“And accidents!  We carefully registered the principal accomplice of the ‘Black Terror,’ a little hunchback with a face to send chills down your back.  After we had him in about half the scenes of a sequence of action he was taken sick and died of influenza.  First we waited a few days; then we had to take all that stuff over again.

“Our payroll on this picture is staggering.  Stella’s three thousand a week is cheap for her, the old contract, but it’s a lot of money to throw away.  Two weeks when she was under the weather cost us six thousand dollars salary and there was half a week we couldn’t do any work without her.  Gordon and Shirley and Marilyn Loring draw down seventeen hundred a week between them.  The director’s salary is only two hundred short of that.  All told ‘The Black Terror’ is costing us a hundred thousand dollars over our original estimate.

“And now”—­it seemed to me that Manton literally groaned—­“with Stella Lamar dead—­excuse me looking at it this way, but, after all, it is business and I’m the executive at the head of the company—­now we must find a new star, Lord knows where, and we must retake every scene in which Stella appeared.  It—­it’s enough to bankrupt Manton Pictures for once and all.”

“Can’t you change the story about some way, so you won’t lose the value of her work?” asked Kennedy.

“Impossible!  We’ve announced the release and we’ve got to go ahead.  Fortunately, some of the biggest sets are not taken yet.”

The car pulled up with a flourish before the Manton studio, which was an immense affair of reinforced concrete in the upper Bronx.  Then, in response to our horn, a great wide double door swung open admitting us through the building to a large courtyard around which the various departments were built.

Here, there was little indication that the principal star of the company had just met her death under mysterious and suspicious circumstances.  Perhaps, had I been familiar with the ordinary bustle of the establishment, I might have detected a difference.  Indeed, it did strike me that there were little knots of people here and there discussing the tragedy, but everything was overshadowed by the aquatic scene being filmed in the courtyard for some other Manton picture.  The cramped space about the concrete tank was alive with people, a mob of extras and stage hands and various employees, a sight which held Kennedy and me for some little time.  I was glad when Manton led the way through a long hall to the comparative quiet of the office building.  In the reception room there was a decided hush.

“Is Millard here?” he asked of the boy seated at the information desk.

“No, sir,” was the respectful reply.  “He was here this morning and for a while yesterday.”