Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Jul 1929)

100 Continued from page 98 Madeleine Standish did not need to hear the voice of Marco Lopez to recognize him. Evidently the two had just met. "I was coming to-night, even if thou hadst not written," he said in Spanish. "Yes, it's true we finished the film a day or two ago. But I bad arrangements to make. Of course it's all right about our going away. There's, a good ship sailing next week, and " "Wait ! I must speak of something else first," Rose cut him short. "Something more important to me even than the ship." "Well, wait till I've had a look into the summerhouse," Lopez warned her. "Good ! No one there. Let us sit inside !" The two voices came clearly through the tiny window near the low roof of the rustic building, though it was half choked with bougainvillea. "Somebody in Hollywood knows I am in Pasadena," the woman announced abruptly. "He — it was a man — telephoned this morning." "Dios!" exclaimed Lopez. "One of those detectives !" "Perhaps. But whoever it was, knew as much about you as about me. Marco, is it true you heard from Buenos Aires of your wife's death six weeks ago?*' She flung the question at him, and taken aback, he drew in his breath with a kind of gasp before answering. Then he said sharply, "Certainly it is not true. Who could have " "I know by your voice, and see by the look on your face even here in this darkness, that you're lying to me!" Rose cried. "You meant to marry Lady Gates legally." "Thou wilt regret not trusting me," answered Marco. "But even had this been true, what matter? Thou art the wife of my heart. All I do, or have done, is for thee." "If you knew she was dead so long ago, and if you'd loved me as you used to do, you would have married me then, not waited till you could wind that old woman round your finger! I thank God — if there is a God — that I killed her. As for her jewels that I saved for 3^011—30 you would forgive me for the loss of her money, you shall never have them now — nor the Arnold jewels, either." "What dost thou mean, Rose?" Lopez challenged her. "Art thou quarreling with me after all we have been to each other?" "I am parting from you," the woman answered in a toneless voice, as of one dying. "If I had seen truth in your eyes when you answered my question, I should have been so A Girl Comes to Holl^xtfood happy. I could have gone to the world's end with you. The jewels would all have been yours." "Part of them is mine," Lopez cut in sharply, speaking in terse English for the first time. "You got them from Lady Gates by a trick. You con-fessed it to me yourself that night when I came home and told you we had lost everything, because she was dead, with her will not yet changed. No doubt you would have lifd then as you say I lie now, if I had not been so sure it was you who sent her that anonymous letter about me. You confessed that she had some writing paper with the address on it of the bungalow where Allen first stayed. She had brought it in her bag to take notes of the horoscope you cast for her. You cut out the address, but any one who knew could recognize the paper. Sheer jealous. spite made you do that. You hoped to turn the old woman against me, while pretending to help me win her. And worse, you allowed me no time to defend myself if she accused me. You gave her poison, which she took a few minutes after she had read that letter and died before I reached the restaurant." "That was a mere chance, her dying then," Rose broke in. "I've told you I gave her a number of the granil tablets like those I've been taking myself. The ones with the death dose — there were only three of them ■ — looked the same as the rest. Fate decided that all three should be at the bottom of the vial. I suppose you are not unhappy, because of the evidence against Allen? You never liked him." "Allen and what happens to him are nothing to me," Lopez answered, all the softness of his accents gone with his native language. "It is myself I think of, and what I have lost through your stupid jealousy. You have tried to excuse yourself by telling me how clever you were to get Lady Gates' jewels, how you persuaded her with that hypnotic power you have over people, to let you keep the jewels for a few days and 'enchant' them so they would bring the owner luck. But it was the money I wanted most. What have the other jewels done for us, except to give us the trouble of watching them and fearing they might be taken away? And now — after I have thrown over everything for you, have been your lover, your servant, and for nearly two years, have hidden you, protecting you as no man ever protected a woman, you coolly say, 'We are parting !' You will keep for yourself the jewels Lady Gates would have given me with all else she owned, if you had let her live. Do you think you will ever get away from me like that ? If you do you make a mistake. I have loved you with passion and devotion. But when you killed Lady Gates, and with her my hopes of a rich future, you killed my love for you at the same moment. You have been guilty of murder before — a man who adored you and you had made desperate. You did that because, he menaced you at last, and because you loved me. This murder of an old woman, you committed because you loved yourself and cared not in your insane jealousy how you injured me! No", you will not take away what is left from the wreck. Don't you understand that you are in my power?" "As you are in mine," Rose said with a new quietness. "You have no longer any power over me at all," Lopez told her, "not even the power of love, which once was so strong. / have committed no murders. My one crime is to have protected a weak, sinful woman who would have died if I had abandoned her. What is there for a jury to convict me of ? Nothing. The newspapers would make of me not a criminal, but a hero. That is how you and I stand. Think it over, Rose." "Yes. I'll think it over — now," she answered, in so hushed a tone that her words scarcely reached the ears of the listeners. For a few seconds all was still in the summerhouse. Then Rose cried out shrilly, "I've thought it over! I'm not in your power — not in any one's power on this earth." Madeleine clutched Barrett's arm. Instinctively she guessed what the woman had done, but it was not till after a stifled exclamation from* Lopez, and a subdued scuffle, that Barrett guessed also. "She's taken poison !" whispered the girl. "He'll leave her there, and save himself. Quick — or he'll be gone ! We'll need his confession." "Stick 'em up, Lopez !" said Barrett, blocking the summerhouse door, and pressing an automatic against the dancer's graceful waistline. "You're going to get a chance to tell your story and see how much of a hero you'll be to your friends the newspaper men." Free ! Malcolm was free, and he owed his freedom — perhaps his life — to the courage, the intelligence and love of "Mary Smith, the mysterious cigarette girl of Montparnasse." It was in that way the newspapers spoke of her, though the secret of her real name and her real mission in Hollywood was no longer a .secret, now that the mission had been at last accomplished. Continued on page 110