The Film of Fear

CHAPTER I

Ruth Morton finished her cup of coffee, brushed a microscopic crumb from her embroidered silk kimono, pushed back her loosely arranged brown hair, and resumed the task of opening her mail.

It was in truth a task, and one that consumed an inordinate amount of her valuable time. And her time was extremely valuable. Computed upon the basis of her weekly salary of one thousand dollars, it figured out just $142.85 per day, or very nearly $6 per hour, or 10 cents per minute, for each minute and hour of the twenty-four. As a motion picture star, she had the satisfaction of knowing that she was paid a slightly larger salary than had been, until recently, received by the President of the United States.

The opening of the huge batch of letters that greeted her daily across her dainty breakfast table was very much of a duty. It was not that she felt any keen interest in the numberless notes from admirers, both male and female, from Portland, Me., to Los Angeles, Cal., to say nothing of South Bend, Opeloosa and Kicking Horse between. These might readily have been consigned to the depths of the wastebasket unopened, unread. But there was always the chance that, intermingled with this mass of adulation, there might be a real letter, from a real friend, or a business communication of importance from some picture company possibly, prepared to offer her two thousand dollars per week, instead of one thousand, at the expiration of her present contract. So the mail had to be carefully opened, at least, even if the bulk of it was tossed aside unread.

Her mother usually assisted her in this daily task, but to-day Mrs. Morton, oppressed by a slight attack of indigestion, slept late, and Ruth proceeded with the operation alone.

She was a singularly attractive girl, combining a wholesome and quite unassumed innocence with a certain measure of sophistication, gained by daily contact with the free and easy life of the studios. Her brown eyes were large and wondering, as though she still found it difficult to realize that within four years she had stepped from comparative poverty to the possession of an income which a duke or a prince might readily have envied. Her features, pleasing, regular, somewhat large, gave to her that particular type of beauty which lends itself best to the eccentricities of the camera. Her figure, graceful, well modeled, with the soft roundness of youth, enabled her to wear with becoming grace almost any costume, from the simple frock of the school girl to the costly gowns of the woman of fashion. Add to this a keen intelligence and a delightful vivacity of manner, and the reason for Ruth Morton's popularity among motion picture "fans" from coast to coast was at once apparent.

She sat in the handsomely appointed dining-room of the apartment on Fifty-seventh Street which she and her mother had occupied for the past two years. The room, paneled in dull ivory, provided a perfect setting for the girl's unusual beauty. In her kimono of Nile green and gold, she presented a figure of such compelling charm that Nora, her maid, as she removed the empty coffee-cup, sighed to herself, if not with envy, at least with regret, that the good God had not made her along lines that would insure an income of over fifty thousand dollars a year.

Ruth sliced open half a dozen more letters with her ivory paper knife and prepared to drop them into the waste basket. One was from a manufacturer of cold cream, soliciting a testimonial. Two others were from ungrammatical school girls, asking her how they should proceed, in order to become motion picture stars. Another was an advertisement of a new automobile. The fifth requested an autographed picture of herself. She swept the five over the edge of the table with a sigh of relief. How stupid of all these people, she thought, to take up their time, and her own, so uselessly.

The sixth letter, from its external appearance, might readily have been of no greater interest than the other five, and yet, something intangible about it caused her to pause for a moment before inserting the point of the knife beneath the flap of the envelope. It was a large envelope, square, formal-looking. The address upon it was typewritten. Unlike the majority of the other letters, forwarded from the studio, it bore the street and number of the apartment house in which she lived. The envelope was postmarked New York, and was sealed with a splotch of black sealing wax, which, however, contained the imprint of no monogram or seal, but was crossed both vertically and horizontally by a series of fine parallel lines, dividing its surface into minute squares.

Ruth observed these several peculiarities of the letter she was about to open, with growing interest. The usual run of her correspondence was so dull and uninteresting that anything out of the ordinary was apt to attract her attention. Slipping the ivory blade of the paper knife quickly beneath the flap of the envelope, she cut it open.

The letter within, written on the same heavy paper as that composing the envelope, contained but three typewritten lines. It was not these, however, that instantly attracted Ruth's attention, but the signature appended to them. This signature did not consist of a name, but of an astonishing seal, imprinted upon a bit of the same black sealing wax with which the envelope had been fastened. And the device, as Ruth bent over it to make out its clearcut but rather fine lines, filled her with a sudden and overwhelming dismay.

It was a grinning death's head, about half an inch in width, with eye-sockets staring vacantly, and grisly mouth gaping in a wide and horrible smile, made the more horrible by the two rows of protruding teeth. The girl almost dropped the letter, as full realization of the significance of the design swept over her.

Hastily she recovered herself, and with trembling fingers raised the letter from her lap. The three typewritten lines upon the sheet were, if anything, more horrifying than the device beneath them. "Your beauty has made you rich and famous," the letter read. "Without it you could do nothing. Within thirty days it shall be destroyed, and you will be hideous."

For a long time Ruth sat gazing at the words before her. In spite of their ghastly significance she could with difficulty bring herself to believe that she had an enemy in the world sufficiently ruthless, sufficiently envious of her beauty and her success, to be capable of either threatening her in this brutal way, or of carrying such a threat into execution. So far as she knew, there was not a single person of all her acquaintance who wished her ill. Her own nature was too sweet, too sympathetic, too free from malice and bitterness, to conceive for a moment that the very charms which had brought her fame, success, might also be the means of bringing her envy and hatred in like proportion. She cast about in her mind for some possible, some reasonable explanation of the matter, but try as she would, she was unable to think of anyone with whom she had ever come in contact, capable of threatening her in this terrible way. She had about decided that the whole thing must be some stupidly conceived practical joke, when she saw her mother cross the hall and come into the room.

Mrs. Harriet Morton was a woman of fifty, handsome and youthful in spite of her gray hair, her years. That she had once been extremely good-looking could have been told at a glance; anyone seeing mother and daughter together experienced no difficulty in determining the source of Ruth Morton's charms.

"Well, dear," said the older woman, with a pleasant smile. "Haven't you finished your letters yet?" She glanced toward the clock on the mantel. "You'll have to leave for the studio in half an hour." Ruth nodded, gazing at her mother rather uneasily.

"You'll have to open the rest of them, mother," she said, indicating the pile of letters. "I – I'm tired."

Mrs. Morton came up to her daughter and passed her hand over the girl's glossy hair.

"What's wrong, Ruth? You look as though something had frightened you." Then her eyes fell upon the letter lying in the girl's lap, and she paused suddenly.

Ruth handed her mother the sheet of paper.

"I – I just got this," she said, simply.

Mrs. Morton took the letter quickly from her daughter's hand and proceeded to read it. A look of apprehension crept into her eyes, but she did her best to appear unconcerned.

"Some crank," she said, after she had mastered the sudden fear that swept over her. "I shouldn't pay any attention to it, if I were you, my dear. There are a lot of people in the world that have nothing better to do, than play silly jokes like that."

"Then you don't think it amounts to anything?" Ruth asked, somewhat relieved.

"Certainly not. Just a stupid plan to frighten you. Pay no attention to it. No" – she folded the letter as the girl put out her hand – "I'll take charge of this. Now you'd better hurry and get ready. The car will be waiting for you at nine, and Mr. Edwards expects to start that new picture to-day, doesn't he?"

"Yes." The girl rose. "It's a beautiful part. I'm the daughter of an old music teacher, who dies in Brooklyn, and leaves me in poverty. And later on, it turns out he was the heir to the throne of Moravia, and I'm a princess. Lots of adventures, and spies, and all that. Ralph Turner is the lover. He's awfully good-looking, don't you think?"

Mrs. Morton assented in rather a preoccupied way, as her daughter left the room. She was still thinking of the brutal threat which the girl had just received, and of the possible dangers to which she might as a result be exposed. Mrs. Morton by no means felt the matter to be a joke, in spite of the assurances she had given Ruth. The tone of the letter, the evident care which had been taken to prevent the identity of the writer from becoming known, filled her with the gravest alarm.

As she sat pondering the matter, Nora came into the room, with Ruth's dust coat and parasol in her hands. Mrs. Morton beckoned to the girl, then spoke to her in a low voice.

"Nora," she said, "Miss Ruth received a letter this morning, from somebody who is envious of her beauty and success. I pretended to make light of the matter, but there may be something back of it. I want you to watch her carefully while you are away from the house. Be on your guard every moment of the time. Don't let anyone come near her. They might try to throw acid, or something of the sort. I shan't feel safe until she is home again."

The maid's face lit up with a significant smile. From her manner it was clear that she fairly worshiped her young mistress.

"I'll not let anyone do her any harm, Mrs. Morton," she said, earnestly. "You may be sure of that."

"And don't let her know," Mrs. Morton added hastily, in a low voice, as she saw Ruth come to the door, "that I am at all worried. She must not have a threat like that on her mind."

The maid nodded, then turned toward the door where Ruth stood.

"Well, mother, good-by," the latter exclaimed with a laugh. "You can open all the rest of the letters, and if you come across any more like that last one, please keep them. I think I'll begin a collection."

Mrs. Morton forced herself to join in the girl's laughter.

"There won't be any more, dear," she said, kissing the girl fondly. "Don't bother your head about such things. They're not worth it. And come home as soon as you get through."

"All right, mother. We're going to the theater to-night, aren't we? Don't forget to get the tickets." With a smile she left the room, and a few moments later Mrs. Morton heard the rumble of the descending elevator.

She sat in silence for a long time, thinking, a great fear clutching at her heart. Her life, she reflected, had held, until recently, but little of happiness. The long, weary days of poverty, when her husband, incapacitated by a paralytic stroke, had seen his savings slowly dwindle away; the death of her son, and then that of Mr. Morton himself passed before her mental vision. Only Ruth had been left to her, and in the girl's happiness and success lay Mrs. Morton's whole life and being. Now, that things had at last taken a turn, and the future seemed clear and assured ahead of her, was some dreadful tragedy to change all her joy to sorrow? She turned to the pile of still unopened letters with a sigh, afraid, almost to proceed with the task of reading them. Yet, an hour later, when they had all been disposed of without further threats against Ruth having been discovered, she breathed more easily. Perhaps, after all, the horrible letter was merely a silly joke. She took it out and examined it again with the greatest care, but no clue to the identity of the writer rewarded her scrutiny. The message remained clear, terrible, full of sinister meaning. "Within thirty days it shall be destroyed, and you will be hideous!" The grinning death's head seal stared up at her, fascinatingly horrible. Mrs. Morton quickly placed the letter in her bosom.

Rising, she left the room, and proceeded to that occupied by Ruth. It pleased her, notwithstanding the servants, to take care of it herself. Mrs. Morton was passionately devoted to her beautiful daughter. In her, the sun rose and set.

She glanced about the daintily furnished room with a smile. The appointments were simple, almost girlish, in spite of their owner's large salary. Mrs. Morton began to set the room to rights. She had finished making the bed, and had gone over to the dressing table to arrange the articles upon it, when a square of white upon the floor attracted her attention.

It lay upon the rug in front of the dressing table, and appeared to be a letter of some sort.

Supposing it to be something that the girl had dropped in the hurry of leaving, Mrs. Morton stooped and picked it up. Then a queer feeling of dismay came over her. The large square white envelope, the typewritten address, bore a singular and disquieting resemblance to the one in which the threatening letter had been received so short a time before.

With trembling hands, Mrs. Morton tore the envelope open and removed the folded sheet of paper within. When her eyes fell upon the contents of the latter, she shuddered, and stood white with fear.

There was a message in typewritten characters upon the sheet, and Mrs. Morton read it with a groan of despair.

"Only twenty-nine days more!" the message said. "We shall not fail." Below the words grinned the frightful death's head seal.

CHAPTER II

Mrs. Harriet Morton was a courageous woman, but when she read the second threat against her daughter, she was filled with instant indignation and horror. The thing was so appallingly mysterious, so utterly without reasonable explanation.

Ruth had left the room but a few moments before. Certainly the letter was not upon the floor then. The maid, Nora, had gone with her. That removed her from any suspicion, even had such a thought been reasonable or possible, and Mrs. Morton felt it was not. The only other person in the apartment was Mary, their old cook, a negro from the south, who had been a faithful and patient member of the Morton household for over ten years. That she could have had a hand in placing this mysterious message in Ruth's bedroom seemed incredible, not to be entertained for a moment. And yet, there was the message, appallingly simple, direct, threatening. "Only twenty-nine days more!" Mrs. Morton shuddered.

She glanced about the room. How had the letter come there? Certainly not by means of the door. Yet it seemed equally out of the question that it could have been brought in through one of the windows.

There were two in the room, one facing to the front, and opening upon a court, the other in the rear, overlooking the yards of the houses on the next street. She went to the front window, which was raised only a few inches, and gazed out.

Below her stretched the wide court, flanked on one hand by the side of the apartment building, on the other by the blank wall of an adjoining house. The latter was some ten feet from where she stood, and there were no windows in it! She turned to the window at the other side of the room.

Here a fire escape led down to an alley at the rear of the building. Could it have been in this way that the letter had been delivered? The thing seemed impossible. Not only was the window closed, but she knew that the ladders did not reach all the way to the ground, the last section being pulled up, to be dropped only in case of fire. With a mystified look she returned to the center of the room.

The letter grinned at her from the dresser, on which she had left it. Ruth must never hear of the matter, she knew. Taking it up, she placed it in the bosom of her dress along with the one which had arrived earlier in the day. Then she sat down to decide what she had best do next.

To trifle with so dangerous a situation was no longer to be thought of. One message, the first, might have been a foolish joke. The second proved that the danger threatening her daughter was real, imminent.

At first she thought of placing the matter in the hands of the postal authorities, but would they, she wondered, concern themselves with threats delivered in other ways than by mail? This second message had not come through any such channels. In desperation she put on her hat, placed the two letters in her handbag and set out to seek the advice of one of her oldest and best friends.

Her purpose took her to a private banking house in Broad Street, upon the wide entrance doors of which was inscribed the name John Stapleton & Co. She asked to see Mr. Stapleton. John Stapleton was a man of wealth and influence in the financial world, and Mrs. Morton's husband had at one time been one of his most trusted employees. Now that Ruth had become to some extent a capitalist, it was to Mr. Stapleton that the care of her savings had been entrusted. Mrs. Morton felt the utmost confidence in both his sincerity and his judgment.

Mr. Stapleton received her almost at once, in his simply yet richly furnished private office, and rising from his huge flat-topped rosewood desk, welcomed her warmly, and asked what he could do for her.

Mrs. Morton felt confused. Her mission seemed, after all, a strange one with which to come to a leader of finance.

"I – I am in great trouble, Mr. Stapleton," she began.

"Yes?" He took her hand in his and led her to a chair. "Tell me all about it."

Mrs. Morton explained the circumstances surrounding the receiving of the two letters in detail, and then handed the documents to Mr. Stapleton.

"Do you think I had better place the matter in the hands of the postal authorities?" she said. Mr. Stapleton examined the two letters carefully then he shook his head.

"No. At least not at present. It seems to me that your daughter may be in grave danger, and under those circumstances, I think your wisest course would be to employ a private detective, an investigator of matters of this character, not only to ferret out those who are responsible for these threats, but to take steps to protect your daughter from harm."

"You think, then, that she is really in danger?" Mrs. Morton gasped.

"I do not wish to alarm you, but I very much fear that she is."

"But I don't know any private detectives," Mrs. Morton began.

Stapleton looked up from the letter.

"When I spoke," he said, "I had a certain man in mind. He is not a detective, in the usual sense of the word. You can find plenty of those, of course, but, while they are useful enough in the detection of criminals of the ordinary sort, they would probably have very little success in an affair such as this. The man I had in mind is a brilliant criminal investigator, one whose services I have more than once been obliged to make use of in matters of a personal nature. Some two years ago, for instance, my child was kidnapped, in Paris, and held for ransom. The entire police force of the French capital seemed powerless to discover his whereabouts. At last I called in Richard Duvall, and within a few days my boy was returned to me, and the criminals who had abducted him placed under arrest. It was a marvellous, a brilliant piece of work. I am not likely to forget very soon the mystery of the changing lights." He paused, and Mrs. Morton spoke up eagerly.

"Give me Mr. Duvall's address," she said, "and I will see him at once."

"That," Mr. Stapleton smiled, "is, of course, the great difficulty. Duvall, who is married, lives with his wife on their farm near Washington. They both have plenty of money, and he has practically retired from professional work."

"Then of what use is it to suggest his name?" asked Mrs. Morton, quickly.

"He had already retired," Stapleton rejoined, "at the time of my boy's kidnapping, but I prevailed on him to take up the case. His retirement merely means that he is not in the active practice of his profession. But exceptional cases, cases which by reason of their novelty interest him, he may be persuaded to undertake. I fancy this matter of your daughter's would prove attractive to him. It is unusual – bizarre. I strongly advise you to see him."

"To do that, I must go to Washington?"

"Yes. I will give you a letter which will insure you an interview, and, I hope, enlist his services in your behalf." He pressed a button on his desk, summoning a stenographer. "I sincerely hope that you will be successful."

Mrs. Morton sat in silence while the letter of introduction to Richard Duvall was being written. Then she rose to go.

"I will leave for Washington this afternoon," she announced. "I feel that there is no time to waste."

"You are quite right. And be sure to tell Mr. Duvall that you are a close personal friend of mine, and that anything he can do for you I shall appreciate to the utmost."

Mrs. Morton went back to the apartment, and made her preparations to start. She determined to take a train leaving at half past three, and as Ruth would not return from the studio until later, she called her up on the telephone, and told her of her sudden determination.

"It is a matter of business, dear," she explained. "I will be back to-morrow. Good-by." The girl's cheerful voice reassured her. At least nothing had happened up to now, to give cause for alarm.

It was only when Mrs. Morton was about to leave for the train that her nerves were once more subjected to a severe shock.

The telephone bell rang, and she went to answer it, thinking that Ruth might for some reason have called her up.

Over the wire came a thin, queer voice.

"Beauty is only skin deep," it said. "A breath may destroy it." After that, silence.

Mrs. Morton made a frantic effort to learn the number of the station from which she had been called, but without success. In a rather depressed state of mind, she made her way to the train.

It was half past eight at night when she arrived in Washington, and she at once called up Richard Duvall on the telephone.

To her disappointment, she learned that he was out, and was not expected back until late. There was nothing to do but wait until morning. She retired to her room, full of hope that the following day would bring an end to her fears.

Immediately after breakfast she called again, and this time was more successful. Duvall himself answered the telephone.

"I am Mrs. Morton, from New York," she said, eagerly. "I would like to come out and see you."

"What do you wish to see me about?" the detective inquired.

"It is a personal matter. I will explain when I arrive. I prefer not to do so over the telephone. I have a letter to you from Mr. Stapleton."

"Mr. John Stapleton, the banker?"

"Yes."

"Come, then, by all means, at any hour that suits you. Mr. Stapleton is one of my best friends."

Mrs. Morton hung up the receiver, after assuring him that she would start at once. Then she went out and engaging an automobile, set out for Duvall's place.

CHAPTER III

Richard Duvall and his wife, Grace, lingered rather later than usual over their breakfast that morning.

It was a warm and brilliant day in May, and the blossoming beauty of the spring filled them both with a delightful sense of well-being.