He glanced suspiciously at Michael as he entered.
“I want to see you, Foss, about a sheet of script that’s got amongst the ‘Roselle’ script,” said Jack Knebworth. “May I tell Mr. Foss what you have told me?”
Michael hesitated for a second. Some cautioning voice warned him to keep the question of the Headhunter a secret. Against his better judgment he nodded.
Lawley Foss listened with an expressionless face whilst the old director explained the significance of the interpolated sheet, then he took the page from Jack Knebworth’s hand and examined it. Not by a twitch of his face or a droop of his eyelid did he betray his thoughts.
“I get a lot of stuff in,” he said, “and I can’t immediately place this particular play; but if you’ll let me take it to my office, I will look up my books.”
Again Michael considered. He did not wish that piece of evidence to pass out of his hands; and yet without confirmation and examination, it was fairly valueless. He reluctantly agreed.
“What do you make of that fellow?” asked Jack Knebworth when the door had closed upon the writer.
“I don’t like him,” said Michael bluntly. “In fact, my first impressions are distinctly unfavourable, though I am probably doing the poor gentleman a very great injustice.”
Jack Knebworth sighed. Foss was one of his biggest troubles, sometimes bulking larger than the temperamental Mendoza.
“He certainly is a queer chap,” he said, “though he’s diabolically clever. I never knew a man who could take a plot and twist it as Lawley Foss can—but he’s—difficult.”
“I should imagine so,” said Michael dryly.
They passed out into the studio, and Michael sought the troubled girl to explain his crudeness. There were tears of vexation in her eyes when he approached her, for his startling disappearance with a page of the script had put all thoughts of the play from her mind.
“I am sorry,” he said penitently. “I almost wish I hadn’t come.”
“And I quite wish it,” she said, smiling in spite of herself. “What was the matter with that page you took—you are a detective, aren’t you?”
“I admit it,” said Michael recklessly.
“Did you speak the truth when you said that my uncle—” she stopped, at a loss for words.
“No, I did not,” replied Michael quietly. “You uncle is dead, Miss Leamington.”
“Dead!” she gasped.
He nodded.
“He was murdered, in extraordinary circumstances.”
Suddenly her face went white.
“He wasn’t the man whose head was found at Esher?”
“How did you know?” he asked sharply.
“It was in this morning’s newspaper,” she said, and inwardly he cursed the sleuthhound of a reporter who had got on to the track of this latest tragedy.
She had to know sooner or later: he satisfied himself with that thought.
The return of Foss relieved him of further explanations. The man spoke for a while with Jack Knebworth in a low voice, and then the director beckoned Michael across.
“Foss can’t trace this manuscript,” he said, handing back the sheet. “It may have been a sample page sent in by a contributor, or it may have been a legacy from our predecessors. I took over a whole lot of manuscript with the studio from a bankrupt production company.”
He looked impatiently at his watch.
“Now, Mr. Brixan, if it’s possible I should be glad if you would excuse me. I’ve got some scenes to shoot ten miles away, with a leading lady from whose little head you’ve scared every idea that will be of the slightest value to me.”
Michael acted upon an impulse.
“Would you mind my coming out with you to shoot—that means to photograph, doesn’t it? I promise you I won’t be in the way.”
Old Jack nodded curtly, and ten minutes later Michael Brixan was sitting side by side with the girl in a charabanc which was carrying them to the location. That he should be riding with the artistes at all was a tribute to his nerve rather than to his modesty.
VI
The Master of Griff
Adele did not speak to him for a long time. Resentment that he should force his company upon her, and nervousness at the coming ordeal—a nervousness which became sheer panic as they grew nearer and nearer to their destination—made conversation impossible.
“I see your Mr. Lawley Foss is with us,” said Michael, glancing over his shoulder, and by way of making conversation.
“He always goes on location,” she said shortly. “A story has sometimes to be amended while it’s being shot.”
“Where are we going now?” he asked.
“Griff Towers first,” she replied. She found it difficult to be uncivil to anybody. “It is a big place owned by Sir Gregory Penne.”
“But I thought we were going to the Dower House?”
She looked at him with a little frown.
“Why did you ask if you knew?” she demanded, almost in a tone of asperity.
“Because I like to hear you speak,” said the young man calmly. “Sir Gregory Penne? I seem to know the name.”
She did not answer.
“He was in Borneo for many years, wasn’t he?”
“He’s hateful,” she said vehemently. “I detest him!”
She did not explain the cause of her detestation, and Michael thought it discreet not to press the question, but presently she relieved him of responsibility.
“I’ve been to his house twice. He has a very fine garden, which Mr. Knebworth has used before—of course, I only went as an extra and was very much in the background. I wish I had been more so. He has queer ideas about women, and especially actresses—not that I’m an actress,” she added hastily, “but I mean people who play for a living. Thank heaven there’s only one scene to be shot at Griff, and perhaps he will not be at home, but that’s unlikely. He’s always there when I go.”
Michael glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. His first impression of her beauty was more than confirmed. There was a certain wistfulness in her face which was very appealing; an honesty in the dark eyes that told him all he
