They’d forgotten about Miss Laird for the moment; I officed her and we edged out.
Lieutenant Lawson was coming out of the phone booth in the hallway downstairs. He said: “I just talked to the Doc. He says her nibs was killed some time in the half-hour before he got to her — that’d make it sometime after ten minutes to six. An’ he says she was loaded with heroin... He says all the licker was for was to hold the H down an’ keep her from blowin’ her noodle entirely.”
I said: “If she was that high maybe she sapped herself with the vibrator.”
He looked at me as if he thought I was on the level about it and galloped back upstairs.
We ducked out the private entrance through the Purchasing Department to keep from being swamped by reporters and walked around the block to the car.
Dreier was out, as far as I was concerned. So was Creighton and the maid. That left Bachmann, who I was sure had told me the truth or what he believed to be the truth, and Mrs Bachmann. I didn’t know her very well; I was trying to think of five or six good reasons why she shouldn’t have got mad, too, while they were going round and round, and picked up the vibrator and let Maya have it.
I didn’t have to wait long for all six reasons. It was pretty dark by that time. We got into the car and somebody walked over from a car that was parked across the street and said: “Mister Nolan — you’ve got to do something!” It was Ruth Bachmann.
I said: “Sure — I’ll do anything I can. Where do I begin?”
She glanced at Miss Laird and went on, “I think Mister Dreier is needlessly sacrificing himself because he saw Jack and me come out of the dressing rooms — and I was crying. Miss Sarin put me out of her room” — her voice broke a little — “and I think l should tell the police I was there and what happened and then Mister Dreier will feel free to clear himself.”
Something in the way she said it gave me all my reasons at once; either she was telling the truth or I was a Tasmanian watchmaker — which I wasn’t.
I said: “You sit tight and let things go the way they are for a little while and everything’ll be all right. I’ve got an idea.”
She agreed after a minute and went back across the street; I started the car and swung into Melrose and wished I had an idea.
Back at the hotel I asked the clerk who the guy who lived across the court from me was.
He said: “Hotaling — Francis J. Hotaling.” He’d lived there five days.
The name was familiar as hell. We went up to the room and fixed a drink and I beat my head against the wall a little bit trying to remember, and one of them worked. Hotaling was a fellow who had been pointed out to me by some of the boys around the Brown Derby as a “Connection.” That meant if you wanted anything on the mossy side of the Law — anything from square-cut emeralds to marihuana — he was the guy to see. He had a pan that looked like it had been through a wringer and worked in gangster pictures occasionally but his main racket was getting things for people who wanted them very badly — people who could pay — and he majored in dope.
So Mister Hotaling was pegged — and that wasn’t all. I called up Jacobsen, the assistant director. Hotaling had worked the last three days on Death Song. I told Jacobsen to meet me at the studio in an hour, hung up and said: “Dolores — you are about to see Pat Nolan, the great detective, at work. Fix us a drink.”
I jumped out to the elevator and sat on the button and had a long heart-to-heart talk with the elevator boy. He checked. When I went back to the room the phone was ringing. It was the Nick Galbraith Detective Agency. He wanted to know where he could find Miss Laird. I told him I’d just put her on a train for Kansas, and clicked the receiver and told Deep South to send up a waiter. The waiter showed up in a couple minutes and we ordered dinner.
Have you ever seen an angel eat oysters? It’s marvelous.
Bachmann said: “We can’t do it — it’s bad taste, with this terrible thing happening to Maya and all...”
He and Jacobsen and Dolores and I were sitting in his office.
I did a fair imitation of staring at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Bad taste! Is it bad taste to nail the murderer? Is it bad taste to—”
Jacobsen interrupted: “I think it’s a swell idea.”
I took a bow.
“Why not give this information to the police — let them handle it?” Bachmann was gazing vacantly out the window.
“Because they’ll ruin it! Because our only hope is to force a quick confession before they know what’s hit ’em.” I stood up. “For God’s sake, Jack — where’s your showmanship?”
He swung around wearily, said: “All right — go ahead. But I think—”
I’d grabbed Dolores’ hand and we were on our way; we didn’t hear what Bachmann thought. Jacobsen pattered along behind us, ducked into his office and grabbed the phone.
By a quarter of twelve we had a complete night-crew on Stage Six. I’d told the chief carpenter what I wanted and prop-boys, grips, juicers, and what have you were scampering around like ants at a picnic.
We worked all night. I talked Dolores into taking a nap, which she probably faked; by daylight we had the whole layout working like a piece of well-oiled machinery. Jacobsen had called Mary Fallon, Sarin’s double and stand-in, and my other principals for six-thirty and when they got there we cleared the set and rehearsed for a couple hours and then knocked off for breakfast.
The general call was for nine-thirty. The idea that we circulated around was that we were going to start Death Song over as if nothing had happened, because we had to meet the release date — the old “The show must go on” gag.
I was taking over as director until Dreier came back and we were starting with a corner of one of the big sets with about thirty extras and four bit players. We were, according to the dope that I had everyone on the lot broadcasting, going to clean up all the big stuff first while we were trying to find a girl for the Sarin part.
At a little before nine-thirty I left the restaurant and dashed over to Stage Six. Everything was ready; Jacobsen had draped a collection of the toughest mugs in Hollywood along a wall that was supposed to be one end of a prison yard. They wore San Quentin rompers and they included Hammer and Francis J. Hotaling. Jacobsen had called both of them for bits, at seventy-five slugs a day.
I chinned with the cameraman a minute and sat down under the camera, nodded at Jacobson; he and his kickers yelled: “Quiet everybody!”
Bachmann was standing a little way back of me with a couple of other B.L.D. executives; Dolores was sitting on the arm of my chair with her elbow on my shoulder, which was exactly where her elbow should be.
I snapped in to the loudspeaker: “Gentlemen, as Mister Jacobsen has informed you, this is the scene where you look up and see the airplane that is signaling to someone in the prison. At first you are talking to each other, moving about, smoking. The sound of the airplane is your cue. When you hear it, look up — not all at once but a few at a time. Shall we rehearse it or do you all understand?”
They bobbed their heads in concert.
I put the loudspeaker down and said: “Turn ’em over.”
The soundman called the number and the assistant cameraman clicked his sticks, scuttled out of the scene. I lifted my right hand and the whole stage was plunged into pitch darkness.
It was entirely silent, entirely black; I felt Dolores’ hand tighten on my shoulder.
There was thin slithering sound and, suddenly, a little light. The wall had split, slid back, and we were all looking into an exact replica of Maya Sarin’s dressing room. The light grew in it as it grows when an electric dimmer is reversed, on a small stage. Everything else was in darkness.