Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Jul 1929)

67 The last installment of our great serial proves that all's well that ends well in our heroine's unraveling of a baffling mystery. By Alice M. Will lamson Illustrated by X e n a Wright Synopsis of Previous Chapters. Malcolm Allen, a young British novelist in Hollywood, goes to the rescue of a beautiful girl who attempts to leave the fashionable Restaurant Montparnasse without paying for the dinner she has eaten. He is impressed, and later, dazzled by her beauty, offers her a chance in the movies. He is dumfounded when she tells him she prefers to be a cigarette girl at Montparnasse. Lady Gates, Malcolm's aunt, is struck with the possibility of entering the gay life of the movie capital. Soon after her arrival she falls <under the influence of Marco Lopez, a professional dancer, who is attracted by the wealth of the new arrival. He causes her to visit a certain seeress, his confederate, who tells Lady Gates she can have youth and beauty again by undergoing scientific rejuvenation. Upon leaving the hospital, Lady Gates sends for her nephew, who disapproves of her appearance. Angered, she severs relations with him, and becomes more devoted to Lopez. "Miss Smith," the strange beauty for whom Malcolm has procured the position of cigarette seller in the restaurant, admits that she came to Hollywood because of Marco Lopez. Though naturally mystified and jealous, Malcolm knows that he loves her. _ Lopez, with the seeress, plans great inroads, and. even marriage to Lady Gates, in order to have her will changed in his favor. Lady Gates receives an anonymous letter warning her against the dancer. She accuses Malcolm of writing it, but he succeeds in quieting her and, at her request, prepares a drink for her. A few minutes later she is carried out of the restaurant, dead. Lopez accuses Malcolm of having murdered his aunt, and the young author is arrested. Miss Smith, whose real name is Madeleine Standish, prevails upon a noted lawyer to take the case. Together they set about to solve the mystery of Lady Gates' murder, which the girl is sure was committed by the same persons who brought tragedy ■into her own life some time before. Unknown to Lopez, she and the lawyer purchase the bungalow the dancer is eager to sell at a sacrifice, and Madeleine goes there alone, under cover of darkness, to run down a secret clew. Everything in the bungalow points to a woman vain of her beauty, and Madeleine cleverly deduces that her name was Rose —-the very Rose Rosenkrantz who caused the death of Madeleine's stepfather, after gaining possession of magnificent jewels which had belonged to Madeleine's mother. Furthermore, she discovers writing paper similar to that on which the anonymous 'letter to Lady Gates was written. She shows her clews to John Barrett, the lawyer. All that remains to clear Malcolm of the charge of murder, is to find Rose Rosenkrantz. This Madeleine confidently sets out to do. CHAPTER XXIX. "BUT WHY PASADENA?" TTT was through the influence of John Barrett that | Madeleine got a job as chambermaid at the Ambassador Hotel, on the floor where Lady Gates had lived in her mirrored suite. But it was the girl's own idea, and she had said,' "Watch my smoke !" in answer to Barrett's fear that she might fail to disguise herself. Her copper hair hidden under a neat, dark wig topped by an equally neat cap, her fairness dimmed with brunet powder which dulled the natural redness of her lips, she was unnoticeable and hardly pretty. Her hours at the hotel were governed by work at the studio. But this complication was simplified somewhat by the fact that her real identity and object were known to the hotel management. • Copyright, 1928, by Alice II. Williamson. It was understood that her scenes in "Red Velvet" were never to be shot earlier than eleven a. m., or later than six p. m., and that Oscar Sonnenberg was never to guess why. Madeleine went on duty at the hotel at seven in the morning, and at half past ten was free ; free again, also at six in the evening to go where she would. Thus her secret activities were made possible, and the hardest thing she had to do was to let herself be touched by Marco Lopez in their big scene together. The girl's one consolation in this came from stealthily observing his face. It had become strained and anxious looking. Madeleine kept the name of "Mary,"' hers since that first night at Montparnasse^— just "Mary," without a surname — for her maid's work at the hotel. But it was her special business there to start a friendship with the girl who had cared for Lady Gates' rooms before the murder, and still looked after them since they had been occupied by a family from New York. Madeleine didn't wish to seem mysterious to Charlotte, her new chum, so to her she was "Mary Sinnett." She and Charlotte went to a movie together at Mary's expense, on the first night of their acquaintance, and next morning Mary presented her pal with a hat which, she said, didn't become her and she'd worn only once. By this time Charlotte's reticence on the subject of Lady Gates was broken. She confessed that her knowledge of a few details in the "Lady Gates affair" had troubled her by day and kept her awake at night. "I'm not one of them gushin' ones anyhow," she said, "and it's just made me sick, the morbid curiosity of some folks because a poor body has been murdered. And the reporters ! I might have talked to them, if a couple hadn't tried bullyin'. Besides, I didn't want to be called as a witness when Mr. Allen comes to trial. The detectives asked about writing paper; — whether I'd ever noticed any different from the hotel stationery in the old lady's rooms. Well, I had! But if I'd had the lockjaw, I couldn't have shut my mouth tighter about everything till this very minute. "There was such a little bit of different writin' paper anyhow, and the only way I noticed it was like this. One day not long before she was murdered. Lady Gates was dressed to go out. She had that gold bag in her hand. I was dustin' the table, and she says, 'Oh, Charlotte !' says she, 'just fish me out a bit o' paper from that drawer, will you, because I need to make notes of somethin' important.' I opens the drawer, and on top lays a few sheets and envelopes of a sort o' blue color. Will these do, ma'am ?' says I ; and she says 'Yes ! That paper'll fit into my bag, I think. Never mind the envelopes.' But there was three or four inside the sheets as I handed her the lot, and she didn't notice. I remember seein' her stuff the paper into the gold bag, and s what a tight fit it was, though that bag was the biggest one I ever seen, and I only wish she'd have willed it to me. But they say if the jury pronounces the nephew innocent, he gets the lot. I s'pose even the bag, too !" ■ "I don't believe Mr. Allen would care about keeping that bag for himself," said Madeleine at last. "It would have painful associations. I shouldn't wonder, Charlotte,