Picture-Play Magazine (Mar-Jul 1929)

94 Continued from page 70 Marco had spoken not one angry word. But he had been strange in his manner — either sullenly secretive or stunned. Rose wasn't sure which. And that was the trouble — not being sure ! He was the one chance of love and life left to her, and the fear of losing him had been a taste of death. She had had a hemorrhage. Blood had poured from her mouth. She had forgotten everything but physical fear. Marco had insisted, when ice and the remedies he knew well how to use, had restored her, that she must be taken from her hiding place, into sunshine and freedom. She must go where she could be seen by a doctor, without terrors and tremblings. She had consented to his plan, and Marco had rushed her from Hollywood to this hotel in Pasadena, where she was the beautiful invalid, Mrs. Richard Rendel. He had been her "chauffeur," with cap pulled over his eyes. But each day had been more of a living death than the worst days of the lonely veiled prophetess in the bungalow. Marco had not come to Pasadena, though he had promised to visit her evenings in the hotel garden. He had written only twice, and told her not to answer yet, as he had become suspicious that detectives were watching him, since he had left the bungalow. Luckily, he had burned everything which might give her away in her old quarters, and the place had been sold. The woman's heart was sore in her isolation, and the maid's admiration was balm. Mary brought fruit and flowers, inexpensive, but still a tribute. Mary chose books from the library. Mary begged to do Mrs. Rendel's nails, and proved quite a skilled manicurist. Mary brushed madam's hair, and exclaimed at its magnificence. Never had there been such hair on a woman's head, never had there been such a woman ! Mary encouraged the invalid to believe that soon she would be well, and seemed about to weep on being told that soon her adored one might leave Pasadena. "But if you want me to be happy," Mrs. Rendel said, "you ought to be glad. Because I'm going to meet some one I love and who loves me better than anything on earth — at least, I think he does ! Only " Yes, there was a fly in the ointment ; a crumpled rose leaf under the feather mattress. The beautiful lady confessed that she had difficulty in communicating with this man. She wished, she needed very much to write to him, but there were reasons why she couldn't send a letter addressed to him out of this hotel. A Girl Comes to Hollywood People who were jealous of him and of her might be spying. "Oh, madam, couldn't I mail it for you?" begged the maid. "You know I'd do anything — and that's so little !" The person who could have suspected this devoted, rather stupid and utterly unsophisticated servant, must have been a monomaniac on the subject of suspicion. "Why, yes, I'll trust you," Rose said, "but you must promise not to mail my letter in the hotel." Mary promised that — and kept her word. The girl had often heard of sly wretches who steamed open the envelopes of letters and read their contents. Now she herself was one of those sly wretches, and she didn't like being it. But it was for Malcolm far more than for herself. Everything now was for Malcolm. Rose Rosenkrantz had written to Lopez at his new address. My Own Darling Marco : At last I have found some one I can trust to mail a letter. I have heard from you only twice. Why? Surely there is no danger in your addressing an envelope to Mrs. Richard Rendel at the Pasadena Park Hotel. I have been as careful as you warned me to be, and no one suspects that I am any one but Mrs. Rendel. I never leave my room except after dark, for a walk in the garden, and even that I have done only a few times, in the hope that you might come, as you said you surely would do. But no ! I have suffered so in ray disappointment, that I have cried myself into coughing fits and have lain awake all night. I miss you horribly ! — your love, your never-failing care. I torture myself in the night with dreadful questions. "Does he still love me? Can it be that my putting that foolish old woman out of the world where she was ruining my hopes, has killed the adoration he vowed would last forever !" Oh, no, Marco, that can't be, unless you lied, as I fear sometimes, and meant to leave me in order to pose as the hag's husband. That would be the one reason you couldn't forgive me — because her money meant more to you than my love, and I couldn't let you have both. Remember, you forgave me for Lester Arnold, when you guessed What I had been forced to do to save myself and keep the jewels, which meant as much for you as for me. "Why not forgive me this Gates woman?" I ask myself. Her jewels we have. With both lots we shall be rich. Are you going to keep your promise? Are you coming soon, with our plans perfected, to tell me when I am to meet you, never to part again, and on what ship you have taken our passage? Oh, I would pray, if I could pray, that you have not changed ! If you had, I should be lost and I would live no longer. Your too-much loving, Rose. P. S. Try to come to the garden tomorrow night soon after nine. There it all was — all that Madeleine had hoped for, in biack and white. But she did not know what to do with the letter, now that she had it. Afraid of making some fatal mistake, just as the game seemed coming into her own hands, she telephoned to John Barrett, not from the hotel, but from a booth in a drug store. It was her afternoon off duty, as she had explained to Rose in promising to mail the letter, and there was time for her to take a taxi for a rush over to Hollywood and back, after making an appointment to call on the lawyer. "The woman has given herself away pretty completely, with this," Barrett said, when he had read the letter Madeleine brought him. "A little taste of the third degree would get all the details of both murders out of her now — your stepfather and Lady Gates, to say nothing of the anonymous letter, and how she got hold of the old lady's jewels. This letter I must keep. But if you're good at that sort of thing, you might copy the beginning, and then the postscript with the signature, on hotel paper for Lopez's benefit. You have the stamped envelope that you steamed open, ready and " "Oh !" said Madeleine, pale and quivering. "This is what I've longed for, worked for, almost starved for these last fifteen months. And now, when fate has played into my hands, I feel like Judas Iscariot ! That woman's a murderess, and worse. She broke my mother's heart, got all her money and stole her jewels. She killed my stepfather when she'd ruined him. She murdered Lady Gates, and she's letting the guilt rest on Malcolm Allen. She's a fiend in human shape, but — that look on her face when she said she trusted me!" "It's her stock in trade," said Barrett. "Don't be a silly child, after all your pluck and courage, and these strokes of genius on your part where you've out-maneuvered the detectives ! Here, give me that letter and forget it. I'll deal with it. Thank the lord, I'm hard-boiled!" "I thought I was !" murmured Madeleine. "But tell me this much : You'll try to bring about that meeting in the garden to-morrow night, and — you'll be there?" "I'll do more than that," said Barrett. "Mrs. Richard Rendel is going to get a telephone call from Hollywood to-morrow morning at — what time will you be busy in her room?" "From nine to about ten," the girl answered shakily. "I bring her breakfast at nine." "Good ! Then she'll get the message before she's had time to brace up on a cup of coffee." "What are you going to say?" Madeleine gasped. Continued on page 98