Detective Kennedy: The Film Mystery. Arthur B. Reeve

      Chapter I

      A Camera Crime

       Table of Contents

      "Camera!"

      Kennedy and I had been hastily summoned from his laboratory in the city by District-Attorney Mackay, and now stood in the luxurious, ornate library in the country home of Emery Phelps, the banker, at Tarrytown.

      "Camera!--you know the call when the director is ready to shoot a scene of a picture?--well--at the moment it was given and the first and second camera men began to grind--she crumpled--sank to the floor--unconscious!"

      Hot and excited, Mackay endeavored to reenact his case for us with all the histrionic ability of a popular prosecutor before a jury.

      "There's where she dropped--they carried her over here to this davenport--sent for Doctor Blake--but he couldn't do a thing for her. She died--just as you see her. Blake thought the matter so serious, so alarming, that he advised an immediate investigation. That's why I called you so urgently."

      Before us lay the body of the girl, remarkably beautiful even as she lay motionless in death. Her masses of golden hair, disheveled, added to the soft contours of her features. Her wonderfully large blue-gray eyes with their rare gift for delicate shades of expression were closed, but long curling lashes swept her cheeks still and it was hard to believe that this was anything more than sleep.

      It was inconceivable that Stella Lamar, idol of the screen, beloved of millions, could have been taken from the world which worshiped her.

      I felt keenly for the district attorney. He was a portly little man of the sort prone to emphasize his own importance and so, true to type, he had been upset

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