The Film of Fear

by Frederic Arnold Kummer

The ten names on the boxes in the vestibule meant nothing to him. How was it possible to determine which one was that of the woman he sought? Weinberg—Scully—Martin—Stone—he ran down the list, trying to find some distinguishing mark, some clue, that would guide him.

Suddenly he paused, allowing the light from his torch to rest upon the card bearing the name of one of the tenants on the fourth floor.

This card had attracted his attention, because it was different from any of the others in the two racks. They were either engraved or printed visiting cards, stuck inside the brass frames provided for them, or the names were written or printed by hand upon blank cards. But this card, bearing simply the inscription E. W. Norman, was neither engraved nor printed, nor written by hand. On the contrary, it was typewritten.

This in itself at once attracted Duvall's attention, owing to the fact that the various letters received by Ruth Morton had also all been typewritten. If the name, Norman, was an assumed one, as Duvall concluded it to be, what more natural than that it should be typewritten on a blank card, especially when a regular printed or engraved card was not available; when to have it written in long hand would have been a disclosure of identity, and when, above all, the woman in question possessed, and knew how to operate, a typewriter.

There was more than this, however, about the name on the card, to convince Duvall that E. W. Norman was the woman he sought. He recalled with distinctness the two salient features of the typewriting in all the letters sent to Miss Morton, the misplaced "a," and the broken lower right-hand corner of the capital "W." He looked closely at the two letters in the name before him. The "a" was misplaced, the "W" minus its lower right-hand corner. The evidence seemed to be complete.

The next thing to be considered was, how could he first obtain entrance to the apartment building, and, subsequently, to the flat of the woman posing as E. W. Norman? Were he to ring the latter's bell, he felt quite sure she would not respond by unfastening the front door, but she would on the contrary be warned, and even if unable to escape, might destroy the evidence he hoped to find in her possession.

On the other hand, to ring the bell of one of the other apartments might result in the unlatching of the front door, but might involve explanations, difficult, in the circumstances, to make. There was no help for it, however. Duvall pressed the bell belonging to the family named Scully.

It was a long time before there was any response. Duvall had almost begun to despair of getting one, when he heard the clicking of the electric latch, and found that he could turn the knob and enter the hallway.

He had barely done so, when at big, burly-looking man, who might have been a bartender, or a head waiter, appeared in the door of one of the ground floor apartments, clad only in his night clothes.

"Well—whatcha want?" he growled.