At this stage I cannot better carry my story forward than by continuing to quote from the reports of different operatives. To me these are fascinating documents. Their sober matter-of-factness is more thrilling than the most exciting yarn. With a wealth of seemingly irrelevant detail they build up a picture more convincing than any except those of a master of fiction. One has to be in the secret, of course. The operatives themselves are not supposed to know what it is all about, though they may guess a little. But to be in the secret of a case and to read the reports bearing on it from a hundred angles, gives one a strange sense of power.



REPORT OF D. B.

According to my instructions I applied for board at number — West Forty-Ninth street, Mrs. Atwood, landlady. I gave my name as Winston Darnall, and made out I was a character actor just in from the road. I engaged the rear hall room top floor. The place is an ordinary actor's house, considerably run down. The landlady has only lately bought the business from another woman, so it hasn't got the familiar friendly air of a long-established place.

At the supper table I recognised my man Kenton Milbourne from the description furnished. He's an unusual looking man—unusually homely. He doesn't keep to himself at all, like a fellow with something on his mind. He seems to be on good enough terms with the other boarders, but they keep out of his way because he's such a tiresome talker. There's one or two old fellows that go around with him. They sit in the parlour and talk by the hour about what dandy actors they are.

Milbourne has the large front room on the third floor. As luck would have it, the hall room adjoining was vacant, and there is only a thin board partition between, because the hall-room was originally an alcove. But I judged this was too much of a good thing. I was afraid of taking the hall room for fear of putting M. wise. Maybe later, when we're friends I can move.

I wasn't in any rush to pick up Milbourne. Thought I'd better wait awhile and give him a chance to make up to me. Meanwhile I jollied the landlady. She was a talker like all of them. Milbourne, it seems, is her pet. She holds him up as a model for the other boarders because he paid her four weeks board in advance when her rent fell due. This seems to indicate he means to stay a while.

All the boarders look up to Milbourne with a kind of respect because he's just closed his season with a first-class company, while the rest are mostly with repertoire companies, and cheap road shows.

The second night I was there, Milbourne braced me in the parlour. Looking for a new listener, I guess. He started in to tell me what a hit he made with the Irma Hamerton production. If this man is a crook he's the smoothest article I ever ran up against. Because he isn't smooth at all. He talks all the time about himself as simple as a child, but at that he don't tell you much. He's got a dull eye which don't seem to take in nothing, and he talks in a slow, monotonous way and says a thing over and over until you're doped.

A couple of nights later some of the younger boarders were having a bit of a rough house in the parlour and M. asked me up to his room where we could talk in peace. His room was bare like. He don't show any photographs or pictures or gimcracks. Seems he never even unpacks his trunk. It was a big trunk even for an actor, and packed neat and full as a honeycomb. Whenever he wants a little thing he unlocks it, takes out what he's after, and locks it again, even though he's right in the room. The key is on a chain fastened to his waistband.

His talk was mostly about the Irma Hamerton company. He told me what he says is the rights of the story about her sickness, and the unexpected closing in the middle of good business. She was in love with her leading man, Roland Quarles, according to him. Nothing was too bad for him to say about Quarles.*


* My operative went into considerable detail here as to Milbourne's opinion of Roland. Most of it I have deleted, since it was no more than meaningless abuse.

B.E.


I didn't take much stock in all this. It is the way a poor actor likes to talk about one who rises above him.

About Quarles and Miss Hamerton; Milbourne said that just as she was going to marry him she found out that he had a wife already. Without exactly saying so, he let on that it was he, Milbourne, who had put her wise to the young man. That's the way they go on. She had hysterics, he said, and broke up the show. As proof of his story, he said that Quarles had disappeared and nobody knew where he was, not even his old servant.

As I talk more with Milbourne I see that he isn't so simple as he likes to make out. He has a way of sandwiching in little questions in his dull talk, that amounts to pretty effective cross-examining in the end. He didn't get anything on me though. My story hasn't any holes in it yet. I have an idea that I've had considerably more experience acting than he has.

Sometimes he lets slip a clever remark that don't fit in with his character of a bonehead at all. For instance, we were talking about the Chatfield case that all the papers are full of now, and Milbourne says:

"Put a police helmet on any man, and right away his brain seems to take the shape of it. Cops think as much alike as insects. Let a crook once get on to their way of thinking, and he can play with them like a ball on a rubber string."

He let this out by accident. Afterwards he looked at me sharp to see if I had taken anything amiss. I never let on.

I have been in this house ............