Three months went by; then a fourth. Japonica Avenue may have forgotten Chester Pilkins, but Gertrude Maud had not. At the tag end of the fourth month came tidings from the main office of the detective agency which, overnight, started Mrs. Pilkins to where—as the passenger agents for the transcontinental lines so aptly phrased it—California’s Golden Strand is kissed by the pellucid waves of the Sun-Down Sea. It couldn’t be true, this report which had been brought to her by a representative of the great sleuth for whom the agency was named; indeed, it was inconceivable to one who knew her husband that such a report could be true, but she would make certain for herself. She would—so this suffering, conscientious woman told herself—leave no stone unturned. She would neglect to follow up no clue merely because of its manifest improbability.
So back she journeyed to that selfsame town where the Ziegler studios were housed. A local representative of the agency, being advised by telegraph in advance of her coming, met her at the station. Expressing physically the gentle sympathy of an honorary pallbearer, he led her to an automobile, and with her he drove for miles through streets which she remembered having traversed at least once before, until in the far suburban reaches of the city, where the blue foothills of the coast range [198] came down toward the sea, he brought her to a centre of the moving-picture industry; not the Ziegler establishment this time, but to the curious place known as Filmville—ninety fenced-in acres of seeming madness. It was getting on toward five o’clock in the afternoon when the automobile halted before its minareted portals. Leaving Mrs. Pilkins in the car her companion went to confer briefly with a uniformed individual on duty at the door. Returning to her he spoke as follows:
“The—ahem—the party we’ve got under suspicion is out on location with a company. But they’re due back here before dark. I guess we’d better wait a spell.”
He helped her to alight, dismissed the automobile, and accompanied her to an ornamental seat facing an exceedingly ornamental fountain which spouted in a grass plot hard by the gates to Filmville. As she sat and waited, strangely clad men and women—purporting to represent in their attire many periods of the world’s history and many remote corners of the world’s surface—passed by, going in and out. From over the high walls came to her jungle sounds and jungle smells, for this large concern maintained its own zoo upon its own premises. Persistently a sacred cow of India, tethered in a recess of the fence where herbage sprouted, mooed for an absent mate. The voice of the creature matched Mrs. Pilkins’ thoughts. Internally she was mooing for her mate too.
[199]
Twilight impended when two automobile loads of principals, attired cowboyishly and cowgirlishly, came thumping out of the north along the dusty road. These persons dismounted and trooped inside. A little behind them, heralded by a jingle of accoutrement, came a dozen or so punchers riding ponies. With jest and quip bandied back and forth, and to the tinkling of their spurs, these last dropped off their jaded mounts, leaving the ponies to stand with drooping heads and dragging bridles, and went clumping on their high heels into a small wooden place, advertising liquid refreshment, which stood across the way. The detective softly joggled Mrs. Pilkins’ elbow.
“Come on, ma’am,” he said; “just follow me. And don’t say anything until you’re sure. And don’t scream or faint or anything like that—if you can help it.”
“I shan’t,” said Mrs. Pilkins, all a-tremble. She was resolved not to scream and she was not the fainting kind.
Very naturally and very properly, as a gently nurtured woman, Mrs. Pilkins had never seen the interior of a barroom. From just inside the swinging doors where her escort halted her she looked about the place with the eye of curiosity, and even though her mind swirled tumultuously she comprehended it—the glassware, the pictures on the walls, the short bar, the affable dispenser who stood behind it, and [200] the row of cowboys who lined the front of it from end to end, with their backs and hunched shoulders all turned to her, stretching away in a diminishing perspective.
“Wait a minute, lady,” advised the detective in a whisper. “Take your time and look ’em over careful. And be sure—be sure to be sure.”
The lady strove to obey. She looked and she looked. At the back of the room three punchers were clumped together, withdrawn slightly from their fellows—a tall puncher, a medium-sized puncher, and between these two a small puncher.