"A bolo!" repeated the head of the Homicide Squad.

"A. terrible weapon," explained the physician. "Really a cane-knife, but used by the Igorottes in war—and head-hunting!"

"Then it was not a knife that one ordinarily would carry?"

"Lord, no! The blade was more than a foot long—that I'd swear!"

Inspector Corot appeared to be mentally mulling over the words of the Medical Examiner. Then he turned abruptly and made for the room where the members of the cast awaited him.

"Circulate about the studio," he said to the reporter who strode after him, "and see what you can learn about the Storme woman's past."

LITTLE had ever been known about the strange young leading woman who called herself Helene Storme. Tad Boone had spotted her in the cashier's cage of a side-street cafeteria in New York. She was the very type he was seeking for his new picture. So it was that the young woman, without previous experience, had found herself under contract, and in the Ajax Studios in Astoria.

Stony-faced, some had called her at her first appearance upon the lot. But under the magic touch of the director, some spark of life had kindled, to make of her a creature of flame and passion. However, when not acting, she was passive, unresponsive, like a woman buried within herself. But she had vindicated the judgment of her discoverer.

However, they were salty details of the girl's life that Inspector Corot looked for—marriages, men, morals! So the Blade man headed for the publicity department. But even Don Clark, its head, knew nothing more of Helene Storme.

"She's a mystery woman, I tell you, Dawson," he wailed. "No one, not even Tad, knows anything about her past—Lord, feller, I tried the old-home-town and mother-dear blab on her to get a story of her life, but I drew a blank, a blankety-blank. Poor sister, she's dead now, and can't help it, but she's making the first page."