He turned to his assistant. That young man scratched his head in an effort of memory.
“Ankles?” he hazarded a guess at random—a safe guess, for Knebworth had views about ankles.
“Nothing wrong with them—get out the print and let us see it.”
Ten minutes later, Adele sat by the old man’s side in the little projection room and saw her “test” run through.
“Hair!” said Knebworth triumphantly. “I knew there was something. Don’t like bobbed hair. Makes a girl too pert and sophisticated. You’ve grown it?” he added as the lights were switched on.
“Yes, Mr. Knebworth.”
He looked at her in dispassionate admiration.
“You’ll do,” he said reluctantly. “See the wardrobe and get Miss Mendoza’s costumes. There’s one thing I’d like to tell you before you go,” he said, stopping her. “You may be good and you may be bad, but, good or bad, there’s no future for you—so don’t get heated up. The only woman who’s got any chance in England is the producer’s wife, and I’ll never marry you if you go down on your knees to me! That’s the only kind of star they know in English films—the producer’s wife; and unless you’re that, you haven’t—!”
He snapped his finger.
“I’ll give you a word of advice, kid. If you make good in this picture, link yourself up with one of those cute English directors that set three flats and a pot of palms and call it a drawing-room! Give Miss What’s-her-name the script, Harry. Say—go out somewhere quiet and study it, will you? Harry, you see the wardrobe. I give you half an hour to read that script!”
Like one in a dream, the girl walked out into the shady garden that ran the length of the studio building, and sat down, trying to concentrate on the typewritten lines. It wasn’t true—it could not be true! And then she heard the crunch of feet on gravel and looked up in alarm. It was the young man who had seen her that morning—Michael Brixan.
“Oh, please—you mustn’t interrupt me!” she begged in agitation. “I’ve got a part—a big part to read.”
Her distress was so real that he hastened to take his departure.
“I’m awfully sorry—” he began.
In her confusion she had dropped the loose sheets of the manuscript, and, stooping with her to pick them up, their heads bumped.
“Sorry—that’s an old comedy situation, isn’t it?” he began.
And then he saw the sheet of paper in his hand and began to read. It was a page of elaborate description of a scene.
“The cell is large, lighted by a swinging lamp. In centre is a steel gate through which a soldier on guard is seen pacing to and fro—”
“Good God!” said Michael, and went white.
The u’s in the type were blurred, the g was indistinct. The page had been typed on the machine from which the Headhunter sent forth his gruesome tales of death.
V
Mr. Lawley Foss
“What is wrong?” asked Adele, seeing the young man’s grave face.
“Where did this come from?”
He showed her the sheet of typewritten script.
“I don’t know: it was with the other sheets. I knew, of course, that it didn’t belong to ‘Roselle.’ ”
“Is that the play you’re acting in?” he asked quickly. And then: “Who would know?”
“Mr. Knebworth.”
“Where shall I find him?”
“You go through that door,” she said, “and you will find him on the studio floor.”
Without a word, he walked quickly into the building. Instinctively he knew which of the party was the man he sought. Jack Knebworth looked up under lowering brows at the sight of the stranger, for he was a stickler for privacy in business hours; but before he could demand an explanation, Michael was up to him.
“Are you Mr. Knebworth?”
Jack nodded.
“I surely am,” he said.
“May I speak to you for two minutes?”
“I can’t speak to anybody for one minute,” growled Jack. “Who are you, anyway, and who let you in?”
“I am a detective from the Foreign Office,” said Michael, lowering his voice, and Jack’s manner changed.
“Anything wrong?” he asked, as he accompanied the detective into his sanctum.
Jack laid down the sheet of paper with its typed characters on the table.
“Who wrote that?” he asked.
Jack Knebworth looked at the manuscript and shook his head.
“I’ve never seen it before. What is it all about?”
“You’ve never seen this manuscript at all?”
“No, I’ll swear to that, but I dare say my scenario man will know all about it. I’ll send for him.”
He touched a bell, and, to the clerk who came:
“Ask Mr. Lawley Foss to come quickly,” he said.
“The reading of books, plots and material for picture plays is entirely in the hands of my scenario manager,” he said. “I never see a manuscript until he considers it’s worth producing; and even then, of course, the picture isn’t always made. If the story happens to be a bad one, I don’t see it at all. I’m not so sure that I haven’t lost some good stories, because Foss”—he hesitated a second—“well, he and I don’t see exactly eye to eye. Now, Mr. Brixan, what is the trouble?”
In a few words Michael explained the grave significance of the typewritten sheet.
“The Headhunter!” Jack whistled.
There came a knock at the door, and Lawley Foss slipped into the room. He was a thinnish man, dark and saturnine of face, shifty of eye. His face was heavily lined as though he suffered from some chronic disease. But the real disease which preyed on Lawley Foss was the bitterness of mind that comes to a man at war with the world. There had been a time in his early life when he thought that same world was at his feet. He had written two plays that had been produced and had run a few nights. Thereafter, he had trudged from theatre to theatre in vain, for the taint of failure was on him, and no manager would so much as open the brown-covered manuscripts he brought to them. Like many another man, he had sought easy ways to wealth, but the
