A SCRAP OF FILM
The area in front of Morris’s store was one of vast confusion. A
hook-and-ladder truck blocked it off from the east and a chemical truck
from the west. Traffic had piled up behind both of them, in a solid
mass. And the sidewalks were jammed with people. It looked as if
everyone in Brentwood had converged on the spot.
The voice of Andy Kane, chief of Brentwood’s five-man police force,
rose over the hubbub. “All right, keep moving there!” he shouted.
“There’s nothing to see here, folks. Keep moving!”
Ken and Sandy squeezed through to him. Chief Kane glared when he saw
them. “There’s nothing for you here either,” he said. “That’s the
fire—the whole thing!” He pointed a scornful finger at a metal
wastebasket standing in the middle of the street, still smoking faintly
but now safely covered with the white foam from chemical extinguishers.
“So that’s all it is!” Sandy’s glance took in the busy policemen,
urging the crowd along, the two great fire engines with their coils of
hose, the firemen in heavy black waterproofs, and the jammed traffic.
“This is something the fire chief will want to remember,” he said with
a grin. “See you later,” he added to Ken, and disappeared into the
crowd with his camera.
A few minutes later Ken spotted him on the roof of Morris’s two-story
building, aiming his lens at the crowd below and at the small
foam-shrouded wastebasket at its center. When Sandy rejoined Ken again
he was still grinning.
“I’ll print this up for the chief’s New Year’s card,” Sandy said. Then
he straightened his face quickly as Chief Dick James emerged from the
jewelry store.
“Everything under control, Chief?” Ken asked.
James nodded shortly. “Total damage one wastebasket and a black smudge
on about five square feet of wall. Quick thinking on Sam Morris’s part,
of course,” he added, “or it might have been a real fire. The minute he
saw flames coming out of the basket he picked it up and carried it into
the street.”
“How’d it start?” Ken asked. “Cigarette?”
James shrugged. “Probably. Or a still-burning match. People are so
danged careless. Wonder it doesn’t happen oftener, the way they toss
stuff around.”
Sandy, bending over the wastebasket, sniffed curiously. “Smell this
thing, Chief,” he said. “Maybe it’s my imagination.”
“What are you imagining?” But James bent over the basket and took a
deep breath. Then he looked up with the same puzzlement that Sandy
showed.
“All right, masterminds,” Ken said. “What gives?”
“Film,” Sandy said. “Or at least that’s what it smells like. But why
would there be film in Sam’s basket?”
“That’s a good question,” James said. “Let’s go ask Sam if he’s got the
answer.” But before they went inside the shop he called one of his men
over and instructed him to take the wastebasket to the firehouse and
examine it carefully.
There were fewer customers inside the store than there had been
earlier, but otherwise it looked very much as it had earlier that
morning. Sam Morris, wearing a smoky streak down one cheek, came
forward to speak to them.
“Sorry about all the excitement, Chief,” he said. “Your box is
repaired,” he added to the boys.
“Gosh!” Ken said. “I’d forgotten all about it.”
“Would there have been any film in that wastebasket, Sam?” James asked.
“Film?” The jeweler looked blank. “What kind of film?”
“We don’t know,” James said. “We’re not even sure if that’s what it
was, but that’s what it smells like.”
Sam shook his head. “I don’t know what was in the basket. It stands
over there, beneath that desk.” He pointed to a writing shelf built
against one wall, for the use of customers who wanted to fill out cards
to enclose with gifts. “It’s usually almost empty, except for a couple
of cards that have been blotted or spoiled, or maybe an empty cigarette
package. I don’t know why anybody would have thrown film in it.”
“Film is inflammable stuff,” James pointed out. “Maybe somebody wanted
to start a fire in here.”
“A pyromaniac?” Sam looked unbelieving.
James shook his head. “I was thinking of a crook—a man smart enough to
start a fire, so that he could make off with a handful of rings, or
watches, during the excitement. Have you checked your stock, Sam?”
Morris shook his head. “It didn’t occur to me. I had the basket out in
the street in a couple of seconds, and then I came right back in. My
clerks were here all the time.” He smiled wearily. “There wasn’t half
as much excitement in the store as there was out in the street after
the trucks arrived.”
“Where were you when the blaze started up?” James asked.
“Behind the partition—in the workroom.” Morris gestured toward the rear
wall broken by a single door and a windowlike gap above a ledge. “I’d
just finished putting in a watch crystal for the man who was here when
you boys were in earlier,” he added to Sandy and Ken. “He’d been
waiting for a few minutes and I was just handing him his watch through
the window there when one of the customers yelled ‘Fire!’ I saw the
smoke right away, and I ran out of the workroom through that door and
carried the basket to the street.”
“You don’t know what merchandise was out on top of the counter at the
time?”
“No, I don’t, Chief. But I can find out.” Morris hurried off and held
brief consultations with both his clerks. When he came back he looked
relieved.
“There were no small items being displayed just then,” he said. “One
clerk was showing electric percolators, and the other was displaying
cut glass to one customer and selling a smoking set to another one at
the same time.”
James still didn’t look entirely satisfied. “Check your rings and
watches and other small stuff as soon as you get a chance, Sam, and let
me know if anything’s missing.”
“All right,” Morris agreed. “But I still don’t think there was anything
deliberate about that fire. It must have been just a careless smoker
who threw a match in the basket.”
“You didn’t see that happen, did you?” Sandy asked.
“No—and my clerks didn’t either. I asked them. We were just too busy to
be looking around.”
“Sure.” James nodded. “Well, maybe we’re guessing wrong about this film
business. But if we run down anything we’ll let you know.”
“Don’t forget your box, boys.” Morris hurried back to the window in the
rear partition, reached a hand through, and lifted it from a shelf just
inside the opening.
“How much do we owe you, Sam?” Ken asked.
Sam smiled. “Since when do I charge a good friend for a few minutes’
work?” He shook his head. “Go on—beat it. Just see if you can get it
home without dropping it again.”
The boys thanked him and left the store with James.
“Give us a ring if you really do turn up some film in that basket, will
you, Chief?” Sandy asked.
“Sure.”
Back in the _Advance_ office Ken handed the box to his father. “We’ve
got Mom’s present all right, but we haven’t got much of a story.”
“We haven’t got much of a story yet,” Sandy corrected him.
“What does the ‘yet’ mean?” Pop demanded, while Richard Holt lifted the
cardboard lid and assured himself that the catch on the little iron box
was now in perfect working order.
Sandy explained the possibility of incendiarism. Bert’s automatic hoot
of laughter died when he realized that Chief James shared Sandy’s
suspicion.
“But if Sam says nothing was missing, it doesn’t sound like a
grab-and-run deal,” Pop pointed out.
“He doesn’t _think_ anything is missing,” Sandy reminded him. “He might
still find—” He broke off as the phone rang.
A moment later Sandy was talking to the caller who had asked for him.
“No kidding?” he said. “About six inches? And thirty-five millimeter,
huh? Did you find a cartridge or a spool?” He listened for another
moment and then said “Sure. Thanks, Chief,” and hung up.
“I guess you all heard that.” There was a note of triumph in Sandy’s
voice. “They found a six-inch scrap of thirty-five-millimeter film in
the wastebasket. My guess is it’s the remains of a roll for a candid
camera like mine.”
“That still doesn’t make it an incendiary job,” Bert said firmly.
“Probably some customer of Sam’s had just picked the roll up at a
drugstore, where he was having it developed. He looked at it while he
was waiting in Sam’s, saw that it was no good, and threw it away.”
“Could be.” Richard Holt nodded his agreement. “Of course anybody
should know better than to throw film into a public wastebasket where
it might cause just this kind of trouble. But there are always careless
people around.”
“Write just a brief paragraph on the fire, Ken,” Pop said decisively.
“Then, if Sam does report anything missing among his stock, we’ll go to
work on it.” He turned to Dick Holt. “Did Sam do a good job on your
box?”
“Perfect,” Ken’s father assured him.
“Fine. I’m not surprised. Sam’s a good man.”
“And he wouldn’t let us pay for it, Dad,” Ken said.
Pop smiled. “I’m not surprised at that either. Here, I’ll help you with
that, Dick,” he added, as the correspondent brought out the wrapping
paper and ribbon he had put into his overcoat pocket that morning at
the house.
Ken and Sandy were alone in the office that noon. Pop and Bert had
carried Richard Holt off to their weekly lunch club meeting.
“Don’t cook up any more mysteries,” Bert had warned as he left.
“Mysteries!” Sandy made a face at his brother’s disappearing back.
“Every time we ask a simple question we’re accused of stirring up
trouble.”
Ken slipped a sheet of paper into his typewriter and twirled the
roller. “We don’t do badly,” he said, smiling. “Maybe they’ve got some
reason to suspect us.”
Sandy stared. “Whose side are you on, anyway? You were the one who
started the whole business this morning.”
“Sure—sure. And I’m not satisfied about that business yet. But I guess
maybe it was a little too much when we came tearing in with talk about
an incendiary fire. Especially,” Ken added pointedly, “in view of
something I remember you telling me a while ago.”
“What was that?” Sandy asked.
“You told me that modern camera film is called safety film because it
does _not_ go up in flames, fast—the way film used to do.”
“That’s right,” Sandy agreed. “It doesn’t.”
“Then why would anybody deliberately try to start a fire with film?”
Ken asked.
Sandy smiled. “A really smart crook wouldn’t, maybe,” he admitted. “If
he was somebody like you, for example, who had had the benefit of my
educational conversation. But film used to be very inflammable, and it
probably still has that reputation with a lot of people.”
Ken looked unconvinced. “I still don’t think it was very smart of you
to become suspicious just because you smelled film in that basket.
After all, if a man plans to rob a jewelry store, and his success
depends on a good rousing fire, you’d think he’d look into the subject
a little first. That he’d make sure he had the right materials on hand.”
“Well, I thought maybe this wasn’t carefully planned,” Sandy said
argumentatively. “Couldn’t it have been done on impulse—on the spur of
the moment? In that case you might easily duck into a drugstore and buy
a roll of film. It’s easy to carry around. It’s not noticeable. It’s—”
“Wait a minute!” Ken broke in suddenly. “Maybe it all fits together!”
“Maybe all what fits together?”
“It’s the iron box—Mom’s present! That’s what’s doing it.” Ken folded
his arms over his typewriter and rested his chin on them, staring at
the gaily wrapped package that now stood on Pop’s desk. “Yes, that’s
it. I’m sure of it.” His voice was tense.
“Are you out of your mind?” Sandy demanded. “What are you talking
about? What’s the little iron box—?”
“Listen,” Ken said. “It’s all perfectly obvious. That box is important
to somebody. The somebody, whoever he is, knew Dad was bringing it home
with him. He—the somebody, I mean—went to Dad’s apartment last night
looking for it. It wasn’t there. He knows something about Dad—at least
enough to realize that he was coming to Brentwood. So later last night
he tried to break into the house here, but I scared him off. He must
have hung around, saw that we were taking the box to Sam Morris’s this
morning, and made another attempt there.”
“And there he is foiled again!” There was laughter behind Sandy’s
mock-dramatic voice.
“Right,” Ken said. “Because, as you explained to me yourself, he made a
bad choice of material for his fire. He wants to create a diversion. He
has some vague idea that film is inflammable, and dashes into the
nearest drugstore to get some. He slips into the crowd at Sam’s, drops
it into the wastebasket, along with a lit match, and then—”
Sandy, openly grinning now, picked it up. “And then sees his whole
villainous dream go up in a tiny cloud of smoke.”
“Right,” Ken said again, more firmly than ever. “Because, for one
thing, the fire only lasts a second. And, for another, that man waiting
for his watch crystal is standing right in front of the window,
unconsciously protecting the box on the shelf inside. Sam told us he
was there when it happened. Remember?”
“Oh, I remember all right,” Sandy admitted. “But the whole thing sounds
like a hallucination, my friend. In the first place, why would anybody
particularly want the box? Your father told us it wasn’t valuable—that
he picked it up from the porter in the Rome office.”
“It’s an antique,” Ken pointed out.
“Sure. So is any old stone you can find in a field.”
“Look,” Ken said, “I don’t know _why_ anybody wants the box. But it
looks to me as if somebody does. I was right about somebody breaking
into the house last night. You were right about the film in Sam’s
wastebasket, which is certainly an odd place for film to be.”
Sandy stood up abruptly. “O.K.,” he said. “Maybe we can check that part
of your nightmare, anyway. If somebody bought that film with the
deliberate purpose of starting a fire, he probably got it in Schooley’s
photo shop right across the street from Sam’s. Let’s go and find out.”
They grabbed their coats and started for the door. Ken picked up the
box from Pop’s desk on the way.
“I think I’ll keep my hands on this—just in case,” he said.
The photographic supply shop was as crowded as Sam’s store had been.
Several minutes went by before the boys could catch the attention of
one of the clerks.
But finally one of them said, “Hi, Sandy. What is it today? Film or
flash bulbs?”
“Neither,” Sandy told him. “Just some information. Did you sell a roll
of thirty-five millimeter this morning?”
The clerk’s eyebrows rose. “Are you crazy? I must have sold at least
fifty. In case you don’t know it, chum, tomorrow is Christmas and quite
a few people seem to want to take pictures that day.”
“I know,” Sandy said, “but—”
“Wait,” Ken interrupted. “Let’s put it this way. Did you sell any to a
man who either didn’t seem to know anything about film, or who didn’t
care what kind he bought?”
The clerk’s eyebrows rose another fraction of an inch. “Of all the
idiotic—” he began, and then stopped. He looked at the boys sharply for
an instant, and then called over his shoulder to a fellow clerk. “Rick!
Got a second?”
Rick left his customer who was examining a small camera and joined
them. “What’s up?”
“Didn’t you tell me about some queer duck who came in this morning to
buy film and didn’t know what size he wanted or what speed or anything?”
Rick nodded. “Sure. He just asked for film. When I asked what size, he
said it didn’t matter. And then when I kind of stared at him he said it
was for a little camera. I figured he meant a miniature job, so I
suggested a cartridge of thirty-five millimeter and he said that would
be fine. But he didn’t know whether he wanted color film or black and
white, and he didn’t know what I was talking about when I mentioned
high-speed stuff. I finally gave him a spool of the cheapest film we
have, just to get rid of him.”
Ken made an effort to keep his voice calm. “Do you remember what he
looked like?”
“I probably wouldn’t remember my own mother if she came in here today,”
Rick said with a grin. “But I do recall one more funny thing about that
guy,” he added suddenly. “Right after he left I had to reach into the
front window for a camera some customer wanted to see, and I noticed
him crossing the street. The dumb cluck was opening the cartridge box
and exposing the film to the light! He’s sure going to be in for a
surprise when he tries to take pictures with it.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Ken said, beginning to pull Sandy away. “I
doubt if he planned to take any pictures at all.”
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