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Film of Fear (Dramatic Reading)

<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2> The announcement, made by Mr. Baker, that Miss Marcia Ford, the film cutter, had reported for work, filled Duvall with astonishment. He had expected nothing of the sort, so convinced was he that the girl in question was the one they were looking for, the one who had been persecuting Ruth Morton, the motion picture star, with her threats. He rose from his seat, in Mr. Baker's office at the studio, and turned toward the door. "If Miss Ford has reported for work," he said, "I had better take a look at her at once. If she is the woman who escaped from the cab, last night, I shall have no difficulty in recognizing her. But I am afraid it is out of the question. Knowing that both you and I had seen her, when she fainted at the theater, she would not dare to put in an appearance here to-day. The thing is utterly incomprehensible. "Still, she might suppose that we would not suspect her, that she could carry on her work in the studio without anyone being the wiser. I seldom go into that part of the building, myself, and she would certainly not expect to see you. In fact, it may not have occurred to her that we suspect one of our employees, in spite of the stolen photograph or the fake telegram." "Suppose we take a look at her at once. That will settle the whole question," Duvall urged. "Very well." Mr. Baker closed his desk and the two men crossed the corridor and made their way into that part of the studio building devoted to the developing and finishing of the films. Mr. Emmett, the head of the department, was seated at his desk when they arrived. "So the Ford girl is here," Baker said at once. "Yes, sir. She came in about ten minutes ago, explaining her lateness by saying that she was ill, when she got up this morning, and was not sure that she could get here at all. Shall I send for her?" "No," Duvall interposed quickly. "Pardon me, Mr. Baker," he turned to the latter, "but if we send for this girl, it will arouse her suspicions. Of course I do not think she is the woman we are looking for, but she may be in league with her. Would it not be better to have Mr. Emmett and yourself conduct me through the room in which she works, as though I were a visitor to the studio? You can readily point her out to me as we pass, and that will give me ample opportunity to recognize her, in case I have ever seen her before." "I think that a very good idea," returned Baker. He said a few words to Mr. Emmett, and the three men set out to go through the rooms in which the film cutting and pasting were done. At one of the tables a girl of about twenty was at work. As they passed, Mr. Emmett turned his head and nodded. The girl did not look up, and the three men continued their way through the room. When they again reached the hall, Mr. Baker turned to Duvall. "Well?" he questioned. "It is not the woman," the detective said. "I did not suppose it would be. There is some slight resemblance, of course. The color of the eyes and hair is the same, and the features are somewhat alike. However, I am very much afraid, Mr. Baker, that I have wasted both your time and mine. And yet, I cannot get over my original impression, that the person responsible for these threats is connected, in some way, with your company." Baker, puzzled and disappointed as well, led the way back to his office. Duvall, however, when they reached it, did not enter. "I shall not remain any longer, at present," he said. "I have an idea that I can accomplish more in town. Perhaps I may discover something there—some clue, that will enable us to make progress. I have a plan that may result in something." "What is it?" Mr. Baker asked. "I prefer not to say yet. If anything develops, I will let you know. Good day." The taxicab in which he had made the trip down was still waiting for him. An hour later he had reached his hotel. The disguise of the night before he had discarded. The woman in the cab had penetrated it. His presence, and that of Mrs. Morton, at the uptown hotel, was known. There seemed to be no further purpose, for the present, in attempting to preserve his incognito. He went to his room at once, and knocked on the door which separated it from the apartment of Mrs. Morton and her daughter. The door was opened by the maid, who ushered him into the little parlor. "I will tell Mrs. Morton that you are here," the girl said, and went into the next room. Mrs. Morton came out presently, her face pale and drawn. Duvall knew at once that she had been up all night, watching, no doubt, beside her daughter. "How is Miss Ruth?" he asked. "She is better. She had a fairly good night's rest, and her fever has left her." "I am glad to hear that. I hope there have been no further threats." "No. Not yet. But I never know at what moment something may happen. It is terrible—terrible, living under a shadow like this." As she spoke, the telephone bell rang. "You answer it, Mr. Duvall," she said, turning quickly to the door by which she had entered, and closing it. "I do not think I can stand anything more at present." Duvall took down the receiver. Someone was asking for Mr. John Bradley. "This is Mr. Bradley," he said, then suddenly recognized his wife's voice. "Is this you, Richard?" she asked. "Yes. What is it?" "If you have time, to-day, come down and see me. I have something I want to tell you. Something important." "Very well. I will be there in half an hour. Good-by." He hung up the receiver. "Was it anything—anything more, Mr. Duvall?" asked Mrs. Morton. "No. Nothing of that sort. Well, I must go along now. I merely looked in to ask after your daughter. There is one thing I want you to do, however, and that is, let me have a key to your apartment on 57th Street." Mrs. Morton took the key from her purse, and handed it to him. "Haven't you any good news, yet?" she asked, somewhat pathetically. "Not yet—at least nothing very definite. I know the woman who is annoying your daughter by sight, however, and I think I can safely assure you that she will be under arrest before very long. Matters of this sort take time, Mrs. Morton. Remember that I have had charge of the case but three days, and these people we are looking for are shrewd, leaving few clues. But I feel that I shall have something definite to report very soon now." "I hope so, I'm sure. Good day." "Good day." Duvall left the room, and taking a taxi, drove down to see Grace. He found her sitting at the writing desk, in the reception room of their suite, apparently busy over a letter. She pushed the sheet of paper aside, when her husband entered, and threw her arms about his neck. "Richard!" she exclaimed, "I'm so glad to see you. It has been ages. What's the matter with you? You look dreadfully blue." Duvall threw himself into a chair. "I'm a bit disgusted with myself," he said. "What about? I may ask you now, may I not? Is it about that wretched Morton case? I must talk to you about that. May I? You see, you rather got me into it, last night, and I got myself into it, too, by coming up to your hotel to see you, and now you've got to tell me how things turned out, after you left the theater, or I shall not know just what to do." "About what?" "I'll tell you that, after I hear about last night." Duvall laughed, although a trifle grimly. "I'm not particularly proud of last night," he said. "Wasn't the woman who fainted the one you were after?" asked Grace. "Yes. I'm sure she was. But unfortunately, she got away from me." He outlined to Grace the circumstances which led up to the woman's escape from the cab. "You say she was a small, slight woman, with light hair?" "Yes. Why?" "Then I may know something about her." "What?" "I'll tell you. You remember that, when I came up to see you at the hotel yesterday afternoon, you were greatly put out, because you were afraid that I might have been followed, thus disclosing the name of your hotel to these people you are trying to avoid?" "Yes. I was afraid of it. And the people in question did find out in some way where I had taken Miss Morton and her mother, as I discovered last night." "They did not discover it through me." "How do you know?" "It came about in a curious way. After you told me, over the telephone, that you feared I might have been followed, I looked up the taxi driver who took me uptown, and asked him if anyone had tried to question him. I thought that possibly this hotel might have been watched, and, if so, the person who was watching it might have noticed the number of my car, or the driver, and later, applied to him for information. I saw him as soon as I returned. No one had done so." "That is all very well, but they might have asked him, and found out where he drove you, later." "They did ask him, later. Why is it, Richard, that you seem to forget that I have done detective work before, too? I suspected that he might be approached, and I subsidized him—gave him ten dollars, and instructed him to let me know, in case anyone questioned him about me." "Well, late yesterday afternoon, a woman, answering the description you give, did apply to the cabman to find out where he had driven me. Naturally he told her nothing. Then, thinking, I suppose, that I might repeat my visit, she gave him five dollars, and told him to let her know in case I drove from here to any other hotel. She figured, no doubt, that being your wife, I was certain to go and see you." Duvall sat forward in his chair, an eager look upon his face. "You did splendidly, Grace," he said. "Much better than I have done. But the important point is this. How was the cabman to let her know, and where? Did she give him her name and address?" "She gave him a name and address. It is about that, that I wanted to see you." "What was it?" "Alice Watson. General Delivery. He was to write her a letter." Duvall sank back in his chair with a disappointed look. "An assumed name, of course," he said. "I'm afraid it won't be of much service to us." "But why? I was going to write this woman a letter, giving her the name of some other hotel—any one would do. Then, she would come there to find you, we could have the cabman, Leary, on watch to point her out, and in that way identify her and perhaps follow her to her home." Duvall shook his head. "It would have worked splendidly, my dear," he said, "except for the fact that in some way the woman has already discovered the name of my hotel. She will not go to the general delivery window at the post office to get it, now, for she already knows it. And if she did, she would realize as soon as she read your letter that you were not telling her the truth. Is that what you have been so busy about?" He glanced at the half-finished letter that lay on his wife's desk. "Yes." Grace looked at him rather sheepishly. "I am terribly disappointed," she said. "I really hoped that I had discovered something that would help you." She took from the desk the piece of paper that contained Alice Watson's address, and tearing it into bits, dropped them slowly into the waste basket. Duvall observed her action. "What are you tearing up?" he asked. "Oh, nothing. Merely the bit of paper that contained the woman's assumed name and address. It is of no use any longer." She glanced at a scrap of the paper, about half an inch square, that remained between her fingers, then started. "There must have been something on the other side," she exclaimed. "There's a part of a name here—printed or engraved. It looks like 'Ford.'" Duvall sprang from his chair and made a dive for the scrap basket. "Ford!" he exclaimed. "That's queer! We must get every scrap of that card at once." It took the two of them several minutes to gather from the basket the tiny pieces into which Grace had torn the bit of paper. Then they fitted them together. Duvall saw at once, as soon as he picked up the first scrap, that the address had been written on a card. When the several pieces had at last been assembled upon the top of the desk, it became quite clear that the Watson name and address had been hastily scrawled upon the torn half of a visiting card. Slowly and carefully Duvall turned the bits over. The words engraved upon the opposite side filled him with delight. There were first the letters "cia," followed by the name "Ford." Beneath were two figures, a "6" and a "2," and after them, West 57th Street. Duvall gazed at the result in surprise, then taking from his pocketbook the torn half of the card he had found the night before in the cab, he laid it beside the fragments on the desk. The two fitted exactly. The name and address were both plain. Evidently the woman who had interviewed the cabman, Leary, and the woman who had escaped from the cab were one and the same. She had taken a card from her purse, torn it in half, written the "Alice Watson" address that she gave the cabman on one half, and thrust the other back into her handbag. Later, when Duvall had attempted to examine the contents of the bag, the bit of card had fallen to the floor. All that was sufficiently clear. Grace, looking over her husband's shoulder, read the completed name and address. "Miss Marcia Ford," she exclaimed. "162 West 57th Street. Why, Richard, there is the name and address of the woman you want." "It may be her address," her husband remarked, gloomily, "but it certainly isn't her name." "But—Why not?" "Because I saw Marcia Ford this morning, and she isn't the woman!" Grace looked at him in astonishment. "Are you sure?" she cried. "Perfectly. Marcia Ford is not the one we are after." "Then how do you explain the woman having a card with that name on it?" "I don't explain it—unless," he paused for a moment in thought. "Unless this Ford woman, and the other one, are in league with each other, which might account for the latter having her card in her purse." "And the address! Is that where Marcia Ford lives?" "I don't know. It may be where they both live, for all I can tell. I only hope it is." He rose and took up his hat. "Where are you going?" Grace asked. "To 162 West 57th Street." Suddenly he took his wallet from his pocket, snatched a second card from it, and after looking at it for a moment, gave an exclamation of delighted surprise. "What is it?" Grace asked quickly. He thrust the card into her hand. Grace glanced at it, without quite understanding what it meant. "I don't see what you mean," she exclaimed. "The thing is clear enough. The card I have just given you belongs to Miss Ruth Morton." "I see that, but——" "Then surely you must see that Miss Morton's apartment also is on Fifty-seventh Street, and just two doors from the address of Miss Marcia Ford!" <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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