

“Many mysterious happenings which have been explained in the end, have appeared just as fantastic in the beginning as what I’ve told you.” Margot tried logic on Hart, without success.

“The chief difficulty, Miss Anstruther, in accepting the arm and hand you describe, is that they were attached to no body.”

“How do you _know_ that?” she came back at him quickly.

“Well, looks that way, doesn’t it?”

“All right, let it go at that, but don’t you think it’s a problem worth at least _trying_ to solve, that an arm _apparently_ attached to no body, nevertheless did certain definite things? Put it that way.”

Hart shrugged his thin shoulders. He glanced around the room.

“This place has been searched thoroughly, and more than once. There are no traces of anyone having hidden under the bed.”

“How about the hollow in the nap of the rug where a finger-tip pressed down the match?”

“Maybe. It’s fluffed out now. I can only say that there isn’t the slightest evidence that a crime was committed or attempted. So it doesn’t seem to concern the police department.”

Margot regarded him with serious eyes. He was as cold and impersonal as a fish.

“Then you are finished with the case?”

“Not quite. Sleep somewhere else to-night. I’ll leave Quinlan to watch this room. If there’s nothing to report by to-morrow, we’ll be through.”

Hart left, and Boyle, heaving a great sigh of relief, went with him. Margot asked Quinlan to wait downstairs for a half hour, as she had something to talk over with her friend. She went down with the policeman and asked Mrs. Bellew’s permission for him to remain in her sitting-room. Quinlan’s expression of despair at the prospect of half an hour of uninterrupted conversation with the landlady was comic. But Mrs. Bellew smiled happily at the prospect, oblivious of Quinlan’s unflattering scowl.

Alone with Gene in the brightly lighted room, Margot threw herself with a sigh of relief, on the divan. She let him sit beside her, but she refused even to let him hold her hand.

“Gene, old dear, my brain’s on the rampage. I haven’t an emotion to-night capable of sitting up and taking notice of the love-making of a veritable Valentino.” She laughed and patted his hand. “But I do need your sympathy and advice--dreadfully.”

“I have a vision of you taking my _advice_.”

“Well--perhaps that isn’t exactly what I mean, but I want to talk things over with you,--get a few trifles off my mind.”

She told him of Stoner’s peculiar behavior and comments on hearing of her ghostly adventure. She repeated laughingly his warnings about Corinne Delamar, but she omitted his avowals of devotion, and his anger because she had refused to dine with him that night. It would be unwise to give Gene any additional reason for suspicion and jealousy of Stoner. She decided to refrain even from telling Gene of her conclusions as to the director’s motives for begging her to drop the matter of the mystery. Gene would be enraged at the bare idea of Stoner having the impudence to be jealous where Margot was concerned. And as to his motives,--she had begun to wonder if her conclusions hadn’t carried her far afield of the truth. That was just what she wanted to discuss with Gene--Stoner’s _motive_ in being apparently so upset about her having publicity.

“Do you know,” she ended her recountal with a fixed stare across the room; “at times I feel as if there were something queer about Stoner--something vaguely sinister and disturbing. At other times I laugh at myself for such an idea, especially when he’s in one of his boyish, boisterous and entirely simple-minded moods.”

“What first gave you such an idea about Stoner? He seems to me the crudest, most obvious type of male.”

“I guess it’s his eyes--mostly.” Margot’s own eyes looked full of the enchantment of mystery. “They certainly have a weird expression at times.”

“What do you mean by ‘weird’? The way he looks at _you_?”

She smiled at Gene’s quickly aroused suspicion and resentment.

“No, it’s nothing personal. That’s the odd thing about it. There are moments when he looks at me but doesn’t really see me for a second. And his eyes seem to be saying something that he’s unconscious of saying and that I can’t understand. It’s happened more than once.”

Gene’s adoring smile was then a little quizzical.

“That’s a little trick of yours, Margot, darling, to read things in eyes that are really quite without expression.”

“That’s where you’re all wrong, old dear,” she said quickly. “Often when a person’s eyes look positively blank to others, they tell _me_ something in total contradiction to what their lips are saying. It’s most embarrassing at times.”

“When did you first notice this _weird_ expression in Stoner’s eyes?” Gene looked as if Stoner as a subject for conversation might be improved upon.

“Oh,” she said eagerly, “that reminds me. I’ve never told you about the day I first went to the Superfilm studio for a job. Maybe after I’ve told you certain things, you may be clever enough to throw light on Stoner’s pale eyes.”

She laughed at Gene’s exclamation of disgust, and began her narrative.

She told him of her embarrassed entry into the waiting-room of the casting director, when she had run the gauntlet of rows of feminine eyes--eyes of the other girls on the same errand as herself, and waiting in various degrees of irritation and boredom. She laughed in amused reminiscence.

“Every head in the room bobbed--including my own. Just a difference in color and cut. Lipsticks, powder-pads, tiny mirrors--rows of them. And their poor, pathetic little faces, Gene. Vacuous smiles on carefully painted lips, and hardened eyes that should have been young and weren’t. And pair after pair of flesh-colored silk stockings--mine were tan that day, and I was glad of it. And their attenuated skirts adjusted modestly an inch or two above the knee. I wanted to scream with laughter, but suddenly I wanted to cry, they were so pathetic.”

Gene interrupted her with a quick pressure of her hand.

“Just like you, Margot. Your sense of humor gets a good fillip out of something, then suddenly your desire to be helpful comes uppermost.”

“Oh, it wasn’t that. Don’t sentimentalize about me, Gene. It was only that I felt that those girls, with their stereotyped prettiness and vacuous vanity, probably needed work and money, far more than I did. Then I laughed at myself realizing that they’d stand a better chance of getting it in that place than I would. Then, my dear, we all got a shock. Lulu Leinster, with that wonderful little head and body of hers, walked into the room. _Her_ hair _wasn’t_ bobbed, and it was glorious, hanging in two huge braids. Primitive hair, hurled at one’s vision that way, was provocative--almost indecent.” Margot laughed again, and stroked her own shorn locks.

“It’s a wonder, with your excessive modesty, that you didn’t depart at once, leaving Lulu without a competitor.” Gene teased her with his broad grin.

“My dear, that’s _just_ what I was on the point of doing, while Sam, Stoner’s bodyguard, was flinging his questions at her, and she coolly informed him that she’d been sent by a beauty contest committee in Texas, she having won the prize. Then, before I knew it, Sam stood in front of _me_, asking the same fool questions. The next thing I knew, every girl in the room, except Lulu and me, was marching out, having been told by Sam that they needn’t wait. He was so suave I wanted to kick him. And the girls filed out, tossing their heads and clicking their heels, and curling their angry lips. A few minutes later Sam ushered us into Stoner’s august presence.”

Margot interrupted her story to let Gene light a cigarette for her. She took a few abstracted puffs, the smoke winding slowly upward from her parted lips, then she told Gene how the director stood by his desk, frowning at the two girls as they entered his sanctum. How he then sat before his desk and addressed himself first to Lulu, asking her name and address. How he disposed of Lulu and turned to Margot with the same questions. Margot’s eyes darkened with excitement as she stressed this part of her narrative.

“I gave him my name, then my address. The minute I said 809 East Forty-ninth Street, Stoner’s head jerked up, and his light blue eyes looked straight into mine. He repeated the number of the house--not the street--and his face was impassive, but suddenly I noticed his eyes. The pupil dilated, and a sort of yellowish shadow darkened the iris. I caught a strange shimmer in the eyeball, like dust specks seen in a sunbeam. Of course I may have imagined it all, but that was the very first time when I seemed to dread something in his eyes that confused and mystified me.”

Gene studied her reflectively. “What did he say after that?”

“Oh, he looked down at his desk, then up again at me, quickly, then he remarked that I must have one foot in the East River. His eyes were as blank as pale blue eyes can be, even in an intelligent head. I told him that it was an easy step down, but not quite over. Then he stood up and calmly told us that they only needed one more girl and that he couldn’t decide which of us would screen the best without a test. He told us to come back the following day. And oh, Gene, I never told you what Lulu said to me.” Margot chuckled in gleeful remembrance. “When we parted in New York she announced that she’d probably not see me again. For a second I didn’t get it. I looked my surprise, then she said: ‘Why--er--you ain’t going back there to-morrow?’ Then I understood, and I asked her why not. She got a bit rattled and said that she didn’t suppose I’d want to go to the bother. I smiled and remarked that it wouldn’t be any more bother for me than for her. She had the grace to stumble as she said: ‘Maybe my funny face is more what they want than yours.’ I remarked that that fine point remained to be proved, and that perhaps we’d _both_ be chosen and become rival stars. Poor little Lulu is short on humor. She didn’t see the joke. Anyway, we met in the studio next day, and now, my dear Gene, I’ve come to the really interesting part of my story.”

“Tell me first, Margot, if you got the impression from the way Stoner looked at you, that he admired you personally?”

“Oh,” Margot shrugged indifferently. “I don’t suppose he regarded me as a piece of bric-a-brac, but what I mean had nothing to do with me as a woman or an actress. Of course the impression faded and I felt, afterwards, that I’d been over psychic or suspicious, as usual. But that night the impression returned stronger than before. It even made me hesitate about going back.”

Margot told of being escorted by Sam--together with Lulu--to the stage where a close-up of some scene was being registered. Margot had seen interest flash in Stoner’s eyes when he saw the two girls waiting to be noticed by him. He had chucked Lulu under the chin but had refrained from a like playful greeting with Margot after one glance into her eyes.

He had again asked her name, then he had said:

“So you live on Forty-ninth Street, in one of those ramshackle houses built before the flood? What did you say the number was?”

Margot had told him.

“What floor do you live on?”

“For a second,” said Margot, “I thought he meant to be impudent, but I decided he meant nothing offensive, so I told him that I lived on the first floor. Then he asked if my room was front or back. I had another impulse to glare at him, but instead, I said politely that I had the large room in the rear, and added that he seemed to know the house. It was then that I thought I caught that queer glint in his eyes again, and a slight challenge in his glance. He said indifferently that a friend of his had lived in this house and that he hadn’t seen it for years. He remarked that I must find the place uncomfortable and inconvenient. I told him I didn’t. Then he announced that he would make a test of Lulu first.”

The two girls had been directed to put on make-up, and when they had appeared properly mascaraed and powdered, he had indicated a place for Lulu to stand. He had told her, with a good-natured grin, to think hard of her “sweetie,” and to imagine she was meeting him by the light of the moon, and that he was going to take her in his arms and hug her. Lulu had smiled in full understanding and self-assurance and had proceeded to spoil her beauty by a forced and absurd expression of rapturous parted lips. Stoner had groaned.

“Oh, Lord, that won’t do! Think again, not so hard, maybe. Relax! Try to feel what you’d really feel if the fellow you love stood right in my boots!” Stoner had laughed boisterously at his little joke.

That time Lulu had done much better. Margot, watching her, had decided that Lulu had the making of a good movie actress--above the average--and this impression was followed by the humble assurance that she would certainly not register as well in this silly test as the little beauty-contest girl, whose egoism was of so different a variety. If Stoner had needed two girls, perhaps she could have passed muster, but not in competition with Lulu.

“Then,” Margot went on with a laugh, “I heard Stoner calling me. I remembered what I’d been asked when I was a kid:--which would I prefer, be a greater fool than I looked, or look a greater fool than I be. I knew I’d explode if he invoked the figure of an absent lover. But Stoner isn’t a fool. He took me by surprise by telling me to imagine that I’d just seen--was still looking at--something that froze my blood with horror. Somebody run over or murdered. Or, better still, I must register the emotion that would overcome me if I were alone in the dark, and suddenly saw something that didn’t belong there--something spooky, with an agonized face, calling for mercy. Wasn’t it uncanny, his striking that note of fear and horror, considering what happened so soon afterwards?”

“Yes, it was,” agreed Gene quickly. “You don’t need to tell me how you registered those faked emotions. The results speak for themselves. He selected _you_ instead of Lulu.”

Margot leaned forward excitedly, and put her hand on Gene’s arm.

“That’s just the odd part of the whole performance--something I’ve never told you before, Gene. As to how I registered, I guess I didn’t do badly. Either Stoner’s surprising eloquence or the memory of a ghost story heard years ago, that had made my blood run cold--literally--or whatever it was, my imagination took fire and I actually saw before me, for that moment, the thing of horror. Funny, but I never thought of that odd coincidence until to-day. Well, Lulu told me afterwards that my eyes dilated, and my lips quivered. In short I ‘registered,’ and Stoner gave an expression of approval. Then he looked from Lulu to me, and finally he said:

“‘You’re all right!’” He shifted his gaze back to Lulu, and said: “‘So are you, girlie. Damned if I know which of you is the best. Have to wait and see the proofs. Come back to-morrow morning or stick around now for a few hours.’”

“Of course we told him we’d return the next day. Lulu’s rapturous smile seemed to indicate that she was sure of what the proofs would show. We started to leave and at the far end of the stage, within a few feet of the entrance, we heard Stoner’s stentorian call, asking us to go back a minute. He was whispering to Sam and one of the camera men. Then he came up to us and said:

“‘I’ve decided not to wait for those pictures. ’Tisn’t necessary. I can tell just from looking at you two, which one is the best--the best, anyway, for _my_ purposes.’”

“I felt Lulu tremble with excitement. I thought I saw again that faint glitter in Stoner’s pale eyes. Then, looking at me he said:

“‘It’s you I want, Miss Anstruther. Come back to-morrow to start work. The part you’ll get isn’t a small one. It’ll mean work.’”

Margot told Gene of poor little Lulu’s sobbing disappointment, and of Stoner’s attempt to console her by advising her not to be soft, and not to mind, as it was all in the game, and it was a hard, hard world anyway. He had ended by saying that he had chosen Margot because she suited the part in the picture, better than Lulu. He had been speaking to Lulu, but Margot had caught his gaze fixed upon herself. Intuition told her that he had chosen her for personal reasons. She had registered fairly well, but so had Lulu, and Lulu was decidedly more the screen type of beauty, with her fine profile and wonderful hair.

“You see, Gene,” Margot summed up eagerly, “my first conclusion was that I’d made a strong appeal to Stoner. Perhaps I saw that much in his eyes, but there was something else in his eyes. It eluded and mocked me, but it was there--something that was neither admiration nor desire. I felt half inclined to refuse his offer, when I heard him telling Lulu that since she was so unhappy, he’d fix her up. There was a girl on the lot who needed a rest. He’d give her a vacation on full pay and Lulu could have her part in _A Toreador’s Love_. Only the part of a lady’s maid, but if Lulu wanted it--etc., etc. And then he said to me--while Lulu was washing her face, that he hoped we’d be friends, and that he hoped I’d let him call on me some evening soon.”

Margot could not resist a dramatic pause, just to give Gene a chance to frown in angry indignation. He did not disappoint her.

“Damn nerve! What did you tell him?”

“Well, I was on the point of giving him a sharp retort, when he said, casually:

“‘What was that number again? 809 East 49th Street?’”

“Once again I was arrested by the look in his eyes--that strange yellowish shadow covering the blue of the iris, and the dilating of the pupil. That’s all, Gene, but I’d like to know what you make of it?”

Gene looked puzzled and uncertain. “You mean--why he chose you instead of Lulu Leinster?”

“Yes, of course, that’s what I mean.”

“Search _me_, Margot. You make it all sound very mysterious, and you draw a picture of old fat Stoner that’s far more interesting and thrilling than anything he can ever hope to be in the flesh.”

“Perhaps you think my imagination’s gone wild along with my brain. No, old dear. Just think hard, a minute. Don’t you honestly think it rather strange--in all the circumstances--that he should have chosen me? And remember all I’ve told you about his eyes, especially in connection with my living in this house!”

Gene threw back his head with a jerk of sudden astonishment.

“You think Stoner’s connected in some way--in the past--with this house--with what’s happened here?” Gene’s blue eyes were troubled and mystified.

“Well,” said Margot slowly, “I’m not _sure_ of anything, and it’s too soon to draw any definite conclusions about Stoner or anything else, but I do feel that in some way that I can’t fathom, Stoner has a personal reason for wanting me to drop the investigation of my little mystery.”

Gene pondered that a moment, then he said abruptly:

“Can’t get it at all, Margot. I’m convinced that all those weird expressions you’ve been seeing in Stoner’s eyes, can be boiled down to just one thing--his mad admiration for you, my dear girl.”

Margot jumped to her feet, and seized Gene’s hand with a laugh.

“That’s about enough from you for one night, old silly. I’m tired out anyway, and poor Quinlan’s half hour has stretched out till I dare say he’s ready to kill me. So off with you, Gene! See you to-morrow, and here’s hoping you’ll have done some heavy thinking in the meantime!”

She let him kiss her good-night, then she ran down stairs to tell Quinlan that he could return to his official duties.