“That made eight people with possible motives for the crime.  When I got that far I gave it up.  In fact”—­Mackay lowered his voice, suddenly—­“I don’t like the attitude of Emery Phelps.  This is his house, you know, and he is the financial backer of Manton Pictures, yet there seems to be an undercurrent of friction between Manton and himself.  I—­I wanted him to show me some detail of the arrangement of things in the library, but he wouldn’t come into the room.  He said he didn’t want to look at Miss Lamar.  There—­there was something—­and, I don’t know.  If he is concerned in any way—­that would make nine.”

“You think Miss Lamar and Phelps—­”

Mackay shook his head.  “I don’t know.”

Kennedy turned to me, expression really serious.  “Is this the way they carry on in the picture world, Walter?” he asked.  “Is this the usual thing or—­or an exception?”

I flushed.  “It’s very much an exception,” I insisted.  “The film people are just like other people, some good and some bad.  Probably three-quarters of all this is gossip.”

“I hope so.”  He straightened.  “The only thing to do is to go after them one at a time and disentangle all the conflicting threads.  It looks as though there will be any number of possible false leads and so we must be careful and deliberate.  I think I’ll question each in turn—­here.”

He walked over to the fireplace, stopping for just a moment to glance at the body of Stella.  Then he pulled the blinds down halfway, so that the room seemed somber and gruesome.  He drew a chair so that the different individuals as he examined them, would be unable to lose sight of the dead woman.  His arrangements completed, he faced the district attorney.

“Manton first,” he directed.

In an instant I caught the psychology of it—­the now darkened library, the beautiful body still lying on the davenport, the quiet and quick arrival of ourselves.  If anything could be extracted from these people, surely it would be betrayed under these surroundings.

IV

THE FATAL SCRIPT

I had no real opportunity to study Manton when he greeted us upon our arrival, and at that time neither Kennedy nor I possessed even a passing realization of the problem before us.  Now I felt that I was ready to grasp at any possible motive for the crime.  I was prepared to suspect any or all of the nine people enumerated by Mackay, so far as I could speak for myself, and at the very least I was certain that this was one of the most baffling cases ever brought to Craig’s attention.

Yet I was sure he would solve it.  I waited most impatiently for the outcome of his examination of Lloyd Manton.

The producer-promoter was a well-set-up man just approaching middle age.  About him was a certain impression of great physical strength, of bulk without flabbiness, and in particular I noticed the formation of his head, the square broad development which indicated his intellectual power, and I found, too, a fascinating quality about his eyes, deeply placed and of a warm dark gray-brown, which seemed to hold a fundamental sincerity which, I imagined, made the man almost irresistible in a business deal.