IX

WHITE-LIGHT SHADOWS

“What do you think of it?” I asked Kennedy, when we were half through our meal at a tiny restaurant on upper Broadway.

“We’re still fumbling in the dark,” he replied.

“There’s the towel—­”

“Yes, and almost any one on Mackay’s list of nine suspects could have placed it in that washroom.”

“Well—­” I was determined to draw him out.  My own impressions, I must confess, were gloriously muddled.  “Manton heads the list,” I suggested.  “Everyone says she was mixed up with him.”

“Manton may have philandered with her; undoubtedly he takes a personal interest in all his stars.”  Kennedy, I saw, remembered the promoter’s close attentions to Enid Faye.  “Nevertheless, Walter, he is first and foremost and all the time the man of business.  His heart is in his dollars and Millard even suggests that he is none too scrupulous.”

“If he had an affair with Stella,” I rejoined, “and she became up-stage—­the note you found suggested trouble, you know—­then Manton in a burst of passion—­”

“No!” Kennedy stopped me.  “Don’t forget that this was a cold-blooded, calculated crime.  I’m not eliminating Manton yet, but until we find some tangible evidence of trouble between Stella and himself we can hardly assume he would kill the girl who’s made him perhaps a million dollars.  Every motive in Manton’s case is a motive against the crime.”

“That eliminates Phelps, then, too.  He nearly owned the company.”

“Yes, unless something happened to outweigh financial considerations in his mind also.”

“But, good heavens!  Kennedy,” I protested.  “If you go on that way you’ll not eliminate anyone.”

“I can’t yet,” he explained, patiently.  “It’s just as I said.  We’re fishing in the dark, absolutely.  So far we haven’t a single basic fact on which to build any structure of hypothesis.  We must go on fishing.  I expect you to dig up all the facts about these people; every odd bit of gossip or rumor or anything else.  I’ll bring my science to play, but there’s nothing I can do except analyze Stella’s stomach contents and the spots on the towel; that is, until we’ve got a much more tangible lead than any which have developed so far.”

“Is there anything I can do to-night?”

“Yes!” He looked at his watch.  “There are two men who were very close to Miss Lamar.  Jack Gordon was engaged to her, Merle Shirley seemed to have been mixed up with her seriously.  All the picture people have night haunts.  See what you can find about these two men.”

“But I don’t know where to find them offhand, and—­”

“Both belong to the Goats Club, probably.  Try that as a start.”

I nodded and began to hurry my dessert.  But I could not resist questioning him.

“You think they are the most likely suspects?”

“No, but they were intimately associated with Miss Lamar in her daily life and they are the two we have learned the least about.”