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

Now, with the fire due to break out any second, she was only rocking. The lorgnette was stiff as a ramrod in her grasp. Not that she was holding it out at full length before her or anything like that, she was holding it close in, unobtrusively, but straight up and down — a little out to one side of her own body. Maybe the director’s orders had been for her to stop fiddling with it at a certain point. Then again maybe not. All I wanted to find out was at what point she had stopped tapping and playing with it. I had been concentrating on Meadows until now and had missed that.

“Whoa, back up!” I called out to him. “All the way back and then start over — slow.”

I let Meadows go this time and kept my eye on Tobias and her lorgnette. The minute I saw it stop — “Hold it!” I yelled and ran over to the screen and examined Meadows’ dress. Nothing yet. But in three more revolutions of the camera that deadly white spot had already showed up on the celluloid-lined hoopskirt. Effect had followed cause too quickly to be disregarded.

“Lights!” I roared. “I’ve got it!”

He turned a switch, the room blazed all around me, and I took that handkerchief out of my pocket and examined the pieces of glass it held. Some were thicker than others — the lens had therefore been convex, not flat. I held one up and looked at my cuff through it. The weave stood out. A magnifying glass. I held it about a foot away from the back of my hand, where I’d already been burned once this afternoon, and even with the far weaker lights of the projection-room working through it, in about thirty seconds something bit me and I jumped.

He’d come out and was watching what I was doing. “Pack that film up again in the box the way you had it,” I said. “I’ll be back for it in a minute. I’m taking it down to headquarters with me!”

“What’d you find out?” he asked.

“Look it up in tomorrow morning’s papers!”

I called Tobias’ dressing-room. “How’s the lay of the land?” I greeted her.

She knew me right away. “I know, it’s Handsome.”

“I was wrong about those eighteen kids,” I told her. “I counted ’em over — only nine.”

She sure was a hard-boiled customer. “Nine to go,” she said cheerfully. “When will I see you?”

“I’ll pick you up in about twenty minutes.”

“Where we going?” she cooed when she got in the car.

“You’ll find out.”

Then when we got there, she said: “Why, this looks like police headquarters to me.”

“Not only does, but is,” I told her. “Won’t take a minute, I just want to see a man about a dog.”

“Wouldn’t you rather have me wait outside for you?”

I chucked her under the chin. “I’m getting so fond of you I want you with me wherever I go. Can’t stand being without you even for five minutes.”

She closed her eyes and looked pleased and followed me in like a lamb. Then when the bracelets snapped on her wrists she exploded: “Why you dirty double-crossing — I thought you said you wanted to see a man about a dog.”

“I do,” I said, “and you’re the dog.”

“What’re the charges?” the chief asked.

“Setting fire to Martha Meadows with a magnifying glass and causing her to bum to death. Here’s the glass she used; picked up on the set. Here’s the original harmless glass that was in the frame before she knocked it out; picked up in the trashbasket in her dressing room. The film, there in the box, shows her in the act of doing it. She’s been eaten away with jealousy ever since she faded out and Meadows stepped into her shoes.”

I never knew a woman knew so many bad words as she did; and she used them all. After she’d been booked and the matron was leading her away she called back: “You’ll never make this stick. You think you’ve got me, but you’ll find out!”

“She’s right, Gal,” commented the chief, after she’d gone. “The studio people’ll put the crusher on the case before it ever comes up for trial. Not because they approve of what she’s done — but on account of the effect it would have on the public.”

“She may beat the murder rap,” I said, “but she can’t get around these.” I took a bundle of letters and a square of blotting-paper out of my pocket and passed them to him. “Wrote them in her very dressing room at the studio and then mailed them to Meadows on the outside, even after Meadows had gotten her a job. The blotting-paper tells the story if you hold it up to a mirror. She didn’t get rid of it quickly enough.”

“Good work, Gal,” the chief said; and then, just like him, he takes all the pleasure out of it. “Now that you’re in for promotion, suppose you step around to that grill and pay the guy for that plate-glass window you busted.”

Murder in Wax

He always called me Angel Face. Always claimed I didn’t have a thing inside my head, but that the outside was a honey. When he began to let up on the ribbing, I should have known something was wrong. But I figured maybe it was because we had been married four years — and didn’t tumble right away.