A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

She shook her head some more. “Stop yo’ mouth. She was everybody’s honey. Didn’t she even go to the trouble of axing ’em and coazing ’em to give that Miss Tobias a job in her picher on account of she felt sorry for her cause she was a back-number and nobody wanted her no-how?”

“What about those threats she got, where are they?”

“She turned ’em over to her supe’visor. They weren’t nothing, everybody in the business gets ’em. It means you a big-shot, that’s all.”

“You were there when it happened. What’d you see?”

“Weren’t nothing to see. ’Pears like it musta been some of this here sponchaneous combusting.”

That gave me an idea, but I hung it up to dry for a while. I rang headquarters and spilled what had happened to the chief. “Something new — an invisible accident. Right under everybody’s nose and yet nobody saw it. Guess I better stay on it for a while, don’t you?”

“You park your can on it till it breaks. I’ll let the studio hot-shots know.”

When I got back to the set they were all there yet — all but Stor-mann and Tobias! “I thought I told you—” I snarled in the guard’s ear.

“They’ll be right back,” he whined, “they told me so. Stormy only stepped next door to get some more liquor. The electrician that was supplying him ran out of it. And she went to take off her costume. She got jittery because Stormy was nervous and started smoking around her. After what happened to— Besides, they weren’t under arrest. Nobody here is, and you don’t know Stormy. If I’d a’ tried to stop him, it woulda been good-bye to my job—”

They were back in no time at all. Tobias was back first and I made a mental note of that. Since when does it take a man longer to dig up some liquor than it does a woman to change clothes from head to foot — besides, scraping off a stage make-up in the bargain? That was another little chip stacked against Stormann. I had three of them so far. He hadn’t wanted Meadows to bring me on the set with her. He bullied her into going in alone while my back was turned. And lastly he’d found an excuse for leaving the set, taking him longer to get back than it had a conceited frail, like Tobias, to do herself over from head to toe.

The ace turned up when I checked up on the electrician who’d been supplying him.

“Why, no,” he admitted, “I got another bottle left. I told him so, only he got a sudden notion his own was better quality and went out after it.”

What a dead give-away that was!

He had the staggers when he showed up, but he had enough decency left to straighten up when he saw me and breathe: “How is she?”

I made the announcement I’d been saving until he got there — to see how he’d take it.

“I’m sorry to say — she’s quit.”

I kept my eyes on him. It was hard to tell. Plop! went the bottle he’d brought in with him and he started folding up like a jack knife. They picked him up and carried him out. It might’ve been the drink — but if he hadn’t wanted to be questioned, for instance, it was the swellest out he could’ve thought up.

Maybe I should and maybe I shouldn’t have, but I’m frank to admit I stuck a pin in him before they got him to the door — just to see. He never even twitched.

I turned a chair around backwards, sat down on it, and faced the rest of them. “I’m in charge of this case now,” I said, “by order of police headquarters and with the consent of the studio executives. All I’m going to do, right now, is repeat the question I’ve already asked Mr. Stormann, Miss Tobias, Nellie, and the script-girl. Did any of you see what caused it?” This meant the electricians, stage-hands, and the two cameramen. They all shook their heads.

I got up and banged the chair down so hard one leg of it busted off. “She wasn’t six feet away from some of you!” I bawled them out. “She was in the full glare of the brightest lights ever devised! All eyes were on her watching every move and she was the center of attraction at the time! She burned to death, and yet no one saw how it started! Twenty-five pairs of human eyes and they might as well have all been closed! Well, there’s one pair left — and they won’t let him down.”

I suppose they thought I meant my own. Not by a damn sight. “Now clear out of here, all of you, and don’t touch anything as you go!” I pointed to the chief electrician. “You stay and check up on those lights for defects — one of ’em might have got overheated and dropped a spark on her. And don’t try to hold out anything to save your own skin. Criminal carelessness is a lot less serious than obstructing an agent of justice!” I passed my handkerchief to the guard. “You comb the floor around where she was standing. Pick up every cigarette butt and every cinder you find!”