“I want to get blood smears of Shirley and Marilyn,” he confided in a low voice.  “I shall have to think of some pretext.”

Neither of the two we sought were in their quarters and so we continued on into the studio.  Here we found Kauf at work; at least he was engaged in a desperate attempt to get something out of his people.

“Ye gods, Gordon!” we heard him exclaim, as we made our way through the debris of the banquet set to the ballroom now dazzlingly bright under the lights.  “What if you do have to wear a bandage around your head?  It’s a masked ball, isn’t it?  You’ve got a monk’s cowl over everything but your features, haven’t you?”

It struck me that the faces had never been more ghastly, although my reason convinced me it was simply the usual effect of the Cooper-Hewitt tubes.  But there was no question but that the explosion had given everyone a bad fright, that not an actress or actor but would have preferred to have been nearly anywhere else but under the heat of the glass roof, now a constant reminder of the accident because of the gaping hole directly above them.

Marilyn was in the center of the revelers in the set, already in costume.  Shirley I saw close to the camera men, standing uneasily on shaky legs, shielding his eyes with one hand while he clung to a massive sideboard for support with the other.  He had not yet donned his carnival clothes, nor essayed to put on a make-up.

Enid Faye, the only one in sight whose spirits seemed to have rallied at all, was offering him comfort of a sort.

“You’ll get by, all right, Merle, if you can keep on your pins, and I’ll say you deserve credit for trying it.  There’s”—­she stepped back a bit to study him—­“there’s just one thing.  Your eyes show the result of all that smoke and vapor—­no color or luster at all.  I—­I wonder if belladonna wouldn’t brighten them up a bit and—­well, get you by, for to-day?”

“I’ll go out and get some at lunch.”  He smiled weakly.  “I’ll try anything once.”

“That’s the spirit!” She patted him on the shoulder, then danced on into the center of the set, stopping to direct some barbed remark at Marilyn.

Kauf took his megaphone to call his people around him.  There seemed to be a certain essential competence about the little man, now that Manton and Phelps and Millard were not about to bother him.  While we watched he succeeded in photographing one of the full shots of the general action or atmosphere of the dance.  Then he hurried to the side of Shirley, to see if the heavy man felt equal to the task of resuming his make-up once more.

I found the time dragging heavy on my hands and I wished that Kennedy would return to the laboratory or decide upon some definite action.  Though I racked my brain, I failed to think of a device whereby Kennedy could get blood smears of Shirley or Marilyn without their knowledge.  Once more my reflections veered around to the matter of the stolen towel and I wondered if that had been wasted effort on Kennedy’s part; if the fire had thrown out his carefully arranged plans to trap whoever took it.