The Film of Fear

by Frederic Arnold Kummer

"Ruth opened them both. I was in the next room at the moment. Suddenly I heard a cry, and on rushing in, found her standing in the center of the room, holding a small bottle in one hand, and staring at it in the utmost consternation. In her other hand was a sheet of paper, which, as I subsequently found, had been wrapped around the bottle, inside the outer brown-paper cover.

"The bottle was labeled 'carbolic acid.' Here is the sheet of paper." Mrs. Morton, with trembling fingers, extended a half sheet of note-paper toward the detective.

Duvall took it and read the typewritten words upon it.

"We gave you thirty days. Now we give you seven. Drink this, and save yourself from a horrible fate." The death's head signature ended the message. "Ruth has been very ill ever since," Mrs. Morton added drearily. "If she is not better in the morning, I shall call in a doctor. She felt herself absolutely safe, here, and was recovering her cheerfulness. Now all her fears have returned with redoubled force. I am terribly worried about her—terribly worried." Taking out her handkerchief, the poor woman wiped the tears from her eyes. "How could these people have known we were here?" she whispered, in an awed voice. "It seems like the work of fiends."

There was little that the detective could say in reply. Even to his sober judgment, there came a suggestion of the uncanny, the supernatural. The woman in the cab had escaped at half past nine, presumably quite ignorant of the location of Mrs. Morton's retreat. Half an hour later, the campaign of intimidation was renewed with greater vigor than before.

"I'm afraid, Mrs. Morton," he said, "that it will be necessary for you to remain with your daughter every minute of the time, for a day or two. By then, I am convinced that we shall have laid our hands on the guilty parties. Good night."

Duvall rose very early the following morning, and drove at once to the studio, but early as he was, Mr. Baker was there before him.

The latter was seated in his office, poring over a mass of reports, when Duvall entered. He glanced up, rose, shook hands nervously, then motioned to a chair.

"Nothing new yet," he said. "My stenographer, Miss King, is here. Neither Miss Green nor Miss Ford have yet arrived, but it is still a little early. Miss King came before her usual time, as she had some reports to get out that she could not complete last night. We have at least fifteen minutes to wait."

Duvall told him to proceed with his work, and drawing a newspaper from his pocket, made an effort to interest himself in it. In this, however, he was not very successful. Time after time his mind would wander from the printed sheet before him to the strange events of the night before. The thing that puzzled him most was, how did the persecutors of Miss Morton discover her new address so soon? Was the woman who had handed the package to Nora, the maid, the same one that had vanished from the cab? He remembered that it had been about nine o'clock when they left the Grand Theater, and perhaps half-past when he had gone into the drug store in Sixth Avenue to get the aromatic spirits of ammonia. Had the woman gone directly from the cab to the hotel? She must have done so, without much loss of time, in order to reach there by ten o'clock. How had she known the address? He knew very well that he had given it to the cabman, when they started away from the theater. Had the supposedly fainting woman overheard his words? If she had, and had so promptly acted upon them, she was far more clever and determined than her appearance would seem to warrant. He revolved the matter endlessly in his mind, waiting for Mr. Baker to announce that the time had come, when Miss Ford's or Miss Green's arrival or non-arrival would indicate which of the two, if either, was the woman they sought.