Picture Play Magazine (Oct-Nov 1915)

The Ivory Snuff Box (WORLD FILM) By Kenneth Rand Real crime deduction by a real crime deducer. In other words, a detective story that is of the variety so hard to find. There is nothing of the fantastic, impossible work of the average fiction detective, but there is something, and lots of it, of the good, wholesome, interesting work of a master mind in the art of running down criminals. The snuff box of mysterious value is stolen, and Richard Duvall sets out to find the thief — but he finds a lot more, which leads into a plot that is crowded with unusual, absorbing incidents. The story is based on the photo drama of the same title filmed by the World Film Company. The cast includes: Richard Duvall Holbrook Blinn Grace Ellicot Alma Bel win Monsieur Lefevre Robert Cummings Dr. Hartmann Norman Trebor RICHARD DUVALL turned impatiently at the rap on the door. He had been married not quite forty minutes, and he and his bride, Grace Ellicot, an American in Paris like himself, were about to begin their wedding breakfast in the suite the young man had engaged at the fashionable hotel in the Place Vendome, to which they had driven in a taxi from the church. "Come in !" Duvall called shortly. A servant bearing a card salver, and on that a sealed letter, entered the room and presented the missive on the small silver tray to Duvall with a bow. "The messenger said there was no answer, sir," the servant announced, as Duvall took the letter. "Thank you, sir !" And, pocketing the coin which the young man carelessly dropped on the salver in the sealed envelope's place, with another bow the servant withdrew. "What is it, Richard?" asked Grace, her tone anxious as she saw the expression of quick concern that had crossed Duvall's face as he looked at the envelope's contents. It was nothing but a card, on which there was no line of writing. The card simply read: "Monsieur Lefevre, Prefect of Police." And yet it conveyed a message to Duvall. It was a command, that he might disobey only at the cost of cutting himself off from his sole means of livelihood. He crushed the card in his hand and dropped it into his pocket, without showing it to his wife of less than an hour. Duvall had not yet told her what his business was. His father had been French, which accounted for his name as well as for his fluent use of that language, and likewise for the mission on which he had come to Paris some five or six years before — in the hope, which had proved vain, of being able to realize something on the estate which his father had left behind him when the unfortunate outcome of a duel had forced him to take flight to America. Penniless in the capital of France, the young man had accepted the position of an operative on the staff of Monsieur Lefevre, the chief of the secret police, who had once known his father, and offered him the means of supporting himself for that reason. Duvall had risen high in his grizzled chief's esteem during the few years that had followed, proving to Lefevre that he had natural talents for detection which had made his choosing by the head of the secret service as one of his assistants a positive inspiration. So resourceful had Duvall proved himself in even the most important and delicate cases, that of late only those had come to be intrusted to him. The intimation that his chief required his services was always sent to Duvall merely in the form of Monsieur Lefevre's card — as that message had come to him now. "But why did this interruption to his honeymoon have to occur just at the present moment ?" the young man asked himself exasperatedly. He looked at the beautiful girl whom he had just made his wife, and from her to the table, on which was spread out the breakfast that neither of them had yet touched. For a moment, Duvall thought of ignoring the summons from his chief. But then he realized the impossibility of his taking that step. To do so would throw him instantly out ofemployment again, and mean that they would both be penniless. There was nothing for him to do but to go and find out what Lefevre wanted of him, and Duvall caught up his hat and coat and turned toward the door. "Nothing is the matter," he answered Grace's question, "but I shall have to go out for an hour or two." "For an hour or two !" she repeated his last words, in blank dismay over the length of time he mentioned as that which was likely to elapse before his return. "Richard — tell me where you are going !" "I can't," he replied, turning with the doorknob in his hand. "The identity of the person who has summoned me must be kept secret — until I have informed him of our marriage, arid gained his permission to tell you, my wife, of my connection with him. I would have to break the vow I have given, to tell you now. I'll explain everything to you when I come back, dearest — which will be in just a little while!" And, throwing a reassuringly blithe kiss to her, in another moment Duvall was gone. Ten minutes later he walked into the private office of the chief of the secret police. Monsieur Lefevre, looking up from his desk, sighed with relief at