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A Girl Comes to Hollywood
61
"Look!" Madeleine exclaimed, throwing back the scarf from the things that had been hidden, "I wouldn't have dared call you up, if I hadn't found the thing I came here to find !"
There was a fireplace in this room ; and Mr. Jones' permission to leave without cleaning the house excused in Lopez the untidy jumble of half-consumed logs, ashes, cigarette stubs, match ends, and-other waste. When a man has no cause to suppose himself watched or suspected, ' he sometimes becomes slightly careless, even when it would be wiser to take precautions. Thinking thus, Madeleine began delicately to stir the ashes with a small poker which had been left on the hearth. •
A bronze hair^ .' H pin was her first
find, proof of a woman's presence ■ — a woman with dark, unbobbed hair. Next came a broken bottle which had evidently contained perfume. It was of a well-known shape associated with a famous French perfumer.
These things were not of much use to her, nor was the half -burned metal container for lipstick. Lopez might have had many women visitors in his bungalow, Barrett would remind her, if she brought him such trifles in proof of her sensational theory. But suddenly a pile of ashes at the back of the fireplace yielded something of greater interest, a riven ball of crystal such as fortune tellers use. The fire had first cracked, then broken it in two pieces. Near by lay a pack of cards, evidently tossed onto the logs in its case, which had preserved many of the cards intact.
"The old game !" Madeleine said bitterly, for the sight of the crystal and the cards brought back dark memories.
John Barrett should see these things just as they lay; He should come here to look at them. That would be better than taking them to him. It seemed to her that, considering what she had told Barrett of the woman's profession, these partly destroyed records of a hidden presence in Marco Lopez's bungalow ought to interest the lawyer. Surely they were of some value, but the girl couldn't disguise from herself the fact that so far she was deeply disappointed.
She hadn't yet, however, exhausted the possibilities of the fireplace from which she had hoped so much.
The remaining ends of the charred logs were too heavy