“Yes,” was Kennedy’s answer, “but it must be very costly.”

“It is all of that,” said Millard.  “But what of it if the film makes a big clean-up?  I wouldn’t have missed this for anything.  Werner never staged a spectacle like this in his life.  Fortune Features are going to set a new mark in pictures.”

“But can they keep it up?  Have they the money?”

Millard shrugged his shoulders.  “Manton Pictures can’t—­that’s a cinch.  Phelps has reached the end of his rope, I guess.  I’m afraid the trouble with him was that he was thinking of too many things besides pictures.”

There was no mistaking the meaning of the remark.  Millard was still cut by Stella’s desertion of him for the broker.  I caught Kennedy’s glance, but neither of us cared to refer to her.

“Where can I find Manton now?” Kennedy asked.

“Did you try his office at seven hundred and twenty-nine?” was Millard’s suggestion.

“No; I wanted to see this place first.”

“Well, you’ll most likely find him there.  I’ve got to go back to the city myself-some scenes of ‘The Black Terror’ to rewrite to fit Enid better.  I’ll motor you across the ferry and to the Subway.”

At the Subway station, Millard left us and we proceeded to Manton’s executive offices in a Seventh Avenue skyscraper, built for and devoted exclusively to the film business.

Manton’s business suite was lavishly furnished, but not quite as ornate and garish as his apartment.  The promoter himself welcomed us, for no matter how busy he was at any hour, he always seemed to have time to stop and chat.

“Well, how goes it?” He pushed over a box of expensive cigars.  “Have you found out anything yet?”

“Had a visit from Phelps this morning.”  Kennedy plunged directly into the subject, watching the effect.

Manton did not betray anything except a quiet smile.  “Poor old Phelps,” he said.  “I guess he’s pretty uneasy.  You know he has been speculating rather heavily in the market lately.  There was a time when I thought Phelps had a bank roll in reserve.  But it seems he has been playing the game on a shoestring, after all.”

Manton casually flicked the ashes from his cigar into a highly polished cuspidor as he leaned over.  “I happen to have learned that, to make his bluff good, he has been taking money from his brokerage business”—­here he nodded sagely—­“his customers’ accounts you know.  Leigh knows the inside of everybody’s affairs in Wall Street.  They say a quarter of a million is short, at least.  To tell you the truth, poor Stella took a good deal of Phelps’s money.  Certainly his Manton Pictures holdings wouldn’t leave him in the hole as deep as all that.”

I reflected that this was quite the way of the world—­first framing up something on a boob, then deprecating the ease with which he was trimmed.

Was it blackmail Stella had levied on Phelps, I wondered?  Was she taking from him to give to Gordon?  Had Stella broken him?  Was she the real cause of the tangle in his affairs?  And had Phelps in insane passion revenged himself on her?