Black Mask (Vol. 18, No. 11 — January 1936)

Death Song by Paul Cain

Pat Nolan puts on an act for murder.

Jacobsen, the assistant director, yelled “Hold your hammers!”

The pounding at the far end of the stage stopped.

Carl Dreier raised his head, said softly, wearily: “Turn ’em over.”

I held on to the arms of my chair and waited for what I knew was going to happen.

The sound mixer called out the number, the assistant cameraman snapped his slap-stick under the microphone and moved swiftly out of the scene, Maya Sarin came through the right up-stage door in the narrow hallway set and walked a little unsteadily towards the camera. Creighton, the leading man, came through the door and ran after her. He came abreast of her about ten feet from the camera and they stopped and faced each other.

He put his hands gently on her shoulders, gazed deep into her dusky, violet-shadowed eyes.

“Darling!” he whispered, his voice quivering with emotion, “Darling! You can’t leave me like this!...”

Then it happened.

She said: “Oh, yesh, I can.” Her voice was thick with alcohol. She wasn’t tight — she wasn’t even drunk — she was cock-eyed.

Creighton started to say something like “But, darling...” and then he swallowed his words and his emotion and turned squarely towards Dreier, put his hands on his hips, snapped shrilly: “Mister Dreier — I refuse to try to work with a drunken woman any longer!”

Sarin turned wide glassy eyes to stare vacantly in the general direction of the camera.

“Why was matter?” she asked innocently, incredulously. “I don’t know what Mist’ Creighton’s talking about...”

Then her expression changed swiftly, her eyes narrowed to ominous black-fringed slits and she swung her open hand to the side of Creighton’s jaw. If they didn’t hear that smack up on Hollywood Boulevard they weren’t listening — it was a pip.

I thought Creighton was going to go into his swoon for a minute, then he put one hand slowly up to his spanked face and turned and walked back up the hallway, out the door.

Sarin whirled towards the camera. “...’S a frame-up!” she screamed. “Everybodeesh trying to ace me outa thish picsher! I won’t stand—”

Dreier stood up. He was a tall heavy shouldered man with prematurely gray hair, a narrow sharply chiseled face softened by sympathetic eyes, a generous mouth. He looked very tired. He tapped one leg of the tripod with his walking-stick and the cameraman snapped off the camera-motor. It was silent except for the sound of Sarin’s indignant panting.

Dreier said quietly: “In view of the fact that we are five days behind schedule after eleven days on this picture, and that the company has been waiting for you, Miss Sarin, since eleven-thirty this morning” — he glanced at his watch — “and it is now ten minutes after five... And in view of the fact that we have been trying to complete this one simple scene properly for two days and have been unable to because of your condition...”

His accent was very precise. He turned and walked away.

She was after him like a spitting, snarling she-cat; she grabbed his shoulder, swung him around, screamed: “Oh, no, you don’t! — you don’t walk out on me! I’m perfec’ly cap’ble of doing thish shene! I—”

Dreier was standing still, looking down at her; I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a startling change in a man’s face. It was like white luminous metal; his light blue eyes had darkened and his soft mouth had straightened to a thin, savage line. His fury seemed all the more deadly because it was contained, all held inside of him.

His voice sliced the silence like an icy knife: “Take your hand off my shoulder.”

Sarin dropped her hand and stepped back a pace or two, slowly. Dreier turned and walked swiftly away.

News gallops in a studio. I didn’t go to my office because I knew the phone would be burning up with calls from Bachmann. I wanted to figure out what I was going to say.

I was listed on the payroll as a gagman but that wasn’t the half of it. Conciliator in Extraordinary would have been better. Bachmann was the boss of B. L. D. Pictures, and some time, way back in the sweet silent days when we turned them out in a week for eight grand, he’d conceived the fairly nutty idea that I was a natural-born peacemaker. He’d never got over it; when I’d returned to Hollywood after three or four years of trying to find out what made China go, I’d found Bachmann with a studio slightly smaller than Texas and my old job waiting for me.

I’d worked on five pictures for B. L. D. and gradually, insidiously, almost without my knowing it, Maya Sarin had become my special charge. And what a charge! — it would have taken six men and a boy to keep up adequately with her and Bachmann knew it. His faith in me was touching, not to say sublime.

“Death Song” was her first picture with Dreier, and in addition to being Chinese technical expert, and a few other ill-assorted what-nots I was supposed to be Sarin’s spiritual adviser and wet-nurse. And when I say wet-nurse I mean wet-nurse. She could suck up more whiskey in less time than any half-dozen longshoremen I’d known in a long experience of longshoremen. I’d done everything I could to avert the inevitable blow-off. So what! — so it’d happened.

I stalled in the Publicity Department a little while and had my shoes shined and got to Bachmann’s office gradually. Sarin was coming out as I went in. I started to say something light and laugh-provoking, and she glared at me like a wounded lioness; I moved to one side and swayed in the wind as she went past.

There was a girl waiting to see Bachmann in the outer office. She had dark red hair and dark brown eyes and a skin like thick cream.

Bachmann’s secretary got up and started for the door of his private office. She said: “Mister Bachmann wants to see you right away, Mister Nolan—”

Bachmann jerked the door open, blasted me with an icy stare, yelped: “Come in here!”

The secretary looked worried. She said in a small voice: “May I see you for just a moment first, Mister Bachmann?”

Bachmann snapped “No!” repeated: “Come in here, Nolan.”

I bobbed my head at the creamy-skinned angel, said: “This lady was here first...”

She smiled at me and murmured: “Thank you — I’m in no hurry.” The voice went with the rest of her.

Bachmann looked like he was about a half-jump ahead of apoplexy. That was all right with me because when he gets that way he becomes speechless. I gave the angel my best bow and marched past him into the office. He slammed the door and started walking up and down.

In about a minute he got his voice back, shouted: “Well — what are we going to do?”

I was looking out the window. I saw Sarin come out of the downstairs door of the Administration Building and start across the lawn towards the dressing-rooms. I said: “How about leaving the picture business flat and going back to cloaks and suits?”

Bachmann looked like a thug and was one of the swellest all-around men I’ve ever known. He couldn’t help it about his pan. He wasn’t paying any attention to what I said. He yelled: “You’ve got to talk to Dreier!”

I nodded.

“Dreier likes you,” he went on. “You’ve got to make him understand that the release date of ‘Death Song’ is set. It’s sold! It’s got to be finished in three weeks at the outside!”

I nodded again. I was still looking out the window and I saw Sarin disappear into the Dressing-room Building. She looked like she was going somewhere. I said: “You can’t make pictures with a sponge for a star. We’re five days behind schedule. The call was for eleven-thirty this morning because we worked late last night with the mob. Sarin didn’t even get to the lot till four and she was paralyzed...”

I turned to Bachmann. “I think the best thing to do is scrap everything we’ve shot — it’s lousy anyway — and start over with another girl.”

Bachmann lifted his shoulders in such a high shrug that his head almost disappeared like a scared turtle’s.

“What other girl! You’re talking like an idiot! You know as well as I do that Maya’s name is sold with the picture...”

I went over and looked up at a big photograph of her on the wall, grunted: “Uh-huh.”

Bachmann’s voice kept on popping behind me: “You’ve got to talk to Dreier. Maya says he doesn’t like her — that he keeps on riding her and won’t give her a chance to straighten out. She says—”

I heard the door open, Dreier’s soft voice:

“What else does she say?”

I turned around. Dreier came in and closed the door, sank into a big chair.

Bachmann went behind his desk and sat down, too.

Dreier said: “Will you please replace me, Jack? I guess I can’t take it.”

He turned from Bachmann and smiled wearily at me.

Bachmann looked like he was about to do a back-flip. Then the old beaten-animal expression crept into his eyes. I knew that look; it’d take a giant of will-power to say no to him when he used it.

He said tremulously: “Carl. You wouldn’t desert me, too!”

Dreier laughed. He was silent a moment and then he said: “No, Jack — I guess I wouldn’t. Not if you’re going to cry about it.” He raised both hands resignedly and brought them down hard on his knees. “What do you want me to do?”

“Talk to Maya.” Bachmann was leaning forward, smiling eagerly. “Reason with her—”

I grinned.

Bachmann glared at me, went on to Dreier: “Make her understand you don’t dislike her — that it’s for the good of the picture — that we’ve all got to cooperate—”

One of the phones on Bachmann’s desk buzzed. He picked it up said: “Yes — what is it?... Please don’t bother me, Miss Chase — I’m busy!” He slammed up the receiver.

Dreier stood up. “All right, Jack,” he said. “I’ll try — again.”

“Fine!” Bachmann turned to me. “You go with him, Pat.”

I looked at my watch. It was five-forty. I had to see a dog about a man at six-thirty; I said: “Maya’s off me — I haven’t been able to talk to her for three days. I think Carl can do better by himself.”

Dreier was smiling. “Okey,” he said. “I’m going to see the rushes first — last night’s stuff. Then I’ll see what I can do with her.”

He went to the door, turned his tired smile to me. “Want to look at them with me?”

I shook my head. “I haven’t got time — I’ll look at ’em in the morning.”

Dreier nodded and went out and closed the door.

Bachmann was leaning back in his chair glaring at me with elaborate disgust. “A fine smoother-over you’re turning out to be!” he said.

“That smoother-over business is your idea,” I reminded him, “not mine. Me — I like a good fight — I’m the kind of a guy that starts revolutions.”

I gave him a trick grin and bowed out. The creamy angel was still sitting in the outer office. She smiled at me again and I took it and smiled back and almost smashed my knee-cap against the door because I wasn’t looking where I was going.

I was still thinking about her when I got into my car, and figuring that maybe the deal with the man and the dog wasn’t so important after all.

Traffic was heavy on Melrose; I cut up Gower and got out of the worst of it but it took me nearly twenty minutes to get to the hotel.

I was getting into the bathtub when the phone rang. The switchboard-girl said: “Theah’s a Mistah Hammah callin’, Mistah Nolan...” She kind of crooned it, like: “Theah’s a cotton field a callin’, honey chile.” You could slice that Deep South accent with a dull cleaver.

“On the phone, or is he downstairs?”

“On the wiah, Mistah Nolan. He’s in the hotel but he wants to talk to you on the wiah...”

Hammer played occasional bits in pictures and was a sort of all-around handy-man for Joe Ciretti. Ciretti was the Big Bad Wolf of the Coast underworld. He was also Maya Sarin’s current suitor.

I told the girl to put him on and sat down and waited for the click, said “Hello” as disagreeably as I could.

His nasal, high-pitched voice quavered over the wire: “H’are ya, Old Timer? What’s the good word? How’s everything?”

“Everything’s been swell — up to now. I’m in a hurry — what’s on your mind?”

Hammer said: “Me and a friend of mine want to have a little talk with you.”

I said: “Not a chance — I’ve got to be out of here in ten minutes and I’m just getting into the tub. Give me a ring later.”

“Later won’t do. We want to talk to you now!” The tone of his voice had changed; all the amusement had gone out of it and it was almost plaintively serious.

Another voice rasped over the wire suddenly. It was sharp, stacatto, with a slight Latin accent:

“Listen, you! Look out the window — the one on your right. Look at the window across the court!”

I twisted around in the chair and looked through my wide open window at the one the voice was shouting about. It was about twenty-five or thirty feet away, open, dark.

I started to say, “So what,” or something equally bright and then I stopped because there was a thin blue rifle-barrel sticking out a few inches over the lower sill and it was pointing, as nearly as I could measure the angle at that distance, at my right eye. I could see a man’s head and shoulders vaguely outlined against the darkness of the room.

The voice went on: “Now put the phone down on the table and put your hands up — high; then get up and unlock the door and go back and sit down. And don’t forget — you’re covered all the way to the door.”

I did exactly that. I wanted to see what the play was about. I unlocked the door and opened it a couple of inches and went back and sat down. I kept my hands up and watched the rifle-barrel and waited.

In a couple of minutes Hammer and a thick-set, swarthy guy with bright beady eyes and blue-black hair came in and closed the door.

I looked back at the window and the rifle-barrel was gone. I said: “Do you gentlemen mind if I put on my pants?”

Hammer was a thin, medium-sized Swede with a thick butter-yellow mustache. He grinned a little, piped: “Never mind your pants — we like you this way.” He waved his hand at blue-black hair. “This’s Joe Ciretti — he wants to talk to you.”

I got up and grabbed a bathrobe off the bed, slid into it. “First,” I said, “you’d better let me in on what all this strong-arm stuff is about. I don’t like it, and when I don’t like something I get in a bad mood, and when I’m in a bad mood I’m a bad talker — or listener.”

Ciretti’s eyes widened innocently on Hammer; he lifted his hands in front of him as if he was holding a watermelon, said: “Strong-arm stuff! I don’t know what Mister Nolan is talking about — do you, Gus?” His was the sharp, staccato voice of the telephone.

I went over to the door and opened it, said: “You boys have seen too many moving-pictures. It’s a pleasure, Ciretti — sometime I’ll play Indian and cowboy with you but right now I’m in a hurry. Give me a call at the studio—”

Ciretti waltzed over and very suddenly, magically, a big blue heater appeared in his hand; he jabbed it into my belly, rasped: “You go back and sit down — quick!”

Something in his tone made me realize that he might be on the level. I felt like a sap who’d been caught trying to make a four-card straight stand up, sat down.

Ciretti went on: “I’ve called you five, six times at the studio today.”

“That’s dandy,” I said. “I didn’t go near my office all day.”

Ciretti sat down near me, leaned forward and let the big automatic dangle loosely between his legs. “Just one thing I want understood,” he ground out. “Then you can go about your business and we’ll go about ours.”

“That’ll be swell.”

“You, nor this guy Dreier,” he went on, “nor Bachmann, nor anybody else is going to freeze Maya out of this picture.”

I opened my mouth like a black-bass and gave him a stunned gasp.

“Who,” I asked gently, “ever gave you the screwy idea that anyone was trying to freeze her out of anything?”

“She told me.” His voice was like a couple of billiard balls rubbed together. “She says you’re all trying to railroad her out of pictures.”

I said: “You know her better than I do. You know she’s been stiff for weeks, and yet you fall for an insane angle like that. It doesn’t make sense.”

“She says she has to drink to keep going — with everybody against her.” Ciretti straightened up and eased the automatic back into its holster, slowly. He looked worried, as if he actually believed what he was saying and didn’t know what to say next. The poor chump was evidently in love with little Maya.

Hammer was staring at the ceiling, whistling soundlessly, making a very bad job of trying to look unconcerned.

“If that’s all you wanted to see me about,” I said — “and why you picked on me instead of Dreier or Bachmann or someone who really cuts ice at B. L. D. I can’t imagine — you can tell Maya that if she’ll pull herself together and lay off the jug everything’ll be simply elegant.”

I turned to Hammer. “I still don’t savvy all this brandishing of guns and—”

Ciretti interrupted, said swiftly: “I thought you were trying to duck me — and I wanted you to know how I felt about it. You’ve got to give her a break.”

My watch was on the table. I looked at it and it was sixteen minutes after six. I started to stand up and the phone rang; I sat down again and picked up the receiver.

The girl said: “Mistah Bachmann callin’, Mistah Nolan.”

I told her to put Bachmann on and said: “Hello, Jack,” and listened. After about a minute I stuttered something like “Okey, I’ll be right over,” and hung up and looked at Ciretti.

I said: “Maya’s out of the picture.”

He stood up slowly. “What do you mean? They can’t—”

I took a deep breath, went on: “She’s been murdered. They just found her in her dressing-room. Dreier’s been arrested.”

I thought Ciretti was going to explode or fall flat on his face or something. He looked like he couldn’t breathe and his white face got a little purple and he tried to speak and couldn’t. I felt sorry as hell for him.

He finally managed to gasp: “Where’s Dreier? Where have they taken him?”

I said: “I don’t know. Anyway, I’ll lay six, two, and even he didn’t do it. I don’t know anything about it, yet but Dreier’s not a murderer.” And I was remembering his face when he’d turned on Sarin on the set.

Ciretti went unsteadily to the door and went out without looking back. Hammer followed him and closed the door.

I took a two-minute shower and hustled into some clothes. Then I cantered to the door and opened it and started out and ran smack into the angel. Her creamy skin was about five shades lighter and her dark brown eyes were like saucers. Beautiful saucers.

“The girl said your line was busy,” she stammered, “so I got the number of your room and came up. I... I had to see you right away...”

I was steering her towards the elevator. I said: “Sure. What about?”

The elevator door slid open and we got in; she glanced at the elevator-boy and didn’t answer. We were in the car, roaring down Vine Street by the time she managed to say: “Maya Sarin’s been murdered!”

I looked at her sidewise and missed an oil-truck by inches, grunted: “Uh-huh. How did you know?”

“I saw her — I went to her dressing-room and found her lying there, dead.” I felt the angel shudder beside me and heard her take in breath swiftly, sharply.

“What did you go to her dressing-room for?”

She said: “I guess I’d better begin at the beginning.”

I nodded, swung into Sunset Boulevard. She began at the beginning and talked nearly all the way to the studio. In a large nutshell it went something like this:

She’d come to Hollywood from some place in Kansas to crash pictures, but pictures had crashed her. She’d worked extra a couple times at B. L. D. and Titanic and then there’d been a great open space without work and finally without coffee and doughnuts. She’d answered an ad that turned out to be the Nick Galbraith Detective Agency; they’d put her to work tailing some sucker for divorce evidence and then they’d sent her to Maya Sarin who it seems was one of their best undercover clients and Maya had given her a note to Bachmann asking him to give her some kind, any kind, of a job on the lot.

The idea seemed to be that Maya’s dipsomania was aggravated by a supercharged persecution complex and she wanted the angel to keep her eyes and ears open and find out who was conniving against her at B. L. D. She said Maya acted like she was scared to death of something and didn’t seem to be quite sure of what it was.

From then on the plot thickened. She’d been waiting to present her note to Bachmann when Maya had stormed in after the blow-off on the set. A couple minutes after Maya went into the private office a woman whom she recognized as Mrs. Bachmann came in and sat down and talked about the weather with the secretary. And Maya was shouting her head off inside — they could hear practically every word she said.

By the time the angel had reached that point in her story I was standing on the brakes for the stop-light at Melrose. I leaned back and listened with both ears.

She was pretty excited. She said: “Finally Miss Sarin screamed: ‘You straighten this thing out and see that I get a square deal around this dump or I’ll tell that high and mighty wife of yours some things that’ll make her hair curl!’ Mrs. Bachmann got as white as a sheet and marched out of the office.”

I said: “Is it possible that anybody in the western hemisphere doesn’t know that Bachmann and Maya Sarin used to be... well... friendly?”

The stop-light snapped green; I shifted and let the clutch in and glanced swiftly at the angel. She was smiling a little. “Probably not anybody,” she said — “except Mrs. Bachmann.” She hesitated a moment, went on: “In a few minutes Miss Sarin came out and you came in. The secretary wanted to tell Bachmann about his wife being there but he was too excited to listen. I got up and looked out the window and saw Miss Sarin go across the lawn to the dressing-rooms and after a minute Mrs. Bachmann followed her.”

“To the dressing-rooms! I saw Sarin, too, but I left the window as soon as she disappeared.”

She nodded. “Then, after you and Mister Dreier left, the secretary went in and Bachmann came rushing out and apologized and said he’d be back in a few minutes. He looked terribly worried. I watched from the window and he went over to the dressing-rooms, too. I waited about a quarter of an hour and he didn’t come back. The secretary went home and I thought maybe Bachmann had forgotten about me and wouldn’t come back to the office so I went to Miss Sarin’s room to ask her what I’d better do. I was curious about what’d happened, too. I knew where her room was from the time I’d worked there. She didn’t answer when I knocked and I opened the door and she was lying on the floor, dead.”

“What time was it?”

“It must have been about five minutes after six.” The angel was almost whispering. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have any business there, or at least it would take a lot of explaining and there didn’t seem to be anyone around. Then I remembered that Miss Sarin had told me about you and that you were the only person on the lot she thought she could trust. I hurried back to Bachmann’s office. He hadn’t come back. I called the agency and told them what had happened and asked the boy at the information-desk where you lived and took a cab and came to your hotel...”

I said: “What’s your name?”

“Laird — Dolores Laird.”

I thought it was a nice name.

The rest of the night was an odds-on favorite nightmare that began with reporters ganging us when we got out of the car. We finally made the Sarin dressing-room and it was so jammed with assorted Law that the walls were bulging. Everyone had a different theory.

Nick Galbraith, the angel’s boss, said it was a cinch for Sarin’s maid. Sarin had sent her off the lot to get something — probably a bottle — as soon as she’d returned to the dressing-room and according to Galbraith the maid had sneaked back and beaned her with the “blunt instrument”; that was the only thing they all agreed on.

The blunt instrument was an oversize vibrator that was still lying on the floor near the chalked-off space where the body had been found.

A detective-lieutenant named Law-son insisted that Creighton was the murderer. Creighton’s dressing-room was across the hall and when the maid had come back from her errand and found Dreier bending over the body she’d screamed and Creighton had dashed in and he and the maid had pointed the finger at Dreier. Dreier, it seemed, wouldn’t talk and most of the coppers favored one or another variation of the Dreier theory. He was being held at the Hollywood Station.

Bachmann sat and groaned.

Then a radish-nosed captain from L. A. got a brilliant idea and asked Galbraith how come he knew about Sarin’s chill so soon. Galbraith had to tell ’em about Miss Laird and they started working her over. Why hadn’t she called for help? — why hadn’t she called the police? — how long had she been in the dressing-room? — what was the reason for “personal enmity” towards Maya Sarin?

I said I’d vouch for Miss Laird and they all looked at me as if I was one of those arrangements with electric teeth that deep-sea nets bring up. Who was I? Where was I at the time of the crime?

I had a swell answer for that. I said: “What was the time of the crime?”

They all scratched their heads and asked a lot more questions and finally decided that the murder had occurred between five-thirty-five and five minutes after six — if Miss Laird was telling the truth.

I called the projection-room and found out that Dreier hadn’t left there till almost ten after. That gave Lawson a fresh start on his Creighton angle and they all started poking questions at Creighton who was sitting in a corner looking scared.

I winked one of my most reassuring winks at Miss Laird and jockeyed Bachmann out into the hall; we walked down to the far end. I told him in a few one and two syllable words that I knew about him and Mrs. Bachmann both going to the Dressing-room Building — and why.

He looked at me with his eyes hanging out on his cheeks and said: “Pat! I swear to you that neither of us had anything to do with it!”

“Nobody says you did. But if Miss Laird saw both of you go into the building it’s probable that someone else saw you, too. I just want to be sure you’re in the clear.”

He put his hand against the wall to steady himself, whispered: “Mrs. Bachmann talked to Maya and Maya got mad and put her out of the room. She was coming down the hall from the room, crying, when I got here. I took her out to her car — it was parked in the alleyway out there — and we sat and talked for a long while and then we heard Maya’s maid scream... Carl was going into the projection-room when we came out of the building and he saw us — he saw that Ruth was crying. I guess when he found Maya dead he thought we had something to do with it and that’s the reason he won’t say anything.”

I patted Bachmann’s arm and steered him back towards the dressing-room and told him I had an idea I wanted to work out in detail, that I was going to run along and would call him later. As a matter of fact the only idea I had at that point was to talk to Mrs. Bachmann.

They were still working on Creighton. Radish-nose was yelping about putting the pinch on everybody and a little guy from the D.A.’s office was running him a close second for noise by pointing out, with gestures, that there were four entrances to the Dressing-room Building and that anybody on the lot between five-thirty and six-fifteen was technically under suspicion.

They’d forgotten about Miss Laird for the moment; I officed her and we edged out.

Lieutenant Lawson was coming out of the phone-booth in the hallway downstairs. He said: “I just talked to the Doc. He says her nibs was killed sometime in the half-hour before he got to her — that’d make it sometime after ten minutes to six. An’ he says she was loaded with heroin... He says all the licker was for was to hold the H down an’ keep her from blowin’ her noodle entirely.”

I said: “If she was that high maybe she sapped herself with the vibrator.”

He looked at me as if he thought I was on the level about it and galloped back upstairs.

We ducked out the private entrance through the purchasing department to keep from being swamped by reporters and walked around the block to the car.

Dreier was out, as far as I was concerned. So was Creighton and the maid. That left Bachmann, who I was sure had told me the truth or what he believed to be the truth, and Mrs. Bachmann. I didn’t know her very well; I was trying to think of five or six good reasons why she shouldn’t have got mad, too, while they were going round and round, and picked up the vibrator and let Maya have it.

I didn’t have to wait long for all six reasons. It was pretty dark by that time. We got into the car and somebody walked over from a car that was parked across the street and said: “Mister Nolan — you’ve got to do something!” It was Ruth Bachmann.

I said: “Sure — I’ll do anything I can. Where do I begin?”

She glanced at Miss Laird, went on: “I think Mister Dreier is needlessly sacrificing himself because he saw Jack and me come out of the dressing-rooms — and I was crying. Miss Sarin put me out of her room” — her voice broke a little — “and I think I should tell the police I was there and what happened and then Mister Dreier will feel free to clear himself.”

Something in the way she said it gave me all my reasons at once; either she was telling the truth or I was a Tasmanian watchmaker — which I wasn’t.

I said: “You sit tight and let things go the way they are for a little while and everything’ll be all right. I’ve got an idea.”

She agreed after a minute and went back across the street; I started the car and swung into Melrose and wished I had an idea.

Back at the hotel I asked the clerk who the guy who lived across the court from me was.

He said: “Hotaling — Francis J. Hotaling.” He’d lived there five days.

The name was familiar as hell. We went up to the room and fixed a drink and I beat my head against the wall a little bit trying to remember, and one of them worked. Hotaling was a fella who had been pointed out to me by some of the boys around the Brown Derby as a “Connection.” That meant if you wanted anything on the mossy side of the Law — anything from square-cut emeralds to marihuana — he was the guy to see. He had a pan that looked like it had been through a wringer and worked in gangster pictures occasionally but his main racket was getting things for people who wanted them very badly — people who could pay — and he majored in dope.

So Mister Hotaling was pegged — and that wasn’t all. I called up Jacobsen, the assistant director. Hotaling had worked the last three days on “Death Song.” I told Jacobsen to meet me at the studio in an hour, hung up and said: “Dolores — you are about to see Pat Nolan, the great detective, at work. Fix us a drink.”

I jumped out to the elevator and sat on the button and had a long heart to heart talk with the elevator boy. He checked. When I went back to the room the phone was ringing. It was the Nick Galbraith Detective Agency. He wanted to know where he could find Miss Laird. I told him I’d just put her on a train for Kansas, and clicked the receiver and told Deep South to send up a waiter. The waiter showed up in a couple minutes and we ordered dinner.

Have you ever seen an angel eat oysters? It’s marvelous.

Bachmann said: “We can’t do it — it’s bad taste, with this terrible thing happening to Maya and all...”

He and Jacobsen and Dolores and I were sitting in his office.

I did a fair imitation of staring at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Bad taste! Is it bad taste to nail her murderer? Is it bad taste to—”

Jacobsen interrupted: “I think it’s a swell idea.”

I took a bow.

“Why not give this information to the police — let them handle it?” Bachmann was gazing vacantly out the window.

“Because they’ll ruin it! Because our only hope is to force a quick confession before they know what’s hit ’em.” I stood up. “For God’s sake, Jack — where’s your showmanship?”

He swung around wearily, said: “All right — go ahead. But I think—”

I’d grabbed Dolores’ hand and we were on our way; we didn’t hear what Bachmann thought. Jacobsen pattered along behind us, ducked into his office and grabbed the phone.

By a quarter of twelve we had a complete night-crew on Stage Six. I’d told the chief-carpenter what I wanted and prop-boys, grips, juicers, and what have you were scampering around like ants at a picnic.

We worked all night. I talked Dolores into taking a nap, which she probably faked; by daylight we had the whole layout working like a piece of well-oiled machinery. Jacobsen had called Mary Fallon, Sarin’s double and stand-in, and my other principals for six-thirty and when they got there we cleared the set and rehearsed for a couple hours and then knocked off for breakfast.

The general call was for nine-thirty. The idea that we circulated around was that we were going to start “Death Song” over as if nothing had happened, because we had to meet the release-date — the old “The show must go on” gag.

I was taking over as director until Dreier came back and we were starting with a corner of one of the big sets with about thirty extras and four-bit players. We were, according to the dope that I had everyone on the lot broadcasting, going to clean up all the big stuff first while we were trying to find a girl for the Sarin part.

At a little before nine-thirty I left the restaurant and dashed over to Stage Six. Everything was ready; Jacobsen had draped a collection of the toughest mugs in Hollywood along a wall that was supposed to be one end of a prison-yard. They wore San Quentin rompers and they included Hammer and Francis J. Hotaling. Jacobsen had called both of them for bits, at seventy-five slugs a day.

I chinned with the cameraman a minute and sat down under the camera, nodded at Jacobsen; he and his kickers yelled: “Quiet — everybody!”

Bachmann was standing a little way back of me with a couple of other B. L. D. executives; Dolores was sitting on the arm of my chair with her elbow on my shoulder, which was exactly where her elbow should be.

I snapped into the loud-speaker: “Gentlemen, as Mister Jacobsen has informed you, this is the scene where you look up and see the airplane that is signaling to someone in the prison. At first you are talking to each other, moving about, smoking. The sound of the airplane is your cue. When you hear it, look up — not all at once but a few at a time. Shall we rehearse it or do you all understand?”

They bobbed their heads in concert.

I put the loud-speaker down and said: “Turn ’em over.”

The sound-man called the number and the assistant cameraman clicked his sticks, scuttled out of the scene. I lifted my right hand and the whole stage was plunged into pitch darkness.

It was entirely silent, entirely black; I felt Dolores’ hand tighten on my shoulder.

There was thin slithering sound and, suddenly, a little light. The wall had split, slid back, and we were all looking into an exact replica of Maya Sarin’s dressing-room. The light grew in it as it grows when an electric-dimmer is reversed, on a small stage. Everything else was in darkness.

Maya was sitting at her dressing-table staring drunkenly into the mirror. It was Mary Fallon, of course, but in those circumstances she looked more like Maya than Maya ever thought of. She was wearing the double of the costume Maya had been murdered in.

I expected a big triple-action gasp but I guess everyone who wasn’t in on it was too surprised to gasp, or didn’t have the wind for it. You could have heard a pin-feather fall.

There was a knock at the dressing-room door and Maya — I mean Mary — called “Come in,” huskily — with Maya’s voice. Hammer and Francis J. Hotaling came in. The make-up man had accomplished a miracle with those two; they were a couple old-timers that came nearer doubling Hammer and Hotaling than anyone else I could find in the files and they were dressed exactly as Hammer had been dressed when he and Ciretti crashed in on me, and as Hotaling had been dressed when he reached the studio.

Maya swung around and said: “Wha’ d’ yuh want?” and Hotaling put his hand in his pocket and answered: “We got that stuff for you.” Maya stood up and Hammer edged around behind her and picked up the vibrator and slammed her over the head. Then they both scurried out of the room and the lights dimmed and it was pitch dark again. And still — so still I could hear Dolores’ heart pounding beside me.

That went on for about a minute and then Hammer — the real Hammer — screamed. The lights came on and there was a lot of Law milling around and Hammer was still screaming.

We all sat in Bachmann’s office; Bachmann and Jacobsen and Dreier, who had been released, and the angel and I.

There was a knock at the door and Bachmann said: “Yes.” The secretary opened the door and Lawson, the dick from the Hollywood Station, waltzed in.

He said: “Everything’s under control. Hammer thought we were going to hang the rap on him and squealed. We caught Ciretti in the bathtub. He’s been crazy mad at Maya four or five days — ever since he caught her playing post office with his chauffeur — and getting crazier all the time. And he’s been scared, too. She’s been so high with alky and heroin and what-not she’s been shooting off her mouth about where she got it...”

“Which was from Hotaling, huh? — and Hotaling was Ciretti’s man?” I wanted to be sure about that.

Lawson nodded. “Uh-huh. Both of them, with Hammer, had decided what to do about it. Ciretti had Hotaling move into the room across from yours because he figured he could jockey Maya into going to your room and bump her off there and make it look like you did it. But Maya was sore at you and wouldn’t go for it.”

I said: “Isn’t that dandy.”

Lawson went on: “Ciretti and Hammer were there last night when Hotaling came in from the studio and said Maya and Dreier had had a battle on the set. That looked like gravy to Ciretti — he hurried over to the studio and went in the extra gate with Hotaling’s pass — they look a lot alike, anyway. He wanted to put the chill on her himself on account of the jealous angle. He smacked her down and then rushed back to the hotel. He could see you were in your room — across the court — and he suddenly had the bright idea of putting on that act for you — figuring it would double as an alibi and make it look like he was broken-hearted over her death.”

And that was, in a manner of speaking, that.

Dreier and Dolores and I walked out towards the set together. Dreier kept looking at her in a very quaint way and finally he asked: “Have you ever worked in pictures, Miss Laird?”

She smiled sidewise at me, said: “Yes — a little.”

We all stopped and Dreier turned to me. “You know,” he you-knowed in a far-away voice — “We’ve got to replace Maya very quickly. What do you think of Miss Laird for the part?”

I said I thought she’d be swell, but I knew a better part that she’d fit even more perfectly. She and I grinned at each other like a couple of kids and Dreier looked at us wide-eyed for a minute and then turned quietly and walked away.