“Tell me all you know about him?” I asked.

“Well, to give you an example, he was in here just about a week ago.  I was sitting in the grill, eating an after-theater supper, when I heard the most terrible racket.  He and Emery Phelps, the banker, you know, were having an honest-to-goodness fight right out in the lobby.  It took three of the men to separate them.”

“What was it all about.”

“Well, Gordon owes money right and left, not a few hundred or some little personal debts like that, but thousands and thousands of dollars.  I got it from some of the other men here that he has been speculating on the curb downtown, losing consistently.  More than that, he’s engaged to Stella Lamar—­you knew that?—­and he’s been blowing money on her.  Then they tell me his professional work is suffering, that his recent screen appearances are terrible; the result of late hours and worry, I suppose.”

“The fight with Phelps was over money?”

“Of course!  I figure that he kept drawing against his salary at the studio until the film company shut down on him.  Then probably he began to borrow from Phelps, who’s Manton’s backer now, until the banker shut down on him also.  At any rate, Phelps had begun to dun him and it led to the fight.”

“That’s all you know about Gordon?”

“Lord!  Isn’t it enough?”

I walked out of the club and toward Broadway, reflecting upon this information.  Could Gordon’s debts have any bearing upon the case?  All at once one possibility struck me.  He had been borrowing from Phelps.  Perhaps he had borrowed from Stella also.  Perhaps that was the cause of their quarrel.  Perhaps she had threatened to make trouble—­it was a slender motive, but worth bringing to the attention of Kennedy.

My immediate problem, however, was to obtain some information about Merle Shirley.  At first I thought I would make the rounds of some of the better-known cafes, but that seemed a hopeless task.  Suddenly I remembered Belle Balcom, formerly with the Star.  I recollected a previous case of Kennedy’s where she and I had been great rivals in the quest of news.  I recalled a trip we had made to Greenwich Village together.  Belle knew more people about town than any other newspaper woman.  Now, for some months, she had been connected with Screenings, a leading cinema “fan” magazine, and would unquestionably be posted upon the photoplayers.

Luckily, I caught her at home.

“Bless your soul,” she told me over the phone, in delight, “I’ve just been aching for some one to take me out to-night.  We’ll go to the Midnight Fads and if Shirley isn’t there the head waiter will tell you all I don’t remember.  It was a glorious fight.”

She wouldn’t say any more over the phone, but I was hugely curious.  Had there been another encounter with fists?  And who had been involved?

When she met me finally, at the Subway station, and when we obtained an out-of-the-way table at the Fads, she explained.  It seemed that Shirley had met Stella there a number of times and that Gordon, at last, had got wind of it.  Gordon first had come up himself, quietly, pleading with Stella.  She had been in a high humor and had refused even to listen to him.  Then he had become insulting.  At that Shirley knocked him down.