Picture-Play Magazine (Sep 1928 - Feb 1929)

62 A Girl Comes to Hollywood for the small poker, so Madeleine, on her knees, began liftirig out the bits of burned wood with her fingers. She laid them one by one on the hearth and began another search through a mixture of ashes, charred rags, broken china, and all sorts of rubbish, or what Lopez in his haste must have considered rubbish. In a corner at the back, under a pair of almost unrecognizable bedroom slippers, she came at last upon a box of heavy cardboard. Its thickness had saved it from being consumed. Having been pushed under the logs, the flames had risen above it, leaving the box almost intact. Madeleine gave a little cry of excitement, and once again started at the sound of her own voice in this empty, echoing house. The box was of the sort made to hold stationery, and Madeleine's eager fingers could hardly wait to tear it open. Was she to be disappointed again, or was she to have the reward hoped for when she played her bold coup of buying Marco Lopez's bungalow? CHAPTER XXVI. ALIAS ROSE ROSEN KRANTZ. John Barrett did not drive into the street where the Lopez house stood, but left his automobile parked in a dark, quiet thoroughfare close by, where many people unable to afford a garage left their small cars more or less safely locked for the night. Barrett knew that Madeleine Standish intended to steal unobtrusively into the bungalow she'd bought, and now he approached it with caution, as he knew she would wish him to do. As he came near, meaning to knock softly, a figure rose from the shadow that darkened the front steps. "I knew you'd come!" Madeleine whispered. "When I thought it was almost time for you to get here, I came out to wait and let you in." They passed through the door Madeleine had left ajar, into the vestibule, now dark as a pocket until she flashed on the light of an electric torch. "In the studio and her room where I've been working," the girl explained, "lights can't be seen from outside. In the vestibule there are no curtains, and — I'm not taking chances ! I'm surer than ever to-night that Lopez didn't dream her existence was suspected. If he had, he wouldn't have been silly enough to leave the things I've found — ■ the things I, wanted you to see on the spot, and couldn't — just couldn't! — wait till to-morrow." "You talk about 'her' room as if yOu'd made sure of a good deal," Barrett said, as Madeleine led him into the studio. "I have/' the girl answered. "At least, it seems a good deal to me. I had to know' to-night, here in this place, what you thought about it!" She led him through the studio and the glass-walled passage to the room beyond. "Do you remember the name I told you the woman gave herself at home in the East?" the girl asked abruptly. "Yes. I've trained myself not to forget easily," Barrett answered. "She had adopted the fantastic name of Rosamund Rosenkrantz. You didn't believe it to be her real name, but you never discovered any other." "That is right !" said Madeleine. "She signed the letters I found, 'Rose,' you remember, and there was a golden rose under the monogram 'R R' on the writing paper I showed you." "I do remember. Why are you reminding me of that now?" Barrett inquired. "Look round you at this room !" the girl exclaimed. "Roses all over the wall paper — rose lights — evidently all the decorations were rose. I know the curtains were rose color, because a few threads of rose-colored silk are caught in one of those glass roses made to hold the curtains back. And don't you smell the rose incense? It was in the studio too, but it's stronger here. Everything to celebrate the beauty of the rose !" . > "Lopez is a romantic lover — something of a poet. We must grant him that," said Barrett. "She made all men romantic," Madeleine answered bitterly. "See ! I brought this bridge table in here from the studio. I've put my exhibits on it. That's what you lawyers would call them, I suppose." "You've covered some of the things with a scarf," Barrett remarked. "My scarf. I wanted you to concentrate on the least important finds first, and then — then spring the others on you. I wouldn't have dared call you up if I hadn't found the things I've hidden under the scarf !" "Bronze hairpin : long-haired, darkish woman," mumbled Barrett. "Lipstick cover. Black safety pins. Red Chinese bedroom slippers. H'm ! Not much of importance so far. Lopez posed as a bachelor here in Hollywood. He may have had any number of " "I knew you'd say that !" broke in Madeleine. "But look at the crystal and its stand ! Look at the cards ! I've told you how the woman began getting in her deadly work at home by reading the crystal and telling fortunes by cards !" "Yes, those are points in your favor — so far as proving the woman's identity is concerned, granted the lawyer, "but it has nothing to do with the case in which you and I are even more interested now than in the past — because we've got a man to save or lose." "Has it nothing to do with that case?" Madeleine challenged him. "You remember, I told you that Lady Gates spoke of a woman, some one who had advised her to consult that plastic surgeon and be rejuvenated? It was when she complained of being afraid to go alone. I asked why the 'lady who advised her' coiddn't go. She said that was impossible, and froze up when I tried to ask a few more questions. Then she suggested taking me as a paid companion, and I accepted — in the hope I might find out something about Marco Lopez and Rose Rosenkrantz. I found out nothing ! Lady Gates was as close as a clam, and of course she had been warned never to speak of the woman. I asked her once, quite suddenly — hoping to surprise the secret out of her, in case she had one — if she'd ever heard of a Mrs. Rosamund Rosenkrantz. She said 'No!' and I could. tell by the blank expression of her face that she was speaking the truth. Now, here's the proof of how that wretch wormed herself into poor Lady Gates' confidence ! She did it by the old tricks that began the breaking up of my home. I can almost see what happened — how she read the future in that crystal and told it by cards — made Lady Gates believe she could become young and beautiful, and win the passionate love of a man years her junior. I don't know whether Rosamund Rosenkrantz sent her to the most expensive jewelers and dressmakers and milliners and furriers in Hollywood, or whether Lopez did that. But some one did it, and got a huge commission, of course. The two probably managed it together as they must have done often before." "You are probably right about the woman and Lady Gates," said Barrett. "But though it may be illegal, it's not exactly a crime to tell fortunes by crystals or cards. And as I'm here, I'd better tell you what otherwise would have kept until to-morrow — two pieces of news that reached me almost together, just before I went home from my office. One came by word of mouth, one by cable from South America." "Pieces of bad news?" Madeleine asked, steadying herself. [Continued on page 961