Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 31, No. 4. Whole No. 173, April 1958

Robert Bloch Is Betsey Blake Still Alive?

By Hollywood standards, Betsey Blake — the Blonde Baby, the madcap Miss Mystery — died at exactly the wrong time. But it had happened before — Valentino, Harlow, James Dean. So Hollywood knew exactly what to do.

In April, Steve rented a little cottage down at the beach. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t “down” at all; it stood right on the edge of a steep cliff, and you had to walk almost a quarter of a mile until you got to the nearest steps. But Steve didn’t care. He hadn’t come to the beach to go swimming.

He’d holed up here for a dual purpose. He wanted to lick his wounds and he wanted to write. Things hadn’t gone too well for Steve during the past year — six weeks as a junior writer at one of the major studios, but no contract, and two originals picked up by small independent producers on option, only both options had lapsed without anybody getting excited. So Steve had broken with his agent after one of those standard “To hell with Hollywood!” routines and retreated to the beach. Sometimes he thought he was going to write the Great American Novel. At other times, when the fog rolled in, he’d stand at the window and gaze down at the water, thinking how easy it would be to jump.

Then he met Jimmy Powers, and things got worse.

Jimmy Powers had a cottage right down the line from the one Steve had rented. He came rolling up four or five nights a week in a big new Buick convertible. He had a nice collection of Italian silk suits, but when he was at the beach he preferred to lounge around in matching shorts-and-shirts outfits, all of which had his initials monogrammed on the pockets. Often he came for the weekend, hauling a case of champagne in the trunk of the car. On such occasions Jimmy was usually accompanied by a stock-contract girl from the studio where he was employed as a public relations man.

The thing that got Steve down was the fact that Jimmy Powers (Buick, silk suits, monogrammed shirts, champagne and starlets) was only twenty-three.

“How does he do it?” Steve asked himself over and over. “The guy’s got nothing on the ball. He can’t write for sour apples. He’s not even a good front man. It isn’t charm, or personality, or good looks, or anything like that. What’s his secret?”

But Jimmy Powers never talked about his work at the studio; and whenever Steve brought up the subject, he’d switch to another topic. But one evening, when both of them had half a load on, Steve tried again.

“How long you had this job, Jimmy?”

This time it worked.

“Almost three years.”

“You mean you started when you were twenty? Just walked into one of the biggest outfits in the business and snagged a public relations job?”

“That’s right.”

“No previous experience? And right away they let you do promotion puffs on their top stars?”

“That’s the way the ball bounced.”

“I don’t get it.” Steve stared at him. “How does a guy fall into something like that?”

“Oh, it isn’t so much, really,” Jimmy told him. “Only three bills a week.”

“Only three bills.” Steve grunted. “For a kid like you? I’ve never come close to a steady three hundred a week, and I’ve knocked around the Industry for years. What gives, Jimmy? Level with me. Do you know where the body is buried?”

“Something like that,” Jimmy answered. He gave Steve a kind of funny look and changed the subject, fast.

After that evening, Jimmy Powers wasn’t very friendly any more. There were no further invitations to the handsomely furnished cottage. Then for about three weeks Jimmy stopped coming down to the beach altogether. By this time Steve was actually in production, grinding away at a book.

He was hard at it that evening in June when Jimmy Powers knocked on his door.

“Hi, sweetheart,” he said. “Mind if I barge in?”

At first Steve thought Jimmy was drunk, but a double-take convinced him that the guy was just terribly excited. Powers paced up and down, snapping his fingers like a cornball juvenile in an expectant-father routine.

“Still writing the Great American Novel, huh?” Jimmy said. “Come off it, chum. Maybe I can steer you onto some real moola.”

“Like three bills a week?” Steve asked.

“Peanuts. I’m talking about big money. The minute I hit this angle I thought of you.”

“Very kind, I’m sure. What do I have to do — help you stick up the Bank of America?”

Jimmy ignored the gag. “You know where I just come from? M.P.’s office. That’s right — for the last five hours, solid, I’ve been sitting in Mr. Big’s office preaching the Word. Ended up with cart blank to handle the whole deal. Any way I want.”

“What deal?”

Jimmy sat down then, and when he spoke again his voice was softer.

“You know what happened to Betsey Blake?” he asked.

Steve nodded. He knew what had happened to Betsey Blake, all right. Every man, woman, and child in the United States had been bombarded for the past two weeks with news reports about the Betsey Blake tragedy.

It had been one of those freak accidents. Betsey Blake, the Screen’s Blonde Baby, the one and only Miss Mystery, was piloting her speedboat just outside Catalina Channel around twilight on the evening of June 2nd. According to the reports, she was preparing to enter the annual racing event the following Sunday, to try for her fourth straight win. Nobody knew just what had happened because there were no witnesses, but apparently her speedboat rammed into another boat head-on, killing a Mr. Louis Fryer of Pasadena. And herself.

Both boats had gone down immediately, and divers were still making half-hearted efforts to recover them from the deep water outside the choppy channel when, two days later, Fryer’s body was washed up on a lonely beach. The next day Betsey Blake’s corpse made a farewell appearance in the same place.

Betsey’s identification took another few days to be established definitely enough to satisfy authorities, but there was no doubt about it. The Blonde Baby was no more.

It was a big story, because The Blonde Baby had been up there for a long time. The “Miss Mystery” tag had been pinned on her when she first rose to prominence in pictures, and she’d always lived up to it, taking unusual care to conceal her private life, which rumor had it was just one lurid escapade after another.

So the papers had had a field day digging up her past. They managed to ring in the name of virtually every important male star of the past twenty years. Some of the scandal sheets hinted that they could also mention the names of most of the studio set-dressers, gaffers, and truck-drivers over the same period.

“What happened?” Steve asked Powers. “Did your boss have a heart attack?”

Jimmy nodded. “Just about. Her death puts us on a real spot. The Friday before, she’d just finished her part in Splendor. Studio wrapped the picture up, four million bucks’ worth of Technicolor, Super-Cinemascope, three top stars — the works. It’s all finished, no more retakes, the sets are struck, the film is in the can. And then Betsey kicks off.”

“So?”

“So? M.P. is sitting there with a very cold turkey. Sure, if he could push Splendor out to the exhibitors right away, maybe he could capitalize on the headlines a little. But this is our biggest picture for the year. We already set it up for late Fall release, around November, to catch the holiday trade and make a bid for the Awards. You begin to see the grief? Comes November, and Betsey Blake will be dead six months. By that time all the excitement is over. Who’s going to plunk down a dollar-twenty to see somebody who’s putting out free lunch to the worms? M.P. has to gross at least five million to break even. How’s he going to do it? So for the past two weeks he’s been nursing a real headache. Takes a lot of aspirin to cure a headache like that.”

“But where do you come in?”

“With the U.S. Marines,” Jimmy said. “Here M.P. and all the big wheels have been batting their brains out trying to come up with an angle — naturally, they had to junk the whole publicity campaign — and all they’ve got for their pains is sweat. Well, I got busy, and today I walked into M.P.’s office and laid five million potatoes right in his lap — maybe seven or eight.”

“You found a solution?” Steve asked.

“Damned right I found a solution! It was sitting there staring them in the face all the time. I say it — right on M.P.’s wall. I walked over and pointed to the picture. That’s all, brother.”

“Picture on the wall?” Steve said. “Whose picture?”

Jimmy made with the dramatic pause.

“Valentino.”

“Come again?”

“Rudolph Valentino, You’ve heard of him?”

“Sure I’ve heard of him.”

“Yeah. Well, chances are you wouldn’t have if some bright boy hadn’t pulled the same stunt back in ’26.”

“What stunt?”

“Valentino went up like a skyrocket, but he was coming down fast. Then, just when he’d finished The Son of the Sheik — bingo! he gets appendicitis or something and croaks. So there the studio sits — with a dead star and a dead flicker. That’s when some genius pulled a rabbit out of the hat.”

Jimmy Powers snapped his fingers again. “They staged the most sensational funeral you ever saw. Poured out the puffs about the passing of the screen’s Greatest Lover. Filled the newspapers, jammed the magazines, flooded the country with Valentino. Made out that all the dames who used to flip over him on the screen were soaking their handkerchiefs now that he was gone. By the time his picture was released they had everybody so hot to see it there was no holding them. The picture and the re-releases made so much dough that even the Valentino estate paid its debts and showed a profit. How did they do it? Women weeping at the grave, rumors cropping up that Rudy was still alive — publicity. Publicity — with a capital P.”

Jimmy Powers grinned. “Well, I guess you get my angle. M.P. sure latched onto it! And I pointed out to him that we had an even better deal going for us. Because we had this Miss Mystery gimmick to play with, and a real mysterious death. We can even start a story that Betsey Blake is still alive — stuff like that.”

“But she was positively identified—”

“I know, I know! So was Booth, and Mata Hari, and this Anasthesia dame, or whatever her name was, over in Russia. But the suckers go for that angle. Is Betsey Blake Still Alive? We plant articles in all the rags. Maybe even pony up some loot to get out special one-shots. The Betsey Blake Magazine. You know, like they did on this kid Presley, and a lot of others. Hire some kids to start Betsey Blake fan clubs. Get some of the high-priced talent to write sob stuff for the women’s magazines. Like how Betsey Blake was a symbol of American girlhood.”

“But she wasn’t a symbol,” Steve objected. “And she wasn’t exactly a girl, either.”

“Sure, sure, she was past forty. And I happen to know M.P. was going to axe her the minute her contract ran out. But she was well-preserved, you got to admit that, and. a lot of the kids still went for her. We can build it up — yes sir, man, we can build it up!”

No doubt about it, Jimmy Powers was very excited. “And think of what we can do with her past! Nobody has dope on her real name, or just how she got started in show biz back in the Thirties. Wait’ll we get to work on The Real Betsey Blaise and The Betsey Blake Nobody Knows.”

The excitement was contagious. In spite of himself Steve found himself saying, “Say, that’s a possibility, isn’t it? You might be able to uncover all sorts of things. Didn’t I once hear a rumor that she’d had an illegitimate child by some producer? And that she was once married to—”

Jimmy Powers shook his head.

“No, that isn’t the kind of stuff we want at all! You hear that stuff about everybody in the Industry. I’m giving strict orders to lay off any investigation, get me? We’ll cook up our own stories. Make any kind of a past we want. Maybe get her mixed up with some of these mystic cults, you know what I mean. Hint foul play, too. Oh, we’ll have a ball!”

“We? I thought this was just your baby.”

“It is — M.P. gave me the green light all the way. But it’s a big job, Steve. That’s why I thought of you, sweetheart. You’d be a natural on this kind of promotion — doing some of the high-class stuff — like, say, for those women’s rags I mentioned. So how’s about it, Stevie-burger? How’d you like to be a great big legend-maker?”

Steve sat there for a moment without opening his mouth. And when finally he did open it, he had no idea what was going to come out.

“You know Betsey Blake when she was alive?” he asked.

“Of course I did. Handled most of her promotion — Stalzbuck was in charge, really, but I did a lot of the work. I thought you knew that.”

“I wasn’t sure.” Steve hesitated. “What kind of person was she, really?”

Jimmy Powers shrugged. “An oddball. What difference does it make?”

“Was she friendly? Would you say she was a kind person?”

“In a way. Yes, she was. So why the District Attorney bit?”

“Because she’s dead, Jimmy, Dead and gone, in a tragic accident. And the dead should be allowed to rest in peace. You can’t just go and pitch a sideshow over her grave.”

“Who says I can’t?”

It was Steve’s turn to shrug. “All right. I suppose you can. And nothing I say is going to stop you, is it?”

“Damned right it won’t!”

Steve nodded. “Then go ahead. But, in the classic phrase, include me out. And thanks all the same. I can’t be a ghoul.”

Jimmy stared at him. “So I’m a ghoul, huh?” he muttered. “Well, I’ve got news for you. I’m a ghoul and you’re a fool. A damned fool.”

“Knock it off, please.”

“Okay.” Jimmy paused at the door. “You were always asking me what it takes to get along in this racket. Well, Stevie, it takes guts, that’s what it takes. Guts to see your big opportunity when it comes along, and guts to follow through. Guts that you haven’t got, Stevie-boy.”

“Maybe I was brought up differently.”

Jimmy laughed harshly. “You can say that again! Brother, if you only knew how differently! I got the perfect training for this particular job, believe me. And just you watch how I make good on it.”

Then he was gone, and Steve tried to go back to work.

Jimmy stayed away from the beach for a long time — right through the height of the summer season. Steve figured he was working on his promotion, but there was no word from him.

Then the news started trickling in. The trickle became a stream, the stream became a flood.

The Betsey Blake legend burst open the American public during the latter part of August. By September the first magazines hit the stands, carrying their planted stories. By October the specials were out, the fan clubs were formed, and the television people were combing their files for old kinescopes of Betsey Blake’s few live shows.

The whole thing was just as Jimmy Powers had outlined it, only more so. I Was Betsey Blade’s Last Date vied for attention with The Loves of Betsey. And there was The Truth About—, and The Real—, and What They Don’t Dare Print About—, and a hundred others. The studio, meanwhile, was doing an indefatigable job tying in Splendor. Betsey Blake in her last and greatest performance! The greatest actress of the American screen!

On a different level there was the Betsey Blake — The Woman Nobody Knew approach. In this series it was possible to learn that Betsey Blake had herself been the daughter of a reigning celebrity of the silent screen, or of royal European blood, or merely a youngster out of Hollywood High School who deliberately set out to fashion a career for herself.

There were as many, and as conflicting, details as to her love fife. And there was much speculation about why she had maintained such an air of secrecy concerning her personal affairs. She was a devout churchgoer, she was a freethinker, she was a secret Satanist, she dabbled in astrology, she attended Voodoo ceremonies in Haiti, she was really an old woman who had discovered the secret of eternal youth. She was secretly an intellectual and her lovers included most of the celebrated literary figures of our generation; she was actually a shy, sensitive person who couldn’t face her own image on the screen; she was a devoted student of the drama who had planned to retire from the screen and establish her own repertory theater. She loved children and wanted to adopt half a dozen, she had been jilted as a girl and still cherished the memory of her one real love, she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and spent all her money on psychiatrists.

All this, and much more, could be learned by any reader during early fall.

But Jimmy Powers had prophesied correctly when he said that the mystery angle would prove to be the most attractive part of the legend. There was the Betsey Blake Did Not Die! theory, which played up the “strange circumstances” surrounding the case, the “unexplained disappearance” of the two boats, the “reluctance” of the studio to exhibit the body in a public funeral. This angle fastened on every conceivable circumstance, real or rumored, which could be offered as “proof.”

As November approached, the volume and tempo of the articles neared a crescendo. For now the Betsey Blake legend was public property, and the fake fan clubs had given way to real fan clubs. Some of the scandal rags were printing the “inside story” and the “real lowdown” — Betsey Blake had been a tramp, she had been an alcoholic, she had started out posing for “art studies” and worse — but none of these allegations affected the legend. Rather, they served to strengthen it. To her growing army of devotees came the teenagers, and that was the final victory. Everyone from eight to eighty was breathlessly awaiting the advent of Splendor on their local screens.

It was early one night in November, as Steve sat typing the second draft of his novel, that Jimmy Powers reappeared.

Once again he hailed Steve from the doorway, and once again Steve thought he might be drunk.

This time, however, he had more grounds for his suspicion, because as Jimmy entered the room he brought an alcoholic aura with him.

“How ya doing, boy?” he shouted.

Steve started to tell him, but Powers wasn’t really listening.

“Guess I don’t have to tell you how I’m doing,” he exclaimed. “We open nation-wide next week. Nation-wide, get me? No previews, no test spots, no New York first run — just solid bookings straight across the board. Every key city, and the highest percentage of the gross we ever sold a picture for! And who did it, Stevie-burger? Me, that’s who.”

Steve lit a cigarette to avoid having to make any comment.

“And don’t think the Industry doesn’t know it! Man, are the offers pouring in. Of course, M.P.’s a smart old buzzard — he’s not going to let me get away from him. Two grand a week, five years non-cancellable, and that’s not all. When the pic opens I get a bonus. Fifty Gs under the table. You imagine that? Fifty Gs, cash, that nobody will ever know about. No taxes, nothing. Let me tell you, M.P. knows how to make a gesture. Of course, it’s worth it to him. I been sweating blood on this thing, Stevie. Nobody will ever know the throats I had to cut—”

“Don’t tell me,” Steve said.

“Still playing it simon-pure, huh? Well, that’s okay by me, no hard feelings. I just wanted you to know what you missed out on, sweetheart. This was the biggest coup of the century.”

“You can say that again.”

Both Jimmy Powers and Steve stared at the woman in the doorway. She was short, brown-haired, and plump enough to fill out the rather bedraggled slacks-and-sweater combination she was wearing. Her feet were bare, and she had some difficulty balancing on them, because she was obviously tight as a tick.

“What the hell—?” Jimmy began as she weaved toward him with a smirk.

“Saw you leave your shack just as I came along,” she said. “So I just sneaked in there by myself and had a little drinkie. I could hear you talking over here, so I thought why not come over and join the party?”

“Mind telling me who you are?” Steve asked, a premonition growing in him.

The woman grinned and pointed at Jimmy Powers. “Ask him,” she said.

Jimmy Powers just stood there, his face going from red to white.

“No,” he said. “No, it isn’t — it can’t be—”

“The hell it isn’t,” said the woman. “You know better than to try and get away with that.”

“But what happened? Where have you been?”

“Took myself a little trip.” The woman giggled. “It’s kind of a long sh-story.” She turned to Steve. “Got anything to drink?”

Before Steve could answer, Jimmy stepped forward. “You’ve had enough,” he said. “Tell your story and make it fast.”

“All right, all right, hold your horses.” The woman flopped into an armchair and for a moment stared at the floor.

“I saw the papers, of course,” she said. “They got it all wrong.”

“Then why didn’t you do something?” Jimmy growled.

“Because I was on a trip, remember? I mean I saw them all right, but they were a couple of months old.” She paused. “You going to let me tell this my way?”

“Go ahead.”

“Sure, I cracked into this other boat, like they said. Damn thing running without a light, motor throttled down so’s I never heard a thing. This Louis Fryer was on board, like they said — I knew old Louie from ’way back. What the papers didn’t know, of course, is that he wasn’t alone. He must have picked up some tramp off the beach, some blonde floozy hanging around the Yacht Club. Anyway, when we hit she got it, too. At least that’s the way it figures. She got it and when her body came up they identified her as me.”

“And what happened to—?”

“I’m coming to that part. I passed out, I guess. But I had sense enough to hang onto the boat.”

“The boat went down. They never found it.”

“The boat didn’t go down. And the reason they never found it was that it got picked up that night. With me with it. Little Mexican freighter spotted us just outside the channel and hauled us on board. Me and the boat. I was out cold — guess I had a concussion. When I came to, I was on my way to Chile.”

“Chile?”

The woman nodded. “Sure, Chile. That’s in South America, you know? Valparaiso, Santiago — we went everywhere. Those little wildcat freighters, they take their own good-natured time when they make a trip. Besides, I sold the boat down there for a good price. Made enough to pay my way and plenty left over for tequila. Captain was a good friend of mine. Whole crew, for that matter. You see, they didn’t ever catch on to who I was. All they could see was a blonde. At least, after I got another bottle of rinse and touched it up a bit.” The woman gestured toward her tousled hair. “You know how they flip for a blonde.” She giggled again.

Jimmy Powers stood up. “You mean to tell me you’ve spent the last five months helling around on a freighter with a bunch of Mex grease-monkeys?” he shouted.

“And why not? First real vacation I’ve had in years. And believe me, it was one long party. When I found out in Santiago what the score was, I thought the hell with it, let ’em suffer. This was my big chance to get off the hook for a while and live a little. So I lived. But we ran out of cash, the Captain and I, so when we docked at Long Beach today I came ashore, I knew M.P. would blow his stack if I walked in on him cold. I figured I’d see you first. Maybe we can cook up a publicity angle together, so when we hit M.P. he won’t go through the roof.”

The woman turned to Steve. “You sure you haven’t got a drinkie?” she asked. “Jeez, look at my hair. Got to get to a beauty parlor right away. Nobody’d recognize me. Isn’t that right, pal? Go ahead, admit it — you didn’t recognize me either at first, did you? Gained fifteen pounds, hair grown out. And next week the picture opens—”

“That’s right,” Jimmy Powers said. “Next week the picture opens.”

The woman stood up, swaying. “One thing I got to hand you,” she said. “You did a wonderful promotion job. Even in Chile they knew all about it. And when I hit town today, first thing I did was hike over to the magazine racks. There I am, all over the place. A wonnerful job.”

“Yeah,” said Jimmy.

“Well, don’t just stand there. Now you gotta do even a more wonnerful job. Because I’m back. That’s the real topper, isn’t it? Wait until this one hits the good old public!”

“Yeah,” said Jimmy.

“Of course, this time I’ll be around to help you. I got a line all cooked up. The Captain, he won’t do any talking — he’s shoving off again for Mexico tomorrow morning. We can handle it any way we like. Hah, I can just see the look on the face of old Louie Fryer’s wife when she finds out he had a blonde on board! But it’s a wonnerful story. It’ll be a big needle for the picture.”

“Yeah,” said Jimmy.

She turned away and faced Steve again. “How about that drinkie, lover-boy?”

“I’ll give you a drink,” Jimmy Powers said. “Over at my place. Come along now.”

“Betcha.”

He placed his arm around the woman and guided her toward the door. Then he paused and looked at Steve. “Stick around, will you?” he said. “I want to talk to you later.”

Steve nodded.

He saw them disappear into Jimmy’s cabin. It was the only other cottage with lights on all along the beach — November is off-season.

He could even have listened and caught some of their conversation. But Steve couldn’t concentrate. He was too busy calling himself names.

Was this the woman he’d been too noble to help turn into a legend? Was her reputation worth protecting at the sacrifice of his own future? Jimmy had been right — the trouble with him was he had no guts. His chance had come and he’d muffed it. For what?

Steve was too wrapped up in name calling to notice what time it was Jimmy and the woman left. When he finally glanced across the way he saw that the lights of the cottage had gone out.

Jimmy Powers had said he was coming back. Where was he? Steve started for the door. He was quite sure Jimmy hadn’t driven away, because he would have heard the sound of the car.

Just then Jimmy came stumbling up the walk. He seemed to have taken on quite a bit more to drink.

Steve said, “What’s the matter? Where’s Betsey Blake?”

“Who?” Jimmy staggered in the doorway, then steadied himself against the side of the screen. “You mean the old bat who barged in here? I hope you didn’t go for that line of malarkey she tried to hand out.”

“But it figures, Jimmy. You can check up on it—”

“I don’t have to. When I got her over to my place I started asking a few questions and she broke down. She was just running a bluff — made the whole thing up. She’s no more Betsey Blake than you are.”

“What!”

Jimmy Powers wiped his forehead. “I think she was figuring on a shakedown. You know — come out with the story just before the picture’s set to break, and threaten to queer the works unless the studio pays off.” He shook his head. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter, now.”

“You scared her off?”

“No.” Jimmy gulped. “Don’t get me wrong, pal. Nobody scared her. She just left of her own free will, and under her own steam. You got to get that straight, see? Because I... I think there’s been sort of an accident.”

“Accident?”

Steve stiffened, and Jimmy went limp.

“I’m not sure yet. That’s why I came over. I wanted you to come with me and look—”

“Look at what? Where is she?”

“Well, you must have noticed, she was crocked, wasn’t she? I happened to be at the back window after she left, and I saw her stumbling along the edge of the cliff, like. I was all set to holler at her — listen to what I’m telling you, Stevie-boy, you got to get this — I was all set to holler at her when she sort of fell. Bingo, like that, she’s gone.”

“You mean she... But that’s a sixty-foot drop!”

Jimmy gulped again. “I know. I haven’t looked. I’m afraid to, alone.”

“We’d better call the cops,” Steve said.

“Yeah, sure. But I wanted to talk to you first. Alone, see? I mean, we call them, right away they’ll ask a lot of questions. Who was she, where did she come from, what did she want around here? You know cops.”

“Tell them the truth.”

“And queer the picture?”

“But you say she wasn’t Betsey Blake.”

“She wasn’t, but the minute they find out she claimed to be, the whole campaign is in the soup. Don’t you understand, Steve? People will start wondering — was she or wasn’t she? I worked my tail off building up a legend, and now it can all tumble down just because some dizzy old bag takes a header off a cliff.”

Steve tried to get Jimmy Powers to meet his stare, but the bloodshot eyes kept rolling. “What I mean to say,” he was muttering, “is why not just forget the whole thing?”

“But we’ve got to notify the authorities. Who knows? She may still be alive down there.” Steve started for the phone.

“I know, I know. You got to tell them. But she isn’t alive, she couldn’t be. And all I want is that you don’t say anything about her coming here tonight. Or that she said anything. Make believe it never happened. I just looked out the window before I went to bed and I noticed this beach bum stagger over the edge. That’s the way it was. No harm done, is there, Steve? I mean, look at all that’s at stake.”

“I’m looking,” Steve said. “And I’ll think about it.” He went to the phone and dialed. “Hello, get me police headquarters. I want to report an accident...”

He didn’t waste words. No details — a woman had apparently fallen over the cliff, such-and-such an address; yes, he’d be waiting for them.

When Steve hung up, the publicity man expelled his breath in a deep sigh.

“That’s the way to do it,” he said. “You handled it just right. I won’t forget you, Stevie-boy.”

“I’m still thinking,” Steve said. “When they get here I’ll make up my mind what to say.”

“Now, listen—”

“You listen to me. What makes you so sure that woman wasn’t who she claimed to be? No, don’t give me that blackmail argument again. Nobody gets drunk when they’re out to pull a shakedown.” He walked over to Jimmy Powers. “Let me ask you another question. Suppose she really was Betsey Blake. Then what? Why couldn’t you have made the announcement tomorrow, the way she said? Think of the sensation it would have made, what it would have done for the picture.”

Jimmy drew back against the door. “To hell with the picture,” he said. “It’s me I’m thinking about. Don’t you understand that, meat-head? This is my promotion, mine all the way. I cooked it up. I nursed it. It’s my baby, and everybody in this town knows it. The picture’s gonna be a smash, and who gets the credit? Me, that’s who.

“Figure it your way and see what happens. So she breaks the story, and there’s a sensation all right. Maybe even a bigger sensation, a real sockeroo. But it’s not going to do the picture any more good — we’ve got it made already, just the way it is. And so Betsey Blake turns up alive, then what? She’s still an old bag — she can’t play leads any more, not even if they photograph her through a scrim to take the wrinkles out. Alive, she’s just a middle-aged tramp who hits the sauce. Dead, she’s a legend. She’s right up there with Valentino and Harlow and James Dean. Her old pictures are worth a fortune in re-run rights. I tell you, it adds up!

“Besides, if she breaks the story, what happens to me? I’m the fair-haired boy right now. But if she tops me, then she gets the credit. You heard her say it yourself, how ‘we’ were gonna figure out an angle together. I know that ‘together’ line from way back! She’d take all the bows, steal all the scenes. Believe me, Steve, I know! She was always like that, couldn’t stand to have anyone else share the spot with her. It was Betsey Blake, first, last, and always. The things she pulled with me personally! I would have rotted in the publicity department the rest of my life if this break hadn’t come along. You don’t get this kind of a chance often out here, Steve. I took it, and I worked on it, and nobody’s gonna grab it away from me at the last minute. I wouldn’t let her—”

Steve put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “You told me what I wanted to know,” he said. “She was Betsey Blake, wasn’t she?”

“I ain’t saying. And you don’t have to say anything either, when the cops come. I mean, Steve, have a heart — what good can it do now? You don’t know anything about it, that’s all you tell ’em. I’ve got five grand I can bring over here tomorrow morning. Five grand in cash that says you don’t know anything. Hell, ten grand. And a job at the studio—”

“So she was Betsey Blake,” Steve murmured. “And she just walked out of your place and fell off the cliff.”

“Those things happen, you know how it is, a drunk dame and her foot slips. It was an accident, I swear it was! All right, if you must know, I was with her — I didn’t want to tell you that part. I was with her, I was going to drive her home, and then she let go of my arm and stumbled off.”

“There’ll be footprints in the sand,” Steve said. “And they’ll check anyway, they always do. They’ll find out who she really is, and they’ll investigate from start to finish. They’ll go all the way back—”

Jimmy Powers wilted. Steve had to hold him up.

“I never figured,” he said. “Sure, they’ll go all the way back.”

“You shouldn’t have killed her.”

“Don’t say that, Stevie!”

“It’s true, isn’t it? You did kill her. You knew she was Betsey Blake, but you killed her anyway, because you thought she’d queer your big deal.”

Jimmy didn’t answer. Instead he hit out at Steve, and Steve twisted and brought up his arm. Jimmy sagged. Steve held him there, listening for the sound of a siren in the distance.

“Fifty grand,” Jimmy whispered. “I told you I had it coming. Fifty grand, all in cash. Nobody’d ever know.”

Steve sighed. “When I heard about the money I was ready to kick myself,” he said. “I thought I was a sucker because I didn’t have your kind of guts. But now I know what it means to have them. It means you don’t stop at anything, not even killing.”

“You don’t understand,” Jimmy whimpered. “I wanted to live it up, I wanted my chance to be a big shot. She never gave it to me while she was alive, and when she disappeared I thought my big break had finally come. But what’s the use now? Like you say, they’ll find out sooner or later. I ought to have doped it out. I couldn’t get away with it. And now it’ll kill the legend, too.”

“Never mind the legend,” Steve said. “You killed a woman.” The sirens were close now; he could hear the tires squealing to a halt. “I guess I don’t understand at that,” Steve said. “I don’t understand your breed of rat at all. Call yourself a big-shot publicity man, do you? Why, you’d murder your own mother for a story.”

Jimmy Powers gave him a funny look as the cops came in. “That’s right,” he whispered. “How’d you guess?”