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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/19403-8.txt b/19403-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0f458db --- /dev/null +++ b/19403-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10701 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Murder at Bridge, by Anne Austin + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Murder at Bridge + + +Author: Anne Austin + + + +Release Date: September 28, 2006 [eBook #19403] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MURDER AT BRIDGE*** + + +E-text prepared by Mark C. Orton, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg +Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustration. + See 19403-h.htm or 19403-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/4/0/19403/19403-h/19403-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/4/0/19403/19403-h.zip) + + + + + +MURDER AT BRIDGE + +A Mystery Novel + +by + +ANNE AUSTIN + +Author of "Murder Backstairs" + + + + + + + +Grosset & Dunlap Publishers New York +Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1931. Reprinted March, +April, 1931; February, 1932. +Printed in the United States of America + + + + +For ARLINE AND F. HUGH HERBERT + + + + +[Illustration: Ground-floor plan of Nita Selim's house in Primrose +Meadows, showing the bedroom in which the murder was committed.] + + + + +CHAPTER ONE + + +Bonnie Dundee stretched out a long and rather fine pair of legs, +regarding the pattern of his dark-blue socks with distinct satisfaction; +then he rested his black head against the rich upholstery of an armchair +not at all intended for his use. + +His cheerful blue eyes turned at last--but not too long a last--to the +small, upright figure seated at a typewriter desk in the corner of the +office. + +"Good morning, Penny," he called out lazily, and good-humoredly waited +for the storm to break. + +"Miss Crain--to _you_!" The flying fingers did not stop an instant, but +Dundee noticed with glee that the slim back stiffened even more rigidly +and that there was a decided toss of the brown bobbed head. + +"But Penny is so much more like you," Dundee protested, unruffled. "And +why should I be forced always to think of you as a long-legged bird, +when even our mutual boss, District Attorney William S. Sanderson, has +the privilege of calling you what you are--a bright and shining new +penny?" + +"I've known Bill Sanderson since I was born," the unseen lips informed +him truculently, even as the unseen fingers continued their fiercely +staccato typing. + +"Ah! That explains a lot!" Dundee conceded handsomely. "I just wondered, +amidst all this bonhommie of 'Bill' and 'Penny,' why I--" + +"I only call Mr. Sanderson 'Bill' when I forget!" the small creature +defended herself sharply. "Goodness knows I _try_ to be an efficient +private secretary! And I could be a lot more efficient if lazy strangers +didn't plump themselves down in our best visitors' chair, and try to +flirt with me. I don't flirt! Do you hear?--_I don't flirt with +anybody!_" + +"Flirt with you, you funny little Penny?" Dundee's voice was a little +sad, the voice of a man who finds himself grievously misunderstood. "I +only want you to like me, if you can, and be a little nice to me, for +after all I--" + +"Oh, I know!" Penny Crain jerked the finished letter from her typewriter +and spun about on her narrow-backed swivel chair to face him. "I know +you are 'Mr. James F. Dundee, Special Investigator attached to the +office of the District Attorney,' and that you have a right to drive me +crazy if you want to." + +"_Crazy?_" Dundee was genuinely amazed, contrite. "I beg your pardon +most humbly, Miss Crain. I'll go back to my cell--" + +"Your office is almost as big and nice as this one," Penny retorted, but +her sharp, bright brown eyes--really almost the color of a new +penny--softened until they took on a velvety depth. + +Dundee did not fail to notice the softening, nor did the little +heart-shaped face, with its low widow's-peak, its straight, short nose, +and its pointed little chin, made almost childish by the deep cleft +which cut through its obvious effort to look mature and determined, fail +to please him any more acutely than on the other days of the one short +week he had been privileged at intervals to gaze upon it. + +"But the files, and--other things--are in this office," he told her, his +blue eyes twinkling happily once more. + +"Don't you _dare_ touch my files again!" Penny cried, springing to her +feet and running toward the wall which was completely concealed by +drawers, cabinets and shelves, filled with the records of which she was +the proud custodian. "That's why I said just now that you were driving +me crazy. Thursday you took a whole folder of correspondence out of the +letter files and put it back under the wrong initial. I had to hunt for +it for two hours, with Bill--I mean, Mr. Sanderson--gnawing his nails +with impatience. He thought I had filed it wrong, and you might have +made me lose my job." + +Unconsciously her slightly husky contralto voice had sunk lower and +trembled audibly. + +"I'm awfully sorry. I shan't touch your files again, Miss Crain." + +"Oh--go on and call me Penny," she conceded impatiently. "What do you +want now?... And you can get anything you need out of the files if +you'll just put the folder in the bottom drawer of my desk, so that I +can file it myself--correctly!" + +"Thank you, Penny," Bonnie Dundee said gravely. "I'd like awfully to +have the complete transcript of 'The State versus Maginty.' Mr. +Sanderson is determined to get a conviction where our former district +attorney most ingloriously failed. The new trial comes up in two weeks, +and he wants me to try to uncover a missing link of evidence." + +"I know," she nodded, and stretched her short, slender body to pull down +the two heavy volumes he required. + +Without a by-your-leave, Special Investigator Dundee resumed his +comfortable seat, and laid the first of the volumes open upon his knees. +But he did not seem to take a great deal of interest in the impanelling +of jurors in the case of one Rufus Maginty, who had won the temporary +triumph of a "hung jury" under the handling of the state's case by +District Attorney Sherwood, deposed in November's election. + +Rather, his eyes followed the small, brisk figure of Miss Penelope +Crain, as it moved about the room, and his ears listened to the somehow +charming though emphatic tapping of her French heels.... French heels! +Hadn't she been wearing sensible, Cuban-heeled Oxfords all other days of +this first week of his "attachment" to the district attorney's +office?... Cunning little thing, for all her thorniness and her +sharpness with him, which he now saw that he had deserved.... Pretty, +too.... Damned pretty!... What color was that dress of hers?... Ummm, +let's see ... Chartreuse, didn't they call it? Chartreuse with big brown +dots in it. Bet it was sleeveless under that short little jacket of +golden-brown chiffon velvet.... By Jove--and Dundee lapsed into one of +the Englishisms he had picked up during his six months' work in England +as a tyro in the records department of Scotland Yard, before he had come +to Hamilton to make a humble beginning as a cub detective on the +Homicide Squad--yes, by Jove, she was all dressed up, for some reason or +other. + +"Of course! Because it's Saturday and you have the afternoon off!" +Dundee finished his reverie aloud, to the astonishment of the small +person trying to reach a file drawer just a little too high for her. "I +mean," he hastened to explain, "that I've just noticed how beautiful +your costume is, and found a reason for it." + +There was sudden color in the creamy face. The French heels tapped an +angry progress across the big office, and Penny sat down abruptly in her +swivel chair, reached across the immaculate desk, snatched up a morning +paper and tossed it, without a glance, in the general direction of her +tormentor. + +"Page three, column two, first item," she informed him ungraciously, and +then began to search with a funny sort of desperation for more work to +consume her extraordinary energy. + +Bonnie Dundee grinned indulgently as he opened _The Hamilton Morning +News_ and turned to the specified page and column. + +"Ah! My old friend, the 'society editress,' in her very best style," he +commented as he began to read aloud: + +"'Mrs. Juanita Selim, new and charming member, is entertaining the +Forsyte Alumnae Bridge Club this afternoon, luncheon to be served at the +exclusive new Breakaway Inn on Sheridan Road--'" + +"I've read it--and I'm busy, so shut up!" Penny commanded, as she +gathered up pencils to sharpen. + +Quite meekly, Bonnie Dundee subsided into silent perusal of an item he +was sure could have no possible interest for himself, in either a +personal or professional capacity, unless Penny's name was in it +somewhere: + +"--after which the jolly party of young matrons and maids will adjourn +to Mrs. Selim's delightful home in the Primrose Meadows Addition." He +chuckled, and dared to interrupt the high importance of pointing-up +pencils. "I say, that's funny, isn't it?... 'Primrose Meadows +Addition'!" + +"I don't think it's funny," Penny retorted coldly. "It so happens that +my mother named it, that my father went into bankruptcy trying to make a +go of it, and that 'Mrs. Selim's delightful home' was built to be our +home, and in which we were fortunate enough to live only two months +before the crash came." + +"Oh!" Dundee groaned. "Penny, Penny! I'm dreadfully sorry." + +"Shut up!" she ordered, but her voice was huskier than ever with tears. + +Dundee's now thoroughly interested eyes raced down the absurdly written +paragraphs: + +"Although not an alumna of that famous and select school for girls, +Forsyte-on-the-Hudson, graduation from which places any Hamilton girl in +the very inner circle of Hamilton society, Mrs. Selim has been closely +identified with the school, having for the past two years directed and +staged Forsyte's annual play which ushers in the Easter vacation. + +"Indeed it was Mrs. Selim's remarkable success with this year's play +which caused Mrs. Peter Dunlap, long interested in a Little Theater for +Hamilton, to induce the beautiful and charming young directress to come +to Hamilton with her. Plans for the Little Theater are growing apace, +and it is safe to conjecture that not all the conversation flying thick +and fast about 'Nita's' bridge tables this afternoon will be concerned +with contract 'conventions,' scores, and finesses which failed. + +"Lovely 'Nita' was elected to membership a fortnight ago, when a vacancy +occurred, due to the resignation of Miss Alice Humphrey, who has gone +abroad for a year's study in the Sorbonne. The two-table club now +includes: Mesdames Hugo Marshall, Tracey A. Miles, Peter Dunlap, John C. +Drake, Juanita Selim, and Misses Polly Beale, Janet Raymond, and +Penelope Crain." + +Dundee lowered the paper and stared at the profile of District Attorney +Sanderson's private secretary. So she was a "society girl," a "Forsyte" +girl! Was that the reason, perhaps, why she had been so thorny with him, +a mere "dick"? Well, he wasn't just a dick any longer. He was a Special +Investigator ... A society girl, playing at work.... + +But there was more, and he read on: "As is well known, the 'girls' have +their 'hen-fight' bridge-luncheon every Saturday afternoon from the +first of October to the first of June, and a bridge-dinner, in which +mere men are graciously included, every other Wednesday evening during +the season. Mr. and Mrs. Tracey A. Miles are scheduled as next +Wednesday's host and hostess." + +"I take off my hat to your 'society editress'," Dundee commented with +false cheerfulness, when he had laid the paper back upon Penny's desk. +"She makes half a column of this one item in what must be a meager +Saturday bunch of 'Society Notes,' then writes it all over again, in the +past tense, for an equally meager Monday column.... Like bridge, Miss +Crain?" + +Penny snatched up the paper and crushed it into her wastebasket. "I do! +And I like my old friends, even if I am not able, financially, to keep +up with them.... If that's why you've suddenly decided to stop +being--comrades--" + +"Please forgive me again, Penny," he begged gently. + +"I was born into that crowd, and I still belong to it, because all of +them are my real friends, but get this into your thick Scotch-Irish +head, Mr. Dundee--I'm working because I have to, and--and because I love +it, too, and because I want to earn enough before I'm many years older +to give Mother some of the things she's missing so dreadfully +since--since my father failed and--and ran away." + +"Ran away?" Dundee echoed incredulously. How could any man desert a +daughter like this! + +"Yes! Ran away!" she repeated fiercely. "I might as well tell you +myself. Plenty of others will be willing to, as soon as they know you +are--my friend.... As I told you, my father"--her voice broke--"my +father went bankrupt, but before the courts knew it he had sent some +securities to a--to a _woman_ in New York, and when he--left us, he went +to her, because he left Mother a note saying so. His defrauded creditors +here have tried to--to catch him, but they haven't--yet--" + +Very gently Bonnie Dundee took the small hand that was distractedly +rumpling the brown waves which swept back from the widow's-peak. It lay +fluttering in his bigger palm for a moment, then snatched itself away. + +"I won't have you feeling sorry for me!" she cried angrily. + +"Who owns your--the Primrose Meadows house now?--Mrs. Selim?" he asked. + +"The 'lovely Nita'?" Her voice was scornful. "No. She rents it from +Judge Hugo Marshall--or is supposed to pay him rent," she added with a +trace of malice. "Hugo is an old darling, but he is fearfully weak where +pretty women are concerned. Nita Selim had known Hugo in New +York--somehow--and as soon as Lois--Mrs. Dunlap, I mean--had got Nita +off the train, the stranger in our midst hied herself to Hugo's office +and he's been tagging after her ever since.... Though most of the men in +our crowd are as bad as or worse than poor old Hugo. How Karen keeps on +looking so blissfully happy--" + +"Karen?" Dundee interrupted. + +"Mrs. Hugo Marshall," she explained impatiently. "Karen Plummer made her +debut a year ago this last winter--a darling of a girl. Judge +Marshall--retired judge, you know--had been proposing to the prettiest +girl in each season's crop of debs for the last twenty years, and Hugo +must have been the most nonplussed 'perennial bachelor' who ever led a +grand march when Karen snapped him up.... Loved him--actually! And it +seems to have worked out marvelously.... A baby boy three months old," +she concluded in her laconic style. Then, ashamed; "I don't know why I'm +gossiping like this!" + +"Because you can't find another blessed scrap of work to do, you little +efficiency fiend," Dundee laughed, "Come on! Gossip some more. My +Maginty case will wait till afternoon, to be mulled over while you're +losing your hard-earned salary at bridge with rich women." + +"We don't play for high stakes," she corrected him. "Just a twentieth of +a cent a point, though contract can run into money even at that. The +winnings all go to the Forsyte Scholarship Fund. On Wednesday evenings +the crowd plays for higher stakes--a tenth--and winners keepers. +Therefore I can't afford to go, unless I sink so low as to let my escort +pay my losses--which I sometimes do," she confessed, her brown head low +for a moment. + +"Is this Mrs. Peter Dunlap a deep-bosomed club woman, who starts +Movements?" he asked, more to bring her out of her depression than +anything else. "Bigger and Better Babies Movements, and Homes for Fallen +Girls, and Little Theater Movements?" + +The brown head flung itself up sharply, and the brown eyes hardened into +bright pennies again. "Lois Dunlap is the sweetest, finest, most +_comfortable_ woman in Hamilton, and I adore her--as does everyone else, +Peter Dunlap hardly more than the rest of us. She _is_ interested in a +Little Theater for Hamilton, but she won't manage it. That's why she got +hold of Nita Selim. Lois will simply put up barrels of money, without +missing them, and give a grand job to a little Broadway gold-digger. +Funny thing is, she really delights in Nita. Thinks she's sweet and has +never had a real chance." + +"And what do you think?" Dundee asked softly. + +"Oh--I suppose I'm a cat, but I can see through her so clearly. Not that +she's bad; she's simply an opportunist. She's awfully sweet and +deferential and 'frank' with women, but with men--well, she simply tucks +her head so that her shoulder-length black curls fall forward +enchantingly, gives them one wistful smile out of her big eyes that are +like black pansies and--the clink of slave chains!... Now go on and +think I'm catty, which I suppose I am!" + +Bonnie Dundee grinned at her reassuringly. Not for him to explain that +practically all women and many men found themselves "gossiping" when he +led them on adroitly, for reasons of his own. Which of course helped +make him the excellent detective he was. + +"So all the men in your crowd have fallen for Nita Selim, have they?" + +"Practically all, in varying degrees, except Peter Dunlap, who has never +looked at another woman since he was lucky enough to get Lois, and Clive +Hammond, who's engaged to Polly Beale," Penny answered reluctantly, her +color high. + +"Including _your_ young man?" + +"I haven't a 'young man,' in the sense of being engaged," Penny +retorted, then added honestly: "I _have_ been letting Ralph +Hammond--that's Clive's brother, you know--take me about a good +deal.... Ralph and Clive have plenty of money," she defended herself +hastily. "They are architects, Clive being the head of the firm and +Ralph, who hasn't been out of college so very long, a junior partner. +It was the Hammond firm that drew up the plans for Dad's--I mean, my +father's--Primrose Meadows Addition houses. He had our house built as a +sort of show-place, you know, so that prospective builders out there +could see how artistic a home could be put up for a moderate sum of +money. But he didn't quite finish even that--left half the gabled top +story unfinished, and Nita has been teasing Hugo to finish it up for +her. It looks," she added with a shrug, "as if Nita will get what she +wants--as usual." + +"And Ralph has acquired a set of slave chains?" Dundee suggested, with +just the slightest note of sympathy. + +"_And how!_" Penny assured him, grimly. "A simile as out-of-date as my +clothes are going to be if I don't get some new ones soon. Not that the +crowd minds what I wear," she added loyally. "I could dress up in a +window drape--" + +"And be just as charming as you are in that grand new party dress you +have on now," Dundee finished for her gallantly. + +"_New!_" Penny snorted and turned back to her desk in a futile effort to +find something left undone. + +Dundee ignored the rebuff. "How many suckers--I mean, how many gentlemen +with moderate incomes actually built in Primrose Meadows?" + +"You are inquisitive, aren't you?... None! Our house, or rather the one +Nita Selim is living in now, is the only house on what used to be a big +farm.... Why?" + +"I was just wondering," Dundee said softly, almost absent-mindedly, +"why the 'lovely Nita' chose so isolated a place in which to live, +when Hamilton has rather a large number of 'For Rent' signs out just +now.... By the way, know what time it is now?... Twenty to one! Get your +hat on, young woman. I'm going to drive you out to Breakaway Inn." + +"You're not! I'm going to take a bus. One runs from the Square right +past the Inn," she told him firmly. + +And just as firmly Dundee escorted her out of the almost deserted, +rather dirty old courthouse to where his brand-new sports +roadster--bought "on time"--was awaiting them in the parking space +devoted to the motors of those who officially served Hamilton County. + +"I know why you want to drive me out to the Inn," Penny told him +suddenly, as the proud owner maneuvered his car through Saturday noon +traffic. "You want to see Nita Selim. Clank! Clank! I can hear the +padlocks snapping on the slave chains right now." + +"Meow!" Dundee retorted, then grinned down at her with as much comradely +affection as if they had been friends for years instead of for a couple +of hours. "Is Nita very small?" he added. + +"Little enough to tuck herself under the arm of a man a lot shorter than +you," Penny assured him with curious vehemence. "And if Penelope Crain +is no mean prophet, that's exactly what she'll do within five minutes +after she meets you--just as she is wistfully inviting you to join the +other men for the cocktail party which is scheduled to break up the +bridge game at 5:30. Then, of course, you'll be urged to join us all at +the dinner-dance at the Country Club tonight." + +"Will she?" Dundee pretended to be vastly intrigued, which caused the +remainder of the drive to be a rather silent one, due to Penny's +unresponsiveness. + +Breakaway Inn was intensely Spanish in architecture and transplanted +shrubbery, but its stucco walls were of a rather more violent raspberry +color than is considered quite esthetic in Spain or Mexico. + +"There's Lois Dunlap's car just driving up," Penny cried, her face +softening with the adoration she had freely professed for her friend. +But it clouded again almost instantly. "And Nita Selim. I suppose Nita +was a little ashamed to drive up in her own Ford coupe." + +As Dundee helped his new friend to alight his eyes were upon the two +women being assisted by a uniformed chauffeur from Lois Dunlap's +limousine. + +In a moment the four were a laughing, exclamatory group. + +"Oh, what a tall, grand man you've got yourself, Penny darling!" the +tiny, beautiful creature who could only be Mrs. Selim cried out happily. +"_May_ I meet him?" + +"I shouldn't let you," Penny answered frankly, "but I will.... Mrs. +Selim, Mr. Dundee.... And Mrs. Dunlap, Mr. Dundee.... How are you, Lois? +And Peter and the brats?" + +"All well, Penny. Petey's off on a week-end fishing trip, and not one of +the brats has measles, scarlet fever or hay fever, thank God," Dundee +heard Mrs. Dunlap say in the comfortable, affectionate voice that went +with her comfortable, pleasant face and body.... Nice woman! + +But his eyes were of necessity upon Nita Selim, for that miniature Venus +was, as Penny had predicted, almost tucked under his arm by this time, +her black-pansy eyes wide and wistful, her soft black curls falling +forward as she coaxed: + +"You'll come to the cocktail party at my house at 5:30, won't you, Mr. +Dundee?" + +"Afraid I can't make it," Dundee smiled down at her. "I'm a busy man, +Mrs. Selim.... You see, I'm Special Investigator attached to the +District Attorney's office," he explained very deliberately. + +"O-o-oh!" Nita Selim breathed. Than, step by step, she withdrew, so that +he was no longer submitted to the temptation to put his arm about her +too intriguing little body. And as she retreated, Dundee's keen eyes +noted a hardening of the black-pansy eyes, the sudden throbbing of a +pulse in her very white neck.... + +"No, don't mind about calling for me," Penny protested a moment later. +"Ralph has already volunteered.... Thanks awfully!" + +As Dundee backed out of the driveway his last glance was for a very +small figure in a brown silk summer coat and palest yellow chiffon +frock, slowly rejoining Penelope Crain and Lois Dunlap. What the devil +had frightened her so? For she had been almost terrified.... Of course +she might be one of those silly women who shudder at the sight of a +detective, because they've smuggled in a diamond from Paris or a bottle +of Bacardi from Havana.... + +But long before his car made the distance back to the city Dundee had +shrugged off the riddle and was concentrating on all the facts he knew +regarding the Maginty case. It was his first real assignment from +Sanderson, and he was determined to make good. + +Four hours later he was interrupted in his careful reading of the trial +of Rufus Maginty by the ringing of the telephone bell. That made four +times he had had to snap out the fact that District Attorney Sanderson +was playing some well-earned golf on the Country Club links, Dundee +reflected angrily, as he picked up the receiver. + +But the call was for Dundee himself, and the voice on the other end of +the wire was Penny Crain's, although almost unrecognizable. + +"Speak more slowly, Penny!" Dundee urged. "What's that again.... Good +Lord! You say that Nita Selim...." + +After a minute of listening, and a promise of instant obedience, Dundee +hung up the receiver. + +"My God!" he said slowly, blankly. "Of all things--_murder at bridge_!" + + + + +CHAPTER TWO + + +As Special Investigator Dundee drove through the city of Hamilton at a +speed of sixty miles an hour, his way being cleared by traffic policemen +warned by the shrill official siren which served him as a horn, he had +little time to think connectedly of the fact that Nita Selim had been +murdered during a bridge game in her rented home in Primrose Meadows. + +Even after the broad sleekness of Sheridan Road stretched before him he +could do little more than try to realize the shock which had numbed +him.... "Lovely Nita," as the society editor of _The Morning News_ had +called her, was--_dead_! How, why, he did not know. He had asked no +details of Penny Crain.... Funny, thorny little Penny! Loyal little +Penny! + +"Judge Marshall has telephoned Police Headquarters," she had told him +breathlessly over the telephone, "but I made him let me call you as soon +as he had hung up. I wanted _our_ office to be in on this right from the +first." + +Beautiful, seductive Nita Selim, almost cuddling under his arm within +three minutes of meeting him--_dead_! A vision of her black-pansy eyes, +so wide and luminous and wistful as they had looked sideways and upward +to his, pleading for him to join her after-bridge cocktail party, nearly +made him crash into a lumbering furniture van. Those eyes were luminous +no longer, could never again snap the padlocks of slave chains upon any +man--as Penny had expressed it.... Dead! And she had been so warmly +alive, even as she had retreated from him at his mention of the fact +that he was attached to the office of the district attorney as a special +investigator. What had she feared then? Was her death a payment for some +recent or long-standing crime? Or had she simply been withdrawing from +contamination with a "flat-foot"?... No! She had been _afraid_--horribly +afraid of some ulterior purpose behind his innocent courtesy in driving +Penelope Crain to Breakaway Inn. + +Well, speculation now was idle, he told himself, as he noted that his +speedometer had dropped from sixty to thirty in his preoccupation. He +speeded again, but was soon forced to stop and ask his way into Primrose +Meadows. The vague directions of a farmer's son lost him nearly eight +precious minutes, during which his friend, Captain Strawn of the +Homicide Squad, might be bungling things rather badly. But at last he +found the ornate pair of pillars spanned by the painted legend, +"Primrose Meadows," and drove through them into what soon became a +rutted lane. Almost a quarter of a mile from the entrance he found the +isolated house, unmistakable because of the line-up of private cars +parked before the short stretch of paved sidewalk, and the added +presence of police cars and motorcycles. + +Dundee turned his own car into the driveway leading from the street +along the right side of the house toward the two-car garage in the rear. +Ahead of his roadster were two other cars, and a glance toward the open +garage showed that a Ford coupe was housed there. + +As he was descending Captain Strawn's voice hailed him from an open +window of the room nearest the garage. + +"Hello, Bonnie! Been expecting you.... Damnedest business you ever +saw.... There's a door from this room onto the porch. Hop up and come on +in." + +Dundee obeyed. Driving in he had noted that a wide porch, upheld by +round white pillars, stretched across the front of the gabled brick +house and extended halfway along its right side, past a room which was +obviously a solarium, with its continuous windows, gay awnings, +and--visible through the glittering panes--orange-and-black wicker +furniture. + +It was easy to swing himself up to the floor of the porch. Strawn flung +open the door which led into the back room, remarking with a grin: + +"Don't be afraid I'm gumming up any fingerprints. Carraway has already +been over the room.... The Selim woman's bedroom," he explained. "The +room she was killed in." + +"You _have_ been on the job," Dundee complimented his former chief. + +"Sure!" Strawn acknowledged proudly. "Can't be too quick on our stumps +when it's one of these 'high sassiety' murders. Dr. Price will be here +any minute now, and my men have been all over the premises, basement to +attic. Of course it was an outside job--plain as the nose on your +face--and we haven't found a trace of the murderer." + +Although Mrs. Selim had taken the house furnished, it was obvious that +this big bedroom of hers was not exactly as the Crain family had left +it. A little too pretty, a little too aggressively feminine, with its +chaise longue heaped with silk and lace pillows, its superfluity of big +and little lamps, its bed draped with golden-yellow taffeta, its +dressing table-- + +But he could not let critical eyes linger on the triple-mirrored vanity +dresser. For on the bench before it sat a tiny figure, the head bowed so +low that some of the black curls had fallen into a large open bowl of +powder. She was no longer wearing the brown silk summer coat whose open +front had given him a glimpse of pale yellow chiffon. + +He saw the dress now, a low-cut, sleeveless, fluffy affair, but he +really had eyes only for the brownish-red hole on the left side of the +back of the bodice, about halfway between shoulder and waist--a waist so +small he could have spanned it with his two hands, including its band of +fuchsia velvet ribbon. There also had been a bow of fuchsia velvet +ribbon on the lace and straw hat she had swung so charmingly less than +five hours ago. + +"Shot through the heart, I guess," Strawn commented. "Took a good +marksman to find her heart, shooting her through the back.... Funny +thing, too. Nobody heard the shot--leastways none of that crowd penned +up in the living room will admit they did. They'll all hang together, +and lie like sixty to keep us from finding out anything that might point +to one of _their_ precious bunch! But if a gun with a Maxim silencer +_was_ used, as it must have been if that whole crew ain't lying, the +gunman musta been _good_, because you can't sight with a Maxim screwed +onto a rod, you know." + +"Have your men found the gun?" Dundee asked. + +"Of course not, or I'd know whether it had a Maxim on it or not," Strawn +retorted. "My theory is," he added impressively, "that somebody with a +grudge against this dame hired a gunman to hang around till he got her +dead to rights, then--plop!" and he imitated the soft, thudding sound +made by the discharge of a bullet from a gun equipped with a silencer. + +"Doesn't it seem rather strange that a professional gunman should have +chosen such a time--with men arriving in cars, and the house full of +women who might wander into this room at any minute--to bump off his +victim?" Dundee asked. + +"Well, there ain't no other explanation," Captain Strawn contended. +"Outside of the fact that my men have gone over the whole house and +grounds without finding the gun, I've got other evidence it was an +outside job.... Look!" + +Dundee followed the Chief of the Homicide Squad to one of the two +windows that looked out upon the driveway. Both were open, since the May +day was exceptionally warm, even for the Middle West. The unscreened +window from which he obediently leaned was almost directly in line with +the vanity dressing-table across the room. + +"Look! See how them vines have been torn," Strawn directed, pointing to +a rambler rose which hugged the outside frame of the window. "And look +hard enough at the flower bed down below and you'll see his +footprints.... Of course we've measured them and Cain, as you see, is +guarding them till my man comes to make plaster casts of them.... Yes, +sir, he hoisted himself up to the window ledge, aimed as best he could, +then slipped down and beat it across the meadow." + +"Then," Dundee began slowly, "I wonder why Mrs. Selim didn't see that +figure crouched in the window, since she must have been powdering her +face and looking into the middle of the three mirrors--the one which +reflects this very window?" + +"How do you know she was powdering her face, not looking for something +in a drawer?" Strawn demanded truculently. + +"For three reasons," Dundee answered almost apologetically. "First: her +powder puff, as I'm sure you noticed, is still clutched in her right +hand; second: there is no drawer open, and no drawer _was_ open, unless +someone has closed it since the murder, whereas on the other hand her +powder box _is_ open; third: the left side of her face is unevenly +coated with powder, while the other is heavily but _evenly_ powdered. +Therefore I can't see why she didn't scream, or turn around when she +heard your gunman clambering up to her window, or even when he had +crouched in it. I don't see how she could _help_ seeing him!" + +"Well--what do _you_ think?" Strawn asked sourly, after he had tested +the visibility of the window from the dressing-table mirror. + +"I'm afraid, Captain Strawn, that there are only two explanations +possible. The first, of course, is that Nita Selim was quite deaf or +very nearsighted. I happen to know from having met her today--" + +"_You_ met her today?" Strawn interrupted incredulously. + +Dundee explained briefly, then went on: "As I was saying I have good +reason to know she was not deaf, but I can't say as to her being +nearsighted, except that it is my observation that people who are +extremely nearsighted do not have very wide eyes and no creases between +the brows. I am fairly sure she did not wear glasses at all, because +glasses worn even a few hours a day leave a mark across the nose or show +pinched red spots on each side of the bridge of the nose." + +"You must have had a good hard look at her," Strawn gibed, his grey eyes +twinkling, and his harsh, thin-lipped mouth pulling down at one corner +in what he thought was a genial smile. + +"I did," Dundee retorted. "Well, conceding that she was neither deaf nor +half-blind, she would necessarily have heard and seen her assailant +before he shot her." + +"What's the other explanation?" Strawn was becoming impatient. + +"That the person who killed her was so well known to her, and his--or +her--presence in this room so natural a thing that she paid no attention +to his or her movements and was concentrating on the job of powdering +her very pretty face." + +"You mean--one of that gang of society folks in there?" and Strawn +jerked a thumb toward the left side of the house. + +"Very probably," Dundee agreed. + +"But where's the gun?" Strawn argued. "I tell you my men--" + +"This was a premeditated murder, of course," Dundee interrupted. "The +Maxim silencer--unless they are all lying about not hearing a +shot--proves that. Silencers are damned hard to get hold of, but people +with plenty of money can manage most things. And since the murder was +premeditated, it is better to count on the fact that the murderer--or +murderess--had planned a pretty safe hiding place for the gun and the +silencer.... Oh, not necessarily in the house or even near the house," +he hastened to assure Strawn, who was trying to break in.... "By the +way, how long after Mrs. Selim was killed was her death discovered? Or +do you know?" + +"I haven't been able to get much out of that bunch in there--not even +out of Penelope Crain, who ought to be willing to help, seeing as how +she works for the district attorney. But I guess she's waiting to spill +it all to you, if she knows anything, so you and Sanderson will get all +the credit." + +"Now, look here, chief," Dundee protested, laying a hand on Strawn's +shoulder as he reverted to the name by which he had addressed the head +of the Homicide Squad for nearly a year, "we're going to be friends, +aren't we? Same as always? We know pretty well how to work together, +don't we? No use to begin pulling against each other." + +"Guess so," Strawn growled, but he was obviously pleased and relieved. +"Maybe you'd better have a crack at that crowd yourself. I hear Doc +Price's car--always has a bum spark plug. I'll stick around with him +until he gets going good on his job; then, if you'll excuse me for +butting in, I'll join your party in the living room.... And good luck to +you, Bonnie!" + +Dundee took the door he knew must lead into the central hall, but found +himself in an enclosed section of it--a small foyer between the main +hall and Nita Selim's bedroom. There was room for a telephone table and +its chair, as well as for a small sofa, large enough for two to sit upon +comfortably. He paused to open the door across from the telephone table +and found that it opened into a closet, whose hangers and hat forms now +held the outdoor clothing belonging to Nita's guests. Nice clothes--the +smart but unostentatious hats and coats of moneyed people of good taste, +he observed a little enviously, before he opened the door which led into +the main hall which bisected the main floor of the house until it +reached Nita's room. + +Another door in the section behind the staircase leading to the gabled +second story next claimed his attention. Opening it, he discovered a +beautifully fitted guests' lavatory. There was even a fully appointed +dressing-table for women's use, so that none of her guests had had the +slightest excuse to invade the privacy of Mrs. Selim's bedroom and bath, +unless specifically invited to do so. Rather a well planned house, this, +Dundee concluded, as he closed the door upon the green porcelain +fixtures, and walked slowly toward the wide archway that led from the +hall into a large living room. + +He had a curious reluctance to intrude upon that assembled and guarded +company of Hamilton's "real society." They were all Penny's friends, and +Penny was _his_ friend.... + +But his first swift, all-seeing glance about the room reassured him. No +hysterics here. These people brought race and breeding even into the +presence of death. Whatever emotions had torn them when Nita Selim's +body was discovered were almost unguessable now. A stout, short woman of +about thirty was tapping a foot nervously, as she talked to the man who +was bending over her chair. John C. Drake, that was. Dundee had met him, +knew him to be a vice president of the Hamilton National Bank, in charge +of the trust department. Penelope Crain was occupying half of a +"love-seat" with Lois Dunlap, the hands of the girl and of the woman +clinging together for mutual comfort. That tall, thin, oldish man, with +the waxed grey mustache, must be Judge Hugo Marshall, and the pretty +girl leaning trustingly against his shoulder must be his wife--Karen +Marshall, who had jumped at her first proposal during her first season. + +"Yes, well-bred people," he concluded, as his eyes swept on, and then +stopped, a little bewildered. Who was _that_ man? He didn't belong +somehow, and his hands trembled visibly as he tried to light a +cigarette. Leaning--not nonchalantly, but actually for support--against +the brocaded coral silk drapes of a pair of wide, long windows set in +the east wall. Suddenly Dundee had it.... Broadway! This was no +Hamiltonian, no comfortably rich and socially secure Middle-westerner. +Broadway in every line of his too-well-tailored clothes, in the polished +smoothness of his dark hair.... + +"Why, it's Mr. Dundee at last!" Penny cried, turning in the S-shaped +seat before he had time to finish his mental inventory of the room's +occupants. + +She jumped to her feet and threaded a swift way over Oriental rugs and +between the two bridge tables, still occupying the center of the big +room, still cluttered with score pads, tally cards, and playing cards. + +"I've been wondering if you had stopped to have dinner first," she +taunted him. Then, laying a hand on his arm, she faced the living room +eagerly. "This is Mr. Dundee, folks--special investigator attached to +the district attorney's office, and a grand detective. He solved the +Hogarth murder case, you know, and the Hillcrest murder. And he's _my_ +friend, so I want you all to trust him--and tell him things without +being afraid of him." + +Then, rather ceremoniously but swiftly, she presented her friends--Judge +and Mrs. Hugo Marshall, Mr. and Mrs. Tracey Miles, Mr. and Mrs. John C. +Drake, Mrs. Dunlap, Janet Raymond, Polly Beale, Clive Hammond, and-- + +At that point Penny hesitated, then rather stiffly included the +"Broadway" man, as "Mr. Dexter Sprague--of New York." + +"Thank you, Miss Crain," Dundee said. "Now will you please tell me, if +you know, whether all those invited to both the bridge party and the +cocktail party are here?" + +Penny's face flamed. "Ralph Hammond, Clive's brother, hasn't come +yet.... I--I rather imagine I've been 'stood up,'" she confessed, with a +faint attempt at gayety. + +And Ralph Hammond was the man who had once belonged rather exclusively +to Penny, and who, according to her own confession, had succumbed most +completely to Nita Selim's charms!--Dundee noted, filing the reflection +for further reference. + +"Please, Mr. Dundee, won't you detain us as short a time as possible?" +Lois Dunlap asked, as she advanced toward him. "Mr. Dunlap is away on a +fishing trip, and I don't like to leave my three youngsters too long. +They are really too much of a handful for the governess, over a period +of hours." + +"I shall detain all of you no longer than is absolutely necessary," +Dundee told her gently, "but I am afraid I must warn you that I can't +let you go home very soon--unless one or more of you has something of +vital importance to tell--something which will clear up or materially +help to clear up this bad business." + +He paused a long half-minute, then asked curtly: "I am to conclude that +no one has anything at all to volunteer?" + +There was no answer, other than a barely perceptible drawing together in +self-defence of the minds and hearts of those who had been friends for +so long. + +"Very well," Dundee conceded abruptly. "Then I must put all of you +through a routine examination, since every one of you is, of course, a +possible suspect." + + + + +CHAPTER THREE + + +"Good-by, dinner!" groaned the plump, blond little man who had been +introduced as Tracey Miles, as he sorrowfully patted his rather +prominent stomach. + +"Don't worry, darling," begged the dark, neurotic-looking woman who was +Flora Miles, his wife. "I'm sure Mr. Dundee will ask Lydia--poor Nita's +maid, you know--" she explained in an aside to Dundee, "--to prepare a +light supper for us if he really needs to detain us long--which I am +sure he won't." + +"How can you think of food now?" Polly Beale, the tall, sturdy girl with +an almost masculine bob and a quite masculine tweed suit, demanded +brusquely. Her voice had an unfeminine lack of modulation, but when +Dundee saw her glance toward Clive Hammond he realized that she was +wholly feminine where he was concerned, at least. + +"Of course, we are all _dreadfully_ cut up over poor Nita's--death," +gasped a rather pretty girl, whose most distinguishing feature was her +crop of crinkly, light-red hair. + +"I assume that to be true, Miss Raymond," Dundee answered. "But we must +lose no more time getting at the facts. Just when was Mrs. Selim +murdered?" + +At the brutal use of the word a shudder rippled over the small crowd. +Dexter Sprague, "of New York," dropped his lighted cigarette where it +would have burned a hole in a fine Persian rug, if Sergeant Turner, on +guard over the room for Captain Strawn, had not slouched from his corner +to plant a big foot upon it. + +"We don't know exactly when it happened," Penny volunteered. "We were +playing bridge, the last hand of the last rubber, because the men were +arriving for cocktails, when Nita became dummy and went to her bedroom +to--" + +"To make herself 'pretty-pretty' for the men," Mrs. Drake mimicked; +then, realizing the possible effect of her cattiness on Dundee, she +defended herself volubly: "Of course I _liked_ Nita, but she _did_ think +so terribly much about her effect on men--and all that, and was always +fixing her make-up, and besides--you _can't_ suspect me, because I was +playing against Karen and Nita--" + +"Thank you, Mrs. Drake," Dundee cut in. "Does anyone know the exact time +Mrs. Selim left the room, when she became dummy?" + +"I can tell you, because I had just arrived--the first of the men to get +here," Tracey Miles volunteered, obviously glad of the chance to talk--a +characteristic of the man, Dundee decided. "I looked at my watch just +after I stepped out of my car, because I like to be on time to the dot, +and Nita--Mrs. Selim--had said 5:30.... Well, it was exactly 5:25, so I +had five minutes to spare." + +"Yes?" Dundee speeded him up impatiently. + +"Well, I came right into the hall, and hung my hat in the closet out +there, and then came in here. It must have been about 5:27 by that +time," he explained, with the meticulousness of a man on the witness +stand. "I shouted, 'Hello, everybody! How's tricks?...' That's a joke, +you know. 'How's tricks?'--meaning tricks in bridge--" + +"Yes, yes," Dundee admitted, frowning, but the rest of the company +exchanged indulgent smiles, and Flora Miles patted her husband's hand +fondly. + +"Well, Nita jumped up from the bridge table--that one right there," +Miles pointed to the table nearer the arched doorway, "and she said, +'Good heavens! Is it half past five already? I've got to run and make +myself 'pretty-pretty' for just such great big men as you, Tracey--" + +"'Tracey, darling'!" Judge Marshall corrected, with a chuckle that +sounded odd in the tensely silent room. + +Tracey Miles flushed a salmon pink, and his wife's fingers clutched at +his hand warningly. "Oh, Nita called everybody 'darling,' and didn't +mean anything by it, I guess," he explained uneasily. "Just one of her +cute little ways--. Well, anyway, she came up to me and straightened +my necktie--another one of her funny little ways--and said, 'Tracey, +my _own_ lamb, won't you shake up the cocktails for poor little +Nita?...' You know, a sort of way she had of coaxing people--" + +"Yes, I know," Dundee agreed, with a trace of a grin. "Go on as rapidly +as you can, please." + +"I thought you wanted to know everything!" Miles was a little peevish; +he had evidently been enjoying himself. "Of course I said I'd make the +cocktails--she said everything was ready on the sideboard. That's the +dining room right behind this room," he explained unnecessarily, since +the French doors were open. "Well, Nita blew me a kiss from her +fingertips, and ran out of the room.... Now, let's see," he ruminated, +creasing his sunburned forehead beneath his carefully combed blond hair, +"that must have been at exactly 5:30 that she left the room. I went on +into the dining room, and Lois--I mean, Mrs. Dunlap came with me, +because she said she was simply dying for a caviar sandwich and a nip +of--of--" + +"Of Scotch, Tracey," Lois Dunlap cut in, grinning. "I'm sure Mr. Dundee +won't think I'm a confirmed tippler, so you might as well tell the +truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.... Poor Tracey has a +deadly fear that we are all going to lose the last shred of our +reputations in this deplorable affair, Mr. Dundee," she added in a +rather shaky version of the comfortable, rich voice he had heard earlier +in the day. + +"I'm not going to pry into cellars," Dundee assured her in the same +spirit. "What else, Mr. Miles?" + +"Nothing much," Tracey Miles confessed, with apparent regret. "I was +still mixing--no, I'd begun to shake the cocktails--when I heard a +scream--" + +"Whose scream?" Dundee demanded, looking about the room, and dismissing +Miles thankfully. + +"It was--I," Judge Marshall's fair-haired, blue-eyed little bride +volunteered in a voice that threatened to rise to hysteria. + +"Tell me all about it," Dundee urged gently. + +"Yes, sir," she quavered, while her husband's arm encircled her +shoulders in courtly fashion. "As Tracey told you, Nita was dummy, and I +was declarer--that is, I got the bid, and played the hand. It--it was +quite an exciting end for me to the afternoon of bridge, for I'm not +usually awfully lucky, so when Penny had figured up the score, because +I'm not good at arithmetic, and I knew Nita and I had rolled up an +awfully big score, I jumped up and ran into her room to tell her the +good news, because she hadn't come back. And--and--there she was--all +bowed over her dressing-table, and she--she was--was--" + +"She was dead when you reached her?" Dundee assisted her. + +"Yes," Karen Marshall answered faintly, and turned to hide her face +against her elderly husband's breast. + +Dundee's swift eyes took in the varying degrees of whiteness and sick +horror that claimed every face in the room as surely as if all present +had not already heard Karen tell her story to Captain Strawn. Tracey +Miles looked as if he would have no immediate craving for his dinner, +and Judge Marshall's fine, thin face no longer looked so +"well-preserved" as he prided himself that it did. As for Dexter +Sprague, he almost folded up against the coral brocade draperies. It was +the women, oddly enough, who kept the better control over their +emotions. + +"Of course you all rushed in when Mrs. Marshall screamed?" he asked +casually. + +Twelve heads nodded mutely. + +"Did any or all of you touch the body, or things in the room?" + +"Mr. Sprague touched her hair, and--and lifted one of her hands," Penny +contributed quietly. "But you know how it must have been! We can't any +of us tell _exactly_ every move we made, but there was some rushing +about. The men, mostly, looking for--for whoever did it--" + +"Mrs. Marshall, did you see anyone--_anyone at all_--in or near that +room when you entered it?" + +The white-faced young wife lifted her head, and looked at him dazedly +with drowned blue eyes. "There wasn't anyone in--in that room, I know," +she faltered. "It felt horrible--being in there with--with _her_--all +alone--" + +"But near the room? In the main hall or in the little foyer where the +telephone is?" Dundee persisted. + +"I--don't think so ... I can't--remember--seeing _anyone_.... Oh, Hugo!" +and again she crouched against her husband, who soothed her with +trembling hands that looked incongruously old against her childish fair +hair and face. + +"Where were the rest of you--_exactly_ where, I mean?" Dundee demanded, +conscious that Captain Strawn had entered the room and was standing +slightly behind him. + +There was such a babel of answers, given and then hastily corrected, +that Dundee broke in suddenly: + +"I want a connected story of 'the events leading up to the tragedy.' And +I want someone to tell it who hasn't lost his--or her--head at all." He +looked about the company, as if speculatively, but his mind was already +made up. "Miss Crain, will you tell the story, beginning with the moment +I left you and Mrs. Dunlap and Mrs. Selim today?" + +Penny nodded miserably and was about to begin. + +"Just a minute, before you begin, Miss Crain," Dundee requested. "I'd +like to make notes on your story," and he drew from a coat pocket a +shorthand book, hastily filched from Penny's own tidy desk. "Yes," he +answered the girl's frank stare of amazement, "I can write shorthand--of +a sort, and pretty fast, at that, though no other human being, I am +afraid, could read it but myself.... As for you folks," he addressed the +uneasy, silent group of men and women in dead Nita's living room, "I +shall ask you not to interrupt Miss Crain unless you are very sure that +her memory is at fault." + +Penelope Crain was about to begin for the second time, when again Dundee +interrupted. "Another half second, please." + +On the first sheet of the new shorthand notebook Dundee scribbled: +"Suggest you try to locate Ralph Hammond immediately. Very much in love +with Mrs. Selim. Invited to cocktail party; did not show up." Tearing +the sheet from the notebook, he passed it to Captain Strawn, who read +it, frowning, and then nodded. + +"Doc Price has done all he can here," Strawn whispered huskily. "Wants +to know if you'd like to speak to him before he takes the body to the +morgue." + +"Certainly," Dundee answered as he grinned apologetically to the girl +who was waiting, white-faced but patiently, to tell the story of the +afternoon. + +Quickly suppressed shudders and low exclamations of horror followed him +and the chief of the Homicide Squad from the room. + +"Well, Bonnie boy, we meet again, for the usual reason," old Dr. Price +greeted the district attorney's new special investigator. "Another +shocking affair--that.... A nice clean wound, one of the neatest jobs I +ever saw. Shot entered the back, and penetrated the heart.... _Very_ +nicely calculated. If the bullet had struck a quarter of an inch higher, +it would have been deflected by the--" + +"But the _path_ of the bullet, doctor!" Dundee broke in. "Have you made +any calculations as to the place and distance at which the shot was +fired?" + +"Roughly speaking--yes," the coroner answered. "The gun was fired at a +distance, probably, of ten or fifteen feet--perhaps closer, but I don't +think so," he amended meticulously. "As for the path of the bullet, I +have fixed it, judging from the position of the body, which I am assured +had not been moved before my arrival, as coming from a point somewhere +along a straight line drawn from the wound, with the body upright, of +course, to--here!" + +Dundee and Strawn followed the brisk little white-haired old doctor +across the bedroom to a window opening upon the drive--the one nearest +the door leading out upon the porch. + +"I've marked the end of the line here," Dr. Price went on, pointing to a +faint pencil mark made upon the window frame--the pale-green strip of +woodwork near the chaise longue, which was set between the two windows. + +"I told you she was shot from the window!" Strawn reminded Dundee +triumphantly. "You see, doc, it's my theory that the murderer climbed up +to the sill of this window, which was open as it is now, crouched in it, +and shot her while she sat there powdering her face." + +"Not necessarily, Captain, not necessarily," Dr. Price deprecated. "I +merely say that this pencil mark indicated the _end_ of the line showing +the path of the bullet. Certainly she was not shot _through_ the frame +of the window, but she might have been shot by anyone stationed just in +front of it, or anywhere along the line, up to, say, within ten feet of +the woman.... Now, if that's all, Captain, I'll be getting this corpse +into the morgue for an autopsy. And I'll send you both a copy of my +findings." + +"Just a minute, Dr. Price," Dundee detained him. "How old would you say +Mrs. Selim was?" + +The little doctor pursed his wrinkled lips and considered for a moment, +eyeing the body stretched upon the chaise longue speculatively. + +"We-ell, between thirty and thirty-four years old," he answered finally. +"Of course, you understand that that estimate is unofficial, and must +remain so, until I have completed the autopsy--" + +Dundee stared down at the upturned face of the dead woman with startled +incredulity. Between thirty and thirty-four years old! That tiny, +lovely--But she was not quite so lovely in death, in spite of the +serenity it had brought to those once-vivacious features. Peering more +closely, he could see--without those luminous, wide eyes to center his +attention--numerous fine lines on the waxen face, the slackness of a +little pouch of soft flesh beneath her round chin, an occasional white +hair among the shoulder-length dark curls.... Dundee sighed. How easy it +was for a beautiful woman to deceive men with a pair of wide, velvety +black eyes! But he'd bet the women had not been quite so thoroughly +taken in by her cuddly childishness, her odd mixture of demureness and +youthful impudence! + +Back in the living room, whose occupants stopped whispering and grew +taut with suspense, Dundee seated himself at a little red-lacquer table, +notebook spread, while Strawn settled himself heavily in the nearest +overstuffed armchair. + +"Now, Miss Crain, I am quite ready, if you will forgive me for having +kept you waiting." + +In a very quiet voice--slightly husky, as always--Penny began her story: + +"I think it lacked two or three minutes of one o'clock when you drove +away. Nita, Lois--do you mind if I use the names I am most accustomed +to?... Thank you!--and I went immediately into the lounge of Breakaway +Inn, where we found Carolyn Drake and Flora Miles waiting for us. Nita +soon left us to see about the arrangement of the table, and while she +was away the rest of the girls arrived." + +"Except--" a woman's voice broke in. + +"I was going to say all eight of us were ready for lunch except Polly +Beale. She hadn't come," Penny went on, her husky voice a little sharp +with annoyance. "When Nita came to ask us into the private dining room, +one of the Inn's employees came and told her there was a call for her +and showed her to the private booth in the lounge. In a minute Nita +returned and told us that Polly wasn't coming to the luncheon, but would +join us later for bridge here." + +"Why don't you tell him how funny Nita acted?" Janet Raymond prompted. + +Penny flushed, but she accepted the prompting. "I think any of us might +have been a little--annoyed," she said steadily, as if striving to be +utterly truthful. "Nita told us--" she turned to Dundee, whose pencil +was flying, "that Polly had made no excuse at all; in fact, she quoted +Polly exactly: 'Sorry, Nita. Can't make it for lunch. I'll show up at +your place at 2:30 for bridge.'" + +"Nita couldn't bear the least hint of being slighted," Janet Raymond +explained, with a malicious gleam in her pale blue eyes. "If it hadn't +been for Lois and Hugo--Judge Marshall, I mean--Nita Selim would never +have been included in any of our affairs--and she _knew_ it! The Dunlaps +can do anything they please, because they're--" + +"Please, Janet!" Lois Dunlap cut in, her usually placid voice becoming +quite sharp. "You must know by this time that I make friends wherever I +please, and that I liked--yes, I was _extremely_ fond of poor little +Nita. In fact, I am forced to believe that, of all the women she met in +this town, I was her only real friend." + +There was a flush of anger on her lovably plain face as her grey eyes +challenged first one and then another of the "Forsyte girls." One or two +looked a little ashamed, but there was not a single voice to contradict +Lois Dunlap's flat assertion. + +"Will you please go on, Pen--Miss Crain?" Dundee urged, but he had +missed nothing of the little by-play. + +"I wish you would call me Penny so I'd feel more like a person than a +witness," Penny retorted thornily. "Where was I?... Oh, yes! Nita cooled +right off when Lois reminded her that Polly was always abrupt like +that--" and here Penny paused to grin apologetically at the girl with +the masculine-looking haircut, "and then we all went into the private +dining room, where Nita had ordered a perfectly gorgeous lunch, with a +heavenly centerpiece of green-striped yellow orchids--Well, I don't +suppose you're interested in what we ate and things like that--" she +hesitated. + +"Was there anything unusual in the conversation--anything like a +quarrel?" Dundee prompted. + +"Oh, no!" Penny protested. "Nothing happened out of the ordinary at +all--No, wait! Nita received a letter by messenger--or rather a note, +when we were about half through luncheon--" + +There was a low, strangled-in-the-throat cry from someone. Who had +uttered it Dundee could not be sure, since his eyes had been on his +notebook. But what had really interrupted Penny Crain was a crash. + + + + +CHAPTER FOUR + + +"Pardon! Awfully sorry," Clive Hammond muttered, as he bent to pick up +the fragments of a colored pottery ashtray which he and his fiancée, +Polly Beale, had been sharing. + +"Don't worry--about picking it up," Polly commanded in her brusque +voice, but Dundee, listening acutely, was sure of a very slight pause +between the two parts of her sentence. + +He glanced at the couple--the tall, masculine-looking girl, lounging +deep in an armchair, Clive Hammond, rather unusually good-looking with +his dark-red hair, brown eyes, and a face and body as compactly and +symmetrically designed as one of the buildings which had been pointed +out to Dundee as the product of the young architect's genius, now +resuming his seat upon the arm of the chair. His chief concern seemed +to be for another ashtray, which Sergeant Turner, with a grin, +produced from one of the many little tables with which the room was +provided.... Rather strange that those two should be engaged, Dundee +mused.... + +"Go on, Miss Crain," the detective urged, as if he were impatient of the +delay. "About that note or letter--" + +"It was in a blue-grey envelope, with printing or engraving in the upper +left-hand corner," Penny went on, half closing her eyes to recapture the +scene in its entirety. "Like business firms use," she amended. "I +couldn't help seeing, since I sat so near Nita. She seemed startled--or, +well maybe I'd better say surprised and a little sore, but she tore it +open and read it at a glance almost, which is why I say it must have +been only a note. But while she was reading it she frowned, then smiled, +as if something had amused or--or--" + +"She smiled like any woman reading a love letter," Carolyn Drake +interrupted positively. "I myself was sure that one of her _many_ +admirers had broken an engagement, but had signed himself, 'With all my +love, darling--your own So-and-so!'" + +Dundee wondered if even Carolyn Drake's husband, the carefully groomed +and dignified John C. Drake, bank vice-president, had ever sent _her_ +such a note, but he did not let his pencil slow down, for Penny was +talking again: + +"I think you are assuming a little too much, Carolyn.... But let that +pass. At any rate, Nita didn't say a word about the contents of the note +and naturally no one asked a question. She simply tucked it into the +pocket of her silk summer coat, which was draped over the back of her +chair, and the luncheon went on. Then we all drove over here, and found +Polly waiting in her own coupe, in the road in front of the house. She +told Nita she had rung the bell, but the maid, Lydia, didn't answer, so +she had just waited. + +"Nita didn't seem surprised; said she had a key, if Lydia hadn't come +back yet.... You see," she interrupted herself to explain to Dundee, +"Nita had already told us at luncheon that 'poor, darling Lydia,' as she +called her, had had to go in to town to get an abscessed tooth +extracted, and was to wait in the dentist's office until she felt equal +to driving herself home again in Nita's coupe.... Yes, Nita had taken +her in herself," she answered the beginning of a question from Dundee. + +"At what time?" Dundee queried. + +"I don't know exactly, but Nita said she'd had to dash away at an +ungodly hour, so that Lydia could make her ten o'clock dentist's +appointment, and so that she herself could get a manicure and a shampoo +and have her hair dressed, so I imagine she must have left not later +than fifteen or twenty minutes to ten." + +"How did Mrs. Selim get out to Breakaway Inn, if she left her own car +with the maid?" + +"You saw her arrive with Lois," Penny reminded him. + +"Nita had told us all about Lydia's dentist's appointment when she was +at my house for dinner Wednesday night," Lois Dunlap contributed. "I +offered to call for her anywhere she said, and take her out to Breakaway +Inn in my car today. I met her, at her suggestion, in the French hat +salon of the shop where she got her shampoo and manicure--Redmond's +department store." + +"A large dinner party, Mrs. Dunlap?" Dundee asked. + +"Not large at all.... Just twelve of us--the crowd here except for Mr. +Sprague, Penny and Janet." + +"Who was Mrs. Selim's dinner partner?" Dundee asked. + +"That's right! He _isn't_ here!" Lois Dunlap corrected herself. "Ralph +Hammond brought her and was her dinner partner." + +"Thank you.... Now, Penny. You were saying the maid had not returned." + +"Oh, but she had!" Penny answered impatiently. "If I'm going to be +interrupted so much--. Well, Nita rang the bell and Lydia came, tying on +her apron. Nita kissed her on the cheek that wasn't swollen, and asked +her why she hadn't let Polly in. And Lydia said she hadn't heard the +bell, because she had dropped asleep in her room in the basement--dopey +from the local anesthetic, you know," she explained to Dundee. + +"I--see," Dundee acknowledged, and underlined heavily another note in +his scrawled shorthand. + +"So Lydia took our hats and summer coats and put them in the hall +closet, and then followed Nita, who was calling to her, on into Nita's +bedroom. We thought she either wanted to give directions about the +makings for the cocktails and the sandwiches, or to console poor Lydia +for the awful pain she had had at the dentist's, so we didn't intrude. +We made a dive for the bridge tables, found our places, and were ready +to play when Nita joined us. Nita and Karen--" + +"Just a minute, Penny.... Did any of you, then or later, until Mrs. +Marshall discovered the tragedy, go into Mrs. Selim's bedroom?" + +"There was no need for us to," Penny told him. "There's a lavatory with +a dressing-table right behind the staircase. I, for one, didn't go into +Nita's room until after Karen screamed." + +There was a chorus of similar denials on the part of every woman +present. At Dundee's significant pressing of the same question upon the +men, he was met with either laconic negatives or sharply indignant ones. + +"All right, Penny. Go ahead, please." + +"I was going to tell you how we were seated for bridge, if that +interests you," Penny said, rather tartly. + +"It interests me intensely," Dundee assured her, smiling. + +"Then it was this way," began Penny, thawing instantly. "Karen and Nita, +Carolyn and I were at this table," and she pointed to the table nearer +the hall. "Flora, Polly, Janet and Lois were at the other. We played at +those tables all afternoon. We simply pivoted at our own table after the +end of each rubber. When Nita became dummy--" + +"Forgive me," Dundee begged, as he interrupted her again. "I'd like to +ask a question ... Mrs. Dunlap, since you were at the other table, +perhaps you will tell me what your partner and opponents were doing just +before Mrs. Selim became dummy." + +Lois Dunlap pressed her fingertips into her temples, as if in an effort +to remember clearly. + +"It's--rather hard to think of bridge now, Mr. Dundee," she said at +last. "But--yes, of course I remember! We had finished a rubber and had +decided there would be no time for another, since it was so near 5:30--" + +"That last rubber, please, Mrs. Dunlap," Dundee suggested. "Who were +partners, and just when was it finished?" + +"Flora--" Lois turned toward Mrs. Miles, who had sat with her hands +tightly locked and her great haggard dark eyes roving tensely from one +to another--"you and I were partners, weren't we?... Of course! Remember +you were dummy and I played the hand? You went out to telephone, didn't +you?... That's right! I remember clearly now! Flora said she had to +telephone the house to ask how her two babies--six and four years old, +they are, Mr. Dundee, and the rosiest dumplings--. Well, anyway, Flora +went to telephone--" + +"In the little foyer between the main hall and Mrs. Selim's room?" + +"Yes, of course," Lois Dunlap answered, but Dundee's eyes were upon +Flora Miles, and he saw her naturally sallow face go yellow under its +too-thick rouge. "I played the hand and made my bid, although Flora and +I had gone down 400 on the hand before," Lois continued, with a rueful +twinkle of her pleasant grey eyes. "When the score was totted up, I +found I'd won a bit after all. Our winnings go to the Forsyte Alumnae +Scholarship Fund," she explained. + +"Yes, I know," Dundee nodded. "And then--?" + +"Polly asked the other table how they stood, and Nita said, 'One game to +go on this rubber, provided we make it....' Karen was dealing the cards +then, and Nita was looking very happy--she'd been winning pretty +steadily, I think--" + +"Pardon, Mrs. Dunlap.... How did the players at your table dispose of +themselves then--that is, immediately after you had finished playing the +last hand, and Mrs. Marshall was dealing at the other table?" + +Lois screwed up her forehead. "Let me think--I know what _I_ did. I went +over to watch the game at the other table, and stayed there till +Tracey--Mr. Miles--came in for cocktails. I can't tell you exactly what +the other three did." + +There was a strained silence. Dundee saw Polly Scale's hand tighten +convulsively on Clive Hammond's, saw Janet Raymond flush scarlet, +watched a muscle jerk in Flora Miles' otherwise rigid face. + +Suddenly he sprang to his feet. "I am going to make what will seem an +absurd request," he said tensely. "I am going to ask you all--the women, +I mean--to take your places at the bridge tables. And then--" he paused +for an instant, his blue eyes hard: "I want to see the death hand played +exactly as it was played while Nita Selim was being murdered!" + + + + +CHAPTER FIVE + + +"Shame on you, Bonnie Dundee!" cried Penny Crain, her small fists +clenched belligerently. "'Death hand', indeed! You talk like a New York +tabloid! And if you don't realize that all of us have stood pretty +nearly as much as we can without having to play the hand at bridge--the +_very_ hand we played while Nita Selim was being murdered!--then you +haven't the decency and human feelings I've credited you with!" + +A murmur of indignant approval accompanied her tirade and buzzed on for +a moment after she had finished, but it ceased abruptly as Dundee spoke: + +"Who's conducting this investigation, Penny Crain--you or I? You will +kindly let me do it in my own fashion, and try to be content when I tell +you that, in my humble opinion, what I propose is absolutely necessary +to the solution of this case!" + +Bickering--Dundee grinned to himself--exactly as if they had known each +other always, had quarreled and made up with fierce intensity for years. + +"Really, Mr. Dundee," Judge Hugo Marshall began pompously, embracing his +young wife protectingly, "I must say that I agree with Miss Crain. This +is an outrage, sir--an outrage to all of us, and particularly to this +frail little wife of mine, already half-hysterical over the ordeal she +has endured." + +"Take your places!" Dundee ordered curtly. After all, there was a limit +to the careful courtesy one must show to Hamilton's "inmost circle of +society." + +Penny led the way to the bridge tables, the very waves of her brown bob +seeming to bristle with futile anger. But she obeyed, Dundee exulted. +The way to tame this blessed little shrew had been solved by old Bill +Shakespeare centuries ago.... + +As the women took their places at the two tables, arguing a bit among +themselves, with semi-hysterical edges to their voices, Dundee watched +the men, but all of them, with the exception of Dexter Sprague--that +typical son of Broadway, so out of place in this company--had managed at +least a fine surface control, their lips tight, their eyes hard, +narrowed and watchful. Sprague slumped into a vacated chair and closed +his eyes, revealing finely-wrinkled, yellowish lids. + +"Where shall we begin?" Polly Beale demanded brusquely. "Remember this +table had finished playing when Karen began to deal what you call the +'death hand,'" she reminded him scornfully. "And Flora wasn't here at +all--she had been dummy for our last hand--" + +"And had gone out to telephone," Dundee interrupted. "Mrs. Miles, will +you please leave the room, and return exactly when you did return--or as +nearly so as you can remember?" + +Dundee was sure that Mrs. Miles' sallow face took on a greyish tinge as +she staggered to her feet and wound an uncertain way toward the hall. +Tracey Miles sprang to his wife's assistance, but Sergeant Turner took +it upon himself to lay a detaining hand on the too-anxious husband's +arm. With no more than the lifting of an eyebrow, Dundee made Captain +Strawn understand that Flora Miles' movements were to be kept under +strict observation, and the chief of the Homicide Squad as unobtrusively +conveyed the order to a plainclothesman loitering interestedly in the +wide doorway. + +"Now," he was answering Polly Beale's question, "I should like the +remaining three of you to behave exactly as you did when your last hand +was finished. Did you keep individual score, as is customary in +contract?--or were you playing auction?" + +"Contract," Polly Beale answered curtly. "And when we're playing among +ourselves like this, one at each table is usually elected to keep score. +Janet was score-keeper for us this afternoon, but we all waited, after +our last hand was played, for Janet to give us the result for our tally +cards." + +Dundee drew near the table, picked up the three tally cards--ornamental +little affairs, and rather expensive--glanced over the points recorded, +then asked abruptly: + +"Where is Mrs. Miles' tally? I don't see it here." + +There was no answer to be had, so he let the matter drop, temporarily, +though his shorthand notebook received another deeply underlined series +of pothooks. + +"Go on, please, at both tables," Dundee commanded. "Your table--" he +nodded toward Penny, who was already over her flare of temper, "will +please select the cards each held at the conclusion of Mrs. Marshall's +deal." + +"Oooh, I'd never remember _all_ my cards in the world," Carolyn Drake +wailed. "I know I had five Clubs--Ace, King, Queen--" + +"You had the Jack, not the Queen, for I held it myself," Penny +contradicted her crisply. + +"Until this matter of who held which cards after Mrs. Marshall's deal is +settled, I shall have to ask you all to remain as you are now," Dundee +said to the players seated at the other table. + +At last it was threshed out, largely between Penny Crain and Karen +Marshall, the latter proving to have a better memory than Dundee had +expected. At last even Carolyn Drake's querulous fussiness was +satisfied, or trampled down. + +Both Judge Marshall and John Drake started forward to inspect the cards, +which none of the players was trying to conceal, but Dundee waved them +back. + +"Please--I want you men--all of you, to take your places outside, and +return to this room in the order of your arrival this afternoon. Try to +imagine that it is now--if I can trust Mr. Miles' apparently excellent +memory--exactly 5:25--" + +"Pretty hard to do, considering it's now a quarter past seven and +there's still no dinner in sight," Tracey Miles grumbled, then +brightened: "I can come right back in then--at 5:27, can't I?" + +That point settled, and the men sent away, to be watched by several +pairs of apparently indolent police eyes, Dundee turned to the bridge +table, Nita's leaving of which had provided her murderer with his +opportunity. + +"The cards are 'dealt'," Penny reminded him. + +"Now I want you other three to scatter exactly as you did before," +Dundee commanded, hurry and excitement in his voice. + +Lois Dunlap rose, laid down her tally card, and strolled over to the +remaining table. After a moment's hesitation, Polly Beale strode +mannishly out of the room, straight into the hall. Dundee, watching as +the bridge players earlier that afternoon certainly had not, was amazed +to see Clive Hammond beckoning to her from the open door of the +solarium. + +So Clive Hammond had arrived ahead of Tracey Miles! Had somehow entered +the solarium unnoticed, and had managed to beckon his fiancée to join +him there! Prearranged?... And why had Clive Hammond failed to enter and +greet his hostess first? Moreover, _how_ had he entered the solarium? + +But things were happening in the living room. Janet Raymond, flushing so +that her sunburned face outdid her red hair for vividness, was slowly +leaving the room also. Through a window opening upon the wide front +porch Dundee saw the girl take her position against a pillar, then--a +thing she had not done before very probably--press her handkerchief to +her trembling lips. + +But the bidding was going on, Karen Marshall piping in her childish +treble: "Three spades!" + +Dundee took his place behind her chair, then silently beckoned to Penny +to shift from her own chair opposite Carolyn Drake to the chair Nita +Selim had left to go to her death. She nodded understandingly. + +"Double!" quavered Carolyn Drake, next on the left to the dealer, and +managed to raise her eyebrows meaningly to Penny, her partner, who had +not yet changed places. + +Penny, throwing herself into the spirit of the thing, scowled warningly. +No exchanging of illicit signals for Penny Crain! But the instant she +slipped into Nita Selim's chair her whole face and body took on a +different manner, underwent almost a physical change. She _was_ Nita +Selim now! She tucked her head, considered her cards, laughed a little +breathless note, then cried triumphantly: + +"And I say--_five spades_! What do you think of _that_, partner?" + +Then the girl who was giving an amazing imitation of Nita Selim changed +as suddenly into her own character as she changed chairs. + +"Nita, I don't think it's quite Hoyle to be so jubilant about the +strength of your hand," she commented tartly. "I pass." + +Karen Marshall pretended to study her hand for a frowning instant, then, +under Penny's spell, announced with a pretty air of bravado: + +"Six spades!... Your raise to five makes a little slam obligatory, +doesn't it, Nita?" + +Carolyn Drake flushed and looked uneasily toward Penny, a bit of by-play +which Dundee could see had not figured in the original game. But she +bridled and shifted her plump body in her chair, as she must have done +before. + +"I double a little slam!" she declared. Then, still acting the role she +had played in earnest that afternoon, she explained importantly: "I +always double a little slam on principle!" + +Penny, in the role of Nita, redoubled with an exultant laugh, then, as +herself, said, "Pass!" with a murderous glance at Mrs. Drake. + +"Let's see your hand, partner," Karen quavered, addressing a woman who +had been dead nearly two hours; then she shuddered: "Oh, this is too +horrible!" as Penny Crain again slipped into Nita Selim's chair and +prepared to lay down the dummy hand. + +And it _was_ horrible--even if vitally necessary--for these three to +have to go through the farce of playing a bridge hand while one of the +original players was lying on a marble slab at the morgue, her cold +flesh insensible to the coroner's expert knife. + +But Dundee said nothing, for Tracey Miles was already hovering in the +doorway, ready for his cue to enter. + +Penny, or rather "Nita," was saying: + +"How's _this_, Karen darling?" as she laid down the Ace and deuce of +Spades, Karen's trumps. + +"I hope you remember _you_ are vulnerable, as well as we," Carolyn +remarked in a sorry imitation of her original cocksureness, as she +opened the play by leading the Ace of Clubs. + +"And how's _this_, partner?... A singleton in Clubs!" Nita's imitator +demanded triumphantly, as she continued to lay down her dummy hand, +slapping the lone nine of Clubs down beside trumps; "and this little +collection of Hearts!" as she displayed and arranged the King, Jack, +eight and four of Hearts; "_and_ this!" as a length of Diamonds--Ace, +Jack, ten, eight, seven and six slithered down the glossy linen cover of +the bridge table toward Karen Marshall. "Now if you don't make your +little slam, infant, don't dare say I shouldn't have jumped you to +five!... I figured you for a blank or a singleton in Diamonds, and at +least the Ace of Hearts, or you--cautious as you are--wouldn't have made +an original three Spade bid without the Ace.... Hop to it, darling!" + +"This is where I enter," Tracey Miles whispered to Dundee, and, at a nod +from the young detective, the pudgy little blond man strode jauntily +into the living room, proud of himself in the role of actor. + +"Hello, everybody! How's tricks?" he called genially, but there was a +quiver of horror in his voice under its blitheness. + +Penny was quite pale when she sprang from her chair, but her voice +seemed to be Nita's very own, as she sang out: + +"It _can't_ be 5:30 already!... Thank heaven I'm dummy, and can run away +and make myself pretty-pretty for you and all the other great big men, +Tracey darling!" + +Dundee's keen memory registered the slight difference in the wording of +the greeting as reported by this pseudo-Nita and the man she was running +to meet. But Penny, as Nita, was already straightening Tracey Miles' +necktie with possessive, coquettish fingers, was coaxing, with head +tucked alluringly: + +"Tracey, my ownest lamb, won't you shake up the cocktails for Nita? The +makings are all on the sideboard, or I don't know my precious old +Lydia--even if her poor jaw does ache most horribly." + +Then Penny, as Nita, was on her way, pausing in the doorway to blow a +kiss from her fingertips to the fatuously grinning but now quite pale +Tracey Miles. She was out of sight for only an instant, then reappeared +and very quietly retraced her steps to the bridge table. + +Unobtrusively, Dundee drew his watch from his pocket, palmed it as he +noted the exact minute, then commanded curtly: "On with the game!" + +As Tracey Miles passed the first bridge table Lois Dunlap linked her arm +in his, saying in a voice she tried to make gay and natural: + +"I'm trailing along, Tracey. Simply dying for a nip of Scotch! Nita's is +the real stuff--which is more than my fussy old Pete can get half the +time!--and you know I loathe cocktails." + +The two passed on into the dining room, the players scarcely raising +their eyes from their cards, which they held as if the game were real. + +Dundee, his watch still in his hand, advanced to the bridge table. +Strolling from player to player he made mental photographs of each hand, +then took his stand behind Penny's chair to observe the horribly +farcical playing of it. Poor little Penny! he reflected. She hadn't had +a chance against that dumb-bell across the table from her. Fancy +anyone's doubling a little slam bid on a hand like Carolyn Drake's--or +even calling an informatory double in the first place! Why hadn't she +bid four Clubs after Karen's original three Spade bid, if she simply +wanted to give her partner information?... Not that she really had a +bid-- + +Karen's hand trembled as she drew the lone nine of Clubs from the dummy, +to place beside Carolyn's Ace, but Penny's fingers were quite steady as +she followed with the deuce of Clubs, to which Karen added, with a trace +of characteristic uncertainty, the eight. + +"There's our book!" Carolyn Drake exulted obediently, but she cast an +apologetic glance toward Penny. "If we take one more trick we set them." + +"Fat chance!" Penny obligingly responded, and Dundee, relieved, knew +that the farcical game would now be played almost exactly, and with the +same comments, as it had been played while Nita Selim was being +murdered. Thanks to Penny Crain! + +With a shamefaced glance upward at Dundee, Carolyn Drake then led the +deuce of Diamonds, committing the gross tactical error of leading from +the Queen. Karen added the Jack from the dummy, and Penny shruggingly +contributed her King, to find the trick, as she had suspected in the +original game, trumped by the five of Spades, since Karen had no +Diamonds. + +"So _that_ settles _us_, Carolyn!" Penny commented acidly. + +Her partner rose to the role she was playing. "Well, as I said, I always +double a little slam on principle. Besides, how could I know they would +have a chance for cross-ruffing in _both_ Clubs and Diamonds? I thought +you would at least hold the Ace of Diamonds and that Karen would +certainly have one, as I only had four--" + +Penny shrugged. "Oh, well! Let's play bridge!" for Karen was staring at +her cards helplessly. "Sorry, Karen! I realize a post mortem is usually +held after the playing of a hand--not before." + +"I--I guess I'd better get my trumps out," Karen--now almost a genuine +actress, too--breathed tremulously. "I _do_ wish Nita were playing this +hand. I know I'll muff it somehow--" + +"Good kid!" Dundee commented silently, and allowed himself the liberty +of patting Karen on her slim shoulder. + +The girl threw an upward glance of gratitude through misty eyes, then +led the six of Spades, Mrs. Drake contributing the four, dummy taking +the trick with the Ace, and Penny relinquishing the three. + +"Let's see--that makes five of 'em in, since I trumped one trick," Karen +said, as she reached across the table to lead from dummy. + +As if the words were a cue--which they probably were--Judge Marshall +entered the room at that moment, making a great effort to be as jaunty, +debonair, and "young for his age" as he must have thought he looked when +he made his entrance when the real game was being played. + +At his step Karen lifted her head and greeted her elderly husband with a +curious mixture of childlike joy and womanly tenderness: + +"Hullo, darling!... I'm trying to make a little slam I may have been +foolish to bid, but Nita jumped me from three to five Spades--" + +"Let's have a look, sweetheart," the retired judge suggested pompously, +and Dundee gave way to make room for him behind Karen's chair. + +But before Judge Marshall looked at his wife's cards he bent and kissed +her on her flushed cheek, and Karen raised a trembling hand to tweak his +grey mustache. Dundee, with uplifted eyebrow, queried Penny, who nodded +shortly, conveying the information that this was the way the scene had +really been played when there was no question of acting. + +"I'm getting out my trumps, darling," Karen confided sweetly, as she +reached for the deuce of Spades--the only remaining trump in the dummy. + +"What's your hurry, child?" her husband asked indulgently. "Lead this!" +and he pointed toward the six of Diamonds. + +"I wish you'd got a puncture, Hugo, so you couldn't have butted in +before this hand was played," Carolyn Drake spluttered. "Remember this +is a little slam bid, doubled and redoubled--" + +"I should think _you_ would like to forget that, Carolyn!" Penny +commented bitingly. "But I agree with Carolyn, Hugo, that Karen is quite +capable of making her little slam without your assistance." + +"Please don't mind," Karen begged. "Hugo just wanted to help me, because +I'm such a dub at bridge--" + +"The finest little player in town!" Judge Marshall encouraged her +gallantly, but with a jaunty wink at the belligerent Penny. + +Smiling adoringly at him again, Karen took his suggestion and led the +six of Diamonds from the dummy; Penny covered it with the nine; Karen +ruffed with the seven of Spades from her own hand, and Mrs. Drake +lugubriously contributed the four of Diamonds. + +"I can get my trumps out now, can't I, Hugo?" Karen asked deprecatingly, +and at her husband's smiling permission, she led the King of Spades, +Carolyn had to give up the Jack, which she must have foolishly thought +would take a trick; the dummy contributed the deuce, and Penny followed +with her own last trump--the eight. + +Karen counted on her fingers, her eyes on the remaining trumps in her +hand, then smiled triumphantly up at her husband. + +"Why not simply tell us, Karen, that the rest of the trumps are in your +own hand?" Penny suggested caustically. + +"I--I didn't mean to do anything wrong," Karen pleaded, as she led now +with the ten of Hearts, which drew in Carolyn's Queen to cover--Carolyn +murmuring religiously: "Always cover an honor with an honor--or should I +have played second hand low, Penny?"--topped by the King in the dummy, +the trick being completed by Penny's three of Hearts. + +At that point John C. Drake marched into the room, strode straight to +Dundee, and spoke with cold anger: + +"Enough of this nonsense! I, for one, refuse to act like a puppet for +your amusement! If you are so vitally interested in contract bridge, I +should advise you to take lessons from an expert, not from three +terrified women who are rather poor players at best. I also advise you +to get about the business you are supposed to be here for--the finding +of a murderer!" + + + + +CHAPTER SIX + + +Before Drake had reached his side, his purpose plain upon his stern, +rather ascetic features, Dundee had taken a hasty glance at the watch +cupped in his palm and noted the exact minute and second of the +interruption. Time out! + +"One moment, Mr. Drake," he said calmly. "I quite agree with you--from +your viewpoint. What mine is, you can't be expected to know. But believe +me when I say that I consider it of vital importance to the +investigation of the murder of Mrs. Selim that this particular bridge +hand, with all its attending remarks, the usual bickering, and its +interruptions of arriving guests for cocktails, be played out, exactly +as it was this afternoon. I thought I had made myself clear before. If +you don't wish me to believe that _you have something to conceal_ by +refusing to take part in a rather grisly game--" + +"Certainly I have nothing to conceal!" John C. Drake snorted angrily. + +"Then please bow as gracefully as possible to necessity," Dundee urged +without rancor. "And may I ask, before we go on, if you made your +entrance at this time, and the facts of your arrival?" + +Drake considered a moment, gnawing a thin upper lip. Beads of sweat +stood on his high, narrow forehead. + +"I walked over from the Country Club, after eighteen holes of golf with +your _superior_, the district attorney," Drake answered, with nasty +emphasis. "I left the clubhouse at 5:10, calculating that it would take +me about twenty minutes for the walk of--of about a mile." + +Dundee made a mental note to find out exactly how far from this lonely +house in Primrose Meadows the Country Club actually was, but his next +question was along another line: + +"You _walked_, Mr. Drake?--after eighteen holes of golf on a warm day?" + +Drake flushed. "My wife had the car. I had driven out with Mr. +Sanderson, but he was called away by a long distance message. I lingered +at the club for a while, chatting and--er--having a cool drink or two, +then I set out afoot." + +"No one offered you a lift?" Dundee inquired suavely. + +"No. I presume my fellow-members thought I had my car with me, and I +asked no one for a lift, for I rather fancied the idea of a walk across +the meadows." + +"I see," said Dundee thoughtfully. "Now as to your arrival here--" + +"I walked in. The door had been left on the latch, as it usually is, +when a party is on," Drake explained coldly. "And I was just entering +the room when I heard my wife make the remark about covering an honor +with an honor, and then her question of Penny as to whether she should +have played second hand low." + +"So you entered this time at the correct moment," said Dundee. "Now, Mr. +Drake, I am going to ask you to re-enter the room and do exactly as you +did upon your arrival at approximately 5:33. I am sure you would not +willingly hamper me--or _my superior_--in this investigation." + +Drake wheeled, ungraciously, and returned to the doorway, while Dundee +again consulted his watch, mentally subtracting the minutes which had +been wasted upon this interruption, from the time he had marked upon his +memory as the moment at which Drake had interfered. But an undercurrent +of skepticism nagged at his mind. Why had Drake chosen to _walk_? And +why had it taken him from 5:10 to approximately 5:33 to walk a mile or +less? The average walker, and especially one accustomed to playing golf, +could easily have covered a mile in fifteen minutes, instead of the +twenty-three minutes Drake had admitted to.... If it _was_ a +mile!... Was it possible that the banker loved wildflowers? + +With head up aggressively, Drake was undoubtedly making an effort to +throw himself into the role--or perhaps into a role chosen on the spot! + +"Where's everybody?" he called from the doorway. "Am I early?" + +"Don't interrupt, please, dear," Carolyn Drake answered, her voice +trembling now, where before it must have been sharp and querulous. + +Silently Drake took his place behind his wife's chair, laying a hand +affectionately upon her shoulder. Dundee, watching closely, saw Penny's +eyes widen with something like shocked surprise. So Drake _was_ trying +to deceive him, counting on the oneness of this group, his closest +friends! + +Karen, obviously flustered, too, reached to the dummy for the Ace of +Diamonds, to which Penny played the three, Karen herself discarding the +ten of Clubs, and Mrs. Drake the five of Diamonds. + +"You asked no questions, Mr. Drake?" Dundee interpolated. + +The banker flushed again. "I--yes, I believe I did. Carolyn--Mrs. +Drake--explained that Karen was playing for a little slam in Spades, and +that she had doubled--'on principle'," he added acidly--a voice which +Mrs. Drake must be very well accustomed to, Dundee surmised. + +"And when I told you that Nita had redoubled and it looked as if she was +going to make it," Carolyn Drake whimpered and shifted her short, stout +body in the little bridge chair, "you said--why not tell the truth?--you +said it was just like me and I might as well take to tatting at bridge +parties." + +"That was said jokingly, my dear," Drake retorted, with a coldness that +tried to be affectionate warmth. + +"Play bridge!" Dundee commanded, sure that the approximate length of the +previous dispute had now been taken up, whatever retort Carolyn Drake +had made. Then he checked himself, again looking at his watch: "And just +what did you answer to your husband's little joke, Mrs. Drake?" + +"I--I--" The woman looked helplessly around the table, her slate-colored +eyes reddened with tears, then she plunged recklessly, after a fearful +glance at Dundee's implacable face. "I said that if it was Nita he was +talking to, he wouldn't speak in that tone; that she could make all the +foolish mistakes of over-bidding or revoking or doubling that she wanted +to, and he wouldn't say a word except to praise her--" + +"Then I may as well confess," Drake said acidly, "that I answered +substantially as follows: 'Nita is an _intelligent_ bridge player as +well as a charming woman, my dear!...' Now make the most of that little +family tiff, sir--and be damned to you!" + +"Did that end the scene, Mrs. Drake?" Dundee asked gently. + +"I--I said something about all the men thinking Nita was perfect," Mrs. +Drake confessed, "and I cried a little, but we went on with the hand. +And Johnny--Mr. Drake went away, walking up and down the room, waiting +for Nita to come back, I suppose!" + +"Then go on with the game," Dundee ordered. + +Silently now, as silently as the real game must have been played, +because of the embarrassing scene between husband and wife, the sinister +game was carried to its conclusion. Karen led the Jack of Hearts from +the dummy, Penny played her seven, Karen contributed her own deuce, and +Mrs. Drake followed suit with the five. + +Again Karen led from the dummy, with the four of Hearts, followed by +Penny's nine, taking it with her own Ace, Mrs. Drake throwing off the +five of Clubs. Karen then led the six of Hearts, Carolyn Drake discarded +the six of Clubs, dummy took the trick with the eight of Hearts, and +Penny sloughed the three of Clubs. + +With a faint imitation of the triumph with which she had played the hand +the first time, Karen threw down her remaining three trumps. + +"I've made it--a little slam!" she tried to sound very triumphant. +"Doubled and redoubled!... How much did I--did Nita and I make, Penny?" + +"Plenty!" But before putting pencil to score pad, Penny cupped her chin +in her hands and stared at Carolyn Drake. "I'd like to know, Carolyn, if +it isn't one of your most cherished secrets, _what_ possessed you to +double in the first place?" + +Carolyn Drake flushed scarlet as she protested feebly: "I thought of +course I could take two Club tricks with my Ace and King.... That's why +I doubled the little slam, of course. And my first double simply meant +that I had one good suit.... I thought if you could bid at all that my +two doubletons--" + +"Oh, what's the use?" Penny groaned. "But may I remind you that it is +_not_ bridge to lead from a Queen?... You led the deuce of Diamonds, +when of course the play, since you had seen the Ace in the dummy, was to +lead your Queen, forcing the Ace and leaving my King guarded to take a +trick later." + +"But Karen didn't have any Diamonds at all," Carolyn defended herself. + +"A secret you weren't in on when you led from your Queen," Penny +reminded her. "Oh, well! We'll pay up and shut up!" and she made a +pretense of totting up the score, while Karen, who had risen, stood over +her like a bird poised for flight. + +At that instant Dexter Sprague began to advance into the room, Janet +Raymond at his side, her face flaming. + +"Behave exactly as you did before!" Dundee commanded in a harsh whisper. +No time for coddling these people now! + +Dexter Sprague's face took on a yellower tinge, but he obeyed. + +"Greetings!" he called in the jaunty, over-cordial tones of a man who +knows himself not too welcome. "Where's Nita--and everybody? Isn't that +the cocktail shaker I hear?" + +Having received no answer from anyone present, Sprague strolled through +the living room and on into the dining room, Janet following. Judge +Marshall had nodded stiffly, and John C. Drake had muttered the +semblance of a greeting.... Were they all overdoing it a bit--this +reacting of their hostility to the sole remaining outsider of their +compact little group?... Dundee stroked his chin thoughtfully. + +But Penny was saying in her abrupt, husky voice: "Above the line, 1250; +below the line 720, making a total of 1970 on this hand, Karen." + +"Won't Nita be glad?" Karen gasped, then began to run totteringly, +calling: "Nita! Nita!" But in the hall she collapsed, shuddering, crying +in a child's whimper: "No, no! I--can't--go in there--again!" + +It was Dundee who reached her first--Dundee and not her outraged and +excited old husband. + +"Mrs. Marshall--listen, please," he begged in a low voice, as he lifted +her so that her head rested against his arm. "You have been +splendid--wonderful! Please believe that I am truly sorry to distress +you so, and that very soon, I hope, you may go home and rest." + +"I--can't bear any--more," Karen whimpered. + +Ignoring Judge Marshall's blustering, Dundee continued softly: "You +don't want the wrong person to be accused of this terrible crime, do +you, Mrs. Marshall?... Of course not! And you _do_ want to help us all +you can to discover who really killed Mrs. Selim?" + +"I--I suppose so," Karen conceded, on a sob. + +"Then I'll help you. I'll go to the bedroom with you," Dundee promised +her with a sigh of relief. To the others he spoke sharply: + +"Go back to the exact positions in living room and dining room and +solarium, that you occupied when Mrs. Marshall ran from the room." + +"I think you're overdoing it, Bonnie," Captain Strawn protested. +"But--sure I'll see that they mind you." + +With Karen Marshall clinging to his arm, Dundee walked down the hall, +beyond the staircase to an open door on his left--a door guarded by a +lounging plainclothesman. Seated at the dressing-table of the guests' +lavatory was Flora Miles, her sallow dark face so ravaged that she +looked ten years older than when he had first seen her an hour before. + +"So you were in here when you heard Mrs. Marshall scream, Mrs. Miles?" +Dundee paused to ask. + +"Yes--yes!" she gasped, rising. "And that horrible man has made me stay +in here--. Of course, the door was closed--before. I telephoned home to +ask about my children, and then I came in here to--to do my face over--" + +"You didn't hear your husband arrive?" + +"No,--I didn't hear him arrive," Flora Miles faltered, her handkerchief +dabbing at her trembling, over-rouged lips. + +"I--see," Dundee said slowly. + +He stepped into the little room, leaving Karen to stand weakly against +the door frame. Without a word to Mrs. Miles he looked closely at the +top of the dressing-table and into the small wastebasket that stood +beside it. + +"You--you can see that I cold-creamed my face before I put on fresh +powder and--and rouged," Flora Miles pointed out, with an obvious effort +at offended dignity. "After I came back, while you were making those +poor girls play the hand over again, I went through the same +motions--because you told all of us to behave exactly as we had done +before--" + +"I--see," Dundee agreed. + +Pretty clever, in spite of being almost frightened to death, Dundee said +to himself. But he had been just a shade cleverer than she, for he had +been in this room ahead of her, and there had been no balls of greasy +face tissue in the wastebasket then! + +He was passing out of the room, offering his arm to Karen, when one of +his underlined notes thrust itself upon his memory: + +"May I see your bridge tally, please, Mrs. Miles?" + +"My--bridge tally!" she echoed blankly. "Why--it must be on the table +where I was playing--" + +"It is not," Dundee assured her quietly. "Perhaps it is in your +handbag?" and he glanced at the rather large raffia bag that lay on the +table. + +She snatched it up, slightly averting her body as she looked hastily +through its contents. + +"It--isn't here.... Oh, I don't know _where_ it is! What does it +matter?" + +Without replying, Dundee escorted the trembling little discoverer of +Nita Selim's body into the large ornate bedroom, murmuring as he did so: + +"Don't be frightened, Mrs. Marshall. The bod--I mean Mrs. Selim isn't +here now.... And you shan't have to scream. I'll give the signal myself. +I just want you to go through the same motions you did before." On jerky +feet the girl advanced to Nita's now deserted vanity dresser. + +"I--I was calling to her all the time," she whispered. "I didn't even +wait to knock, and I--I began to tell her how much we'd made off that +hand, when I--when she didn't answer.... I didn't touch her, but I +saw--I saw--" Again she gripped her face with her hands and was about to +scream. + +"I know," Dundee assured her gently. Then he shouted: "Ready!" + +Herded by Strawn, the small crowd of men and women came running into the +room, Judge Marshall leading the way, Penny being second in line. Penny +_second_! Why not Flora Miles, who had been nearer to that room than any +of the others, if her story was true--Dundee asked himself. But all had +crowded into the room, including Polly Beale and Clive Hammond, before +Mrs. Miles crept in. + +"Is this the order of your arrival?" Dundee asked them all. + +Penny, who was standing against the wall, just inside the doorway, spoke +up, staring at Flora with frowning intentness. + +"You're sort of mixed up, aren't you, Flora? I was standing right here +until the worst of it was over--I didn't even go near Nita, and I know +you didn't pass me. I remember that Tracey stepped away from the--body, +and called you, and you weren't here. And then almost the next minute I +saw you coming toward him from--from--_over there_!" + +And Penny pointed toward that corner of the room which held, on one +angle, the door leading to the porch, and on its other angle the window +from which, or from near which Nita Selim had been shot. + +"You're lying, Penny Crain! I did no such thing!" Flora Miles cried +hysterically. "I came running in--with--with the rest of you, and I +rushed over there just to see if I could see anybody running away across +the meadow--" + +"My wife is right, sir," Tracey Miles added his word aggressively. "I +saw what she was doing--the most sensible of all of us--and I ran to +join her. We looked out of the windows, both the side windows and the +rear ones, and out onto the porch. But we didn't see anything." + +Surprisingly, Dundee abandoned the point. + +"And you were the only one to touch her, Sprague?" + +"I--believe so," Dexter Sprague answered in a strained voice. "I--laid +my hand on her--her hair, for an instant, then I picked up her hand to +see if--if there was any pulse left." + +"Yes?" + +"She--she was dead." + +"And her hand--did it feel cold?" + +"Neither cold nor warm--just cool," Sprague answered in a voice that was +nearly strangled with emotion. "She--she always had cool hands--" + +"What did you do, Judge Marshall?" Dundee asked abruptly. + +"I took my poor little wife away from this room, laid her on a couch in +the living room, and then telephoned the police. Miss Crain stood at my +elbow, urging me to hurry, so that she might ring you--as she did. Your +line was busy, and she lost about five minutes before getting you." + +"And the rest of you?" Dundee asked. + +"Nothing spectacular, I'm afraid, Mr. Dundee," Polly Beale answered in +her brusque, deep voice, now edged with scorn. + +Further questioning elicited little more, beyond the fact that Clive +Hammond had dashed out to circle the house and look over the grounds, +and that John Drake had been fully occupied with an hysterical wife. + +"Better let this bunch go for the present, hadn't we, boy?" Captain +Strawn whispered uneasily. "Not a thing on any of them--" + +"Not quite yet, sir, if you don't mind," Dundee answered in a low voice. +"Will you take them back into the living room and put them under +Sergeant Turner's charge for a while? Then there are one or two things +I'd like to talk over with you." + +Mollified by the younger man's deference and persuasiveness, Strawn +obeyed the suggestion, to return within five minutes, his grey brows +drawn into a frown. + +"I hope you'll be willing to take full credit for that fool bridge game, +Bonnie," he worried. "_I_ don't want to look a chump in the newspapers!" + +"I'll take the blame," Dundee assured him, with a grin. "But that 'fool +bridge game'--and I admit it was a horrible thing to have to do--told me +a whole bunch of facts that ought to be very, very useful." + +"For instance?" Strawn growled. + +"For instance," Dundee answered, "it told me that it took approximately +eight minutes to play out a little slam bid, when ordinarily it would +have taken not more than two or three minutes. Not only that, but it +told me the names of everyone in _this_ party who could have killed Nita +Selim, and--. Good Lord! Of course!" + +And to Captain Strawn's amazement Dundee threw open the door of Nita's +big clothes closet, jerked on the light, and stooped to the floor. + + + + +CHAPTER SEVEN + + +Almost immediately Special Investigator Dundee rose from his crouching +position on the floor of Nita Selim's closet, and faced the chief of the +Homicide Squad of Hamilton's police force. + +"I think," he said quietly, for all the excitement that burned in his +blue eyes, "that we'd better have Mrs. Miles in for a few questions." + +"What have you got there--a dance program?" Strawn asked curiously, but +as Dundee continued to stare silently at the thing he held, the older +man strode to the door and relayed the order to a plainclothes +detective. + +"I sent for _Mrs._ Miles," Dundee said coldly, when husband and wife +appeared together, Flora's thin, tense shoulders encircled by Tracey's +plump arm. + +"If you're going to badger my wife further, I intend to be present, +sir!" Miles retorted, thrusting out his chest. + +"Very well!" Dundee conceded curtly. "Mrs. Miles, why didn't you tell me +in the first place that you were _in this room_ when Nita Selim was +shot?" + +"Because I wasn't--in--in the room," Flora protested, clinging with both +thin, big-veined hands to her husband's arm. + +"Sir, you have no proof of this absurd accusation, and I shall +personally take this matter up--" + +"I have the best of proof," Dundee said quietly, and took his hand from +his pocket. "You recognize this, Mrs. Miles?... You admit that it is the +tally card you used while playing bridge this afternoon?" + +"No, no! It isn't mine!" Flora cried hysterically, cringing against her +husband, who began to protest in a voice falsetto with rage. + +Dundee ignored his splutterings. "May I point out that it is identical +with the other tally cards used at Mrs. Selim's party today, and that on +its face it bears your name, 'Flora'?" and he politely extended the card +for her inspection. + +"I--yes, it _must_ be mine, but I was _not_ in this room when Nita +was--was shot!" + +"But you will admit that you _were_ in her clothes closet at some time +during the twenty or more minutes that elapsed between your leaving the +bridge game, when you became dummy, and the moment when Karen Marshall +screamed?" + +As Flora Miles said nothing, staring at him with great, terrified black +eyes, Dundee went on relentlessly: "Mrs. Miles, when you left the bridge +game, you did not intend to telephone your house. You came _here_--into +this room!--and you lay in wait, hiding in her closet until Nita Selim +appeared, as you knew she would, sooner or later--" + +"No, no! That's a lie--a lie, I tell you!" the woman shrilled at him. "I +_did_ telephone my house, and I talked to Junior, when the maid put him +up to the phone.... You can ask her yourself, if you don't believe me!" + +"But _after_ you telephoned, you stole into this room--" + +"No, no! I--I made up my face all fresh, just as I told you--" + +Dundee did not bother to tell her how well he knew she was lying, for +suddenly something knocked on the door of his mind. He strode to the +closet, searched for a moment among the multitude of garments hanging +there, then emerged with the brown silk summer coat which Nita Selim had +worn to Breakaway Inn that noon. Before the terrified woman's eyes he +thrust a hand first into one deep pocket and then another, finding +nothing except a handkerchief of fine embroidered linen and a pair of +brown suede gauntlet gloves. + +"Will you let me have the note, please, Mrs. Miles? The note Nita +received during her luncheon party, and which she thrust, before your +eyes, into a pocket of this coat?... It is in your handbag, I am sure, +since you have had no opportunity, unobserved, to destroy it." + +"What ghastly nonsense is this, Dundee?" Tracey Miles demanded +furiously. + +But Dundee again ignored him. His implacable eyes held Flora Miles' +until the woman broke suddenly, piteously. She fumbled in the raffia bag +which had been hanging from her arm. + +"Good God, Flora! What does it all mean?" Tracey Miles collapsed like a +pricked pink balloon. "That's _my_ stationery--one of my business +envelopes--" + +Flora Miles dropped the bag which she need no longer watch and clutch +with terror, as she dug her thin fingers into her husband's shoulders +and looked down at his puzzled face, for she was a little taller than +he. + +"Forgive me, darling! Oh, I knew God would punish me for being jealous! +I thought _you_ were writing love letters to--to that woman--" + +Dundee did not miss the slightest significance of that scene as he +retrieved the blue-grey envelope she had dropped. It was inscribed, in a +curious handwriting: "Mrs. Selim, Private Dining Room, Breakaway Inn." + +"Let's see, boy," Strawn said, with respect in his harsh voice. + +Dundee withdrew the single sheet of business stationery, and obligingly +held it so that the chief of detectives could read it also. + +"Nita, my sweet," the note began, without date-line, "Forgive your bad +boy for last night's row, but I _must_ warn you again to watch your +step. You've already gone too far. Of course I love you and understand, +_but_--Be good, Baby, and you won't be sorry." + +The note was signed "Dexy." + +Dundee tapped the note for a long minute, while Tracey Miles continued +to console his wife. A new avenue, he thought--perhaps a long, long +avenue.... + +"Mrs. Miles," he began abruptly, and the tear-streaked face turned +toward him. "You say you thought this letter to Mrs. Selim had been +written by your husband?" + +"Yes!" She gasped. "I'm jealous-natured. I admit it, and when I saw one +of our own--I mean, one of Tracey's business envelopes--" + +"You made up your mind to steal it and read it?" + +"Yes, I did! A wife has a right to know what her husband's doing, if +it's anything--like that--" Her haggard black eyes again implored her +husband for forgiveness, before she went on: "I _did_ slip into Nita's +room and go into her closet to see if she had left the letter in her +coat pocket. I closed the door on myself, thinking I could find the +light cord, but it was caught in one of the dresses or something, and it +took me a long time to find it in the dark of the closet, but I did find +it at last, and was just reading the note--" + +"You _read_ it, even after you saw that the handwriting on the envelope +wasn't your husband's?" Dundee queried in assumed amazement. + +Flora's thin body sagged. "I--I thought maybe Tracey had disguised his +Handwriting.... So I read it, and saw it was from Dexter--" + +"Mr. Miles, do you know how some of your business stationery got into +Sprague's hands?" + +"He's had plenty of opportunity to filch stationery or almost anything +he wants, hanging around my offices, as he does--an idler--" + +But Dundee was in a hurry. He wheeled from the garrulity of the husband +to the tense terror of the wife. + +"Mrs. Miles, I want you to tell me exactly what you know, unless you +prefer to consult a lawyer first--" + +"Sir, if you are insinuating that _my wife_--" + +"Oh, let me tell him, Tracey," Mrs. Miles capitulated suddenly, +completely. "I _was_ in the closet when Nita was killed, I suppose, but +I didn't _know_ she was being killed! _Because I was lying in there on +the closet floor in a dead faint!_" + +Dundee stared at the woman incredulously, then suppressed a groan of +almost unbearable disappointment. If Flora Miles was telling the truth, +here went a-flying his only eye-witness, probably, or rather, his only +ear-witness. + +"Just when did you faint, Mrs. Miles?" he asked, struggling for +patience. "Before or after Nita came into this room?" + +"I was just finishing the note, with the light on in the closet, and the +door shut, when I heard Nita come into the room. I knew it was Nita +because she was singing one of those Broadway songs she is--was--so +crazy about. I jerked off the light, and crouched way back in a corner +of the closet. A velvet evening wrap fell down over my head, and I was +nearly smothering, but I was afraid to try to dislodge it for fear a +hanger would fall to the floor and make an awful clatter. And then--and +then--" She shuddered, and clung to her husband. + +"What caused you to faint, Mrs. Miles?" + +"Sir, my wife has heart trouble--" + +"What did you hear, Mrs. Miles?" Dundee persisted. + +"I couldn't hear very well, all tangled up in the coat and 'way back in +the closet, but I did hear a kind of bang or bump--no, no, not a pistol +shot!--and because it came from so near me I thought it was Nita or +Lydia coming to get something out of the closet, and I'd be discovered, +so I--I fainted--" She drew a deep breath and went on: "When I came to I +heard Karen scream, and then people running in--. But all the time that +awful tune was going on and on--" + +"Tune?" Dundee gasped. "Do you mean--Nita Selim's--_song_?" + +Flora Miles seemed to be dazed by Dundee's vehement question. + +"Why, yes--Nita's own tune. That's what she called it--her own tune--" + +"But, Mrs. Miles," Dundee protested, ashamed that his scalp was +prickling with horror, "do you mean to tell me that Nita was not dead +_then_--when Karen Marshall screamed?" + +"Dead?" Flora repeated, more bewildered. "Of course she was, or at +least, they all said so--. Oh, I know what you mean! And you don't mean +what I mean at all--" + +"Steady, honey-girl!" Tracey Miles urged, putting his arm about his +wife. "I'd better tell you, Dundee.... When we all came running into the +room, there was Nita's powder box playing its tune over and over--" + +"Oh!" Dundee wiped his forehead. "You mean it's a musical box?" + +"Yes, and plays when the lid is off," Tracey answered, obviously +delighted to have the limelight again. "Well, of course, since Nita +couldn't put the lid back on, it was still playing.... What was the +tune, honey?" he asked his wife tenderly. "I haven't much ear for music +at best, but at a time like that--" + +"It was playing _Juanita_," Flora answered wearily. "Over and +over--_'Nita, Jua-a-n-ita, be my own fair bride_'," she quavered +obligingly. "Only not the words, of course, just the tune. That's why +Nita bought the box, I suppose, because it played her namesake song--" + +"Maybe one of her beaus gave it to her," Tracey suggested lightly, +patting his wife's trembling shoulder. "Anyway, Dundee, the thing ran on +and on, until it ran down, I suppose. I confess I wanted to put the lid +back on, to stop the damned thing, but Hugo said we mustn't touch +anything--" + +"And quite right!" Dundee cut in. "Now, Mrs. Miles, about that noise you +heard.... Did you hear anyone enter the room?... No?... Well, then, did +you hear Nita speak to anyone? You said you thought it might be Lydia, +coming to get something out of the closet." + +"I didn't hear Nita speak a word to anybody, though she might have and I +wouldn't have heard, all muffled up in that velvet evening wrap and so +far back in the closet--" + +"Did you hear the door onto the porch--it's _quite_ near the closet--" + +"The door was open when we came in, Dundee," Tracey interposed. "It must +have been open all the time." + +"I didn't hear it open," Mrs. Miles confirmed him wearily. "I tell you I +didn't hear _anything_, except Nita's coming in singing, then the powder +box playing its tune, and that bang or bump I told you about." + +"And just where was that?" Dundee persisted. + +"_I don't know!_" she shrilled, hysteria rising in her voice again. "I +told you it sounded fairly near the closet, as if--as if somebody bumped +into something. That's what it was like! That's exactly what it was +like. And I was so frightened of being found in the closet that I +fainted, and didn't come to until Karen screamed--" + +She was babbling on, but Dundee was thinking hard. A very convenient +faint--that! For the murderer, at least! But--why not for Mrs. Miles +herself? Odd that she should _faint_! Why hadn't she trumped up some +excuse immediately and left the closet as Nita was entering the room? +Was it, possibly, because she could think of nothing but the great +relief of finding that it was Sprague, not her husband, who had been +writing love letters to Nita Selim?... A jealous woman-- + +"Miles," he began abruptly, "I think you'd better tell me how your wife +became so jealous of you and Nita Selim that she could get herself into +such a false position." + +Tracey Miles reddened, but a gesture of one of his sunburned hands +restrained his wife's passionate defense of him. "It's the truth that +Flora is jealous-natured. And I suppose--" he faltered a moment, and his +eyes did not meet his wife's, "--that I liked seeing her a little bit +jealous of her old man. Sort of makes a man feel--well, big, you know. +And pretty important to somebody!" + +"So you were just having a bit of fun with your wife, so far as Mrs. +Selim was concerned?" Dundee asked coldly. + +The blood flowed through the thinning blond hair. "We-el, not exactly," +he admitted frankly. "You see, I _did_ take a shine to Nita, and if I do +say so myself, she liked me a lot.... Oh, nothing serious! Just a little +flirtation, like most of our crowd have with each other--" + +"Mrs. Miles," Dundee interrupted with sudden harshness, "are you _sure_ +you did not know that that letter was from Dexter Sprague before you +looked for it?" + +"Sir, if you are insinuating that _my wife_ carried on a flirtation +or--an--an _affair_ with that Sprague insect--" Tracey began to bluster. + +But Dundee's eyes were on Flora Miles, and he saw that her sallow skin +had tightened like greyish silk over her thin cheek bones, and that her +eyes looked suddenly dead and glassy. + +"You _fainted_, you say, Mrs. Miles," Dundee went on inexorably. "Was it +because, by any chance, this note--" and he tapped the sheet which had +caused so much trouble--"revealed the fact that Nita Selim and Dexter +Sprague were sweethearts or--lovers?" + +It was a battle between those two now. Both ignored Tracey's red-faced +rage. + +Flora licked her dry lips. "No--no," she whispered. "_No!_ It was +because I was jealous of Tracey and Nita--" + +"Yes, and I'd given her cause to be jealous, too!" Tracey forced himself +into the conversation. "One night, at the Country Club, Flora saw me and +Nita stroll off the porch and down onto the grounds, and she had a right +to be sore at me when I got back, because I'd cut a dance with her--my +own wife!... And it was only this very morning that I made a point of +driving--out of my way too--by this house to see Nita. Not that I meant +any harm, but I was being a little silly about her--and she was about +me, too! Not that I'd leave my wife and babies for any Broadway beauty +under the sun--" + +"Oh, Tracey! And you weren't going to tell me--" Was there _real_ +jealousy now, or just pretense on Flora's part? + +"You understand, don't you, Dundee?" Tracey demanded, man to man. "I was +just having a little fun on the side--nothing serious, mind you! But of +course I didn't tell Flora every little thing--. No man does! There've +been other girls--other women--" + +"Tracey isn't worse than the other men!" Flora flamed up. "He's such a +darling that all the girls pet him, and spoil him--" + +Dundee could stand no more of Miles' complacent acceptance of his own +rakishness. And certainly a girl like Nita Selim would have been able to +bear precious little of it.... Conceited ass! But Flora Miles was +another matter--and so was Dexter Sprague! + +"You can join me in the living room, if you like," Dundee said shortly, +as he wheeled and strode toward the door. Was that quick, passionate +kiss between husband and wife being staged for his benefit? + +"Pretty near through, boy?" Strawn, who had been silent and bewildered +for a long time, asked anxiously, as the two detectives passed into the +hall. + +"Not quite. I've got to know several things yet," Dundee answered +absently. + +But in the living room his mind was wholly upon the business in hand. + +"I'll keep you all no longer than is absolutely necessary," he began, +and again the close-knit group--in which only Dexter Sprague was an +alien--grew taut with suspense. "From the playing out of the 'death +hand' at bridge," he went on, using the objectionable phrase again very +deliberately, "I found that no two of you men arrived together.... Mr. +Hammond, you were the first to arrive, I believe?" + +"It seems that I was!" Clive Hammond answered curtly. + +"And yet you did not enter the living room to greet your hostess?" + +"I wanted a private word with Polly--Miss Beale--my fiancée," Hammond +explained briefly. + +"How and when did you arrive?" + +"I don't know the exact time. Never thought of looking at my watch," +Hammond offered. "I came out in my own roadster--that tan Stutz you may +have noticed in the driveway. As for how I entered the house, I leaped +upon the porch and opened a door of the solarium. I walked across the +solarium, saw Polly just finishing with bridge for the afternoon, and +beckoned to her. She joined me in the solarium, and we stayed there +until Karen screamed.... That's all." + +"Have you been engaged long, Mr. Hammond--you and Miss Beale?" Dundee +asked, as if quite casually. + +"Nearly a year,--if it's any of your business, Dundee!" + +"And just when had you seen Miss Beale last, before late this +afternoon?" Dundee asked. + +"I refuse to answer!" Hammond flared. "That at least is none of your +damned business!" + +"I believe I can answer my own question, Mr. Hammond," Dundee said very +softly. + + + + +CHAPTER EIGHT + + +"Then why ask me?" Hammond shrugged, but his eyes flickered toward Polly +Beale. + +"I thought perhaps you could give me a little additional information," +Dundee soothed him. "You see, it happens that I saw you, Miss Beale and +another young man come into the Stuart House dining room about half past +one today, just when I was thinking of lunch for myself." + +"The mysterious 'other young man' was Clive's brother, Ralph Hammond," +Polly Beale cut in brusquely. + +"Your decision to lunch with your fiancé and his brother was quite a +sudden one?" Dundee asked courteously. "Just when did you change your +mind about Mrs. Selim's luncheon party at Breakaway Inn, Miss Beale?" + +The tall girl threw up her mannishly cropped, chestnut head. "There is +nothing at all sinister or even queer about it, Mr. Dundee! I was on my +way to the luncheon, when I decided to drive past Nita's house, on the +chance that she might like me to drive her over." + +"Then you didn't know that Mrs. Dunlap had already arranged to meet Mrs. +Selim downtown this morning and to take her to the Inn?" Dundee asked. + +"No! I didn't hear of the arrangement," Polly answered decidedly. + +"You were a close friend of Mrs. Selim's perhaps?" Dundee prodded. + +"Not at all! But that would not keep me from doing my hostess a +courtesy.... She hated her Ford and liked expensive cars," Polly added +unemotionally. "It was about a quarter to one when I got here, I should +say. Nita wasn't here, nor was her maid, but I saw Ralph's car parked in +front of the house--" + +"_Ralph Hammond's car?_" a woman squealed, but Dundee let Polly +continue. + +"I rang and he answered the door. Said he was alone in the house, going +over the premises at Judge Marshall's request," Polly said evenly. + +"That's right--that's right!" Judge Marshall agreed hastily. "Nita--Mrs. +Selim--wanted the unfinished half of the gabled top story finished up. +Wanted a maid's room and bath, and a guest room and bath added to the +living quarters already completed. I gave the commission, for an +estimate, at least, to the Hammond firm, since they had built the house +originally for Crain--Penny's father." + +"I see," Dundee agreed. "And you sent your brother, Mr. Hammond?" + +"He was the natural one to send," Clive Hammond retorted. "Small job. +All he had to do was to get together an estimate on additional furnace +lines and radiators, electric wiring, plumbing, plastering, etc." + +"Go on, Miss Beale," Dundee directed. + +"Thanks!" There was sarcasm in her brusque voice. "But that's really +about all I have to tell. Ralph complained that he was hungry and +charged me with giving him too little of my time--the usual thing. I +picked up Nita's phone, called Clive and made the date for the three of +us. Then I called Breakaway Inn, cancelled the luncheon part of the +bridge party with Nita, and Ralph and I drove back to Hamilton." + +Dundee studied her strong, clever, almost plain face for a long minute. +Certainly Polly Beale did not look like a liar--but he would have taken +his oath that she was lying now. Or rather not revealing the whole truth +behind the actual facts of her movements that day. For instance, could a +simple plea of her future brother-in-law make her do so discourteous a +thing as to break a luncheon appointment, especially when such a course +would not only disappoint her hostess and her friends but disarrange the +seating plan of a rather formal party? + +Of course the explanation was obvious. She had wanted, first, to see +Nita and remonstrate privately with her for having so enslaved Ralph +Hammond, when he was tacitly known to "belong" to Penny Crain--one of +the sacred crowd. Failing that, she had found Ralph himself, and had not +expected to find him; had talked with him about Nita, and had quarreled +a bit with him, perhaps, over his love-sodden behavior. And the crisis +had become so acute that Polly had arbitrarily called upon Clive Hammond +and then had forced Ralph to accompany her. + +"Do you know, Miss Beale, why Ralph Hammond did not keep _his_ +engagement with Mrs. Selim this afternoon? Or rather, his promise to +appear for cocktails and to be Miss Crain's partner for the rest of the +evening--dinner and dancing at the Country Club?" + +"I do not!" Polly said crisply. + +"Hammond?" + +"Neither do I," Hammond retorted angrily. + +"Then it was not to discuss Ralph Hammond and his--affairs, that you +beckoned Miss Beale to meet you in the solarium upon your arrival?" + +"It--_was not_!" + +A shade too much anger and emphasis, Dundee decided. And he wished +heartily that Strawn's detectives would not delay much longer in +bringing the missing young man into this already involved examination. + +"You say that you both were in the solarium from the time of your +arrival, Hammond, until Mrs. Marshall screamed," Dundee continued. "Just +what did you see and hear?" + +Dundee watched their faces keenly, but again they were well-bred, +expressionless. It was Polly Beale who answered: "Naturally there was +not absolute silence, but I am afraid we were not listening. We were +rather engrossed in our conversation. We were seated--near no +windows--and I for one _saw_ nothing, as well as heard nothing that I +can recall." + +"Hammond?" + +"That goes for me, too--absolutely!" + +Abruptly abandoning the engaged couple, Dundee returned to Miles. "You +were the second arrival, then?" + +"Yes. I parked my car along the curb in front of the house," Tracey +answered readily. "And I came right on in, and Nita jumped up--" + +"Yes. We've had all that twice before," Dundee interrupted cruelly. +"Now, Judge Marshall--" + +"One of my friends gave me a lift from town," Judge Marshall volunteered +pompously. "Chap named Sampson. You may have heard of him--fine fellow, +splendid lawyer. We played billiards together at the Athletic Club, and +when I was about to call a taxi--my wife having the car here--he offered +to drop me here on his way to the Country Club.... N-no, I don't +remember the exact time, did not consult my watch." + +"You came directly from the road into the house, Judge Marshall?" + +"Certainly, sir!" + +"Did you--er, see anyone?" + +"You mean, sir, did anyone see _me_?" Judge Marshall demanded with +pompous indignation. "No, no one, sir! If my word is not good enough for +you, you can think what you damned please!" + +"I think we are all getting a little too tired, Mr. Dundee," Penny Crain +suggested, almost humble in her weariness. + +"I'm truly sorry," the young detective apologized. "But I can't leave +things like this ... Mr. Drake, you have said you walked over from the +Country Club. You must have approached the house from the driveway side, +the side of the house which contains Mrs. Selim's bedroom.... Is that +right?" + +"More or less, except that I skirted the house rather widely and arrived +from the road, stepping upon the front porch, and walking directly into +the hall. I saw no one outside or near the house when I arrived," Drake +answered, with less than his usual nastiness. + +"And saw no one running away across the meadows?" Dundee pressed. + +"No one at all," Drake retorted. "I wish to God I could truthfully say +that I saw a gunman, with a mask and a smoking revolver, skulking +through the wildflowers, but the absolute truth is that I saw no one." + +"Thank you, Mr. Drake.... Now--Mr. Sprague, 'of New York'!" + +Sprague's nervously twitching face reddened darkly. "I--I took a bus. I +have no car of my own. I got off the bus on Sheridan Road, at the +entrance to Primrose Meadows." + +"I see. And you walked the quarter of a mile to this house?" + +Sprague's hand fumbled with his cravat. "I--of course I did!" + +"I see.... Now, Miss Raymond," Dundee pounced unexpectedly, so that the +red-haired girl went very white beneath her freckles, "you observed Mr. +Sprague toiling down the rutty road, hot and weary, but romantic in the +sunset?" + +Mrs. Drake let out a nervous giggle, then clapped her hand over her +mouth. + +"I--I wasn't looking that way," Janet Raymond stammered. "I--I just went +out on the porch for a breath of fresh air--" + +"And you were _completely_ surprised when Mr. Sprague came walking up +the flagstone path?" Dundee persisted, for he knew she was lying, knew +that she had stationed herself there to watch for Sprague. + +"I--yes, I was! He stopped and talked for a while, before we came in and +joined Tracey and Lois in the dining room, where Tracey was mixing +cocktails.... But," she flared suddenly, "I don't see why you have to +badger all of us, when it _must_ have been Lydia, the maid, who killed +Nita, because--" + +"Oh, Janet! Shame on you!" Penny cried furiously. + +"Where is the maid now, Captain Strawn?" Dundee asked. "I haven't seen +her yet--" + +"Because she's in her room in the basement, Bonnie," Strawn answered. +"Sort of forgot about her, didn't you?" and he chuckled at the younger +man's discomfiture. "But _I_ got her story out of her, you bet! Nothing +to it, though. One of my boys--Collins, it was--found her in that short, +dark hall that runs between the Selim woman's bedroom and the kitchen. +Sicker'n a pup she was; it was a mess. Said she'd--" + +"I'd better have her up and question her, if she's well enough," Dundee +interrupted, as tactfully as possible. "It seems that she had an +abscessed tooth out today, with gas and a local anesthetic.... Now, Miss +Raymond, will you tell me exactly what you meant by saying it must have +been Lydia who killed her mistress?" + +"I certainly will!" the red-haired girl cried defiantly. "What I can't +see is why Tracey and Lois and Dex--Mr. Sprague--didn't think of it, +too. It's as plain as--" + +"Yes, as the nose on my face," Dundee cut in grimly, but with a glance +at Strawn. "Just stick to the facts, however, Miss Raymond, and maybe we +can all agree with you." + +"Well, when Mr. Sprague and I went into the dining room, there were Lois +and Tracey cutting up like a couple of children," Janet began, +determined to take her time. "When they saw us, Lois said: 'Good Lord, +Tracey! Get busy! Or your job as bartender will be taken away from you,' +and Tracey began to shake cocktails at the sideboard--" + +"Guess I'd better tell it, Janet, for what it's worth," Lois cut in +impatiently. "It's nothing more nor less than that I had to ring twice +for poor Lydia before she came," she explained to Dundee. "Tracey is +full of original ideas about cocktails, and wanted some sort of bitters. +He was going to shout for Lydia, but I stepped on the button under the +dining table, and the poor thing--in the basement nursing her jaw, +probably--didn't hear. Tracey and I got to kidding, as Janet says, and +had scarcely noticed how long Lydia was in coming. I rang again, and she +came.... That's all!" + +"That isn't all!" Janet denied angrily. "I was there when Lydia came +in, and she was looking white as a ghost--except for her swollen jaw. +What's more, she acted so dumb Tracey had to tell her twice what he +wanted.... And then she said Nita didn't have any of those bitters +anyway." + +"An open-and-shut case against poor Lydia!" Penny Crain broke in +derisively. "Go pluck daisies, Janet! You'd be of a lot more help!" + +"Here's your maid, Bonnie," Captain Strawn announced lazily, as one of +his plainclothesmen appeared in the arch between dining and living room, +dragging by the hand a woman who was resisting strangely, her apron +pressed to her face. + +"You are Lydia?" Dundee asked, his voice kinder than it had been for +many minutes. "Oh, it's Lydia Carr, Captain Strawn? Thank you.... Don't +be afraid. And I'm sorry about the tooth.... Come along in. I'll not +keep you long." + +The woman's knees seemed about to fail her, but with a sudden effort she +released the detective's grip on her wrist. Very tall she was, very bony +in her black cotton dress. Pathetic, too, with her thin, iron-grey hair, +and that apron concealing the left half of her face. It was odd, Dundee +thought, that it was not the swollen jaw she chose to cover. + +Mrs. Dunlap sprang to her feet and hurried across the room. + +"Don't mind, Lydia, please. You must not be so sensitive," she said +gently, and even more gently pulled down the concealing apron.... + +"Good God!" Dundee breathed, and Strawn nodded his understanding of the +younger man's horror. + +For the left half of Lydia Carr's face was drawn and puckered and ridged +almost out of human semblance. Even the eye was ruined--a milky ball +which the puckered, hairless eyelid could never cover again. + +"Poor Lydia is ashamed of her scarred face," Lois Dunlap explained, her +arm still about the maid's shoulder. "She isn't quite used to it yet, +but none of _us_ mind--" + +"You were burned recently, Lydia?" Dundee asked pityingly. + +"That's my business!" the woman astounded him by retorting harshly. + +"How did it happen, Lydia?" Dundee persisted, puzzled. + +"I had an accident. It was my own fault." + +Lois Dunlap's kind grey eyes caught and held Dundee's firmly. "I think, +if Nita could speak to you now, Mr. Dundee, that she would beg you not +to try to force Lydia's confidence on this subject. Nita was devoted to +Lydia--we can all testify to that!--and one of the sweetest things about +her was her constant effort to protect Lydia from questions and curious +glances. I, for one, know that Nita often begged Lydia to submit to a +skin-grafting operation, regardless of expense--" + +When that kind voice choked on tears, Dundee abruptly abandoned his +intention to press the matter further. + +"Lydia, your mistress had been married, or was still married, wasn't +she?" + +The woman's single, slate-grey eye stared into his expressionlessly. +"She had 'Mrs.' in front of her name, to use when she felt like it. +That's all I know. I never saw her husband--if she had one. I only +worked for her about five years." + +"You say she used her married name 'when she felt like it....' What do +you mean by that, Lydia?" + +"I mean she was an actress, and used her stage name--Juanita +Leigh--pronounced like it was spelled plain 'Lee'; but she was mostly +called 'Nita Leigh'." + +"An actress, you say?" Dundee repeated thoughtfully. "I had heard of her +only as director of the Forsyte School plays.... What shows was she in?" + +"She was what they call a specialty dancer in musical comedy," Lydia +answered. "Sometimes she had a real part and sometimes she only danced. +She was a good hoofer and a good trouper," she added, the Broadway terms +falling strangely from those austere lips. "And when she wasn't in a +show she sometimes got a job in the pictures. She never had a real +chance in the movies, though, because they mostly wanted her to double +for the star in long shots, where dancing comes into the picture, or in +close-ups where they just show the legs, you know." + +"I see," Dundee agreed gravely. "Where were you during the fifteen +minutes or so before your mistress was shot, Lydia?" + +"I was down in my room in the basement," the woman answered. "Nita--I +mean Miss Nita was going to get Judge Marshall to build me a room on the +top floor. She hated for me to have to sleep in the basement, but I +didn't mind." + +"You were not required to be on duty for the party?" + +"No," she answered in her harsh, flat voice. "I'd fixed the sandwiches +and put out the liquors for the cocktails--set them all out on the +dining table and sideboard, and Miss Nita had told me to go and lie down +as soon as I was through. So I did. I had an abscessed tooth pulled this +morning, and I was feeling sick." + +"Did you hear the kitchen bell at all?" Dundee went on. + +"I dropped off to sleep--that fool dentist had shot me full of dope--but +I did hear the bell and I come up to answer it. Mrs. Dunlap said she'd +rung twice, and I said I was sorry--" + +"Lydia, did you go into your mistress' bedroom before or after you +answered that bell?" Dundee asked with sudden sharpness. + +"I did not! I didn't even know she was in her bedroom, until I saw her +sitting at her dressing-table--dead." The harsh voice hesitated over the +last word, but it did not break. + +"And just when did you first see her--after she was dead?" + +"I went into the kitchen, thinking something else might be needed. Then +I heard a scream. It sounded like it come from Nita's--Miss Nita's +bedroom, and I run along the back hall that leads from the kitchen to +her bedroom. I heard a lot of people running and yelling. Nobody paid +any attention to me." + +"You came into the room?" + +"No, sir, I did not. I stopped in the doorway. I heard Mr. Sprague say +she was dead. I was sick and dizzy anyway, and I couldn't move for a +minute. I sort of slipped down to the floor, and I guess I must have +passed out. And then I was sick to my stomach, and--I didn't seem to +care if I never moved again." + +"Why, Lydia?" Dundee asked gently. + +"Because she was the only friend I had in the world, and I couldn't have +loved her better if she'd been my own child," Lydia answered. And the +stern voice had broken at last. "I was still there in the back hall when +a cop come and asked me a lot of questions, and then that man--" she +pointed to Captain Strawn, "--said I could go and lay down. He helped me +down the basement stairs." + +Dundee tapped his teeth with the long pencil he had kept so busy that +evening--tapped them long and thoughtfully. Then: + +"Lydia, did you see anyone--_anyone at all!_--from your basement room +window before you answered Mrs. Dunlap's ring?" + + + + +CHAPTER NINE + + +For the first time during the difficult interview Dundee was sure that +Lydia Carr was lying. For a fraction of a second her single eye wavered, +the lid flickered, then came her harsh, flat denial: + +"I didn't see nobody." + +"I presume your basement room has a window looking out upon the back +garden?" Dundee persisted. + +"Yes, it has, but I didn't waste no time looking out of it," Lydia +answered grimly. "I was laying down, with an ice cap against my jaw." + +She _had_ seen someone, Dundee told himself. But the truth would be +harder to extract from that stern, scar-twisted mouth, than the +abscessed tooth had been. + +Finally, when her lone eye did not again waver under his steady gaze, he +dismissed her, or rather, returned her to Captain Strawn's custody. + +"Well, Janet, I hope you're satisfied!" Penny Crain said bitingly, as +she dashed unashamed tears from her brown eyes. "If ever a maid was +absolutely crazy about her mistress--" + +"I'm _not_ satisfied!" Janet Raymond retorted furiously. "She's just the +sort that would harbor a grudge for _years_, and then, all hopped up +with dope--" + +"Stop it, Janet!" Lois Dunlap commanded with a curtness that set oddly +upon her kind, pleasant face. + +"Listen here, Dundee," Tracey Miles broke in, almost humbly. "My wife is +getting pretty anxious about the kiddies. The nurse quit on us +yesterday, and--" + +"And _my_ little wife is worrying herself sick over our boy--just three +months old," Judge Marshall joined the protest. "I'm all for assisting +justice, sir, having served on the bench myself, as you doubtless know, +but--" + +"I'm all right, really, Hugo," Karen Marshall faltered. + +"Please be patient a little longer," Dundee urged apologetically. After +all, only one of these people could be guilty of Nita Selim's murder, +and it _was_ beastly to have to hold them like this.... _But one was +guilty!_ + +"You knew Mrs. Selim in New York, Sprague?" he asked, whirling suddenly +upon the man with the Broadway stamp. + +"I met Nita Leigh, as I always heard her called, when I was assistant +director in the Altamont Studios, out on Long Island," Sprague answered, +his black eyes trying to meet Dundee's with an air of complete +frankness. "Wonderful little girl, and a great dancer ... Screened +damned well, too. I had hoped to give her a break some day, at something +better than doubling for stars who can't dance. But it happened that +Nita, who never forgot even a casual friend, had a chance to give me a +leg up herself--a chance to show what I can really do with a camera." + +"I knew I'd seen your name somewhere!" Dundee exclaimed. "So you're the +man the Chamber of Commerce is dickering with.... Going to make a movie +of the founding, growth and beauties of the city of Hamilton, aren't +you?" + +"If I get the contract--yes," Sprague answered with palpably assumed +modesty. "My plans, naturally, call for a great deal of research work, a +large expenditure of money, a very careful selection of 'stars'--" + +"I see," Dundee interrupted. Then his tone changed, became slow and +menacing in its terrible emphasis: "_And you really couldn't let even a +good friend like Nita Selim upset those fine plans of yours, could you, +Sprague?_" + +Even as he put the sinister question, the detective was exulting to +himself: "Light at last! Now I know why this Broadway bounder was +received into an exclusive crowd like this! Every last female in the +bunch hoped to be the star of Sprague's motion picture!" + +"I don't know what you're driving at, Dundee!" Sprague was on his feet, +his black eyes blazing out of a chalky face. "If you're accusing me +of--of--" + +"Of killing Nita Selim?" Dundee asked lazily. "Oh, no! Not--yet, +Sprague! I was just remembering a rather puzzling note of yours I +happened to read this afternoon.... That note you sent by special +messenger to Breakaway Inn this noon, you know." + +He had little interest for the sudden crumpling of Dexter Sprague into +the chair from which he had risen. Instead, as Dundee drew the note from +his coat pocket, his eyes swept around the room, noted the undisguised +relief on every face, the almost ghoulish satisfaction with which that +close-knit group of friends seized upon an outsider as the probable +murderer of that other outsider whom they had rashly taken into their +sacred circle. Even Penny Crain, thorny little stickler for fair play +that she was, relaxed with a tremulous sigh. + +"You admit that this note, signed by what I take to be your 'pet name,' +was written by your hand, Sprague?" Dundee asked matter-of-factly, as he +extended the sheet of bluish notepaper. + +"I--no--yes, I wrote it," Sprague faltered. "But it doesn't mean a +thing--not a damned thing! Just a little private matter between Nita and +myself--" + +"Rather queer wording for an unimportant message, Sprague," Dundee +interrupted. "Let me refresh your memory: 'Nita, my sweet,'" he began to +read slowly, "'Forgive your bad boy for last night's row, but I _must_ +warn you again to watch your step. You've already gone too far. Of +course I love you and understand, _but_--Be good, Baby, _and you won't +be sorry_!--Dexy....' Well, Sprague?" + +Sprague wiped his perspiring hands on his handkerchief. "I know it +sounds--odd, under the circumstances," he admitted desperately, "but +listen, Dundee, and I'll try to make that damned note as clear as +possible to a man who doesn't know his Broadway.... Why, man, it isn't +even a love letter! Everybody on Broadway talks and writes to each other +like that, without meaning a thing!... As I told you, Nita Leigh, or +Mrs. Selim, remembered some little kindnesses I had done her on the +Altamont lot, when they got her to take up that Little Theater work Mrs. +Dunlap is interested in, and found that the Chamber of Commerce was +interested in putting Hamilton into the movies, in a big booster +campaign. She wired me and I thought it looked good enough to drop +everything and come.... Of course Nita and I got to be closer friends, +but I swear to God we were just friends--" + +"And what was the 'friendly' row about last night, Sprague?" + +"There wasn't a row, really," Sprague protested with desperate +earnestness. "It was merely that Nita insisted on my casting her for the +heroine of the movie--a thing I knew would alienate the whole crowd +that's been so kind to us--" + +"Why--since she was a professional actress?" Dundee demanded. + +"Because she isn't a Hamilton girl, of course, and the Chamber of +Commerce wants the cast to be all local talent," Sprague answered, +lapsing unconsciously into the present tense. + +"And just what were you warning her against?" + +"I'd told her before to watch her step," Sprague went on more easily. +"You see, Dundee, Nita Leigh is--was--a first-class little vamp, and I +could see she was playing her cards with the men here--" he indicated +four of Hamilton's most prominent Chamber of Commerce members with a +wave of his hand--"to get them all so crazy about her that they'd vote +for her as the star of the picture. I could see her point, all right. It +would have been a big chance for her to show how she could act.... Well, +I could see it was dangerous business, and that the girls--" and he +smiled jerkily at the tense women in the living room, "--were getting +pretty wrought up over the way Nita was behaving.... All except Mrs. +Dunlap," he added. "_She_ didn't want to act in the picture, and Nita +didn't make any headway at all with Peter Dunlap." + +"Thanks, Mr. Sprague," Lois Dunlap drawled, with an amused quirk of her +broad mouth. + +"Get along with the row, Sprague!" Dundee commanded impatiently. + +"As I said, it wasn't really a row. I just pleaded with Nita last night +to smooth down the girls' rumpled feathers, and to make it clear to them +that she didn't want the star part in the picture any more than she +wanted any other woman's husband or sweetheart.... Just a friendly +warning--" Sprague drew a deep breath. "And that's all the note +meant--absolutely!" + +"I see," Dundee said quietly, then quoted: _"'Be good, Baby, and you +won't be sorry!'"_ + +"That meant, of course," Sprague took him up eagerly, "that I'd see she +got a real part in a regular movie, after I'd made my hit with the +Hamilton picture." + +Very plausible, very plausible indeed, Dundee reflected. And yet-- + +Finally he lifted his head and let his eyes dart from face to face. + +"All of you have stated, separately and collectively, that you heard no +shot fired in Nita Selim's bedroom this afternoon," he said sharply. "Is +that true?" + +He was answered by weary nods or sullen affirmations. + +"Then," he continued, "I must conclude that you are all lying or that +Nita Selim was killed with a gun equipped with a Maxim silencer." + +Never was a detective more unprepared for the effect of his words upon a +group of possible suspects than was Special Investigator Dundee.... + + + + +CHAPTER TEN + + +As Dexter Sprague had glibly and plausibly explained away every sinister +aspect of the note he had written to Nita Selim that day, Special +Investigator Dundee was recalling with verbatim vividness his argument +with Captain Strawn of the Homicide Squad immediately after his arrival +into the house of violent death. + +He had said then: "The person who killed Nita Selim, was so well known +to her, and his--or her--presence in this room so natural a thing that +she paid no attention to his or her movements and was concentrating on +the job of powdering her very pretty face." + +And he had said further, in face of the disappearance of the gun and in +explanation of the fact that all twelve of these people had immediately +protested to Strawn that they had heard no shot: + +"This was a premeditated murder, of course. The Maxim silencer--unless +they are all lying about not hearing a shot--proves that. Silencers are +damned hard to get hold of, but people with plenty of money can manage +most things." + +And as Dexter Sprague had talked on, more and more glibly, Dundee had +suddenly found an explanation which fitted his own argument with such +perfection that he wondered, naïvely, if he were perhaps gifted with +clairvoyance. + +Of all these twelve people, whom he had questioned so relentlessly, only +Dexter Sprague could easily have come into possession of a Maxim +silencer. He had dilated proudly upon the fact that he had been an +assistant director at the Altamont Studios on Long Island. And the +Altamont company had recently finished making a series of "underworld" +motion pictures--crook dramas featuring gunmen with "rods" made eerily +noiseless by Maxim silencers. + +A bit of information he had picked up in a motion picture magazine had +hurtled into the logical chain of Dundee's reasoning: assistant +directors were in charge of "props"; it was their business to see that +no article needed for the production of a picture was lost or missing +when the director needed it. Dexter Sprague had said that he had +"dropped everything" to come when Nita Selim wired him of the Chamber of +Commerce project to make a "booster" movie of Hamilton. + +Perhaps he _had_ dropped everything. But--_had he hesitated long enough +to pick up a Maxim silencer and a blunt-nosed automatic_? And was the +"row" which Sprague had been so glibly explaining away an ancient one--a +row so deadly that, when Nita Selim had refused to heed his written +warning, her murder had become necessary? + +It was with all this in mind that Bonnie Dundee flung his challenge: "I +must conclude that you are all lying or that Nita Selim was killed with +a gun equipped with a Maxim silencer." + +And his eyes, terrible with their command that the weakling should break +and confess, were upon Dexter Sprague. But Sprague did not break. He +stared back blankly.... + +If his eyes and his attention had included the whole group it is +possible that what happened would not have taken Dundee so completely by +surprise. He had paid little attention to a sort of concerted gasp, a +slight movement among the group farthest from him. + +But not even his intense concentration upon Sprague could prevent his +hearing Karen Marshall's childish voice, tremulous with fear: + +"No, no, Hugo! Don't--don't!" + +He whirled from Sprague in time to see Judge Marshall disengaging his +arm from his young wife's clinging fingers, to note, with profound +astonishment, that Drake was stepping hastily aside, so that not even +his coat sleeve might be brushed by the advancing figure of the elderly, +retired judge. And before Judge Marshall had time to speak, Dundee saw +that a blight had touched, at last, the solid friendship of the women; +that they did not look at each other with that air of standing together +whatever happened, but that their eyes, not meeting at all, became +secret, calculating, afraid.... + +"Sir!" Judge Marshall began pompously, when he had planted himself +squarely before the young detective, "It shall never be said of me that +I have tried, even in the slightest way, to hamper the course of +justice." + +"I am sure of that, Judge Marshall," Dundee replied courteously, but his +pulses were hammering. What, in God's name, did this long-winded old +fool have to tell him?... "You have some information you believe may be +valuable, Judge?" + +"I do not believe it will be at all valuable, sir. On the contrary!" the +old man retorted indignantly. "But to suppress the fact at this juncture +might lead to grave misunderstandings later, when it inevitably comes to +light. So, sir, it is my duty to inform you that I myself own a Colt's +.32, as well as a Maxim silencer." + +"What!" Dundee exclaimed incredulously. He was conscious that, behind +him, Captain Strawn was getting to his feet. + +"There is no need to get out your handcuffs, Captain Strawn!" Judge +Marshall warned him majestically. "I assure you that I have not violated +the law. Every judge, active and retired, is entitled to a permit to +carry a weapon, and I long ago availed myself of the privilege. Nor am I +about to make a confession of murder!" + +"There ain't no permit, so far as I know, Judge," Strawn growled, "for +any man, whoever he may be--God A'mighty himself not excepted--to tote a +gun with a silencer on it." + +Karen Marshall was crying now, with the abandoned grief of a petted +child. + +"Granted, Captain!" Judge Marshall snapped. "But it happens that I do +not 'tote' my gun with the silencer on it. If it interests you, I may as +well explain that I came by the silencer several years ago, when I was +on the bench. A notorious Chicago gunman, on trial for murder here, and +acquitted by a feeble-minded jury, made me a present of the very +silencer he had used in killing his victim--an ironic gesture, a gesture +of supreme insolence, but an entirely safe gesture, since he well knew +that a man once acquitted of a crime cannot again be placed in jeopardy +for the same offence." + +"So you kept the silencer as a curiosity, Judge Marshall?" Dundee +interrupted the pompous flow of rhetoric. + +"For years--yes," the ex-judge answered, then his face went yellow +and very old. "As I told you just now, I will withhold no fact that +may be of any relevance whatever.... About two months ago--in March, +I believe--our little group here took up target-shooting as a fad. +Several of us became quite expert with revolver and rifle. Mr. +Drake--" and he nodded toward the banker, who instantly averted his eyes, +"--conceived the idea of practising the draw-from-the-hip sort of +revolver-shooting--the kind one sees in Wild West movies, you know--" + +"I think you might add, Hugo," Drake cut in angrily, "that I had in mind +the hope of being able to protect the bank in case of a holdup!" + +"And the silencer, Judge Marshall?" Captain Strawn prodded. + +Judge Marshall flushed, and fingered the end of a waxed mustache. "The +silencer, sir, was my wife's idea. You see, sir, we are fortunate enough +to be the parents of an infant son. He was just a month old when I +painted a bull's eye upon the brick wall of our back garden and invited +our friends to indulge their fad as our guests. The shooting awakened +the baby so frequently that Karen--Mrs. Marshall--dug up the silencer, +which I had shown her as a memento of my career on the bench. Thereafter +we confined our practice almost exclusively to drawing from the hip and +shooting without sighting. It is impossible to sight with a gun equipped +with a silencer, you know, since the silencer covers the sighter on the +barrel." + +"It sure does," Strawn drawled. "So every last one of you folks had a +good deal of this sort of practice, I take it?" + +Judge Marshall glanced about the room, as if he could not recall the +face of everyone present. + +"Yes, all of us--except Mr. Sprague and--Penny, my dear, did you join us +at all?" + +The girl who had once been in on every sport that this crowd of +Hamilton's socially elect indulged in, flushed a painful red. + +"No, Hugo. I--I have to stay with Mother on Sunday mornings, you know." + +"Your target practice was a Sunday morning diversion, then, Judge +Marshall?" Dundee asked. + +"Yes. We usually have an hour of the sport--between eleven and noon, on +Sundays. We've been having a sort of tournament--quite sharply +competitive--" + +"When did you and your friends practise last?" Dundee asked. + +"Last Sunday. Tomorrow was to mark the end of the 'tournament'," the +Judge answered. + +"And when did you last see your gun and silencer?" Dundee persisted. + +"Last Sunday, of course.... Why, Good Lord!" Marshall ejaculated. _"It +was Nita herself who put the gun away!_" + +There was a collective gasp of relief. Eyes could meet eyes--now. But it +was Flora Miles who voiced the thought or hope that seemed apparent on +every face. + +"That's why I didn't hear anyone talking when I was in the closet!" she +cried, her voice almost hysterical in its vehemence. "_There wasn't +anybody but Nita in the room!_ She committed suicide! She stole poor +Hugo's gun and the silencer and committed suicide!" + +"At a distance of from ten to fifteen feet?" Dundee asked with +ill-concealed sarcasm. "And when she was powdering her face? And just +after entering the room, blithely singing a Broadway hit?" + +"Maybe the lady is right, boy," Captain Strawn interposed mildly. "I've +heard of people rigging up contrivances--" + +"Which make the gun and the silencer disappear by magic?" Dundee +demanded. "No, folks, I'm afraid the suicide theory is no good.... Now, +Judge Marshall," and he turned again to the creator of the biggest +sensation since the investigation into Nita Selim's death had got under +way, "you say that Mrs. Selim herself put the gun away.... Will you +explain the circumstances?" + +The elderly man's face had gone yellowish again. "Certainly! Nita Selim +and I were the last to leave the back garden. She was particularly poor +at the sport--never made a bull's eye during the four or five Sunday +mornings after Lois--Mrs. Dunlap--drew her into our set. She begged for +a few more shots, and I stayed with her, after the others had gone into +the house for--er--refreshment. She fired the last bullet in the chamber +of the Colt's, and together we walked to the house, entering the little +room at the rear where all sorts of sports equipment are kept--fishing +rods and tackle, golf clubs, bows and arrows, skis, etc. She was +carrying the gun, unscrewing the silencer as we walked. It is my habit +to keep the pistol and the silencer in a drawer in a little corner +cupboard--" + +"Locked, up?" Dundee asked sharply. + +"Usually locked, but not always, I am afraid," Judge Marshall answered +reluctantly. + +"And you saw Mrs. Selim place the gun and the silencer in the drawer?" + +"I--thought I did, but I was really not watching closely. As a matter of +fact, I stopped to look over a fishing rod, with a view to trying it out +the first good fishing weather--" + +"Was Mrs. Selim wearing a coat or cloak?" Dundee cut in impatiently. + +"Why, I don't know--" + +"Yes, she was, Hugo!" Karen cried out eagerly. "It was quite chilly last +Sunday morning. Remember? We all had on coats or sweaters. Nita wore a +dark-green leather jacket with big pockets--" + +"And she left in a great hurry, without even waiting for a drink," Flora +Miles contributed triumphantly. "I tell you, she took them away in her +pockets." + +"Your guess may be correct, Mrs. Miles," Dundee agreed, "but I think we +had better not come to any definite conclusion until we know that Judge +Marshall's automatic and silencer are really missing.... Is there anyone +at your house now, Judge, whom you can ask to look for it?" + +"Certainly. The butler.... Shall I telephone him?" + +Accompanied by Captain Strawn, the ex-judge went to the telephone in the +little foyer between Nita Selim's bedroom and the main hall. And within +five minutes he was back, nodding his head gravely. + +"Hinson tells me that the Colt's and the silencer are both missing, +sir.... May I express my profound regret that my possession of--" + +"Some other time, Judge Marshall!" Dundee interrupted curtly, and +hurried from the room, followed by Strawn, who nodded to Sergeant +Turner, still lounging wearily in a far corner of the living room, to +stand guard vigilantly. + +"Well, Bonnie, here's the devil to pay," Strawn gloomed, but Dundee made +for the telephone without answering. + +He called a number, then curtly demanded: "Dr. Price, please!... Yes, I +know he's busy on an autopsy. Just tell him that Dundee, of the district +attorney's office, wants to speak to him." + +There was a long pause, then: "Hello, Dr. Price!... Dundee.... What are +the caliber and type of bullet that killed Nita Selim?... Thanks much, +doctor.... Anything new?... Fine! Thanks again!" + +He hung up the receiver and faced Strawn. "Bullet from a Colt's .32," he +said grimly. "I suggest you send one of your men around to the Marshall +home to pick up a bullet that was shot in their damned target practice. +If you send the two bullets tonight, registered mail, to Wright, the +ballistics expert in Chicago, he can probably wire you tomorrow morning +as to whether the same gun was used to fire both." + +"Sure, Bonnie," Strawn agreed lugubriously. "I was going to do just +that.... Say, this town is getting to be worse than Chicago!" + +When he re-entered the living room Dundee began upon the judge again, +regardless of the fact that the elderly husband was murmuring +consolatory endearments to his young wife. + +"Judge Marshall, how many keys are there to the cupboard drawer in which +your gun and silencer were kept?" + +"Just one. I have it with me," the old man answered wearily. + +"Then when Hinson, your butler, looked for them, he found the drawer +unlocked?" + +"He did. I confess to almost criminal negligence--" + +"Then so far as you know, the gun and silencer could have been removed +at any time by any guest of yours between noon last Sunday and--today?" +Dundee went on relentlessly. + +"I--suppose so. But these people have been my close friends for years," +the judge answered. "Not one of them, sir--" + +"After Mrs. Selim's departure last Sunday, did your other guests remain +for any length of time?" + +"For an hour or more, I think. Lois and Peter Dunlap remained for our +two o'clock Sunday dinner, but the others drifted away to various +engagements." + +"Did any of you return to the room where the gun was kept?" + +"I can speak only for myself and Peter--Mr. Dunlap," Judge Marshall +answered, flushing with indignation. "The two of us went down just +before dinner was served. I wanted to show him some new flies for trout +casting." + +"Your home is a popular rendezvous for your intimates, is it not?" + +"I pride myself that it is, sir!" + +"And guests run in and out, having the freedom of the place?" + +"Certainly, sir!... And since I am not so stupid as you imagine, I can +tell you now that I understand the drift of your questions, and can +forestall them: Yes, all of these people--_my friends_!--have had +opportunity to take the gun and the silencer from the cupboard since it +was placed there last Sunday, if it _was_ placed there by Mrs. Selim. +But may I remind you, sir, that opportunity alone is not sufficient; +that _motive_--" + +"Since Mrs. Selim is dead, murdered by the weapon which was stolen, we +can assume, Judge Marshall, that someone had motive," Dundee reminded +him implacably, for in his mind there was no doubt that the ballistics +expert would bear him out. + +There was a heavy, throbbing silence. The group that, with the exception +of Dexter Sprague, had been so united, so cemented with long-sustained +friendship, again dissolved visibly before Dundee's eyes into eleven +individuals, each shrinking into himself, mentally drawing away from any +possible contamination with a murderer.... + +"You have said, Judge Marshall," Dundee went on at last, "that Miss +Crain and Mr. Sprague were not at your home for target practice Sunday. +Has either of them been in your home during this past week?" + +"Penny--Miss Crain--spent an evening with my wife when I was--er--away +from home on business. That was last Tuesday, I believe--" + +"Yes, it was Tuesday, Hugo," Penny Crain interrupted firmly. "And Karen +can vouch for the fact that I did not go into the gun room." + +"Don't be silly, Penny!" Carolyn Drake scolded, as if she had long been +bursting to speak. "Giving an alibi! As if _any_ of us who were playing +bridge while that woman was being shot _needs_ any alibi!... But I'll +tell you what _I_ think, Mr. Detective! I think Nita herself stole the +gun and the silencer, to kill Dexter Sprague with, and that _he_ stole +it from her and murdered _her_! Nobody else has the slightest scrap of a +motive, and that note he wrote her ought to be enough to hang him on!" + +Dexter Sprague had struggled to his feet during the woman's hysterical +attack, his face like chalk, his eyes blazing. But Dundee waved him +aside peremptorily. + +"One more question, Judge Marshall," he said suavely, as if he had not +heard a word that Carolyn Drake had said. "You knew Mrs. Selim before +her arrival in Hamilton with Mrs. Dunlap, I believe.... Just when and +where did you meet her?" + + + + +CHAPTER ELEVEN + + +"You are damned impertinent, sir!" Judge Marshall shouted, the ends of +his waxed grey mustache trembling with anger. + +"Then I take it that you do not wish to divulge the circumstances of +your friendship with Mrs. Selim?" Dundee asked. + +"Friendship!" the old man snorted. "Your implications, sir, are +dastardly! I met Mrs. Selim, or rather, Nita Leigh, as she was +introduced to me, only once, several years ago when I was in New York. +Naturally--" + +"Just a moment, Judge. You say she was introduced to you as Nita Leigh. +Then you knew her as an actress, I presume?" + +"I refuse to submit to such a cowardly attack, sir!" + +"_Attack_, Judge?" Dundee repeated with assumed astonishment. "I merely +thought you might be able to shed a little light on the past of the +woman who has been murdered here today, with a weapon you admit to +having owned.... However--" + +The elderly ex-judge stared at his tormentor for a moment as if murder +was in his heart. He gasped twice, then suddenly his whole manner +changed. + +"I apologize, Dundee. You must realize how--But that is beside the +point. I met Nita Leigh at--er--at a social gathering, arranged by some +New York friends of mine. She was young, attractive, more refined +than--er--than the average young woman in musical comedy. Naturally I +told her if she was ever in Hamilton to look me up. And she did." + +"And because she was 'more refined than the average young woman in +musical comedy'--than the average chorus girl, to put it simply," Dundee +took him up, "you co-operated with Mrs. Dunlap to introduce her to your +most intimate friends--including your wife?" + +"Oh, Hugo! Why didn't you tell me?" Karen Marshall wailed. + +"You see, sir, what you are doing!" Judge Marshall stormed. + +"I am truly sorry if I have distressed you, Mrs. Marshall," Dundee +protested sincerely. "But--" He shrugged and turned again to the +husband. "I understand you were Mrs. Selim's landlord.... May I ask how +much rent she paid?" + +"The house rents for one hundred dollars a month--furnished." + +"And did Mrs. Selim pay her rent promptly?" Dundee persisted. + +"Since this is the 24th of May, sir, Mrs. Selim's rent for June was not +yet due." + +Not before poor little Karen could Dundee force himself to ask what, +inevitably, would have been his next question--one which could not have +been evaded, as the ex-judge had evaded the other two questions: "_Is it +not true, Judge Marshal, that Nita Leigh Selim paid you no rent at +all?_" But there were other ways to find out.... + +"Look here, Dundee!" a brusque voice challenged, and the detective +whirled to face Polly Beale. It was like her, he thought with a slight +grin, to address him as one man to another.... + +"Yes, Miss Beale?" + +"I'm no fool, and I don't think any of my friends here are +either--though two or three of them have acted like it today," the +masculine-looking girl stated flatly. "You've made it very plain that +any one of us here, except the Sprague man, could have stolen Hugo's gun +and silencer.... Has the gun been found?" + +"It has not, Miss Beale." + +"O. K.!" The queer girl snapped her fingers. "I move that you or +Captain Strawn search the men for the weapon, and that I search the +Women.... Wait!" she harshly stopped a flurry of feminine protests. "I'll +ask you, Dundee, to search me first yourself. I believe the technical +term is 'frisking,' isn't it?... Then 'frisk' me.... Here is my handbag. +I wore no coat, except this--" and she pointed to the jacket of her tweed +suit. + +As she strode toward the detective Clive Hammond sprang after her with +an oath and a sharp command. + +"Shut up, Clive! I'm not married to you yet!" she retorted, but her eyes +were gentler than her voice. + +His face burning with embarrassment, Dundee went through the traditional +gestures of police "frisking"--running his hands rapidly down the girl's +tall, sturdy body, slapping her pockets. And his fingers fumbled sadly +as he opened her tooled leather handbag. + +"Satisfied?" Polly Beale demanded, and at Dundee's miserable nod, the +girl faced her friends: "Well, come along, girls!" + +"Lord! What a girl!" Dundee muttered to Strawn, as the young Amazon +herded Flora Miles, Penny Crain, Karen Marshall, Carolyn Drake, Lois +Dunlap and Janet Raymond into the dining room. + +Silently, and almost meekly, as if shamed into submission by Polly +Beale's example, John Drake, Tracey Miles, Clive Hammond, Judge +Marshall, and Dexter Sprague permitted Captain Strawn and Sergeant +Turner to search them. + +"How about the guest closet and the cars?" Dundee asked of Strawn in a +low voice, when the fruitless, unpleasant task was finished. + +"Gone over with a fine tooth comb long ago," Strawn assured him +gloomily. "And not a hiding place in or outside the house that the boys +haven't poked into--including the meadow as far as anyone could throw +from the bedroom window." + +The women were filing back into the room, some pale, some flushed, but +all able to look each other in the eye again. + +With surprising jauntiness Polly Beale saluted Dundee. "Nothing more +deadly on any of us than Flora's triple-deck compact." + +"I thank you with all my heart, Miss Beale," Dundee said sincerely. "And +now I think you may all go to your homes.... Of course you understand," +he interrupted a chorus of relieved ejaculations, "that all of you will +be wanted for the inquest, which will probably be held Monday." + +"And what's more," Captain Strawn cut in, to show his authority, "I want +all of you to hold yourselves ready for further questioning at any +time." + +There was a stampede for coats and hats, a rush for cars as if the house +were on fire, or--Dundee reflected wryly--as if those he had tortured +were afraid he would change his mind. Rushing away with hatred of him in +their hearts.... + +Only Penny Crain held back, maneuvering for a chance to speak with him. + +"I don't have to go with the rest, do I?" she begged in a husky whisper. + +"And why not?" Dundee grinned at her, but he was glad there was no +hatred in _her_ eyes. + +"I'm 'attached' to the district attorney's office, too, aren't I?" + +"Right! And you've been a brick this evening. I don't know what I should +have done without you--" + +"Well, I can't see that you've done much _with_ me," she gibed. "But I'd +like to stick around, if you're going to do some real Sherlocking--" + +"Can't be done, Penny. I want to stay here alone for a while and mull +things over. But I'd like to have a long talk with you tomorrow." + +"Come to Sunday dinner. Mother loves murder mysteries," she suggested. +Then realization swept over her. Her brown eyes widened, filled with +terror. "Stop thinking one of us did it! _Stop_, I tell you!" + +"Can _you_ stop, Penny?" he asked gently. + +But she fled from him, sobbing wildly for the first time that long, +horrible evening. Dundee, watching from the doorway of the lighted hall, +saw the chauffeur open the rear door of the Dunlap limousine, saw Penny +catapult herself into Lois Dunlap's outstretched arms.... + +"When did the Dunlap chauffeur call for his mistress?" he asked Strawn, +who stood beside him. + +"About ten minutes after you arrived," Strawn answered wearily. "Said +he'd dropped Mrs. Dunlap and the Selim woman at about 2:30 and had been +ordered to return around 6:30.... Knows nothing, of course." The chief +of the Homicide Squad drew a deep breath. "Well, Bonnie, he has nothing +on me. In spite of all the palaver I don't know nothing either." + +"You need some dinner, chief," Dundee suggested. "And the boys must be +getting hungry, too." + +"Somebody's got to guard the house, I suppose," Strawn gloomed. "Not +that it will do any good.... And what about that maid--that Carr woman? +Shall I lock her up on general principles?" + +"No. I want to have another talk with her, and if she bucks at spending +the night here, I'll take her to the Rhodes House, and turn her over to +my old friend, Mother Rhodes. We haven't anything on her, you know." + +"No, nor on anybody else, except that old fool, Marshall, and we can't +clap him into jail--yet," Strawn agreed, his grey eyes twinkling. + +"Take your crew on in, chief," Dundee urged. "I'll stick till midnight +or longer, if you don't mind. You can arrange to have a couple of the +boys to relieve me about twelve.... And by the way, will you telephone +me the minute you get hold of Ralph Hammond?" + +"Well, maybe not so quick as all that," Strawn drawled. "I'll take the +first crack at _that_ baby, my lad!... Not so dumb, am I, Bonnie-boy? +Not so dumb! I can put two and two together as well as the next +one--pretty near as well as the district attorney's new 'special +investigator!'" + + * * * * * + +Although Bonnie Dundee had taken Captain Strawn's none-too-gentle +parting gibe with good grace, it was a very thoughtful young detective +who set about locking himself into the house in which Nita Selim had +been murdered. + +Captain Strawn had beaten him to the job that evening by at least twenty +minutes. Had the old detective stumbled upon something which Dundee, for +all his spectacular thoroughness, had overlooked or had been unable to +turn up because Strawn had suppressed it? + +What if Strawn's parting boast was not an idle one, and he really had +"the goods" on Ralph Hammond? Had the old chief been laughing up his +sleeve during the farce of playing out the "death hand at bridge," and +during the merciless quizzing of old Judge Marshall? + +But Dundee's native common sense quickly routed his gloom. Captain +Strawn was too direct in his methods, too afraid of antagonizing the +rich and influential, to have permitted even a "special investigator" +from the district attorney's office to torment those twelve people +needlessly. Probably Strawn, feeling a little hurt at having played +second fiddle all evening, had simply wanted to get him fussed, was even +now chuckling over the effect of his parting boast.... + +Much cheered, Dundee lingered in the dining room whose windows he had +made fast against any intrusion, so that his task of guarding the house +alone might be minimized. As he glanced at the table, with its silver +plates heaped with tiny sandwiches of caviar and anchovy paste, its +little silver boats of olives and sweet pickles, he discovered that he +was very hungry indeed.... + +As he munched the drying sandwiches and sipped charged water--the +various liquors for cocktails on the sideboard offered a temptation +which he sternly resisted--Dundee's thought boiled and churned, throwing +up picture after picture of Nita Selim, alive and then dead; of Penny +Crain--bless her!--helping him at the expense of her loyalty to +life-long friends; of Flora Miles, lying desperately and then confessing +to a shameful theft; of Karen Marshall gallantly playing out the "death +hand"; of Karen's stricken, childish face when she learned that her +elderly husband had met and at least flirted with Nita Selim at a chorus +girls' party.... + +At that last picture Dundee flushed so that his skin prickled. Had he +made a fool of himself, or was he right in his suspicion that Hugo +Marshall had given Nita Selim this cottage rent free? That point should +be easily settled, at any rate.... + +Ruefully reflecting that appetizers do not make a satisfactory meal he +betook himself to the dead woman's bedroom.... Yes, his memory had +served him well. Here was her desk--a small feminine affair of rosewood, +set in the corner of the room nearest the porch door. + +The desk was not locked. As Dundee let down the slanting lid, whose +polish was marred with many fingerprints, he saw that its contents were +in a hopeless jumble. So Strawn had beaten him to this, too! Had he +found an all-important clue in one of the many little pigeon-holes and +drawers, stuffing it into his pocket just before a bumptious young +"special investigator" had arrived? + +But Dundee's returning gloom was instantly dispelled. Here was Nita's +checkbook, a flutter of filled-in stubs attached to only one remaining +blank check. So Nita had banked with the Hamilton National Bank, of +which John C. Drake--who apparently hated his fattish, fussy wife--was a +vice president! Another tiny fact to be tucked away.... She had opened +her account, apparently, on April 21, the day of her arrival in +Hamilton--the guest and employe of Mrs. Peter Dunlap. Probably Lois +Dunlap had advanced her the two hundred dollars as first payment for her +prospective work in organizing a Little Theater movement in Hamilton. + +Turning rapidly through stubs, Dundee stopped twice, whistling softly +with amazement each time. For on April 28th, and again on May 5th, Nita +Selim had deposited $5,000! Where had she got the money? Were the sums +transfers from accounts in New York banks? But it was hardly likely that +a little Broadway hanger-on had had so much hard cash on deposit. Then +where had she got it--$5,000 at a time, here in Hamilton? + +_Blackmail!_ + +Hastily but thoroughly Dundee ran through the remaining check +stubs.... _No record at all of a check for rent made out to Judge Hugo +Marshall!_ + +But there was a stub that interested him. Check No. 17--Nita had spent +her money lavishly--was filled in as follows, in Nita's pretty backhand: + + No. 17 $9,000 + _May 9, 1930_ + To _Trust Dept._ + For _Investment_ + +Had John C. Drake, who as vice president in charge of trusts and +investments had doubtless handled the check, wondered at all where the +$9,000 had come from? + +One other revelation came out of the twenty-three filled-in stubs. On +every Monday Nita Selim had drawn a check for $40 to her maid, Lydia +Carr. + +Again Dundee whistled. Forty dollars a week was, he wagered to himself, +more money than any other maid in Hamilton was lucky enough to receive! +Nita in a new light--an over-generous Nita! Or--_was Nita herself paying +blackmail on a small scale_? + +He reached into a pigeon-hole whose contents--a thick packet of unused +envelopes--had not been disturbed by Strawn, and was about to remove an +envelope in which to place the all-important checkbook, when he noticed +something slightly peculiar. An envelope in the middle of the packet +looked rather thicker than an empty case should.... + +_But it was not empty._ And across the face of the expensive, +cream-colored linen paper was written, in that same pretty, very legible +backhand: + + TO BE OPENED IN CASE OF MY DEATH + --JAUNITA LEIGH SELIM + +His heart hammering painfully, and his fingers trembling, Dundee drew +out the two close-written sheets of creamy notepaper. After all, who had +better right than he to open it? Was he not the representative of the +district attorney?... And he hadn't damaged the envelope. It had opened +very easily indeed--its flap had yielded instantly to his thumb-nail.... + +Wait! It had been _too easy_! Before unfolding the letter or whatever it +was, Dundee examined the flap of the envelope.... Yes! He was not the +first to open it since its original sealing. God grant he hadn't +destroyed any tell-tale fingerprints in his criminal haste to learn any +secret that Nita Selim had recorded here!... Perhaps Nita herself had +unsealed the letter to make an addition or a correction? + +Well, whatever damage had been done was done now, and he might as well +read.... + +Five minutes later Bonnie Dundee was racing through the dining room, +pushing open the swinging door that led into the butler's pantry. Where +the devil were the steps that led down into the basement? A precious +minute was lost before he discovered that a door in the dark back hall +opened upon the steep stairs.... + +An unshaded light, dangling from the ceiling, revealed the furnace in +one corner of the big basement, laundry equipment in another. He plunged +on.... That must be the maid's room, behind that closed door.... God! +What if she had escaped, while he had been munching caviar and anchovy +sandwiches? A fine guard he'd been!... And it wasn't as if he hadn't had +a dim suspicion of the truth.... + +The knob turned easily. He flung open the door. And then his knees +nearly gave way, so tremendous was his relief. For there, on the thin +mattress of a white-enameled iron bed, lay the woman he so ardently +desired to see. + +She had apparently been asleep, and the noise he had made had startled +her into panicky wakefulness. Instinctively her hand flew to the ruined +left side of her face--that hideous expanse of livid flesh, scarred and +ridged so that it did not look human.... + +"What--? Who--?" Lydia Carr gasped, struggling to a sitting position, +only to fall back as nausea swept over her. + +"You remember me?" Dundee panted. "Dundee of the district attorney's +office. I questioned you this afternoon--" + +The woman closed the single eye that had escaped the accident which had +marred her face so hideously. "I--remember.... I'm sick.... I told you +all I know--" + +"Lydia, why didn't you tell me that it was your mistress, Mrs. Selim who +did--that?" Dundee demanded sternly, pointing to the woman's sightless +left eye and ruined cheek. + + + + +CHAPTER TWELVE + + +Lydia Carr, still clothed in the black cotton dress and white apron of +her maid's uniform, struggled to a sitting position on the edge of her +basement room bed. + +"No, no! That's a lie! It was an accident, I tell you--my own +fault!... Who dared to say Nita--Miss Nita--did it?" + +"Better lie down, Lydia," Dundee suggested gently. "I won't want you +fainting. You've had a hard day with the abscessed tooth, the dope the +dentist gave you, and--other things. I don't wonder that you lost your +head, went a little crazy, perhaps--" + +The detective's sinister implication seemed to make no impression at all +upon the woman with the scarred face. + +"I asked you--" she gasped, her single eye glaring at him, "who dared +say Nita burned me?" + +"It was Nita herself who told me," Dundee answered softly. "Just a few +minutes ago." + +"Holy Mother!" the maid gasped, and crossed herself dazedly. + +Let her think the dead woman had appeared to him in a vision, Dundee +told himself. Perhaps her confession would come the quicker-- + +The maid began to rock her gaunt body, her arms crossed over her flat +chest. "My poor little girl! Even in death she thinks of me, she's +sorry--. She sent me a message, didn't she? Tell me! She was always +trying to comfort me, sir! The poor little thing couldn't believe I'd +forgiven her as soon as she done it--. Tell me!" + +"Yes," Dundee agreed, his eyes watching her keenly. "She sent you a +message--of a sort.... But I can't give it to you until you have told me +all about the--accident in which you were burned." + +"I'll tell," Lydia promised eagerly. Gone were the harshness and +secretiveness with which she had met his earlier questioning.... "You +see, sir, I loved Miss Nita--I called her Nita, if you don't mind, sir. +I loved her like she was my own child. And she was fond of me, too, +fonder of me than of anybody in the world, she used to tell me, when +some man had hurt her bad.... And there was always some man or other, +she was so sweet and so pretty.... Well, I found her in the bathroom one +day, just ready to drink carbolic acid, to kill her poor little self--" + +"When was that, Lydia?" Dundee interrupted. + +"It was in February--Sunday, the ninth of February," Lydia went on, +still rocking in an agony of grief. "I tried to take the glass out of +her hands. She'd poured a lot of the stuff out of the bottle.... You +see, she was already in a fit of hysterics, or she'd never have tried to +kill herself.... It was my own fault, trying to take the glass away from +her, like I did--" + +"She flung the acid into your face?" Dundee asked, shuddering. + +"She didn't know what she was doing!" the woman cried, glaring at him. +"Nearly went out of her mind, they told me at the hospital, because +she'd hurt me.... A private room in the best hospital in New York she +got for me, trained nurses night and day, and so many doctors fussing +around me I wanted to fire the whole outfit and save some of my poor +girl's money--which I don't know till this day how she got hold of--" + +Dundee let her sob and rock her arms for a while unmolested. In February +Nita Selim had had to borrow money to pay doctor and hospital bills. Had +borrowed it or "gold-dug" it.... And in May she had been rich enough to +have $9,000 to invest! + +"Lydia, you never forgave Nita Selim for ruining your life as well as +your face!" Dundee charged her suddenly. + +"You're a liar!" she cried passionately. "I know what I felt. It's _my_ +face and _my_ life, ain't it? I tell you I didn't even bear a grudge +against her--the poor little thing! Eating her heart out with sorrow for +what she'd done--till the very day of her death! Always trying to make +it up to me--paying me too much money for the handful of work I had to +do, what with her eating out nearly all the time and throwing away +stockings the minute they got a run in 'em--. Forgive her? I'd have +crawled from here to New York on my hands and knees for Nita Leigh!" + +Dundee studied her horribly scarred face, made more horrible now by what +looked like genuine grief. + +"Lydia, who was the man over whom your mistress wanted to commit +suicide?" + +The single, tear-reddened eye glared at him suspiciously, then became +wary. "I don't know." + +"Was it Dexter Sprague, Lydia?" + +"Sprague?" She spat the name out contemptuously. "No! She didn't know +him then, except to speak to at the moving picture studio." + +"When did he become her--lover, Lydia?" Dundee asked casually. + +The woman stiffened, became menacingly hostile. "Who says he was her +lover? You can't trick me, Mr. Detective! I'd cut my tongue out before +I'd let you make me say one word against my poor girl!" + +Dundee shrugged. He knew a stone wall when he ran up against one. + +"Lydia," he began again, after a thoughtful pause, "I have proof that +Nita Selim was sure you had never forgiven her for the injury she did +you." His fingers touched the letter in his pocket--that incredible +"Last Will and Testament" which Nita had written the day before she was +murdered.... + +"And that's another lie!" the woman cried, shaking with anger. She +struggled to her feet, stood swaying dizzily a moment. "Come upstairs +with me to her room, and I'll show _you_ some proof that I had forgiven +her!... Come along, I tell you!... Trying to make me say _I_ killed my +poor girl, when I'd have died for her--Come on, I tell you!" + +And Dundee, wondering, beginning to doubt his own conviction a +little--that conviction which had sprung full-grown out of Nita's +strange, informal will, and which had seemed to explain +everything--followed Lydia Carr from her basement room to the bedroom in +which Nita had been murdered.... + +"See this!" and Lydia Carr snatched up the powder box from the +dressing-table. Her long, bony fingers busied themselves with frantic +haste, and suddenly, into the silence of the room came the tinkle of +music. "_I_ bought her this--for a present, out of my own money, soon as +I got out of the hospital!" the maid's voice shrilled, over the slow, +sweet, tinkly notes. "It's playing her name song--_Juanita_. It was +playing that song when she died. I stood there in the doorway and heard +it--" and she pointed toward the door leading from Nita's room into the +back hall. "She loved it and used it all the time, because I gave it to +her.... And _this_!" + +She set the musical powder box upon the dressing-table and rushed across +the room to one of the several lamps that Dundee had noticed on his +first survey of the room. It was the largest and gaudiest of the +collection--a huge bowl of filigreed bronze, set with innumerable +stones, as large as marbles, or larger. Red, yellow and green stones +that must have cast a strange radiance over the pretty head that had +been wont to lie just beneath it, on the heaped lace pillows of the +chaise lounge, Dundee reflected. + +As if Lydia had read his thoughts, she jerked at the little chain which +hung from the bottom of the big bronze bowl against the heavy metal +standard. + +"I gave her this--saved up for it out of my own money!" she was assuring +him with savage triumph in proving her point. "And she loved it so she +brought it with us when we came from New York--It won't light! It was +working all right last night, because my poor little girl was lying +there, looking so pretty under the colored lights--" + +With strong twists of her big hands Lydia began to unscrew the filigreed +bronze bowl. As she lifted it off she exclaimed blankly: + +"Why, look! The light bulb's--_broke_!" + +But Dundee had already seen--not only the broken light bulb but the +explanation of the queer noise that Flora Miles had described +hysterically over and over, as "a bang or a bump." The chaise lounge +stood between the two windows that opened upon the drive. And at the +head of it stood the big lamp, just a few inches from the wall and only +a foot from the window frame upon which Dr. Price had pencilled the +point to indicate the end of the imaginary line along which the shot +which killed Nita Leigh Selim had traveled. + +The "bang or bump" which Flora Miles had heard had been made by the +knocking of the big lamp against the wall. Undoubtedly the one who had +bumped into the lamp was Nita's murderer--or murderess--in frantic haste +to make an escape. + +_And that meant that the murderer had fled toward the back hall, not +through the window in front of which he had stood, not through the door +leading onto the front porch...._ A little progress, at least! + +But Lydia was not through proving that she had forgiven her mistress. +She was snatching things from Nita's clothes closet-- + +"See these mules with ostrich feathers?--I give 'em to my girl!... And +this bed jacket? I embroidered the flowers on it with my own hands--" + +Through her flood of proof Dundee heard the whir of a car's engine, then +the loud banging of a car's door.... Running footsteps on the flagstone +path.... Dundee reached the front door just as the bell pealed shrilly. + +"Hello, Dundee! Awfully glad I caught you before you left.... Is poor +Lydia still here?" + +"Come in, Mr. Miles," Dundee invited, searching with a puzzled frown the +round, blond face of Tracey Miles. "Yes, Lydia is still here.... Why?" + +"Then I'm in luck, and I think Lydia is, too--poor old girl!... You see, +Dundee," Miles began to explain, as he took off his new straw hat to mop +his perspiring forehead, "the crowd all ganged up when our various cars +reached Sheridan Road, and by unanimous vote we elected to drive over to +the Country Club for a meal in one of the small private dining rooms--to +escape the questions of the morbidly curious, you know--" + +"Yes.... What about it?" Dundee interrupted impatiently. + +"Well, I admit we were all pretty hungry, in spite of--well, of course +we were all fond of Nita, but--" + +"What about Lydia?" Dundee cut him short. + +"I'm getting to it, old boy," Miles protested, with the injured air of +an unappreciated small boy. "While we were waiting for our food, +somebody said, 'Poor Lydia! What's going to become of _her_?' And +somebody else said that it was harder on her--Nita's death, I mean--than +on anybody else, because Nita was all she had in the world, and then +Lois--Lois is always practical, you know--ran to telephone Police +Headquarters, to see what had been done with Lydia, and to see if it +would be all right for Flora and me to take her home with us--" + +"Just a minute, Miles! Whom did Mrs. Dunlap talk to at Headquarters?" + +"Why, Captain Strawn, of course," Miles answered. "He told Lois that you +were still out here, questioning Lydia again, and that it was all right +with him, whatever you decided. So as soon as I had finished eating, I +drove over--" + +"Is Mrs. Miles with you?" Dundee interrupted again. + +"Well, no," Miles admitted uncomfortably. "You see, the girls felt a +little squeamish about coming back, even on an errand of mercy--" + +Dundee grinned. He had no doubt that Flora Miles had emphatically +refused the possibility of another gruelling interview. + +"Why do you and Mrs. Miles want to take Lydia home with you?" he asked. + +"To give her a home and a job," Miles answered promptly. "She knows us, +we're used to her poor old scarred face, and the youngsters, Tam and +Betty, are not a bit afraid of her. In fact, Betty pats that scarred +cheek and says, over and over, 'Poo Lyddy! Poo Lyddy! Betty 'oves +Lyddy!' and Tam--he's T. A. Miles, junior, you know, and we call him +Tam, from the initials, because he hates being called Junior and two +Tracey's are a nuisance--" + +"I gather that you want to hire Lydia as a nurse for the children," +Dundee interrupted the fond father's verbose explanations. + +"Right, old man! You see, our nurse left us yesterday--" + +"Wait here, Miles. I'll speak to Lydia. She's in Mrs. Selim's +bedroom.... By the way, Miles, since you and your wife are kind enough +to want to take Lydia in and give her a home and a job, I think it only +fair to tell you that it is highly improbable that Lydia Carr will take +any job at all." + +"You mean--?" Miles gasped, his ruddy face turning pale. "I say, Dundee, +it's absurd to think for a minute that good old faithful Lydia had a +thing to do with Nita's murder--" + +"I rather think you're right about that, Miles," Dundee interrupted. +"Now will you excuse me?" + +He found Lydia where he had left her--in her dead mistress' bedroom. The +tall, gaunt woman was crouching beside the chaise longue, her arms +outstretched to encircle a little pile of the gifts she claimed to have +given Nita Selim to prove that she bore no grudge for the terrible +injury her mistress had done her. At Dundee's entrance she flung up her +head, and the detective saw that tears were streaming from both the +sightless eye and the unharmed one. + +Taking his seat on the chaise longue, Dundee explained gently but +briefly the offer which Tracey Miles had just made. + +"They want--_me_?" she gasped brokenly, incredulously, and her fingers +faltered to her horrible cheek. "I didn't think anybody but my poor girl +would have me around--" + +"It is true they want you," Dundee assured her. "But you don't have to +take a job now unless you wish, Lydia." + +"What do you mean?" the maid demanded harshly, her good eye hardening +with suspicion. + +"Lydia," the young detective began slowly, and almost praying that he +was doing the right thing, "when I woke you up tonight to question you, +I said that Nita herself had just told me that it was she who had burned +your face.... And you asked me if she had also given you a message--" + +"Yes, sir!" the maid interrupted with pitiful eagerness. "And you'll +tell me now? You don't still think _I_ killed her, do you?" + +"No, I don't think you killed your mistress, Lydia, but I think, if you +would, you could help me find out who did," Dundee assured her gravely. +"No, wait!" and he drew from his pocket the envelope inscribed: "To Be +Opened In Case of My Death--Juanita Leigh Selim." + +"Do you recognize this handwriting, Lydia?" + +"It was wrote by her own hand," the maid answered, her voice husky with +tears. "Is that the message, sir?" + +"You never saw it before?" Dundee asked sharply. + +"No, no! I didn't know my poor girl was thinking about death," Lydia +moaned. "I thought she was happy here. She was tickled to pieces over +being taken up by all them society people, and on the go day and +night----" + +"Lydia, this is Mrs. Selim's last will and testament," Dundee +interrupted, withdrawing the sheets slowly and unfolding them. "It was +written yesterday, and it begins: + +"'Knowing that any of us may die any time, and that I, Juanita Leigh +Selim, have good cause to fear that my own life hangs by a thread that +may break any minute--'" + +"What did my poor girl mean?" Lydia Carr cried out vehemently. "She +wasn't sick, ever--" + +"I think, Lydia, that she feared exactly what happened today--murder! +And I want you to tell me who it was she feared. _For I believe you +know!_" + +The woman shrank from him, until she was sitting on her lean haunches, +her hands flattening against her cheeks. For a long minute she did not +attempt to answer. Her right eye widened enormously, then slowly grew as +expressionless as the milky left ball. + +"I--don't--know," she said dully. Then, with vehement emphasis: "_I +don't know!_ If I did, I'd kill him with my own hands!" + +Dundee had no choice but to take her word. + +"You said there was a message for me," Lydia reminded him. + +"I'll read you her will first," Dundee said quietly, lifting the sheets +again: "I am herewith setting down my last will and testament, in my own +handwriting. I do here and now solemnly will and bequeath to my faithful +and beloved maid, Lydia Carr, all property, including all moneys, stocks +and personal belongings of which I die possessed--" + +"To--_me_?" Lydia whispered. "To me?" + +"To you, Lydia," Dundee assured her gravely. + +"Then I can have all her pretty clothes to keep always?" + +"And her money, to do as you like with, if the court accepts this will +for probate--as I think it will, regardless of the fact that it is very +informal and was not witnessed." + +"But--she didn't have any money," Lydia protested. "Nothing but what +Mrs. Dunlap paid her in advance for the work she was going to do--" + +"Lydia, your mistress died possessed of nearly ten thousand dollars!" +Dundee fixed her bewildered grey eye with his blue ones. "_Ten thousand +dollars!_ All of which she got right here in Hamilton! And I want you to +tell me how she got it!" + +"But--I don't know! I don't believe she had it!" + +Dundee shrugged. Either this woman would perjure her soul to protect her +mistress' name from scandal, or she really knew nothing. + +"That is all of the will itself, Lydia," he went on finally, "except her +command that her body be cremated without funeral services of any kind, +and that nobody be allowed to accompany the remains to the crematory +except yourself and Mrs. Peter Dunlap, in case her death takes place in +Hamilton--" + +"She _did_ love Mrs. Dunlap," Lydia sobbed. "Oh, my poor little girl--" + +"And there is also a note for you, which I took the liberty of reading, +in which Mrs. Selim minutely describes the clothes in which she wishes +to be cremated, as well as the fashion in which her hair is to be +dressed--" + +"Let me see it!" Lydia plunged forward on her knees and snatched at the +papers he held. "For God's sake, let me see!" + + + + +CHAPTER THIRTEEN + + +"I'll read you the note, Lydia, but I can't let you touch it," Dundee +said sternly, taking good care that she should not touch either the +paper on which the note to herself had been written or the sheet which +contained that strange, informal will. Informal, in spite of the dead +woman's obvious effort to couch it in legal phraseology.... + +Was Lydia's frenzy assumed? Did she hope to leave fingerprints now which +would account for fingerprints she had already left upon it? Was it not +possible that Lydia's had been the prying fingers which had opened the +envelope after Nita Selim had sealed it with God only knew what fears in +her heart? If so, Lydia Carr had found that she was her mistress' sole +legatee.... _Revenge, coupled with greed...._ What better motive for +murder could a detective ask? And who had had so good an opportunity as +Lydia Carr to dispose of the weapon? + +The woman crouched back on her haunches, an agony of pleading in her +single eye. + +"Lydia, I think you know already what this note tells you," Dundee said +slowly. + +To his astonishment the maid nodded, the tears starting again. "I asked +her once what she wanted to keep that old dress for, and she--she said +I'd find out some day, but I never dreamed she'd want it for a--oh, my +God!--for a _shroud_!" + +For the second time that evening Lydia Carr completely routed Dundee's +carefully worked-up case against her. It was inconceivable, he told +himself, that a mind cunning enough to have executed this murder would +give itself away in such a fashion. If she had indeed pried among her +mistress' papers and found the will and note, would she not, from the +most primitive instinct of self-preservation, have pretended total +ignorance of the note's contents? + +"I'll read the note, Lydia," he said gently. "It is addressed: 'My +precious old Lydia'--" + +"She was always calling me that!" the maid sobbed. + +"And she writes: 'If you ever read this it will be because I'm dead, and +you'll know that I've tried to make it up to you the only way I knew. I +never could believe you really forgave me, but maybe you will now. And +there is one last thing I want you to do for me, Lydia darling. You +remember that old royal blue velvet dress of mine that you were always +sniffing at and either trying to make me give away or have made over? +And remember that I told you that you'd know some time why I kept it? +Well, I want you to lay me out in it, Lydia. Such a funny old-fashioned +shroud, isn't it?... But with dresses long again, maybe it won't look so +funny, and there'll be nobody but you and Lois to see me in it, because +I've said so in my will. And I want my hair dressed as it was the only +time I ever wore the royal blue velvet. A French roll, Lydia, with +little curls coming out the left side of it and hanging down to the left +ear. You brush the hair straight up the back of the head, gather it +together and tie a little bit of black shoestring around it, then you +twist the hair into a roll and spread it high, pinning it down on each +side of the head. _And don't forget the little curls on the left side!_ +I hope I have enough hair, but if it hasn't grown long enough, you +know where those switches are that I had made when I first bobbed my +hair.... You won't mind touching me when I'm dead, will you, Lydia? I do +love you.... Nita.'" + +Dundee was silent for a minute after he had finished reading the strange +note and had returned it to the envelope, along with the will. At last, +speaking against a lump in his throat, he broke in on the desolate +sobbing of Nita's maid: + +"Lydia, how old was your mistress?" + +"You won't put it in the papers, will you?" Lydia pleaded. "She--she +was--thirty-three. But not a soul knew it except me--" + +"And will you tell me how old the royal blue velvet dress is?" he +continued. "Also, how long since girls dressed their hair in a French +roll?" + +"The dress is twelve or thirteen years old," Lydia said, her voice dull +now with grief. "I know, because I used to do dressmaking during the +war. And it was during the war that girls wore their hair that way--I +did mine in a Psyche knot, but the French roll was more stylish." + +"Did your mistress ever tell you about the one time she wore the dress?" + +Lydia shook her head. "No. She wouldn't talk about it--just said I'd +know sometime why she kept it.... Royal blue velvet, it is, the skirt +halfway to the ankles, and sleeves with long pointed ends, lined with +gold taffeta, and finished off with gold tassels. It's in a dress bag, +hanging in her closet." + +"Do you think it was her wedding dress, Lydia?" Dundee suggested, the +idea suddenly flashing into his mind. + +"I don't know. I didn't ask her that," Lydia denied dully. "Can I take +it with me--and the switches she had made out of her curls?" + +"I'll have to get authority to remove anything from the house, Lydia," +Dundee told her. "But I am sure you will be permitted to follow Mrs. +Selim's instructions.... So you're going to accept the Miles' offer of a +job as nurse?" + +"Yes. I'd rather work. Mr. and Mrs. Miles have always been specially +nice to me, and I--I could love their children. They're not--afraid of +me--" + +"Perhaps you're wise," Dundee agreed. "By the way, Lydia, did Mrs. Selim +have a pistol in her possession at any time during the past week?" + +The maid shook her head. "Not that I seen. And if she'd got one because +she was afraid, she'd a-kept it handy and I'd a-been bound to see it." + +Convinced of her sincerity, he was about to let her go to pack her bag +when another belated question occurred to him. "Lydia, will you tell me +what engagements Mrs. Selim had this last week?" + +The woman scowled, fanatically jealous, Dundee guessed, of her mistress' +reputation, but at last she answered defiantly: "Let me see.... Mr. +Sprague had Sunday dinner here, and spent the afternoon, but Sunday +night it was young Mr. Ralph Hammond. He come whenever she'd let +him.... Monday night?... Oh, yes! She had dinner at the Country Club +with the Mileses and the Drakes and the Dunlaps. Mr. Miles brought her +home, because Mr. Sprague wasn't invited.... Tuesday night--let me +think!... Yes, that's the night Judge Marshall was here. Nita had sent +for him to talk about finishing up the attic--" + +So that was the "business engagement" which Judge Marshall had hemmed +and hawed over, Dundee reflected triumphantly. + +"--and Wednesday night," Lydia was continuing, with a certain pride in +her mistress' popularity, "she was at a dinner party at the Dunlaps'." + +"Did Mr. Peter Dunlap ever call on Mrs. Selim--alone?" + +"_Him?_" Lydia was curiously resentful. "He wasn't ever here. Nita said +to me she wished Mr. Peter liked her as well as Mis' Lois did." + +"Thursday night?" + +"Mr. Ralph Hammond took her somewhere to dinner, to some other town, I +think, but I wasn't awake when they got home. Nita never would let me +set up for her--said I needed my rest. So I always went to bed early." + +"And yesterday--Friday?" Dundee demanded tensely. For Friday she had +been driven to making her last will and testament.... + +"She was home all day, but about half past four Mr. Drake came," Lydia +said slowly, as if she too were wondering. "She was awfully restless, +couldn't set still or eat. I ought to have suspicioned something, but +she was often like that--lately. Mr. Drake stayed about an hour. I +didn't see him leave, because I was cooking Nita's dinner.... But little +good it did, because she didn't eat it, so there was plenty for Mr. +Sprague when he dropped in about seven." + +"Did Sprague spend the evening?" + +"I guess so, but I don't know. Nita made me take the Ford and drive into +town for a picture show. She was in bed when I got back, and--" but she +checked herself hastily. + +"Did Nita seem strange--troubled, excited? Did she look as if she'd been +crying?" Dundee prodded. + +"I didn't see her," the maid acknowledged. "I knocked on her door, but +she told me to go on to bed, that she wouldn't need me. But now I think +back, her voice sounded queer.... Maybe she _was_ crying, but I don't +know--" + +"And this morning?" + +"She seemed all right--just excited about the party and worried about my +tooth. Mr. Ralph Hammond come to make the estimates on finishing up the +top floor, and we left him here--" + +"What was her attitude toward Mr. Miles when he dropped in on her this +morning?" Dundee interrupted. + +"Mr. Miles?" Lydia echoed, frowning. "He wasn't here this morning, or if +he was, it was after Nita and I left for town." + +While the maid was packing a bag, which Dundee would examine before she +was allowed to take it away with her, the detective rejoined Tracey +Miles, who had made himself as comfortable as possible in the living +room. + +"Lydia's going with you, and is grateful for your wife's kindness," +Dundee informed him, and felt his heart warm to the boresome, +egotistical little cherub of a man when he saw how Miles' face lit up +with real pleasure. "By the way, Miles, you saw Ralph Hammond when you +called here this morning, didn't you?" + +"Yes," Miles answered with some reluctance. "He answered the door when I +rang and told me Lydia and Nita had gone into town." + +"Mr. Miles," Dundee began slowly, throwing friendliness and persuasion +into his voice, "I know how all you folks stick together, but I'd +appreciate it a lot if you'd tell me frankly whether you noticed +anything unusual in Hammond's manner this morning." + +"Unusual?" Miles repeated, frowning. "He was a little short with me +because he was busy, and, I suspect, a little jealous because I'd come +calling on Nita--" He broke off abruptly, in obvious distress. "Look +here, Dundee! I didn't mean to say that, but I suppose you'll find out +sooner or later.... Well, the fact is, the whole crowd knows Ralph +Hammond was absolutely mad about Nita Selim. Wanted to marry her, and +made no secret of it, though we all thought or hoped it would be little +Penny Crain. He's been devoted to Penny for years, and since Roger Crain +made a mess of things and skipped out, leaving Penny and her poor mother +high and dry, we've all done our best to throw Penny and Ralph together. +But since Nita came to town--" + +"Was Nita in love with Ralph?" Dundee cut in, rather curtly, for he had +a curious distaste for hearing Penny Crain discussed in this manner. + +"Sometimes we were sure she was," Miles answered. "She flirted with all +of us men--had a way with her of making every man she talked to think he +was the only pebble on the beach. But there was something special in the +way she looked at Ralph.... Yes, I think she _was_ in love with him! But +then again," he frowned, "she would treat him like a dog. Seemed to want +to drive him away from her--but she always called him back--Oh, Lord!" +he interrupted himself with a groan. "Now I suppose I _have_ put my foot +in it! You've got the damnedest way of making a chap tell everything he +would cut his tongue out rather than spill, Dundee! But just because a +young man's in love, and happens not to show up at a party, is no reason +to think he sneaked up to the house and killed the woman he loved and +wanted to marry. For I'm not so dumb that I haven't seen the drift of +your damnable questions, Dundee!... Do you know Ralph Hammond, by any +chance?" he concluded, his round face red with anger. + +"No--but I should like to meet him," Dundee retorted. "He seems quite +hard to locate this evening." + +"Well, when you do meet him," Tracey Miles began violently, his blue +eyes blazing with anger, "you'll soon find you've been barking up the +wrong tree! There's not a cleaner, finer, straighter--" + +"In fact, he is a friend of yours, Miles," Dundee answered soothingly, +"and I respect you for every word you've said.... By the way, did all of +you go to the Country Club for dinner after you left here?" + +Somewhat mollified, Miles answered: "All of us but Clive Hammond. He +said he was going to have a look around for Ralph himself. Seemed to +have an idea where he might find him.... And, oh, yes, Sprague +disappeared in the scramble. He hasn't a car and nobody thought of +offering him a lift. Guess he took a bus into Hamilton.... Ah! Here's +Lydia!... Hello, Lydia!" he called heartily to the woman who was +standing, tall and gaunt, in the doorway. "Mighty glad you're coming to +look after the kids!" + +From behind the black veil which draped her ugly black hat and hid her +scarred face, Lydia answered in the dull, harsh voice that was +characteristic of her: + +"Thank you, sir. I'll do my best." + +She made no protest when Dundee, with a word of embarrassed apology, +went rapidly through the heavy suitcase she had brought up from the +basement with her. And when he had finished his fruitless search, she +knelt and silently smoothed the coarse, utilitarian garments he had +disarranged. + +Five minutes later Dundee was alone in the house where murder had been +committed under such strange and baffling circumstances that afternoon. +He was not nervous, but again he made a tour of inspection of the first +floor and basement, looking into closets, and testing windows to make +sure they were all locked. Everywhere there were evidences of the +thoroughness of the police detectives who had searched for the weapon +with which Nita Selim had been murdered. In the basement, as he had +subconsciously noted on his headlong dash to question Lydia Carr, the +furnace doors swung open, and the lids of the laundry tubs had been left +propped up, after the unavailing search.... + +He plodded wearily up the basement stairs and on into the kitchen. +Perhaps the ice-box had something fit to eat in it--the fruit intended +for Nita's and Lydia's Sunday breakfast. Those caviar and anchovy +sandwiches had certainly not stuck with him long.... + +He was making his way toward the electric refrigerator when he stopped +as suddenly as if he had been shot. + +The kitchen door, which he had taken especial pains to assure himself +was locked, when he had made the rounds immediately after the departure +of Captain Strawn and his men, was standing slightly ajar! + +_Someone had entered this house!_ + +Dundee stared blankly at the door, which was equipped with a Yale lock. +Someone with a key.... But why had the door been left ajar? _To make +escape more noiseless?_ + +With the toe of his shoe Dundee pushed the door to and heard the click +of the lock, then, all thought of food routed from his mind, made a +quick but almost silent dash into the dining room to secure one of the +pair of tall wax tapers, which, in their silver candlesticks, served as +ornaments for the sideboard. + +If the intruder was still in the house he could be nowhere but in that +unfinished half of the gabled top story. The nearer stairs were those in +the back hall, and Dundee took them two at a time, regardless of the +noise. Who had preceded him stealthily?... By the aid of his lighted +candle he discovered an electric switch at the head of the stairs, +flicked it on, and found himself in a wide hall, one wall of which was +finished with buff-tinted plaster and with three doors, the other of +rough boards with but a single door. + +With his candle held high, so that its light should not blind him, and +well aware that it made him a perfect target, Dundee opened the +unpainted door and found himself in the dark, musty-smelling room that +had served Nita Selim and the Crains before her as a storeroom. From the +ceiling dangled a green cord ending in a cheap, clear-glass bulb, but +its light was sufficient to penetrate even the farthest low nooks made +by the three gables. He blew out his candle and dropped it, as useless +now. + +A quick tour convinced him that nothing human was concealed behind one +of Nita Selim's empty wardrobe trunks, or behind one of the several +pieces of heavy old furniture, undoubtedly left behind by the +dispossessed Crain family. + +Big footprints on the thick dust which coated the floor showed him that +he was being no more thorough than Captain Strawn's brace of +plainclothes detectives had been much earlier that evening. Two pairs of +giant footprints.... + +With an exclamation he discovered a smaller, narrow pair of prints, and +followed their winding trail all around and across the attic. And then +he remembered.... Ralph Hammond's footprints, of course, made that +morning as he went about his legitimate business of measuring and +estimating for the job of turning the storeroom into bedrooms and +bathrooms. + +Dundee had not realized that he was frightened until he was in the hall +again, facing one of the three doors in the plastered wall. With +surprise, and some amusement, he became aware that his hands were +trembling, and that his knees had a curious tendency to buckle. + +The fact that the door directly in front of him was open about two +inches served, for some odd reason, to steady his nerves. Pushing the +door wide open with his foot--for he never forgot the possibility of +incriminating fingerprints which might easily be obliterated, he +discovered a light switch near the door frame. + +The instant illumination from a ceiling cluster revealed a large +bedroom, and less clearly, another and smaller room beyond it, facing as +the house faced--toward the south. Knees and hands steady again, he +investigated the finished portion of the gabled story swiftly. A +charming layout, he told himself. Had Penny Crain once enjoyed this +delightful little sitting-room, with its tiny balcony built out upon the +sloping roof?... And it gave him pleasure to think that this big, +well-furnished but not fussily feminine bedroom had once been hers, as +well as the small but perfect bathroom whose high narrow window +overlooked the back garden. The closets, dresser drawers and highboy +drawers were completely empty, however, of any traces of her occupancy +or that of any other.... + +With these rooms going to waste, why--he suddenly asked himself--had +Nita Selim coaxed Judge Marshall to have the unfinished half of the +gabled attic turned into bedrooms and baths? Why couldn't Lydia have +slept up here, if Nita thought so much of her "faithful and beloved +maid"? + +But even as he asked himself the question Dundee realized that the +answer to it had been struggling to attract his attention. + +_These rooms had not been wasted!_ Someone had been occupying them as +late as last night! Weaving swiftly through the three rooms, like a +bloodhound on the scent, Dundee collected the few but sufficient proofs +to back up his intuitive conviction. A copy of _The Hamilton Evening +Sun_, dated Friday, May 23, left in an armchair in the sitting-room. All +windows raised about six inches from the bottom, so that the night +breeze stirred the hand-blocked linen drapes. And, clinging to these +drapes, the faint but unmistakable odor of cigarette smoke. Finally, +with a low cry of triumph, Bonnie Dundee flung back the colored linen +spread which covered the three-quarter bed and discovered that the +sheets and pillow cases, though clean, had, beyond the shadow of a +doubt, been slept upon. + +Bending so that his nose almost touched a pillow case he sniffed. +_Pomade!..._ Who was the man who had slept in this bed last night? + + + + +CHAPTER FOURTEEN + + +With the thrill of his discovery singing blithely along his nerves, +Bonnie Dundee, Special Investigator for the District Attorney, had at +first hugged the intention of following the new trail alone. Hadn't +Captain Strawn taunted him not too good-naturedly about his ability to +get along without the younger man's help? + +But he was glad, both selfishly and unselfishly, when, half an hour +later, he threw open the front door of dead Nita's house to the chief of +the Homicide Squad, Carraway, the fingerprint expert, and the two +plainclothesmen who had searched the top floor for the missing weapon or +the murderer himself soon after the murder had been committed. For if +Strawn needed his help, Dundee needed the expert machinery which Strawn +captained. And it was good to feel the grip of gratitude in the old +chief's handclasp and to see the almost shy twinkle of apology in his +hard old grey eyes.... + +Dundee led the way up the front stairs to the upper floor, glad to hear +the heavy tread of official feet behind him. + +"I guess you've got it all doped out who the Selim woman's gentleman +friend was," Strawn commented genially, as he followed Dundee into the +pleasant, big bedroom. + +"I believe I have, but I need Carraway to prove my hunch," Dundee +acknowledged. + +Eagerly, swiftly, he displayed his first tangible finds--the open +windows, the drapes smelling of cigarette smoke, the evening paper of +the day before, the faint odor and greasiness of barber's pomade upon +the pillow case of the bed which had clearly been slept in since the +linen was changed. + +"Now, Collins--Harmon--" Dundee whirled upon the two silent +plainclothesmen, "I want to know what you saw in these rooms when you +searched them early this evening that you don't see now. You looked into +the closets and drawers, of course?" + +"Yes, sir," Collins answered. "And they was all empty, Dundee. Me and +Harmon didn't waste time smelling pillow cases, and I admit we didn't +pay no attention to that there newspaper--" + +"_Empty!_" Dundee echoed. "Are you sure?... You, too, Harmon?" + +"What are you driving at, boy?" Captain Strawn asked indulgently. + +Briefly, with disappointment flattening his voice, Dundee told of his +finding the kitchen door ajar, after he had made sure it was locked on +his first rounds of the house. + +"I worked it out this way," he continued, despite Strawn's grin. "Dexter +Sprague was Nita's lover, as I had thought all along. He was in the +habit of spending the night here whenever Nita would give him an evening +of her company. He was here last night, according to the maid, Lydia +Carr. Nita sent her into Hamilton to a picture show. Nita and Sprague +quarreled last night, but I am positive he spent the night here anyway. +Certainly there was no actual rupture, since Sprague worded his note to +her as he did. I have another strong reason for thinking his belongings +were here at least until noon today, but that can wait for the moment. +Furthermore, I am positive that Sprague descended by the backstairs and +went around the house to join the cocktail party which was to follow the +hen bridge party." + +"How do you make that out, Bonnie?" Strawn asked, his grin wiped away. + +"Try to remember how Sprague looked when you first got here," Dundee +suggested. "I saw him twenty minutes after you did, but--_he was wearing +an immaculate stiff collar, and there were still traces of talcum powder +over a close shave_! And you will remember that he said he had made a +half hour's trip by bus, and had walked the quarter of a mile from the +bus stop on Sheridan Road to this house. It was a mighty hot afternoon, +chief!" + +"Not conclusive," Strawn growled. + +"Then here's another straw to add to the weight of my conclusion," +Dundee went on unshaken. "You remember that Janet Raymond was on the +front porch _watching for Sprague_, while the 'death hand of bridge' was +being played?... Oh, she tried to protect him.... Wait, I'll read you +the notes I made when I was questioning her. I looked them up while I +was waiting for you.... Here! I had said to Miss Raymond: 'You observed +Mr. Sprague toiling down the rutty road, hot and weary, but romantic in +the sunset?' And she answered, stammering: 'I--I wasn't looking that +way....' And I knew she was lying, knew that she had been taken +completely by surprise when Sprague suddenly appeared _from the rear of +the house_! What's more, she betrayed herself and him by admitting that +she was surprised. Then--because the girl is undoubtedly in love with +Sprague and was mortally afraid he had killed Nita Selim, she tried +frantically to throw suspicion on Lydia Carr, by telling how Lydia had +failed to answer Mrs. Dunlap's first ring--Good Lord! Wait a minute! I +want to think!" he interrupted himself to exclaim. + +After a full minute, while he had stood very still, with his fingers +pressed against his closed eyes, Dundee began slowly: + +"I believe that's it.... Listen, boys!" He turned to the two +plainclothesmen, urgent pleading in his voice. "Would you both take your +oath that there was no bag--say a small Gladstone overnight +bag--anywhere in these rooms when you searched them this evening?" + +The two detectives glanced at each other, their faces reddening. It was +Harmon, the older of the pair, who swallowed hard before answering: + +"We'd been told to look for a man hiding, and for a gun--" Then he +squared his shoulders as if to receive the blame like a man. "Yes, sir! +There was a little black grip on the closet shelf. I went through it +myself, but there wasn't no gun in it. Just a pair of pajamas and a +couple of shirts, one of 'em dirty, some socks and collars and a +shaving-kit--" + +Dundee drew a deep breath, and clapped the red-faced detective on the +back in high good humor. + +"There simply _had_ to be a bag somewhere!" he laughed. + +"This is the way of it, Strawn.... Nita and Sprague rowed last night. +Sprague tried to make it up, but Nita must have been through with him. +Probably told him last night to clear his things out and not come back. +She thought he had done so; probably he did leave before she got up. At +any rate she was so sure he was gone and his things with him that she +and Lydia went to town this morning and left Ralph Hammond here to go +through the place as freely as he liked, making his estimates on the job +of finishing up the other half of this floor. And Ralph--but let that +wait for the moment." + +"Got any real proof that it was Sprague who stayed here and not the +Hammond boy?" Strawn interrupted shrewdly. + +"I'm coming to the proof," Dundee assured him, "or rather, the rest of +the proof that I haven't already given you. You're damned hard to +convince, chief! But let me go on with my theory, which I think covers +the facts.... At luncheon, when Nita received that note from Sprague, I +imagine she got a hunch that he hadn't taken her seriously, that he had +not removed his belongings. You remember Penny Crain said Nita had Lydia +follow her into her bedroom, as soon as Nita got home from the +luncheon?... Well, it's my hunch that Nita asked Lydia if Sprague's +things were gone when she cleaned these rooms this morning, and that +Lydia said no. Nita then probably told Lydia to pack them herself, and I +feel positive that Lydia did so, for she must have felt safe when she +protested to me that Sprague was not Nita's lover. I also feel sure that +Sprague arrived at least half an hour before he said he did, by some +back path across the meadow; that he came up to these rooms that he +considered his, found his things packed, but went about shaving and +changing his shirt and collar, regardless. I also feel sure that Lydia +followed him upstairs to explain and impress upon him that Nita had +meant what she said. And it is quite likely that she was not through +picking up after him when he descended by the back stairs and surprised +Janet Raymond on the front porch. That accounts, of course, for Lydia's +not hearing the kitchen bell the first time Mrs. Dunlap rang." + +"Umm," Strawn grunted. "What about the proofs you're holding back?" + +"Come along, chief--you, too, Carraway!" Dundee answered, and led the +way into the bathroom. "I felt sure these rooms would yield a very +definite clue, even though Sprague, when he sneaked back tonight to get +his tell-tale bag, apparently made every effort to wipe his fingerprints +off the furniture and bathroom fixtures.... Now, Carraway, if you'll +step upon this little stool and look along the top of this medicine +cabinet, you'll find what I found--and didn't touch." + +The fingerprint expert did as he was told. When he stepped down he was +holding, between the very tips of his fingers, a safety razor blade. + +"No dust on it, you see," Dundee pointed out. "Now if you don't find +Dexter Sprague's fingerprints on it, my whole theory topples." + +"How am I going to know whose fingerprints they are till we get hold of +Sprague?" Carraway asked reasonably. + +"We don't need him--for that purpose, at least," Dundee assured him. +"Downstairs in the living room, on a little table in the southeast +corner of the room, you'll find a red glass ashtray which no one but +Dexter Sprague used all evening. It was clean and empty when I saw him +use it first. I think you'll find on it all the prints you need." + +"So you think Sprague killed her because she was through with him?" +Strawn asked. + +Dundee shook his head. "Since I don't like Dexter Sprague a little bit, +chief, I'd like to think so, but--" + + + + +CHAPTER FIFTEEN + + +Bonnie Dundee's first thought upon awakening that Sunday morning was +that it might prove to be rather a pity that his new bachelor apartment, +as he loved to call his three rooms at the top of a lodging house which +had once been a fashionable private home, faced south and west, rather +than east. At the Rhodes House, whose boarding-house clamor and lack of +privacy he had abandoned upon taking the flattering job and decent +salary of "Special Investigator attached to the District Attorney's +office," he had grown accustomed to using the hot morning sun upon his +reluctant eyelids as an alarm clock. + +But--he continued the train of thought, after discovering by his watch +that it was not late; only 8:40--it was pretty darned nice having +"diggings" like these. Quiet and private. For he was the only tenant +now on the top floor. His pleased, lazy eyes roved over the plain +severity but solid comfort of his bedroom, and on past the open door to +take in appreciatively the equally comfortable and masculine living +room.... Pretty nice! That leather-upholstered couch and armchair had +been a real bargain, and he liked them all the better for being rather +scuffed and shabby. Then his eyes halted upon a covered cage, swung from +a pedestal.... + +"Poor old Cap'n!... Must be wondering when the devil I'm going to get +up!" and he swung out of bed, lounged sleepily into the small living +room and whisked the square of black silk from the cage. + +The parrot, formerly the property of murdered old Mrs. Hogarth of the +Rhodes House, but for the past year the young detective's official +"Watson," ruffled his feathers, poked his green-and-yellow head between +the bars of his cage and croaked hoarsely: "Hullo! Hullo!" + +"Hullo, yourself, my dear Watson!" Dundee retorted. "Your vacation is +over, old top! It's back on the job for you and me both!... Which +reminds me that I ought to be taking a squint at the Sunday papers, to +see how much Captain Strawn thought fit to tell the press." + +He found _The Hamilton Morning News_ in the hall just outside his living +room door. + +"Listen, Cap'n.... 'NITA SELIM MURDERED AT BRIDGE'.... Probably the +snappiest streamer headline the News has had for many a day.... Now +let's see--" He was silent for two minutes, while his eyes leaped down +the lesser headlines and the column one, page one story of the murder. +Then: "Good old Strawn! Not a word, my dear Watson, about your absurd +master's absurd performance in having 'the death hand at bridge' +replayed. Not a word about Ralph Hammond, the missing guest! Not a word +about Mrs. Tracey Miles' being hidden away in the clothes closet while +her hostess was being murdered!... In fact, my dear Watson, not a word +about anything except Strawn's own theory that a hired gunman from New +York or Chicago--preferably Nita's home town, New York, of +course--sneaked up, crouched in her window, and bumped her off. _And_ +life-size photographs of the big footprints under the window to prove +his theory!... By golly, Cap'n! I clean forgot to tell my former chief +that I'd found Nita's will and note to Lydia! He'll think I deliberately +held out on him.... Well--I can't sit here all day gossiping with you, +'my dear Watson....' Work--much work--to be done; then--Sunday dinner +with poor little Penny." + +Four hours later a tired and dispirited young detective was climbing the +stairs of an ugly, five-story "walk-up" apartment house in which Penny +Crain and her mother had been living since the financial failure and +flight of the husband and father, Roger Crain. + +"Hello, there!" It was Penny's friendly voice, hailing him from the +topmost landing of the steep stairs. "All winded, poor thing?" + +His tired, unhappy eyes drank her in--the freshness and sweetness of a +domestic Penny, so different from the thorny little office Penny who +prided herself on her efficiency as secretary to the district +attorney.... Penny in flowered voile, with a saucy, ruffled white +apron.... But there were purplish shadows under her brown eyes, and her +gayety lasted only until he had reached her side. + +"Sh-h-h!--Have they found Ralph?" she whispered anxiously. + +He could only answer "No," and he almost choked on the word. + +"Mother's all of a twitter at my having a detective to dinner," she +whispered, trying to be gay again. "She fancies you'll be wearing size +11 shoes and a 'six-shooter' at your belt--Yes, Mother! It's Mr. +Dundee!" + +She did not look "all of a twitter," this pretty but rather faded +middle-aged little mother of Penny's. A gentle dignity and patient +sadness, which Dundee was sure were habitual to her, lay in the faded +blue eyes and upon the soft, sweet mouth.... + +But Mrs. Crain was ushering him into the living room, and its charm made +him forget for the moment that the Crains were to be pitied, because of +their "come-down" in life. For every piece of furniture seemed to be +authentic early American, and the hooked rugs and fine, brocaded damasks +allied themselves with the fine old furniture to defeat the ugliness +with which the Maple Court Apartments' architect had been fiercely +determined to punish its tenants. + +"'Scuse me! Gotta dish up!" Penny flung over her shoulder as she ran +away and left him alone with her mother. + +Dundee liked Mrs. Crain for making no excuses about a maid they could +not afford, liked the way she settled into a lovely, ancient +rocking-chair and set herself to entertain him while her daughter made +ready the dinner. + +Not a word was said about the horrible tragedy which had occurred the +day before in the house which had once been her home. They talked of +Penny's work, and the little gentlewoman listened eagerly, with only the +faintest of sighs, as Dundee humorously described Penny's fierce +efficiency and District Attorney Sanderson's keen delight in her work. + +"Bill Sanderson is a nice boy," the woman of perhaps 48 said of +Hamilton's 35-year-old district attorney. "It is nice for Penny to work +with an old friend of the family, or was--until--" + +And that was the nearest she came to mentioning the murder before Penny +summoned them to the little dining room. + +Because Penny was watching him and was obviously proud of her skill as a +cook--skill recently acquired, he was sure--Dundee ate as heartily as +his carefully concealed depression would permit. There was a beautifully +browned two-rib roast of beef, pan-browned potatoes, new peas, +escalloped tomatoes, and, for dessert, a gelatine pudding which Penny +proudly announced was "Spanish cream," the secret of which she had +mastered only that morning. + +"I was up almost at dawn to make it, so that it would 'set' in time," +she told him, and by the quiver of her lip Dundee knew that it was not +Spanish cream which had got her up.... + +"I'm going to help wash dishes," he announced firmly, and Penny, with a +quick intake of breath, agreed. + +"Hadn't you better take a nap, Mother?" she added a minute later, as +Mrs. Crain, with a slight flush on her faded cheeks, began to stack the +dessert dishes. "You mustn't lay a hand on these dishes, or Bonnie and I +will have our dishwashing picnic spoiled.... Run along now. You need +sleep, dear." + +"Not any more than you do, poor baby!" Mrs. Crain quavered, and then +hurried out of the room, since gentlewomen do not weep before strangers. + +"I called you 'Bonnie' so Mother would know we are really friends," +Penny explained, her cheeks red, as she preceded him through the +swinging door into the miniature kitchen. + +"You'll stick to that--being friends, I mean, no matter what happens, +won't you, Penny?" Dundee said in a low voice, setting the fragile +crystal dishes he carried upon the porcelain drainboard of the sink. + +"I knew you had something bad to tell me.... It's about--Ralph, I +suppose?" Her husky voice was scarcely audible above the rush of hot +water into the dishpan. "You'd better tell me straight off, Bonnie. I'm +not a very patient person.... Are they going to arrest Ralph when they +find him? There wasn't a word in the paper about him this morning--" + +"I'm afraid they are, Penny," Dundee told her miserably. "Captain Strawn +has a warrant ready, but of course--" + +"Oh, you don't have to tell me you hope Ralph isn't guilty!" she cut in +with sudden passionate vehemence. "Don't _I_ know he couldn't have done +it? They always arrest the wrong person first, the blundering idiots--" + +It was the thorny Penny again, the Penny with glittering eyes which +matched her nickname. But Dundee felt better able to cope with this +Penny.... + +"I'm afraid I'm the chief idiot, but you must believe that I'm sorry it +should be a friend of yours," he told her, and reached for the plate she +had rinsed of its suds under the hot water tap. + +"Shoot the works!" she commanded, with hard flippancy. "Of course I +might have known that Captain Strawn's theory about a gunman was just +dust in our eyes, and that only a miracle could keep you from fastening +on poor Ralph, since he and the gun are both missing.... Naturally it +wouldn't occur to you that it might be an outsider, someone who had +followed Nita and her lover, Sprague, from New York, to kill her for +having left him for Sprague.... Oh, no! Certainly not!" she gibed, to +keep from bursting into tears. + +"An outsider would hardly have had access to Judge Marshall's pistol and +Maxim silencer," he reminded her. "And Captain Strawn received a wire +from a ballistics expert in Chicago this morning, confirming our +conviction that the same gun which fired the bullets against Judge +Marshall's target fired the bullet which killed Nita Selim.... You've +washed that plate long enough. Let me dry it now.... And there are other +things, Penny--" + +"Such as--" she challenged in her angry, husky contralto. + +"Sprague admitted to me this morning, after I had confronted him with +proofs, that he sometimes slept in the upstairs bedroom--" + +"I told you they were lovers!" Penny interrupted. + +"--and that he slept there Friday night, after he and Nita had +quarreled. He still contends that the row was over that +movie-of-Hamilton business," Dundee went on, as if she had not spoken. +"He admitted also that Nita had told him to take his things away when he +left Saturday morning, but he says it was only because she didn't want +Ralph Hammond to find a man's belongings there if he had occasion to go +into the upstairs rooms in making his estimates for the finishing-up of +the other side. But he contends, and Lydia Carr, whom I also saw again +this morning, supports him in it, that he stayed in the house +occasionally when Nita was particularly nervous about being alone, and +that they were _not_ lovers." + +"Pooh!... Don't wipe the flowers off that plate. Here's another." + +"I'm inclined to say 'Pooh!', too, Penny," Dundee assured her, "but +Tracey Miles told me last night when he came to get Lydia that Nita +really seemed to be in love with Ralph--part of the time, at least." + +"Nita thought enough of Dexter Sprague to send for him to come down +here, and to root her head off for him to get the job of making the +movie," Penny reminded him fiercely, making a great splashing in the +dishpan. + +"Then--_you_ don't think she was in love with Ralph?" Dundee asked. + +"Oh, _I don't know_!" the girl cried. "I thought so sometimes--had the +grace to hope so, anyway, since Ralph was so crazy about her." + +"That's the point, Penny," Dundee told her gently. "Everyone I've talked +to this morning, including Sprague, seems sure that Ralph Hammond was +mad about Nita Selim." + +"So of course he would kill her!" Penny scoffed bitterly. + +"Yes, Penny--when he discovered Sprague's easily-recognized cravats +draped over the mirror frame in a bedroom in Nita's house.... For they +were there to be seen when Ralph went into that bedroom yesterday +morning." + +"How do you know he saw them?" + +"Because he left this behind him," Dundee admitted reluctantly, and +wiped his hands before drawing an initialed silver pencil from his +breast pocket. "I found it under the edge of the bed. The initials are +R. H." + +"Yes, I recognize it," Penny admitted, turning sharply away. "I gave it +to him myself, for a Christmas present. I thought I could afford to give +silver pencils away then. Dad hadn't bolted yet--" She crooked an elbow +and leaned her face against it for a moment. Then she flung up her brown +bobbed head defiantly. "Well?" + +"Ralph must have been--well, in a pretty bad way, since he loved Nita +and wanted to--marry her," Dundee persisted painfully. "Remember that +Polly Beale found him still there when she stopped to offer Nita a lift +to Breakaway Inn. It is not hard to imagine what took place. We _know_ +that Polly curtly cancelled her luncheon engagement with Nita and the +rest of you, and went into town with Ralph, after making sure that Clive +would join them. I saw young Hammond myself for an instant, without +knowing who he was, and I remember now thinking that he looked far too +ill to eat. I was lunching at the Stuart House myself when they came +into the dining room, you know." + +"Plenty to hang him on, I see!" Penny cried furiously. + +"There's a little more, Penny," Dundee went on. "Polly Beale and Clive +Hammond were mortally afraid that Ralph _would_ come to the cocktail +party! I'm sure Clive made Ralph promise to stay away, and that both +Clive and Polly did not trust him to keep his promise. That is why, I am +sure, Clive beckoned Polly to join him in the solarium, without entering +the living room to speak to Nita. You remember they said they stayed +there all during the playing of--" + +"If you call it the 'death hand' again, I'll scream!" + +"All right.... They stayed there until Karen discovered the murder. I am +sure they chose that place because of its many windows--they could watch +for Ralph's car, dash out and head him off. Take him away by force, if +necessary, to keep him from making a scene. I believe they knew he had +murder in his heart, and that he would find a way to get a gun--" + +"Have you also found out that he stole Hugo's gun yesterday?" + +"I have found that it was possible for him to do so," Dundee said +slowly. "The butler was off for the afternoon until six o'clock. There +was no one in the house but the nursemaid and the-three-months-old +baby." + +"Well? And I suppose you think Clive and Polly didn't have a chance to +head Ralph off, as you say, but that they did see him running away after +he killed her?" Her voice was still brittle with anger, but there were +indecision and fear in it, too. + +"No," Dundee replied. "I don't think they saw him. I feel pretty sure he +came into the house by the back way, and through the back hall into +Nita's room. He must have known Clive and Polly would be on the lookout +for him.... At any rate, I have proof that whoever shot Nita from in +front of that window near the porch door fled toward the back hall." + +And he told her of the big bronze lamp, whose bulb had been broken, +reminding her of its place at the head of the chaise longue which was +set between the two west windows. + +"That was the 'bang or bump' Flora Miles heard while she was hiding in +the closet," he explained. "I suppose Flora has told all of you about +it?... I thought so. Muffled as she was in the closet, it is unlikely +that she could have heard Nita's frantic whisperings to Ralph.... I +doubt if he spoke at all. Nita must have been sure he was about to leave +by the porch door--" + +Dimly there came the ring of the telephone. With a curt word, Penny +excused herself to answer it. Dundee went on polishing glasses with a +fresh towel.... + +"Bonnie!" Penny was coming back, walking like a somnambulist, her brown +eyes wide and fixed. "That was--Ralph!... _And he doesn't even know Nita +is dead!_" + + + + +CHAPTER SIXTEEN + + +"Of course I recognized his voice instantly when he said, 'That you, +Penny?' and it's a wonder I didn't scream," said Penny Crain, fighting +her way up through dazed bewilderment to explain in detail, in answer to +Dundee's pelting questions. "I said, 'Of course, Ralph.... Where _have_ +you been?...' And _he_ said, in that coaxing, teasing voice of his that +I know so well: 'Peeved, Penny?... I don't blame you, honey. You really +ought not to let me come over and explain why I stood you up last night, +but you will, won't you?... Ni-i-ze Penny!...' That's exactly how he +talked, Bonnie Dundee! Exactly! _Oh, don't you see he couldn't know that +Nita is dead?_" + +"Did you ask him where he was?" Dundee asked finally. + +"No. I just told him to come on over, and he said I could depend on it +that he wouldn't waste any time.... Oh, Bonnie! What shall we _do_?" + +"Listen, Penny!" Dundee urged rapidly. "You must realize that I've got +to see and hear, but I don't want Ralph Hammond to see _me_ until after +he's had a talk with you. Will you let me eavesdrop behind these +portieres?... I know it's a beastly thing to do, but--" + +Penny agreed at last, and within ten minutes after that amazing +telephone call Dundee, from behind the portieres that separated the +dining and living room, heard Penny greeting her visitor in the little +foyer. She had played fair; had not gone out into the hall to whisper a +warning--if any warning was needed. + +He had seen Ralph Hammond enter the dining room of the Stuart House the +day before, in company with Clive Hammond and Polly Beale, when the +three had been strangers to him; but Dundee told himself now that he +would hardly have recognized the young man whom Penny was preceding into +her living room. The Ralph Hammond of Saturday had had a white, drawn +face and sick eyes. But this boy.... + +Like his older brother, Clive, Ralph Hammond had dark-red, curling hair. +But unlike his brother's, his eyes were a wide, candid hazel--the green +iris thickly flecked with brown. A little shorter than Clive, a trifle +more slender. But that which held the detective's eyes was something +less tangible but at once more evident than superlative masculine good +looks. It was a sort of shy joyousness and buoyance, which flushed the +tan of his cheeks, sang in his voice, made his eyes almost unbearably +bright.... + +Before Penny Crain, very pale and quiet, could sink into the chair she +was groping toward, Ralph Hammond was at her side, one arm going out to +encircle her shoulders. + +"Don't look like that, Penny!" Dundee heard him plead, his voice +suddenly humble. "You've every right to be sore at me, honey, but please +don't be. I know I've been an awful cad these last few weeks, but I'm +myself again. I'm cured now, Penny--" + +"Wait, Ralph!" Penny protested faintly, holding back as he would have +hugged her hard against his breast. "What about--Nita?" + +Dundee saw the young man's face go darkly red, but heard him answer +almost steadily: "I hoped you'd understand without making me put it into +words, honey.... I'm cured of--Nita. I can't express it any other way +except to say I was sick, and now I'm cured--" + +"You mean--" Penny faltered, but with a swift, imploring glance toward +Dundee, "--you don't love Nita any more? You can't deny you were +terribly in love with her, Ralph. Lois told us--told _me_ last night +that Nita had told her in strictest confidence that she had promised to +marry you, just Thursday night--" + +The boy's face was very pale as he dropped his hands from Penny's +shoulders, but Dundee, from behind the portieres, was not troubling to +spy for the moment. He was too indignant with Penny for having withheld +from him the vital fact of Nita's engagement to Ralph Hammond.... + +"That's true, Penny," Ralph was saying dully. "You have a right to know, +because I'm asking _you_ to marry me now.... I did propose to Nita again +Thursday night, and she did accept me. I confess now I was wild with +happiness--" + +"Why did she refuse you before?" Penny cut in, and Dundee silently +thanked her for asking the question he would have liked to ask himself. +"Was it because she wasn't sure she was in love with you?" + +"You're making it awfully hard for me, honey," the boy protested, +then admitted humbly, "Of course you want to know, and you should +know.... No, she said all along, almost from the first that she loved +me more than I could love her, but that there were--reasons.... _Two +reasons_, she always said, and once I asked her jealously if they were +both men, but she looked so startled and then laughed so queerly that I +didn't ask again.... Then I thought it might be because I was younger +than she was, though I can't believe she is more than twenty-three or so, +and I'm twenty-five, you know. And once I got cold-sick because I thought +she might still be married, but she said her husband was married again, +and I wasn't to ask questions or worry about him--" + +"But she _did_ accept you Thursday night?" Penny persisted. + +"Yes," the boy admitted, his face darkly flushed again. "This is awfully +hard, honey, but I'll tell you once for all and get it over with.... I +took her to dinner. We drove to Burnsville because she said she was sick +of Hamilton. When we were driving back she suddenly became very +queer--reckless, defiant.... And she asked me if I still wanted to marry +her, and I said I did. I asked her right then to say when, and she said +she'd marry me June first, but she added--" and the boy, to Dundee's +watching eyes, seemed to be genuinely puzzled again by what must have +sounded so odd at the time--"that she'd marry me June first _if she +lived to see the day_." + +"Oh!" Penny gasped, then, controlling her horror, she asked with what +sounded like real curiosity, "Then what--happened, Ralph? Why do you +propose to _her_ on Thursday and to _me_ on--on Sunday?" + +"A gorgeous actress sacrificed to the typewriter," Dundee told himself, +as he waited for Ralph Hammond's reluctant reply. + +"Can't we forget it, honey?... You do love me a little, don't you? Can't +you take my word for it that--I'm cured now--forever?" + +Penny's hands went up to cover her face, and Dundee had the grace to +feel very sorry indeed for her--sorry even if she intended to give her +promise to Ralph Hammond, as a sick feeling in his stomach prophesied +that she was about to do.... + +"How can I know you're really--cured, if I don't know what cured you?" + +"I suppose you're right," the boy admitted miserably. "There's no need +to ask you not to tell anyone else. Although I don't want to see her +again ever--. Why, Penny, I wouldn't even tell Polly and Clive +yesterday, after it happened, though Polly guessed and went upstairs--. +I tried to keep her back--." + +"I don't--quite understand, Ralph," Penny interrupted. "You mean +something happened when you were at Nita's house yesterday morning?" + +"Yes. Judge Marshall had promised Nita to have the unfinished half of +the top story turned into a maid's bedroom and bath and a guest bedroom +and bath. Clive let me go to make the estimates. Of course I was glad of +the chance to see Nita again--I hadn't been with her since Thursday +night. But she had to take Lydia in for a dentist's appointment, and +they left me alone in the house. I had to go into the finished half to +make some measurements, and in the bedroom I found--oh, God!" he +groaned, and pressed a fist against his trembling mouth. + +"You found that Dexter Sprague was staying there, was using the bedroom +that used to be mine--didn't you?" Penny helped him at last, in +desperation. + +"How did you know?" The boy stared at the girl blankly for a moment, +then seemed to crumple as if from a new blow. "I suppose it was common +gossip that Nita and Sprague were lovers, and I was the only one she +fooled!... My God! To think all of you would stand by and let me _marry_ +her--a cheap little gold-digger from Broadway, living with a cheap +four-flusher she couldn't get along without and had to send for--" + +"Did you--want to kill her, Ralph?" Penny whispered, touching one of his +knotted fists with a trembling hand. + +"Kill her?... Good Lord, _no_!" the boy flung at her violently. "I'm not +such an ass as that! You girls are all alike! Polly had so little sense +as to think I'd want to kill Nita and Sprague both! She couldn't see, +and neither could Clive, that all I wanted was to get away from +everybody and get so drunk I could forget what a fool I'd been--" + +"What _did_ you do, Ralph?" Penny asked urgently. + +"Why, I got drunk, of course," the boy answered, as if surprised at her +persistence. "Darling, you wouldn't believe me if I told you how much +rot-gut Scotch it took to put me under, but that filthy bootlegging +hotel clerk would have charged me twice what he did for the stuff if he +had known how much good it would do me." + +"Hotel?" Penny snatched at the vital word. "Where did you go to get +drunk, Ralph?" + +"I never realized before you had so much curiosity, honey," the boy +grinned at her. "After I shook Clive--Polly went on to Nita's bridge +party, because she couldn't throw her down at the last minute--I +wandered around till I came to the Railroad Men's Hotel, down on State +Street, you know, the other side of the tracks. It's a miserable dump, +but I sort of hankered for a place to hide in that was as miserable and +cheap as I felt--" + +"Did you register under your own name?" + +"Ashamed of me, Penny?... No, I registered under my first two +names--Ralph Edwards. And the rat-faced, filthy little hotel clerk +turned out to be a bootlegger.... Well, when I woke up about eleven this +morning I give you my word I wasn't sick and headachy, though God knows +I'd drunk enough to put me out for a week.... Penny, I woke up +feeling--well, I can't explain it but to say I felt light and new +and--and clean.... All washed-up! At first I thought my heart was +empty--it felt so free of pain. But as I lay there thanking God that +_that was that_, I found my heart wasn't empty at all. It was brimming +full of love--Gosh, honey! I sound like a Laura Jean Libbey hero, don't +I?... But before I rang you from the lunch room where I ate breakfast I +wrote Nita a special delivery note, telling her it was all off. I had to +be free actually, before I could ask you.... You _will_ marry me, won't +you, Penny honey?... I knew this morning I had never really loved anyone +else--" + +Penelope Crain remained rigid for a moment, then very slowly she laid +both her hands on his head, for he had knelt and buried his face against +her skirt. But as she spoke, her brown eyes, enormous in her white face, +were upon Dundee, who had stepped silently from behind the portieres. + +"Yes. I'll marry you, Ralph!... You may come in now, Mr. Dundee!" + + + + +CHAPTER SEVENTEEN + + +It was nearly nine o'clock Monday morning, and Special Investigator +Dundee sat alone in the district attorney's office, impatiently awaiting +Sanderson's arrival. Coroner Price, with the approval of Captain Strawn +of the Homicide Squad, had set the inquest into the murder of Juanita +Leigh Selim for ten o'clock, and there was much that Dundee wished to +say to the district attorney before that hour arrived. + +When the thoroughly tired and dispirited young detective had returned to +his apartment late Sunday afternoon, after having seen Ralph Hammond +completely exonerated of any possible complicity in the murder of Nita +Selim, he had found a telegram from the district attorney, filed in +Chicago: + + "CALLED CHICAGO SERIOUS ILLNESS OF MOTHER STOP RETURNING HAMILTON + EIGHT TEN MONDAY MORNING STOP SEE BY PAPERS YOU ARE ON SELIM JOB + STOP GOOD BUT WATCH YOUR STEP--SANDERSON" + +Well--and Dundee grinned ruefully--he had been on the job all right, but +would Sanderson consider that he had "watched his step"? At any rate, he +had been thorough, he congratulated himself, as he weighed the big +manilla envelope containing his own transcription of the copious +shorthand notes he had taken during the first hours of the +investigation. A smaller envelope held Nita's tell-tale checkbook, her +amazing last will and testament, and the still more startling note she +had written to Lydia Carr. The last two Dundee had retrieved from +Carraway only this morning, after having submitted them to the +fingerprint expert on Sunday. + +Carraway's report had rather dashed him at first, for it proved that no +other hands than Nita's--and his own, of course--had touched either +envelope or contents. But he was content now to believe that Nita +herself had unsealed the envelope she had inscribed, "To Be Opened in +Case of My Death".... Why?... Had she been moved by an impulse to give a +clue to the identity of the person of whom she stood in fear, but had +stifled the impulse? + +Strawn had said, too, that the little rosewood desk had been in a fairly +orderly condition, before his big, official hands had clawed through it +in search of a clue or the gun itself.... Well, Strawn had been properly +chagrined when Dundee had produced the will and note.... + +"Why did she stick it away in a pack of new envelopes, if she wanted it +to be found?" Strawn had demanded irritably, and had not been appeased +by Dundee's suggestion: "Because she did not want Lydia, in dusting the +desk, to see it and be alarmed." + +Yes, he had been busy enough, but what, actually, had he to show for his +industry? He had worked up three good cases--the first against Lydia +Carr, the second against Dexter Sprague, and the third against Ralph +Hammond--only to have them knocked to pieces almost as fast as he had +conceived them.... Of course Lydia Carr might be lying to give Sprague +an alibi, but Dundee was convinced that she was telling the truth and +that she hated Sprague too much to fake an alibi for him.... Of course +there was always Judge Marshall, but-- + +Through the closed door came sounds which Dundee presently identified as +connected with Penny Crain's arrival--the emphatic click of her heels; +the quick opening and shutting of desk drawers.... + +The down-hearted young detective debated the question of taking his +perplexities out to her, but decided against it. She probably wanted to +hear no more of his theories, was undoubtedly burning with righteous +indignation against him because of Ralph Hammond.... Did she still +consider herself engaged to Ralph, in spite of the fact that young +Hammond had gallantly insisted upon releasing her from her promise as +soon as he suspected that it had been given merely to prove her faith in +his innocence? + +It was a decidedly unhappy young detective whom Sanderson greeted upon +his arrival at nine o'clock. + +The new district attorney, who had held office since November, was a +big, good-natured, tolerant man, who looked younger than his 35 years +because of his freckles and his always rumpled mop of sandy hair. But +those who sought to take advantage of his good nature in the courtroom +found themselves up against as keen a lawyer and prosecutor as could be +found in the whole state, or even in the Middle West. + +"Well, boy!" he greeted Dundee genially but with an undertone of +solemnity in his rich, jury-swaying baritone. "Looks like we've got a +sensational murder on our hands. It's not every day Hamilton can rate a +headline like 'BROADWAY BELLE MURDERED AT BRIDGE'--to quote a Chicago +paper.... But I'm afraid there's not enough mystery in it to suit your +tastes." + +Dundee grinned wryly. "I've been pretty down in the mouth all morning +because there's a little too much mystery, chief." + +"Fairly open-and-shut, isn't it?" Sanderson asked, obviously surprised. +"New York gets too hot for this Selim baby--probably mixed up with some +racketeer, racketeers being the favorite boy-friends of 'Broadway +belles', if one can believe the tabloids. Lois Dunlap offers her a job +to organize a Little Theater in Hamilton--which the fair Nita would +certainly have described as a hick town and which she wouldn't have been +found dead in if she could have helped it--" and the district attorney +grinned at his own witticism, "--but Broadway Nita jumps at it. Her +racketeer sweetie has a long arm, however, and Nita gets hers. Justly +enough, probably, but I wish to the Lord she had chosen some other town +to hide in. Lois Dunlap is the finest woman in Hamilton, but she's too +damned promiscuous in her friendships. As it is now, some of the best +friends I have in the world are mixed up in this mess, even if it is +only as innocent victims of circumstance--" + +Until then Dundee had let his chief express his pent-up convictions +without interruption, and indeed Sanderson's courtroom training had +fitted him admirably for long speeches. But he could keep silent no +longer. + +"That is what has been worrying me, chief," he interrupted. "Captain +Strawn has given the papers very little real information, but the truth +is I am afraid _one_ of your friends was not an innocent victim of +circumstance." + +District Attorney Sanderson sat down abruptly in the swivel chair at his +desk. "Just what do you mean, Dundee?" + +"I mean I am convinced that one of Mrs. Selim's _guests_ was her +murderer, but I'd like to tell you the whole story, and let you judge +for yourself." + +"My God!" Sanderson ejaculated. Slowly he drew out a handkerchief and +mopped his freckled brow. "If I hadn't had a good many years of +experience with criminals, Dundee, I'd say it is obvious on the face of +it that none of those four men--Judge Marshall, Tracey Miles, Johnny +Drake, Clive Hammond--could have committed such a cheap, sensational +crime as murdering a hostess during a bridge game.... Not that I haven't +wanted to commit murder myself over many a game of bridge," he added, +with the irrepressible humor for which he was famous. Then he groaned, +the rueful twinkle still in his eye: "I'm afraid we're in for a lot of +gruesome kidding. Why, last night, in the club car of my train, three +tables of bridge players could scarcely play a hand for wisecracking +about the dangers of being dummy!... Well, boy, now that I've talked +myself past the worst shock, suppose you give me the low-down. But I +warn you I'm going to take a powerful lot of convincing." + +Painstakingly, and in the greatest detail, Dundee told the whole story, +beginning with his arrival Saturday evening at the Selim house, +including the ghastly replaying of the "death hand at bridge"--a phrase, +by the way, which the prosecutor instantly adopted--and ending with +Ralph Hammond's establishing of an alibi, to the entire satisfaction of +Captain Strawn, as well as of Dundee himself. He was interrupted +frequently of course, scoffingly at first, then with deepening solemnity +and respect on the part of the district attorney. + +"Let me see the plan of the house again," he said, when Dundee had +finished. "Also that table you've worked up showing the approximate time +and order of arrival of the four men.... Thanks!... Hmm!... Hmm!" + +"You see, sir," Dundee repeated at last, "the list of possible suspects +includes Lydia Carr, Dexter Sprague, John C. Drake, Judge Marshall, +Polly Beale, Flora Miles, Janet Raymond, Clive Hammond--" + +"But Polly and Clive were in the solarium _together_ all the time!" +Sanderson objected. + +"So they said," Dundee agreed. "But it is a very short trip from the +solarium by way of the side porch into Nita's bedroom. And either Polly +Beale or Clive Hammond could have made that trip, on the pretext of +speaking to Nita about Ralph!... Motive: murder to end blackmail. +Naturally such a theory would not include _both_ of them, but if _one of +them_ was being blackmailed and made use of the pretext of warning Nita +of Ralph's overwrought condition--" + +"Sprague's your man!" Sanderson interrupted with relief. "Motive: +jealousy because Nita was ditching him to marry Ralph.... As for the gun +and silencer, it seems pretty clear to me that Nita herself stole it +from Judge Marshall, and that Sprague got it away from her. You say the +maid, Lydia, went upstairs to tell Sprague he had to pack his things and +take them away--for good!... Very well! Sprague goes down the backstairs +with the gun in his pocket, through the back hall into Nita's bedroom, +shoots her, bumps into the lamp, goes out by the back door, and comes +around front to join the party.... You say yourself he has admitted to +everything but the trip to Nita's room and the shooting--even to +sneaking back to get his bag, which I believe also contained the gun +until he had a chance to dispose of it on his way to his hotel in +Hamilton." + +Dundee shook his head. "I'd like to agree, chief, but I believe Lydia is +telling the truth. She says she was in the upstairs bedroom with Sprague +and remained behind only two or three minutes at most, to put his +shaving kit into the packed bag, and to clean up the bathroom basin. On +her way down the backstairs she says she heard Lois Dunlap's second ring +and went to answer it. Sprague and Janet Raymond, with whom Janet says +he stopped to talk a minute on the front porch, were in the dining room +_before_ Lydia entered it.... I'm convinced Lydia hates Sprague and +would be glad to believe him guilty.... No, Mr. Sanderson, I don't +believe Sprague did it, but I do believe it was Sprague's revenge that +Nita was afraid of when she made her will Friday night. Naturally she +figured she'd have time to tell the person she was blackmailing that she +was through with him--or her, but I believe Sprague and Nita were +lovers, even partners in blackmail, and that she feared he would kill +her when he knew she was going to marry Ralph Hammond and give up their +source of income." + +Sanderson considered for a long minute, pulling at his full lower lip. +"Well, thank God for those precious footprints Strawn is building on! +Don't think I fail to follow your reasoning that the crime _must_ have +been committed in the bedroom, and not from the window sill, but those +footprints may save us yet, and will certainly get us through the +inquest. You agree, of course, that none of all this you've told me must +even be hinted at during the inquest?... Good! Let's be going. It's +nearly ten." + +Dundee's whole soul revolted at the very thought of the barbaric farce +of an inquest--the small morgue chapel crowded to the doors with +goggle-eyed, blood-loving humanity; the stretcher with its sheeted +corpse; reporters avid of sensation and primed with questions which, if +answered by indiscreet witnesses, would defeat the efforts of police and +district attorney; news photographers with their insatiable cameras +aimed at every person connected with the case in any way. + +Mercifully, this particular inquest upon the body of Juanita Leigh Selim +promised to be quickly over. For Coroner Price, in conference with +Sanderson, Dundee and Captain Strawn, had gladly agreed to call only +those witnesses and extract from them only such information as the +authorities deemed advisable. + +Lydia Carr, whose black veil had defeated the news camera levelled at +her poor scarred face, was the first witness called by Coroner Price, +and she was required for the single purpose of identifying the body as +that of her mistress. To two perfunctory questions--"Have you any +information to give this jury regarding the cause and manner of the +deceased's death?" and "Have you any personal knowledge of the identity +of any person, man or woman, of whom the deceased stood in fear of her +life?"--Lydia answered a flat "No!" and was then dismissed. + +Karen Marshall, looking far too young to be the wife of the elderly +ex-judge, Hugo Marshall, was the second witness called. Dr. Price guided +her gently to a brief recital of her discovery of the dead body of her +hostess, emphasizing only the fact that, so far as she could see, the +bedroom was unoccupied except by the corpse at the time of the +discovery. + +He then handed her the photostatic copy of a blueprint of the ground +floor of the Selim house, with a pencilled ring drawn around the +bedroom. Karen falteringly identified it, as well as the pencil-drawn +furniture, and was immediately dismissed--to the packed rows of +spectators and reporters. + +Dr. Price himself took the stand next and described, in technical terms, +the wound which had caused death and the caliber of the bullet he had +extracted from the dead woman's heart. + +"I find, also, from the autopsy," he concluded, "that the bullet +traveled a downward-slanting path. I should add, moreover, that I have +made exact mathematical calculations, using the position of the body and +of the wound as a basis, and found that a line drawn from the wound, and +extended, at the correct slant, ends at a point 51.8 inches high, upon +the right-hand side of the frame of the window nearest the porch door." +And he obligingly passed the marked blueprint among the jury. When it +was in his own hands again, he added: "It is impossible to state the +exact distance the bullet traveled, more nearly than to say the shot was +fired along the line I have indicated, at a distance of not more than +fifteen feet and not less than ten." + +Captain Strawn rose and was permitted to question the witness: + +"Dr. Price, that blueprint shows that the bedroom is fifteen feet in +width, don't it?" + +"That is correct." + +"Have you also measured the height of that window sill from the floor?" + +"I have," the coroner answered. "The height from floor to sill is 26 +inches." + +"Now, doctor, from your calculations, would it be possible for a man +crouching in the open window to fire a shot along the path you have +calculated?" + +"It would," Dr. Price answered. "But as I have pointed out, it is +impossible for me to say at exactly what distance from the body the shot +was fired." + +But Strawn, of course, was amply satisfied. And so were Dundee and the +district attorney, for it suited their purposes admirably for the public +to be convinced at this time that an intruding gunman had murdered Nita +Selim. + +Captain Strawn, sworn in, told briefly of his being called to the scene +of the crime, of the activities of Carraway, the fingerprint expert, and +of the exhaustive search of his squad of detectives. + +"Did you find any person concealed upon the premises, that is, within +the house itself, or in the garage or on the grounds?" Dr. Price asked. + +"No, sir." + +"Did you or your men discover the weapon with which the deceased was +killed?" + +"No, sir." + +"Did you question all persons in the house at the time of the crime, as +to whether or not a shot had been heard?" + +"I did. The answer in every case was that they heard no shot." + +"And you also questioned every person present in an effort to place +responsibility for the death of Mrs. Selim?" + +"I did. I couldn't find that anyone present had anything to do with it." + +"Who were these persons?" Dr. Price then asked. + +"Judge and Mrs. Hugo Marshall, Mr. and Mrs. Tracey A. Miles, Mr. and +Mrs. John C. Drake, Mrs. Peter Dunlap, Miss Janet Raymond, Miss Polly +Beale, Miss Penelope Crain, Mr. Clive Hammond, Mr. Dexter Sprague--of +New York, and Mrs. Selim's maid, Lydia Carr," Captain Strawn answered +promptly, rolling out the names of Hamilton's elect with sonorous +satisfaction, which obviously had the desired effect in convincing the +jury that not among those proud names, at least, could be found the name +of the murderer. + +"Did you find on the premises any clue which you consider of importance +to this jury?" + +"I did! A bunch of footprints under the window you've been talking +about. Here are life-size photographs of 'em, doctor.... And the rambler +rose vines that climb up the outside of the window had been torn." + +After the photographs had been duly inspected by the jury of six Dr. +Price said: "That is all, and thank you, Captain Strawn.... Mr. Dundee!" + +As had been agreed between the coroner and the district attorney, +Dundee's testimony, after the preliminary questions, was confined to the +offering of Nita Selim's "last will and testament" and the note to +Lydia. + +The reporters, who had obviously feared that nothing new would +eventuate, sat up with startled interest, then their pencils flew, as +Dundee read the two documents, after he had told when and where he had +discovered them. As District Attorney Sanderson had said; "Better give +the press something new to chew on, but for God's sake don't mention +that checkbook of Nita's. It's dynamite, boy--dynamite!" + +While the morgue chapel was still in a buzz of excitement, Dundee was +dismissed, and District Attorney Sanderson requested an adjournment of +the inquest for one week. + +The police were urging the crowd upon its way before it became fully +aware that it had been cheated of the pleasure of hearing, at first +hand, the stories of that fatal bridge and cocktail party from the +guests themselves. + +"Tell the Carr woman I want to speak to her," Sanderson directed Dundee. +"She'll thank you for rescuing her from the reporters." + +As Dundee pushed his way through the jam he heard a reporter earnestly +pleading with Lois Dunlap: "But I'm sure you can remember the cards each +player held in that 'death hand,' Mrs. Dunlap--" + +Cheerfully sure that he could trust Lois Dunlap's discretion and +distaste for publicity, Dundee went on, grinning at the reporter's use +of his own lurid phrase. + +Two minutes later Sanderson, Strawn and Dundee were closeted in Dr. +Price's own office with Lydia Carr. + +"First, Lydia," began Sanderson, "I want to warn you to give the +reporters no information at all regarding the nature or extent of your +mistress' bequest." + +"It was little enough she had, poor girl, beyond her clothes and a few +pieces of jewelry," Lydia answered stubbornly. "Are you going to let me +do what she told me to, in that note?... Not that I hold with burning--" + +"I see no reason why you should not take charge of the body, Lydia, and +arrange it immediately for cremation.... Do you, Captain Strawn?" +Sanderson answered. + +"No, sir. The quicker the better." + +"Then, Lydia, if Captain Strawn will send you out to the Selim house +with one of his boys, you may get the dress described in Mrs. Selim's +note--" + +"And the curls she cut off and had made into switches," Lydia +interrupted. "I can't dress my poor girl's hair in a French roll without +them!" + +"The curls, too," Sanderson agreed. "Now as to the cremation--" + +"Mrs. Miles let me come in early to see about that," Lydia interrupted +again. "They can do it this afternoon, and you don't need to worry about +the expense. I've got money enough of my own to pay my girl's funeral +expenses." + +"Good!" Sanderson applauded. "The will shall be probated as soon as +possible, of course, but it makes it simpler if you will pay the +necessary expenses now." + +"Just a minute, chief," Dundee halted the district attorney as he was +about to leave. "Under the circumstances, I think it highly advisable +that we get pictures of the burial dress. I suggest you have Lydia bring +the things to your office before she lays out the body, and that +Carraway photograph the dress there, from all angles. I should also like +to have a picture of the body after Lydia has finished her services." + +The maid's scarred face flushed a deep, angry red, but she offered no +protest when the district attorney accepted both of Dundee's +suggestions. + +"Then you'll have Carraway with his camera at my office in about an +hour?" Sanderson turned to Captain Strawn. "Let's say twelve o'clock. By +the way, Lydia, you may bring in with you the few pieces of jewelry you +mentioned. I'll keep them safely in my offices until the will is +probated and they are turned over to you." + +"I don't know where she kept them," Lydia answered. + +"_What?_" exclaimed Bonnie Dundee. + +"I said I don't know where she kept her jewelry," Lydia Carr retorted. +"It wasn't worth much--not a hundred dollars altogether, I'll be bound, +because Nita sold her last diamond not a week before we left New York. +She owed so many bills then that the money she got for directing that +play at the Forsyte School hardly made a dent on them." + +"Do you know whether the jewelry was kept in the house or in a safe +deposit box?" Dundee asked, excitement sharpening his voice. + +"It must have been in the house, because she wore the different pieces +any time she pleased," the maid answered. "I didn't ask no questions, +and I didn't happen to see her get it out or put it away. I didn't ever +do much lady's-maid work for her, like dressing her or fixing her +hair--just kept her clothes and the house in order, and did what little +cooking there was to do--" + +"Her dressing-table?" Dundee prodded. "Her desk?" + +The maid shook her head. "I was always straightening up the drawers in +both her dressing-table and her desk, and she didn't keep the jewelry in +either one of them places." + +"Captain Strawn, when you searched the dressing-table and desk for the +gun or anything of importance, did you have any reason to suspect a +secret drawer in either of them?" + +"No, Bonnie. They're just ordinary factory furniture. I tapped around +for a secret drawer, of course, but there wasn't even any place for +one," Strawn assured him with an indulgent grin. + +"I want to see Penny Crain!" Dundee cried, making for the door. + +"Then you'd better come along to the courthouse with me," Sanderson +called after him. "I sent her back to the office as soon as the inquest +was adjourned." + +The two men passed through the now deserted morgue chapel and almost +bumped into a middle-aged man, obviously of the laboring class in spite +of his slicked-up, Sunday appearance. + +"You're the district attorney, ain't you, sir?" he addressed Sanderson +in a nervous, halting undertone. + +"Yes. What is it?" + +"I come to the inquest to give some information, sir, but it was +adjourned so quick I didn't have time--" + +"Who are you?" Sanderson interrupted impatiently. + +"I'm Rawlins, sir. I worked for the poor lady, Mrs. Selim--gardening one +day a week--" + +"Come to my office!" Sanderson commanded quickly, as a lingering +reporter approached on a run.... "No, no! I'm sorry, Harper," he said +hastily, cutting into the reporter's questions. "Nothing new! You may +say that the police have thrown out a dragnet--" and he grinned at the +trite phrase "--for the gunman who killed Mrs. Selim, and will offer a +reward for the recovery of the weapon--a Colt's .32 equipped with a +Maxim silencer.... Come along, George, and I'll explain just what Mrs. +Sanderson and I have in mind." + +The district attorney and Dundee strode quickly away, and the man, +Rawlins, after a moment of indecision, trotted after them. + +"I don't understand, sir, and my name ain't George. It's Elmer." + +"You don't have to understand anything, except that you're not to answer +any question that any reporter asks you," Sanderson retorted. + +When the trio entered the reception room of the district attorney's +suite in the courthouse Sanderson paused at Penny Crain's desk: + +"Bring in your notebook, Penny. This man has some information he +considers important." + +A minute later Sanderson had begun to question his voluntary but highly +nervous witness. + +"Your name?" + +"It's Elmer Rawlins, like I told you, sir," the man protested, and +flinched as Penny recorded his words in swift shorthand. "It was my wife +as made me come. She said as long as me and her knowed I didn't do +nothing wrong, I'd oughta come forward and tell what I knowed." + +"Yes, yes!" Sanderson encouraged him impatiently. "You say you worked +for Mrs. Selim as gardener one day a week--" + +"Yes, sir, but I 'tended to her hot water and her garbage, too--twice a +day it was I had to go and stoke the little laundry heater that heats +the hot water tank in summertime when the steam furnace ain't being +used. I live about a mile beyant the Crain place, that is, the house the +poor lady was killed in--" + +"Did you come to stoke the laundry heater Saturday evening?" Dundee +interrupted. "Excuse me, sir," he turned to the district attorney, "but +this is the first time I've seen this man." + +"No, sir, I didn't stoke it Sat'dy night," Rawlins answered uneasily. +"You see, I was comin' up the road to do my chores at half past six, +like I always do, but before I got to the house I seen a lot of +policemen's cars and motorcycles, and I didn't want to get mixed up in +nothing, so I turned around and went home again. I didn't know what was +up, but when me and the wife went into Hamilton Sat'dy night in our +flivver we seen one of the extries and read about how the poor lady was +murdered. But that ain't what I was gittin' at, sir--" + +"Well, what _are_ you getting at?" Sanderson urged. + +"Well, the extry said the police had found some footprints under the +frontmost of them two side windows to Mis' Selim's bedroom, and went on +to talk about the rose vines being tore, and straight off I said to the +missus, 'Them's _my_ footprints, Minnie'--Minnie's my wife's name--" + +"_Your_ footprints!" Sanderson ejaculated, then shook with silent +laughter. "There goes Strawn's case, Bonnie!" But immediately he was +serious again, as the import of this new evidence came to him. "Tell us +all about it, Rawlins.... When did you make those footprints?" + +"Friday, sir. That's the day I gardened for Mis' Selim.... You see, sir, +the poor little lady told me she was kept awake nights when they was a +high wind, by the rose vines tapping against the windows. Says she, 'I +think they's somebody tryin' to git into my room, Elmer,' and I could +see the poor little thing was mighty nervous anyway, so I didn't waste +no time. I cut away a lot of the rose vine and burned it when I was +burnin' the garbage and papers in the 'cinerator out back." + +"Is that all, Rawlins?" Sanderson asked. + +"'Bout all that 'mounts to anything," the laborer deprecated. "But they +was somethin' else that struck me as a little funny, when I come to +think of it--" + +"Well?" Sanderson prodded, as the man halted uncertainly. + +"Well, it's like I told you, it was my job to burn the papers. That +scar-face maid of Mis' Selim's put everything--garbage and trash--in a +big garbage can outside the back door, and I burnt 'em up. So I was +kinder surprised Sat'dy mornin', when I went to stoke up the laundry +heater, to find somebody'd been meddlin' with my drafts and had let the +fire go clean out. I had to clean out the ashes and build a new fire--" + +"You're trying to say, I suppose, that you could tell by the ashes that +someone had been burning papers in the laundry heater?" Sanderson asked, +with a quick glance at Dundee's tense face. + +"That's right, sir," Rawlins agreed eagerly. "You know what kind of +ashes a mess o' paper makes--layers of white ashes, sir, that kinder +looks like papers yit." + +"Yes, I know.... And you found layers of white ashes, which you took +particular pains to clean out?" Sanderson asked bitterly. + +"Yes, sir. So's I could build a new fire--" + +"Did you speak to the maid--ask her if she'd been 'meddlin' with your +drafts'?" + +"Yes, sir, I did!" the man answered with a trace of the belligerence he +had undoubtedly shown to Lydia. "She said _she_ didn't open no dampers, +claimed the heater was the same as usual when she left Friday night to +go to a movie. So I reckin it was the poor lady herself, burnin' up love +letters, maybe, or some such truck--" + +"You're to keep your 'reckins' to yourself, Rawlins," Sanderson cut in +emphatically. "Remember, now, you're not to tell anybody else what +you've just told me.... If that's all, you can go now, and I'm much +obliged to you. Leave your address with the young lady here. You'll be +needed later, of course." + +The relieved man hurried out of the room on Penny's heels. Sanderson +shrugged, then, when the door had closed, began heavily: + +"It looks like you're right, Bonnie, about that blackmail business. +As the astute Rawlins says, 'love letters, maybe, or some such +truck....' Of course it all fits in with your theory that Nita had made +up her mind to reform, marry Ralph Hammond, and be a very good girl +indeed.... All right! You can have Penny in now. I think I know pretty +well what you're going to ask her. And I may as well tell you that when +Roger Crain skipped town with some securities he was known to possess, he +hadn't got them from a safe deposit box, because he didn't have one," and +Sanderson pressed a button on the edge of his desk.... + +"Penny, do you know whether there is a concealed safe in the Selim +house?" + +The girl, startled, began to shake her head, then checked herself. "Not +that I ever saw, or knew of when Dad and Mother and I lived there, +but--" She hesitated, her cheeks turning scarlet. + +"Out with it, Penny!" Sanderson urged, his voice very kind. + +"It's just that, if you really think there's a secret hiding place in +the house, I believe I understand something that puzzled me when it +happened," Penny confessed, her head high. "I was at the Country Club +one night--a Saturday night when the whole crowd is usually there for +the dinner and dance. I'd been dancing with--with Ralph, and when the +music stopped we went out on the porch, where several of our crowd were +sitting. It was--just two or three weeks after--after Dad left town. +Lois wouldn't let me drop out of things.... Anyway, it was dark and I +heard Judge Marshall saying something about 'the simplest and most +ingenious arrangement you ever saw. Of course that's where the rascal +kept his securities--...' I knew they were talking about Dad, from the +way Judge Marshall shut up and changed the subject as soon as he saw +me." + +"Who was on the porch, Penny?" Dundee asked tensely. + +"Why, let's see--Flora, and Johnny Drake, and Clive," she answered +slowly. "I think that was all, besides Judge Marshall. The others hadn't +come out from dancing.... Of course I don't know whether or not it was +some 'arrangement' in the house--" + +"Where are you going, boy?" Sanderson checked Dundee, who was already on +his way to the door. + +"To find that gun, of course!" + +"Well, if it's tucked away in the 'simplest and most ingenious +arrangement you ever saw' it will stay put for a while," Sanderson said. +"Lydia's due here within half an hour, and you don't want to miss her, +do you?" + + + + +CHAPTER EIGHTEEN + + +It was exactly twelve o'clock when Lydia Carr, accompanied by Detective +Collins of the Homicide Squad carrying a small suitcase, arrived at the +district attorney's office. + +"I kept my eye on her every minute of the time, to see that there wasn't +no shenanigans," Collins informed Dundee and Sanderson importantly, +callous to the fact that the maid could hear him. "But I let her bring +along everything she said she needed to lay the body out in.... Was that +right?" + +"Right!" agreed the district attorney, as Dundee opened the suitcase +upon Sanderson's desk. + +The royal blue velvet dress lay on top, neatly folded. Dundee shook out +its folds. It looked remarkably fresh and new, in spite of the years it +had hung in Nita Selim's various clothes closets, preserved because of +God alone knew what tender memories. Perhaps the beautiful little dancer +had intended all those years that it should be her shroud.... + +"Oh, it's lovely!" Penny Crain, who was looking on, cried out +involuntarily. "It looks like a French model." + +"It's a copy of a French model. You can see by the label on the back of +the neck," Lydia answered, her one good eye softening for Penny. + +"So it is!" Dundee agreed, and took out his penknife to snip the threads +which fastened the white satin, gold-lettered label to the frock. +"'Pierre Model. Copied by Simonson's--New York City'," he read aloud, +and slipped the little square of satin into the envelope containing the +murdered woman's will. "Well, Penny, I'm glad you like the dress, for +I'm going to ask you to do the mannikin stunt in it as soon as Carraway +arrives with his camera." + +Penny turned very pale, but she said nothing in protest, and Dundee +continued to unpack the suitcase. His masculine hands looked clumsy as +they lifted out the costume slip and miniature "dancing set"--brassiere +and step-ins--all matching, of filmiest white chiffon and lace. His +fingers flinched from contact with the switch of long, silky black +curls.... + +"She bought them after we came to Hamilton," Lydia informed him, +pointing to the undergarments. "Them black moiré pumps and them French +stockings are brand new, too--hundred-gauge silk them stockings are, and +never on her feet--" + +"Ready for me?" Carraway had appeared in the doorway, with camera and +tripod. + +"Yes, Carraway.... Just the dress, Penny.... I want full-length +front, back and side views of Miss Crain wearing this dress, +Carraway.... Flashlights, of course. Better take the pictures in Miss +Crain's office," Dundee directed. "You stay here, Lydia. I want to talk +with you while that job is being done." + +"Yes, sir," Lydia answered, and accepted without thanks the chair he +offered. + +"I suppose you have read _The Hamilton Morning News_ today, Lydia?" + +"I have!" + +"May I have that paper, chief?... Thanks!... Now, Lydia, I want you to +read again the paragraphs that are headed 'New York, May 25--' and tell +us if the statements are correct." + +Lydia accepted the paper and her single eye scanned the following lines +obediently: + + New York, May 25 (UP) + + Mrs. Juanita Leigh Selim, who was murdered Saturday afternoon + in Hamilton, ----, was known along Broadway as Nita Leigh, chorus + girl and specialty dancer. Her last known address in New York was + No. -- West 54th St., where she had a three-room apartment. + According to the superintendent, E. J. Black, Miss Leigh, as he + knew her, lived there alone except for her maid, Lydia Carr, and + entertained few visitors. + + Irving Wein, publicity director for Altamont Pictures, when + interviewed by a reporter in his rooms at the Cadillac Hotel late + today, said that Nita Leigh had been used for "bits" and as a + dancing "double" for stars in a number of recent pictures, + including "Night Life" and "Boy, Howdy!", both of which have + dancing sequences. Musical comedy programs for the last year carry + her name only once, in the list of "Ladies of the Ensemble" of the + revue, "What of it?" + + Miss Eloise Pendleton, head-mistress of Forsyte-on-the-Hudson, + mentioned in the dispatches from Hamilton, confirms the report that + Mrs. Selim, as she was known there, twice directed the annual + Easter musical comedy presented by that fashionable school for + young ladies, but could add nothing of interest to the facts given + above, beyond asserting that Mrs. Selim had proved to be an + unusually competent and popular director of their amateur + theatricals. + +"Yes, that's correct, as far as it goes," Lydia commented, resentment +strong in her harsh voice as she returned the paper to Dundee. + +"Have you anything to add?" Dundee caught her up quickly. + +"No, sir!" Lydia shook her head, her lips in a grim line. Then +resentment burst through: "They don't have to talk like she was a back +number on Broadway, just because she was tired of the stage and going in +for movies!" + +District Attorney Sanderson took her in hand then, pelting her with +questions about Nita's New York "gentlemen friends," but he made no more +headway than Dundee. + +"We _know_ that Nita Selim was afraid of _someone_!" Sanderson began +again, angrily. "Who was it--someone she'd known in New York, or +somebody in Hamilton?" + +"I don't know!" Lydia told him flatly. + +"But you do know she was living in fear of her life, don't you?" Dundee +interposed. + +"I--well, yes, I suppose she was," Lydia admitted reluctantly. "But I +thought she was just afraid to live out there in that lonesome house +away off at the end of nowhere." + +"Was she afraid of Dexter Sprague?" Sanderson shot at her. + +"Would she have asked him to stay all night if she'd been afraid of +_him_?" Lydia demanded scornfully. "And would she have asked _him_ to +rig up a bell from her bedroom to mine, if it was _him_ she was afraid +of?" + +"A bell?" Dundee echoed. + +"Yes, sir. It has a contraption under the rug, right beside her bed, +so's she could step on it and it would ring in my room, which was +underneath hers.... Mr. Sprague bought the wire and stuff, bored a hole +through her bedroom floor, and fixed it all hisself." + +"Did anyone know Nita had taken this precaution to protect herself?" +Dundee asked. + +"Mis' Lois did, because one day not long ago she stepped on it +accidentally, when she was in Nita's room. The bell buzzed in my room +and I come up to answer it, and Nita explained it to Mis' Lois." + +So that was why no attempt had been made to murder Nita while she +slept!--Dundee told himself triumphantly. For of course it was more than +probable that Lois Dunlap had innocently spread the news of Nita's +nervousness and her ingenious method of summoning help instantly.... + +There was a knock at the door. + +"Come in!... All finished, Carraway?... Fine! I'd like to see the prints +as soon as possible, and now I'd like you to go over to the morgue with +Lydia, and wait there until she has the body dressed in these clothes, +and the hair done according to the instructions Mrs. Selim left.... I'll +leave the posing to you, but I want a full-length picture as well as a +head portrait." + +As Lydia's work-roughened, knuckly hands were returning the funeral +clothes to the suitcase, another question occurred to Dundee: + +"Lydia, did you know, before I questioned you at the Miles home +yesterday, that Sprague had returned for that bag he had left in the +bedroom upstairs?" + +Her scarred cheek flushed livid, but the maid answered with defiant +honesty: "Yes, I did! He spoke to me through my basement window just +before you come running down to talk to me. He'd sneaked back, but he +could tell from seeing your car outside that you was there, and he asked +me to go up and get the bag and set it outside the kitchen door for him. +I said I wouldn't do it; it was too risky." + +"Then you were pretending to be asleep when I entered your room?" + +"Yes, I was! But I _had_ been asleep before Mr. Sprague called me. While +you was ding-donging at me about Nita burning my face I heard Mr. +Sprague open the kitchen door. He had a key Nita had give him, so's he +could slip in unnoticed if he happened to come when Nita had other +company. He didn't hardly make any noise at all, but I heard it, because +I was listening for it.... You'd left the door to the basement stairs +open, and my door, too, so I heard him." + +"Did you hear him come down?" + +"Yes, I did! There's a board on the backstairs that squeaks, and I heard +it plain, while you was still at me, hammer and tongs," Lydia answered. +"He was in the house not more'n two minutes, all told, and when I +figured he was safely out, I went upstairs with you to show you the +presents I'd give Nita after she burnt me, to prove I'd forgive her." + +"Why didn't you tell me, Lydia? Why did you protect Sprague? I know you +don't like him," Dundee puzzled. + +"I wasn't thinking about him," Lydia told him flatly. "I was thinking +about Nita. I didn't want any scandal on her, and I knew what the police +and the newspapers would say if they found out Mr. Sprague had been +staying all night sometimes." + +"Are you prepared to swear Sprague had time to do nothing but go up to +the bedroom and get his bag?" + +"I am!" + +When Lydia and Carraway had left together, Dundee rose and addressed the +district attorney: + +"I'm going out to the Selim house now, to look for that secret hiding +place where Roger Crain kept his securities, and which Judge Marshall +evidently displayed to Nita, as one of the charms of the house when she +'rented' it." + +"Why not simply telephone Judge Marshall and ask him where and what it +is?" Sanderson asked reasonably. + +"Do you think he'd tell?" Dundee retorted. "The old boy's no fool. Even +if he didn't kill Nita himself and hide the gun there, my question would +throw him into a panic of fear lest one of his best friends had done +just that.... No, I'll find it myself, if it's all right with you!" + +But after a solid hour of hard and fruitless work, Bonnie Dundee was +forced to admit ruefully to himself that his parting words to the +district attorney might have been the youthful and empty boast that +Sanderson had evidently considered them. + +For nowhere in the house Roger Crain had built and in which Nita Selim +had been murdered could the detective find anything remotely resembling +a concealed safe. The two plainclothesmen whom Strawn had detailed to +guard the house and to continue the search for the missing gun and +silencer looked on with unconcealed amusement as Dundee tapped walls, +floors and ceilings in a house that seemed to be exceptionally free of +architectural eccentricities. + +Finally Dundee grew tired of their ribald comments and curtly ordered +them to make a new and exhaustive search of the unused portions of the +basement--those dark earth banks, with their overhead networks of water +and drain pipes, heavily insulated cables of electric wires, cobwebby +rafters and rough shelves holding empty fruit jars and liquor +bottles--which contrasted sharply with the neatly ceiled and +cement-floored space devoted to furnace, laundry and maid's room. Dundee +himself had given those regions only a cursory inspection with his +flashlight, for it was highly improbable that Nita Selim would have made +use of a secret hiding place for her jewelry and valuable papers, if +that hiding place was located in such dark, awesome surroundings. + +No. The hiding place, if it really existed--and it must exist--had been +within easy reach of Nita dressing and bedecking herself for a party, or +Lydia Carr could not have been kept in complete ignorance of its +location. + +With that conviction in mind, Dundee returned to Nita's bedroom, to +which he had already devoted at least half an hour. Nothing in the big +clothes closet, where Flora Miles had been hiding while Nita was being +murdered. No secret drawers in desk or dressing-table or bedside table. +No false bottom in boudoir chair or chaise longue.... He had even taken +every book out of the four-shelf bookcase which stood against the west +wall near the north corner of the room, and had satisfied himself that +no book was a leafless fake. + +His minute inspection of the bathroom and back hall, upon which Nita's +bedroom opened, had proved as fruitless, although he had removed every +drawer from the big linen press which stood in the hall, and measured +spaces to a fraction of an inch. As for the walls, they were, except for +the doors, unbroken expanses of tinted plaster. + +And yet-- + +He stepped into the clothes closet again, hammer in hand for a fresh +tapping of the cedar-board walls. Nothing here.... And then he tapped +again, his ear against the end wall of the closet--the wall farthest +from the side porch.... + +Yes! There was a faintly hollow echo of the hammer strokes! + +Excitement blazing high again, he took the tape measure with which he +had provided himself on his way out, and calculated the length of the +closet from end to end. Six feet.... + +Emerging from the closet he closed his eyes in an effort to recall in +exact detail the architect's blueprint of the lower floor, which Coroner +Price had submitted to his jury at the inquest that morning. Yes, that +was right! The inner end wall of Nita's clothes closet was also the back +of the guest closet in the little foyer that lay between Nita's bedroom +and the main hall. + +Within ten minutes, much laying-on of the tape measure had produced a +startling result. Instead of having a wall in common, the guest closet +and Nita's clothes closet were separated by exactly eleven inches! Why +the waste space? The blueprint, bearing the imprint of the architects, +Hammond & Hammond, showed no such walled-up cubbyhole! + +Exultantly, Dundee again entered Nita's closet and went over every inch +of the narrow, horizontal cedar boards, which formed the end wall. But +he met with no reward. Not through this workmanlike, solidly constructed +wall had an opening been made.... + +But in the foyer closet he read a different story. Its back wall had an +amateurish look. This closet was not cedar-lined, as was Nita's, but was +painted throughout in soft ivory. But it was the back wall of the closet +in which Dundee was interested. Unlike the other walls, which were of +plaster, the back was constructed of six-inch-wide boards--the cheapness +of the lumber not concealed by its coat of ivory paint. No +self-respecting builder had put in that wall of broad, horizontal +boards.... + +And then, directly beneath the shelf which was set regulation height, +just above the pole on which swung a dozen coat hangers, Dundee found +what he was looking for. + +A short length of the cheap board, a queer scrap to have been used even +in so shoddy a job as that wall was.... Eight inches long. And set +square in the center of the wall, just below the shelf and pole. If he +had not been looking for something odd, however, Dundee acknowledged to +himself, he would not have noticed it. Did anyone ever notice the back +walls of closets? + +Sure of the result, he pressed with his finger tips upon the lower end +of that short piece of board. And slowly it swung inward, the top +slanting outward. + +_He had found the secret hiding place._ And Dundee silently agreed with +Judge Marshall that it was "the simplest and most ingenious arrangement +you ever saw," for it was nothing more nor less than a shelf set between +the two closets, in those eleven inches of unaccounted for space! + +"I take off my hat to Roger Crain!" Dundee reflected. "No burglar in the +world would ever have thought of pressing upon a short piece of board in +a foyer closet, in search of a safe.... But how did Judge Marshall know +of its existence?" + +The only answer Dundee could think of was that Crain, overseeing the +building of his house, had suddenly conceived this brilliant and simple +plan, and had tipped one of the carpenters to carry it out for him. +Possibly, or probably, he had bragged to Clive or Ralph Hammond, his +architects, of his clever invention. And the Hammond boys had passed on +the information to Judge Marshall, when, after Crain's failure and +flight, the house had become the property of the ex-judge. + +These thoughts rushed through his mind as his flashlight explored the +shelf through the tilted opening. The gun and silencer _must_ be here, +since they could be no place else!... But the shelf was bare except for +a small brass box, fastened only by a clasp. In his acute disappointment +Dundee took little interest in the collection of pretty but inexpensive +jewelry--Nita's trinkets, undoubtedly--which the brass box +contained.... No wedding ring among them.... + +In spite of his chagrin at not finding the gun, Dundee studied the +simple mechanism which Roger Crain's ingenuity had conceived. From the +outside, the eight-inch length of board fitted smoothly, giving no +indication whatever that it was otherwise than what it seemed--part of a +cheaply built wall. But Dundee's flashlight played upon the beveled +edges of both the short board and the two neighboring planks between +which it was fitted. The pivoting arrangement was of the simplest, the +small nickel-plated pieces being set into the short board and the other +two planks with small screws which did not pierce the painted outside +surface. + +His curiosity satisfied, Dundee stepped out of the closet into the tiny +foyer. He was about to leave when a terrific truth crashed through his +mind and froze his feet to the floor. + +_Of course the gun and silencer were not there!_ + +This was the _guest closet_! In it had hung the hat of every person who +had been Nita's guest, either for bridge or cocktails, that fatal +Saturday afternoon! + +_And to this closet, to retrieve hat, stick or--in the case of the +women, summer coat and hat--had come every person who had been +questioned and then searched by the police._ + +Dundee tried to recapture the picture of the stampede which had followed +upon his permission for all guests to go to their homes. But it was +useless. He had stayed in the living room with Strawn, had taken not the +slightest interest in the scramble for hats, coats and sticks. For +Strawn had previously assured him that the guest closet had been +thoroughly searched. + +So quickly that he felt slightly dizzy, Dundee's thoughts raced around +the new discovery. This changed everything, of course. Any one of half a +dozen persons could have arrived with the gun and silencer--not screwed +together, of course, because of the ungainly length--and seized the +opportunity presented by Nita's being alone in her bedroom to shoot her. +What easier, then, than to hide the weapon on this secret shelf, the +"door" of which yielded to the slightest pressure? And what easier than +to retrieve the weapon after permission had been granted to all to +return to their homes? Easy enough to manage to go alone to the closet +for a hat, the extra minute of time unnoticed in the general excitement. +It had been vitally necessary, too, to retrieve the weapon, since any +innocent member of that party might have remembered later to mention the +secret hiding place to the police--secret no longer since Judge Marshall +had gossiped about it.... + +Then another thought boiled up and demanded attention. In the new +theory, what place did the "bang or bump" have--that noise which Flora +Miles, concealed in Nita's closet, had dimly heard? Dundee had been +positive, when Lydia had discovered the shattered electric bulb in the +big bronze lamp that its position in Nita's room indicated the progress +of the flight of the murderer--flight diagonally across the room toward +the back hall. But now-- + +A little dashed, Dundee returned to the bedroom. The big lamp was where +he had first seen it--about a foot beyond the window nearest the porch, +and at the head of the chaise longue which was set between the two west +windows, where, according to Lydia, the lamp always stood. The too-long +cord lay slackly along the floor near the west wall, and extended to the +double outlet on the baseboard behind the bookcase.... _A slack cord!_ + +Down on his hands and knees Dundee went, to peer under the low bottom +shelf of the bookcase.... Yes! The pronged plug of the lamp cord had +been jerked almost out of the baseboard outlet! It was easy to visualize +what had happened: The murderer, after firing the shot, had +involuntarily taken a step or even several steps backward, until his +foot had caught in the loop of electric cord, causing the big lamp to be +thrown violently against the wall near which it stood.... But who? + +_Any one of half a dozen people!_ But--_who_? + + + + +CHAPTER NINETEEN + + +Having ticketed the big bronze lamp, which he had brought with him from +the Selim house, and locked it away in the room devoted to "exhibits for +the state," Bonnie Dundee hurried into Penny's office, primed with the +news of his discovery of the secret hiding place and eager to lay his +new theory before the district attorney. + +"Bill's gone," Penny interrupted her swift typing to inform him. "To +Chicago. He had only fifteen minutes to make the three o'clock train, +after he received a wire saying his mother is not expected to live. He +tried to reach you at the Selim house, but one of Captain Strawn's men +said you had left." + +"I stopped on my way in to get a bite to eat," Dundee explained +mechanically. "I'd dashed off without my lunch, you know." + +"Did you find the gun and silencer?" Penny asked. + +"No. Whoever used it Saturday afternoon walked out of the house with it, +in plain view of the police, and still has it.... Very convenient, too, +in case another murder seems to be expedient--or amusing." + +"Don't joke!" Penny shuddered. "But what in the world do you mean?" + +Briefly Dundee told her, minimizing the hard work, the concentrated +thinking, and the meticulous use of a tape measure which had resulted in +the discovery of the shelf between Nita's bedroom closet and the guest +closet in the little foyer. + +"I see," Penny agreed, her husky voice slow and weighted with horror. +She sat in dazed thought for a minute. "That rather brings it home to my +crowd--doesn't it?... To think that Dad--!... Probably everyone at the +party--except me--had heard all about Dad's 'simple and ingenious' +arrangement for hiding the securities he sent on to New York before he +ran away.... And no outsiders--nobody but _us_--had a legitimate excuse +for entering that closet.... Not even Dexter Sprague. It's one of his +affectations not to wear a hat--" + +"Is it?" Dundee pounced. "You're sure he wore no hat that afternoon? Did +you notice him when he left after I had dismissed you all?" + +"Yes," Penny acknowledged honestly. "I paid attention to him, because I +was hating him so. I believed then that he was the murderer, and I was +furious with you and Captain Strawn for not arresting him.... He was +the first to leave--just walked straight out; wouldn't even stop to talk +with Janet Raymond, who was trying to get a word with him. I saw him +start toward Sheridan Road--walking. He had no car, you know." + +"Did you observe the others?" Dundee demanded eagerly. "Do you know who +went _alone_ to the guest closet?" + +Penny shook her head. "Everybody was milling around in the hall, and I +paid no attention. Lois said she would drive me home, and then I went in +to ask you to let me stay behind with you--" + +"I remember.... Listen, Penny! I'm going to tell you something else that +nobody knows yet but Sanderson, Lydia and me. I don't have to ask you +not to tell any of your friends. You know well enough that anything you +learn from either Sanderson or me is strictly confidential." + +Penny nodded, her face very white and her brown eyes big with misery. + +"I have every reason to believe that Nita Selim was a blackmailer, that +she came to Hamilton for the express purpose of bleeding someone she had +known before, or someone on whom she had 'the goods' from some +underworld source or other.... At any rate, Nita banked ten thousand +mysterious dollars--$5,000 on April 28, and $5,000 on May 5. I talked to +Drake last night, and I have his word for it that the money was in bills +of varying denomination--none large--when Nita presented it for deposit. +Therefore it seems clear to me that Nita got the money right here in +Hamilton; otherwise it would have come to her in the form of checks or +drafts or money orders. And it seems equally clear to me that she did +not bring that large amount of cash from New York with her, or she would +have deposited it in a lump sum in the bank immediately after her +arrival." + +"Yes," Penny agreed. "But why are you telling _me_?... Of course I'm +interested--" + +"Because I want you to tell me the financial status of each of your +friends," Dundee said gently. "I know how hard it is for you--" + +"You could find out from others, so I might as well tell you," Penny +interrupted, with a weary shrug. "Judge Marshall is well-to-do, and +Karen's father--her mother is dead--settled $100,000 on her when she +married. She has complete control of her own money.... The Dunlaps are +the richest people in Hamilton, and have been for two or three +generations. Lois was 'first-family' but poor when she married Peter, +but he's been giving her an allowance of $20,000 a year for several +years--not for running the house, but for her personal use. Clothes, +charities, hobbies, like the Little Theater she brought Nita here to +organize--" + +"I wouldn't say she spends a great deal of it on dress," Dundee +interrupted with a grin. + +"Lois doesn't give a hang how she looks or what anyone thinks of +her--which is probably one reason she is the best-loved woman in our +crowd," Penny retorted loyally. "The Miles' money is really Flora's, +and she has the reputation of being one of the shrewdest business +'men' in town. When she married Tracey nearly eight years ago, he was +just a salesman in her father's business--the biggest dairy in the +state ... 'Cloverblossom' butter, cream, milk and cheese, you +know.... Well, when Flora married Tracey, her father retired and let +Tracey run the business for Flora, and he's still managing it, but Flora +is the real head.... Now, let's see.... Oh, yes, the Drakes!... Johnny +is vice president of the Hamilton National Bank, as you know, and owns +a big block of the stock. Carolyn has no money of her own, except what +Johnny gives her, and I rather think he isn't any too generous--" + +"They don't get along very well together, do they?" + +"N-no!" Penny agreed reluctantly. "You see, Johnny Drake was simply not +cut out for love and marriage. He's a born ascetic, would have been a +monk two or three centuries ago, but he cares as much for Carolyn as he +could for any woman.... The Hammond boys have some inherited money, and +Clive has made a big financial success of architecture.... That leaves +only Janet and Polly, doesn't it?... Polly's an orphan and has barrels +of money, and will have barrels more when her aunt, with whom she lives, +dies and leaves her the fortune she has always promised her." + +"And Janet Raymond?" + +"Janet's father is pretty rich--owns a big wire-fence factory, but Janet +has only a reasonable allowance," Penny answered. "As for me--I'm _very_ +rich: I get thirty-five whole dollars a week, to support myself and +Mother on." + +Dundee remained thoughtfully silent for a long minute. Then: "All you +girls are alumnae of Forsyte-on-the-Hudson, and Nita Selim came here +immediately after she had directed a Forsyte play.... Tell me, +Penny--was any of the Hamilton girls ever in disgrace while in the +Forsyte School?" + +Penny's face flamed. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, but so far as I know +there was never anything of the sort. Of course we all graduated +different years, except Karen and I, and I might not have heard--But +no!" she denied vehemently. "There wasn't any scandal on a Hamilton girl +ever! I'm sure of it!" + +But her very vehemence convinced Bonnie Dundee that she was not at all +sure.... + +He looked at his watch. Four o'clock.... By this time Nita Selim--tiny +cold body, royal blue velvet dress, black curls piled high in an +old-fashioned "French roll," bullet-torn heart--were nothing more than a +little heap of grey ashes.... Would Lydia Carr have them put in a sealed +urn and carry them about with her always? + +"I'm going out now, Penny, and I shan't be back today," he told the girl +who had returned to her furious typing. "I'll telephone in about an hour +to see if anything has come up.... By the way, how do I get to the +Dunlap house?" + +"It's in the Brentwood section. You know--that cluster of hills around +Mirror Lake. Most of the crowd live out there--the Drakes, the Mileses, +the Beales, the Marshalls. The Dunlap house stands on the highest hill +of all. It's grey stone, a little like a French chateau. We used to live +out there, too, in a Colonial house my mother's father built, but Dad +persuaded Mother to sell, when he went into that Primrose Meadows +venture. The Raymonds bought it.... But why do you want to see Lois?" + +"Thanks much, Penny. I don't know what I should do without you," Dundee +said, without answering her question, and reached for his hat. + +After ten minutes of driving, the last mile of which had circled a +smooth silver coin of a lake, Dundee stopped his car and let his eyes +rove appreciatively. He had made this trip the day before to question +Lydia, already installed as nurse for the Miles children, but he had +been in too great a hurry then to see much of this section consecrated +to Hamilton's socially elect.... + +Georgian "cottage," Spanish hacienda, Italian villa, Tudor mansion--that +was the Miles home; Colonial mansion where Penny had once lived; grey +stone chateau.... Not one of them blatantly new or marked with the +dollar sign. Dundee sighed a little enviously as he turned his car into +the winding driveway that led up the highest hill to the Dunlap home. + +Lois Dunlap betrayed no surprise when the butler led Dundee to the +flag-stoned upper terrace overlooking Mirror Lake, where she was having +tea with her three children and their governess. For a moment the +detective had the illusion that he was in England again.... + +"How do you do, Mr. Dundee?... This is Miss Burden.... My three +offspring--Peter the third, Eleanor, and Bobby.... Will you please take +the children to the playroom now, Miss Burden?... Thank you!... Tea, Mr. +Dundee? Or shall I order you a highball?" + +"Nothing, thanks," Dundee answered, grateful for her friendliness but +nonplussed by it. Not for the first time he felt a sick distaste for the +profession he had chosen.... + +"It's all over," Lois Dunlap said in a low voice, as the butler +retreated. "Lydia made her look very beautiful.... I thought it would be +rather horrible, having to see her, as the poor child requested in her +note to Lydia, but I'm glad now I did. She looked as sweet and young and +innocent as she must have been when she first wore the royal blue +velvet." + +"I'm glad," Dundee said sincerely. Then he leaned toward her across the +tea table. "Mrs. Dunlap, will you please tell me just how you persuaded +Mrs. Selim to come to Hamilton--so far from Broadway?" + +"Why certainly!" Lois Dunlap looked puzzled. "But it really did not take +much persuasion after I showed her some group photographs we had made +when we Forsyte girls put on 'The Beggar's Opera' here last October--a +benefit performance for the Forsyte Alumnae Scholarship fund." + +With difficulty Dundee controlled his excitement. "May I see those +photographs, please?" + +"I had to hunt quite a bit for them," his hostess apologized ten minutes +later, as she spread the glossy prints of half a dozen photographs for +Dundee's inspection. "Do you know 'The Beggar's Opera'?" + +"John Gay--eighteenth century, isn't it?... As I remember it, it is +quite--" and Dundee hesitated, grinning. + +"Bawdy?" Lois laughed. "Oh, very! We couldn't have got away with it if +it hadn't been a classic. As it was, we had to tone down some of the +naughtiest passages and songs. But it was lots of fun, and the boys +enjoyed it hugely because it gave them an opportunity to wear tight +satin breeches and lace ruffles.... This is my husband, Peter. He adored +being the highwayman, 'Robin of Bagshot'," and she pointed out a stocky, +belligerent-looking man near the end of the long row of costumed +players, in a photograph which showed the entire cast. + +"You say that Mrs. Selim accepted your proposal _after_ she saw these +photographs?" Dundee asked. "Had she refused before?" + +"Yes. I'd gone to New York for the annual Easter Play which the Forsyte +School puts on, because I'm intensely interested in semi-professional +theatricals," Lois explained. "Nita had done a splendid job with the +play the year before, and I spoke to her, after this year's show was +over, about coming to Hamilton. She was not at all interested, but +polite and sweet about it, so I invited her to have lunch with me the +next day, and showed her these photographs of our own play in the hope +that they would make her take the idea more seriously. We had borrowed a +Little Theater director from Chicago and I knew we had done a really +good job of 'The Beggar's Opera.' The local reviews--" + +"These 'stills' look extremely professional. I don't wonder that they +interested Nita," Dundee cut in. "Will you tell me what she said?" + +"She rather startled me," Lois Dunlap confessed. "I first showed her +this picture of the whole cast, and as I was explaining the play a +bit--she didn't know 'The Beggar's Opera'--she almost snatched the +photograph out of my hands. As she studied it, her lovely black eyes +grew perfectly enormous. I've never seen her so excited since--" + +"What did she say?" Dundee interrupted tensely. + +"Why, she said nothing just at first, then she began to laugh in the +queerest way--almost hysterically. I asked her why she was laughing--I +was a little huffy, I'm afraid--and she said the men looked so adorably +conceited and funny. Then she began to ask the names of the players. I +told her that 'Macheath'--he's the highwayman hero, you know--was played +by Clive Hammond; that my Peter was 'Robin of Bagshot', that Johnny +Drake was another highwayman, 'Mat of the Mint', that Tracey Miles +played the jailor, 'Lockit'--" + +"Did she show more interest in one name than another?" + +"Yes. When I pointed out Judge Marshall as 'Peachum', the fence, she +cried out suddenly: 'Why, I know him! I met him once on a party.... Is +he really a _judge_?' and she laughed as if she knew something very +funny about Hugo--as no doubt she did. He was an inveterate +'lady-killer' before his marriage, as you may have heard." + +"Do you think her first excitement was over seeing Judge Marshall among +the players?" Dundee asked. + +"No," Lois answered, after considering a moment. "I'm sure she didn't +notice him until I pointed him out. The face in this group that seemed +to interest her most was Flora Miles'. Flora played the part of 'Lucy +Lockit', the jailor's daughter, and Karen Marshall the other feminine +lead, 'Polly Peachum', you know. But it was Flora's picture she lingered +over, so I showed her this picture," and Lois Dunlap reached for the +portrait of Flora Miles, unexpectedly beautiful in the eighteenth +century costume--tight bodice and billowing skirts. + +"She questioned you about Mrs. Miles?" Dundee asked. + +"Yes. All sorts of questions--her name, and whether she was married and +then who her husband was, and if she had had stage experience," Lois +answered conscientiously. "She explained her interest by saying Flora +looked more like a professional actress than any of the others, and that +we should give her a real chance when we got our Little Theater going. I +asked her if that meant she was going to accept my offer, and she said +she might, but that she would have to talk it over with a friend first. +Just before midnight she telephoned me at my hotel that she had decided +to accept the job." + +Dundee's heart leaped. It was very easy to guess who that "friend" was! +But he controlled his excitement, asked his next question casually: + +"Did she show particular interest in any other player?" + +"Yes. She asked a number of questions about Polly Beale, and seemed +incredulous when I told her that Polly and Clive were engaged. Polly +played 'Mrs. Peachum', and was a riot in the part.... But Nita's +intuition was correct. Flora carried off the acting honors.... Oh, yes, +she also asked, quite naïvely, if all my friends were rich, too, and +could help support a Little Theater. I reassured her on that point." + +"And," Dundee reflected silently, "upon a point much more important to +Nita Selim." Aloud he said: "I don't see _you_ among the cast." + +"Oh, I haven't a grain of talent," Lois Dunlap laughed. "I can't act for +two cents--can I, Peter darling?... Here's the redoubtable 'Robin of +Bagshot' in person, Mr. Dundee--my husband!" + +The detective rose to shake hands with the man he had been too absorbed +to see or hear approaching. + +"You're the man from the district attorney's office?" Peter Dunlap +scowled, his hand barely touching Dundee's. "I suppose you're trying to +get at the bottom of the mystery of why my wife brought that Selim +woman--" + +"Don't call her 'that Selim woman', Peter!" Lois Dunlap interrupted with +more sharpness than Dundee had ever seen her display. "You never liked +the poor girl, were never just to her--" + +"Well, it looks as if my hunch was correct, doesn't it?" the stocky, +rugged-faced man retorted. "I told you at the beginning to pay her off +and send her back to New York--" + +"You knew I couldn't do that, even to please you, dear," Lois said. "But +please don't let's quarrel about poor Nita again. She's dead now, and I +want to do anything I can to help bring her murderer to justice." + +"There's nothing you can do, Lois, and I hope Mr.--ah--Dundee will not +find it necessary to quiz you again." + +Dundee reached for his hat. "I hope so, too, Mr. Dunlap.... By the way, +you are president of the Chamber of Commerce, aren't you?" + +"Yes, I am! And we're having a meeting tonight, at which that Sprague +man's bid on making a historical movie of Hamilton will be turned +down--unanimously. Now that the Selim woman isn't here to vamp my +fellow-members into doing anything she wants, I think I can safely +promise you that Dexter Sprague will have no further business in +Hamilton--unless it is police business!" + +"Thanks for the tip, Mr. Dunlap," Dundee said evenly. "I hope you +enjoyed your fishing trip. Where do you fish, sir?" + +"A tactful way of asking for my alibi, eh?" Dunlap was heavily +sarcastic. "I left Friday afternoon for my own camp in the mountains, up +in the northwest part of the state. I drove my own car, went alone, +spent the week-end alone, and got back this noon. I read of the murder +in a paper I picked up in a village on my way home. I didn't like Nita +Selim, and I don't give a damn about her being murdered, except that my +wife's name is in all the papers.... Any questions?" + +"None, thanks!" Dundee answered curtly, then turned to Lois Dunlap who +was watching the two men with troubled, embarrassed eyes. "I am very +grateful to you, Mrs. Dunlap, for your kindness." + +The detective's angry resentment of Peter Dunlap's attitude lasted until +he had circled Mirror Lake and was on the road into Hamilton. Then +commonsense intervened. Dunlap was undoubtedly devoted to his wife. +Penny had said that he had "never looked at another woman." It was +rather more than natural that he should be in a futile, blustering rage +at the outcome of Lois' friendship for the little Broadway dancer.... + +Free of anger, his mind reverted to the story Lois Dunlap had told him. +For in it, he was sure, was hidden the key to the mystery of Nita +Selim's murder. Not at all interested in the proposition to organize a +Little Theater in Hamilton, Nita had been seized with a strange +excitement as soon as she was shown photographs of a large group of +Hamilton's richest and most prominent inhabitants.... But there was the +rub! _A large group!_ Would that group of possible suspects never narrow +down to one? Of course there was Judge Marshall, but if Lois Dunlap's +memory was to be trusted Nita had not noticed the elderly Beau Brummel's +picture until _after_ that strange, hysterical excitement had taken +possession of her. And if it had been Judge Marshall whom she had come +to Hamilton to blackmail would Nita not have guarded her tongue before +Lois? The same was true about her extraordinary interest in Flora +Miles.... + +Dundee tried to put himself in Nita's place, confronted suddenly with a +group picture containing the likeness of a person--man or woman--against +whom she knew something so dreadful and so secret that her silence would +be worth thousands of dollars. Would _he_ have chattered of that very +person? No! Of anyone else but that particular person! It was easy to +picture Nita, her head whirling with possibilities, hitting upon the +most conspicuous player in the group--dark, tense, theatrical Flora, +already pointed out to her as one of the two female leads in the +opera.... But of whom had she really been thinking? + +Again a blank wall! For in that group photograph of the cast of "The +Beggar's Opera" had appeared every man, woman and girl who had been +Nita's guest on the day of her murder.... + +Dundee, paying more attention to his driving, now that he was in the +business section of the city, saw ahead of him the second-rate hotel +where Dexter Sprague had been living since Nita had wired him to join +her in Hamilton. On a sudden impulse the detective parked his car in +front of the hotel and five minutes later was knocking upon Sprague's +door. + +"Well, what do you want now?" the unshaven, pallid man demanded +ungraciously. + +Dundee stepped into the room and closed the door. "I want you to tell me +the name of the man Nita Selim came here to blackmail, Sprague." + +"Blackmail?" Sprague echoed, his pallid cheeks going more yellow. +"You're crazy! Nita came here to take a job--" + +"She came here to blackmail someone, and I am convinced that she sent +for you to act as a partner in her scheme.... No, wait! I'm _convinced_, +I tell you," Dundee assured him grimly. "But I'll make a trade with you, +in behalf of the district attorney. Tell me the name of the person she +blackmailed, and I will promise you immunity from prosecution as her +accomplice." + +"Get out of my room!" and Dexter Sprague's right forefinger trembled +violently as it pointed toward the door in a melodramatic gesture. + +"Very well, Sprague," Dundee said. "But let me give you a friendly +warning. _Don't try to carry on the good work._ Nita got ten thousand +dollars, but she also got a bullet through her heart. And the gun which +fired that bullet is safely back in the hands of the killer.... You're +not going to get that movie job, and I was just afraid you might be +tempted!... Good afternoon!" + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY + + +It was Wednesday evening, four whole days since Nita Leigh Selim, +Broadway dancer, had been murdered while she was dummy at bridge. +Plainclothesmen, in pairs, day and night shifts, still guarded the +lonely house in Primrose Meadows, but Dundee had taken no interest in +the actual scene of the crime since Carraway, fingerprint expert, had +reported negatively upon the secret shelf between Nita's bedroom closet +and the guest closet. So far as any tangible evidence went, only +Dundee's fingers had pressed upon the pivoting panel and explored the +narrow shelf. + +The very lack of fingerprints had of course confirmed Dundee's belief +that the murderer's hand had pressed upon that swinging panel, had +quested in vain for the incriminating documents or letters which had +been the basis of Nita's blackmail scheme, had deposited upon the shelf +the gun and silencer with which the murder had been accomplished, and +had later retrieved the weapon in perfect safety. A hand loosely wrapped +in a handkerchief or protected by a glove.... The hand of a cunning, +careful, cold-blooded murderer--or murderess.... But--who? _Who?_ + +Bonnie Dundee, brooding at his desk in the living room of his small +apartment, reflected bitterly that he was no nearer the answer to that +question than he had been an hour after Nita Selim's death. + +"Well, 'my dear Watson'," he addressed his caged parrot finally. "What +do you say?... Who killed Nita Selim?" + +The parrot stirred on his perch, thrust out his hooked beak to nip his +master's prodding finger, then disdainfully turned his back. + +"I don't blame you, Cap'n," Dundee chuckled. "You must be as sick of +that question as I am.... And what a pity it ever had to be asked! If +the murderer had not been so hasty--or so pressed for time that he +really could not wait to listen to Nita--he would have learned from +Nita herself that she had decided to be a very good girl, and had burned +the 'papers'--all because she was genuinely in love with Ralph +Hammond.... One comfort we have, 'my dear Watson': the murderer still +does not know that Nita burned the papers Friday night. Sooner or later, +when he believes police vigilance has been relaxed, he'll go prowling +about that house, and to Captain Strawn, who doesn't take the slightest +stock in my theory, will go credit for the arrest.... Unless--" + +Dundee reached for a telegraph form and again scanned the pencilled +message. Only that afternoon had it occurred to him to ask the telegraph +company for a copy of the wire by which Dexter Sprague, according to his +own story, had been summoned to Hamilton by Nita Selim. + +The manager had been obliging, had looked up the message and copied it +with his own hand. It was a night letter, and had been filed in Hamilton +April 24--the third day after Nita's arrival. Addressed to Dexter +Sprague, at a hotel in the theatrical district, New York City, the +message read: + + "EVERYTHING JAKE SO FAR BUT WOULD FEEL SAFER YOU HERE CHAMBER OF + COMMERCE PLANNING BOOSTER MOVIE FOUNDING AND DEVELOPMENT OF + HAMILTON LOOKING GOOD DIRECTOR WHY NOT TRY FOR JOB AS GOOD EXCUSE + ALL MY LOVE--NITA" + +Dundee laid the paper on his desk, locked his hands behind his head, and +addressed the parrot again. The habit of using the bird for an audience +and as an excuse for puzzling and mulling aloud had grown on him during +the year he had owned the doughty old Cap'n. + +"As I was about to say, 'my dear Watson', Captain Strawn's boys out at +the Selim house will have their chance to nab our man--or woman--unless +Dexter Sprague ignores my warning, pretends to have the papers himself, +and tries to carry on the blackmail scheme, which he undoubtedly knew +all about and which, most probably, he encouraged Nita to undertake--the +'friend' she had to consult, you know, before she decided to accept Lois +Dunlap's offer." + +The parrot interrupted with a hoarse cackle. + +"Have you gone over to the enemy, Cap'n?" Dundee reproved the bird. "You +sound exactly like Strawn when he laughed at my interpretation of this +message this afternoon. My late chief contends--and it is just possible, +of course, that he is right--that Nita was afraid she couldn't swing the +job of organizing and directing Lois' Little Theater, and wanted Sprague +here, both as lover and unofficial assistant. But that's a pretty thin +explanation, don't you think, 'my dear Watson'?... Oh, all right! Laugh, +damn you! But I'd feel better if Strawn had taken my advice and set a +dick to trail Sprague, to see that he keeps out of mischief.... All +this, however, gets us no nearer to answering that eternal +question--'Who?'" + +With a deep sigh the troubled young special investigator reached for the +"Time Table" he had drafted from his notes made during the grisly +replaying of the "death hand at bridge," and scanned it again: + + 5:20--Flora Miles, dummy, Table No. 1, leaves living room to + telephone. + + 5:22--Clive Hammond arrives and goes directly into solarium. + + 5:23--End of rubber at Table No. 1. Players: Polly Beale, Janet + Raymond, Lois Dunlap, Flora Miles (dummy). Polly Beale leaves + living room to join Clive Hammond in solarium. + + 5:24--Janet Raymond leaves room; says she went straight to front + porch. + + 5:25--Tracey Miles parks car at curb; walks up to the house, hangs + up hat in clothes closet and at (his estimate) + + 5:27--Miles enters living room, talks with Nita, who, as dummy, has + just laid down her cards at Table No. 2. Players: Karen Marshall, + Penny Crain, Carolyn Drake. + + 5:28--Nita leaves living room, goes to her bedroom to make up. + + 5:28-1/2--Lois Dunlap and Miles go into dining room, Miles to make + cocktails. + + 5:31--Judge Marshall enters living room, interrupts bridge game. + + 5:33--John C. Drake enters living room, having walked from Country + Club, which he says he left at 5:10, and which is only + three-quarters of a mile from the Selim house. + + 5:36--Karen finishes playing of hand, and Dexter Sprague and Janet + Raymond enter from front porch, proceeding into dining room. + + 5:37--Penny Crain finishes scoring, and Karen leaves room to tell + Nita the score. + + 5:38--Karen screams upon discovering the dead body at the + dressing-table. + +Dundee laid aside the typed sheet and reached for another, the typing of +which was perfect, since Penny's efficient fingers had manipulated the +keys. + +When he had telephoned to the office just before five o'clock Monday +afternoon to see if anything had come up, Dundee had learned from Penny +that Peter Dunlap had issued an informal call to "the crowd" for a +meeting at his home that evening. + +"You're going, of course?" Dundee had asked. "Then, during the +discussion of the case, I wish you'd try to get the answers to some +questions which need clearing up--if you can do so without getting +yourself 'in Dutch' with your friends.... Fine! Got a pencil?... Here +goes!" + +And now he was re-reading the "report" she had conscientiously written +and left on his desk Tuesday morning: + +"Peter, declaring he wanted to get at the bottom of this case, presided +almost like a judge on the bench, and asked nearly every question you +wanted the answer to. Everyone in the crowd adores gruff old Peter and +no one dreamed of resenting his barrage of questions. What a detective +_he_ would make! + +"First: Janet admitted that she did not go directly to the front porch +when she left the living room after her table finished the last rubber. +Went first to the hall lavatory to comb her hair and renew her make-up. +Said she was there alone about five minutes, then went to the front +porch. (Revised her story after Tracey had said he did not see her on +the porch when he arrived.) + +"Second: Judge Marshall said he glanced into the living room when he +arrived, saw Karen, Carolyn and me absorbed in our game, and went on +down the hall, to hang up his hat and stick. Proceeded immediately to +the living room. + +"Third: John Drake told Peter he entered the front hall and passed on to +the lavatory to wash up. Felt sticky after his walk from the Country +Club. Hung up hat in the guest closet. Went to living room within three +minutes after reaching the house. + +"Fourth: Polly and Clive told Peter they stayed together in the solarium +the whole time, stationed at a front window, watching for Ralph. When +Peter asked them if they could confirm Judge Marshall's story and Johnny +Drake's story, they said they had seen them both arrive, but had paid no +attention to them after they were in the house. It occurred to Peter, +too, to wonder if either Polly or Clive went to Nita's room to warn her +that Ralph knew about Sprague's having slept the night before in the +upstairs bedroom. They both denied emphatically that they had done so. + +"Fifth: Judge Marshall--the pompous old darling--still smarting under +the insinuations you made about him and Nita right after the murder, +volunteered the information to Peter that Nita had _not_ paid her rent, +on the plea that she was short of funds, and that he had told her to let +it go until it was quite convenient. + +"Sixth: The word 'blackmail' was not mentioned, and Johnny Drake, +because of professional ethics, I suppose, did not tell about Nita's two +deposits of $5,000 each in his bank. + +"Seventh: The secret shelf in the foyer closet was not mentioned. + +"Peter's verdict, after he got through with us, was that only Sprague +could have done it--using the gun and silencer which Nita herself had +stolen from Hugo. I couldn't tell him that you are convinced that +Lydia's alibi for him is a genuine one, for apparently Lydia hasn't told +either Flora or Tracey that she was able to furnish Sprague an alibi. + +"And that's all, except that Peter asked me to convey to you his +apologies for his rudeness Monday afternoon.... Penelope Crain." + +With a deep sigh Dundee laid Penny's report aside. + +"And that does seem to be all, 'my dear Watson'," he told the parrot. +"Exactly half a dozen possible suspects, and not an atom of actual +evidence against one of them--except that Judge Marshall owned the gun. +Six--count 'em: Judge Marshall, John Drake, Flora Miles, Clive Hammond, +Polly Beale, Janet Raymond.... Every single one of them a possible +victim of blackmail, since the girls all attended the Forsyte School, +where Nita directed the Easter play for two years, and since the men +make several trips a year to New York.... Six people, all of whom +probably knew of the existence of the secret shelf.... Six people who +knew Nita was in her bedroom, either from having seen her go or from +hearing her powder box tinkling its damnable tune!... Yes, Penny! You're +right! That's all--so far as Hamilton is concerned! If Sanderson won't +let me go to New York--which is where this damned business started--I'll +resign and go on my own, without wasting another day here!" + +But Dundee did not go to New York the next morning. He was far too busy +in Hamilton.... + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE + + +"Hello, Penny!" Dundee greeted the district attorney's private secretary +Thursday morning at five minutes after nine. "Any news from Sanderson?" + +"Yes," Penny Crain answered listlessly. "A night letter. He says his +mother is still very low and that we're to wire him at the Good +Samaritan Hospital in Chicago if anything turns up." + +"Then I suppose I can reach him there by long distance," and Dundee +lifted the telephone from Penny's desk to put in the call. + +"What's happened?" Penny demanded, her brown eyes wide and startled. + +"And hurry it up, will you, please?" Dundee urged the long distance +operator before hanging up the receiver and answering Penny's question. +"That's just the trouble--nothing's happened, and nothing is very likely +to happen here. I'm determined to go to New York and work on this pesky +case from that end--" + +"Then you've come around to Captain Strawn's theory that it was a New +York gunman?" Penny asked hopefully. + +"Not by a jugful!... But what's the matter with you this morning, young +woman? You're looking less like a new penny and more like one that has +been too much in circulation." + +"Thanks!" Penny retorted sarcastically; then she grinned wryly. "You are +right, as a matter of fact. I was up too late last night--bridge at the +Mileses'." + +"_Bridge!_" Dundee ejaculated incredulously. "So the bridge party _did_ +take place, in spite of the society editor's discreet announcement +yesterday that 'owing to the tragic death of Mrs. Selim, the regular +every-other-Wednesday dinner-bridge of the Forsyte Alumnae Association +will not be held this evening at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Tracey Miles, +as scheduled'." + +"It wasn't a 'dinner-bridge' and it really wasn't intended to be a +party," Penny corrected him. "It just sort of happened, and of all the +ghastly evenings--" + +"Tell me about it," Dundee suggested. "Knowing this town's telephone +service as I do, I'll have plenty of time to listen, and you don't know +how all-agog I am for inside gossip on Hamilton's upper crust." + +"Idiot!" Penny flung at him scornfully. "You know society would bore you +to death, but I don't think you would have been exactly bored last +night, knowing, as I do, your opinion of Dexter Sprague." + +"Sprague? Good Lord! Was he there?... This does promise to be +interesting! Tell me all!" + +"Give me time!" Penny snapped. "I might as well talk, since there's +almost no work for me to do, with Bill away.... Ralph called me up last +night at dinner time, and asked me if I felt equal to playing bridge +again. He said that he, Clive, Tracey and Johnny Drake had lunched +together yesterday--as they frequently do--at the Athletic Club, and +that Judge Marshall, who had been lunching at another table with his +friend, Attorney Sampson, stopped at their table and suggested a bridge +game at his home for last night. Hugo said he wanted to coax Karen into +playing again, so she would get over her hysterical aversion to the game +since she had to replay that awful 'death hand'.... You see," Penny +explained parenthetically, "Hugo is a regular bridge fiend, and +naturally he doesn't want to be kept out of his game." + +"Brute!" Dundee cried disgustedly. "Why couldn't he give the poor girl a +few days more?" + +"That's what I thought," Penny acknowledged. "But _I_ didn't get an +inhibition against bridge, and the idea rather appealed to me +personally. The last few days haven't been particularly cheerful ones, +so I told Ralph I'd be glad to go. Tracey had suggested his house, +instead of Hugo's, because Betty wasn't well yesterday and Flora +wouldn't want to leave her for a whole evening. Well, Ralph and I--" + +"Are you going to marry Ralph Hammond, Penny?" Dundee interrupted, as if +prompted by casual interest. + +Penny's pale face flushed vividly. "No. I'm not in love with him, and +I'm sure he realizes I'm not and won't ask me again. But I _had_ to say +yes Sunday! I simply couldn't let you walk in on us, after I'd permitted +you to eavesdrop while he was talking, without first saying the one +thing that would convince him that I believed in his innocence and +hadn't set a trap for him." + +"I see!" Dundee acknowledged soberly, but his blue eyes shone +with sudden joy. "Oh! There's long distance! Just a minute, +darling!... Hello! Hello!... Yes, this is Dundee.... Oh! All right! +Try again in fifteen minutes, will you?" He hung up the receiver and +explained to Penny: "Sanderson hasn't reached the hospital yet, but is +expected soon.... Go on with your story.... Who all played bridge at +the Mileses'? You don't mean to say Dexter Sprague was invited, too!" + +Penny's face was still a brilliant pink as she answered: "I refuse to +have my climax spoiled!... When Ralph and I got there at eight, we found +that Peter and Lois had dined with Tracey and Flora and that they were +delighted at the prospect of bridge, as a relief from endless +discussions of the murder. We'd hardly got there when the Marshalls +came, poor little Karen not suspecting that she was going to have to +play. Then came Johnny Drake alone, with the news that Carolyn was in +bed and very miserable with a summer cold. Polly walked over from her +house, which is on the next hill to the right, you know. She said Clive +had decided to work late at the office, and had promised to call for her +about eleven, to take her home." + +"What about Janet Raymond? Was she left out?" Dundee asked. + +"I told you it wasn't a planned affair," Penny reminded him. "But Flora +did telephone her, and she said she didn't feel like coming. She's been +moping about like a sick cat since Nita's death. We all knew she was +idiotically in love with Dexter Sprague, and it must have been an awful +blow to her to hear you read aloud that note Nita received from +Sprague." + +"So I noticed," Dundee nodded, recalling the deathly pallor of the +girl's face as Sprague had glibly explained away that damning note and +all its implications. + +"Well," Penny continued, "Tracey suggested bridge, and at first Karen +flatly refused to play, but Hugo finally persuaded her.... Karen would +do absolutely _anything_ for that ridiculous old husband of hers! I +simply can't understand it--how she can be in love with him, I mean!" + +"I thought you liked Judge Marshall," Dundee laughed. + +"Oh, I do--in a way.... But fancy a young girl like Karen being in love +with him!... Well, anyway, we all went out to the east porch, which is +kept in readiness for bridge all summer. Iron bridge tables, covered +with oilcloth, and with oilcloth pouches for the cards and score pads, +so there's never any bother about scurrying in with things on account of +rain. It's a roofed, stone-floored porch, right outside the living-room, +and under it are the garages, so it's high and cool, with a grand view +of Mirror Lake down below, and of the city in the distance." She sighed, +and Dundee knew that she was thinking of her own lost home in +Brentwood--the fine old Colonial mansion which had been sacrificed to +her father's disastrous Primrose Meadows venture. Then she went on: "I +don't know why I am telling you all this, except that the setting was so +pleasant that we should have had a much better time than we did." + +"You're an artful minx, Penny!" Dundee chuckled. "You're working up +suspense for the entrance of the villain!" + +"Then let me do it justice," Penny retorted. "Lois and Peter, Ralph and +I, made up one table for bridge; Tracey and Polly, Judge Marshall and +Karen the other. Flora said she didn't want to play, because she wanted +to be free to keep an eye on Betty, although she protested she had +perfect faith in Lydia, who, Flora says, is proving to be a marvel with +the children. And Johnny Drake asked her to play anagrams with him, in +between trips to the nursery. Johnny has a perfect pash for anagrams, +and is a wow at 'em. So Tracey got the box of anagrams out of the trophy +room--" + +"The trophy room?" Dundee repeated, amused. + +"That's what Tracey calls it," Penny explained impatiently, "because he +has a couple of golf cups and Flora has an immense silver atrocity which +testifies to the fact that she was the 'lady's tennis champion' of the +state for one year. There are also some mounted fish and some deer heads +with incredible antlers, but the room is really used as a catch-all for +all the sports things--racquets, golf clubs, skis, ping-pong table, +etc.... Anyway, Tracey brought out the box of anagrams, and we were all +having a pretty good time when, at half past eight, the butler announced +'_Mr. Dexter Sprague_'!" + +"Your tone makes me wish I'd been there," Dundee acknowledged. "What +happened?" + +"You know how slap-em-on-the-back Tracey always is?" Penny asked, +grinning. "Well, you should have seen him and heard him as he dismissed +poor Whitson--the butler--as if he were giving him notice, instead of +letting him off for the night! And the icy dignity with which he greeted +poor Sprague--" + +"_Poor_ Sprague?" Dundee echoed. + +"Well, after all, Sprague _had_ been received by all the crowd before +Nita's death," Penny retorted. "I think it was rather natural for him to +think he'd still be welcome. He began to apologize for his uninvited +presence, saying he had felt lonesome and depressed and had just 'jumped +into a taxi' and come along, hoping to find the Mileses in. Flora tried +to act the lady hostess, but Peter got up from his bridge table and said +in tones even icier than Tracey's: 'Will you excuse me, Flora? And will +you take my place, Drake?... I'm going into the library. I don't enjoy +the society of murderers!'" + +"Good Lord!" Dundee ejaculated, shocked but admiring. "Did Sprague make +a quick exit?" + +"Not just then," Penny said mysteriously. "Of course everyone was simply +stunned, but Sprague retorted cheerfully, 'Neither do I, Dunlap!' Peter +stalked on into the living room on his way to the library, Johnny took +his place at the bridge table, and Tracey, at an urgent signal from +Flora, offered his seat at the other table to Sprague, as if he were +making way for a leper. Poor Polly had to be Sprague's partner. Flora, +as if she were terrified at what might happen--you know how frightfully +tense and nervous she is--made an excuse to run upstairs for a look at +Betty." + +"And something terrible did happen," Dundee guessed. "You're looking +positively ghoulish. Out with it!" + +"After about half an hour of playing without pivoting," Penny went on +imperturbably, "Hugo bid three spades, Karen raised him--in a trembling +voice--to five spades, Hugo of course went to a little slam, and Dexter +Sprague, if you can believe me, said: 'Better not leave the table, +Karen. _A little slam-bid in spades has been known to be fatal to the +dummy!_'" + +"_No!_" Dundee was genuinely shocked, but before he could say more the +telephone rang. "Sanderson at last.... Hello! Chicago?... Oh, hello, +Captain Strawn!... _What's that?_... Oh, my God!... Where did you say +the body is?" + +He listened for a long minute, then, with a dazed "Thanks! I'll be +over," he hung up the receiver. + +"Sprague--murdered!" he answered the horrified question in Penny's eyes. +"Body discovered this morning about nine by one of the Miles' maids, in +what you described just now as the 'trophy room'.... Shot--just below +the breastbone, Captain Strawn says." + +"The trophy room!" Penny cried. "Then--_that's_ where he was all the +time after he disappeared so strangely last night--" + +"Whoa, Penny!" Dundee commanded. "Get hold of yourself! You're shaking +all over.... I want to know everything _you_ know--as quickly and as +accurately as you can tell it. Go right on--" + +"Poor Dexter!" Penny groaned, covering her convulsed face with her +hands. "To think that he was _dead_ when we were saying such horrid +things about him--" + +"Don't waste sympathy on him, honey!" Dundee cut in, his voice very +gentle but urgent. "If he had heeded my warning Monday he wouldn't be +dead now." + +"What do you mean?" Penny gasped, but she was already calmer. "Your +warning--?" + +"I had a strong suspicion that he was mixed up with Nita in her +blackmail scheme and I took the trouble to warn him not to try to carry +on with it. Yesterday afternoon I begged Strawn to have him shadowed to +see that he kept out of mischief. I was afraid the temptation would be +too strong for him, but Strawn wouldn't listen to me--still clinging to +his theory of a New York gunman.... Feeling better now, honey? Can you +go on? I want to get out to the Miles house as soon as I can." + +"You're getting very--affectionate, aren't you?" Penny gave him a wobbly +smile in which, however, there was no reproof. "I think I can go on +now--. Where was I?" + +"Good girl!" Dundee applauded, but his heart was beating hard with +something more than excitement over Sprague's murder. "You'd just told +me about Sprague's warning Karen not to leave the table when she became +dummy after Judge Marshall's little slam bid in spades." + +"I remember," Penny said, pressing her fingers into her temples. "But +Karen _did_ leave the table. When Sprague said that awful thing, poor +Karen burst into tears and ran from the porch into the living room, Hugo +started to follow her, but Sprague halted him by apologizing very +humbly, and then by adding: 'I'd really like to see you play this hand, +sir. I believe I've got the cards to set you with....' Of course he +could not have said anything better calculated to hold Hugo, who, as I +said, is a regular fiend when it comes to bridge.... Well, Hugo played +the hand and made his little slam, and then he again started to go look +for Karen, but Polly, who was Sprague's partner, you know, told him in +that brusque way of hers to go on with the game and give Karen a chance +to have her little weep in peace. Probably Hugo would have gone to look +for her anyway, but just then Flora came back. She said Betty was asleep +at last and that her temperature was normal, and when she heard about +Karen, she offered to take her hand until Karen felt like coming back." + +"What did Drake do then? He'd been playing anagrams with Mrs. Miles, you +said," Dundee interrupted. + +"Don't you remember?--I told you Johnny had taken Peter's place at our +table after Peter refused to breathe the same air as Dexter Sprague," +Penny reminded him. "Ralph and I, Lois and Johnny were playing together, +and just at the time I became dummy, Sprague became dummy at the other +table. He rose, saying he had to go telephone for a taxi, and passed +from the porch into the living room--" + +"Where is the telephone?" + +"The one the guests use is on a table in the hall closet, where we put +our things," Penny explained. "You can shut the door and hold a +perfectly private conversation.... Well, _we never saw Dexter Sprague +again_!" + +"Good Lord! Another bridge dummy murdered!" Dundee groaned. "At least +the newspapers will be happy!... Didn't anyone go to look for him after +the hand was played?" + +"Not straight off," Penny answered, with an obvious effort to remember +clearly every detail. "Let's see--Oh, yes! That hand was played out +before Ralph had finished playing his, at our table, so I was free to +pay attention to the other table. Flora said that since they couldn't +play another hand until Dexter came back, she thought she'd better hunt +up Karen, who hadn't come back yet." + +"How long was Mrs. Miles away from the porch?" Dundee asked quickly. + +"Oh, I don't know--ten minutes, maybe. She came back alone, saying she +had found Karen in her bedroom--Flora's room, of course--crying +inconsolably. Flora told Hugo he'd better go up to her himself, since +she evidently had her feelings hurt because he hadn't followed her in +the first place. Tracey, who wasn't playing bridge, you remember, +because he had given up his place to Sprague, asked Flora if she'd seen +Sprague, and Flora said, in a surprised voice, 'No! I wonder where he is +all this time,' and Polly said that probably he'd gone to the lavatory, +which opens into the main hall and is next to the library.... Well, +pretty soon Judge Marshall and Karen came back--" + +"Pretty soon?--Just how long was Judge Marshall gone?" Dundee pressed +her, his pencil, which had been flying to take down her every word, +poised over the notebook he had snatched from her desk. + +"I can't say exactly!" Penny protested thornily. "I was playing again at +the other table. I suppose it was about ten minutes, for Ralph and I had +made another rubber, I remember.... Anyway, Karen was smiling like a +baby that has had a lot of petting, but she said Hugo had promised her +she wouldn't have to play bridge any more that evening, so Flora +remained at that table, playing opposite Hugo, while Tracey played with +Polly. As soon as Tracey became dummy, Flora suggested he go look for +Sprague." + +"And how long was _he_ gone from the porch?" Dundee asked. + +"Less than no time," Penny assured him. "He was back before Polly had +finished playing the hand. He said he'd gone to the hall closet, where +Whitson, the butler, would have put Sprague's hat and stick, and that he +had found they were gone.... Well--and you needn't put down 'well' every +time I say it!" Penny interrupted herself tartly. "Tracey said he +supposed Sprague had ordered his taxi and had decided to walk down the +hill to meet it, and he added that that was exactly the kind of courtesy +you could expect from a cad and a bounder like Sprague--walking in +uninvited, making Karen cry, then walking out, without a word, leaving +the game while he was dummy. Flora spoke up then and said it was no +wonder Dexter had left without saying good-by, considering how he'd been +treated. Then Tracey said something ugly and sarcastic about Flora's +being disappointed because Sprague had decided not to spend the whole +evening--" + +"A first-class row, eh?" Dundee interrupted, with keen interest. + +"Rather! Flora almost cried, said Tracey knew good and well that she had +only been playing-up to Sprague before Nita's death, in the hope of +getting the lead in the Hamilton movie, if Sprague got the job of +directing it, and Tracey said, 'So you call it playing-up, do you? It +looked like high-powered flirting to me--or maybe it was more than a +flirtation!...' Then Flora told him he hadn't acted jealous at the +time, and that he _knew_ he'd have been glad if she'd got the +lead.... Well, just then along came Janet--" + +"_Janet Raymond?_" Dundee ejaculated. "I thought you said she had +refused the invitation when Mrs. Miles phoned her." + +"So she had, but she said she changed her mind, had been blue all +evening, and needed cheering up." + +"How did she get in?" + +"She walked over from her house, which isn't very far from the Mileses', +and simply came up the path to the porch," Penny explained. "Tracey +asked her if she had seen Sprague on the road--it's the same road Dexter +would have had to take going down the hill to the main road--and she +acted awfully queer--" + +"How?" Dundee demanded. + +"Exactly as she would act, since she was in love with him," Penny +retorted. "She turned very red, and asked if Sprague had inquired for +her, and Flora quite sharply told her he hadn't. Then Janet said she was +very much surprised that Sprague had been there, and that she couldn't +understand why he had behaved so strangely. Then Lois said she might as +well go fetch Peter from the library, since Sprague was no longer there +to contaminate the atmosphere. She came back--" + +"After how long a time?" + +"Oh, about five minutes, I suppose," Penny answered wearily. "She came +in, her arm linked with Peter's, and laughing. Said she had found him +reading a 'Deadwood Dick' thriller.... One of Tracey's hobbies--" she +broke off to explain, "--is collecting old-fashioned thrillers, like the +Nick Carter, Diamond King Brady, Buffalo Bill and Deadwood Dick +paper-bound books. Of course he didn't take up that hobby until a lot of +other rich men had done it first. There was never anybody less original +than poor Tracey.... Well, Flora gave up her place to Janet, and again +played anagrams with Johnny, Peter taking his original place at our +table. Suddenly Polly threw down her cards--she'd been having rotten +luck and seemed out of sorts--and said she didn't want to play bridge +any more. So poor Flora again had to be the perfect hostess, and switch +from anagrams to bridge." + +"And Polly played anagrams with Drake?" Dundee prompted. + +"No. She said she thought anagrams were silly, and wandered off the +porch and down the path, calling over her shoulder that she was going to +take a walk. Tracey asked Johnny if he'd mind mixing the highballs and +bringing out the sandwiches. Said Whitson had left a thermos bucket of +ice cubes on the sideboard, some bottles of ginger ale, and a tray of +glasses and sandwiches. Told him he'd find decanters of Scotch and rye, +and to bring out both." + +"So Drake left the room, too," Dundee mused. "Oh, Lord. I _knew_ I'd +find that every last one of the six had a chance to kill Sprague, as +well as Nita!... How long was Polly Beale gone on this walk of hers?" + +"She came in with a pink water lily--said she'd been down to the lily +ponds, and that Flora had enough to spare her one," Penny answered. "She +couldn't have been away more than ten minutes, because Johnny was just +mixing the highballs, according to our preference for Scotch or rye--or +plain ginger ale, which both Ralph and I chose. After we'd had our +drinks and the sandwiches, we went on with bridge. Polly and Johnny just +wandered about the porch or watched the game at the two tables. And +about five minutes after eleven Clive Hammond arrived, coming up the +path to the porch, just as Janet had. After he came, there was no more +bridge, but we sat around on the porch and talked until midnight. Clive +said he was too tired to play bridge--that he'd been struggling all +evening with a knotty problem." + +"I can sympathize with him!" Dundee said grimly, as he rose. "I've got +my own knotty problem awaiting me.... When that call comes through from +Chicago, tell Sanderson the bad news, and say I'll telephone him later." + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO + + +The Miles home, still known in Hamilton as the Hackett place, since it +had been built more than thirty years before by Flora's father, old +Silas Hackett, dead these seven years, dominated one of the most +beautiful of the wooded hills which encircled Mirror Lake in the +Brentwood section. Of modified Tudor architecture, its deep red, +mellowed bricks had achieved in three decades almost the same aged +dignity and impressiveness as characterized the three-century-old +mansion in England which Silas Hackett's architect had used as an +inspiration. + +The big house faced the lake, a long series of landscaped terraces +leading down to the water's edge, but the driveway wound from the state +road up a side of the hill, to the main entrance at the rear of the +house. + +Once before--on Sunday, the day after Nita Selim's murder, when he had +come to interview Lydia Carr and had secured the alibi which had +eliminated Dexter Sprague as a suspect--Dundee had driven his car up +this hill between the tall yew hedges. But then he had taken the fork +which led to the hooded doorway over the kitchen; had descended the +kitchen stairs with Lydia, to the servants' sitting room in the +basement. Now he continued along the main driveway to the more +impressive entrance, whose flanking, slim turrets frowned down upon a +line of police cars and motorcycles. + +His approach must have been expected and observed, for it was the master +of the house who opened the great, iron-studded doors and invited the +detective into the broad main hall, at the end of which, down three +steps, lay the immense living room. The detective's first glance took in +stately armchairs of the Cromwell period, thick, mellow-toned rugs, and, +in the living room beyond, splendid examples of Jacobean furniture. + +"A horrible thing to happen in a man's home, Dundee," Miles was saying, +his plump, rosy face blighted with horror. "I can't realize yet that we +actually slept as usual with a corpse lying down here all night! And I +have only myself to blame--" + +"What do you mean?" Dundee asked. + +"Why, that the--the body wasn't discovered sooner," Miles explained. "If +it had occurred to me that Whitson hadn't closed the trophy room +windows, I should have gone in to close and lock them when I made the +rounds of living room, dining room and library, after our guests were +gone last night." + +A pale-faced, bald-headed butler had materialized while his master was +speaking. "Beg pardon, sir, but I did not close the trophy room windows +because I thought you might be using the room again.... You see, sir," +and Whitson turned to Dundee, "Mr. Miles and Mr. Dunlap played ping-pong +in the trophy room after dinner until the other guests began to arrive, +and I did not want them to find the room stuffy--it was a warm night--if +any of the guests--" + +"I see," Dundee interrupted. "Who, to your knowledge, was the last +person to enter the trophy room last night, Mr. Miles?" + +"I was, except Sprague, of course, and I had no idea he'd gone there. +Drake wanted to play anagrams, and before the bridge game started, I +went to the trophy room to get the box," Miles explained. "I turned off +the light when I left, and there was no light burning in there this +morning when Celia, the parlor maid, went there to put the anagram box +back in the cabinet, and found the body.... Flora--Mrs. Miles--had +brought the anagrams in from the porch and left them on a table in the +living room, as our guests were getting ready to leave. There was +nothing else to bring in, in case of rain. The bridge tables are of +iron, covered with oilcloth, and fitted with oilcloth bags for the +cards, score pads, and pencils--" + +"Yes, I know," Dundee interrupted. "Miss Crain has already told me all +about that, and a good many details of the party itself.... By the way, +where is Mrs. Miles now?" + +"In bed. The doctor is with her. She is prostrated from the shock." + +"Where is this room you call the trophy room?" Dundee asked. "No, don't +bother to come with me. Just point it out. It's on this floor, I +understand." + +Miles pointed past the great circular staircase that wound upward from +the main hall. "You can't see the door from here, but it's behind the +staircase. Celia found the door closed this morning, and no light on, as +I said--" + +Dundee cut him short by marching toward the door which was again closed. +He entered so noiselessly that Captain Strawn, Dr. Price and the +fingerprint expert, Carraway, did not hear him. For a moment he stood +just inside the door and let his eyes wander about the room which Penny +Crain had already described. It was not a large room--twelve by fourteen +feet, possibly--but it looked even smaller, crowded as it was with the +long ping-pong table, bags of golf clubs, fishing tackle, tennis +racquets, skis and sleds. There were two windows in the north wall of +the room, looking out upon the yew-hedged driveway, and between them +stood a cabinet of numerous big and little drawers. + +Not until he had taken in the general aspect of the room did Dundee look +at the thing over which Captain Strawn and the coroner were bending--the +body of Dexter Sprague. + +The alien from New York had fallen about four feet from the window +nearer the east wall of the trophy room. He lay on his side, his left +cheek against the floor, the fingers of his left hand still clutching +the powder-burned bosom of his soft shirt, now stiff with dried blood, a +pool of which had formed and then half congealed upon the rug. The right +hand, the fingers curled but not touching each other, lay palm-upward on +the floor at the end of the rigid, outstretched arm. The one visible eye +was half open, but on the sallow, thin face, which had been strikingly +handsome in an obvious sort of way, was a peace and dignity which Dundee +had never seen upon Sprague's face when the man was alive. The left leg +was drawn upward so that the knee almost touched the bullet-pierced +stomach. + +"How long has he been dead, doctor?" Dundee asked quietly. + +"Hello, boy!" Dr. Price greeted him placidly. "Always the same question! +I've been here only a few minutes, and I've already told Strawn that I +shall probably be unable to fix the hour of death with any degree of +accuracy." + +"Took your time, didn't you, Bonnie?" Captain Strawn greeted his former +subordinate on the Homicide Squad. "Doc says he's been dead between ten +and twelve hours. Since it's nearly ten now, that means Sprague was +killed some time between nine and eleven o'clock last night." + +"Better say between nine o'clock and midnight last night," Dr. Price +suggested. "He may have lived an hour or more--unconscious, of course. +For the indications are that he did not die instantly, but staggered a +few steps, clutching at the wound. But of course I shall have to perform +an autopsy first----" + +Dundee crossed the room, stepping over the dead man's stick--a swank +affair of dark, polished wood, with a heavy knob of carved onyx, which +lay about a foot beyond the reach of the curled fingers of the stiff +right hand. + +"Sprague's hat?" he asked, pointing to a brightly banded straw which lay +upon the top of the cabinet. + +"Yes," Strawn answered. "And did you notice the window screen?" + +He pointed to the window in front of which the body lay. The sash of +leaded panes was raised as high as it would go, and beneath it was a +screen of the roller-curtain type, raised about six inches from the +window sill. A pair of curved, nickel-plated catches in the center of +the inch-wide metal band on the bottom of the coppernet curtain showed +how the screen was raised or lowered. + +Dundee nodded, frowning, and Strawn began eagerly: + +"You'll have to admit I was right now, boy. You've sneered at my gunman +theory and tried to pin Nita's murder on one of Hamilton's finest bunch +of people, but you'll have to admit now that every detail of this set-up +bears me out." + +"Yes?" + +"Sure. This is the way I figure it out: Sprague has good reason to be +afraid he's next on the program. He's nervous. He hops a taxi at his +hotel and comes here--can't stick to his room any longer. Wants a little +human companionship. This crowd here--and I have Miles' word for +it--ain't any too glad to see him, and shows it. He phones for a taxi to +go back to his hotel--about 9:15, that was, Miles says--but decides to +walk down the hill to meet it. Don't want to go back out on the porch +and lie about having had a good time, when he hasn't.... Well, he opens +the front door, or what would be the front door if this was any ordinary +house, but before he steps out he sees or hears something--probably a +rustling in the hedge across the driveway, or maybe he even sees a face, +in the light from the lanterns on each side of the door. He feels sure +Nita's murderer has trailed him and is lying in wait for him. In a panic +he darts into this room, and don't turn on the light for fear he'll be +seen from the windows, but he can see well enough to make out how the +screens work, and he was familiar with the house anyway. I'll bet you +anything you like Sprague stayed in this room for an hour or two, till +he thought the coast was clear, then eased up this screen, intending to +climb out of the window and drop to the ground.... Not much of a drop at +that. You can see that the tall hedge on this side of the driveway comes +pretty near up to these windows.... Well, I figure he laid his hat on +this cabinet, intending to reach in for it when he was outside, but that +he had already made some little noise which the gunman was listening +for, and that when he got the screen up this high, the gunman, crouching +under the window, let go with the same gun and silencer that he used to +bump off Nita.... I've got Miles' word for it that neither he nor +anybody else heard a shot.... Of course, nobody knew Sprague was in +here, and since his hat and stick was both missing from the hall closet, +they took it for granted he'd beat it.... Any objections to that theory, +boy?" + +"Just a few--one in particular," Dundee said. "But I grant it's a good +one, provided Dr. Price's autopsy bears you out as to the course of the +bullet, and that Carraway finds Sprague's fingerprints on that +contrivance for raising the screen. Even then----" + +But Dundee was not allowed to finish his sentence, for Strawn was +summoned to the telephone, by Whitson. When he returned there was a +slightly bewildered look on his heavy old face. + +"That's funny.... Collins--the lad I sent to check up on the taxi +companies--says he's located the driver that answered Sprague's call +last night. The driver says he was called about 9:15, told to come +immediately, and to wait for Sprague at the foot of the hill, on the +main road. He says he waited there until half past ten, then went on +back to town, sore'n a boiled owl." + +"It doesn't look exactly as if Sprague were afraid of anyone _outside of +this house_ last night, does it?" Dundee asked. "By the way, I suppose +you've sent for everyone who was here?" + +"Sure!" But again Captain Strawn looked uncomfortable. "But we haven't +been able to locate the Beale girl and Clive Hammond." + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE + + +"I'd give a good deal to know which of those two suggested that it would +be a good idea to get married the first thing this morning," Dundee +mused aloud, as he put down the second extra which _The Hamilton Morning +News_ had had occasion to issue that Thursday. + +It was two o'clock, and the district attorney's "special investigator" +sat across the desk from Captain Strawn, in his former chief's office at +Police Headquarters. + +The first extra had screamed in its biggest head type: SECOND BRIDGE +DUMMY MURDER! and had carried, in detail, Captain Strawn's comforting +theory that Dexter Sprague's erstwhile friends had again been made the +victims of a New York gunman's fiendish cleverness in committing his +murders under circumstances which would inevitably involve Hamilton's +most highly respected and socially prominent citizens in the police +investigation. + +But the second extra had a more romantic streamer headline: HAMMOND +WEDDING DELAYS MURDER QUIZ. + +The story beneath a series of smaller headlines began: + +"At the very moment--9:05 o'clock this morning--when Celia Hunt, maid in +the Tracey Miles home in the Brentwood district of Hamilton, was +screaming the news of her discovery of the dead body of Dexter Sprague, +New York motion picture director, in what is known as the 'trophy room,' +Miss Polly Beale and Mr. Clive Hammond were applying for a marriage +license in the Municipal Building. + +"At 9:30, when Miss Beale and Mr. Hammond were exchanging their vows in +the rectory of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, of which both bride and +groom have been members since childhood, Captain John Strawn of the +Homicide Squad was listening to Tracey Miles' account of the strange +disappearance of Dexter Sprague last night from an impromptu bridge +game, after he had announced his intention of taking advantage of the +fact that he was 'dummy' to telephone for a taxi. + +"And at 10 o'clock, when the new Mrs. Hammond called her home to break +the news of her marriage to her aunt, Mrs. Amelia Beale, the bride was +in turn acquainted with the news of Sprague's murder and the fact that +both she and her husband were wanted at the Miles home for questioning +by the police, since both had been guests of Mr. and Mrs. Miles last +night, although Mr. Hammond did not arrive until about 11 o'clock." + +There followed a revision of the murder story as it had appeared in the +first extra, with additional details supplied by Strawn, and with a line +drawing of the scene of the crime--the trophy room itself and the forked +driveway with its tall yew hedges. A dotted line illustrated Strawn's +theory of Sprague's plan to elude the murderer who had followed him to +the Miles home. Because of the curved sweep of the driveway toward the +main entrance of the house, the tall hedge was less than two feet from +the window with the partly opened screen. + +"Captain Strawn's theory," read the text below the large drawing, "is +that Sprague had good cause to fear he was being followed on his way to +the Miles home; that he telephoned for a taxi to wait for him at the +foot of the hill, and that he planned to leave the Miles house by way of +the trophy room window, so that his lurking pursuer might have no +knowledge of his departure. The drawing shows that his proposed flight +would have been protected by hedges until he reached the wooded slope of +the hill, provided his Nemesis was lurking in the opposite hedge across +the driveway, where he could observe every departure from the Miles +home." + +"You've sure got a single-track mind, boy," Strawn chuckled. "So you +think those two got married in such a hurry this morning because the law +says a husband or a wife can't be made to testify against the other?" + +"Possibly." Dundee grinned, unruffled. "But there is another +possibility--which is why I should like to know who suggested this +sudden wedding. I mean that we can't overlook the possibility that these +two murders made either the bride or the groom feel perfectly safe in +going on with the marriage. Polly Beale and Clive Hammond had been +engaged for more than a year, you know, with no apparent reason for a +long engagement.... As for my having a single-track mind, Captain, what +about you? I have six possible suspects, all of whose names I know, and +you have only one--whose name you do not know, and whose motive you can +only guess at, while _I_ have a perfectly good motive that might fit any +one of my six--blackmail!" + +"Is that so?" Strawn growled. "I'm not telling the papers everything, +and if they are satisfied to call these murders '_crimes passionnels_,' +it's all right with me. But I'm not forgetting that Nita Selim banked +ten thousand dollars cash after she got to Hamilton. My real theory now +that Sprague has been killed is that Nita and Sprague had cooked up some +sort of racket between them, and that when Nita got the chance to come +to Hamilton with Mrs. Dunlap, she jumped at it, and she and Sprague +sprung their racket, whatever it was, either just before or just after +Nita left New York. Probably it was Nita's tip-off and Sprague did the +actual dirty work himself, which explains that telegram that Nita sent +him April 24, just three days after she got to Hamilton. Let's see again +just what it says," and Strawn reached for a copy of the night letter +which Dundee himself had unearthed the day before. "See: '_Everything +Jake so far, but would feel safer you here_--'" + +"Yes, I remember the wording quite well," Dundee interrupted. "But you +did not take it so seriously when I showed it to you yesterday. If you +had--" + +"All right! Rub it in!" Strawn snapped, flushing darkly. "If I had +assigned a man to 'tail' Sprague, as you suggested, he wouldn't have +been murdered--" + +"He probably would have been murdered just the same," Dundee comforted +the older man, "but we might have been lucky enough to have had an +eye-witness." + +"Oh, you and your theory!" Strawn growled. "But let me go on.... Nita +meant she would feel safer about Sprague if he was here in Hamilton, +too. But the guy they double-crossed in New York, or worked the badger +game on, or something like that, got on their trail. But it took him +weeks to do it, and Sprague followed Nita's advice. He got here on +Sunday April 27, and on Monday the 28th Nita banked the first $5,000! +Don't you see it, boy? Sprague brought with him the dough they'd got for +their stunt, and thought it was safer for Nita to bank it in her name, +since it wasn't the name she was known by in New York anyway. We've +checked up on Sprague pretty thoroughly. He didn't have a bank book, +either on his body or in his room, and every bank in town denies he had +an account with them." + +"If that theory is correct, it makes Nita Selim a pretty low character," +Dundee mused aloud. "Not only did she kick him out as a lover, but she +double-crossed him as her partner in crime, by willing the whole wad to +Lydia Carr. Sprague must have received quite a shock when he heard +Nita's will read at the inquest." + +"Yeah," Strawn agreed. "It looks like Mrs. Dunlap picked a sweet +specimen to make a friend out of.... Well, that's my theory, and I think +it explains everything. Their victim in New York simply hired a gunman, +or come down here himself, when he got on their tracks. Of course it was +a good stunt to make it look like a local crime--figured he'd fool _me_ +just as he fooled _you_! So the murderer simply trailed Nita around, and +saw that whole bunch of society people shooting at a target at Judge +Marshall's place, with a gun equipped with a Maxim silencer. Too good an +opportunity to be missed, so he bides his chance to swipe the gun and +silencer. To make sure it will look like a local crime, he pops off Nita +when that same bunch is at her house, but it takes a few days longer +before he has the same opportunity to get Sprague. But it come last +night and he grabbed it." + +"A very plausible theory, and one which, in general, the whole city of +Hamilton has been familiar with since the night Nita was murdered," +Dundee remarked significantly. + +"What do you mean?" Strawn demanded. "It's waterproof, ain't it? Doc +Price says the bullet--and a .32 caliber one at that--entered Sprague's +body just below the breastbone and traveled an upward course till it +struck the extreme right side of the heart. The bullet entered exactly +where it would have to, if the murderer was crouching under that window +while Sprague was raising the screen. And we have Carraway's report that +it was Sprague's fingerprints on those nickleplated things you have to +press together to make the screen roll up or down. Furthermore, I +haven't a doubt in the world that the ballistics expert in Chicago will +report that the bullet was fired from the same gun that killed Nita +Selim." + +"Neither have I," Dundee agreed. "But what I meant was that you had +obligingly furnished the murderer who fits _my_ theory with a theory +he--or she--would not have upset for the world!... Listen!" and he bent +forward very earnestly: "I'm willing to grant that Sprague was shot from +the outside, through the window, when Sprague raised the screen. But +there our theories part company. I believe that the murderer was a guest +in the Selim home last night, that he or she had made an appointment to +meet Sprague there, on the promise of paying the hush money he had +demanded, in spite of my warning to him not to carry on with the +blackmail scheme. Naturally he or she--and I'll say 'he' from now on, +for the sake of convenience--had no intention of being seen entering +that room. The bridge game was suggested by Judge Marshall at noon. +There was plenty of time for the rendezvous to be made with Sprague. As +I see it, the murderer told Sprague to excuse himself from the game when +he became dummy, and to go to the trophy room and wait there until the +murderer had a chance to slip away and appear beneath the window. +Sprague had been promised that, when he raised the screen at a tap or a +whispered request, a roll of bills would be handed to him, but--he +received a bullet instead." + +"And which one of your six suspects have you picked on?" Strawn asked +sarcastically. + +"That's just the trouble. There are still six," Dundee acknowledged with +a wry grin. "After Sprague's disappearance, every one of the six was +absent from the porch at one time or another.... No, by George! There +are _seven_ suspects now! I was about to forget Peter Dunlap, who admits +he was alone on a fishing trip when Nita was murdered and who left the +porch last night to go to the library, as soon as Sprague arrived!... As +for the movements of the original six after Sprague disappeared: Polly +Beale took a walk about the grounds; Flora Miles went upstairs to hunt +for Karen Marshall, and was gone more than ten minutes; Drake went to +the dining room to get the refreshments, and no one can say exactly how +long he was gone; Judge Marshall went up to get his wife, and had time +to make a little trip on the side; Janet Raymond walked over from her +home, and passed that very window, arriving after Sprague had +disappeared; and, finally, Clive Hammond arrived alone in his car, which +he parked within a few feet of that window. This morning he gets +married----" + +"A telegram, sir!" interrupted a plainclothesman, who had entered +without knocking. + +Strawn snatched at it, read it, then exulted: "Read this, boy! I guess +_this_ settles the business!" + +The telegram had been filed half an hour before and was from the city +editor of _The New York Evening Press_: + + "WORKING ON YOUR THEORY OF NEW YORK GUNMAN RESPONSIBLE MURDERS OF + JUANITA LEIGH SELIM AND DEXTER SPRAGUE THIS PAPER HAS DISCOVERED + THAT SELIM WOMAN WAS SEEN AT NIGHT CLUBS SEVERAL TIMES DURING + JANUARY FEBRUARY WITH QUOTE SWALLOW TAIL SAMMY END QUOTE UNDERWORLD + NAME FOR SAM SAVELLI STOP SAVELLI TAKEN FOR RIDE TUESDAY APRIL + TWENTY SECOND TWO DAYS AFTER SELIM WOMAN LEFT NEW YORK STOP POLICE + HERE WORKING ON THEORY SAVELLI SLAIN BY OWN GANG AFTER THEY WERE + TIPPED OFF SAVELLI WAS DOUBLE CROSSING THEM STOP IN EXCHANGE FOR + THIS TIP CAN YOU GIVE US ANY SUPPRESSED INFORMATION YOUR POSSESSION + STOP SAVELLI HAD BROTHER WHO IS KNOWN TO US TO HAVE PROMISED + REVENGE SWALLOW TAIL SAMMYS MURDER STOP BE A SPORT CAPTAIN." + +"Well, that puts the lid on it, don't it?" Strawn crowed. "I'll send +Sergeant Turner to New York on the five o'clock train.... Pretty decent +of that city editor to wire me this tip, I'll say!" + +"And are you going to reciprocate by wiring him about the $10,000 Nita +banked here?" Dundee asked. + +"Sure! Why not? There's no use that I can see to keep it back any +longer, now that no one can have any excuse to think as you've been +doing--that it was blackmail paid by a Hamiltonian." + +"Then," Dundee began very slowly, "if you really think your case is +solved, I'll make one suggestion: take charge of Lydia Carr and put her +in a very safe place." + +"Why?" Strawn looked puzzled. + +"Because, when you publish the fact that Nita and Sprague got $10,000 +for tipping off Savelli's gang that he was double-crossing them, and +that Nita willed the money to Lydia, the avenger's next and last job +would be to 'get' Lydia, since his natural conclusion would be that +Lydia had been in on the scheme from the beginning," Dundee explained. + +"God, boy! You're right!" Strawn exclaimed, and his heavy old face was +very pale as he reached for the telephone, and called the number of the +Miles residence. "I'm going to put it up to her that it will be best for +her to be locked up as a material witness, for her own protection." + +Five minutes later Strawn restored the receiver to the hook with a bang. +"Says she won't budge!" he explained unnecessarily. "Says she ain't +afraid and the Miles kids need her.... Well, it's her own funeral! But I +guess _you_ are convinced at last?" + +Dundee slowly shook his head. "Almost--but not quite, chief!" + +"Lord, but you're stubborn! Here's a water-tight case----" + +"A very pretty and a very satisfactory case, but not exactly +water-tight," Dundee interrupted. "There's just one little thing----" + +"What do you mean?" Strawn demanded irritably. + +"Have you forgotten the secret shelf behind the guest closet in the +Selim house?" Dundee asked. + +"I can afford to forget it, since it hasn't got a thing to do with the +case!" Strawn retorted angrily. "There's not a scrap of evidence----" + +"Of course it does not fit into _your_ theory," Dundee agreed, "for +'Swallow-tail Sammy's' avenging brother could not have known of its +existence, but there is one thing about that secret shelf and its pivot +door which I don't believe you can afford to forget, Captain!" + +"Yeah?" Strawn snarled. + +"Yeah!... I refer, of course, to the complete absence of fingerprints on +the door and on the shelf itself! Carraway didn't even find Nita Selim's +fingerprints. Since Nita would have had no earthly reason for carefully +wiping off her fingerprints after she removed the papers she burned on +Friday night, it's a dead sure fact that someone else who had no +legitimate business to do so, touched that pivoting panel and the shelf, +and carefully removed all traces that he had done so!... And--" he +continued grimly, "until I find out who that someone is, I, for one, +won't consider the case solved!" + +Fifteen minutes later Dundee was sitting at Penny Crain's desk in her +office of the district attorney's suite, replacing the receiver upon the +telephone hook, after having put in a call for Sanderson, who was still +in Chicago, keeping vigil at the bedside of his dying mother. + +"Did you find out anything new when you questioned the crowd this +morning?" Penny asked. "Besides the fact that Polly and Clive got +married this morning, I mean.... I wasn't surprised when I read about +the wedding in the extra. It was exactly like Polly to make up her mind +suddenly, after putting Clive off for a year----" + +"So it was Polly who held back," Dundee said to himself. Aloud: "No, I +didn't learn much new, Penny. You're a most excellent and accurate +reporter.... But there were one or two things that came out. For +instance, I got Drake to admit to me, in private, that Nita did give him +an explanation as to where she got the $10,000." + +"Yes?" Penny prompted eagerly. + +"Drake says," Dundee answered dryly, "that Nita told him it was 'back +alimony' which she had succeeded in collecting from her former husband. +Unfortunately, she did not say who or where the mysterious husband is." + +"Pooh!" scoffed Penny. "Don't you see? She just said that to satisfy +Johnny's curiosity. After all, it was the most plausible explanation of +how a divorcee got hold of a lot of money." + +"So plausible that Drake may have thought of it himself," Dundee +reflected silently. Aloud, he continued his report to the girl who had +been of so much help to him: "Among other minor things that came out +this morning, and which the papers did not report, was the fact that +Janet Raymond tried to commit suicide this morning by drinking shoe +polish. Fortunately her father discovered what she had done almost as +soon as she had swallowed the stuff, and made her take ipecac and then +sent for the doctor." + +"Oh, poor Janet!" Penny groaned. "She must have been terribly in love +with Dexter Sprague, though what she saw in him----" + +Dundee made no comment, but continued with his information: "Another +minor development was that Tracey Miles admitted that he and Flora had +quarreled over Sprague after all of you left, and that Flora took two +sleeping tablets to make sure of a night's rest." + +"She's been awfully unstrung ever since Nita's murder," Penny defended +her friend. "She told us all Monday night at Peter's that the doctor had +prescribed sleeping medicine.... Now, you look here, Bonnie Dundee!" she +cried out sharply, answering an enigmatic smile on the detective's face, +"if you think Flora Miles killed Nita Selim and Dexter Sprague, because +she was in love with Dexter and learned he was Nita's lover from that +silly note----" + +"Whoa, Penny!" Dundee checked her. "I'm not linking exactly that. But +I've just remembered something that had seemed of no importance to me +before." + +"And what's that, Mr. Smart Aleck?" Penny demanded furiously. + +"Before I answer that question, will you let me do a little theorizing?" +Dundee suggested gently. "Let us suppose that Flora Miles was _not_ in +love with Sprague, but that she was being blackmailed by Nita for some +scandal Nita had heard gossiped about at the Forsyte School.... No, +wait!... Let us suppose further that Nita recognized Flora's picture in +the group Lois Dunlap showed her, as the portrait of the girl whose +story she had heard; that she was able, somehow, to secure incriminating +evidence of some sort--letters, let us say. Nita tells Sprague about it, +and Sprague advises her to blackmail Flora, who, Lois has told Nita, is +very rich. So Nita comes to Hamilton and bleeds Flora of $10,000. Not +satisfied, Nita makes another demand, the money to be paid to her the +day of the bridge luncheon----" + +"Silly!" Penny scoffed furiously. "The only evidence you have against +poor Flora is that she stole the note Dexter had written to Nita!" + +"That's the crux of the matter, Penny darling!" Dundee assured her in a +maddeningly soothing voice, at which Penny clinched her hands in +impotent rage. "Flora, seeing Nita receive a letter written on her +husband's business stationery, jumps to the conclusion that Nita had +carried out her threat to tell Tracey, or that Nita has at least given +Tracey a hint of the truth and that Tracey's special-messenger note is, +let us say, a confirmation of an appointment suggested by Nita.... Very +well! Flora goes to Nita's bedroom at the first opportunity, knowing +that Nita will come there to make up for the men's arrival. Let's +suppose Flora had brought the gun and silencer with her, intending to +frighten Nita, rather than kill her. But having had proof, as she +believes, that Nita means business, Flora waits in the closet until Nita +comes in and sits down at her dressing-table, then steps out and shoots +her. Then she recoils step by step, until her foot catches in the slack +cord of the bronze lamp, causing the very 'bang or bump' which Flora +herself describes later, for fear someone else has heard it. Her first +concern, of course, is to hide the gun and silencer. She remembers Judge +Marshall's tale of the secret shelf in the guest closet, and not only +hides the gun there but seeks in vain for the incriminating evidence +Nita has against her. But she also remembers the note she believes +Tracey has written to Nita, and which, if found after Nita's death, may +give her away. So she goes to the closet in Nita's bedroom, finds the +note, and faints with horror at her perhaps needless crime when she +realizes that the note was written by Sprague, and not Tracey. Of course +she is too ill and panic-stricken to leave the closet until the murder +is discovered----" + +"But you think she was not too panic-stricken to have the presence of +mind to retrieve the gun and silencer and walk out with them, under the +very eyes of the police," Penny scoffed. + +"_No! I think she was!_" Dundee amazed her by admitting. "And that is +where my sudden recollection of something I had considered unimportant +comes in! Let us suppose that Flora, half-suspected by Tracey, confesses +to him in their car as they are going to the Country Club for their +long-delayed dinner, as were the rest of you. Tracey, loyal to her, +decides to help her. He tells her to suggest, at dinner, that Lydia come +to them as nurse, so that he can go back to the house and get the gun +and silencer from the guest-closet hiding place, if an opportunity +presents itself--as it did, since I left Tracey Miles alone in the hall +while I went into Nita's bedroom to talk with Lydia before I permitted +her to go with Tracey." + +"You're crazy!" Penny told him fiercely, when he had finished. "I +suppose you are going to ask me to believe that Tracey was a big enough +fool to leave the gun and silencer where Flora could get hold of it and +kill Sprague last night." + +"Why not let us suppose that Tracey himself killed Sprague to protect +his wife, not only from scandal, but from a charge of murder?" Dundee +countered. "Tell me honestly: do you think Tracey Miles loves Flora +enough to do that for her?" + +Suddenly, inexplicably, Penny began to laugh--not hysterically, but with +genuine mirth. + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR + + +"What are you laughing at?" Dundee demanded indignantly, but the +sustained ringing of the telephone bell checked Penny Crain's mirthful +laughter. "My Chicago call!... Hello!... Yes, this is Dundee.... All +right, but make it snappy, won't you?... Hello, Mr. Sanderson! How is +your mother?... That's fine! I certainly hope--Yes, the inquest is +slated for tomorrow morning, but there's no use your leaving your mother +to come back for it.... Yes, sir, one important new development. Can you +hear me plainly?... Then hold the line a moment, please!" + +With the receiver still at his ear, Dundee fumbled in his pocket for a +folded sheet of paper. "No, operator! We're not through! Please keep off +the line.... Listen, chief!" he addressed the district attorney at the +other end of the long distance wire. "This is a telegram Captain Strawn +received this afternoon from the city editor of The New York Evening +Press.... Can you hear me?... All right!" and he read slowly, repeating +when necessary. + +When he had finished reading the telegram, he listened for a long +minute, but not with so much concentration that he could not grin at +Penny's wide-eyed amazement and joy. "That's what I think, sir!" he +cried jubilantly. "I'd like to take the five o'clock train for New York +and work on the case from that end till we actually get our teeth into +something.... Thanks a lot, and my best wishes for your mother!" + +"Why didn't you tell me about this 'Swallow-tail Sammy'?" Penny demanded +indignantly. "Tormenting me with your silly theory about poor Flora and +Tracey, when all the time you knew the case was practically solved--" + +"I'm afraid I gave the district attorney a slightly false impression," +Dundee interrupted, but there was no remorse in his shining blue eyes. +"But just so I get to New York--By the way, young woman, what _were_ you +laughing at so heartily? I didn't know I had made an amusing remark when +I asked you if you thought Tracey Miles loved his wife well enough to +commit murder for her." + +Penny laughed again, white teeth and brown eyes gleaming. "I was +laughing at something else. It suddenly occurred to me, while you were +spinning your foolish theory, how _flattered_ Tracey would have been if +Flora had confessed to him Saturday night that she had killed Nita +because she was jealous!" + +"Which was _not_ my theory, if you remember!" Dundee retorted. "But why +is the idea so amusing? Deep in his heart, I suppose any man would +really be a bit flattered if his wife loved him enough to be that +jealous." + +"You don't know Tracey Miles as well as I do," Penny assured him, her +eyes still mirthful. "He's really a dear, in spite of being a dreadful +bore most of the time, but the truth is, Tracey hasn't an atom of sex +appeal, and he _must_ realize it.... Of course we girls have all +pampered his poor little ego by pretending to be crazy about him and +terribly envious that it was Flora who got him--" + +"But Flora Hackett _did_ marry him," Dundee interrupted. "She must have +been a beautiful girl, and she was certainly rich enough to get any man +she wanted--" + +"You would think so, wouldn't you?" Penny agreed, her tongue loosened by +relief. "I was only twelve years old when Flora Hackett made her debut, +but a twelve-year-old has big ears and keen eyes. It is true that Flora +was beautiful and rich, but--well, there was something queer about her. +She was simply crazy to get married, and if a man danced with her as +many as three times in an evening she literally seized upon him and +tried to drag him to the altar.... Her eagerness and her intensity +repelled every man who was in the least attracted to her, and I think +she was beginning to be frightened to death that she wouldn't get +married at all, when she happened to meet Tracey, who had just got a job +as salesman in her father's business. She began to rush him--there's no +other word for it--and none of the other girls minded a bit, because, +without Flora, Tracey would have been the perfect male wallflower. They +became engaged almost right away, and were married six months or so +later. All the girls freely prophesied that even Tracey, flattered by +her passion for him as he so evidently was, would get tired of it, but +he didn't, and there were three marriages in 'the crowd' that June." + +"Three?" Dundee repeated absently, for his interest was waning. + +"Yes.... Lois Morrow and Peter Dunlap; Johnny Drake and Carolyn Swann; +and Tracey and Flora," Penny answered. "Although I was thirteen then and +really too old for the role, I had the fun of being flower girl for Lois +and Flora both." + +"Do you think Flora was really in love with Tracey?" Dundee asked +curiously. + +"Oh, yes! But she'd have been in love with anyone who wanted to +marry her, and the funny thing is that, with the exception of Peter +and Lois, they are the happiest married couple I have ever known.... You +see, Tracey has never got over being flattered that so pretty and +passionate a girl as Flora Hackett wanted _him_!... And that's why I +laughed!... Tracey, with that deep-rooted sexual inferiority complex of +his, would have been so flattered if Flora had told him she killed Nita +out of jealousy that he would have forgiven her on the spot. On the other +hand," she went on, "if Flora had told him that Nita had documentary +proofs of some frightful scandal against her, can't you see how +violently Tracey would have reacted against her?... Oh, no! Tracey would +not have taken the trouble to murder Sprague, when Sprague popped up for +more blackmail!" + +"Perhaps he might have, if the scandal dated back to before the +marriage," Dundee argued. "Let's suppose Sprague did pop up, and Flora +turned him over to Tracey. When Sprague appeared apparently uninvited +last night, Flora must have been on pins and needles, trying to make +Tracey treat him decently and hoping against hope that Tracey would +simply pay the scoundrel all the blackmail he was demanding----" + +"Which is exactly what Tracey would have done, instead of taking the +awful risk of murdering him in his own home," Penny cut in spiritedly. +"Besides, Tracey wasn't gone from the porch long enough to go outside, +signal to Sprague in the trophy room, shoot him when Sprague raised the +screen, and then hide the gun. I told you Tracey was gone only about a +minute when he went to see if Sprague's hat and stick were gone from the +closet." + +"Did Tracey and Flora both step outside to see their guests into their +cars?" Dundee asked suddenly. + +"Tracey did," Penny answered. "Flora told us all good night in the +living room, then ran upstairs to see if Betty was still asleep.... But +remember we didn't leave until midnight, and Dr. Price says Sprague was +killed between nine and eleven last night." + +"Dr. Price would be the first to grant a leeway of an hour, one way or +another," Dundee told her. "Of course, if Tracey did kill him, he let +Flora believe that he had given Sprague the blackmail money he was +demanding. For it is inconceivable that a woman of Flora Miles' +hysterical temperament could have slept--even with two sleeping +tablets--knowing that a corpse was in the house." + +"Oh, I'm sick of your silly theorizing!" Penny told him with vehement +scorn. "Listen here, Bonnie Dundee! You probably laugh at 'woman's +intuition', but take it from me--_you're on the wrong track_!" + +"Oh, I'm not so wedded to that particular theory!" Dundee laughed. "I +can spin you exactly six more just as convincing--" + +"And I shan't listen! You'd better dash home and pack your bag if you +want to catch the five o'clock train for New York." + +"It's already packed and in my office," Dundee assured her lazily. "Got +lots of time.... Hullo! Here's the home edition of _The Evening Sun_," +he interrupted himself, as a small boy, making his rounds of the +courthouse, flung the paper into the office. He reached for it, and +read the streamer headline aloud: "ITALIAN GANGSTER SOUGHT IN BRIDGE +MURDERS ... I wager a good many heads will lie easier on their pillows +tonight." + +"Let me see!" Penny commanded, and snatched the paper unceremoniously. +"Oh! Did you see this?" and she pointed to a boxed story in the middle +of the front page. "'Bridge Parties Cancelled'," she read aloud. "'The +society editor of _The Evening Sun_ was kept busy at her telephone +today, receiving notices of cancellations of bridge parties scheduled +for the remainder of the week. Eight frantic hostesses, terrified by +Hamilton's second murder at bridge----' Oh, that's simply a _crime_! The +newspapers deliberately work up mob hysteria and then----" + +"I'd rather not play bridge for a while myself!" Dundee laughed, as he +rose and started for his own office. "And don't _you_ dare leave the +room when you become dummy, if you have the nerve to play again! +Remember, that gun and silencer are still missing!" + +"What do you mean?.... You don't think there'll be more----?" + +Dundee became instantly contrite before her terror. "I didn't mean it, +honey," he said gently. "I think it is more than likely that the gun is +at the bottom of Mirror Lake. But do take care of yourself, and by that +I mean don't work yourself to death.... Any messages for anyone in New +York?" + +Penny's pale face quivered. "If you--happen to run across my father, +which of course you won't, tell him that--Mother would like him to come +home." + +At intervals during the sixteen-hour run to New York, Penny's faltering +words returned to haunt the district attorney's special investigator, +although he would have preferred to devote his entire attention to +mapping out the program he intended to follow when he reached the city +which, he fully believed, had been the scene of the first act of the +tragic drama he was bent upon bringing to an equally tragic conclusion. + +As soon as he had registered at a hotel near the Pennsylvania Station, +and had shaved and breakfasted, he took from his bag a large envelope +containing the photographs Carraway had made of Penny alive and of Nita +dead, both clad in the royal blue velvet dress. In the envelope also was +the white satin, gold-lettered label which the dress had so proudly +borne: "Pierre Model. Copied by Simonson's. New York City." + +Half an hour later he was showing the photographs and the label to a +woman buyer, in the French Salon of Simonson's, one of New York's most +"exclusive" department stores. + +"Can you tell me when the original Pierre model was bought, and when +this copy was made and sold?" he asked. + +The white-haired, smartly dressed buyer accepted the sheaf of +photographs Bonnie Dundee was offering. "I'll do my best, of course," +she began briskly, then paled and uttered a sharp exclamation as her +eyes took in the topmost picture. "This is Juanita Leigh, isn't +it?... But--" she shuddered, "how odd she looks--as if--" + +"Yes," Dundee agreed gravely. "She was dead when that picture was taken. +Did you know Mrs. Selim?" + +"No," the woman breathed, her eyes still bulging with horror. "But I've +seen so many pictures of her in the papers.... To think that it was one +of _our_ dresses she chose for her shroud! But you want to know when the +dress was sold to her, don't you?" she asked, brisk again. "I can find +out. We keep a record of all our French originals and of the number of +copies made of each.... Let me think! I've been going to Paris myself +for the firm for the last fifteen years, but I can't remember buying +this Pierre model.... Oh, of course! I didn't go over during 1917 and +1918, on account of the war, you know, but the big Paris designers +managed to send us a limited number of very good models, and this must +have been one of them. Otherwise, I'd remember buying it.... If you'll +excuse me a moment----" + +When she returned about ten minutes later, Miss Thomas brought him a +pencilled memorandum. "This Pierre model was imported in the summer of +1917, several months in advance of the winter season, of course. Only +five copies were made--in different colors and materials, naturally, +since we make a point of exclusiveness. The royal blue velvet copy was +sold to Juanita Leigh in January, 1918. I am sorry I cannot give you the +exact day of the month, but our records show the month only. I took the +liberty of showing a picture of the dress to the only saleswoman in the +department who has been with us that long, but she cannot remember the +sale. Twelve years is a long time, you know." + +"Indeed it is," Dundee agreed regretfully. "You have been immensely +helpful, however, Miss Thomas, and I thank you with all my heart." + +"If you could just tell _me_--confidentially, of course," Miss Thomas +whispered, "what sort of clue this dress is--" + +"I don't know, myself!" the detective admitted. "But," he added to +himself, after he had escaped the buyer's natural curiosity, "I intend +to find out!" + +Before he could take any further steps along that particular path, +however, Dundee had an appointment to keep. Upon arriving at his hotel +that morning he had made two telephone calls. He smiled now as he +recalled the surprise and glee of one of his former Yale classmates, now +a discouraged young bond salesman, with whom he had kept in touch. + +"You want to borrow my name and my kid sister?" Jimmy Randolph had +chortled. "Hop to it, old sport! But you might tell me what you want +with such intimate belongings of mine." + +"You may not know it," Dundee had retorted, "but young Mr. James +Wadley Randolph, Jr., scion of the famous old Boston family, is going +to visit that equally famous school, Forsyte-on-the-Hudson, to see +whether it is the ideal finishing school for his beloved young sister, +Barbara.... She's about fifteen now, isn't she, Jimmy?" + +"Going on sixteen, and one of Satan's prize hellions," Jimmy Randolph +had answered. "The family would be eternally grateful if you could get +Forsyte to take her, but make them promise not to have any more chorus +girls who plan to get murdered, as directors of their amateur +theatricals. Bab would be sure to be mixed up in the mess.... I suppose +that's the job you're on, you flat-footed dick, you!" + +The second telephone call had secured an appointment at the Forsyte +School for "Mr. James Wadley Randolph, Jr., of Boston," and Dundee, +rather relishing his first need for such professional tactics, relaxed +to enjoy the ten-mile drive along the Hudson. + +It was a quarter to twelve when his taxi swept up the drive toward the +big grey-stone, turreted building, sedately lonely in the midst of its +valuable acres. + +"Miss Earle says to come to the office," a colored maid told him, when +he had given his borrowed name, and led him from the vast hall to a +fairly large room, whose windows looked upon a tennis court, and whose +walls were almost covered with group pictures of graduating classes, +photographs of amateur theatrical performances, and portrait studies of +alumnae. + +A very thin, sharp-faced woman of about forty, with red-rimmed eyes +which peered nearsightedly, rose from an old-fashioned roll-top desk and +came forward to greet him. + +"I am Miss Earle, Miss Pendleton's private secretary," she told him, as +he shook her bony, clammy hand. "I should have told you when you +telephoned this morning that both Miss Pendleton and Miss Macon sailed +for Europe yesterday. We always have our commencement the last Tuesday +in May, you know.... But if there is anything I can do for you----" + +"I should like to know something at first hand of the history of the +school, its--well, prestige, special advantages, curriculum, and so on," +Dundee began deprecatingly. + +"I should certainly be able to answer any question you may wish to ask, +Mr. Randolph, since I have been with the school for fifteen years," Miss +Earle interrupted tartly. + +"Then Forsyte must take younger pupils than I had been led to believe, +Miss Earle," Dundee said, with his most winning smile. + +"I was never a pupil here," the secretary corrected him, but she thawed +visibly. "Of course, I was a mere child when I finished business school, +but I _have_ been here fifteen years--fifteen years of watching rich +society girls dawdle away four or five years, just because they've got +to be _somewhere_ before they make their debut.... But I mustn't talk +like that, or I'll give you a wrong impression, Mr. Randolph. Of its +kind, it is really a very fine school--very exclusive; riding masters, +dancing masters, a golf 'pro' and our own golf course, native teachers +for French, Italian, German and Spanish.... Oh, the _school_ is all +right, and will probably not suffer any loss of prestige on account of +that dreadful murder out in the Middle West----" + +"Murder?" Dundee echoed, as if he had no idea what she was talking +about. + +"Haven't you been reading the papers?" Miss Earle rallied him, with a +coquettish smile. "But I don't suppose Boston bothers with such sordid +things," she added, her thin-lipped mouth tightening. "Miss Pendleton +was all cut up about it, because Mrs. Selim, or Juanita Leigh, as she +was known on Broadway, had directed our Easter play the last two years, +and the reporters simply hounded us the first two days after she was +murdered out in Hamilton, where a number of our richest girls have come +from----" + +"By Jove!" Dundee exclaimed. "Was the Selim woman connected with this +school, really?... I only read the headlines--never pay much attention +to murders in the papers--" + +"I wish," Miss Earle interrupted tartly, fresh tears reddening her eyes, +"that people wouldn't persist in referring to her as 'that Selim +woman'.... When I think how sweet and friendly she was, how--how +_kind_!" and to Dundee's surprise she choked on tears before she could +go on: "Of course I know it's dreadful for the school, and I ought not +to talk about it, when you've come to see about putting your sister into +the school, but Nita was _my friend_, and it simply makes me _wild_----" + +"You admired and liked her very much?" Dundee asked, forgetting his role +for the moment. + +"Yes, I did! And Miss Pendleton liked her, too. And you can imagine how +clever and popular she was, when a wonderful woman like Mrs. Peter +Dunlap, who was Lois Morrow when she was in school here, admired her so +much she took her to Hamilton with her to direct plays for a Little +Theater.... Why, I never met anyone I was so congenial with!" the +secretary went on passionately. "The girls here snub me and make silly +jokes about me behind my back and call me nicknames, but Nita was just +as sweet to me as she was to anyone--even Miss Pendleton herself!" + +"Were you with her much?" Dundee dared ask. + +"_With her much?..._ I should say I was!" she asserted proudly. "I have +a room here, live here the year 'round, and both years Nita shared my +room, so she would not have to make the long trip back to New York every +night during the last week of rehearsals. We used to talk until two or +three o'clock in the morning--Say!" she broke off, in sudden terror. +"You aren't a reporter, are you?" + +"A reporter? Good Lord, no!" Dundee denied, in all sincerity. Then he +made up his mind swiftly. This woman hated the school and all connected +with it, had grown more and more sour and envy-bitten every year of the +fifteen she had served here--and she liked Nita Leigh Selim better than +anyone she had ever met. The opportunity for direct questioning was too +miraculous to be ignored. So he changed his tone suddenly and said very +earnestly: "No, I am not a reporter, Miss Earle. But I am _not_ James +Wadley Randolph, Jr. I am James F. Dundee, special investigator attached +to the office of the district attorney of Hamilton, and I want you to +help me solve the mystery of Mrs. Selim's murder." + +It took nearly ten precious minutes for Dundee to nurse the terrified +but obviously thrilled woman over the shock, and to get her into the +mood to answer him freely. + +"But I shan't and _can't_ tell you anything bad about Nita!" she +protested vehemently, wiping her red-rimmed eyes. "The papers are all +saying now that she got $10,000 for double-crossing some awful racketeer +named 'Swallow-tail Sammy', but I _know_ she didn't get the money that +way! She was too good----" + +"From Nita's confidences to you, do you have any idea how she did get +the money?" Dundee asked. + +Miss Earle shook her head. "I don't know, but she got it honorably. I +know that!... Maybe she found her husband and made him pay alimony----" + +Dundee controlled his excitement with difficulty. "Did she tell you all +about her marriage and divorce?" + +Again Miss Earle shook her head. "The only time she ever spoke of it was +last year--the first year she directed our play, you know. I asked her +why she didn't get married again, and she said she couldn't--she wasn't +divorced, because she didn't know where her husband was, and it was too +expensive to go to Reno.... Of course she may have found him or +something--and got a divorce some time this last year, and this money +she got was a settlement----" + +"She must have got a divorce, since she was planning to be married again +to a young man in Hamilton," Dundee assured her soothingly. + +"The way everybody puts the very worst interpretation on everything, +when a person gets murdered!" Miss Earle stormed. "If poor Nita had +belonged to a rich family, like the girls here, they would have spent a +million if necessary to hush up any scandal on her!... I've seen it +done!" she added, darkly and venomously. + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE + + +Bonnie Dundee's heart leaped, but he forced himself to go softly. "I +suppose," he said casually, "a fashionable school like this has plenty +of carefully hushed-up scandals----" + +"I'll say it has!" Miss Earle retorted inelegantly, and with ghoulish +satisfaction. "_Money_ can do anything! It makes my blood simply boil +when I think of how those Forsyte girls in Hamilton--so smug and +snobbish in their hick town 'society'--must be running poor Nita down, +now that she's dead and can't defend herself!... If the truth were only +known about some of _them_----" + +Dundee could almost have embraced the homely, life-soured spinster--she +was making his task so easy for him. + +"I've met them all, of course, since Mrs. Selim was murdered," he said +deprecatingly, "and I must say they seem to be remarkably fine women and +girls----" + +"Oh _are_ they?" Miss Earle snorted. "Flora Hackett--Mrs. Tracey Miles +she is now--didn't happen to tell you the nice little fuss _she_ kicked +up when she was here, did she? Oh, no! I guess not!" + +"She looks," Dundee agreed, "like a girl who would have made things +lively." + +"I'll say so! Miss Pendleton nearly had nervous prostration!" Miss Earle +plunged on, then fear blanched her face for a moment. "You know you've +promised you'll never tell Miss Pendleton or Miss Macon that you talked +to me!" + +"You can depend on it that I will protect you," Dundee assured her. +"When did Flora Hackett kick up her little fuss?" + +"Let's see.... Flora graduated in June, 1920," Miss Earle obliged +willingly. "So it must have been in 1919--yes, because she had one more +year here. Of course they let her come back!... _Money!_... She took the +lead in our annual Easter play in 1919, and just because Serena Hart +complimented her and told her she was almost as good as a +professional--" + +"_Serena Hart!_" Dundee wonderingly repeated the name of one of +America's most popular and beloved stage stars. + +"Yes--Serena Hart," Miss Earle repeated proudly. "She was a Forsyte +girl, too, and of course she _did_ go into the chorus herself, after she +graduated in--let's see--1917, because it was the second year after I'd +come to work here--and Miss Pendleton nearly died, because she was +afraid Forsyte's precious prestige would be lowered, but when Serena +became a star everything was grand, of course, and Forsyte was proud to +claim her.... Anyway, Serena comes to the Easter play every year she +can, if she isn't in a Broadway play herself, of course, and so she saw +Flora acting in the Easter play in 1919, and told her she was awfully +good. She was, too, but not half the actress that little Penny Crain +was, when she had the lead in the play four or five years ago." + +Dundee's heart begged him to ask for more details of Penny's triumph, +but his job demanded that he keep the now too-voluble Miss Earle to the +business in hand. + +"And Flora Hackett----?" he prompted. + +"Well, the next day after the play the Easter vacation began, you know, +and Flora _forged_ a letter from her father, giving her permission to +spend the ten-days' Easter holiday with one of the girls who lived in +Atlanta," Miss Earle continued, with great relish. "Well, sir, right in +the middle of the holidays, here came her father and mother--they were +both alive then--and asked for Flora! They wired the girl in Atlanta, +and Flora wasn't there, and the Hacketts were nearly crazy. But as luck +would have it, Mr. Hackett ran into a friend of theirs on Broadway, and +this friend began to tease Mr. Hackett about his daughter's being a +chorus girl!" + +"A chorus girl!" Dundee echoed, taking care not to show his +disappointment. + +"Of course they nabbed her right out of the show, but that wasn't the +worst of it!" Miss Earle went on dramatically and mysteriously. "They +tried to hush it up, of course, but the word went through the school +like wildfire that Flora wasn't only in the chorus, but that she was +_living with an actor_ she'd been writing fan letters to long before the +Easter play went on!" + +"Did you hear his name?" Dundee asked. + +"No," Miss Earle acknowledged regretfully. "But I'll bet anything it was +the truth!... Why, Flora Hackett was so man-crazy she flirted +scandalously with every male teacher in the school. The golf 'pro' we +had then got so scared of her he quit his job!" + +"I suppose," Dundee prompted craftily, "she wasn't any worse than some +of the other Hamilton girls." + +"We-ell," Miss Earle admitted reluctantly, "nothing ever _came out_ on +any of the others, but it looked mighty funny to me when Janet Raymond's +mother took her out of school right in the middle of a term and hauled +her off to Europe _for a whole year_!... I guess,"--she suggested, with +raised eyebrows, "you know what it _usually_ means when a girl has to +spend a whole year abroad, and her mother says she's taking her away for +her health--and Janet looking as healthy as any other girl in the +school, except that she was crying half the time, and smuggling special +delivery letters in and out by one of the maids--" + +"Did you tell Nita these stories and point out the pictures of the +girls?" Dundee had to risk asking. + +Miss Earle froze instantly. "Naturally she was interested in the school, +and once when she said it always made her mad the way chorus girls were +run down, I told her that in my opinion society girls were worse than +actresses, and--well, of course I gave her some examples, a lot of them +worse than anything I've told you about Flora Hackett and Janet +Raymond.... I hope," she added viciously, "that Nita dropped a hint or +two if Flora or Janet had the nerve to high-hat her when she was in +Hamilton!" + +"Perhaps she did," Dundee agreed softly. "By the way, how did Nita +happen to get the job here of directing the Easter plays?" + +"That's what the reporters wanted to know," Miss Earle smiled. "But Miss +Pendleton wouldn't tell them, for fear Serena wouldn't like it, and +maybe be drawn into the scandal, when everybody knows she's as straight +as a string----" + +"Did Serena Hart get her the job?" Dundee was amazed. + +"Yes.... Wait, I'll show you the letter of recommendation she wrote for +Nita to Miss Pendleton," Miss Earle offered eagerly. "Remember, now, +you're not to tell on me!" + +She went to a tall walnut filing cabinet, and quickly returned with a +note, which she thrust into Dundee's willing hands. He read: + + _"Dear Miss Pendleton: The bearer, Juanita Leigh, is rather badly + in need of a job, and I have suggested that she apply to you for a + chance to direct the Easter play. I have known Miss Leigh + personally for ten years, and have the highest regard, both + for her character and for her ability. Since you usually stage + musical comedies, I think Miss Leigh, who has been a specialty + dancer as well as an actress in musical comedy for about twelve + years, would be admirably suited for the work. Knowing my love + for Forsyte as you do, I do not have to assure you that I would + suggest nothing which would be detrimental to the school's best + interests.... Fondly yours, Serena Hart."_ + +"She was wrong there, but I know it wasn't Nita's fault," Miss Earle, +who had been looking over his shoulder, commented upon the last sentence +of the letter. + +"Is Miss Hart appearing in a play now?" Dundee asked. + +"No, but she's rehearsing in one--'Temptation'--which will open at the +Warburton Theater next Monday night," the secretary answered. "At +commencement Tuesday night, Serena told Miss Pendleton how awfully sorry +she was about Nita, and gave me tickets for the opening.... You go to +see her, but don't tell her _I_ told you anything.... I know she's +rehearsing at the theater this afternoon, because she said she would be +all week, and couldn't go to the boat to see Miss Pendleton and Miss +Macon off for Europe." + +"I will!" Dundee accepted the suggestion gratefully, as if it had not +occurred to him. "But first I want you to come out to lunch with me. I'm +sure you know of some nice tearoom or roadhouse in the neighborhood." + +During the luncheon, which Miss Earle devoured avidly, without its +interfering with her flow of reminiscences concerning the girls she +hated, Dundee was able to learn nothing more to the detriment of +Forsyte's Hamilton alumnae, but he did add considerably to his knowledge +and pity of female human nature. + +It was nearly three o'clock when he presented his card, with a message +pencilled upon its back, to the aged doorkeeper who drowsed in the alley +which led to the stage entrance of the Warburton Theater, just off +Broadway near Times Square, and fifteen minutes later he was being +received in the star's dressing-room by Serena Hart herself. + +"You're working on poor Nita's murder?" she began without preamble, as +she seated herself at her dressing-table and indicated a decrepit chair +for the detective. "I was wondering how much longer I could keep out of +it.... Of course you've been pumping that poor, foolish virgin--Gladys +Earle.... Why girls who look like that are always called _Gladys_--God! +I'm tired! We've been at it since ten this morning, but thank the Lord +we're through now for the day." + +Dundee studied her with keen interest, and decided that, almost plain +though she was, she was even more magnetic than when seen from the +footlights.... Rather carelessly dressed, long brown hair rather +tousled, her face very pale and haggard without the make-up which would +give it radiance on Monday night, Serena Hart was nevertheless one of +the most attractive women Dundee had ever met--and one of the kindest, +he felt suddenly sure.... + +"When did I first meet Nita Leigh?" she repeated his question. "Let me +think--Oh, yes! The first year after I went on the stage--1917. We were +in the chorus together in 'Teasing Tilly'--a rotten show, by the way. +The other girls of the chorus were awfully snooty to me, because I was +that anathema, a 'society girl', but Nita was a darling. She showed me +the ropes, and we became quite intimate--around the theater only, +however, since my parents kept an awfully strict eye on me. The show was +a great hit--ran on into 1918, till February or March, I believe." + +"Then do you know, Miss Hart, whether Nita got married during the +winter?" Dundee asked. + +"Why, yes, she did!" Serena Hart answered, her brow clearing after a +frown of concentration. "I can't remember exactly when, but it was +before the show closed--certainly a few weeks before, because the poor +child was a deserted bride days before the closing notice was posted." + +"Deserted!" Dundee exclaimed. "Did you meet her husband, Miss Hart?" + +"No," Serena Hart replied. "As a matter of fact, she told me +extraordinarily little about him, and did not discuss her marriage with +the other girls of the chorus at all. I got the impression that Mr. +Selim--Mat, she called him--wanted it kept secret for a while, but I +don't know why.... This was early in 1918, as I've told you, though I +have no way of fixing even the approximate date, and New York was full +of soldiers. I remember I jumped to the conclusion that Nita had +succumbed to a war romance, but I don't think she said anything to +confirm my suspicion." + +"When did she tell you of her marriage--that is, when--in relation to +the date of the wedding itself?" Dundee asked. + +"The very day she was married," Serena Hart answered. "She was late for +the matinee. Our dressing-tables were side by side, and as she slipped +out of her dress----" + +"This dress?" Dundee asked, and handed her the photograph of dead Nita +in the royal blue velvet dress she had kept for twelve years. + +"Yes," and Serena Hart shuddered. "And her hair was dressed like that, +too, although she had been wearing it in long curls, and had to take it +down before she would go on for the opening number. She whispered to me +that she had been married that day, that she was terribly happy, very +much in love, and that her husband had asked her to dress her hair in +the French roll, a favorite hair-dress with him. Between numbers she +whispered to me again, telling me that her husband was 'so different', +'such a lamb'--totally unlike any man she had met on Broadway, poor +child.... For she was a child still--only twenty, but she had been in +the 'show business' since she was a motherless, fatherless little +drifter of sixteen.... No, she did not tell me how old he was, where he +came from, his business, or what he looked like, and I did not inquire. +As the days passed--weeks, probably, she became more and more silent and +reserved, though once or twice she protested she was still 'terribly +happy.' Then came a day when she did not show up for the performance at +all. The next night she told me--in just a few words, that her husband +had left her, after a quarrel, and had not returned. It seems that she +had innocently told him how she had 'vamped' Benny Steinfeld, the big +revue producer, you know, into giving her a 'spot' in his summer show, +and that her 'Mat' had flown into a rage, accusing her of having been +untrue to him. She never mentioned his desertion to me again, but----" + +"Yes?" Dundee prompted. + +"Well," Serena Hart went on, uncomfortably, "I'm afraid I rather forgot +poor Nita after 'Teasing Tilly' closed, for my next work was in stock in +Des Moines. After a year of stock I got my chance in a legitimate show +on Broadway, and one day I met her on the street. Not having much to +talk with her about, I asked her if she and her husband were reconciled. +She said no, that she had never seen him again. Then, in a burst of +confidence, she told me that she had hired a private detective out of +her meager earnings to investigate him in his home town, or rather the +city he had told her he came from. The detective had reported that no +such person as Mat or Matthew Selim had ever lived there, so far as he +could find out. I asked her if she was going to get a divorce and she +said she was not--that being already married was a protection against +getting married in haste again. After that, I rather lost sight of Nita, +and practically forgot her, our paths being so very divergent." + +"And you never saw her again?" Dundee asked, very much disappointed. + +"Oh, yes, two or three times--at openings, or on the street, but we +never held any significant conversation," Serena Hart answered, reaching +for her plain, rather dowdy little hat. "Wait! I was about to forget! I +had quite a shock in connection with Nita. One afternoon--let's see, +that was when I opened in 'Hullabaloo,' in which I made my first real +success, you know--I bought _The New York Evening Star_, which devotes +considerable space to theatrical doings, to see what sort of review the +show had got, and on the first page I saw a picture of Nita, beneath a +headline which said, 'Famous Model Commits Suicide'----" + +"What!" Dundee exclaimed, astounded. + +"Oh, it wasn't Nita Leigh," Serena Hart reassured him. "There was a +correction the next day. You see, an artists' model named Anita +Lee--spelled L-e-e, instead of Le-i-g-h--had committed suicide, and, as +the _Star_ explained it the next day, the similarity of both the first +name and the last had caused the error in getting a photograph from the +'morgue' to accompany the story. There was a picture of Nita Leigh, with +Nita's statement that 'the report of my death has been exaggerated,' and +a picture of the real Anita Lee." + +"When did the mistake occur?" Dundee asked, in great excitement. + +"Let me think!" Serena Hart frowned. "'Hullabaloo' opened in--yes, about +the first of May, 1922.... Just a little more than eight years ago." + +Dundee reached for his own hat, in a fever to be gone, but to his +surprise the actress stopped him, a faint color in her pale cheeks. + +"Since you're from Hamilton, and are investigating the murder, you have +undoubtedly met little Penelope Crain?" + +"I know her very well. It happens that she is private secretary to the +district attorney, under whom I work.... Why?" + +"I saw her play the lead in the Easter show at Forsyte four or five +years ago," Miss Hart explained, her face turned from the detective as +she dusted it with powder, "and I was impressed with her talent. In +fact, I advised her father, who had come from Hamilton to witness the +performance, as proud parents are likely to do, to let her go on the +stage." + +"So you met Roger Crain?" Dundee paused to ask. + +"Oh, yes.... A charming man, with even more personality than his +daughter," the actress answered carelessly, so carelessly that Dundee +had a sudden hunch. + +"Have you seen Mr. Crain recently?... He deserted his family and fled +Hamilton, under rather unsavory circumstances." + +"What do you mean?" Miss Hart asked sharply. + +"Oh, there was nothing actually criminal, I suppose, but he is believed +to have withheld some securities which would have helped satisfy his +creditors, when bankruptcy was imminent," Dundee explained. "Have you +seen him since then--January it was, I believe?" + +"January?" Miss Hart appeared to need time for reflection. "Oh, yes! He +sent in his card on the 'first night' of my show that opened in +January.... It was a flop--lasted only five weeks.... We chatted of the +Forsyte girls who are now in Hamilton, most of whom I went to school +with or have met at the Easter plays." + +"Do you know where Mr. Crain is now?" Dundee asked. "I have a message +for him from Penny--if you should happen to see him again----" + +"Why _should_ I see him again?" Miss Hart shrugged. "And I haven't the +least idea where he is living or what he is doing now.... Of course, if +he should come to see me backstage after 'Temptation' opens--What is the +message from Penny?" + +"That her mother wants him to come home," Dundee answered. "And I am +very sure Penny wants him back, too.... The mother is one of the +sweetest, gentlest, most tragic women I have ever met--and you have seen +Penny for yourself.... The disgrace has been very hard on them. It would +be splendid if Roger Crain would come back and redeem himself." + +Half an hour later Bonnie Dundee, in the file room of _The New York +Evening Star_, was in possession of the bound volume of that newspaper +for the month of May, 1922. On the front page of the issue of May 3, +under the caption which Serena Hart had quoted so accurately, was a +picture of a young, laughing Nita Leigh, her curls bobbed short, a rose +between her gleaming teeth. And in the issue of May 4 appeared two +pictures side by side--exotic, straight-haired, slant-eyed Anita Lee, +who had found life so insupportable that she had ended it, and the same +photograph of living, vital Nita Leigh. + +When he returned the files he asked the girl in charge: + +"Does this copyright line beneath this picture--" and he pointed to the +photograph of Nita which had appeared erroneously, "--mean that the +picture was syndicated?" + +The girl bent her head to see. "'Copyright by Metropolitan Picture +Service'," she read aloud. "Yes, that's what it means. When _The Evening +Star_ was owned by Mr. Magnus, he formed a separate company called the +Metropolitan Picture Service, which supplied papers all over the country +with a daily picture service, in mat form. But the picture syndicate was +discontinued about five years ago when the paper was sold to its present +owners." + +"Are their files available?" Dundee asked. + +"If they are, I don't know anything about it," the girl told him, and +turned to another seeker after bound volumes of the paper. + +"It doesn't matter," Dundee assured her, and asked for a sheet of blank +paper, on which he quickly composed the following telegram, addressed to +Penny Crain: + + "PLEASE SEARCH FILES ALL THREE HAMILTON PAPERS WEEK OF MAY FOURTH + TO ELEVENTH YEAR OF NINETEEN TWENTY TWO FOR STORY AND PICTURES ON + SUICIDE ANITA LEE ARTISTS MODEL STOP SAY NOTHING TO ANYONE NOT EVEN + SANDERSON IF HE IS THERE STOP WIRE RESULT" + +In his hotel, while impatiently awaiting an answer from Penny, Dundee +passed the time by scanning all the New York papers of Thursday and +Friday, on the chance of meeting with significant revelations concerning +the private life of Dexter Sprague or Juanita Leigh Selim united by +death--in the press, at least. There was much space devoted to the +theory involving the two New Yorkers with the murder of the racketeer +and gambler, "Swallow-tail Sammy" Savelli, but only two pieces of +information held Dundee's interest. + +The first was a reminder to the public that certain theatrical columns +of Sunday, February 9, had carried the rumor of Dexter Sprague's +engagement to Dolly Martin, popular "baby" star of Altamont Pictures, +and that the same columns of Tuesday, February 11, had carried Sprague's +own denial of the engagement--Dolly having "nothing to say." + +"So that is why Nita tried to commit suicide on February 9--and her +attempted suicide, with its tragic consequences for Lydia Carr, is +probably the reason Sprague gave up his movie star," Dundee mused. "Did +Nita let him persuade her to go into the blackmail business, in order to +hold his wandering, mercenary affections?... Lord! The men some women +love!" + +The second bit of information which the papers supplied him was winnowed +by Dundee himself, from a news summary of Nita Leigh's last year of life +as chorus girl, specialty dancer, "double" in pictures, and director of +the Easter play at Forsyte-on-the-Hudson. + +"If Nita got a divorce or even a legal separation from her husband after +her talk with Gladys Earle a year ago, she got it in New York and so +secretly that no New York paper has been able to dig it up," Dundee +concluded. "_And yet she had promised to marry Ralph Hammond!_" + +A bellboy with a telegram interrupted the startling new train of thought +which that conclusion had started. + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX + + +With a sharp exclamation of excitement and triumph, Dundee read Penny's +telegram: + + "HAMILTON EVENING SUN DATE OF MAY FIFTH NINETEEN TWENTY TWO + PUBLISHED STORY OF SUICIDE ANITA LEE ARTISTS MODEL BUT PICTURE + ACCOMPANYING WAS UNDOUBTEDLY NITA LEIGH SELIM'S STOP NO CORRECTION + FOLLOWED STOP WHAT DOES IT MEAN" + +"What does it mean?" Dundee repeated exultantly to himself. "It means, +my darling little Penny, that _anyone in Hamilton who had any interest +in the matter believed Nita Leigh Selim was dead, and thought the +spelling of her name was wrong, not the picture itself_!... The question +is _who_ read that story and gazed on that picture with exquisite +relief?" + +Two hours before he had dismissed as impossible or highly impractical +his impulse to investigate the eleven-year-old scandal on Flora Hackett, +who was now Flora Miles, as told him by Gladys Earle of the Forsyte +School. Even more difficult would it be to find out why Janet Raymond's +mother had taken her abroad for a year. Of course--he had ruefully told +himself--Nita Leigh might have been lucky--or unlucky enough to run +across documentary proof of one of the scandals of which Gladys Earle +had told her, or had dared to blackmail her victim by dark hints, as +Miss Earle had unconsciously suggested to her. + +But this new development could not be ignored. A picture of Nita Leigh +as a suicide had appeared eight years ago in a Hamilton paper, and the +paper had either remained unaware of the error or had thought it not +worth the space for a correction.... _Eight years ago!..._ + +Eight years ago in June three weddings had occurred in Hamilton! The +Dunlap, the Miles, the Drake wedding. And within the last year and a +half Judge Marshall, after proposing season after season to the most +popular debutante, had married lovely little Karen Plummer. Suddenly a +sentence from Ralph Hammond's story of his engagement to Nita Leigh +Selim popped up in Dundee's memory: "And once I got cold-sick because I +thought she might still be married, but she said her husband had married +again, and I wasn't to ask questions or worry about him." + +If Ralph Hammond had reported Nita accurately she had not said she was +_divorced_. She had merely said her husband was _married again_! Why was +Ralph to ask no questions? Divorced wives were not usually so +reticent.... + +Had Nita planned to commit the crime of bigamy? If not, when and where +and how had she secured a divorce? + +To Serena Hart, years before, she had denied any intention of getting a +divorce, for two reasons--_because she did not know where her husband +was_, and because, being married although husbandless, was a protection +against matrimonial temptations. + +To Gladys Earle, a year ago in April, she had confided that she could +not marry again, because she was not divorced and because she did not +know the whereabouts of her husband. + +And so far as New York reporters had been able to find out, Nita Leigh +had done nothing to alter her status as a married woman during the past +year. Moreover, if Nita had secured either a divorce or a legal +separation, her "faithful and beloved maid," Lydia Carr, would certainly +have known of it. And Lydia had vehemently protested more than once to +Bonnie Dundee that she knew nothing of Nita's husband, although she had +worked for the musical comedy dancer for five years. Surely if Nita, +loving and trusting Lydia as she did, had entered into negotiations of +any kind with or concerning her husband during the last year, her maid +would have been the first to know of them. And yet---- + +Suddenly Dundee jumped to his feet and began to pace the floor of his +hotel bedroom. He was remembering the belated confidence that John C. +Drake, banker, had made to him the morning before--after the discovery +of Dexter Sprague's murder. He recalled Drake's reluctant statement +almost word for word: + +"About that $10,000 which Nita deposited with our bank, Dundee.... When +she made the first deposit of $5,000 on April 28, she explained it with +an embarrassed laugh as 'back alimony', an instalment of which she had +succeeded in collecting from her former husband. And, naturally, when +she made the second deposit on May 5, I presumed the same explanation +covered that sum, too, though I confess I was puzzled by the fact that +both big deposits had been made in cash." + +_In cash!_ + +Had Nita, by any chance, been telling a near-truth? Had she been +blackmailing her own husband--a husband who had dared marry again, +believing his deserted wife to be dead--and justifying herself by +calling it "back alimony?" + +But--wasn't it, in reality, no matter what coercion Nita had used in +getting the money, exactly that?... _Back alimony! And the price of her +silence before the world and the wife who was not really a wife...._ + +In a new light, Bonnie Dundee studied the character of the woman who had +been murdered--possibly to make her silence eternal. + +Lois Dunlap had liked, even loved her. The other women and girls of "the +crowd"--that exclusive, self-centered clique of Hamilton's most socially +prominent women--must have liked her fairly well and found her +congenial, in spite of their jealousy of her popularity with the men of +the crowd, or they would not have tolerated her, regardless of Lois +Dunlap's championship of her protegée. + +Gladys Earle had found her "the sweetest, kindest, most generous person +I ever met"--Gladys Earle, who envied and hated all girls who were more +fortunate than she. + +Serena Hart, former member of New York's Junior League and still listed +in the Social Register, had found her the only congenial member of the +chorus she had invaded as the first step toward stardom. And Serena Hart +had the reputation of being a woman of character and judgment, a kind +and wise and great woman.... + +Finally, Ralph Hammond had loved Nita and wanted to marry her. + +Was it possible that Nita Selim's only crime, into which she had been +led by her infatuation for Dexter Sprague, had been to demand, secretly, +financial compensation from a husband who had married and deserted her, +a husband who, believing her dead, had married again? + +But who was the man whose picture--to spin a new theory--Nita had +recognized as that of her husband among the male members of the cast of +"The Beggar's Opera," when Lois Dunlap had proudly exhibited the +"stills" of that amateur performance? + +With excitement hammering at his pulses, Dundee took the bunch of +photographs which Lois Dunlap had willingly given him, and studied the +picture that contained the entire cast--the picture which had first +attracted Nita's attention. And again despair overwhelmed him, for every +one of his possible male suspects was in that group.... + +But he could not keep his thoughts from racing on.... Men who stepped +out of their class and went on parties with chorus girls frequently did +so under assumed names, he reflected. Serena Hart was authority for the +information that Nita's had been a sudden marriage. Was it not entirely +possible that the man who married Nita in 1918 had done so half-drunk, +both on liquor and infatuation, and that he had not troubled to explain +to Nita his motives for having used an assumed name or to write in his +real name on the application for a marriage license? Had Nita's private +detective journeyed out to _Hamilton_ years ago in a fruitless attempt +to locate "Matthew Selim?" + +Bonnie Dundee lay awake for hours Friday night turning these and a +hundred other questions over and over in his too-active mind, and slept +at last, only to awake Saturday with a plan of procedure which he was +sensible enough to realize promised small chance of success. + +And he was right. Not in Manhattan, or in any of the other boroughs of +New York City, did he find any record of a marriage license issued to +Juanita Leigh and Matthew Selim. Not only was it entirely probable that +Juanita Leigh was a stage name and that Nita had married conscientiously +under her real name, but it was equally possible that the license had +been secured in New Jersey or Connecticut. + +When he gave up his quest at noon Saturday and returned to his hotel, +Dundee bought at the newsstand a paper whose headline convinced him that +Sergeant Turner was, at that moment, even more discouraged than himself. +For the big type told the world: + + JOE SAVELLI "GETS" BROTHER'S SLAYER + +And smaller headlines informed the sensation-loving public: + + "SWALLOW-TAIL SAMMY" SAVELLI'S DEATH AVENGED BY BROTHER WHO + SURRENDERS TO POLICE; "SLICK" THOMPSON, ALLEGED MEMBER OF SAMMY'S + GANG, SHOT TO DEATH ON SIXTH AVENUE. + +Still smaller head-type acknowledged that Joe Savelli, after giving +himself up, with a revolver in his hand, had disclaimed any knowledge of +or connection with the murders of Juanita Leigh Selim and Dexter +Sprague. + +Two hours later, Dundee received a long telegram from District Attorney +Sanderson: + + "INFORMED BY EVENING SUN SAVELLI ANGLE COMPLETE WASHOUT STOP HAVE + YOU MADE ANY PROGRESS ALONG OTHER LINES STOP HAVE INFORMED + REPORTERS YOU WORKING INDEPENDENTLY WITH STRONG CHANCE OF SOLVING + BOTH CASES STOP WOULD LIKE YOU HERE FOR ADJOURNED INQUESTS ON BOTH + MURDERS MONDAY STOP MOTHER IMPROVED AM ON JOB AGAIN" + +Since Dundee felt that there was little chance of following through +either on the scandals which Gladys Earle had hinted at, or on Nita's +strangely secret marriage of twelve years before, he immediately +dispatched a wire to Sanderson, assuring him that vital progress had +been made and that he would leave New York on the four o'clock train +west, arriving in Hamilton Sunday morning at 8:50. The concluding +sentence of the wire was: + + "SUGGEST YOU PACIFY PRESS WITH ONLY VAGUEST OF HINTS." + +Sanderson's wire, with its confession of an interview on Dundee's trip +to New York, had upset him and left him with a cold, sick feeling of +fear that, stumbling half in darkness, the district attorney had +unwittingly warned the murderer of Nita Selim and Dexter Sprague that +his special investigator was on the right track. But he consoled himself +with the hope that the final sentence of his answering telegram would +prevent any further damage. + +But he was wrong. An hour before he reached his destination on Sunday +morning he went into the dining car and found a copy of _The Hamilton +Morning News_ beside his plate. And on the front page was a photograph +of dead Nita, her black hair in a French roll, her slim, recumbent body +clad in the royal blue velvet dress. Beneath the picture was the +caption: + +"What part does the outmoded royal blue velvet dress which Nita Selim +chose as a shroud play in the solution of her murder?... That is the +question which Special Investigator Dundee, attached to the district +attorney's office, who is due home this morning from fruitful detective +work in New York, is undoubtedly prepared to answer." + +Dundee was still seething with futile rage when he climbed the stairs to +his apartment. On the floor just inside his living room door he found an +envelope--unstamped and bearing his name in typing. + +The note inside, on paper as plain as the envelope, was typed and +unsigned. + +"If Detective Dundee will consult page 410 of the latest WHO'S WHO IN +AMERICA, he will find a tip which should aid him materially in solving +the two murder cases which seem to be proving too difficult for his +inexperience." + +A wry grin at his anonymous correspondent's unfriendly gibe was just +twisting his lips when a double knock sounded on the living room door, +which he had not completely closed. + +"Come in, Belle!" + +A morose, slack-mouthed mulatto girl in ancient felt slippers sidled +into the room. + +"Howdy, Mistah Dundee," Belle greeted him listlessly. "You got back, lak +de papers said you would, didn' yuh? An' I ain't sayin' I ain't glad! +Dat parrot o' yoahs sho is Gawd's own nuisance--nippin' at mah fingahs +an' screechin' his fool head off.... 'Cose I ain't sayin' it's +_his_ fault--keepin' dat young gemman on de secon' flo' awake las' +night.... But lak I say to Mistah Wilson, when he lights into me dis +mawnin', runnin' off at de mouf 'cause I fo'got to put Cap'n's covah on +his cage las' night, I ain't de onliest one what fo'gits in dis hyar +house.... Comin' home Gawd knows when, leavin' de front do' unlocked de +res' o' de night, so's bugglers and murderers and Gawd knows who could +walk right in hyar----" + +Dundee, itching to consult his own copy of "Who's Who", flung a glance +at the parrot's cage, intending to pacify the mournful mulatto by +scolding his "Watson" roundly. But he changed his mind and consoled the +chambermaid instead: + +"Just tell Mr. Wilson that for once he's wrong. You did _not_ forget to +cover Cap'n's cage, Belle. Look!" + +The girl's dull eyes bulged as they took in the cage, completely swathed +in a square of black silk. + +"Gawd's sake, Mistah Dundee!" she ejaculated. "_I_ didn't put dat covah +on dat bird's cage! An' neithah did Mis' Bowen, 'cause she been laid up +with rheumatiz eveh since you lef, an' eveh las' endurin' thing in dis +ol' house has been lef fo' me to do!" + +"Then I suppose the indignant Mr. Wilson came up and covered Cap'n +himself," Dundee suggested, crossing the room to the bookcase which +stood within reaching distance of his big leather-covered armchair. + +"Him?" Belle snorted. "How he gonna get in hyer widout no key? 'Sides, +he'd a-tol' me if'n----" + +"Belle, how many times must I ask you not to misplace my things?" Dundee +cut in irritably, for he was tired of the discussion, and angry that his +copy of "Who's Who" was missing from its customary place in the +bookcase. + +"Me?... I ain't teched none o' yoah things, 'cep'n to dus' 'em and lay +'em down whar I foun' 'em," Belle retorted, mournfulness submerged in +anger. + +Dundee looked about the room, then his eyes alighted upon the missing +book, lying upon a shelf that extended across the top of an +old-fashioned hot-air register, set high in the wall between the two +windows. The thick red volume lay close against the wall, its +gold-lettered "rib" facing the room. + +"Belle, tell me the truth, and I shall not be angry: did you put that +red book on that shelf?" Dundee asked, his voice steady and kindly in +spite of his excitement. + +"Nossuh! I ain't teched it!" + +"And you did not put the cover over my parrot's cage, although I had +tipped you well to feed Cap'n and cover him at night," Dundee said +severely. + +"I gotta heap o' wuk to do----" + +"And you say that Mr. Wilson, one of the two young men on the second +floor, left the front door unlocked when he came in last night?" Dundee +asked. "Does he admit it?" + +"Yassuh," Belle told him sulkily. "He say he was tiahed when he got home +'long 'bout midnight, an' he clean fo'got to turn de key in de do' an' +shoot de bolt." + +"Thanks, Belle. That will be all now," and Dundee did a great deal to +dispel the chambermaid's gloom by presenting her with a dollar bill. + +When she had gone, the detective read the note again, then looked +at it and its envelope more closely. They had a strangely familiar +look.... Suddenly he jerked open a drawer of his desk, on which his new +noiseless typewriter stood, selected a sheet of plain white bond, and +rolled it into the machine. Quickly he tapped out a copy of the strange, +taunting message. + +Yes! The left-hand margin was identical, the typing and its degree of +blackness were identical, and the paper on which he had made the copy +was exactly the same as that on which the original had been written. + +The truth flashed into his mind. It was no coincidence that he had a +copy of the very book to which his unknown correspondent referred him. +For the note had been written in this very room, on stationery +conveniently at hand, on the noiseless typewriter which had been far +more considerate about not betraying the intruder than had the parrot +whose slumbers had been disturbed. + +"But why did my unknown friend risk arrest as a burglar if he wanted to +give me an honest tip?" Dundee remarked aloud to the parrot, who croaked +an irrelevant answer: + +"Bad Penny! Bad Penny!" + +"I'm afraid, 'my dear Watson,' that those words will not be so helpful +in this case as they were when your mistress was murdered," Dundee +assured his parrot absently, for he was studying the peculiar situation +from every angle. "Another question, Cap'n--why did the unknown bother +to take my 'Who's Who' out of the bookcase, where I should normally have +looked for it, and put it on that particular shelf?" + +Warily, for his scalp was prickling with a premonition of danger, Dundee +crossed the room to the shelf, but his hand did not reach out for the +red book, which might have been expected to solve one problem, at least. +"_Why the shelf?_" he asked himself again. Why not the desk top, or the +mantelpiece, or the smoking table beside the big armchair? + +The shelf, with its drapery of rather fine old silk tapestry, offered no +answer in itself, for it held nothing except the red book, a Chinese +bowl, and a humidor of tobacco. And beneath the shelf was nothing but +the old-fashioned register, the opening covered with a screwed-on metal +screen which was a mass of big holes to permit the escape of hot air +when the furnace was going in the winter.... + +Suddenly Dundee stooped and stared with eyes that were widened with +excitement and a certain amount of horror. Then he rose, and, standing +far to one side, picked up the fat volume which lay on the shelf. As he +had expected, a bullet whizzed noiselessly across the room and buried +itself in the plaster of the wall opposite--a bullet which would have +ploughed through his own heart if he had obeyed his first impulse and +gone directly to the shelf to obey the instructions in the note. + +But more had happened than the whizzing flight of a bullet through one +of the holes of the hot-air register. The "Who's Who" had been jerked +almost out of Dundee's hand before he had lifted the heavy volume many +inches from the shelf. Coincidental with the disappearance of a bit of +white string which had been pinned to a thin page of the book was a +metallic clatter, followed swiftly by the faint sound of a bump far +below. + +Dropping "Who's Who" to the floor, Dundee flung open his living room +door and raced down three flights of stairs. He brought up, panting, at +the door of the basement. It was not locked and in another minute he was +standing before the big hot-air furnace. Above the fire box was a big +metal compartment--the reservoir for the heated air. And set into the +reservoir, to conduct the heat to the regions above, were three huge +pipes. + +With strength augmented by excitement, Dundee tugged and tore at one of +the pipes until he had dislodged it. Then thrusting his hand into the +heat reservoir, he groped until he had found what he had known must be +there--_Judge Marshall's automatic, with the Maxim silencer screwed upon +the end of its short nose_. + +At last he held in his hands the weapon with which Nita Leigh Selim and +Dexter Sprague had been murdered. + +The ingeniousness of his own attempted murder moved him to such profound +admiration that he could scarcely feel resentment. If, in the excitement +of hunting for a promised clue, he had gone directly to the shelf, +standing in front of the hole in the register into which the end of the +silencer had been jammed, so that it showed scarcely at all, even to +eyes looking for it, he would now have been dead. And the gun and +silencer, after hurtling down the big hot-air pipe behind the register, +could have lain hidden for months, even years, in the heat reservoir of +the furnace. + +With the weapon carefully wrapped in his handkerchief, Dundee went up +the stairs almost as swiftly as he had gone down them, meeting no one on +the way to his rooms on the top floor. + +"My most heartfelt thanks to you, Cap'n!" he greeted his parrot. "If you +had not squawked last night and so frightened the murderer that he made +the vital error of covering your cage, I should never have annoyed you +again with my Sherlock ruminations on cases which do not interest you in +the slightest." + +The parrot cackled hoarsely, but Dundee paid him scant attention. He +picked up the now harmless "Who's Who" and turned to page 410, a corner +of which had disappeared with the string that was still fastened to the +hair-trigger hammer of the Colt's .32. Very clever and very simple! The +murderer of two people and the would-be murderer of a third had had only +to unscrew the metal covering of the register, wedge the end of the +silencer into one of the many holes, replace the screws, and paste the +end of the string, drawn through another hole hidden by the tapestry, to +a page of the book he had selected as the one most likely to appeal to a +detective as a clue source.... + +No, wait! He had had to do more! Dundee bent and examined the metal +cover of the register. The circumference of the hole the murderer had +chosen as the one which would be directly in front of Dundee's heart +gleamed brightly. It had been necessary to enlarge it considerably. _The +murderer had left a trace after all!_ + +But the book was open in Dundee's hands and his eyes rapidly scanned +page 410. And he found what the murderer had not expected him to live to +read, but which he had counted on as an explanation of the note which +the police would have puzzled over, if all had gone well with his +scheme.... + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN + + +Dundee laughed, the parrot which had saved his life echoing his mirth +raucously, as his eyes hit upon the following lines of fine print +halfway down the third column of page 410 of "Who's Who in America": + + BURNS, William John, detective; b. Baltimore, Oct. 19, 1861-- + +"A taunt and a joke which turned sour, 'my dear Watson'!" he exulted to +the parrot. "A joke I was not intended to live to laugh over!" + +He closed the book and replaced it in the bookcase, careless of +fingerprints, for he was sure the murderer had been too clever to leave +any behind him in that room--or upon the gun and silencer either, for +that matter. + +Interestedly, Dundee surveyed the scene of his attempted murder. If he +had unsuspectingly gone up to the high shelf to reach for the book he +would have stood so close to the register that there would have been +powder burns on his shirt front--just as there had been on Dexter +Sprague's. And he would have been shot so near an open window--no chance +for fingerprints there, either, since he had not closed the windows on +his departure for New York, not wishing to return to a stuffy +apartment--that the police would have been justified in thinking he had +been shot from outside. It was an old-fashioned house in more ways than +in the manner of its heating. Outside of one of his two unscreened +windows there was an iron grating--the topmost landing of a fire escape. +Dundee could imagine Captain Strawn's positiveness in placing the +murderer there--crouching in wait for his victim.... + +Yes, damned ingenious, this attempted murder! Undoubtedly Strawn would +have dismissed the note as the work of a crank, not hitting upon the +fact that it had been written in that very room, on Dundee's own +typewriter and stationery. Strawn might even have got a mournful sort of +amusement out of the fact that Dundee had been advised to call upon a +greater detective than himself for assistance!... Yes, ingenious indeed! +And so amazingly simple---- + +Suddenly the young detective snatched for his hat. If the murderer was +so ingenious in this case, might he not have been equally clever in +planning and executing the murder of Nita Leigh Selim? + +Twenty minutes later he parked his car in the rutty road before the +Selim house in Primrose Meadows, and honked his horn loudly to attract +the attention of the plainclothesmen Captain Strawn had detailed +immediately after the murder to guard the premises during the day. There +was no answer. And a violent ringing of the doorbell also brought no +response. The guard had been withdrawn, probably to join the small army +of plainclothesmen and patrolmen who had been foolishly and futilely +searching for the New York gunman--the keystone of Captain Strawn's +exploded theory. + +With an oath, Dundee used his skeleton key to release the Yale lock with +which the front door was equipped. Straight down the main hall he went +and into the little foyer between the hall and Nita's bedroom. He +snatched up the telephone and to his relief it was not dead. He gave the +number of Captain Strawn's home, and had the pleasure of learning that +he had interrupted his former chief at a late Sunday breakfast. + +"When did you withdraw the guard from the Selim house?" he asked +abruptly, cutting short Strawn's cordial welcome-home. + +"Late Thursday afternoon," the Chief of the Homicide Squad answered +belligerently. "I needed all my men, and the Selim house had been gone +over with a fine tooth comb half a dozen times.... Why?" + +"Oh, nothing!" Dundee retorted wearily, and hung up the receiver after +assuring his old friend that he would call on him later in the day. + +No use to explain now to Strawn that the murderer had been given every +chance to remove any betraying traces of his crime. Besides, his first +excited hunch, after his own attempted murder, might very well be a +wild, groundless one. In his--Dundee's case--the impossibility of the +murder's being delayed or arranged so that the detective might be slain +when the whole "crowd" was assembled was obvious. The murderer had read +in a late Saturday afternoon extra--a copy of which was now in Dundee's +pocket--District Attorney Sanderson's boast to the press that his office +had been working on an entirely different theory than that which +connected the two murders with "Swallow-tail Sammy," that Special +Investigator Dundee, _expected back in Hamilton early Sunday morning_, +had been investigating Nita Leigh's past life in New York. And despite +Dundee's telegraphed warning, he had hinted sensational revelations +connected with the twelve-year-old royal blue velvet dress which Nita +had chosen to be her shroud. And in his desire to reassure the public +through the press, Sanderson had mysteriously promised even more +specific revelations than Dundee had actually brought home with him. +Prodded by reporters, Sanderson had admitted that he did not himself +know the nature of those revelations. + +The exasperated young detective could picture the murderer reading those +sensational hints and promises, could imagine his panic, the need for +immediate action, so that Special Investigator Dundee should not live to +tell the tale of his New York discoveries to the district attorney or +anyone else. + +But whether he was right or wrong, Dundee determined to give his hunch a +chance. He went into the over-ornate bedroom in which Nita Leigh Selim +had been murdered--shot through the back as she sat at her +dressing-table powdering her face. If her murder had been accomplished +by mechanical means, how had it been done? There was no hot-air register +here.... + +From the dressing-table Dundee walked to the window, upon whose +pale-green frame there was still the tiny pencil mark which Dr. Price +had drawn, to indicate the end of the path along which the bullet had +traveled, provided it had traveled so far. Nothing _here_ to aid in a +mechanical murder-- + +But in a flash Dundee changed his mind. For just slightly above the +pencil mark there was a small dent in the soft painted pine of the +window frame. + +And before his mind could frame words and sentences he thought he saw +how Nita Leigh had been murdered. + +Nothing here?... _Not now, because he himself had taken the lamp to the +courthouse for safe-keeping._ + +He saw it clearly in imagination--that bronze floor-lamp which Lydia +Carr had given to Nita Leigh, its big round bowl studded with great +jewels of colored glass. And in recalling every detail of the lamp he +saw what he had dismissed as of no importance at the time, in the +excitement of finding that the lamp's bulb had been shattered by the +"bang or bump" which Flora Miles had described. _One of the big glass +jewels had been missing, leaving an unsightly hole._ + +No wonder there had been a "bang or bump" hard enough to dent the frame +of the window! For if his hunch was correct, the gun, wedged into the +big bowl, with the silencer slightly protruding from the jewel-hole, had +"kicked," just as it had kicked an hour before, when it had dislodged +itself from the hole in the hot-air register and clattered down the big +pipe to the heat reservoir of the furnace. + +That the big lamp, when he, following Strawn, had first examined the +scene of Nita's murder, had not stood in front of the window frame, did +not dampen Dundee's excitement in the least. After Karen Marshall's +scream that room had been filled with excited people, who had rushed +about, looking out of the window for the murderer and doing all the +other things which terror-stricken people do in such a crisis. No, the +murderer--or murderess--had found no difficulty in shifting the big lamp +one foot nearer the chaise longue, to the place it had always occupied +before. + +But--_how_ had the gun been fired from the lamp? Electrically? Another +picture flashed into Dundee's mind. He saw himself stooping, on Monday +afternoon, to see if the plug of the lamp's cord had been pulled from +the socket, saw it again as it was then--nearly out, so that no current +could pass from the baseboard outlet under the bookcase into the bronze +lamp. How far from the truth his conclusion that Monday had been! + +But what was the _real_ truth? + +Suddenly Dundee flung back the moss-green Wilton rug which almost +entirely covered the bedroom floor and revealed the bell which Dexter +Sprague had rigged up so that Nita might summon Lydia from her basement +room, in case of dire need--a precaution with which the murderer was +probably familiar, since Lois Dunlap might innocently have spread the +news of its existence. + +There was a half-inch hole in the hardwood floor, and out of it issued a +length of green electric cord, connected with two small, flat metal +plates, one upon the other, so that when stepped upon a bell would ring +in Lydia's basement room. + +But there was something odd about the wire. Although it was obviously +new, a section of it near the two metal plates was wrapped with black +adhesive tape. Another memory knocked for attention upon Dundee's mind. +_The long cord of the bronze lamp had been mended with exactly the same +sort of tape--about a foot from where it ended in the contact plug._ + +Within another two minutes, Dundee, with a flashlight he had found in +the kitchen, was exploring the dark, earthy portion of the basement +which lay directly to the east of Lydia Carr's basement room. And he +found what he was looking for--adhesive tape wrapped about the wire +which had been dropped through the floor of Nita's room before it had +been carried, by means of another hole, into Lydia's room. + +He was too late--thanks to Captain Strawn. The bell which Sprague had +rigged up was in working order again. But as he was passing out of the +basement he glanced at the ceiling of the large room devoted to furnace, +hot-water heater and laundry tubs. And in the ceiling he saw a hole.... + +The murderer had left a trace he could not obliterate! + + * * * * * + +At three o'clock that Sunday afternoon Bonnie Dundee, fatigued after a +strenuous day, and suffering, to his own somewhat disgusted amusement, +from reaction--even a detective feels some shock at having narrowly +escaped death--permitted himself the luxury of a call upon Penny Crain. + +He found the girl and her mother playing anagrams. After greeting him, +Mrs. Crain rose, to surrender her place to the visitor. + +"_You_ play with this girl of mine, Mr. Dundee. She's too clever for me! +She's beaten me every game so far, and when I plead for two-handed +bridge as a chance to get even, she shudders at the very word." + +"Why did you drag poor Ralph away from his dinner here today?" Penny +demanded, scrambling the little wooden blocks until they made a weird +pattern of letters. + +"Because I wanted to find out exactly _how_ Nita Selim was killed--and I +did," Dundee answered. "I wish I knew as well _who_ murdered her!" + +Mute before Penny's excited questions, the detective idly selected +letters from the mass of face-up blocks on the table, and spelled out, +in a long row, the names of all the guests at Nita's fatal bridge party. +Suddenly, and with a cry that startled Penny, Dundee made a new name +with the little wooden letters.... + +Now he knew the answers to both "_How?_" and "_Who?_" + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT + + +"I fail to see any necessity for all this secrecy and hocus-pocus," +District Attorney Sanderson protested irritably. "Why the devil don't +you come clean and give us the low-down--if you have it!--on this +miserable business, instead, of high-handedly summoning Captain Strawn +to my office, so that you can give orders to us both?" + +Before Dundee could answer, Captain Strawn came to his assistance. + +"I worked with this boy for pretty near a year, Bill, and never yet did +he fail to make good when he said he had a pot on to boil. If he says it +will boil over this evening, provided we help him, boil over it will, or +I don't know Bonnie Dundee!" + +Sanderson scowled but capitulated. "All right! What do you want?" + +"Thanks, chief! And thanks, Captain!" Dundee cried, with heartfelt +gratitude. "First, I want to be excused from attending the adjourned +inquests into the two murders, scheduled for three o'clock today." + +"O.K." Sanderson agreed shortly. + +"Second, after about an hour of routine stuff, I wish you'd ask for +another adjournment until tomorrow, on the plea that important +developments are expected today." + +"O.K. again!" + +"Third, I'd like you personally to request the appearance of every +person connected in any way with each of the murders, in your office +this afternoon at four o'clock--so the whole bunch will be kept together +and have no chance to go to their homes or anywhere else until I am +ready for them. You can say that, owing to the illness of your mother +during the investigations, you want to question everyone personally." + +"Do you want all the servants brought here, too?" Sanderson asked. + +"None but Lydia Carr," Dundee answered. "After about an hour's innocuous +questioning, please invite them to accompany you to the Selim house. For +that--" and he grinned, "--is where the pot is scheduled to boil over. +I'd like everybody to be there by 5:15." + +"Where do I come in?" Captain Strawn demanded, almost jealously. + +"Now that you are no longer looking for a New York gunman, I suppose you +have plenty of plainclothesmen at your disposal?" Dundee asked, and was +instantly sorry he had reminded his former chief of the collapse of his +cherished and satisfying theory. + +"Plenty," Strawn answered gruffly. "How many will you need?" + +"Enough to keep every person on Mr. Sanderson's invitation list under +strictest observation until--the pot boils over," Dundee replied. + +"When do you want them to get on the job?" + +"As soon as they can do so, after you get back to your office." + +"Are they to follow the whole gang clear out to the Selim house?" + +"Most decidedly! After the unwilling guests are safely within the house, +your boys must guard the premises so that _no one_ leaves without +permission." + +"That's all as good as done," Strawn assured him. "Now--about them +inquiries you asked me to make yesterday of the secretary of the +American Legion." He drew a scrap of paper from his breast pocket. "I +find that John Drake, Peter Dunlap and Clive Hammond were all in +service, in the ----th Division, which was held up late in January, +1918, for nearly two weeks, in Hoboken, before the War Department could +get transports to send 'em to France. Miles, who enlisted the day war +was declared, was wounded and shipped home late in 1917. He was +discharged as unfit for further service--spinal operation--from a New +Jersey base hospital on January 12, 1918. Furthermore, Judge Marshall +was in New York the whole winter of 1917-'18, attached to the Red Cross +in some legal capacity. He donated his services and--" + +"All that doesn't matter now, Captain, but thanks just the same," Dundee +interrupted. "Now if you will both excuse me, I've got a lot of work to +do before five o'clock today!" + +Dundee had not exaggerated. That Monday was one of the busiest days he +had ever spent in all the twenty-seven years of his life. He began, +rather strangely, by visiting half a dozen of Hamilton's hardware +stores, exhibiting a peculiar instrument and making annoying inquiries +as to when and to whom it had been sold. But at his sixth port of call +success so completely rewarded his efforts that he was jubilant when he +bade the mystified proprietor good day, a signed statement reposing in +his wallet. + +Two other calls--both in office buildings--took up only an hour of his +time, and a taxicab delivered him at Police Headquarters just as the +factory whistles were sirening the news that it was twelve o'clock. + +He was lucky enough to find the fingerprint expert, Carraway, in his +cubbyhole of an office, his desk almost crowded out by immense filing +cabinets. + +Five minutes later Dundee sat at that desk, photographs of Dexter +Sprague's dead body, just as it had been discovered on the floor of the +trophy room in the Miles home, and a labelled set of fingerprints spread +out before him. + +"You're sure there can have been no mistake?" he asked. "No chance that +these fingerprint photographs were _reversed_ when the prints were +made?" + +"Not a chance--with my system!" Carraway retorted positively. + +"Fine!" Dundee cried. "May I take these photographs?... You have copies, +I presume?" + +It was half past two o'clock when Dundee, after a much needed lunch, +parked his car in the driveway of one of the most splendid houses +overlooking Mirror Lake--a home whose master and mistress were now +attending an inquest into two murders.... + +Half an hour later he climbed into his roadster again, his head +spinning. "Did I say _ingenious_?" he marvelled.... + +He drove directly to the Selim house, for he had much to do before the +arrival of Sanderson's compulsory guests at 5:15. + +His first visit there was to a small room in the basement--a dark +cubbyhole next to the coal room. He had locked it carefully after +exploring it the day before, for he had taken no chance on leaving +unguarded--as he had found it--treasure worth more to him than its +weight in gold. + +And queer treasure it was that he extracted now--a coiled length of +electric wire, which he and Ralph Hammond had measured the day before, +with triumphant excitement; a box of thumb tacks, many of them +surprisingly bent at the point; an augur with a set of bits of varying +sizes, a step-ladder, and a hammer. If Dexter Sprague had not +overestimated the amount of electric wire needed for the job of +installing an alarm bell between Nita's bedroom and Lydia's.... Dundee +was about to close the tool chest when his eyes fell upon a piece of +hardware he had not expected ever to find, although he had known of its +existence for more than an hour. + +At 5:15 he was entirely ready for D. A. Sanderson, Captain Strawn and +their party of indignant and unwilling guests.... + +"Oh, Mr. Dundee!" Carolyn Drake squealed. "You're not going to make us +play that awful 'death hand' again, are you?" + +They were all crowding about him--the men and women who had been Nita +Selim's guests at her last bridge and cocktail party.... + +"Not only are the bridge tables exactly where they were at this time on +the evening of May 24," Dundee answered _so_ significantly that all +stopped chattering to listen, "_but everything else in the house is +precisely as it was then_. Fortunately, not even the _electricity_ has +been cut off! But to make sure I have forgotten nothing, I wish you +would all follow me into Mrs. Selim's bedroom and look for yourselves." + +Like sheep, they crowded into the little foyer and on into the bedroom. +There stood the big bronze lamp, set squarely in front of the window +frame and in a direct line with the musical powder box on dead Nita's +dressing table. + +At 5:25, Penny Crain, Karen Marshall, Carolyn Drake, and Flora Miles, +who had been requisitioned by Dundee to play the part of the murdered +woman, were seated at table No. 2, and behind Karen's chair stood Lois +Dunlap. Clive Hammond and his new wife were again together in the +solarium. But there Dundee's restaging of the original scene in the +tragic drama ended. Everyone else, including Lydia Carr and Peter +Dunlap, were huddled together in a far corner of the living room. + +"Now, Mr. Miles!" Dundee called. "Your cue! Never mind the comedy about +'How's tricks?' Simply go into the dining room, with Mrs. Dunlap, to mix +cocktails. You'll find all the ingredients still on the sideboard, +exactly as there were when Mrs. Selim sent you to mix drinks on May +24.... And Mrs. Miles, will you, pretending that you are Nita Selim, go +to powder your face at Mrs. Selim's dressing-table?" + +Her face white and drawn, Flora Miles stumbled from the room, just as +her husband, dumb for once with rage, entered the dining room with Lois +Dunlap. + +Dundee was about to follow the latter two when an interruption occurred. +Followed by a plainclothesman, a middle-aged man entered the living +room. Tall, broad-shouldered, determined, he strode to the bridge table, +his handsome head upflung, his brown eyes fixed upon the widened brown +eyes of Penny Crain. + + * * * * * + +"Dad!" the girl breathed; then, joyously: "Oh, Dad! You've come home!" + +But Dundee halted the reconciliation with a stern word of command. +"Please join the group in the corner, Mr. Crain!" + +Regardless of the ensuing hubbub Dundee strode into the dining room, +where Tracey Miles stood at the sideboard, pouring whiskey from an +almost empty decanter into a small glass. + +"May I drink the Scotch Tracey has poured for me, Mr. Dundee?" Mrs. +Dunlap asked shakily, leaning against the big round table. + +"Yes, but--Silence, please!" he cried, as there came the first faint, +tinkling notes of _Juanita_, from Nita's musical powder box, penetrating +the thin wall between the bedroom and dining room. + +"As I have said," the detective spoke loudly and clearly above the +tinkle of music, "_everything is now exactly as it was when Nita Selim +was murdered_! Permit me to show you all how that murder was +accomplished!" + +A chair at the bridge table was overturned. Lois Dunlap almost choked on +her drink of Scotch. Women screamed. In a few seconds every person in +the living room, including the district attorney and Strawn, was huddled +in the wide opening into the dining room, their eyes fixed in horror +upon Bonnie Dundee. + +He spoke again, his voice very clear, but slow and weighted with a +dreadful significance: + +_"Mrs. Dunlap, step on the bell beneath the dining table!"_ + +Lois Dunlap dropped the empty whiskey glass, her face suddenly wiped of +all expression. + +"Step on that bell, Mrs. Dunlap--_just as you did before_!" + +As if hypnotized, Lois Dunlap began to grope with the toe of her right +pump for the slight bulge under the rug which indicated the position of +the bell used for summoning the maid from the kitchen. + +With a strangled cry Tracey Miles lunged across the few feet which +separated the woman and himself, seized her arm and whirled her +violently away from the table. + +"_Do you want to kill my wife, too?_" he panted, his usually florid face +the color of putty. "You--_you_--!" + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE + + +"That would be impossible, Miles," Dundee said deliberately. "_For your +wife is already dead!_" Then his clear words rang out like the knell of +doom: + +"Tracey Arthur Miles, I arrest you for the murder of your wife, known as +Juanita Leigh Selim, and for the murder of Dexter Sprague. And it is my +duty to warn you that anything you say may be used against you." + +Tracey Miles lifted his ashen face and stared at the detective blankly, +as though he had gone deaf and blind. "All--over--isn't it? May I--have +a--drink?" he managed to articulate at last. + +"Poor devil! He needs it," the too-soft-hearted young detective told +himself, as Miles poured a drink from the almost empty whiskey decanter +and raised the little glass to his lips. + +"I have--nothing--to say!" the murderer gasped thickly, then fell +heavily to the floor. + + * * * * * + +It was three-quarters of an hour later. District Attorney Sanderson, +Captain Strawn and Dundee were alone in the house where Nita "Selim" had +been murdered and where her husband had confessed his crimes by +committing suicide. The morgue ambulance had come and gone.... + +"I should have known," Dundee admitted ruefully, as the three men +entered Nita's bedroom, "that so ingenious a criminal as Tracey Miles +would not have failed to provide against the possibility of discovery. +He must have seized an opportunity to spill cyanide of potassium into +the decanter when my eyes were off him for a moment--and upon Lois +Dunlap." + +"I'm glad he did," Sanderson said curtly. "But it was ghastly that poor +Lois had to know that it was she, in all innocence, who fired the shot +that killed her friend." + +"It was," Dundee sighed. "But I believed that the only way I could make +Miles confess was to frighten him into thinking Flora would be killed in +the same manner.... Well, it worked!" + +"Captain Strawn and I are still in the dark as to exactly how Miles +managed his wife's murder," Sanderson reminded him. "This morning you +chose to tell us nothing more than that a Hamilton man had married Nita +Leigh in New York in January, 1918, and that eight years ago, when he +saw her picture in _The Hamilton Evening Sun_, along with the story that +'Anita Lee' had committed suicide, he felt free to marry again.... You +said then you knew who the man was but you would not even tell us how +you knew--" + +"Because I had very little actual proof then," Dundee answered. "As to +who he was, the salient clue had been staring me in the face the whole +time, but it was not until I was fooling with a set of anagrams last +night, idly spelling out the names of all the men who _might_ have +married her and then murdered her, that I saw it--" + +"Saw _what_?" Strawn demanded irritably. + +"That Selim is simply Miles spelled backwards," Dundee explained. +"Possibly because he considered it the sophisticated thing to do, Miles +used an assumed name at the party at which he met Nita Leigh--and +married her under that name shortly afterward. Even the first name, +'Mat', by which she knew him, was only his initials reversed." + +"Simple--but clever," Sanderson commented. + +"Just as were all of Miles' schemes after Nita, egged on by Sprague, +turned up in Hamilton to demand 'back alimony' as the price of her +silence.... But let me show you how he killed his wife." + +He strode to the big bronze lamp. "It took me less than an hour today to +reconstruct the death machine so that it would be almost exactly as it +was when Miles finished his work just before 2:30 on Saturday, May +24--and as it remained until he had an opportunity to come back here and +dismantle it. Trust him to find out that the guard was removed from the +house Thursday!" + +As he spoke, he was unscrewing the big, jewel-studded bowl of the bronze +lamp. Wedged, at a down-slanting angle inside the bowl, which was twelve +inches in diameter, was Judge Marshall's snub-nosed automatic, the +attached Maxim silencer projecting slightly from the hole whose jewel +was missing. + +"Lydia told me last night over the telephone--and very much surprised +she was, too, when I swore her to secrecy--that the jewel had been lost +when the lamp was shipped from New York," Dundee explained. "There's a +blank cartridge in the gun now, of course, but Miles, in his panic, took +my words literally.... See the electro-magnet strapped to the gun butt? +He got it from the bell Sprague had installed in Lydia's bedroom, and he +returned it when he was 'cleaning up', so that the bell would ring +again. The magnet he connected with the electric wire in one of the two +lamp sockets, as you see it now, and the long cord of the lamp was +connected with the wire of the bell in the dining room--so connected +that when anyone stepped on the two little metal plates under the dining +room rug, the kitchen bell would ring and the gun would be fired +simultaneously. But if you will examine the jewel hole," he suggested, +"you will see that Miles had to enlarge it considerably, using a reamer, +which I found in the tool chest in the basement, along with all the +apparatus Sprague had bought for installing Nita's alarm bell. I could +see no reason for Sprague's having needed a reamer for his little job, +however, and this morning I was lucky enough to get proof that Miles +himself had purchased it at a hardware store on the Tuesday before +Nita's murder." + +"How did he connect the lamp cord with the dining room bell?" Strawn +puzzled. "These modern houses don't have exposed wiring--" + +"You forget Sprague's wiring for the alarm bell from here to Lydia's +room!" and Dundee threw back the rug, showing them the hole in the +floor, out of which came a short length of electric wire, ending in two +small metal plates. But attached now to the wire was the cord from the +bronze lamp. + +"The plug of the lamp cord is nearly out of the baseboard outlet behind +the bookcase, just as Miles left it, so that there is no contact with +electricity there. And the rug, which almost entirely covers the floor, +hides, as you have seen, the joining of the two wires. An inexplicable +wrapping of adhesive tape both on the lamp cord and on the wire of +Nita's alarm bell here gave me the clue.... In installing the alarm +bell, Sprague copied the arrangement under the dining table, of course. +And Miles simply had to drop a bit, fastened to the augur Sprague had +bought and used for his own job, down the four inches which separate the +dining room floor from the basement ceiling, boring a hole through the +ceiling. It was that fresh-bored hole in the ceiling that I could not +understand, and which Ralph Hammond assured me was not there Saturday +morning before Nita was killed.... Miles joined a piece of electric wire +to the dining room bell wires, and pushed it down through the hole he +had bored into the basement ceiling. Now if you'll come down with me--" + +When the three men stood staring upward at the basement ceiling, Dundee +continued: + +"See this long wire running along the ceiling from the hole beneath the +dining room bell? The tacks Miles used to secure it were also returned +to the tool chest, but he could not get rid of either the augur hole or +the tiny holes showing the course of the wire.... Let's follow it." + +He led them across the basement to a door leading into a dank, +unfinished portion of the cellar, directly east of Lydia's bedroom and +beneath Nita's. The wire whose course they were following led under the +top frame of the door, and, with a flashlight in his hand, Dundee showed +how it continued along a rafter until it reached the place where it was +joined, by adhesive tape, to the wire Sprague had dropped from Nita's +bedroom floor above. + +"Miles simply cut the wire here where it enters another hole through +Lydia's bedroom wall, and attached the new wire," Dundee explained. "The +connection between the dining room bell and the electro-magnet in the +lamp upstairs was then complete.... Sprague had bought yards too much of +the wire--fortunately for Miles' scheme." + +"But what a chance Miles took on the bullet's not hitting her in a fatal +spot!" Sanderson commented in an awed voice. + +"Not much of a chance!" Dundee denied. "He would fire the gun only when +he knew Nita was seated before her dressing-table. Experienced marksman +that he was, he could calculate the path of the bullet to a nicety. Of +course the machine had to be used that very day. As you know Nita +herself gave him his chance. Miles, standing at the sideboard, which was +separated from Nita's dressing table only by a thin wall, listened until +the first faint notes of _Juanita_ told him that Nita was powdering her +face. He could be almost positive that Nita was sitting down to her +task.... The poor girl saw nothing to alarm her, but the gun kicked when +the shot was fired by Lois' innocent stepping upon the dining room bell, +and the big lamp was rocked so that it banged against the window frame, +shattering the one bulb Miles had left in it. Of course he moved the +lamp a foot or so, in the resulting excitement. And if Nita had been +wounded only, living to tell how the shot was fired, Miles would have +committed suicide then and there." + +"What if Nita had not asked him to mix cocktails or had not gone to +powder her face?" Strawn asked. + +"The whole party was going to dine and dance at the Country Club. +Miles would have escorted her home, as he had done on Monday night, when +Nita had probably made her last demand. He could have counted on Nita's +going into her bedroom to powder her face, even if he had had to tell +her that her nose was shiny, and would himself then have gone to the +dining room, on the excuse that he needed a drink before discussing +'business'.... But I must tell you that on Saturday morning, according +to the telephone operator in Miles' office, into whom I put the fear of +the Lord and the law when I interviewed her this morning, Nita rang Miles +to say she must see him as soon as possible, her unexpressed intention +being to tell him that she was not going to make him come across again. +Miles--the telephone operator confessed to having listened-in on the +Whole conversation--told her he would be right out, but Nita said she and +Lydia were going into Hamilton and would not be back until 2:30--the +time the bridge game was scheduled to begin. That was the opportunity +Miles had been praying for, and he came on out, having previously stolen +the gun and silencer and having studied this house--" + +"How had he got in?" Sanderson wanted to know. + +"Judge Marshall had lent him a key in February, when Miles wanted to +show the house to an engaged young man in his offices, and Miles had +neglected to return it.... Well, when he arrived, he found Ralph Hammond +here, and had to leave, waiting at a safe distance, probably, until the +coast was clear about one o'clock. Even so, he had more than an hour to +do his carefully planned job.... _Nita had to die!_ Miles could not +continue to pay her large sums of money, since he was really only an +employe of Flora's. Everything he held dear in the world was threatened. +He loved Flora, he adored his children, and he could not give up the +luxury and social position which his bigamous marriage with Flora----" + +"Why didn't he make a clean breast of the whole mess to Flora, since he +had not married her until he believed Nita Leigh was dead?" Sanderson +interrupted. + +"You must remember that Flora was carrying on a violent flirtation with +Sprague--'vamping' him to get the lead in the Hamilton movie, if Sprague +got the job of directing it," Dundee reminded him. "Miles, victim of a +deep-rooted sexual inferiority complex, must have felt sure that Flora, +on discovering she was not legally married, would snatch at the chance +to marry Sprague--which was of course what Sprague had planned in case +Nita published the truth." + +"But you were wrong about the secret shelf! The gun was never there!" +Strawn gloated. + +"No. But it was the absence of fingerprints on the pivoting panel and +shelf which kept me on the right track. Miles had searched the shelf for +the marriage certificate which he could not know Nita had already +burned. Probably, too, he had written her a few letters during their +short courtship----" + +"How was Sprague killed?" Sanderson interrupted impatiently. + +Dundee led the way across the basement to a cubbyhole next to the coal +room, entered and came out with a narrow, deep drawer of ebony inlaid +with mother-of-pearl.... + +"First I must tell you that Miles got the gun out of the lamp that +Saturday night, parking his car at a distance and sneaking into the +house while I was talking with Lydia in the basement. We can guess that +he stowed gun, silencer and electro-magnet in a pocket of his car. At +any rate, he came back noisily enough a little later, to offer Lydia a +job as nurse in his home. Doubtless he assured himself that she knew +nothing, or poor Lydia would have gone the way of her mistress and +Sprague." + +"Was Sprague----?" Strawn began. + +"Despite my warning," Dundee went on, refusing to be hurried, "Sprague +made a demand for blackmail money upon Miles. It is possible that +Sprague, also sneaking into the house that Saturday night to get his +bag, saw Miles retrieve the gun. At any rate, Sprague knew that Miles +was the only person among all the company who had a real motive for +killing Nita Selim, and he undoubtedly blackmailed Miles as a murderer +as well as a bigamist. Perhaps Miles put him off for a day or two, but +on Wednesday Judge Marshall begged for a bridge game, and Miles seized +the opportunity of again having the original crowd present--a sort of +wall of integrity surrounding and including him. For I don't think he +really wanted to involve his best friends as suspects. I believe he +merely wanted to hide among them--apparently as above suspicion as they +were. And there is safety in numbers, you know.... At any rate, Miles +made an appointment Wednesday afternoon with Sprague, telling him that, +if he would come to his home that evening, and manage to leave the +bridge game while he was dummy, he would find the money he was +demanding--_in a drawer of the cabinet that stood between the two +windows in the trophy room_!" + +Dundee exhibited the drawer he had taken from the basement tool room. +"This drawer! I took it away from the Miles home this afternoon while +everyone but a chambermaid was at the inquest. Miles did not have time +to go home before going to your office, Mr. Sanderson, with the rest of +the crowd you had summoned for questioning. If he had, he would have +killed himself as soon as he found the incriminating drawer was missing +from the cabinet." + +"But--_how_----?" Sanderson began, frowning with bewilderment. + +"Very simple!" Dundee answered. "When Sprague pulled open this drawer, +which was set in the cabinet at just the height of his stomach, he +received a bullet in his heart.... See these four little holes?... A +vise was screwed into the bottom of the drawer so that it gripped the +gun with its silencer, at an upward angle. A piece of string was tied to +the trigger and fastened somehow to the underside of the drawer, so that +when Sprague pulled the drawer open the string was drawn taut and the +trigger pulled. Practically the same mechanism by which he tried to +murder me.... The kick of the gun jerked the drawer shut. All Miles had +to do when he was pretending to look for Sprague was to turn off the +trophy room light by a button--one of a series on the outside wall of +the hall closet. Probably it had been agreed between them that Sprague +would not return to the bridge game, hence Sprague's telephoning for a +taxi to wait for him at the foot of the hill, and his taking his hat and +stick into the trophy room with him." + +"Then Miles had from midnight till dawn to remove the gun!" + +"Yes. Some time during the night, after Flora was asleep with a +sedative, which she badly needed because of the quarrel--a genuine +one--which she and Tracey had had over Sprague--Miles slipped down to +the trophy room and removed the gun and vise. But he could not remove +the holes the screws had made, although he did cover the bottom of the +usually empty drawer with old pamphlets on the care and feeding of +dogs.... By the way, the chambermaid told me that her master spent about +half an hour before dinner that Thursday night in the trophy room, +'going over his fishing tackle'.... His next concern was to make the +murder jibe completely with Captain Strawn's theory of a gunman who had +trailed his quarry to the Miles home and shot him through the window. +The window was already open, but the screen had to be raised, too, and +Sprague's fingerprints had to be on the nickel catches by which the +screen curtain is raised or lowered. Of course Sprague had not touched +the screen----" + +"Do you mean to say he lugged the corpse to the window and lifted it up +so that he could press the stiff fingers upon the nickel catches?" +Sanderson asked with a shudder. "What a fiend----" + +"No," Dundee assured him. "That was unnecessary. He simply removed the +curtain screen, which is so designed that it can be taken down and put +up as easily as a window shade. He carried the screen--his own hands +protected by gloves, I suppose--to where Sprague's right hand lay _palm +upward_, on the floor, and pressed the thumb and forefinger against the +catches, making fingerprints all right, but they were reversed--as I +discovered when it occurred to me to examine the photographs of +Sprague's fingerprints in Carraway's office today. Miles could not turn +the stiff hand over without bruising the dead flesh; consequently the +print of the forefinger was on the catch where the thumb would normally +have left its mark--and vice versa.... Before I forget it, I should also +tell you that I found a master key hanging on the keyboard in the +butler's pantry. Big houses, with their many locks, are usually provided +with a master key, and Miles undoubtedly used that one to gain entrance +into my room after midnight Saturday morning." + +"Where did you find the vise?" Strawn asked. + +"In the tool chest right here, where he had also placed the reamer he +had bought. The vise probably belonged to Miles originally, but he was +taking no chances on anything's being found in his possession, provided +we tumbled to _how_ the two crimes were committed.... The reamer he must +have brought out here after he used it to enlarge the hole in my hot-air +register after midnight Sunday morning. It is possible he did his +cleaning up job here at the same time. It was safe enough to have lights +on, since the house is so isolated and there had been no guard here +since Thursday." + +"Well--" Sanderson drew a deep breath. "He was a far cleverer man than +any of us suspected. The mechanical arrangements were absurdly easy to +rig up, in all three cases, but the _thinking_ of them----. It is a pity +Nita did not fear him as she feared Sprague's vengeance----" + +"You're right," Dundee answered. "Nita did not fear Miles, not even when +she was making him pay and pay.... No woman could look at Miles and +believe him capable of murder. But a conviction of sexual inferiority +leads to strange things, as psychologists can tell you.... I believe +Miles married the only two women who ever fell in love with him, and +there can be no doubt that Nita really loved him, for she kept her +wedding dress for more than twelve years and chose it to be her shroud. +It is possible she was still fond of him, although she was infatuated +with Sprague when she came down here and was later sincerely in love +with Ralph Hammond. Another reason she did not fear Miles when she made +her will was that she counted on being able to tell him Saturday night +at the latest that she would never ask him for money again, if he would +trade silence for silence. How she hoped to secure Sprague's silence we +can only guess at. Probably she meant to buy it with the remainder of +the $10,000 she had already got from Miles--provided Sprague did not +kill her for ditching him as a lover. We know she foresaw that +possibility, since she willed the money to Lydia. Of course if Sprague +had proved tractable, Nita as Ralph's wife would have been able to +compensate Lydia handsomely for the injury she had done her." + +"Poor Nita--and poor Flora!" Sanderson sighed, as he led the way up the +basement stairs. "Hello! Someone's calling you, Bonnie----" + +Dundee ran through the kitchen and dining room and into the living room, +for he had recognized Penny Crain's sweet, husky contralto. + +"What are _you_ doing back here, young woman?" he demanded. "You were +told to go home and forget all this ugly business----" + +"Dad wants a private word with you," Penny explained, her brown eyes +luminous with happiness. "He's on the front porch.... And you ought to +see Mother! She looks like a twenty-year-old bride!" + +When Dundee joined him on the porch, Roger Crain flushed painfully but +there was happiness in his eyes, too.... + +"Serena asked me to thank you for giving her Penny's message to pass +on to me," Crain began in a low voice. "I'm sure you've guessed a lot, +but what you probably don't know is that Serena used the securities +I had sent her for safe keeping, to play the market with. When she +knew what I had done here, she wouldn't let me touch a penny of the +money until she had turned it into enough to clear up all my debts in +Hamilton.... Then," and he sighed slightly, "she sent me home.... Not +that I'm sorry. I'm going to try to make Margaret and Penny happy, make +them and the town forget that I disgraced them----" + +"Through?" Penny called from the doorway, and Bonnie Dundee forgot +Tracey Miles and all his ingenious schemes. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MURDER AT BRIDGE*** + + +******* This file should be named 19403-8.txt or 19403-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/4/0/19403 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: Murder at Bridge</p> +<p>Author: Anne Austin</p> +<p>Release Date: September 28, 2006 [eBook #19403]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MURDER AT BRIDGE***</p> +<p> </p> +<h3>E-text prepared by Mark C. Orton, Mary Meehan,<br /> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (http://www.pgdp.net/)</h3> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h1>MURDER AT BRIDGE</h1> + +<h3><i>A Mystery Novel</i></h3> + +<h2><i>By</i> ANNE AUSTIN</h2> + +<h3>AUTHOR OF "MURDER BACKSTAIRS"</h3> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h4>GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS NEW YORK</h4> + +<h4>Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1931.<br /> +Reprinted March, April, 1931; February, 1932.</h4> + +<h4>PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</h4> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + + +<h4><span class="smcap">For</span><br /> +ARLINE AND F. HUGH HERBERT</h4> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> +<p> </p> +<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. --> +<p> +<a href="#CHAPTER_ONE">CHAPTER ONE</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_TWO">CHAPTER TWO</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_THREE">CHAPTER THREE</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_FOUR">CHAPTER FOUR</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_FIVE">CHAPTER FIVE</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_SIX">CHAPTER SIX</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_SEVEN">CHAPTER SEVEN</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_EIGHT">CHAPTER EIGHT</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_NINE">CHAPTER NINE</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_TEN">CHAPTER TEN</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_ELEVEN">CHAPTER ELEVEN</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_TWELVE">CHAPTER TWELVE</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_THIRTEEN">CHAPTER THIRTEEN</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_FOURTEEN">CHAPTER FOURTEEN</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_FIFTEEN">CHAPTER FIFTEEN</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_SIXTEEN">CHAPTER SIXTEEN</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_SEVENTEEN">CHAPTER SEVENTEEN</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_EIGHTEEN">CHAPTER EIGHTEEN</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_NINETEEN">CHAPTER NINETEEN</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_TWENTY">CHAPTER TWENTY</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_TWENTY-ONE">CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_TWENTY-TWO">CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_TWENTY-THREE">CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_TWENTY-FOUR">CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_TWENTY-FIVE">CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_TWENTY-SIX">CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_TWENTY-SEVEN">CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_TWENTY-EIGHT">CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_TWENTY-NINE">CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE</a><br /> +</p> +<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. --> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="floorplan" id="floorplan"></a> +<img src="images/floorplan.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + + +<h3>Ground-floor plan of Nita Selim's house in Primrose Meadows, showing the bedroom in which the murder was committed.</h3> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_ONE" id="CHAPTER_ONE"></a>CHAPTER ONE</h2> + + +<p>Bonnie Dundee stretched out a long and rather fine pair of legs, +regarding the pattern of his dark-blue socks with distinct satisfaction; +then he rested his black head against the rich upholstery of an armchair +not at all intended for his use.</p> + +<p>His cheerful blue eyes turned at last—but not too long a last—to the +small, upright figure seated at a typewriter desk in the corner of the +office.</p> + +<p>"Good morning, Penny," he called out lazily, and good-humoredly waited +for the storm to break.</p> + +<p>"Miss Crain—to <i>you</i>!" The flying fingers did not stop an instant, but +Dundee noticed with glee that the slim back stiffened even more rigidly +and that there was a decided toss of the brown bobbed head.</p> + +<p>"But Penny is so much more like you," Dundee protested, unruffled. "And +why should I be forced always to think of you as a long-legged bird, +when even our mutual boss, District Attorney William S. Sanderson, has +the privilege of calling you what you are—a bright and shining new +penny?"</p> + +<p>"I've known Bill Sanderson since I was born," the unseen lips informed +him truculently, even as the unseen fingers continued their fiercely +staccato typing.</p> + +<p>"Ah! That explains a lot!" Dundee conceded handsomely. "I just wondered, +amidst all this bonhommie of 'Bill' and 'Penny,' why I—"</p> + +<p>"I only call Mr. Sanderson 'Bill' when I forget!" the small creature +defended herself sharply. "Goodness knows I <i>try</i> to be an efficient +private secretary! And I could be a lot more efficient if lazy strangers +didn't plump themselves down in our best visitors' chair, and try to +flirt with me. I don't flirt! Do you hear?—<i>I don't flirt with +anybody!</i>"</p> + +<p>"Flirt with you, you funny little Penny?" Dundee's voice was a little +sad, the voice of a man who finds himself grievously misunderstood. "I +only want you to like me, if you can, and be a little nice to me, for +after all I—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I know!" Penny Crain jerked the finished letter from her typewriter +and spun about on her narrow-backed swivel chair to face him. "I know +you are 'Mr. James F. Dundee, Special Investigator attached to the +office of the District Attorney,' and that you have a right to drive me +crazy if you want to."</p> + +<p>"<i>Crazy?</i>" Dundee was genuinely amazed, contrite. "I beg your pardon +most humbly, Miss Crain. I'll go back to my cell—"</p> + +<p>"Your office is almost as big and nice as this one," Penny retorted, but +her sharp, bright brown eyes—really almost the color of a new +penny—softened until they took on a velvety depth.</p> + +<p>Dundee did not fail to notice the softening, nor did the little +heart-shaped face, with its low widow's-peak, its straight, short nose, +and its pointed little chin, made almost childish by the deep cleft +which cut through its obvious effort to look mature and determined, fail +to please him any more acutely than on the other days of the one short +week he had been privileged at intervals to gaze upon it.</p> + +<p>"But the files, and—other things—are in this office," he told her, his +blue eyes twinkling happily once more.</p> + +<p>"Don't you <i>dare</i> touch my files again!" Penny cried, springing to her +feet and running toward the wall which was completely concealed by +drawers, cabinets and shelves, filled with the records of which she was +the proud custodian. "That's why I said just now that you were driving +me crazy. Thursday you took a whole folder of correspondence out of the +letter files and put it back under the wrong initial. I had to hunt for +it for two hours, with Bill—I mean, Mr. Sanderson—gnawing his nails +with impatience. He thought I had filed it wrong, and you might have +made me lose my job."</p> + +<p>Unconsciously her slightly husky contralto voice had sunk lower and +trembled audibly.</p> + +<p>"I'm awfully sorry. I shan't touch your files again, Miss Crain."</p> + +<p>"Oh—go on and call me Penny," she conceded impatiently. "What do you +want now?... And you can get anything you need out of the files if +you'll just put the folder in the bottom drawer of my desk, so that I +can file it myself—correctly!"</p> + +<p>"Thank you, Penny," Bonnie Dundee said gravely. "I'd like awfully to +have the complete transcript of 'The State versus Maginty.' Mr. +Sanderson is determined to get a conviction where our former district +attorney most ingloriously failed. The new trial comes up in two weeks, +and he wants me to try to uncover a missing link of evidence."</p> + +<p>"I know," she nodded, and stretched her short, slender body to pull down +the two heavy volumes he required.</p> + +<p>Without a by-your-leave, Special Investigator Dundee resumed his +comfortable seat, and laid the first of the volumes open upon his knees. +But he did not seem to take a great deal of interest in the impanelling +of jurors in the case of one Rufus Maginty, who had won the temporary +triumph of a "hung jury" under the handling of the state's case by +District Attorney Sherwood, deposed in November's election.</p> + +<p>Rather, his eyes followed the small, brisk figure of Miss Penelope +Crain, as it moved about the room, and his ears listened to the somehow +charming though emphatic tapping of her French heels.... French heels! +Hadn't she been wearing sensible, Cuban-heeled Oxfords all other days of +this first week of his "attachment" to the district attorney's +office?... Cunning little thing, for all her thorniness and her +sharpness with him, which he now saw that he had deserved.... Pretty, +too.... Damned pretty!... What color was that dress of hers?... Ummm, +let's see ... Chartreuse, didn't they call it? Chartreuse with big brown +dots in it. Bet it was sleeveless under that short little jacket of +golden-brown chiffon velvet.... By Jove—and Dundee lapsed into one of +the Englishisms he had picked up during his six months' work in England +as a tyro in the records department of Scotland Yard, before he had come +to Hamilton to make a humble beginning as a cub detective on the +Homicide Squad—yes, by Jove, she was all dressed up, for some reason or +other.</p> + +<p>"Of course! Because it's Saturday and you have the afternoon off!" +Dundee finished his reverie aloud, to the astonishment of the small +person trying to reach a file drawer just a little too high for her. "I +mean," he hastened to explain, "that I've just noticed how beautiful +your costume is, and found a reason for it."</p> + +<p>There was sudden color in the creamy face. The French heels tapped an +angry progress across the big office, and Penny sat down abruptly in her +swivel chair, reached across the immaculate desk, snatched up a morning +paper and tossed it, without a glance, in the general direction of her +tormentor.</p> + +<p>"Page three, column two, first item," she informed him ungraciously, and +then began to search with a funny sort of desperation for more work to +consume her extraordinary energy.</p> + +<p>Bonnie Dundee grinned indulgently as he opened <i>The Hamilton Morning +News</i> and turned to the specified page and column.</p> + +<p>"Ah! My old friend, the 'society editress,' in her very best style," he +commented as he began to read aloud:</p> + +<p>"'Mrs. Juanita Selim, new and charming member, is entertaining the +Forsyte Alumnae Bridge Club this afternoon, luncheon to be served at the +exclusive new Breakaway Inn on Sheridan Road—'"</p> + +<p>"I've read it—and I'm busy, so shut up!" Penny commanded, as she +gathered up pencils to sharpen.</p> + +<p>Quite meekly, Bonnie Dundee subsided into silent perusal of an item he +was sure could have no possible interest for himself, in either a +personal or professional capacity, unless Penny's name was in it +somewhere:</p> + +<p>"—after which the jolly party of young matrons and maids will adjourn +to Mrs. Selim's delightful home in the Primrose Meadows Addition." He +chuckled, and dared to interrupt the high importance of pointing-up +pencils. "I say, that's funny, isn't it?... 'Primrose Meadows +Addition'!"</p> + +<p>"I don't think it's funny," Penny retorted coldly. "It so happens that +my mother named it, that my father went into bankruptcy trying to make a +go of it, and that 'Mrs. Selim's delightful home' was built to be our +home, and in which we were fortunate enough to live only two months +before the crash came."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" Dundee groaned. "Penny, Penny! I'm dreadfully sorry."</p> + +<p>"Shut up!" she ordered, but her voice was huskier than ever with tears.</p> + +<p>Dundee's now thoroughly interested eyes raced down the absurdly written +paragraphs:</p> + +<p>"Although not an alumna of that famous and select school for girls, +Forsyte-on-the-Hudson, graduation from which places any Hamilton girl in +the very inner circle of Hamilton society, Mrs. Selim has been closely +identified with the school, having for the past two years directed and +staged Forsyte's annual play which ushers in the Easter vacation.</p> + +<p>"Indeed it was Mrs. Selim's remarkable success with this year's play +which caused Mrs. Peter Dunlap, long interested in a Little Theater for +Hamilton, to induce the beautiful and charming young directress to come +to Hamilton with her. Plans for the Little Theater are growing apace, +and it is safe to conjecture that not all the conversation flying thick +and fast about 'Nita's' bridge tables this afternoon will be concerned +with contract 'conventions,' scores, and finesses which failed.</p> + +<p>"Lovely 'Nita' was elected to membership a fortnight ago, when a vacancy +occurred, due to the resignation of Miss Alice Humphrey, who has gone +abroad for a year's study in the Sorbonne. The two-table club now +includes: Mesdames Hugo Marshall, Tracey A. Miles, Peter Dunlap, John C. +Drake, Juanita Selim, and Misses Polly Beale, Janet Raymond, and +Penelope Crain."</p> + +<p>Dundee lowered the paper and stared at the profile of District Attorney +Sanderson's private secretary. So she was a "society girl," a "Forsyte" +girl! Was that the reason, perhaps, why she had been so thorny with him, +a mere "dick"? Well, he wasn't just a dick any longer. He was a Special +Investigator ... A society girl, playing at work....</p> + +<p>But there was more, and he read on: "As is well known, the 'girls' have +their 'hen-fight' bridge-luncheon every Saturday afternoon from the +first of October to the first of June, and a bridge-dinner, in which +mere men are graciously included, every other Wednesday evening during +the season. Mr. and Mrs. Tracey A. Miles are scheduled as next +Wednesday's host and hostess."</p> + +<p>"I take off my hat to your 'society editress'," Dundee commented with +false cheerfulness, when he had laid the paper back upon Penny's desk. +"She makes half a column of this one item in what must be a meager +Saturday bunch of 'Society Notes,' then writes it all over again, in the +past tense, for an equally meager Monday column.... Like bridge, Miss +Crain?"</p> + +<p>Penny snatched up the paper and crushed it into her wastebasket. "I do! +And I like my old friends, even if I am not able, financially, to keep +up with them.... If that's why you've suddenly decided to stop +being—comrades—"</p> + +<p>"Please forgive me again, Penny," he begged gently.</p> + +<p>"I was born into that crowd, and I still belong to it, because all of +them are my real friends, but get this into your thick Scotch-Irish +head, Mr. Dundee—I'm working because I have to, and—and because I love +it, too, and because I want to earn enough before I'm many years older +to give Mother some of the things she's missing so dreadfully +since—since my father failed and—and ran away."</p> + +<p>"Ran away?" Dundee echoed incredulously. How could any man desert a +daughter like this!</p> + +<p>"Yes! Ran away!" she repeated fiercely. "I might as well tell you +myself. Plenty of others will be willing to, as soon as they know you +are—my friend.... As I told you, my father"—her voice broke—"my +father went bankrupt, but before the courts knew it he had sent some +securities to a—to a <i>woman</i> in New York, and when he—left us, he went +to her, because he left Mother a note saying so. His defrauded creditors +here have tried to—to catch him, but they haven't—yet—"</p> + +<p>Very gently Bonnie Dundee took the small hand that was distractedly +rumpling the brown waves which swept back from the widow's-peak. It lay +fluttering in his bigger palm for a moment, then snatched itself away.</p> + +<p>"I won't have you feeling sorry for me!" she cried angrily.</p> + +<p>"Who owns your—the Primrose Meadows house now?—Mrs. Selim?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"The 'lovely Nita'?" Her voice was scornful. "No. She rents it from +Judge Hugo Marshall—or is supposed to pay him rent," she added with a +trace of malice. "Hugo is an old darling, but he is fearfully weak where +pretty women are concerned. Nita Selim had known Hugo in New +York—somehow—and as soon as Lois—Mrs. Dunlap, I mean—had got Nita +off the train, the stranger in our midst hied herself to Hugo's office +and he's been tagging after her ever since.... Though most of the men in +our crowd are as bad as or worse than poor old Hugo. How Karen keeps on +looking so blissfully happy—"</p> + +<p>"Karen?" Dundee interrupted.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Hugo Marshall," she explained impatiently. "Karen Plummer made her +debut a year ago this last winter—a darling of a girl. Judge +Marshall—retired judge, you know—had been proposing to the prettiest +girl in each season's crop of debs for the last twenty years, and Hugo +must have been the most nonplussed 'perennial bachelor' who ever led a +grand march when Karen snapped him up.... Loved him—actually! And it +seems to have worked out marvelously.... A baby boy three months old," +she concluded in her laconic style. Then, ashamed; "I don't know why I'm +gossiping like this!"</p> + +<p>"Because you can't find another blessed scrap of work to do, you little +efficiency fiend," Dundee laughed, "Come on! Gossip some more. My +Maginty case will wait till afternoon, to be mulled over while you're +losing your hard-earned salary at bridge with rich women."</p> + +<p>"We don't play for high stakes," she corrected him. "Just a twentieth of +a cent a point, though contract can run into money even at that. The +winnings all go to the Forsyte Scholarship Fund. On Wednesday evenings +the crowd plays for higher stakes—a tenth—and winners keepers. +Therefore I can't afford to go, unless I sink so low as to let my escort +pay my losses—which I sometimes do," she confessed, her brown head low +for a moment.</p> + +<p>"Is this Mrs. Peter Dunlap a deep-bosomed club woman, who starts +Movements?" he asked, more to bring her out of her depression than +anything else. "Bigger and Better Babies Movements, and Homes for Fallen +Girls, and Little Theater Movements?"</p> + +<p>The brown head flung itself up sharply, and the brown eyes hardened into +bright pennies again. "Lois Dunlap is the sweetest, finest, most +<i>comfortable</i> woman in Hamilton, and I adore her—as does everyone else, +Peter Dunlap hardly more than the rest of us. She <i>is</i> interested in a +Little Theater for Hamilton, but she won't manage it. That's why she got +hold of Nita Selim. Lois will simply put up barrels of money, without +missing them, and give a grand job to a little Broadway gold-digger. +Funny thing is, she really delights in Nita. Thinks she's sweet and has +never had a real chance."</p> + +<p>"And what do you think?" Dundee asked softly.</p> + +<p>"Oh—I suppose I'm a cat, but I can see through her so clearly. Not that +she's bad; she's simply an opportunist. She's awfully sweet and +deferential and 'frank' with women, but with men—well, she simply tucks +her head so that her shoulder-length black curls fall forward +enchantingly, gives them one wistful smile out of her big eyes that are +like black pansies and—the clink of slave chains!... Now go on and +think I'm catty, which I suppose I am!"</p> + +<p>Bonnie Dundee grinned at her reassuringly. Not for him to explain that +practically all women and many men found themselves "gossiping" when he +led them on adroitly, for reasons of his own. Which of course helped +make him the excellent detective he was.</p> + +<p>"So all the men in your crowd have fallen for Nita Selim, have they?"</p> + +<p>"Practically all, in varying degrees, except Peter Dunlap, who has never +looked at another woman since he was lucky enough to get Lois, and Clive +Hammond, who's engaged to Polly Beale," Penny answered reluctantly, her +color high.</p> + +<p>"Including <i>your</i> young man?"</p> + +<p>"I haven't a 'young man,' in the sense of being engaged," Penny +retorted, then added honestly: "I <i>have</i> been letting Ralph +Hammond—that's Clive's brother, you know—take me about a good +deal.... Ralph and Clive have plenty of money," she defended herself +hastily. "They are architects, Clive being the head of the firm and +Ralph, who hasn't been out of college so very long, a junior partner. +It was the Hammond firm that drew up the plans for Dad's—I mean, my +father's—Primrose Meadows Addition houses. He had our house built as a +sort of show-place, you know, so that prospective builders out there +could see how artistic a home could be put up for a moderate sum of +money. But he didn't quite finish even that—left half the gabled top +story unfinished, and Nita has been teasing Hugo to finish it up for +her. It looks," she added with a shrug, "as if Nita will get what she +wants—as usual."</p> + +<p>"And Ralph has acquired a set of slave chains?" Dundee suggested, with +just the slightest note of sympathy.</p> + +<p>"<i>And how!</i>" Penny assured him, grimly. "A simile as out-of-date as my +clothes are going to be if I don't get some new ones soon. Not that the +crowd minds what I wear," she added loyally. "I could dress up in a +window drape—"</p> + +<p>"And be just as charming as you are in that grand new party dress you +have on now," Dundee finished for her gallantly.</p> + +<p>"<i>New!</i>" Penny snorted and turned back to her desk in a futile effort to +find something left undone.</p> + +<p>Dundee ignored the rebuff. "How many suckers—I mean, how many gentlemen +with moderate incomes actually built in Primrose Meadows?"</p> + +<p>"You are inquisitive, aren't you?... None! Our house, or rather the one +Nita Selim is living in now, is the only house on what used to be a big +farm.... Why?"</p> + +<p>"I was just wondering," Dundee said softly, almost absent-mindedly, +"why the 'lovely Nita' chose so isolated a place in which to live, +when Hamilton has rather a large number of 'For Rent' signs out just +now.... By the way, know what time it is now?... Twenty to one! Get your +hat on, young woman. I'm going to drive you out to Breakaway Inn."</p> + +<p>"You're not! I'm going to take a bus. One runs from the Square right +past the Inn," she told him firmly.</p> + +<p>And just as firmly Dundee escorted her out of the almost deserted, +rather dirty old courthouse to where his brand-new sports +roadster—bought "on time"—was awaiting them in the parking space +devoted to the motors of those who officially served Hamilton County.</p> + +<p>"I know why you want to drive me out to the Inn," Penny told him +suddenly, as the proud owner maneuvered his car through Saturday noon +traffic. "You want to see Nita Selim. Clank! Clank! I can hear the +padlocks snapping on the slave chains right now."</p> + +<p>"Meow!" Dundee retorted, then grinned down at her with as much comradely +affection as if they had been friends for years instead of for a couple +of hours. "Is Nita very small?" he added.</p> + +<p>"Little enough to tuck herself under the arm of a man a lot shorter than +you," Penny assured him with curious vehemence. "And if Penelope Crain +is no mean prophet, that's exactly what she'll do within five minutes +after she meets you—just as she is wistfully inviting you to join the +other men for the cocktail party which is scheduled to break up the +bridge game at 5:30. Then, of course, you'll be urged to join us all at +the dinner-dance at the Country Club tonight."</p> + +<p>"Will she?" Dundee pretended to be vastly intrigued, which caused the +remainder of the drive to be a rather silent one, due to Penny's +unresponsiveness.</p> + +<p>Breakaway Inn was intensely Spanish in architecture and transplanted +shrubbery, but its stucco walls were of a rather more violent raspberry +color than is considered quite esthetic in Spain or Mexico.</p> + +<p>"There's Lois Dunlap's car just driving up," Penny cried, her face +softening with the adoration she had freely professed for her friend. +But it clouded again almost instantly. "And Nita Selim. I suppose Nita +was a little ashamed to drive up in her own Ford coupe."</p> + +<p>As Dundee helped his new friend to alight his eyes were upon the two +women being assisted by a uniformed chauffeur from Lois Dunlap's +limousine.</p> + +<p>In a moment the four were a laughing, exclamatory group.</p> + +<p>"Oh, what a tall, grand man you've got yourself, Penny darling!" the +tiny, beautiful creature who could only be Mrs. Selim cried out happily. +"<i>May</i> I meet him?"</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't let you," Penny answered frankly, "but I will.... Mrs. +Selim, Mr. Dundee.... And Mrs. Dunlap, Mr. Dundee.... How are you, Lois? +And Peter and the brats?"</p> + +<p>"All well, Penny. Petey's off on a week-end fishing trip, and not one of +the brats has measles, scarlet fever or hay fever, thank God," Dundee +heard Mrs. Dunlap say in the comfortable, affectionate voice that went +with her comfortable, pleasant face and body.... Nice woman!</p> + +<p>But his eyes were of necessity upon Nita Selim, for that miniature Venus +was, as Penny had predicted, almost tucked under his arm by this time, +her black-pansy eyes wide and wistful, her soft black curls falling +forward as she coaxed:</p> + +<p>"You'll come to the cocktail party at my house at 5:30, won't you, Mr. +Dundee?"</p> + +<p>"Afraid I can't make it," Dundee smiled down at her. "I'm a busy man, +Mrs. Selim.... You see, I'm Special Investigator attached to the +District Attorney's office," he explained very deliberately.</p> + +<p>"O-o-oh!" Nita Selim breathed. Than, step by step, she withdrew, so that +he was no longer submitted to the temptation to put his arm about her +too intriguing little body. And as she retreated, Dundee's keen eyes +noted a hardening of the black-pansy eyes, the sudden throbbing of a +pulse in her very white neck....</p> + +<p>"No, don't mind about calling for me," Penny protested a moment later. +"Ralph has already volunteered.... Thanks awfully!"</p> + +<p>As Dundee backed out of the driveway his last glance was for a very +small figure in a brown silk summer coat and palest yellow chiffon +frock, slowly rejoining Penelope Crain and Lois Dunlap. What the devil +had frightened her so? For she had been almost terrified.... Of course +she might be one of those silly women who shudder at the sight of a +detective, because they've smuggled in a diamond from Paris or a bottle +of Bacardi from Havana....</p> + +<p>But long before his car made the distance back to the city Dundee had +shrugged off the riddle and was concentrating on all the facts he knew +regarding the Maginty case. It was his first real assignment from +Sanderson, and he was determined to make good.</p> + +<p>Four hours later he was interrupted in his careful reading of the trial +of Rufus Maginty by the ringing of the telephone bell. That made four +times he had had to snap out the fact that District Attorney Sanderson +was playing some well-earned golf on the Country Club links, Dundee +reflected angrily, as he picked up the receiver.</p> + +<p>But the call was for Dundee himself, and the voice on the other end of +the wire was Penny Crain's, although almost unrecognizable.</p> + +<p>"Speak more slowly, Penny!" Dundee urged. "What's that again.... Good +Lord! You say that Nita Selim...."</p> + +<p>After a minute of listening, and a promise of instant obedience, Dundee +hung up the receiver.</p> + +<p>"My God!" he said slowly, blankly. "Of all things—<i>murder at bridge</i>!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_TWO" id="CHAPTER_TWO"></a>CHAPTER TWO</h2> + + +<p>As Special Investigator Dundee drove through the city of Hamilton at a +speed of sixty miles an hour, his way being cleared by traffic policemen +warned by the shrill official siren which served him as a horn, he had +little time to think connectedly of the fact that Nita Selim had been +murdered during a bridge game in her rented home in Primrose Meadows.</p> + +<p>Even after the broad sleekness of Sheridan Road stretched before him he +could do little more than try to realize the shock which had numbed +him.... "Lovely Nita," as the society editor of <i>The Morning News</i> had +called her, was—<i>dead</i>! How, why, he did not know. He had asked no +details of Penny Crain.... Funny, thorny little Penny! Loyal little +Penny!</p> + +<p>"Judge Marshall has telephoned Police Headquarters," she had told him +breathlessly over the telephone, "but I made him let me call you as soon +as he had hung up. I wanted <i>our</i> office to be in on this right from the +first."</p> + +<p>Beautiful, seductive Nita Selim, almost cuddling under his arm within +three minutes of meeting him—<i>dead</i>! A vision of her black-pansy eyes, +so wide and luminous and wistful as they had looked sideways and upward +to his, pleading for him to join her after-bridge cocktail party, nearly +made him crash into a lumbering furniture van. Those eyes were luminous +no longer, could never again snap the padlocks of slave chains upon any +man—as Penny had expressed it.... Dead! And she had been so warmly +alive, even as she had retreated from him at his mention of the fact +that he was attached to the office of the district attorney as a special +investigator. What had she feared then? Was her death a payment for some +recent or long-standing crime? Or had she simply been withdrawing from +contamination with a "flat-foot"?... No! She had been <i>afraid</i>—horribly +afraid of some ulterior purpose behind his innocent courtesy in driving +Penelope Crain to Breakaway Inn.</p> + +<p>Well, speculation now was idle, he told himself, as he noted that his +speedometer had dropped from sixty to thirty in his preoccupation. He +speeded again, but was soon forced to stop and ask his way into Primrose +Meadows. The vague directions of a farmer's son lost him nearly eight +precious minutes, during which his friend, Captain Strawn of the +Homicide Squad, might be bungling things rather badly. But at last he +found the ornate pair of pillars spanned by the painted legend, +"Primrose Meadows," and drove through them into what soon became a +rutted lane. Almost a quarter of a mile from the entrance he found the +isolated house, unmistakable because of the line-up of private cars +parked before the short stretch of paved sidewalk, and the added +presence of police cars and motorcycles.</p> + +<p>Dundee turned his own car into the driveway leading from the street +along the right side of the house toward the two-car garage in the rear. +Ahead of his roadster were two other cars, and a glance toward the open +garage showed that a Ford coupe was housed there.</p> + +<p>As he was descending Captain Strawn's voice hailed him from an open +window of the room nearest the garage.</p> + +<p>"Hello, Bonnie! Been expecting you.... Damnedest business you ever +saw.... There's a door from this room onto the porch. Hop up and come on +in."</p> + +<p>Dundee obeyed. Driving in he had noted that a wide porch, upheld by +round white pillars, stretched across the front of the gabled brick +house and extended halfway along its right side, past a room which was +obviously a solarium, with its continuous windows, gay awnings, +and—visible through the glittering panes—orange-and-black wicker +furniture.</p> + +<p>It was easy to swing himself up to the floor of the porch. Strawn flung +open the door which led into the back room, remarking with a grin:</p> + +<p>"Don't be afraid I'm gumming up any fingerprints. Carraway has already +been over the room.... The Selim woman's bedroom," he explained. "The +room she was killed in."</p> + +<p>"You <i>have</i> been on the job," Dundee complimented his former chief.</p> + +<p>"Sure!" Strawn acknowledged proudly. "Can't be too quick on our stumps +when it's one of these 'high sassiety' murders. Dr. Price will be here +any minute now, and my men have been all over the premises, basement to +attic. Of course it was an outside job—plain as the nose on your +face—and we haven't found a trace of the murderer."</p> + +<p>Although Mrs. Selim had taken the house furnished, it was obvious that +this big bedroom of hers was not exactly as the Crain family had left +it. A little too pretty, a little too aggressively feminine, with its +chaise longue heaped with silk and lace pillows, its superfluity of big +and little lamps, its bed draped with golden-yellow taffeta, its +dressing table—</p> + +<p>But he could not let critical eyes linger on the triple-mirrored vanity +dresser. For on the bench before it sat a tiny figure, the head bowed so +low that some of the black curls had fallen into a large open bowl of +powder. She was no longer wearing the brown silk summer coat whose open +front had given him a glimpse of pale yellow chiffon.</p> + +<p>He saw the dress now, a low-cut, sleeveless, fluffy affair, but he +really had eyes only for the brownish-red hole on the left side of the +back of the bodice, about halfway between shoulder and waist—a waist so +small he could have spanned it with his two hands, including its band of +fuchsia velvet ribbon. There also had been a bow of fuchsia velvet +ribbon on the lace and straw hat she had swung so charmingly less than +five hours ago.</p> + +<p>"Shot through the heart, I guess," Strawn commented. "Took a good +marksman to find her heart, shooting her through the back.... Funny +thing, too. Nobody heard the shot—leastways none of that crowd penned +up in the living room will admit they did. They'll all hang together, +and lie like sixty to keep us from finding out anything that might point +to one of <i>their</i> precious bunch! But if a gun with a Maxim silencer +<i>was</i> used, as it must have been if that whole crew ain't lying, the +gunman musta been <i>good</i>, because you can't sight with a Maxim screwed +onto a rod, you know."</p> + +<p>"Have your men found the gun?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"Of course not, or I'd know whether it had a Maxim on it or not," Strawn +retorted. "My theory is," he added impressively, "that somebody with a +grudge against this dame hired a gunman to hang around till he got her +dead to rights, then—plop!" and he imitated the soft, thudding sound +made by the discharge of a bullet from a gun equipped with a silencer.</p> + +<p>"Doesn't it seem rather strange that a professional gunman should have +chosen such a time—with men arriving in cars, and the house full of +women who might wander into this room at any minute—to bump off his +victim?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"Well, there ain't no other explanation," Captain Strawn contended. +"Outside of the fact that my men have gone over the whole house and +grounds without finding the gun, I've got other evidence it was an +outside job.... Look!"</p> + +<p>Dundee followed the Chief of the Homicide Squad to one of the two +windows that looked out upon the driveway. Both were open, since the May +day was exceptionally warm, even for the Middle West. The unscreened +window from which he obediently leaned was almost directly in line with +the vanity dressing-table across the room.</p> + +<p>"Look! See how them vines have been torn," Strawn directed, pointing to +a rambler rose which hugged the outside frame of the window. "And look +hard enough at the flower bed down below and you'll see his +footprints.... Of course we've measured them and Cain, as you see, is +guarding them till my man comes to make plaster casts of them.... Yes, +sir, he hoisted himself up to the window ledge, aimed as best he could, +then slipped down and beat it across the meadow."</p> + +<p>"Then," Dundee began slowly, "I wonder why Mrs. Selim didn't see that +figure crouched in the window, since she must have been powdering her +face and looking into the middle of the three mirrors—the one which +reflects this very window?"</p> + +<p>"How do you know she was powdering her face, not looking for something +in a drawer?" Strawn demanded truculently.</p> + +<p>"For three reasons," Dundee answered almost apologetically. "First: her +powder puff, as I'm sure you noticed, is still clutched in her right +hand; second: there is no drawer open, and no drawer <i>was</i> open, unless +someone has closed it since the murder, whereas on the other hand her +powder box <i>is</i> open; third: the left side of her face is unevenly +coated with powder, while the other is heavily but <i>evenly</i> powdered. +Therefore I can't see why she didn't scream, or turn around when she +heard your gunman clambering up to her window, or even when he had +crouched in it. I don't see how she could <i>help</i> seeing him!"</p> + +<p>"Well—what do <i>you</i> think?" Strawn asked sourly, after he had tested +the visibility of the window from the dressing-table mirror.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid, Captain Strawn, that there are only two explanations +possible. The first, of course, is that Nita Selim was quite deaf or +very nearsighted. I happen to know from having met her today—"</p> + +<p>"<i>You</i> met her today?" Strawn interrupted incredulously.</p> + +<p>Dundee explained briefly, then went on: "As I was saying I have good +reason to know she was not deaf, but I can't say as to her being +nearsighted, except that it is my observation that people who are +extremely nearsighted do not have very wide eyes and no creases between +the brows. I am fairly sure she did not wear glasses at all, because +glasses worn even a few hours a day leave a mark across the nose or show +pinched red spots on each side of the bridge of the nose."</p> + +<p>"You must have had a good hard look at her," Strawn gibed, his grey eyes +twinkling, and his harsh, thin-lipped mouth pulling down at one corner +in what he thought was a genial smile.</p> + +<p>"I did," Dundee retorted. "Well, conceding that she was neither deaf nor +half-blind, she would necessarily have heard and seen her assailant +before he shot her."</p> + +<p>"What's the other explanation?" Strawn was becoming impatient.</p> + +<p>"That the person who killed her was so well known to her, and his—or +her—presence in this room so natural a thing that she paid no attention +to his or her movements and was concentrating on the job of powdering +her very pretty face."</p> + +<p>"You mean—one of that gang of society folks in there?" and Strawn +jerked a thumb toward the left side of the house.</p> + +<p>"Very probably," Dundee agreed.</p> + +<p>"But where's the gun?" Strawn argued. "I tell you my men—"</p> + +<p>"This was a premeditated murder, of course," Dundee interrupted. "The +Maxim silencer—unless they are all lying about not hearing a +shot—proves that. Silencers are damned hard to get hold of, but people +with plenty of money can manage most things. And since the murder was +premeditated, it is better to count on the fact that the murderer—or +murderess—had planned a pretty safe hiding place for the gun and the +silencer.... Oh, not necessarily in the house or even near the house," +he hastened to assure Strawn, who was trying to break in.... "By the +way, how long after Mrs. Selim was killed was her death discovered? Or +do you know?"</p> + +<p>"I haven't been able to get much out of that bunch in there—not even +out of Penelope Crain, who ought to be willing to help, seeing as how +she works for the district attorney. But I guess she's waiting to spill +it all to you, if she knows anything, so you and Sanderson will get all +the credit."</p> + +<p>"Now, look here, chief," Dundee protested, laying a hand on Strawn's +shoulder as he reverted to the name by which he had addressed the head +of the Homicide Squad for nearly a year, "we're going to be friends, +aren't we? Same as always? We know pretty well how to work together, +don't we? No use to begin pulling against each other."</p> + +<p>"Guess so," Strawn growled, but he was obviously pleased and relieved. +"Maybe you'd better have a crack at that crowd yourself. I hear Doc +Price's car—always has a bum spark plug. I'll stick around with him +until he gets going good on his job; then, if you'll excuse me for +butting in, I'll join your party in the living room.... And good luck to +you, Bonnie!"</p> + +<p>Dundee took the door he knew must lead into the central hall, but found +himself in an enclosed section of it—a small foyer between the main +hall and Nita Selim's bedroom. There was room for a telephone table and +its chair, as well as for a small sofa, large enough for two to sit upon +comfortably. He paused to open the door across from the telephone table +and found that it opened into a closet, whose hangers and hat forms now +held the outdoor clothing belonging to Nita's guests. Nice clothes—the +smart but unostentatious hats and coats of moneyed people of good taste, +he observed a little enviously, before he opened the door which led into +the main hall which bisected the main floor of the house until it +reached Nita's room.</p> + +<p>Another door in the section behind the staircase leading to the gabled +second story next claimed his attention. Opening it, he discovered a +beautifully fitted guests' lavatory. There was even a fully appointed +dressing-table for women's use, so that none of her guests had had the +slightest excuse to invade the privacy of Mrs. Selim's bedroom and bath, +unless specifically invited to do so. Rather a well planned house, this, +Dundee concluded, as he closed the door upon the green porcelain +fixtures, and walked slowly toward the wide archway that led from the +hall into a large living room.</p> + +<p>He had a curious reluctance to intrude upon that assembled and guarded +company of Hamilton's "real society." They were all Penny's friends, and +Penny was <i>his</i> friend....</p> + +<p>But his first swift, all-seeing glance about the room reassured him. No +hysterics here. These people brought race and breeding even into the +presence of death. Whatever emotions had torn them when Nita Selim's +body was discovered were almost unguessable now. A stout, short woman of +about thirty was tapping a foot nervously, as she talked to the man who +was bending over her chair. John C. Drake, that was. Dundee had met him, +knew him to be a vice president of the Hamilton National Bank, in charge +of the trust department. Penelope Crain was occupying half of a +"love-seat" with Lois Dunlap, the hands of the girl and of the woman +clinging together for mutual comfort. That tall, thin, oldish man, with +the waxed grey mustache, must be Judge Hugo Marshall, and the pretty +girl leaning trustingly against his shoulder must be his wife—Karen +Marshall, who had jumped at her first proposal during her first season.</p> + +<p>"Yes, well-bred people," he concluded, as his eyes swept on, and then +stopped, a little bewildered. Who was <i>that</i> man? He didn't belong +somehow, and his hands trembled visibly as he tried to light a +cigarette. Leaning—not nonchalantly, but actually for support—against +the brocaded coral silk drapes of a pair of wide, long windows set in +the east wall. Suddenly Dundee had it.... Broadway! This was no +Hamiltonian, no comfortably rich and socially secure Middle-westerner. +Broadway in every line of his too-well-tailored clothes, in the polished +smoothness of his dark hair....</p> + +<p>"Why, it's Mr. Dundee at last!" Penny cried, turning in the S-shaped +seat before he had time to finish his mental inventory of the room's +occupants.</p> + +<p>She jumped to her feet and threaded a swift way over Oriental rugs and +between the two bridge tables, still occupying the center of the big +room, still cluttered with score pads, tally cards, and playing cards.</p> + +<p>"I've been wondering if you had stopped to have dinner first," she +taunted him. Then, laying a hand on his arm, she faced the living room +eagerly. "This is Mr. Dundee, folks—special investigator attached to +the district attorney's office, and a grand detective. He solved the +Hogarth murder case, you know, and the Hillcrest murder. And he's <i>my</i> +friend, so I want you all to trust him—and tell him things without +being afraid of him."</p> + +<p>Then, rather ceremoniously but swiftly, she presented her friends—Judge +and Mrs. Hugo Marshall, Mr. and Mrs. Tracey Miles, Mr. and Mrs. John C. +Drake, Mrs. Dunlap, Janet Raymond, Polly Beale, Clive Hammond, and—</p> + +<p>At that point Penny hesitated, then rather stiffly included the +"Broadway" man, as "Mr. Dexter Sprague—of New York."</p> + +<p>"Thank you, Miss Crain," Dundee said. "Now will you please tell me, if +you know, whether all those invited to both the bridge party and the +cocktail party are here?"</p> + +<p>Penny's face flamed. "Ralph Hammond, Clive's brother, hasn't come +yet.... I—I rather imagine I've been 'stood up,'" she confessed, with a +faint attempt at gayety.</p> + +<p>And Ralph Hammond was the man who had once belonged rather exclusively +to Penny, and who, according to her own confession, had succumbed most +completely to Nita Selim's charms!—Dundee noted, filing the reflection +for further reference.</p> + +<p>"Please, Mr. Dundee, won't you detain us as short a time as possible?" +Lois Dunlap asked, as she advanced toward him. "Mr. Dunlap is away on a +fishing trip, and I don't like to leave my three youngsters too long. +They are really too much of a handful for the governess, over a period +of hours."</p> + +<p>"I shall detain all of you no longer than is absolutely necessary," +Dundee told her gently, "but I am afraid I must warn you that I can't +let you go home very soon—unless one or more of you has something of +vital importance to tell—something which will clear up or materially +help to clear up this bad business."</p> + +<p>He paused a long half-minute, then asked curtly: "I am to conclude that +no one has anything at all to volunteer?"</p> + +<p>There was no answer, other than a barely perceptible drawing together in +self-defence of the minds and hearts of those who had been friends for +so long.</p> + +<p>"Very well," Dundee conceded abruptly. "Then I must put all of you +through a routine examination, since every one of you is, of course, a +possible suspect."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_THREE" id="CHAPTER_THREE"></a>CHAPTER THREE</h2> + + +<p>"Good-by, dinner!" groaned the plump, blond little man who had been +introduced as Tracey Miles, as he sorrowfully patted his rather +prominent stomach.</p> + +<p>"Don't worry, darling," begged the dark, neurotic-looking woman who was +Flora Miles, his wife. "I'm sure Mr. Dundee will ask Lydia—poor Nita's +maid, you know—" she explained in an aside to Dundee, "—to prepare a +light supper for us if he really needs to detain us long—which I am +sure he won't."</p> + +<p>"How can you think of food now?" Polly Beale, the tall, sturdy girl with +an almost masculine bob and a quite masculine tweed suit, demanded +brusquely. Her voice had an unfeminine lack of modulation, but when +Dundee saw her glance toward Clive Hammond he realized that she was +wholly feminine where he was concerned, at least.</p> + +<p>"Of course, we are all <i>dreadfully</i> cut up over poor Nita's—death," +gasped a rather pretty girl, whose most distinguishing feature was her +crop of crinkly, light-red hair.</p> + +<p>"I assume that to be true, Miss Raymond," Dundee answered. "But we must +lose no more time getting at the facts. Just when was Mrs. Selim +murdered?"</p> + +<p>At the brutal use of the word a shudder rippled over the small crowd. +Dexter Sprague, "of New York," dropped his lighted cigarette where it +would have burned a hole in a fine Persian rug, if Sergeant Turner, on +guard over the room for Captain Strawn, had not slouched from his corner +to plant a big foot upon it.</p> + +<p>"We don't know exactly when it happened," Penny volunteered. "We were +playing bridge, the last hand of the last rubber, because the men were +arriving for cocktails, when Nita became dummy and went to her bedroom +to—"</p> + +<p>"To make herself 'pretty-pretty' for the men," Mrs. Drake mimicked; +then, realizing the possible effect of her cattiness on Dundee, she +defended herself volubly: "Of course I <i>liked</i> Nita, but she <i>did</i> think +so terribly much about her effect on men—and all that, and was always +fixing her make-up, and besides—you <i>can't</i> suspect me, because I was +playing against Karen and Nita—"</p> + +<p>"Thank you, Mrs. Drake," Dundee cut in. "Does anyone know the exact time +Mrs. Selim left the room, when she became dummy?"</p> + +<p>"I can tell you, because I had just arrived—the first of the men to get +here," Tracey Miles volunteered, obviously glad of the chance to talk—a +characteristic of the man, Dundee decided. "I looked at my watch just +after I stepped out of my car, because I like to be on time to the dot, +and Nita—Mrs. Selim—had said 5:30.... Well, it was exactly 5:25, so I +had five minutes to spare."</p> + +<p>"Yes?" Dundee speeded him up impatiently.</p> + +<p>"Well, I came right into the hall, and hung my hat in the closet out +there, and then came in here. It must have been about 5:27 by that +time," he explained, with the meticulousness of a man on the witness +stand. "I shouted, 'Hello, everybody! How's tricks?...' That's a joke, +you know. 'How's tricks?'—meaning tricks in bridge—"</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes," Dundee admitted, frowning, but the rest of the company +exchanged indulgent smiles, and Flora Miles patted her husband's hand +fondly.</p> + +<p>"Well, Nita jumped up from the bridge table—that one right there," +Miles pointed to the table nearer the arched doorway, "and she said, +'Good heavens! Is it half past five already? I've got to run and make +myself 'pretty-pretty' for just such great big men as you, Tracey—"</p> + +<p>"'Tracey, darling'!" Judge Marshall corrected, with a chuckle that +sounded odd in the tensely silent room.</p> + +<p>Tracey Miles flushed a salmon pink, and his wife's fingers clutched at +his hand warningly. "Oh, Nita called everybody 'darling,' and didn't +mean anything by it, I guess," he explained uneasily. "Just one of her +cute little ways—. Well, anyway, she came up to me and straightened +my necktie—another one of her funny little ways—and said, 'Tracey, +my <i>own</i> lamb, won't you shake up the cocktails for poor little +Nita?...' You know, a sort of way she had of coaxing people—"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know," Dundee agreed, with a trace of a grin. "Go on as rapidly +as you can, please."</p> + +<p>"I thought you wanted to know everything!" Miles was a little peevish; +he had evidently been enjoying himself. "Of course I said I'd make the +cocktails—she said everything was ready on the sideboard. That's the +dining room right behind this room," he explained unnecessarily, since +the French doors were open. "Well, Nita blew me a kiss from her +fingertips, and ran out of the room.... Now, let's see," he ruminated, +creasing his sunburned forehead beneath his carefully combed blond hair, +"that must have been at exactly 5:30 that she left the room. I went on +into the dining room, and Lois—I mean, Mrs. Dunlap came with me, +because she said she was simply dying for a caviar sandwich and a nip +of—of—"</p> + +<p>"Of Scotch, Tracey," Lois Dunlap cut in, grinning. "I'm sure Mr. Dundee +won't think I'm a confirmed tippler, so you might as well tell the +truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.... Poor Tracey has a +deadly fear that we are all going to lose the last shred of our +reputations in this deplorable affair, Mr. Dundee," she added in a +rather shaky version of the comfortable, rich voice he had heard earlier +in the day.</p> + +<p>"I'm not going to pry into cellars," Dundee assured her in the same +spirit. "What else, Mr. Miles?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing much," Tracey Miles confessed, with apparent regret. "I was +still mixing—no, I'd begun to shake the cocktails—when I heard a +scream—"</p> + +<p>"Whose scream?" Dundee demanded, looking about the room, and dismissing +Miles thankfully.</p> + +<p>"It was—I," Judge Marshall's fair-haired, blue-eyed little bride +volunteered in a voice that threatened to rise to hysteria.</p> + +<p>"Tell me all about it," Dundee urged gently.</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir," she quavered, while her husband's arm encircled her +shoulders in courtly fashion. "As Tracey told you, Nita was dummy, and I +was declarer—that is, I got the bid, and played the hand. It—it was +quite an exciting end for me to the afternoon of bridge, for I'm not +usually awfully lucky, so when Penny had figured up the score, because +I'm not good at arithmetic, and I knew Nita and I had rolled up an +awfully big score, I jumped up and ran into her room to tell her the +good news, because she hadn't come back. And—and—there she was—all +bowed over her dressing-table, and she—she was—was—"</p> + +<p>"She was dead when you reached her?" Dundee assisted her.</p> + +<p>"Yes," Karen Marshall answered faintly, and turned to hide her face +against her elderly husband's breast.</p> + +<p>Dundee's swift eyes took in the varying degrees of whiteness and sick +horror that claimed every face in the room as surely as if all present +had not already heard Karen tell her story to Captain Strawn. Tracey +Miles looked as if he would have no immediate craving for his dinner, +and Judge Marshall's fine, thin face no longer looked so +"well-preserved" as he prided himself that it did. As for Dexter +Sprague, he almost folded up against the coral brocade draperies. It was +the women, oddly enough, who kept the better control over their +emotions.</p> + +<p>"Of course you all rushed in when Mrs. Marshall screamed?" he asked +casually.</p> + +<p>Twelve heads nodded mutely.</p> + +<p>"Did any or all of you touch the body, or things in the room?"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Sprague touched her hair, and—and lifted one of her hands," Penny +contributed quietly. "But you know how it must have been! We can't any +of us tell <i>exactly</i> every move we made, but there was some rushing +about. The men, mostly, looking for—for whoever did it—"</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Marshall, did you see anyone—<i>anyone at all</i>—in or near that +room when you entered it?"</p> + +<p>The white-faced young wife lifted her head, and looked at him dazedly +with drowned blue eyes. "There wasn't anyone in—in that room, I know," +she faltered. "It felt horrible—being in there with—with <i>her</i>—all +alone—"</p> + +<p>"But near the room? In the main hall or in the little foyer where the +telephone is?" Dundee persisted.</p> + +<p>"I—don't think so ... I can't—remember—seeing <i>anyone</i>.... Oh, Hugo!" +and again she crouched against her husband, who soothed her with +trembling hands that looked incongruously old against her childish fair +hair and face.</p> + +<p>"Where were the rest of you—<i>exactly</i> where, I mean?" Dundee demanded, +conscious that Captain Strawn had entered the room and was standing +slightly behind him.</p> + +<p>There was such a babel of answers, given and then hastily corrected, +that Dundee broke in suddenly:</p> + +<p>"I want a connected story of 'the events leading up to the tragedy.' And +I want someone to tell it who hasn't lost his—or her—head at all." He +looked about the company, as if speculatively, but his mind was already +made up. "Miss Crain, will you tell the story, beginning with the moment +I left you and Mrs. Dunlap and Mrs. Selim today?"</p> + +<p>Penny nodded miserably and was about to begin.</p> + +<p>"Just a minute, before you begin, Miss Crain," Dundee requested. "I'd +like to make notes on your story," and he drew from a coat pocket a +shorthand book, hastily filched from Penny's own tidy desk. "Yes," he +answered the girl's frank stare of amazement, "I can write shorthand—of +a sort, and pretty fast, at that, though no other human being, I am +afraid, could read it but myself.... As for you folks," he addressed the +uneasy, silent group of men and women in dead Nita's living room, "I +shall ask you not to interrupt Miss Crain unless you are very sure that +her memory is at fault."</p> + +<p>Penelope Crain was about to begin for the second time, when again Dundee +interrupted. "Another half second, please."</p> + +<p>On the first sheet of the new shorthand notebook Dundee scribbled: +"Suggest you try to locate Ralph Hammond immediately. Very much in love +with Mrs. Selim. Invited to cocktail party; did not show up." Tearing +the sheet from the notebook, he passed it to Captain Strawn, who read +it, frowning, and then nodded.</p> + +<p>"Doc Price has done all he can here," Strawn whispered huskily. "Wants +to know if you'd like to speak to him before he takes the body to the +morgue."</p> + +<p>"Certainly," Dundee answered as he grinned apologetically to the girl +who was waiting, white-faced but patiently, to tell the story of the +afternoon.</p> + +<p>Quickly suppressed shudders and low exclamations of horror followed him +and the chief of the Homicide Squad from the room.</p> + +<p>"Well, Bonnie boy, we meet again, for the usual reason," old Dr. Price +greeted the district attorney's new special investigator. "Another +shocking affair—that.... A nice clean wound, one of the neatest jobs I +ever saw. Shot entered the back, and penetrated the heart.... <i>Very</i> +nicely calculated. If the bullet had struck a quarter of an inch higher, +it would have been deflected by the—"</p> + +<p>"But the <i>path</i> of the bullet, doctor!" Dundee broke in. "Have you made +any calculations as to the place and distance at which the shot was +fired?"</p> + +<p>"Roughly speaking—yes," the coroner answered. "The gun was fired at a +distance, probably, of ten or fifteen feet—perhaps closer, but I don't +think so," he amended meticulously. "As for the path of the bullet, I +have fixed it, judging from the position of the body, which I am assured +had not been moved before my arrival, as coming from a point somewhere +along a straight line drawn from the wound, with the body upright, of +course, to—here!"</p> + +<p>Dundee and Strawn followed the brisk little white-haired old doctor +across the bedroom to a window opening upon the drive—the one nearest +the door leading out upon the porch.</p> + +<p>"I've marked the end of the line here," Dr. Price went on, pointing to a +faint pencil mark made upon the window frame—the pale-green strip of +woodwork near the chaise longue, which was set between the two windows.</p> + +<p>"I told you she was shot from the window!" Strawn reminded Dundee +triumphantly. "You see, doc, it's my theory that the murderer climbed up +to the sill of this window, which was open as it is now, crouched in it, +and shot her while she sat there powdering her face."</p> + +<p>"Not necessarily, Captain, not necessarily," Dr. Price deprecated. "I +merely say that this pencil mark indicated the <i>end</i> of the line showing +the path of the bullet. Certainly she was not shot <i>through</i> the frame +of the window, but she might have been shot by anyone stationed just in +front of it, or anywhere along the line, up to, say, within ten feet of +the woman.... Now, if that's all, Captain, I'll be getting this corpse +into the morgue for an autopsy. And I'll send you both a copy of my +findings."</p> + +<p>"Just a minute, Dr. Price," Dundee detained him. "How old would you say +Mrs. Selim was?"</p> + +<p>The little doctor pursed his wrinkled lips and considered for a moment, +eyeing the body stretched upon the chaise longue speculatively.</p> + +<p>"We-ell, between thirty and thirty-four years old," he answered finally. +"Of course, you understand that that estimate is unofficial, and must +remain so, until I have completed the autopsy—"</p> + +<p>Dundee stared down at the upturned face of the dead woman with startled +incredulity. Between thirty and thirty-four years old! That tiny, +lovely—But she was not quite so lovely in death, in spite of the +serenity it had brought to those once-vivacious features. Peering more +closely, he could see—without those luminous, wide eyes to center his +attention—numerous fine lines on the waxen face, the slackness of a +little pouch of soft flesh beneath her round chin, an occasional white +hair among the shoulder-length dark curls.... Dundee sighed. How easy it +was for a beautiful woman to deceive men with a pair of wide, velvety +black eyes! But he'd bet the women had not been quite so thoroughly +taken in by her cuddly childishness, her odd mixture of demureness and +youthful impudence!</p> + +<p>Back in the living room, whose occupants stopped whispering and grew +taut with suspense, Dundee seated himself at a little red-lacquer table, +notebook spread, while Strawn settled himself heavily in the nearest +overstuffed armchair.</p> + +<p>"Now, Miss Crain, I am quite ready, if you will forgive me for having +kept you waiting."</p> + +<p>In a very quiet voice—slightly husky, as always—Penny began her story:</p> + +<p>"I think it lacked two or three minutes of one o'clock when you drove +away. Nita, Lois—do you mind if I use the names I am most accustomed +to?... Thank you!—and I went immediately into the lounge of Breakaway +Inn, where we found Carolyn Drake and Flora Miles waiting for us. Nita +soon left us to see about the arrangement of the table, and while she +was away the rest of the girls arrived."</p> + +<p>"Except—" a woman's voice broke in.</p> + +<p>"I was going to say all eight of us were ready for lunch except Polly +Beale. She hadn't come," Penny went on, her husky voice a little sharp +with annoyance. "When Nita came to ask us into the private dining room, +one of the Inn's employees came and told her there was a call for her +and showed her to the private booth in the lounge. In a minute Nita +returned and told us that Polly wasn't coming to the luncheon, but would +join us later for bridge here."</p> + +<p>"Why don't you tell him how funny Nita acted?" Janet Raymond prompted.</p> + +<p>Penny flushed, but she accepted the prompting. "I think any of us might +have been a little—annoyed," she said steadily, as if striving to be +utterly truthful. "Nita told us—" she turned to Dundee, whose pencil +was flying, "that Polly had made no excuse at all; in fact, she quoted +Polly exactly: 'Sorry, Nita. Can't make it for lunch. I'll show up at +your place at 2:30 for bridge.'"</p> + +<p>"Nita couldn't bear the least hint of being slighted," Janet Raymond +explained, with a malicious gleam in her pale blue eyes. "If it hadn't +been for Lois and Hugo—Judge Marshall, I mean—Nita Selim would never +have been included in any of our affairs—and she <i>knew</i> it! The Dunlaps +can do anything they please, because they're—"</p> + +<p>"Please, Janet!" Lois Dunlap cut in, her usually placid voice becoming +quite sharp. "You must know by this time that I make friends wherever I +please, and that I liked—yes, I was <i>extremely</i> fond of poor little +Nita. In fact, I am forced to believe that, of all the women she met in +this town, I was her only real friend."</p> + +<p>There was a flush of anger on her lovably plain face as her grey eyes +challenged first one and then another of the "Forsyte girls." One or two +looked a little ashamed, but there was not a single voice to contradict +Lois Dunlap's flat assertion.</p> + +<p>"Will you please go on, Pen—Miss Crain?" Dundee urged, but he had +missed nothing of the little by-play.</p> + +<p>"I wish you would call me Penny so I'd feel more like a person than a +witness," Penny retorted thornily. "Where was I?... Oh, yes! Nita cooled +right off when Lois reminded her that Polly was always abrupt like +that—" and here Penny paused to grin apologetically at the girl with +the masculine-looking haircut, "and then we all went into the private +dining room, where Nita had ordered a perfectly gorgeous lunch, with a +heavenly centerpiece of green-striped yellow orchids—Well, I don't +suppose you're interested in what we ate and things like that—" she +hesitated.</p> + +<p>"Was there anything unusual in the conversation—anything like a +quarrel?" Dundee prompted.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no!" Penny protested. "Nothing happened out of the ordinary at +all—No, wait! Nita received a letter by messenger—or rather a note, +when we were about half through luncheon—"</p> + +<p>There was a low, strangled-in-the-throat cry from someone. Who had +uttered it Dundee could not be sure, since his eyes had been on his +notebook. But what had really interrupted Penny Crain was a crash.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_FOUR" id="CHAPTER_FOUR"></a>CHAPTER FOUR</h2> + + +<p>"Pardon! Awfully sorry," Clive Hammond muttered, as he bent to pick up +the fragments of a colored pottery ashtray which he and his fiancée, +Polly Beale, had been sharing.</p> + +<p>"Don't worry—about picking it up," Polly commanded in her brusque +voice, but Dundee, listening acutely, was sure of a very slight pause +between the two parts of her sentence.</p> + +<p>He glanced at the couple—the tall, masculine-looking girl, lounging +deep in an armchair, Clive Hammond, rather unusually good-looking with +his dark-red hair, brown eyes, and a face and body as compactly and +symmetrically designed as one of the buildings which had been pointed +out to Dundee as the product of the young architect's genius, now +resuming his seat upon the arm of the chair. His chief concern seemed +to be for another ashtray, which Sergeant Turner, with a grin, +produced from one of the many little tables with which the room was +provided.... Rather strange that those two should be engaged, Dundee +mused....</p> + +<p>"Go on, Miss Crain," the detective urged, as if he were impatient of the +delay. "About that note or letter—"</p> + +<p>"It was in a blue-grey envelope, with printing or engraving in the upper +left-hand corner," Penny went on, half closing her eyes to recapture the +scene in its entirety. "Like business firms use," she amended. "I +couldn't help seeing, since I sat so near Nita. She seemed startled—or, +well maybe I'd better say surprised and a little sore, but she tore it +open and read it at a glance almost, which is why I say it must have +been only a note. But while she was reading it she frowned, then smiled, +as if something had amused or—or—"</p> + +<p>"She smiled like any woman reading a love letter," Carolyn Drake +interrupted positively. "I myself was sure that one of her <i>many</i> +admirers had broken an engagement, but had signed himself, 'With all my +love, darling—your own So-and-so!'"</p> + +<p>Dundee wondered if even Carolyn Drake's husband, the carefully groomed +and dignified John C. Drake, bank vice-president, had ever sent <i>her</i> +such a note, but he did not let his pencil slow down, for Penny was +talking again:</p> + +<p>"I think you are assuming a little too much, Carolyn.... But let that +pass. At any rate, Nita didn't say a word about the contents of the note +and naturally no one asked a question. She simply tucked it into the +pocket of her silk summer coat, which was draped over the back of her +chair, and the luncheon went on. Then we all drove over here, and found +Polly waiting in her own coupe, in the road in front of the house. She +told Nita she had rung the bell, but the maid, Lydia, didn't answer, so +she had just waited.</p> + +<p>"Nita didn't seem surprised; said she had a key, if Lydia hadn't come +back yet.... You see," she interrupted herself to explain to Dundee, +"Nita had already told us at luncheon that 'poor, darling Lydia,' as she +called her, had had to go in to town to get an abscessed tooth +extracted, and was to wait in the dentist's office until she felt equal +to driving herself home again in Nita's coupe.... Yes, Nita had taken +her in herself," she answered the beginning of a question from Dundee.</p> + +<p>"At what time?" Dundee queried.</p> + +<p>"I don't know exactly, but Nita said she'd had to dash away at an +ungodly hour, so that Lydia could make her ten o'clock dentist's +appointment, and so that she herself could get a manicure and a shampoo +and have her hair dressed, so I imagine she must have left not later +than fifteen or twenty minutes to ten."</p> + +<p>"How did Mrs. Selim get out to Breakaway Inn, if she left her own car +with the maid?"</p> + +<p>"You saw her arrive with Lois," Penny reminded him.</p> + +<p>"Nita had told us all about Lydia's dentist's appointment when she was +at my house for dinner Wednesday night," Lois Dunlap contributed. "I +offered to call for her anywhere she said, and take her out to Breakaway +Inn in my car today. I met her, at her suggestion, in the French hat +salon of the shop where she got her shampoo and manicure—Redmond's +department store."</p> + +<p>"A large dinner party, Mrs. Dunlap?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"Not large at all.... Just twelve of us—the crowd here except for Mr. +Sprague, Penny and Janet."</p> + +<p>"Who was Mrs. Selim's dinner partner?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"That's right! He <i>isn't</i> here!" Lois Dunlap corrected herself. "Ralph +Hammond brought her and was her dinner partner."</p> + +<p>"Thank you.... Now, Penny. You were saying the maid had not returned."</p> + +<p>"Oh, but she had!" Penny answered impatiently. "If I'm going to be +interrupted so much—. Well, Nita rang the bell and Lydia came, tying on +her apron. Nita kissed her on the cheek that wasn't swollen, and asked +her why she hadn't let Polly in. And Lydia said she hadn't heard the +bell, because she had dropped asleep in her room in the basement—dopey +from the local anesthetic, you know," she explained to Dundee.</p> + +<p>"I—see," Dundee acknowledged, and underlined heavily another note in +his scrawled shorthand.</p> + +<p>"So Lydia took our hats and summer coats and put them in the hall +closet, and then followed Nita, who was calling to her, on into Nita's +bedroom. We thought she either wanted to give directions about the +makings for the cocktails and the sandwiches, or to console poor Lydia +for the awful pain she had had at the dentist's, so we didn't intrude. +We made a dive for the bridge tables, found our places, and were ready +to play when Nita joined us. Nita and Karen—"</p> + +<p>"Just a minute, Penny.... Did any of you, then or later, until Mrs. +Marshall discovered the tragedy, go into Mrs. Selim's bedroom?"</p> + +<p>"There was no need for us to," Penny told him. "There's a lavatory with +a dressing-table right behind the staircase. I, for one, didn't go into +Nita's room until after Karen screamed."</p> + +<p>There was a chorus of similar denials on the part of every woman +present. At Dundee's significant pressing of the same question upon the +men, he was met with either laconic negatives or sharply indignant ones.</p> + +<p>"All right, Penny. Go ahead, please."</p> + +<p>"I was going to tell you how we were seated for bridge, if that +interests you," Penny said, rather tartly.</p> + +<p>"It interests me intensely," Dundee assured her, smiling.</p> + +<p>"Then it was this way," began Penny, thawing instantly. "Karen and Nita, +Carolyn and I were at this table," and she pointed to the table nearer +the hall. "Flora, Polly, Janet and Lois were at the other. We played at +those tables all afternoon. We simply pivoted at our own table after the +end of each rubber. When Nita became dummy—"</p> + +<p>"Forgive me," Dundee begged, as he interrupted her again. "I'd like to +ask a question ... Mrs. Dunlap, since you were at the other table, +perhaps you will tell me what your partner and opponents were doing just +before Mrs. Selim became dummy."</p> + +<p>Lois Dunlap pressed her fingertips into her temples, as if in an effort +to remember clearly.</p> + +<p>"It's—rather hard to think of bridge now, Mr. Dundee," she said at +last. "But—yes, of course I remember! We had finished a rubber and had +decided there would be no time for another, since it was so near 5:30—"</p> + +<p>"That last rubber, please, Mrs. Dunlap," Dundee suggested. "Who were +partners, and just when was it finished?"</p> + +<p>"Flora—" Lois turned toward Mrs. Miles, who had sat with her hands +tightly locked and her great haggard dark eyes roving tensely from one +to another—"you and I were partners, weren't we?... Of course! Remember +you were dummy and I played the hand? You went out to telephone, didn't +you?... That's right! I remember clearly now! Flora said she had to +telephone the house to ask how her two babies—six and four years old, +they are, Mr. Dundee, and the rosiest dumplings—. Well, anyway, Flora +went to telephone—"</p> + +<p>"In the little foyer between the main hall and Mrs. Selim's room?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, of course," Lois Dunlap answered, but Dundee's eyes were upon +Flora Miles, and he saw her naturally sallow face go yellow under its +too-thick rouge. "I played the hand and made my bid, although Flora and +I had gone down 400 on the hand before," Lois continued, with a rueful +twinkle of her pleasant grey eyes. "When the score was totted up, I +found I'd won a bit after all. Our winnings go to the Forsyte Alumnae +Scholarship Fund," she explained.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know," Dundee nodded. "And then—?"</p> + +<p>"Polly asked the other table how they stood, and Nita said, 'One game to +go on this rubber, provided we make it....' Karen was dealing the cards +then, and Nita was looking very happy—she'd been winning pretty +steadily, I think—"</p> + +<p>"Pardon, Mrs. Dunlap.... How did the players at your table dispose of +themselves then—that is, immediately after you had finished playing the +last hand, and Mrs. Marshall was dealing at the other table?"</p> + +<p>Lois screwed up her forehead. "Let me think—I know what <i>I</i> did. I went +over to watch the game at the other table, and stayed there till +Tracey—Mr. Miles—came in for cocktails. I can't tell you exactly what +the other three did."</p> + +<p>There was a strained silence. Dundee saw Polly Scale's hand tighten +convulsively on Clive Hammond's, saw Janet Raymond flush scarlet, +watched a muscle jerk in Flora Miles' otherwise rigid face.</p> + +<p>Suddenly he sprang to his feet. "I am going to make what will seem an +absurd request," he said tensely. "I am going to ask you all—the women, +I mean—to take your places at the bridge tables. And then—" he paused +for an instant, his blue eyes hard: "I want to see the death hand played +exactly as it was played while Nita Selim was being murdered!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_FIVE" id="CHAPTER_FIVE"></a>CHAPTER FIVE</h2> + + +<p>"Shame on you, Bonnie Dundee!" cried Penny Crain, her small fists +clenched belligerently. "'Death hand', indeed! You talk like a New York +tabloid! And if you don't realize that all of us have stood pretty +nearly as much as we can without having to play the hand at bridge—the +<i>very</i> hand we played while Nita Selim was being murdered!—then you +haven't the decency and human feelings I've credited you with!"</p> + +<p>A murmur of indignant approval accompanied her tirade and buzzed on for +a moment after she had finished, but it ceased abruptly as Dundee spoke:</p> + +<p>"Who's conducting this investigation, Penny Crain—you or I? You will +kindly let me do it in my own fashion, and try to be content when I tell +you that, in my humble opinion, what I propose is absolutely necessary +to the solution of this case!"</p> + +<p>Bickering—Dundee grinned to himself—exactly as if they had known each +other always, had quarreled and made up with fierce intensity for years.</p> + +<p>"Really, Mr. Dundee," Judge Hugo Marshall began pompously, embracing his +young wife protectingly, "I must say that I agree with Miss Crain. This +is an outrage, sir—an outrage to all of us, and particularly to this +frail little wife of mine, already half-hysterical over the ordeal she +has endured."</p> + +<p>"Take your places!" Dundee ordered curtly. After all, there was a limit +to the careful courtesy one must show to Hamilton's "inmost circle of +society."</p> + +<p>Penny led the way to the bridge tables, the very waves of her brown bob +seeming to bristle with futile anger. But she obeyed, Dundee exulted. +The way to tame this blessed little shrew had been solved by old Bill +Shakespeare centuries ago....</p> + +<p>As the women took their places at the two tables, arguing a bit among +themselves, with semi-hysterical edges to their voices, Dundee watched +the men, but all of them, with the exception of Dexter Sprague—that +typical son of Broadway, so out of place in this company—had managed at +least a fine surface control, their lips tight, their eyes hard, +narrowed and watchful. Sprague slumped into a vacated chair and closed +his eyes, revealing finely-wrinkled, yellowish lids.</p> + +<p>"Where shall we begin?" Polly Beale demanded brusquely. "Remember this +table had finished playing when Karen began to deal what you call the +'death hand,'" she reminded him scornfully. "And Flora wasn't here at +all—she had been dummy for our last hand—"</p> + +<p>"And had gone out to telephone," Dundee interrupted. "Mrs. Miles, will +you please leave the room, and return exactly when you did return—or as +nearly so as you can remember?"</p> + +<p>Dundee was sure that Mrs. Miles' sallow face took on a greyish tinge as +she staggered to her feet and wound an uncertain way toward the hall. +Tracey Miles sprang to his wife's assistance, but Sergeant Turner took +it upon himself to lay a detaining hand on the too-anxious husband's +arm. With no more than the lifting of an eyebrow, Dundee made Captain +Strawn understand that Flora Miles' movements were to be kept under +strict observation, and the chief of the Homicide Squad as unobtrusively +conveyed the order to a plainclothesman loitering interestedly in the +wide doorway.</p> + +<p>"Now," he was answering Polly Beale's question, "I should like the +remaining three of you to behave exactly as you did when your last hand +was finished. Did you keep individual score, as is customary in +contract?—or were you playing auction?"</p> + +<p>"Contract," Polly Beale answered curtly. "And when we're playing among +ourselves like this, one at each table is usually elected to keep score. +Janet was score-keeper for us this afternoon, but we all waited, after +our last hand was played, for Janet to give us the result for our tally +cards."</p> + +<p>Dundee drew near the table, picked up the three tally cards—ornamental +little affairs, and rather expensive—glanced over the points recorded, +then asked abruptly:</p> + +<p>"Where is Mrs. Miles' tally? I don't see it here."</p> + +<p>There was no answer to be had, so he let the matter drop, temporarily, +though his shorthand notebook received another deeply underlined series +of pothooks.</p> + +<p>"Go on, please, at both tables," Dundee commanded. "Your table—" he +nodded toward Penny, who was already over her flare of temper, "will +please select the cards each held at the conclusion of Mrs. Marshall's +deal."</p> + +<p>"Oooh, I'd never remember <i>all</i> my cards in the world," Carolyn Drake +wailed. "I know I had five Clubs—Ace, King, Queen—"</p> + +<p>"You had the Jack, not the Queen, for I held it myself," Penny +contradicted her crisply.</p> + +<p>"Until this matter of who held which cards after Mrs. Marshall's deal is +settled, I shall have to ask you all to remain as you are now," Dundee +said to the players seated at the other table.</p> + +<p>At last it was threshed out, largely between Penny Crain and Karen +Marshall, the latter proving to have a better memory than Dundee had +expected. At last even Carolyn Drake's querulous fussiness was +satisfied, or trampled down.</p> + +<p>Both Judge Marshall and John Drake started forward to inspect the cards, +which none of the players was trying to conceal, but Dundee waved them +back.</p> + +<p>"Please—I want you men—all of you, to take your places outside, and +return to this room in the order of your arrival this afternoon. Try to +imagine that it is now—if I can trust Mr. Miles' apparently excellent +memory—exactly 5:25—"</p> + +<p>"Pretty hard to do, considering it's now a quarter past seven and +there's still no dinner in sight," Tracey Miles grumbled, then +brightened: "I can come right back in then—at 5:27, can't I?"</p> + +<p>That point settled, and the men sent away, to be watched by several +pairs of apparently indolent police eyes, Dundee turned to the bridge +table, Nita's leaving of which had provided her murderer with his +opportunity.</p> + +<p>"The cards are 'dealt'," Penny reminded him.</p> + +<p>"Now I want you other three to scatter exactly as you did before," +Dundee commanded, hurry and excitement in his voice.</p> + +<p>Lois Dunlap rose, laid down her tally card, and strolled over to the +remaining table. After a moment's hesitation, Polly Beale strode +mannishly out of the room, straight into the hall. Dundee, watching as +the bridge players earlier that afternoon certainly had not, was amazed +to see Clive Hammond beckoning to her from the open door of the +solarium.</p> + +<p>So Clive Hammond had arrived ahead of Tracey Miles! Had somehow entered +the solarium unnoticed, and had managed to beckon his fiancée to join +him there! Prearranged?... And why had Clive Hammond failed to enter and +greet his hostess first? Moreover, <i>how</i> had he entered the solarium?</p> + +<p>But things were happening in the living room. Janet Raymond, flushing so +that her sunburned face outdid her red hair for vividness, was slowly +leaving the room also. Through a window opening upon the wide front +porch Dundee saw the girl take her position against a pillar, then—a +thing she had not done before very probably—press her handkerchief to +her trembling lips.</p> + +<p>But the bidding was going on, Karen Marshall piping in her childish +treble: "Three spades!"</p> + +<p>Dundee took his place behind her chair, then silently beckoned to Penny +to shift from her own chair opposite Carolyn Drake to the chair Nita +Selim had left to go to her death. She nodded understandingly.</p> + +<p>"Double!" quavered Carolyn Drake, next on the left to the dealer, and +managed to raise her eyebrows meaningly to Penny, her partner, who had +not yet changed places.</p> + +<p>Penny, throwing herself into the spirit of the thing, scowled warningly. +No exchanging of illicit signals for Penny Crain! But the instant she +slipped into Nita Selim's chair her whole face and body took on a +different manner, underwent almost a physical change. She <i>was</i> Nita +Selim now! She tucked her head, considered her cards, laughed a little +breathless note, then cried triumphantly:</p> + +<p>"And I say—<i>five spades</i>! What do you think of <i>that</i>, partner?"</p> + +<p>Then the girl who was giving an amazing imitation of Nita Selim changed +as suddenly into her own character as she changed chairs.</p> + +<p>"Nita, I don't think it's quite Hoyle to be so jubilant about the +strength of your hand," she commented tartly. "I pass."</p> + +<p>Karen Marshall pretended to study her hand for a frowning instant, then, +under Penny's spell, announced with a pretty air of bravado:</p> + +<p>"Six spades!... Your raise to five makes a little slam obligatory, +doesn't it, Nita?"</p> + +<p>Carolyn Drake flushed and looked uneasily toward Penny, a bit of by-play +which Dundee could see had not figured in the original game. But she +bridled and shifted her plump body in her chair, as she must have done +before.</p> + +<p>"I double a little slam!" she declared. Then, still acting the role she +had played in earnest that afternoon, she explained importantly: "I +always double a little slam on principle!"</p> + +<p>Penny, in the role of Nita, redoubled with an exultant laugh, then, as +herself, said, "Pass!" with a murderous glance at Mrs. Drake.</p> + +<p>"Let's see your hand, partner," Karen quavered, addressing a woman who +had been dead nearly two hours; then she shuddered: "Oh, this is too +horrible!" as Penny Crain again slipped into Nita Selim's chair and +prepared to lay down the dummy hand.</p> + +<p>And it <i>was</i> horrible—even if vitally necessary—for these three to +have to go through the farce of playing a bridge hand while one of the +original players was lying on a marble slab at the morgue, her cold +flesh insensible to the coroner's expert knife.</p> + +<p>But Dundee said nothing, for Tracey Miles was already hovering in the +doorway, ready for his cue to enter.</p> + +<p>Penny, or rather "Nita," was saying:</p> + +<p>"How's <i>this</i>, Karen darling?" as she laid down the Ace and deuce of +Spades, Karen's trumps.</p> + +<p>"I hope you remember <i>you</i> are vulnerable, as well as we," Carolyn +remarked in a sorry imitation of her original cocksureness, as she +opened the play by leading the Ace of Clubs.</p> + +<p>"And how's <i>this</i>, partner?... A singleton in Clubs!" Nita's imitator +demanded triumphantly, as she continued to lay down her dummy hand, +slapping the lone nine of Clubs down beside trumps; "and this little +collection of Hearts!" as she displayed and arranged the King, Jack, +eight and four of Hearts; "<i>and</i> this!" as a length of Diamonds—Ace, +Jack, ten, eight, seven and six slithered down the glossy linen cover of +the bridge table toward Karen Marshall. "Now if you don't make your +little slam, infant, don't dare say I shouldn't have jumped you to +five!... I figured you for a blank or a singleton in Diamonds, and at +least the Ace of Hearts, or you—cautious as you are—wouldn't have made +an original three Spade bid without the Ace.... Hop to it, darling!"</p> + +<p>"This is where I enter," Tracey Miles whispered to Dundee, and, at a nod +from the young detective, the pudgy little blond man strode jauntily +into the living room, proud of himself in the role of actor.</p> + +<p>"Hello, everybody! How's tricks?" he called genially, but there was a +quiver of horror in his voice under its blitheness.</p> + +<p>Penny was quite pale when she sprang from her chair, but her voice +seemed to be Nita's very own, as she sang out:</p> + +<p>"It <i>can't</i> be 5:30 already!... Thank heaven I'm dummy, and can run away +and make myself pretty-pretty for you and all the other great big men, +Tracey darling!"</p> + +<p>Dundee's keen memory registered the slight difference in the wording of +the greeting as reported by this pseudo-Nita and the man she was running +to meet. But Penny, as Nita, was already straightening Tracey Miles' +necktie with possessive, coquettish fingers, was coaxing, with head +tucked alluringly:</p> + +<p>"Tracey, my ownest lamb, won't you shake up the cocktails for Nita? The +makings are all on the sideboard, or I don't know my precious old +Lydia—even if her poor jaw does ache most horribly."</p> + +<p>Then Penny, as Nita, was on her way, pausing in the doorway to blow a +kiss from her fingertips to the fatuously grinning but now quite pale +Tracey Miles. She was out of sight for only an instant, then reappeared +and very quietly retraced her steps to the bridge table.</p> + +<p>Unobtrusively, Dundee drew his watch from his pocket, palmed it as he +noted the exact minute, then commanded curtly: "On with the game!"</p> + +<p>As Tracey Miles passed the first bridge table Lois Dunlap linked her arm +in his, saying in a voice she tried to make gay and natural:</p> + +<p>"I'm trailing along, Tracey. Simply dying for a nip of Scotch! Nita's is +the real stuff—which is more than my fussy old Pete can get half the +time!—and you know I loathe cocktails."</p> + +<p>The two passed on into the dining room, the players scarcely raising +their eyes from their cards, which they held as if the game were real.</p> + +<p>Dundee, his watch still in his hand, advanced to the bridge table. +Strolling from player to player he made mental photographs of each hand, +then took his stand behind Penny's chair to observe the horribly +farcical playing of it. Poor little Penny! he reflected. She hadn't had +a chance against that dumb-bell across the table from her. Fancy +anyone's doubling a little slam bid on a hand like Carolyn Drake's—or +even calling an informatory double in the first place! Why hadn't she +bid four Clubs after Karen's original three Spade bid, if she simply +wanted to give her partner information?... Not that she really had a +bid—</p> + +<p>Karen's hand trembled as she drew the lone nine of Clubs from the dummy, +to place beside Carolyn's Ace, but Penny's fingers were quite steady as +she followed with the deuce of Clubs, to which Karen added, with a trace +of characteristic uncertainty, the eight.</p> + +<p>"There's our book!" Carolyn Drake exulted obediently, but she cast an +apologetic glance toward Penny. "If we take one more trick we set them."</p> + +<p>"Fat chance!" Penny obligingly responded, and Dundee, relieved, knew +that the farcical game would now be played almost exactly, and with the +same comments, as it had been played while Nita Selim was being +murdered. Thanks to Penny Crain!</p> + +<p>With a shamefaced glance upward at Dundee, Carolyn Drake then led the +deuce of Diamonds, committing the gross tactical error of leading from +the Queen. Karen added the Jack from the dummy, and Penny shruggingly +contributed her King, to find the trick, as she had suspected in the +original game, trumped by the five of Spades, since Karen had no +Diamonds.</p> + +<p>"So <i>that</i> settles <i>us</i>, Carolyn!" Penny commented acidly.</p> + +<p>Her partner rose to the role she was playing. "Well, as I said, I always +double a little slam on principle. Besides, how could I know they would +have a chance for cross-ruffing in <i>both</i> Clubs and Diamonds? I thought +you would at least hold the Ace of Diamonds and that Karen would +certainly have one, as I only had four—"</p> + +<p>Penny shrugged. "Oh, well! Let's play bridge!" for Karen was staring at +her cards helplessly. "Sorry, Karen! I realize a post mortem is usually +held after the playing of a hand—not before."</p> + +<p>"I—I guess I'd better get my trumps out," Karen—now almost a genuine +actress, too—breathed tremulously. "I <i>do</i> wish Nita were playing this +hand. I know I'll muff it somehow—"</p> + +<p>"Good kid!" Dundee commented silently, and allowed himself the liberty +of patting Karen on her slim shoulder.</p> + +<p>The girl threw an upward glance of gratitude through misty eyes, then +led the six of Spades, Mrs. Drake contributing the four, dummy taking +the trick with the Ace, and Penny relinquishing the three.</p> + +<p>"Let's see—that makes five of 'em in, since I trumped one trick," Karen +said, as she reached across the table to lead from dummy.</p> + +<p>As if the words were a cue—which they probably were—Judge Marshall +entered the room at that moment, making a great effort to be as jaunty, +debonair, and "young for his age" as he must have thought he looked when +he made his entrance when the real game was being played.</p> + +<p>At his step Karen lifted her head and greeted her elderly husband with a +curious mixture of childlike joy and womanly tenderness:</p> + +<p>"Hullo, darling!... I'm trying to make a little slam I may have been +foolish to bid, but Nita jumped me from three to five Spades—"</p> + +<p>"Let's have a look, sweetheart," the retired judge suggested pompously, +and Dundee gave way to make room for him behind Karen's chair.</p> + +<p>But before Judge Marshall looked at his wife's cards he bent and kissed +her on her flushed cheek, and Karen raised a trembling hand to tweak his +grey mustache. Dundee, with uplifted eyebrow, queried Penny, who nodded +shortly, conveying the information that this was the way the scene had +really been played when there was no question of acting.</p> + +<p>"I'm getting out my trumps, darling," Karen confided sweetly, as she +reached for the deuce of Spades—the only remaining trump in the dummy.</p> + +<p>"What's your hurry, child?" her husband asked indulgently. "Lead this!" +and he pointed toward the six of Diamonds.</p> + +<p>"I wish you'd got a puncture, Hugo, so you couldn't have butted in +before this hand was played," Carolyn Drake spluttered. "Remember this +is a little slam bid, doubled and redoubled—"</p> + +<p>"I should think <i>you</i> would like to forget that, Carolyn!" Penny +commented bitingly. "But I agree with Carolyn, Hugo, that Karen is quite +capable of making her little slam without your assistance."</p> + +<p>"Please don't mind," Karen begged. "Hugo just wanted to help me, because +I'm such a dub at bridge—"</p> + +<p>"The finest little player in town!" Judge Marshall encouraged her +gallantly, but with a jaunty wink at the belligerent Penny.</p> + +<p>Smiling adoringly at him again, Karen took his suggestion and led the +six of Diamonds from the dummy; Penny covered it with the nine; Karen +ruffed with the seven of Spades from her own hand, and Mrs. Drake +lugubriously contributed the four of Diamonds.</p> + +<p>"I can get my trumps out now, can't I, Hugo?" Karen asked deprecatingly, +and at her husband's smiling permission, she led the King of Spades, +Carolyn had to give up the Jack, which she must have foolishly thought +would take a trick; the dummy contributed the deuce, and Penny followed +with her own last trump—the eight.</p> + +<p>Karen counted on her fingers, her eyes on the remaining trumps in her +hand, then smiled triumphantly up at her husband.</p> + +<p>"Why not simply tell us, Karen, that the rest of the trumps are in your +own hand?" Penny suggested caustically.</p> + +<p>"I—I didn't mean to do anything wrong," Karen pleaded, as she led now +with the ten of Hearts, which drew in Carolyn's Queen to cover—Carolyn +murmuring religiously: "Always cover an honor with an honor—or should I +have played second hand low, Penny?"—topped by the King in the dummy, +the trick being completed by Penny's three of Hearts.</p> + +<p>At that point John C. Drake marched into the room, strode straight to +Dundee, and spoke with cold anger:</p> + +<p>"Enough of this nonsense! I, for one, refuse to act like a puppet for +your amusement! If you are so vitally interested in contract bridge, I +should advise you to take lessons from an expert, not from three +terrified women who are rather poor players at best. I also advise you +to get about the business you are supposed to be here for—the finding +of a murderer!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_SIX" id="CHAPTER_SIX"></a>CHAPTER SIX</h2> + + +<p>Before Drake had reached his side, his purpose plain upon his stern, +rather ascetic features, Dundee had taken a hasty glance at the watch +cupped in his palm and noted the exact minute and second of the +interruption. Time out!</p> + +<p>"One moment, Mr. Drake," he said calmly. "I quite agree with you—from +your viewpoint. What mine is, you can't be expected to know. But believe +me when I say that I consider it of vital importance to the +investigation of the murder of Mrs. Selim that this particular bridge +hand, with all its attending remarks, the usual bickering, and its +interruptions of arriving guests for cocktails, be played out, exactly +as it was this afternoon. I thought I had made myself clear before. If +you don't wish me to believe that <i>you have something to conceal</i> by +refusing to take part in a rather grisly game—"</p> + +<p>"Certainly I have nothing to conceal!" John C. Drake snorted angrily.</p> + +<p>"Then please bow as gracefully as possible to necessity," Dundee urged +without rancor. "And may I ask, before we go on, if you made your +entrance at this time, and the facts of your arrival?"</p> + +<p>Drake considered a moment, gnawing a thin upper lip. Beads of sweat +stood on his high, narrow forehead.</p> + +<p>"I walked over from the Country Club, after eighteen holes of golf with +your <i>superior</i>, the district attorney," Drake answered, with nasty +emphasis. "I left the clubhouse at 5:10, calculating that it would take +me about twenty minutes for the walk of—of about a mile."</p> + +<p>Dundee made a mental note to find out exactly how far from this lonely +house in Primrose Meadows the Country Club actually was, but his next +question was along another line:</p> + +<p>"You <i>walked</i>, Mr. Drake?—after eighteen holes of golf on a warm day?"</p> + +<p>Drake flushed. "My wife had the car. I had driven out with Mr. +Sanderson, but he was called away by a long distance message. I lingered +at the club for a while, chatting and—er—having a cool drink or two, +then I set out afoot."</p> + +<p>"No one offered you a lift?" Dundee inquired suavely.</p> + +<p>"No. I presume my fellow-members thought I had my car with me, and I +asked no one for a lift, for I rather fancied the idea of a walk across +the meadows."</p> + +<p>"I see," said Dundee thoughtfully. "Now as to your arrival here—"</p> + +<p>"I walked in. The door had been left on the latch, as it usually is, +when a party is on," Drake explained coldly. "And I was just entering +the room when I heard my wife make the remark about covering an honor +with an honor, and then her question of Penny as to whether she should +have played second hand low."</p> + +<p>"So you entered this time at the correct moment," said Dundee. "Now, Mr. +Drake, I am going to ask you to re-enter the room and do exactly as you +did upon your arrival at approximately 5:33. I am sure you would not +willingly hamper me—or <i>my superior</i>—in this investigation."</p> + +<p>Drake wheeled, ungraciously, and returned to the doorway, while Dundee +again consulted his watch, mentally subtracting the minutes which had +been wasted upon this interruption, from the time he had marked upon his +memory as the moment at which Drake had interfered. But an undercurrent +of skepticism nagged at his mind. Why had Drake chosen to <i>walk</i>? And +why had it taken him from 5:10 to approximately 5:33 to walk a mile or +less? The average walker, and especially one accustomed to playing golf, +could easily have covered a mile in fifteen minutes, instead of the +twenty-three minutes Drake had admitted to.... If it <i>was</i> a +mile!... Was it possible that the banker loved wildflowers?</p> + +<p>With head up aggressively, Drake was undoubtedly making an effort to +throw himself into the role—or perhaps into a role chosen on the spot!</p> + +<p>"Where's everybody?" he called from the doorway. "Am I early?"</p> + +<p>"Don't interrupt, please, dear," Carolyn Drake answered, her voice +trembling now, where before it must have been sharp and querulous.</p> + +<p>Silently Drake took his place behind his wife's chair, laying a hand +affectionately upon her shoulder. Dundee, watching closely, saw Penny's +eyes widen with something like shocked surprise. So Drake <i>was</i> trying +to deceive him, counting on the oneness of this group, his closest +friends!</p> + +<p>Karen, obviously flustered, too, reached to the dummy for the Ace of +Diamonds, to which Penny played the three, Karen herself discarding the +ten of Clubs, and Mrs. Drake the five of Diamonds.</p> + +<p>"You asked no questions, Mr. Drake?" Dundee interpolated.</p> + +<p>The banker flushed again. "I—yes, I believe I did. Carolyn—Mrs. +Drake—explained that Karen was playing for a little slam in Spades, and +that she had doubled—'on principle'," he added acidly—a voice which +Mrs. Drake must be very well accustomed to, Dundee surmised.</p> + +<p>"And when I told you that Nita had redoubled and it looked as if she was +going to make it," Carolyn Drake whimpered and shifted her short, stout +body in the little bridge chair, "you said—why not tell the truth?—you +said it was just like me and I might as well take to tatting at bridge +parties."</p> + +<p>"That was said jokingly, my dear," Drake retorted, with a coldness that +tried to be affectionate warmth.</p> + +<p>"Play bridge!" Dundee commanded, sure that the approximate length of the +previous dispute had now been taken up, whatever retort Carolyn Drake +had made. Then he checked himself, again looking at his watch: "And just +what did you answer to your husband's little joke, Mrs. Drake?"</p> + +<p>"I—I—" The woman looked helplessly around the table, her slate-colored +eyes reddened with tears, then she plunged recklessly, after a fearful +glance at Dundee's implacable face. "I said that if it was Nita he was +talking to, he wouldn't speak in that tone; that she could make all the +foolish mistakes of over-bidding or revoking or doubling that she wanted +to, and he wouldn't say a word except to praise her—"</p> + +<p>"Then I may as well confess," Drake said acidly, "that I answered +substantially as follows: 'Nita is an <i>intelligent</i> bridge player as +well as a charming woman, my dear!...' Now make the most of that little +family tiff, sir—and be damned to you!"</p> + +<p>"Did that end the scene, Mrs. Drake?" Dundee asked gently.</p> + +<p>"I—I said something about all the men thinking Nita was perfect," Mrs. +Drake confessed, "and I cried a little, but we went on with the hand. +And Johnny—Mr. Drake went away, walking up and down the room, waiting +for Nita to come back, I suppose!"</p> + +<p>"Then go on with the game," Dundee ordered.</p> + +<p>Silently now, as silently as the real game must have been played, +because of the embarrassing scene between husband and wife, the sinister +game was carried to its conclusion. Karen led the Jack of Hearts from +the dummy, Penny played her seven, Karen contributed her own deuce, and +Mrs. Drake followed suit with the five.</p> + +<p>Again Karen led from the dummy, with the four of Hearts, followed by +Penny's nine, taking it with her own Ace, Mrs. Drake throwing off the +five of Clubs. Karen then led the six of Hearts, Carolyn Drake discarded +the six of Clubs, dummy took the trick with the eight of Hearts, and +Penny sloughed the three of Clubs.</p> + +<p>With a faint imitation of the triumph with which she had played the hand +the first time, Karen threw down her remaining three trumps.</p> + +<p>"I've made it—a little slam!" she tried to sound very triumphant. +"Doubled and redoubled!... How much did I—did Nita and I make, Penny?"</p> + +<p>"Plenty!" But before putting pencil to score pad, Penny cupped her chin +in her hands and stared at Carolyn Drake. "I'd like to know, Carolyn, if +it isn't one of your most cherished secrets, <i>what</i> possessed you to +double in the first place?"</p> + +<p>Carolyn Drake flushed scarlet as she protested feebly: "I thought of +course I could take two Club tricks with my Ace and King.... That's why +I doubled the little slam, of course. And my first double simply meant +that I had one good suit.... I thought if you could bid at all that my +two doubletons—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, what's the use?" Penny groaned. "But may I remind you that it is +<i>not</i> bridge to lead from a Queen?... You led the deuce of Diamonds, +when of course the play, since you had seen the Ace in the dummy, was to +lead your Queen, forcing the Ace and leaving my King guarded to take a +trick later."</p> + +<p>"But Karen didn't have any Diamonds at all," Carolyn defended herself.</p> + +<p>"A secret you weren't in on when you led from your Queen," Penny +reminded her. "Oh, well! We'll pay up and shut up!" and she made a +pretense of totting up the score, while Karen, who had risen, stood over +her like a bird poised for flight.</p> + +<p>At that instant Dexter Sprague began to advance into the room, Janet +Raymond at his side, her face flaming.</p> + +<p>"Behave exactly as you did before!" Dundee commanded in a harsh whisper. +No time for coddling these people now!</p> + +<p>Dexter Sprague's face took on a yellower tinge, but he obeyed.</p> + +<p>"Greetings!" he called in the jaunty, over-cordial tones of a man who +knows himself not too welcome. "Where's Nita—and everybody? Isn't that +the cocktail shaker I hear?"</p> + +<p>Having received no answer from anyone present, Sprague strolled through +the living room and on into the dining room, Janet following. Judge +Marshall had nodded stiffly, and John C. Drake had muttered the +semblance of a greeting.... Were they all overdoing it a bit—this +reacting of their hostility to the sole remaining outsider of their +compact little group?... Dundee stroked his chin thoughtfully.</p> + +<p>But Penny was saying in her abrupt, husky voice: "Above the line, 1250; +below the line 720, making a total of 1970 on this hand, Karen."</p> + +<p>"Won't Nita be glad?" Karen gasped, then began to run totteringly, +calling: "Nita! Nita!" But in the hall she collapsed, shuddering, crying +in a child's whimper: "No, no! I—can't—go in there—again!"</p> + +<p>It was Dundee who reached her first—Dundee and not her outraged and +excited old husband.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Marshall—listen, please," he begged in a low voice, as he lifted +her so that her head rested against his arm. "You have been +splendid—wonderful! Please believe that I am truly sorry to distress +you so, and that very soon, I hope, you may go home and rest."</p> + +<p>"I—can't bear any—more," Karen whimpered.</p> + +<p>Ignoring Judge Marshall's blustering, Dundee continued softly: "You +don't want the wrong person to be accused of this terrible crime, do +you, Mrs. Marshall?... Of course not! And you <i>do</i> want to help us all +you can to discover who really killed Mrs. Selim?"</p> + +<p>"I—I suppose so," Karen conceded, on a sob.</p> + +<p>"Then I'll help you. I'll go to the bedroom with you," Dundee promised +her with a sigh of relief. To the others he spoke sharply:</p> + +<p>"Go back to the exact positions in living room and dining room and +solarium, that you occupied when Mrs. Marshall ran from the room."</p> + +<p>"I think you're overdoing it, Bonnie," Captain Strawn protested. +"But—sure I'll see that they mind you."</p> + +<p>With Karen Marshall clinging to his arm, Dundee walked down the hall, +beyond the staircase to an open door on his left—a door guarded by a +lounging plainclothesman. Seated at the dressing-table of the guests' +lavatory was Flora Miles, her sallow dark face so ravaged that she +looked ten years older than when he had first seen her an hour before.</p> + +<p>"So you were in here when you heard Mrs. Marshall scream, Mrs. Miles?" +Dundee paused to ask.</p> + +<p>"Yes—yes!" she gasped, rising. "And that horrible man has made me stay +in here—. Of course, the door was closed—before. I telephoned home to +ask about my children, and then I came in here to—to do my face over—"</p> + +<p>"You didn't hear your husband arrive?"</p> + +<p>"No,—I didn't hear him arrive," Flora Miles faltered, her handkerchief +dabbing at her trembling, over-rouged lips.</p> + +<p>"I—see," Dundee said slowly.</p> + +<p>He stepped into the little room, leaving Karen to stand weakly against +the door frame. Without a word to Mrs. Miles he looked closely at the +top of the dressing-table and into the small wastebasket that stood +beside it.</p> + +<p>"You—you can see that I cold-creamed my face before I put on fresh +powder and—and rouged," Flora Miles pointed out, with an obvious effort +at offended dignity. "After I came back, while you were making those +poor girls play the hand over again, I went through the same +motions—because you told all of us to behave exactly as we had done +before—"</p> + +<p>"I—see," Dundee agreed.</p> + +<p>Pretty clever, in spite of being almost frightened to death, Dundee said +to himself. But he had been just a shade cleverer than she, for he had +been in this room ahead of her, and there had been no balls of greasy +face tissue in the wastebasket then!</p> + +<p>He was passing out of the room, offering his arm to Karen, when one of +his underlined notes thrust itself upon his memory:</p> + +<p>"May I see your bridge tally, please, Mrs. Miles?"</p> + +<p>"My—bridge tally!" she echoed blankly. "Why—it must be on the table +where I was playing—"</p> + +<p>"It is not," Dundee assured her quietly. "Perhaps it is in your +handbag?" and he glanced at the rather large raffia bag that lay on the +table.</p> + +<p>She snatched it up, slightly averting her body as she looked hastily +through its contents.</p> + +<p>"It—isn't here.... Oh, I don't know <i>where</i> it is! What does it +matter?"</p> + +<p>Without replying, Dundee escorted the trembling little discoverer of +Nita Selim's body into the large ornate bedroom, murmuring as he did so:</p> + +<p>"Don't be frightened, Mrs. Marshall. The bod—I mean Mrs. Selim isn't +here now.... And you shan't have to scream. I'll give the signal myself. +I just want you to go through the same motions you did before." On jerky +feet the girl advanced to Nita's now deserted vanity dresser.</p> + +<p>"I—I was calling to her all the time," she whispered. "I didn't even +wait to knock, and I—I began to tell her how much we'd made off that +hand, when I—when she didn't answer.... I didn't touch her, but I +saw—I saw—" Again she gripped her face with her hands and was about to +scream.</p> + +<p>"I know," Dundee assured her gently. Then he shouted: "Ready!"</p> + +<p>Herded by Strawn, the small crowd of men and women came running into the +room, Judge Marshall leading the way, Penny being second in line. Penny +<i>second</i>! Why not Flora Miles, who had been nearer to that room than any +of the others, if her story was true—Dundee asked himself. But all had +crowded into the room, including Polly Beale and Clive Hammond, before +Mrs. Miles crept in.</p> + +<p>"Is this the order of your arrival?" Dundee asked them all.</p> + +<p>Penny, who was standing against the wall, just inside the doorway, spoke +up, staring at Flora with frowning intentness.</p> + +<p>"You're sort of mixed up, aren't you, Flora? I was standing right here +until the worst of it was over—I didn't even go near Nita, and I know +you didn't pass me. I remember that Tracey stepped away from the—body, +and called you, and you weren't here. And then almost the next minute I +saw you coming toward him from—from—<i>over there</i>!"</p> + +<p>And Penny pointed toward that corner of the room which held, on one +angle, the door leading to the porch, and on its other angle the window +from which, or from near which Nita Selim had been shot.</p> + +<p>"You're lying, Penny Crain! I did no such thing!" Flora Miles cried +hysterically. "I came running in—with—with the rest of you, and I +rushed over there just to see if I could see anybody running away across +the meadow—"</p> + +<p>"My wife is right, sir," Tracey Miles added his word aggressively. "I +saw what she was doing—the most sensible of all of us—and I ran to +join her. We looked out of the windows, both the side windows and the +rear ones, and out onto the porch. But we didn't see anything."</p> + +<p>Surprisingly, Dundee abandoned the point.</p> + +<p>"And you were the only one to touch her, Sprague?"</p> + +<p>"I—believe so," Dexter Sprague answered in a strained voice. "I—laid +my hand on her—her hair, for an instant, then I picked up her hand to +see if—if there was any pulse left."</p> + +<p>"Yes?"</p> + +<p>"She—she was dead."</p> + +<p>"And her hand—did it feel cold?"</p> + +<p>"Neither cold nor warm—just cool," Sprague answered in a voice that was +nearly strangled with emotion. "She—she always had cool hands—"</p> + +<p>"What did you do, Judge Marshall?" Dundee asked abruptly.</p> + +<p>"I took my poor little wife away from this room, laid her on a couch in +the living room, and then telephoned the police. Miss Crain stood at my +elbow, urging me to hurry, so that she might ring you—as she did. Your +line was busy, and she lost about five minutes before getting you."</p> + +<p>"And the rest of you?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"Nothing spectacular, I'm afraid, Mr. Dundee," Polly Beale answered in +her brusque, deep voice, now edged with scorn.</p> + +<p>Further questioning elicited little more, beyond the fact that Clive +Hammond had dashed out to circle the house and look over the grounds, +and that John Drake had been fully occupied with an hysterical wife.</p> + +<p>"Better let this bunch go for the present, hadn't we, boy?" Captain +Strawn whispered uneasily. "Not a thing on any of them—"</p> + +<p>"Not quite yet, sir, if you don't mind," Dundee answered in a low voice. +"Will you take them back into the living room and put them under +Sergeant Turner's charge for a while? Then there are one or two things +I'd like to talk over with you."</p> + +<p>Mollified by the younger man's deference and persuasiveness, Strawn +obeyed the suggestion, to return within five minutes, his grey brows +drawn into a frown.</p> + +<p>"I hope you'll be willing to take full credit for that fool bridge game, +Bonnie," he worried. "<i>I</i> don't want to look a chump in the newspapers!"</p> + +<p>"I'll take the blame," Dundee assured him, with a grin. "But that 'fool +bridge game'—and I admit it was a horrible thing to have to do—told me +a whole bunch of facts that ought to be very, very useful."</p> + +<p>"For instance?" Strawn growled.</p> + +<p>"For instance," Dundee answered, "it told me that it took approximately +eight minutes to play out a little slam bid, when ordinarily it would +have taken not more than two or three minutes. Not only that, but it +told me the names of everyone in <i>this</i> party who could have killed Nita +Selim, and—. Good Lord! Of course!"</p> + +<p>And to Captain Strawn's amazement Dundee threw open the door of Nita's +big clothes closet, jerked on the light, and stooped to the floor.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_SEVEN" id="CHAPTER_SEVEN"></a>CHAPTER SEVEN</h2> + + +<p>Almost immediately Special Investigator Dundee rose from his crouching +position on the floor of Nita Selim's closet, and faced the chief of the +Homicide Squad of Hamilton's police force.</p> + +<p>"I think," he said quietly, for all the excitement that burned in his +blue eyes, "that we'd better have Mrs. Miles in for a few questions."</p> + +<p>"What have you got there—a dance program?" Strawn asked curiously, but +as Dundee continued to stare silently at the thing he held, the older +man strode to the door and relayed the order to a plainclothes +detective.</p> + +<p>"I sent for <i>Mrs.</i> Miles," Dundee said coldly, when husband and wife +appeared together, Flora's thin, tense shoulders encircled by Tracey's +plump arm.</p> + +<p>"If you're going to badger my wife further, I intend to be present, +sir!" Miles retorted, thrusting out his chest.</p> + +<p>"Very well!" Dundee conceded curtly. "Mrs. Miles, why didn't you tell me +in the first place that you were <i>in this room</i> when Nita Selim was +shot?"</p> + +<p>"Because I wasn't—in—in the room," Flora protested, clinging with both +thin, big-veined hands to her husband's arm.</p> + +<p>"Sir, you have no proof of this absurd accusation, and I shall +personally take this matter up—"</p> + +<p>"I have the best of proof," Dundee said quietly, and took his hand from +his pocket. "You recognize this, Mrs. Miles?... You admit that it is the +tally card you used while playing bridge this afternoon?"</p> + +<p>"No, no! It isn't mine!" Flora cried hysterically, cringing against her +husband, who began to protest in a voice falsetto with rage.</p> + +<p>Dundee ignored his splutterings. "May I point out that it is identical +with the other tally cards used at Mrs. Selim's party today, and that on +its face it bears your name, 'Flora'?" and he politely extended the card +for her inspection.</p> + +<p>"I—yes, it <i>must</i> be mine, but I was <i>not</i> in this room when Nita +was—was shot!"</p> + +<p>"But you will admit that you <i>were</i> in her clothes closet at some time +during the twenty or more minutes that elapsed between your leaving the +bridge game, when you became dummy, and the moment when Karen Marshall +screamed?"</p> + +<p>As Flora Miles said nothing, staring at him with great, terrified black +eyes, Dundee went on relentlessly: "Mrs. Miles, when you left the bridge +game, you did not intend to telephone your house. You came <i>here</i>—into +this room!—and you lay in wait, hiding in her closet until Nita Selim +appeared, as you knew she would, sooner or later—"</p> + +<p>"No, no! That's a lie—a lie, I tell you!" the woman shrilled at him. "I +<i>did</i> telephone my house, and I talked to Junior, when the maid put him +up to the phone.... You can ask her yourself, if you don't believe me!"</p> + +<p>"But <i>after</i> you telephoned, you stole into this room—"</p> + +<p>"No, no! I—I made up my face all fresh, just as I told you—"</p> + +<p>Dundee did not bother to tell her how well he knew she was lying, for +suddenly something knocked on the door of his mind. He strode to the +closet, searched for a moment among the multitude of garments hanging +there, then emerged with the brown silk summer coat which Nita Selim had +worn to Breakaway Inn that noon. Before the terrified woman's eyes he +thrust a hand first into one deep pocket and then another, finding +nothing except a handkerchief of fine embroidered linen and a pair of +brown suede gauntlet gloves.</p> + +<p>"Will you let me have the note, please, Mrs. Miles? The note Nita +received during her luncheon party, and which she thrust, before your +eyes, into a pocket of this coat?... It is in your handbag, I am sure, +since you have had no opportunity, unobserved, to destroy it."</p> + +<p>"What ghastly nonsense is this, Dundee?" Tracey Miles demanded +furiously.</p> + +<p>But Dundee again ignored him. His implacable eyes held Flora Miles' +until the woman broke suddenly, piteously. She fumbled in the raffia bag +which had been hanging from her arm.</p> + +<p>"Good God, Flora! What does it all mean?" Tracey Miles collapsed like a +pricked pink balloon. "That's <i>my</i> stationery—one of my business +envelopes—"</p> + +<p>Flora Miles dropped the bag which she need no longer watch and clutch +with terror, as she dug her thin fingers into her husband's shoulders +and looked down at his puzzled face, for she was a little taller than +he.</p> + +<p>"Forgive me, darling! Oh, I knew God would punish me for being jealous! +I thought <i>you</i> were writing love letters to—to that woman—"</p> + +<p>Dundee did not miss the slightest significance of that scene as he +retrieved the blue-grey envelope she had dropped. It was inscribed, in a +curious handwriting: "Mrs. Selim, Private Dining Room, Breakaway Inn."</p> + +<p>"Let's see, boy," Strawn said, with respect in his harsh voice.</p> + +<p>Dundee withdrew the single sheet of business stationery, and obligingly +held it so that the chief of detectives could read it also.</p> + +<p>"Nita, my sweet," the note began, without date-line, "Forgive your bad +boy for last night's row, but I <i>must</i> warn you again to watch your +step. You've already gone too far. Of course I love you and understand, +<i>but</i>—Be good, Baby, and you won't be sorry."</p> + +<p>The note was signed "Dexy."</p> + +<p>Dundee tapped the note for a long minute, while Tracey Miles continued +to console his wife. A new avenue, he thought—perhaps a long, long +avenue....</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Miles," he began abruptly, and the tear-streaked face turned +toward him. "You say you thought this letter to Mrs. Selim had been +written by your husband?"</p> + +<p>"Yes!" She gasped. "I'm jealous-natured. I admit it, and when I saw one +of our own—I mean, one of Tracey's business envelopes—"</p> + +<p>"You made up your mind to steal it and read it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I did! A wife has a right to know what her husband's doing, if +it's anything—like that—" Her haggard black eyes again implored her +husband for forgiveness, before she went on: "I <i>did</i> slip into Nita's +room and go into her closet to see if she had left the letter in her +coat pocket. I closed the door on myself, thinking I could find the +light cord, but it was caught in one of the dresses or something, and it +took me a long time to find it in the dark of the closet, but I did find +it at last, and was just reading the note—"</p> + +<p>"You <i>read</i> it, even after you saw that the handwriting on the envelope +wasn't your husband's?" Dundee queried in assumed amazement.</p> + +<p>Flora's thin body sagged. "I—I thought maybe Tracey had disguised his +Handwriting.... So I read it, and saw it was from Dexter—"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Miles, do you know how some of your business stationery got into +Sprague's hands?"</p> + +<p>"He's had plenty of opportunity to filch stationery or almost anything +he wants, hanging around my offices, as he does—an idler—"</p> + +<p>But Dundee was in a hurry. He wheeled from the garrulity of the husband +to the tense terror of the wife.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Miles, I want you to tell me exactly what you know, unless you +prefer to consult a lawyer first—"</p> + +<p>"Sir, if you are insinuating that <i>my wife</i>—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, let me tell him, Tracey," Mrs. Miles capitulated suddenly, +completely. "I <i>was</i> in the closet when Nita was killed, I suppose, but +I didn't <i>know</i> she was being killed! <i>Because I was lying in there on +the closet floor in a dead faint!</i>"</p> + +<p>Dundee stared at the woman incredulously, then suppressed a groan of +almost unbearable disappointment. If Flora Miles was telling the truth, +here went a-flying his only eye-witness, probably, or rather, his only +ear-witness.</p> + +<p>"Just when did you faint, Mrs. Miles?" he asked, struggling for +patience. "Before or after Nita came into this room?"</p> + +<p>"I was just finishing the note, with the light on in the closet, and the +door shut, when I heard Nita come into the room. I knew it was Nita +because she was singing one of those Broadway songs she is—was—so +crazy about. I jerked off the light, and crouched way back in a corner +of the closet. A velvet evening wrap fell down over my head, and I was +nearly smothering, but I was afraid to try to dislodge it for fear a +hanger would fall to the floor and make an awful clatter. And then—and +then—" She shuddered, and clung to her husband.</p> + +<p>"What caused you to faint, Mrs. Miles?"</p> + +<p>"Sir, my wife has heart trouble—"</p> + +<p>"What did you hear, Mrs. Miles?" Dundee persisted.</p> + +<p>"I couldn't hear very well, all tangled up in the coat and 'way back in +the closet, but I did hear a kind of bang or bump—no, no, not a pistol +shot!—and because it came from so near me I thought it was Nita or +Lydia coming to get something out of the closet, and I'd be discovered, +so I—I fainted—" She drew a deep breath and went on: "When I came to I +heard Karen scream, and then people running in—. But all the time that +awful tune was going on and on—"</p> + +<p>"Tune?" Dundee gasped. "Do you mean—Nita Selim's—<i>song</i>?"</p> + +<p>Flora Miles seemed to be dazed by Dundee's vehement question.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes—Nita's own tune. That's what she called it—her own tune—"</p> + +<p>"But, Mrs. Miles," Dundee protested, ashamed that his scalp was +prickling with horror, "do you mean to tell me that Nita was not dead +<i>then</i>—when Karen Marshall screamed?"</p> + +<p>"Dead?" Flora repeated, more bewildered. "Of course she was, or at +least, they all said so—. Oh, I know what you mean! And you don't mean +what I mean at all—"</p> + +<p>"Steady, honey-girl!" Tracey Miles urged, putting his arm about his +wife. "I'd better tell you, Dundee.... When we all came running into the +room, there was Nita's powder box playing its tune over and over—"</p> + +<p>"Oh!" Dundee wiped his forehead. "You mean it's a musical box?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, and plays when the lid is off," Tracey answered, obviously +delighted to have the limelight again. "Well, of course, since Nita +couldn't put the lid back on, it was still playing.... What was the +tune, honey?" he asked his wife tenderly. "I haven't much ear for music +at best, but at a time like that—"</p> + +<p>"It was playing <i>Juanita</i>," Flora answered wearily. "Over and +over—<i>'Nita, Jua-a-n-ita, be my own fair bride</i>'," she quavered +obligingly. "Only not the words, of course, just the tune. That's why +Nita bought the box, I suppose, because it played her namesake song—"</p> + +<p>"Maybe one of her beaus gave it to her," Tracey suggested lightly, +patting his wife's trembling shoulder. "Anyway, Dundee, the thing ran on +and on, until it ran down, I suppose. I confess I wanted to put the lid +back on, to stop the damned thing, but Hugo said we mustn't touch +anything—"</p> + +<p>"And quite right!" Dundee cut in. "Now, Mrs. Miles, about that noise you +heard.... Did you hear anyone enter the room?... No?... Well, then, did +you hear Nita speak to anyone? You said you thought it might be Lydia, +coming to get something out of the closet."</p> + +<p>"I didn't hear Nita speak a word to anybody, though she might have and I +wouldn't have heard, all muffled up in that velvet evening wrap and so +far back in the closet—"</p> + +<p>"Did you hear the door onto the porch—it's <i>quite</i> near the closet—"</p> + +<p>"The door was open when we came in, Dundee," Tracey interposed. "It must +have been open all the time."</p> + +<p>"I didn't hear it open," Mrs. Miles confirmed him wearily. "I tell you I +didn't hear <i>anything</i>, except Nita's coming in singing, then the powder +box playing its tune, and that bang or bump I told you about."</p> + +<p>"And just where was that?" Dundee persisted.</p> + +<p>"<i>I don't know!</i>" she shrilled, hysteria rising in her voice again. "I +told you it sounded fairly near the closet, as if—as if somebody bumped +into something. That's what it was like! That's exactly what it was +like. And I was so frightened of being found in the closet that I +fainted, and didn't come to until Karen screamed—"</p> + +<p>She was babbling on, but Dundee was thinking hard. A very convenient +faint—that! For the murderer, at least! But—why not for Mrs. Miles +herself? Odd that she should <i>faint</i>! Why hadn't she trumped up some +excuse immediately and left the closet as Nita was entering the room? +Was it, possibly, because she could think of nothing but the great +relief of finding that it was Sprague, not her husband, who had been +writing love letters to Nita Selim?... A jealous woman—</p> + +<p>"Miles," he began abruptly, "I think you'd better tell me how your wife +became so jealous of you and Nita Selim that she could get herself into +such a false position."</p> + +<p>Tracey Miles reddened, but a gesture of one of his sunburned hands +restrained his wife's passionate defense of him. "It's the truth that +Flora is jealous-natured. And I suppose—" he faltered a moment, and his +eyes did not meet his wife's, "—that I liked seeing her a little bit +jealous of her old man. Sort of makes a man feel—well, big, you know. +And pretty important to somebody!"</p> + +<p>"So you were just having a bit of fun with your wife, so far as Mrs. +Selim was concerned?" Dundee asked coldly.</p> + +<p>The blood flowed through the thinning blond hair. "We-el, not exactly," +he admitted frankly. "You see, I <i>did</i> take a shine to Nita, and if I do +say so myself, she liked me a lot.... Oh, nothing serious! Just a little +flirtation, like most of our crowd have with each other—"</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Miles," Dundee interrupted with sudden harshness, "are you <i>sure</i> +you did not know that that letter was from Dexter Sprague before you +looked for it?"</p> + +<p>"Sir, if you are insinuating that <i>my wife</i> carried on a flirtation +or—an—an <i>affair</i> with that Sprague insect—" Tracey began to bluster.</p> + +<p>But Dundee's eyes were on Flora Miles, and he saw that her sallow skin +had tightened like greyish silk over her thin cheek bones, and that her +eyes looked suddenly dead and glassy.</p> + +<p>"You <i>fainted</i>, you say, Mrs. Miles," Dundee went on inexorably. "Was it +because, by any chance, this note—" and he tapped the sheet which had +caused so much trouble—"revealed the fact that Nita Selim and Dexter +Sprague were sweethearts or—lovers?"</p> + +<p>It was a battle between those two now. Both ignored Tracey's red-faced +rage.</p> + +<p>Flora licked her dry lips. "No—no," she whispered. "<i>No!</i> It was +because I was jealous of Tracey and Nita—"</p> + +<p>"Yes, and I'd given her cause to be jealous, too!" Tracey forced himself +into the conversation. "One night, at the Country Club, Flora saw me and +Nita stroll off the porch and down onto the grounds, and she had a right +to be sore at me when I got back, because I'd cut a dance with her—my +own wife!... And it was only this very morning that I made a point of +driving—out of my way too—by this house to see Nita. Not that I meant +any harm, but I was being a little silly about her—and she was about +me, too! Not that I'd leave my wife and babies for any Broadway beauty +under the sun—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Tracey! And you weren't going to tell me—" Was there <i>real</i> +jealousy now, or just pretense on Flora's part?</p> + +<p>"You understand, don't you, Dundee?" Tracey demanded, man to man. "I was +just having a little fun on the side—nothing serious, mind you! But of +course I didn't tell Flora every little thing—. No man does! There've +been other girls—other women—"</p> + +<p>"Tracey isn't worse than the other men!" Flora flamed up. "He's such a +darling that all the girls pet him, and spoil him—"</p> + +<p>Dundee could stand no more of Miles' complacent acceptance of his own +rakishness. And certainly a girl like Nita Selim would have been able to +bear precious little of it.... Conceited ass! But Flora Miles was +another matter—and so was Dexter Sprague!</p> + +<p>"You can join me in the living room, if you like," Dundee said shortly, +as he wheeled and strode toward the door. Was that quick, passionate +kiss between husband and wife being staged for his benefit?</p> + +<p>"Pretty near through, boy?" Strawn, who had been silent and bewildered +for a long time, asked anxiously, as the two detectives passed into the +hall.</p> + +<p>"Not quite. I've got to know several things yet," Dundee answered +absently.</p> + +<p>But in the living room his mind was wholly upon the business in hand.</p> + +<p>"I'll keep you all no longer than is absolutely necessary," he began, +and again the close-knit group—in which only Dexter Sprague was an +alien—grew taut with suspense. "From the playing out of the 'death +hand' at bridge," he went on, using the objectionable phrase again very +deliberately, "I found that no two of you men arrived together.... Mr. +Hammond, you were the first to arrive, I believe?"</p> + +<p>"It seems that I was!" Clive Hammond answered curtly.</p> + +<p>"And yet you did not enter the living room to greet your hostess?"</p> + +<p>"I wanted a private word with Polly—Miss Beale—my fiancée," Hammond +explained briefly.</p> + +<p>"How and when did you arrive?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know the exact time. Never thought of looking at my watch," +Hammond offered. "I came out in my own roadster—that tan Stutz you may +have noticed in the driveway. As for how I entered the house, I leaped +upon the porch and opened a door of the solarium. I walked across the +solarium, saw Polly just finishing with bridge for the afternoon, and +beckoned to her. She joined me in the solarium, and we stayed there +until Karen screamed.... That's all."</p> + +<p>"Have you been engaged long, Mr. Hammond—you and Miss Beale?" Dundee +asked, as if quite casually.</p> + +<p>"Nearly a year,—if it's any of your business, Dundee!"</p> + +<p>"And just when had you seen Miss Beale last, before late this +afternoon?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"I refuse to answer!" Hammond flared. "That at least is none of your +damned business!"</p> + +<p>"I believe I can answer my own question, Mr. Hammond," Dundee said very +softly.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_EIGHT" id="CHAPTER_EIGHT"></a>CHAPTER EIGHT</h2> + + +<p>"Then why ask me?" Hammond shrugged, but his eyes flickered toward Polly +Beale.</p> + +<p>"I thought perhaps you could give me a little additional information," +Dundee soothed him. "You see, it happens that I saw you, Miss Beale and +another young man come into the Stuart House dining room about half past +one today, just when I was thinking of lunch for myself."</p> + +<p>"The mysterious 'other young man' was Clive's brother, Ralph Hammond," +Polly Beale cut in brusquely.</p> + +<p>"Your decision to lunch with your fiancé and his brother was quite a +sudden one?" Dundee asked courteously. "Just when did you change your +mind about Mrs. Selim's luncheon party at Breakaway Inn, Miss Beale?"</p> + +<p>The tall girl threw up her mannishly cropped, chestnut head. "There is +nothing at all sinister or even queer about it, Mr. Dundee! I was on my +way to the luncheon, when I decided to drive past Nita's house, on the +chance that she might like me to drive her over."</p> + +<p>"Then you didn't know that Mrs. Dunlap had already arranged to meet Mrs. +Selim downtown this morning and to take her to the Inn?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"No! I didn't hear of the arrangement," Polly answered decidedly.</p> + +<p>"You were a close friend of Mrs. Selim's perhaps?" Dundee prodded.</p> + +<p>"Not at all! But that would not keep me from doing my hostess a +courtesy.... She hated her Ford and liked expensive cars," Polly added +unemotionally. "It was about a quarter to one when I got here, I should +say. Nita wasn't here, nor was her maid, but I saw Ralph's car parked in +front of the house—"</p> + +<p>"<i>Ralph Hammond's car?</i>" a woman squealed, but Dundee let Polly +continue.</p> + +<p>"I rang and he answered the door. Said he was alone in the house, going +over the premises at Judge Marshall's request," Polly said evenly.</p> + +<p>"That's right—that's right!" Judge Marshall agreed hastily. "Nita—Mrs. +Selim—wanted the unfinished half of the gabled top story finished up. +Wanted a maid's room and bath, and a guest room and bath added to the +living quarters already completed. I gave the commission, for an +estimate, at least, to the Hammond firm, since they had built the house +originally for Crain—Penny's father."</p> + +<p>"I see," Dundee agreed. "And you sent your brother, Mr. Hammond?"</p> + +<p>"He was the natural one to send," Clive Hammond retorted. "Small job. +All he had to do was to get together an estimate on additional furnace +lines and radiators, electric wiring, plumbing, plastering, etc."</p> + +<p>"Go on, Miss Beale," Dundee directed.</p> + +<p>"Thanks!" There was sarcasm in her brusque voice. "But that's really +about all I have to tell. Ralph complained that he was hungry and +charged me with giving him too little of my time—the usual thing. I +picked up Nita's phone, called Clive and made the date for the three of +us. Then I called Breakaway Inn, cancelled the luncheon part of the +bridge party with Nita, and Ralph and I drove back to Hamilton."</p> + +<p>Dundee studied her strong, clever, almost plain face for a long minute. +Certainly Polly Beale did not look like a liar—but he would have taken +his oath that she was lying now. Or rather not revealing the whole truth +behind the actual facts of her movements that day. For instance, could a +simple plea of her future brother-in-law make her do so discourteous a +thing as to break a luncheon appointment, especially when such a course +would not only disappoint her hostess and her friends but disarrange the +seating plan of a rather formal party?</p> + +<p>Of course the explanation was obvious. She had wanted, first, to see +Nita and remonstrate privately with her for having so enslaved Ralph +Hammond, when he was tacitly known to "belong" to Penny Crain—one of +the sacred crowd. Failing that, she had found Ralph himself, and had not +expected to find him; had talked with him about Nita, and had quarreled +a bit with him, perhaps, over his love-sodden behavior. And the crisis +had become so acute that Polly had arbitrarily called upon Clive Hammond +and then had forced Ralph to accompany her.</p> + +<p>"Do you know, Miss Beale, why Ralph Hammond did not keep <i>his</i> +engagement with Mrs. Selim this afternoon? Or rather, his promise to +appear for cocktails and to be Miss Crain's partner for the rest of the +evening—dinner and dancing at the Country Club?"</p> + +<p>"I do not!" Polly said crisply.</p> + +<p>"Hammond?"</p> + +<p>"Neither do I," Hammond retorted angrily.</p> + +<p>"Then it was not to discuss Ralph Hammond and his—affairs, that you +beckoned Miss Beale to meet you in the solarium upon your arrival?"</p> + +<p>"It—<i>was not</i>!"</p> + +<p>A shade too much anger and emphasis, Dundee decided. And he wished +heartily that Strawn's detectives would not delay much longer in +bringing the missing young man into this already involved examination.</p> + +<p>"You say that you both were in the solarium from the time of your +arrival, Hammond, until Mrs. Marshall screamed," Dundee continued. "Just +what did you see and hear?"</p> + +<p>Dundee watched their faces keenly, but again they were well-bred, +expressionless. It was Polly Beale who answered: "Naturally there was +not absolute silence, but I am afraid we were not listening. We were +rather engrossed in our conversation. We were seated—near no +windows—and I for one <i>saw</i> nothing, as well as heard nothing that I +can recall."</p> + +<p>"Hammond?"</p> + +<p>"That goes for me, too—absolutely!"</p> + +<p>Abruptly abandoning the engaged couple, Dundee returned to Miles. "You +were the second arrival, then?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I parked my car along the curb in front of the house," Tracey +answered readily. "And I came right on in, and Nita jumped up—"</p> + +<p>"Yes. We've had all that twice before," Dundee interrupted cruelly. +"Now, Judge Marshall—"</p> + +<p>"One of my friends gave me a lift from town," Judge Marshall volunteered +pompously. "Chap named Sampson. You may have heard of him—fine fellow, +splendid lawyer. We played billiards together at the Athletic Club, and +when I was about to call a taxi—my wife having the car here—he offered +to drop me here on his way to the Country Club.... N-no, I don't +remember the exact time, did not consult my watch."</p> + +<p>"You came directly from the road into the house, Judge Marshall?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly, sir!"</p> + +<p>"Did you—er, see anyone?"</p> + +<p>"You mean, sir, did anyone see <i>me</i>?" Judge Marshall demanded with +pompous indignation. "No, no one, sir! If my word is not good enough for +you, you can think what you damned please!"</p> + +<p>"I think we are all getting a little too tired, Mr. Dundee," Penny Crain +suggested, almost humble in her weariness.</p> + +<p>"I'm truly sorry," the young detective apologized. "But I can't leave +things like this ... Mr. Drake, you have said you walked over from the +Country Club. You must have approached the house from the driveway side, +the side of the house which contains Mrs. Selim's bedroom.... Is that +right?"</p> + +<p>"More or less, except that I skirted the house rather widely and arrived +from the road, stepping upon the front porch, and walking directly into +the hall. I saw no one outside or near the house when I arrived," Drake +answered, with less than his usual nastiness.</p> + +<p>"And saw no one running away across the meadows?" Dundee pressed.</p> + +<p>"No one at all," Drake retorted. "I wish to God I could truthfully say +that I saw a gunman, with a mask and a smoking revolver, skulking +through the wildflowers, but the absolute truth is that I saw no one."</p> + +<p>"Thank you, Mr. Drake.... Now—Mr. Sprague, 'of New York'!"</p> + +<p>Sprague's nervously twitching face reddened darkly. "I—I took a bus. I +have no car of my own. I got off the bus on Sheridan Road, at the +entrance to Primrose Meadows."</p> + +<p>"I see. And you walked the quarter of a mile to this house?"</p> + +<p>Sprague's hand fumbled with his cravat. "I—of course I did!"</p> + +<p>"I see.... Now, Miss Raymond," Dundee pounced unexpectedly, so that the +red-haired girl went very white beneath her freckles, "you observed Mr. +Sprague toiling down the rutty road, hot and weary, but romantic in the +sunset?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Drake let out a nervous giggle, then clapped her hand over her +mouth.</p> + +<p>"I—I wasn't looking that way," Janet Raymond stammered. "I—I just went +out on the porch for a breath of fresh air—"</p> + +<p>"And you were <i>completely</i> surprised when Mr. Sprague came walking up +the flagstone path?" Dundee persisted, for he knew she was lying, knew +that she had stationed herself there to watch for Sprague.</p> + +<p>"I—yes, I was! He stopped and talked for a while, before we came in and +joined Tracey and Lois in the dining room, where Tracey was mixing +cocktails.... But," she flared suddenly, "I don't see why you have to +badger all of us, when it <i>must</i> have been Lydia, the maid, who killed +Nita, because—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Janet! Shame on you!" Penny cried furiously.</p> + +<p>"Where is the maid now, Captain Strawn?" Dundee asked. "I haven't seen +her yet—"</p> + +<p>"Because she's in her room in the basement, Bonnie," Strawn answered. +"Sort of forgot about her, didn't you?" and he chuckled at the younger +man's discomfiture. "But <i>I</i> got her story out of her, you bet! Nothing +to it, though. One of my boys—Collins, it was—found her in that short, +dark hall that runs between the Selim woman's bedroom and the kitchen. +Sicker'n a pup she was; it was a mess. Said she'd—"</p> + +<p>"I'd better have her up and question her, if she's well enough," Dundee +interrupted, as tactfully as possible. "It seems that she had an +abscessed tooth out today, with gas and a local anesthetic.... Now, Miss +Raymond, will you tell me exactly what you meant by saying it must have +been Lydia who killed her mistress?"</p> + +<p>"I certainly will!" the red-haired girl cried defiantly. "What I can't +see is why Tracey and Lois and Dex—Mr. Sprague—didn't think of it, +too. It's as plain as—"</p> + +<p>"Yes, as the nose on my face," Dundee cut in grimly, but with a glance +at Strawn. "Just stick to the facts, however, Miss Raymond, and maybe we +can all agree with you."</p> + +<p>"Well, when Mr. Sprague and I went into the dining room, there were Lois +and Tracey cutting up like a couple of children," Janet began, +determined to take her time. "When they saw us, Lois said: 'Good Lord, +Tracey! Get busy! Or your job as bartender will be taken away from you,' +and Tracey began to shake cocktails at the sideboard—"</p> + +<p>"Guess I'd better tell it, Janet, for what it's worth," Lois cut in +impatiently. "It's nothing more nor less than that I had to ring twice +for poor Lydia before she came," she explained to Dundee. "Tracey is +full of original ideas about cocktails, and wanted some sort of bitters. +He was going to shout for Lydia, but I stepped on the button under the +dining table, and the poor thing—in the basement nursing her jaw, +probably—didn't hear. Tracey and I got to kidding, as Janet says, and +had scarcely noticed how long Lydia was in coming. I rang again, and she +came.... That's all!"</p> + +<p>"That isn't all!" Janet denied angrily. "I was there when Lydia came +in, and she was looking white as a ghost—except for her swollen jaw. +What's more, she acted so dumb Tracey had to tell her twice what he +wanted.... And then she said Nita didn't have any of those bitters +anyway."</p> + +<p>"An open-and-shut case against poor Lydia!" Penny Crain broke in +derisively. "Go pluck daisies, Janet! You'd be of a lot more help!"</p> + +<p>"Here's your maid, Bonnie," Captain Strawn announced lazily, as one of +his plainclothesmen appeared in the arch between dining and living room, +dragging by the hand a woman who was resisting strangely, her apron +pressed to her face.</p> + +<p>"You are Lydia?" Dundee asked, his voice kinder than it had been for +many minutes. "Oh, it's Lydia Carr, Captain Strawn? Thank you.... Don't +be afraid. And I'm sorry about the tooth.... Come along in. I'll not +keep you long."</p> + +<p>The woman's knees seemed about to fail her, but with a sudden effort she +released the detective's grip on her wrist. Very tall she was, very bony +in her black cotton dress. Pathetic, too, with her thin, iron-grey hair, +and that apron concealing the left half of her face. It was odd, Dundee +thought, that it was not the swollen jaw she chose to cover.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Dunlap sprang to her feet and hurried across the room.</p> + +<p>"Don't mind, Lydia, please. You must not be so sensitive," she said +gently, and even more gently pulled down the concealing apron....</p> + +<p>"Good God!" Dundee breathed, and Strawn nodded his understanding of the +younger man's horror.</p> + +<p>For the left half of Lydia Carr's face was drawn and puckered and ridged +almost out of human semblance. Even the eye was ruined—a milky ball +which the puckered, hairless eyelid could never cover again.</p> + +<p>"Poor Lydia is ashamed of her scarred face," Lois Dunlap explained, her +arm still about the maid's shoulder. "She isn't quite used to it yet, +but none of <i>us</i> mind—"</p> + +<p>"You were burned recently, Lydia?" Dundee asked pityingly.</p> + +<p>"That's my business!" the woman astounded him by retorting harshly.</p> + +<p>"How did it happen, Lydia?" Dundee persisted, puzzled.</p> + +<p>"I had an accident. It was my own fault."</p> + +<p>Lois Dunlap's kind grey eyes caught and held Dundee's firmly. "I think, +if Nita could speak to you now, Mr. Dundee, that she would beg you not +to try to force Lydia's confidence on this subject. Nita was devoted to +Lydia—we can all testify to that!—and one of the sweetest things about +her was her constant effort to protect Lydia from questions and curious +glances. I, for one, know that Nita often begged Lydia to submit to a +skin-grafting operation, regardless of expense—"</p> + +<p>When that kind voice choked on tears, Dundee abruptly abandoned his +intention to press the matter further.</p> + +<p>"Lydia, your mistress had been married, or was still married, wasn't +she?"</p> + +<p>The woman's single, slate-grey eye stared into his expressionlessly. +"She had 'Mrs.' in front of her name, to use when she felt like it. +That's all I know. I never saw her husband—if she had one. I only +worked for her about five years."</p> + +<p>"You say she used her married name 'when she felt like it....' What do +you mean by that, Lydia?"</p> + +<p>"I mean she was an actress, and used her stage name—Juanita +Leigh—pronounced like it was spelled plain 'Lee'; but she was mostly +called 'Nita Leigh'."</p> + +<p>"An actress, you say?" Dundee repeated thoughtfully. "I had heard of her +only as director of the Forsyte School plays.... What shows was she in?"</p> + +<p>"She was what they call a specialty dancer in musical comedy," Lydia +answered. "Sometimes she had a real part and sometimes she only danced. +She was a good hoofer and a good trouper," she added, the Broadway terms +falling strangely from those austere lips. "And when she wasn't in a +show she sometimes got a job in the pictures. She never had a real +chance in the movies, though, because they mostly wanted her to double +for the star in long shots, where dancing comes into the picture, or in +close-ups where they just show the legs, you know."</p> + +<p>"I see," Dundee agreed gravely. "Where were you during the fifteen +minutes or so before your mistress was shot, Lydia?"</p> + +<p>"I was down in my room in the basement," the woman answered. "Nita—I +mean Miss Nita was going to get Judge Marshall to build me a room on the +top floor. She hated for me to have to sleep in the basement, but I +didn't mind."</p> + +<p>"You were not required to be on duty for the party?"</p> + +<p>"No," she answered in her harsh, flat voice. "I'd fixed the sandwiches +and put out the liquors for the cocktails—set them all out on the +dining table and sideboard, and Miss Nita had told me to go and lie down +as soon as I was through. So I did. I had an abscessed tooth pulled this +morning, and I was feeling sick."</p> + +<p>"Did you hear the kitchen bell at all?" Dundee went on.</p> + +<p>"I dropped off to sleep—that fool dentist had shot me full of dope—but +I did hear the bell and I come up to answer it. Mrs. Dunlap said she'd +rung twice, and I said I was sorry—"</p> + +<p>"Lydia, did you go into your mistress' bedroom before or after you +answered that bell?" Dundee asked with sudden sharpness.</p> + +<p>"I did not! I didn't even know she was in her bedroom, until I saw her +sitting at her dressing-table—dead." The harsh voice hesitated over the +last word, but it did not break.</p> + +<p>"And just when did you first see her—after she was dead?"</p> + +<p>"I went into the kitchen, thinking something else might be needed. Then +I heard a scream. It sounded like it come from Nita's—Miss Nita's +bedroom, and I run along the back hall that leads from the kitchen to +her bedroom. I heard a lot of people running and yelling. Nobody paid +any attention to me."</p> + +<p>"You came into the room?"</p> + +<p>"No, sir, I did not. I stopped in the doorway. I heard Mr. Sprague say +she was dead. I was sick and dizzy anyway, and I couldn't move for a +minute. I sort of slipped down to the floor, and I guess I must have +passed out. And then I was sick to my stomach, and—I didn't seem to +care if I never moved again."</p> + +<p>"Why, Lydia?" Dundee asked gently.</p> + +<p>"Because she was the only friend I had in the world, and I couldn't have +loved her better if she'd been my own child," Lydia answered. And the +stern voice had broken at last. "I was still there in the back hall when +a cop come and asked me a lot of questions, and then that man—" she +pointed to Captain Strawn, "—said I could go and lay down. He helped me +down the basement stairs."</p> + +<p>Dundee tapped his teeth with the long pencil he had kept so busy that +evening—tapped them long and thoughtfully. Then:</p> + +<p>"Lydia, did you see anyone—<i>anyone at all!</i>—from your basement room +window before you answered Mrs. Dunlap's ring?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_NINE" id="CHAPTER_NINE"></a>CHAPTER NINE</h2> + + +<p>For the first time during the difficult interview Dundee was sure that +Lydia Carr was lying. For a fraction of a second her single eye wavered, +the lid flickered, then came her harsh, flat denial:</p> + +<p>"I didn't see nobody."</p> + +<p>"I presume your basement room has a window looking out upon the back +garden?" Dundee persisted.</p> + +<p>"Yes, it has, but I didn't waste no time looking out of it," Lydia +answered grimly. "I was laying down, with an ice cap against my jaw."</p> + +<p>She <i>had</i> seen someone, Dundee told himself. But the truth would be +harder to extract from that stern, scar-twisted mouth, than the +abscessed tooth had been.</p> + +<p>Finally, when her lone eye did not again waver under his steady gaze, he +dismissed her, or rather, returned her to Captain Strawn's custody.</p> + +<p>"Well, Janet, I hope you're satisfied!" Penny Crain said bitingly, as +she dashed unashamed tears from her brown eyes. "If ever a maid was +absolutely crazy about her mistress—"</p> + +<p>"I'm <i>not</i> satisfied!" Janet Raymond retorted furiously. "She's just the +sort that would harbor a grudge for <i>years</i>, and then, all hopped up +with dope—"</p> + +<p>"Stop it, Janet!" Lois Dunlap commanded with a curtness that set oddly +upon her kind, pleasant face.</p> + +<p>"Listen here, Dundee," Tracey Miles broke in, almost humbly. "My wife is +getting pretty anxious about the kiddies. The nurse quit on us +yesterday, and—"</p> + +<p>"And <i>my</i> little wife is worrying herself sick over our boy—just three +months old," Judge Marshall joined the protest. "I'm all for assisting +justice, sir, having served on the bench myself, as you doubtless know, +but—"</p> + +<p>"I'm all right, really, Hugo," Karen Marshall faltered.</p> + +<p>"Please be patient a little longer," Dundee urged apologetically. After +all, only one of these people could be guilty of Nita Selim's murder, +and it <i>was</i> beastly to have to hold them like this.... <i>But one was +guilty!</i></p> + +<p>"You knew Mrs. Selim in New York, Sprague?" he asked, whirling suddenly +upon the man with the Broadway stamp.</p> + +<p>"I met Nita Leigh, as I always heard her called, when I was assistant +director in the Altamont Studios, out on Long Island," Sprague answered, +his black eyes trying to meet Dundee's with an air of complete +frankness. "Wonderful little girl, and a great dancer ... Screened +damned well, too. I had hoped to give her a break some day, at something +better than doubling for stars who can't dance. But it happened that +Nita, who never forgot even a casual friend, had a chance to give me a +leg up herself—a chance to show what I can really do with a camera."</p> + +<p>"I knew I'd seen your name somewhere!" Dundee exclaimed. "So you're the +man the Chamber of Commerce is dickering with.... Going to make a movie +of the founding, growth and beauties of the city of Hamilton, aren't +you?"</p> + +<p>"If I get the contract—yes," Sprague answered with palpably assumed +modesty. "My plans, naturally, call for a great deal of research work, a +large expenditure of money, a very careful selection of 'stars'—"</p> + +<p>"I see," Dundee interrupted. Then his tone changed, became slow and +menacing in its terrible emphasis: "<i>And you really couldn't let even a +good friend like Nita Selim upset those fine plans of yours, could you, +Sprague?</i>"</p> + +<p>Even as he put the sinister question, the detective was exulting to +himself: "Light at last! Now I know why this Broadway bounder was +received into an exclusive crowd like this! Every last female in the +bunch hoped to be the star of Sprague's motion picture!"</p> + +<p>"I don't know what you're driving at, Dundee!" Sprague was on his feet, +his black eyes blazing out of a chalky face. "If you're accusing me +of—of—"</p> + +<p>"Of killing Nita Selim?" Dundee asked lazily. "Oh, no! Not—yet, +Sprague! I was just remembering a rather puzzling note of yours I +happened to read this afternoon.... That note you sent by special +messenger to Breakaway Inn this noon, you know."</p> + +<p>He had little interest for the sudden crumpling of Dexter Sprague into +the chair from which he had risen. Instead, as Dundee drew the note from +his coat pocket, his eyes swept around the room, noted the undisguised +relief on every face, the almost ghoulish satisfaction with which that +close-knit group of friends seized upon an outsider as the probable +murderer of that other outsider whom they had rashly taken into their +sacred circle. Even Penny Crain, thorny little stickler for fair play +that she was, relaxed with a tremulous sigh.</p> + +<p>"You admit that this note, signed by what I take to be your 'pet name,' +was written by your hand, Sprague?" Dundee asked matter-of-factly, as he +extended the sheet of bluish notepaper.</p> + +<p>"I—no—yes, I wrote it," Sprague faltered. "But it doesn't mean a +thing—not a damned thing! Just a little private matter between Nita and +myself—"</p> + +<p>"Rather queer wording for an unimportant message, Sprague," Dundee +interrupted. "Let me refresh your memory: 'Nita, my sweet,'" he began to +read slowly, "'Forgive your bad boy for last night's row, but I <i>must</i> +warn you again to watch your step. You've already gone too far. Of +course I love you and understand, <i>but</i>—Be good, Baby, <i>and you won't +be sorry</i>!—Dexy....' Well, Sprague?"</p> + +<p>Sprague wiped his perspiring hands on his handkerchief. "I know it +sounds—odd, under the circumstances," he admitted desperately, "but +listen, Dundee, and I'll try to make that damned note as clear as +possible to a man who doesn't know his Broadway.... Why, man, it isn't +even a love letter! Everybody on Broadway talks and writes to each other +like that, without meaning a thing!... As I told you, Nita Leigh, or +Mrs. Selim, remembered some little kindnesses I had done her on the +Altamont lot, when they got her to take up that Little Theater work Mrs. +Dunlap is interested in, and found that the Chamber of Commerce was +interested in putting Hamilton into the movies, in a big booster +campaign. She wired me and I thought it looked good enough to drop +everything and come.... Of course Nita and I got to be closer friends, +but I swear to God we were just friends—"</p> + +<p>"And what was the 'friendly' row about last night, Sprague?"</p> + +<p>"There wasn't a row, really," Sprague protested with desperate +earnestness. "It was merely that Nita insisted on my casting her for the +heroine of the movie—a thing I knew would alienate the whole crowd +that's been so kind to us—"</p> + +<p>"Why—since she was a professional actress?" Dundee demanded.</p> + +<p>"Because she isn't a Hamilton girl, of course, and the Chamber of +Commerce wants the cast to be all local talent," Sprague answered, +lapsing unconsciously into the present tense.</p> + +<p>"And just what were you warning her against?"</p> + +<p>"I'd told her before to watch her step," Sprague went on more easily. +"You see, Dundee, Nita Leigh is—was—a first-class little vamp, and I +could see she was playing her cards with the men here—" he indicated +four of Hamilton's most prominent Chamber of Commerce members with a +wave of his hand—"to get them all so crazy about her that they'd vote +for her as the star of the picture. I could see her point, all right. It +would have been a big chance for her to show how she could act.... Well, +I could see it was dangerous business, and that the girls—" and he +smiled jerkily at the tense women in the living room, "—were getting +pretty wrought up over the way Nita was behaving.... All except Mrs. +Dunlap," he added. "<i>She</i> didn't want to act in the picture, and Nita +didn't make any headway at all with Peter Dunlap."</p> + +<p>"Thanks, Mr. Sprague," Lois Dunlap drawled, with an amused quirk of her +broad mouth.</p> + +<p>"Get along with the row, Sprague!" Dundee commanded impatiently.</p> + +<p>"As I said, it wasn't really a row. I just pleaded with Nita last night +to smooth down the girls' rumpled feathers, and to make it clear to them +that she didn't want the star part in the picture any more than she +wanted any other woman's husband or sweetheart.... Just a friendly +warning—" Sprague drew a deep breath. "And that's all the note +meant—absolutely!"</p> + +<p>"I see," Dundee said quietly, then quoted: <i>"'Be good, Baby, and you +won't be sorry!'"</i></p> + +<p>"That meant, of course," Sprague took him up eagerly, "that I'd see she +got a real part in a regular movie, after I'd made my hit with the +Hamilton picture."</p> + +<p>Very plausible, very plausible indeed, Dundee reflected. And yet—</p> + +<p>Finally he lifted his head and let his eyes dart from face to face.</p> + +<p>"All of you have stated, separately and collectively, that you heard no +shot fired in Nita Selim's bedroom this afternoon," he said sharply. "Is +that true?"</p> + +<p>He was answered by weary nods or sullen affirmations.</p> + +<p>"Then," he continued, "I must conclude that you are all lying or that +Nita Selim was killed with a gun equipped with a Maxim silencer."</p> + +<p>Never was a detective more unprepared for the effect of his words upon a +group of possible suspects than was Special Investigator Dundee....</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_TEN" id="CHAPTER_TEN"></a>CHAPTER TEN</h2> + + +<p>As Dexter Sprague had glibly and plausibly explained away every sinister +aspect of the note he had written to Nita Selim that day, Special +Investigator Dundee was recalling with verbatim vividness his argument +with Captain Strawn of the Homicide Squad immediately after his arrival +into the house of violent death.</p> + +<p>He had said then: "The person who killed Nita Selim, was so well known +to her, and his—or her—presence in this room so natural a thing that +she paid no attention to his or her movements and was concentrating on +the job of powdering her very pretty face."</p> + +<p>And he had said further, in face of the disappearance of the gun and in +explanation of the fact that all twelve of these people had immediately +protested to Strawn that they had heard no shot:</p> + +<p>"This was a premeditated murder, of course. The Maxim silencer—unless +they are all lying about not hearing a shot—proves that. Silencers are +damned hard to get hold of, but people with plenty of money can manage +most things."</p> + +<p>And as Dexter Sprague had talked on, more and more glibly, Dundee had +suddenly found an explanation which fitted his own argument with such +perfection that he wondered, naïvely, if he were perhaps gifted with +clairvoyance.</p> + +<p>Of all these twelve people, whom he had questioned so relentlessly, only +Dexter Sprague could easily have come into possession of a Maxim +silencer. He had dilated proudly upon the fact that he had been an +assistant director at the Altamont Studios on Long Island. And the +Altamont company had recently finished making a series of "underworld" +motion pictures—crook dramas featuring gunmen with "rods" made eerily +noiseless by Maxim silencers.</p> + +<p>A bit of information he had picked up in a motion picture magazine had +hurtled into the logical chain of Dundee's reasoning: assistant +directors were in charge of "props"; it was their business to see that +no article needed for the production of a picture was lost or missing +when the director needed it. Dexter Sprague had said that he had +"dropped everything" to come when Nita Selim wired him of the Chamber of +Commerce project to make a "booster" movie of Hamilton.</p> + +<p>Perhaps he <i>had</i> dropped everything. But—<i>had he hesitated long enough +to pick up a Maxim silencer and a blunt-nosed automatic</i>? And was the +"row" which Sprague had been so glibly explaining away an ancient one—a +row so deadly that, when Nita Selim had refused to heed his written +warning, her murder had become necessary?</p> + +<p>It was with all this in mind that Bonnie Dundee flung his challenge: "I +must conclude that you are all lying or that Nita Selim was killed with +a gun equipped with a Maxim silencer."</p> + +<p>And his eyes, terrible with their command that the weakling should break +and confess, were upon Dexter Sprague. But Sprague did not break. He +stared back blankly....</p> + +<p>If his eyes and his attention had included the whole group it is +possible that what happened would not have taken Dundee so completely by +surprise. He had paid little attention to a sort of concerted gasp, a +slight movement among the group farthest from him.</p> + +<p>But not even his intense concentration upon Sprague could prevent his +hearing Karen Marshall's childish voice, tremulous with fear:</p> + +<p>"No, no, Hugo! Don't—don't!"</p> + +<p>He whirled from Sprague in time to see Judge Marshall disengaging his +arm from his young wife's clinging fingers, to note, with profound +astonishment, that Drake was stepping hastily aside, so that not even +his coat sleeve might be brushed by the advancing figure of the elderly, +retired judge. And before Judge Marshall had time to speak, Dundee saw +that a blight had touched, at last, the solid friendship of the women; +that they did not look at each other with that air of standing together +whatever happened, but that their eyes, not meeting at all, became +secret, calculating, afraid....</p> + +<p>"Sir!" Judge Marshall began pompously, when he had planted himself +squarely before the young detective, "It shall never be said of me that +I have tried, even in the slightest way, to hamper the course of +justice."</p> + +<p>"I am sure of that, Judge Marshall," Dundee replied courteously, but his +pulses were hammering. What, in God's name, did this long-winded old +fool have to tell him?... "You have some information you believe may be +valuable, Judge?"</p> + +<p>"I do not believe it will be at all valuable, sir. On the contrary!" the +old man retorted indignantly. "But to suppress the fact at this juncture +might lead to grave misunderstandings later, when it inevitably comes to +light. So, sir, it is my duty to inform you that I myself own a Colt's +.32, as well as a Maxim silencer."</p> + +<p>"What!" Dundee exclaimed incredulously. He was conscious that, behind +him, Captain Strawn was getting to his feet.</p> + +<p>"There is no need to get out your handcuffs, Captain Strawn!" Judge +Marshall warned him majestically. "I assure you that I have not violated +the law. Every judge, active and retired, is entitled to a permit to +carry a weapon, and I long ago availed myself of the privilege. Nor am I +about to make a confession of murder!"</p> + +<p>"There ain't no permit, so far as I know, Judge," Strawn growled, "for +any man, whoever he may be—God A'mighty himself not excepted—to tote a +gun with a silencer on it."</p> + +<p>Karen Marshall was crying now, with the abandoned grief of a petted +child.</p> + +<p>"Granted, Captain!" Judge Marshall snapped. "But it happens that I do +not 'tote' my gun with the silencer on it. If it interests you, I may as +well explain that I came by the silencer several years ago, when I was +on the bench. A notorious Chicago gunman, on trial for murder here, and +acquitted by a feeble-minded jury, made me a present of the very +silencer he had used in killing his victim—an ironic gesture, a gesture +of supreme insolence, but an entirely safe gesture, since he well knew +that a man once acquitted of a crime cannot again be placed in jeopardy +for the same offence."</p> + +<p>"So you kept the silencer as a curiosity, Judge Marshall?" Dundee +interrupted the pompous flow of rhetoric.</p> + +<p>"For years—yes," the ex-judge answered, then his face went yellow +and very old. "As I told you just now, I will withhold no fact that +may be of any relevance whatever.... About two months ago—in March, +I believe—our little group here took up target-shooting as a fad. +Several of us became quite expert with revolver and rifle. Mr. +Drake—" and he nodded toward the banker, who instantly averted his eyes, +"—conceived the idea of practising the draw-from-the-hip sort of +revolver-shooting—the kind one sees in Wild West movies, you know—"</p> + +<p>"I think you might add, Hugo," Drake cut in angrily, "that I had in mind +the hope of being able to protect the bank in case of a holdup!"</p> + +<p>"And the silencer, Judge Marshall?" Captain Strawn prodded.</p> + +<p>Judge Marshall flushed, and fingered the end of a waxed mustache. "The +silencer, sir, was my wife's idea. You see, sir, we are fortunate enough +to be the parents of an infant son. He was just a month old when I +painted a bull's eye upon the brick wall of our back garden and invited +our friends to indulge their fad as our guests. The shooting awakened +the baby so frequently that Karen—Mrs. Marshall—dug up the silencer, +which I had shown her as a memento of my career on the bench. Thereafter +we confined our practice almost exclusively to drawing from the hip and +shooting without sighting. It is impossible to sight with a gun equipped +with a silencer, you know, since the silencer covers the sighter on the +barrel."</p> + +<p>"It sure does," Strawn drawled. "So every last one of you folks had a +good deal of this sort of practice, I take it?"</p> + +<p>Judge Marshall glanced about the room, as if he could not recall the +face of everyone present.</p> + +<p>"Yes, all of us—except Mr. Sprague and—Penny, my dear, did you join us +at all?"</p> + +<p>The girl who had once been in on every sport that this crowd of +Hamilton's socially elect indulged in, flushed a painful red.</p> + +<p>"No, Hugo. I—I have to stay with Mother on Sunday mornings, you know."</p> + +<p>"Your target practice was a Sunday morning diversion, then, Judge +Marshall?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes. We usually have an hour of the sport—between eleven and noon, on +Sundays. We've been having a sort of tournament—quite sharply +competitive—"</p> + +<p>"When did you and your friends practise last?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"Last Sunday. Tomorrow was to mark the end of the 'tournament'," the +Judge answered.</p> + +<p>"And when did you last see your gun and silencer?" Dundee persisted.</p> + +<p>"Last Sunday, of course.... Why, Good Lord!" Marshall ejaculated. <i>"It +was Nita herself who put the gun away!</i>"</p> + +<p>There was a collective gasp of relief. Eyes could meet eyes—now. But it +was Flora Miles who voiced the thought or hope that seemed apparent on +every face.</p> + +<p>"That's why I didn't hear anyone talking when I was in the closet!" she +cried, her voice almost hysterical in its vehemence. "<i>There wasn't +anybody but Nita in the room!</i> She committed suicide! She stole poor +Hugo's gun and the silencer and committed suicide!"</p> + +<p>"At a distance of from ten to fifteen feet?" Dundee asked with +ill-concealed sarcasm. "And when she was powdering her face? And just +after entering the room, blithely singing a Broadway hit?"</p> + +<p>"Maybe the lady is right, boy," Captain Strawn interposed mildly. "I've +heard of people rigging up contrivances—"</p> + +<p>"Which make the gun and the silencer disappear by magic?" Dundee +demanded. "No, folks, I'm afraid the suicide theory is no good.... Now, +Judge Marshall," and he turned again to the creator of the biggest +sensation since the investigation into Nita Selim's death had got under +way, "you say that Mrs. Selim herself put the gun away.... Will you +explain the circumstances?"</p> + +<p>The elderly man's face had gone yellowish again. "Certainly! Nita Selim +and I were the last to leave the back garden. She was particularly poor +at the sport—never made a bull's eye during the four or five Sunday +mornings after Lois—Mrs. Dunlap—drew her into our set. She begged for +a few more shots, and I stayed with her, after the others had gone into +the house for—er—refreshment. She fired the last bullet in the chamber +of the Colt's, and together we walked to the house, entering the little +room at the rear where all sorts of sports equipment are kept—fishing +rods and tackle, golf clubs, bows and arrows, skis, etc. She was +carrying the gun, unscrewing the silencer as we walked. It is my habit +to keep the pistol and the silencer in a drawer in a little corner +cupboard—"</p> + +<p>"Locked, up?" Dundee asked sharply.</p> + +<p>"Usually locked, but not always, I am afraid," Judge Marshall answered +reluctantly.</p> + +<p>"And you saw Mrs. Selim place the gun and the silencer in the drawer?"</p> + +<p>"I—thought I did, but I was really not watching closely. As a matter of +fact, I stopped to look over a fishing rod, with a view to trying it out +the first good fishing weather—"</p> + +<p>"Was Mrs. Selim wearing a coat or cloak?" Dundee cut in impatiently.</p> + +<p>"Why, I don't know—"</p> + +<p>"Yes, she was, Hugo!" Karen cried out eagerly. "It was quite chilly last +Sunday morning. Remember? We all had on coats or sweaters. Nita wore a +dark-green leather jacket with big pockets—"</p> + +<p>"And she left in a great hurry, without even waiting for a drink," Flora +Miles contributed triumphantly. "I tell you, she took them away in her +pockets."</p> + +<p>"Your guess may be correct, Mrs. Miles," Dundee agreed, "but I think we +had better not come to any definite conclusion until we know that Judge +Marshall's automatic and silencer are really missing.... Is there anyone +at your house now, Judge, whom you can ask to look for it?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly. The butler.... Shall I telephone him?"</p> + +<p>Accompanied by Captain Strawn, the ex-judge went to the telephone in the +little foyer between Nita Selim's bedroom and the main hall. And within +five minutes he was back, nodding his head gravely.</p> + +<p>"Hinson tells me that the Colt's and the silencer are both missing, +sir.... May I express my profound regret that my possession of—"</p> + +<p>"Some other time, Judge Marshall!" Dundee interrupted curtly, and +hurried from the room, followed by Strawn, who nodded to Sergeant +Turner, still lounging wearily in a far corner of the living room, to +stand guard vigilantly.</p> + +<p>"Well, Bonnie, here's the devil to pay," Strawn gloomed, but Dundee made +for the telephone without answering.</p> + +<p>He called a number, then curtly demanded: "Dr. Price, please!... Yes, I +know he's busy on an autopsy. Just tell him that Dundee, of the district +attorney's office, wants to speak to him."</p> + +<p>There was a long pause, then: "Hello, Dr. Price!... Dundee.... What are +the caliber and type of bullet that killed Nita Selim?... Thanks much, +doctor.... Anything new?... Fine! Thanks again!"</p> + +<p>He hung up the receiver and faced Strawn. "Bullet from a Colt's .32," he +said grimly. "I suggest you send one of your men around to the Marshall +home to pick up a bullet that was shot in their damned target practice. +If you send the two bullets tonight, registered mail, to Wright, the +ballistics expert in Chicago, he can probably wire you tomorrow morning +as to whether the same gun was used to fire both."</p> + +<p>"Sure, Bonnie," Strawn agreed lugubriously. "I was going to do just +that.... Say, this town is getting to be worse than Chicago!"</p> + +<p>When he re-entered the living room Dundee began upon the judge again, +regardless of the fact that the elderly husband was murmuring +consolatory endearments to his young wife.</p> + +<p>"Judge Marshall, how many keys are there to the cupboard drawer in which +your gun and silencer were kept?"</p> + +<p>"Just one. I have it with me," the old man answered wearily.</p> + +<p>"Then when Hinson, your butler, looked for them, he found the drawer +unlocked?"</p> + +<p>"He did. I confess to almost criminal negligence—"</p> + +<p>"Then so far as you know, the gun and silencer could have been removed +at any time by any guest of yours between noon last Sunday and—today?" +Dundee went on relentlessly.</p> + +<p>"I—suppose so. But these people have been my close friends for years," +the judge answered. "Not one of them, sir—"</p> + +<p>"After Mrs. Selim's departure last Sunday, did your other guests remain +for any length of time?"</p> + +<p>"For an hour or more, I think. Lois and Peter Dunlap remained for our +two o'clock Sunday dinner, but the others drifted away to various +engagements."</p> + +<p>"Did any of you return to the room where the gun was kept?"</p> + +<p>"I can speak only for myself and Peter—Mr. Dunlap," Judge Marshall +answered, flushing with indignation. "The two of us went down just +before dinner was served. I wanted to show him some new flies for trout +casting."</p> + +<p>"Your home is a popular rendezvous for your intimates, is it not?"</p> + +<p>"I pride myself that it is, sir!"</p> + +<p>"And guests run in and out, having the freedom of the place?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly, sir!... And since I am not so stupid as you imagine, I can +tell you now that I understand the drift of your questions, and can +forestall them: Yes, all of these people—<i>my friends</i>!—have had +opportunity to take the gun and the silencer from the cupboard since it +was placed there last Sunday, if it <i>was</i> placed there by Mrs. Selim. +But may I remind you, sir, that opportunity alone is not sufficient; +that <i>motive</i>—"</p> + +<p>"Since Mrs. Selim is dead, murdered by the weapon which was stolen, we +can assume, Judge Marshall, that someone had motive," Dundee reminded +him implacably, for in his mind there was no doubt that the ballistics +expert would bear him out.</p> + +<p>There was a heavy, throbbing silence. The group that, with the exception +of Dexter Sprague, had been so united, so cemented with long-sustained +friendship, again dissolved visibly before Dundee's eyes into eleven +individuals, each shrinking into himself, mentally drawing away from any +possible contamination with a murderer....</p> + +<p>"You have said, Judge Marshall," Dundee went on at last, "that Miss +Crain and Mr. Sprague were not at your home for target practice Sunday. +Has either of them been in your home during this past week?"</p> + +<p>"Penny—Miss Crain—spent an evening with my wife when I was—er—away +from home on business. That was last Tuesday, I believe—"</p> + +<p>"Yes, it was Tuesday, Hugo," Penny Crain interrupted firmly. "And Karen +can vouch for the fact that I did not go into the gun room."</p> + +<p>"Don't be silly, Penny!" Carolyn Drake scolded, as if she had long been +bursting to speak. "Giving an alibi! As if <i>any</i> of us who were playing +bridge while that woman was being shot <i>needs</i> any alibi!... But I'll +tell you what <i>I</i> think, Mr. Detective! I think Nita herself stole the +gun and the silencer, to kill Dexter Sprague with, and that <i>he</i> stole +it from her and murdered <i>her</i>! Nobody else has the slightest scrap of a +motive, and that note he wrote her ought to be enough to hang him on!"</p> + +<p>Dexter Sprague had struggled to his feet during the woman's hysterical +attack, his face like chalk, his eyes blazing. But Dundee waved him +aside peremptorily.</p> + +<p>"One more question, Judge Marshall," he said suavely, as if he had not +heard a word that Carolyn Drake had said. "You knew Mrs. Selim before +her arrival in Hamilton with Mrs. Dunlap, I believe.... Just when and +where did you meet her?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_ELEVEN" id="CHAPTER_ELEVEN"></a>CHAPTER ELEVEN</h2> + + +<p>"You are damned impertinent, sir!" Judge Marshall shouted, the ends of +his waxed grey mustache trembling with anger.</p> + +<p>"Then I take it that you do not wish to divulge the circumstances of +your friendship with Mrs. Selim?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"Friendship!" the old man snorted. "Your implications, sir, are +dastardly! I met Mrs. Selim, or rather, Nita Leigh, as she was +introduced to me, only once, several years ago when I was in New York. +Naturally—"</p> + +<p>"Just a moment, Judge. You say she was introduced to you as Nita Leigh. +Then you knew her as an actress, I presume?"</p> + +<p>"I refuse to submit to such a cowardly attack, sir!"</p> + +<p>"<i>Attack</i>, Judge?" Dundee repeated with assumed astonishment. "I merely +thought you might be able to shed a little light on the past of the +woman who has been murdered here today, with a weapon you admit to +having owned.... However—"</p> + +<p>The elderly ex-judge stared at his tormentor for a moment as if murder +was in his heart. He gasped twice, then suddenly his whole manner +changed.</p> + +<p>"I apologize, Dundee. You must realize how—But that is beside the +point. I met Nita Leigh at—er—at a social gathering, arranged by some +New York friends of mine. She was young, attractive, more refined +than—er—than the average young woman in musical comedy. Naturally I +told her if she was ever in Hamilton to look me up. And she did."</p> + +<p>"And because she was 'more refined than the average young woman in +musical comedy'—than the average chorus girl, to put it simply," Dundee +took him up, "you co-operated with Mrs. Dunlap to introduce her to your +most intimate friends—including your wife?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Hugo! Why didn't you tell me?" Karen Marshall wailed.</p> + +<p>"You see, sir, what you are doing!" Judge Marshall stormed.</p> + +<p>"I am truly sorry if I have distressed you, Mrs. Marshall," Dundee +protested sincerely. "But—" He shrugged and turned again to the +husband. "I understand you were Mrs. Selim's landlord.... May I ask how +much rent she paid?"</p> + +<p>"The house rents for one hundred dollars a month—furnished."</p> + +<p>"And did Mrs. Selim pay her rent promptly?" Dundee persisted.</p> + +<p>"Since this is the 24th of May, sir, Mrs. Selim's rent for June was not +yet due."</p> + +<p>Not before poor little Karen could Dundee force himself to ask what, +inevitably, would have been his next question—one which could not have +been evaded, as the ex-judge had evaded the other two questions: "<i>Is it +not true, Judge Marshal, that Nita Leigh Selim paid you no rent at +all?</i>" But there were other ways to find out....</p> + +<p>"Look here, Dundee!" a brusque voice challenged, and the detective +whirled to face Polly Beale. It was like her, he thought with a slight +grin, to address him as one man to another....</p> + +<p>"Yes, Miss Beale?"</p> + +<p>"I'm no fool, and I don't think any of my friends here are +either—though two or three of them have acted like it today," the +masculine-looking girl stated flatly. "You've made it very plain that +any one of us here, except the Sprague man, could have stolen Hugo's gun +and silencer.... Has the gun been found?"</p> + +<p>"It has not, Miss Beale."</p> + +<p>"O. K.!" The queer girl snapped her fingers. "I move that you or +Captain Strawn search the men for the weapon, and that I search the +Women.... Wait!" she harshly stopped a flurry of feminine protests. "I'll +ask you, Dundee, to search me first yourself. I believe the technical +term is 'frisking,' isn't it?... Then 'frisk' me.... Here is my handbag. +I wore no coat, except this—" and she pointed to the jacket of her tweed +suit.</p> + +<p>As she strode toward the detective Clive Hammond sprang after her with +an oath and a sharp command.</p> + +<p>"Shut up, Clive! I'm not married to you yet!" she retorted, but her eyes +were gentler than her voice.</p> + +<p>His face burning with embarrassment, Dundee went through the traditional +gestures of police "frisking"—running his hands rapidly down the girl's +tall, sturdy body, slapping her pockets. And his fingers fumbled sadly +as he opened her tooled leather handbag.</p> + +<p>"Satisfied?" Polly Beale demanded, and at Dundee's miserable nod, the +girl faced her friends: "Well, come along, girls!"</p> + +<p>"Lord! What a girl!" Dundee muttered to Strawn, as the young Amazon +herded Flora Miles, Penny Crain, Karen Marshall, Carolyn Drake, Lois +Dunlap and Janet Raymond into the dining room.</p> + +<p>Silently, and almost meekly, as if shamed into submission by Polly +Beale's example, John Drake, Tracey Miles, Clive Hammond, Judge +Marshall, and Dexter Sprague permitted Captain Strawn and Sergeant +Turner to search them.</p> + +<p>"How about the guest closet and the cars?" Dundee asked of Strawn in a +low voice, when the fruitless, unpleasant task was finished.</p> + +<p>"Gone over with a fine tooth comb long ago," Strawn assured him +gloomily. "And not a hiding place in or outside the house that the boys +haven't poked into—including the meadow as far as anyone could throw +from the bedroom window."</p> + +<p>The women were filing back into the room, some pale, some flushed, but +all able to look each other in the eye again.</p> + +<p>With surprising jauntiness Polly Beale saluted Dundee. "Nothing more +deadly on any of us than Flora's triple-deck compact."</p> + +<p>"I thank you with all my heart, Miss Beale," Dundee said sincerely. "And +now I think you may all go to your homes.... Of course you understand," +he interrupted a chorus of relieved ejaculations, "that all of you will +be wanted for the inquest, which will probably be held Monday."</p> + +<p>"And what's more," Captain Strawn cut in, to show his authority, "I want +all of you to hold yourselves ready for further questioning at any +time."</p> + +<p>There was a stampede for coats and hats, a rush for cars as if the house +were on fire, or—Dundee reflected wryly—as if those he had tortured +were afraid he would change his mind. Rushing away with hatred of him in +their hearts....</p> + +<p>Only Penny Crain held back, maneuvering for a chance to speak with him.</p> + +<p>"I don't have to go with the rest, do I?" she begged in a husky whisper.</p> + +<p>"And why not?" Dundee grinned at her, but he was glad there was no +hatred in <i>her</i> eyes.</p> + +<p>"I'm 'attached' to the district attorney's office, too, aren't I?"</p> + +<p>"Right! And you've been a brick this evening. I don't know what I should +have done without you—"</p> + +<p>"Well, I can't see that you've done much <i>with</i> me," she gibed. "But I'd +like to stick around, if you're going to do some real Sherlocking—"</p> + +<p>"Can't be done, Penny. I want to stay here alone for a while and mull +things over. But I'd like to have a long talk with you tomorrow."</p> + +<p>"Come to Sunday dinner. Mother loves murder mysteries," she suggested. +Then realization swept over her. Her brown eyes widened, filled with +terror. "Stop thinking one of us did it! <i>Stop</i>, I tell you!"</p> + +<p>"Can <i>you</i> stop, Penny?" he asked gently.</p> + +<p>But she fled from him, sobbing wildly for the first time that long, +horrible evening. Dundee, watching from the doorway of the lighted hall, +saw the chauffeur open the rear door of the Dunlap limousine, saw Penny +catapult herself into Lois Dunlap's outstretched arms....</p> + +<p>"When did the Dunlap chauffeur call for his mistress?" he asked Strawn, +who stood beside him.</p> + +<p>"About ten minutes after you arrived," Strawn answered wearily. "Said +he'd dropped Mrs. Dunlap and the Selim woman at about 2:30 and had been +ordered to return around 6:30.... Knows nothing, of course." The chief +of the Homicide Squad drew a deep breath. "Well, Bonnie, he has nothing +on me. In spite of all the palaver I don't know nothing either."</p> + +<p>"You need some dinner, chief," Dundee suggested. "And the boys must be +getting hungry, too."</p> + +<p>"Somebody's got to guard the house, I suppose," Strawn gloomed. "Not +that it will do any good.... And what about that maid—that Carr woman? +Shall I lock her up on general principles?"</p> + +<p>"No. I want to have another talk with her, and if she bucks at spending +the night here, I'll take her to the Rhodes House, and turn her over to +my old friend, Mother Rhodes. We haven't anything on her, you know."</p> + +<p>"No, nor on anybody else, except that old fool, Marshall, and we can't +clap him into jail—yet," Strawn agreed, his grey eyes twinkling.</p> + +<p>"Take your crew on in, chief," Dundee urged. "I'll stick till midnight +or longer, if you don't mind. You can arrange to have a couple of the +boys to relieve me about twelve.... And by the way, will you telephone +me the minute you get hold of Ralph Hammond?"</p> + +<p>"Well, maybe not so quick as all that," Strawn drawled. "I'll take the +first crack at <i>that</i> baby, my lad!... Not so dumb, am I, Bonnie-boy? +Not so dumb! I can put two and two together as well as the next +one—pretty near as well as the district attorney's new 'special +investigator!'"</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Although Bonnie Dundee had taken Captain Strawn's none-too-gentle +parting gibe with good grace, it was a very thoughtful young detective +who set about locking himself into the house in which Nita Selim had +been murdered.</p> + +<p>Captain Strawn had beaten him to the job that evening by at least twenty +minutes. Had the old detective stumbled upon something which Dundee, for +all his spectacular thoroughness, had overlooked or had been unable to +turn up because Strawn had suppressed it?</p> + +<p>What if Strawn's parting boast was not an idle one, and he really had +"the goods" on Ralph Hammond? Had the old chief been laughing up his +sleeve during the farce of playing out the "death hand at bridge," and +during the merciless quizzing of old Judge Marshall?</p> + +<p>But Dundee's native common sense quickly routed his gloom. Captain +Strawn was too direct in his methods, too afraid of antagonizing the +rich and influential, to have permitted even a "special investigator" +from the district attorney's office to torment those twelve people +needlessly. Probably Strawn, feeling a little hurt at having played +second fiddle all evening, had simply wanted to get him fussed, was even +now chuckling over the effect of his parting boast....</p> + +<p>Much cheered, Dundee lingered in the dining room whose windows he had +made fast against any intrusion, so that his task of guarding the house +alone might be minimized. As he glanced at the table, with its silver +plates heaped with tiny sandwiches of caviar and anchovy paste, its +little silver boats of olives and sweet pickles, he discovered that he +was very hungry indeed....</p> + +<p>As he munched the drying sandwiches and sipped charged water—the +various liquors for cocktails on the sideboard offered a temptation +which he sternly resisted—Dundee's thought boiled and churned, throwing +up picture after picture of Nita Selim, alive and then dead; of Penny +Crain—bless her!—helping him at the expense of her loyalty to +life-long friends; of Flora Miles, lying desperately and then confessing +to a shameful theft; of Karen Marshall gallantly playing out the "death +hand"; of Karen's stricken, childish face when she learned that her +elderly husband had met and at least flirted with Nita Selim at a chorus +girls' party....</p> + +<p>At that last picture Dundee flushed so that his skin prickled. Had he +made a fool of himself, or was he right in his suspicion that Hugo +Marshall had given Nita Selim this cottage rent free? That point should +be easily settled, at any rate....</p> + +<p>Ruefully reflecting that appetizers do not make a satisfactory meal he +betook himself to the dead woman's bedroom.... Yes, his memory had +served him well. Here was her desk—a small feminine affair of rosewood, +set in the corner of the room nearest the porch door.</p> + +<p>The desk was not locked. As Dundee let down the slanting lid, whose +polish was marred with many fingerprints, he saw that its contents were +in a hopeless jumble. So Strawn had beaten him to this, too! Had he +found an all-important clue in one of the many little pigeon-holes and +drawers, stuffing it into his pocket just before a bumptious young +"special investigator" had arrived?</p> + +<p>But Dundee's returning gloom was instantly dispelled. Here was Nita's +checkbook, a flutter of filled-in stubs attached to only one remaining +blank check. So Nita had banked with the Hamilton National Bank, of +which John C. Drake—who apparently hated his fattish, fussy wife—was a +vice president! Another tiny fact to be tucked away.... She had opened +her account, apparently, on April 21, the day of her arrival in +Hamilton—the guest and employe of Mrs. Peter Dunlap. Probably Lois +Dunlap had advanced her the two hundred dollars as first payment for her +prospective work in organizing a Little Theater movement in Hamilton.</p> + +<p>Turning rapidly through stubs, Dundee stopped twice, whistling softly +with amazement each time. For on April 28th, and again on May 5th, Nita +Selim had deposited $5,000! Where had she got the money? Were the sums +transfers from accounts in New York banks? But it was hardly likely that +a little Broadway hanger-on had had so much hard cash on deposit. Then +where had she got it—$5,000 at a time, here in Hamilton?</p> + +<p><i>Blackmail!</i></p> + +<p>Hastily but thoroughly Dundee ran through the remaining check +stubs.... <i>No record at all of a check for rent made out to Judge Hugo +Marshall!</i></p> + +<p>But there was a stub that interested him. Check No. 17—Nita had spent +her money lavishly—was filled in as follows, in Nita's pretty backhand:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">No. 17 $9,000<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>May 9, 1930</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0">To <i>Trust Dept.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0">For <i>Investment</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Had John C. Drake, who as vice president in charge of trusts and +investments had doubtless handled the check, wondered at all where the +$9,000 had come from?</p> + +<p>One other revelation came out of the twenty-three filled-in stubs. On +every Monday Nita Selim had drawn a check for $40 to her maid, Lydia +Carr.</p> + +<p>Again Dundee whistled. Forty dollars a week was, he wagered to himself, +more money than any other maid in Hamilton was lucky enough to receive! +Nita in a new light—an over-generous Nita! Or—<i>was Nita herself paying +blackmail on a small scale</i>?</p> + +<p>He reached into a pigeon-hole whose contents—a thick packet of unused +envelopes—had not been disturbed by Strawn, and was about to remove an +envelope in which to place the all-important checkbook, when he noticed +something slightly peculiar. An envelope in the middle of the packet +looked rather thicker than an empty case should....</p> + +<p><i>But it was not empty.</i> And across the face of the expensive, +cream-colored linen paper was written, in that same pretty, very legible +backhand:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>TO BE OPENED IN CASE OF MY DEATH</p> + +<p>—<span class="smcap">Juanita Leigh Selim</span></p></div> + +<p>His heart hammering painfully, and his fingers trembling, Dundee drew +out the two close-written sheets of creamy notepaper. After all, who had +better right than he to open it? Was he not the representative of the +district attorney?... And he hadn't damaged the envelope. It had opened +very easily indeed—its flap had yielded instantly to his thumb-nail....</p> + +<p>Wait! It had been <i>too easy</i>! Before unfolding the letter or whatever it +was, Dundee examined the flap of the envelope.... Yes! He was not the +first to open it since its original sealing. God grant he hadn't +destroyed any tell-tale fingerprints in his criminal haste to learn any +secret that Nita Selim had recorded here!... Perhaps Nita herself had +unsealed the letter to make an addition or a correction?</p> + +<p>Well, whatever damage had been done was done now, and he might as well +read....</p> + +<p>Five minutes later Bonnie Dundee was racing through the dining room, +pushing open the swinging door that led into the butler's pantry. Where +the devil were the steps that led down into the basement? A precious +minute was lost before he discovered that a door in the dark back hall +opened upon the steep stairs....</p> + +<p>An unshaded light, dangling from the ceiling, revealed the furnace in +one corner of the big basement, laundry equipment in another. He plunged +on.... That must be the maid's room, behind that closed door.... God! +What if she had escaped, while he had been munching caviar and anchovy +sandwiches? A fine guard he'd been!... And it wasn't as if he hadn't had +a dim suspicion of the truth....</p> + +<p>The knob turned easily. He flung open the door. And then his knees +nearly gave way, so tremendous was his relief. For there, on the thin +mattress of a white-enameled iron bed, lay the woman he so ardently +desired to see.</p> + +<p>She had apparently been asleep, and the noise he had made had startled +her into panicky wakefulness. Instinctively her hand flew to the ruined +left side of her face—that hideous expanse of livid flesh, scarred and +ridged so that it did not look human....</p> + +<p>"What—? Who—?" Lydia Carr gasped, struggling to a sitting position, +only to fall back as nausea swept over her.</p> + +<p>"You remember me?" Dundee panted. "Dundee of the district attorney's +office. I questioned you this afternoon—"</p> + +<p>The woman closed the single eye that had escaped the accident which had +marred her face so hideously. "I—remember.... I'm sick.... I told you +all I know—"</p> + +<p>"Lydia, why didn't you tell me that it was your mistress, Mrs. Selim who +did—that?" Dundee demanded sternly, pointing to the woman's sightless +left eye and ruined cheek.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_TWELVE" id="CHAPTER_TWELVE"></a>CHAPTER TWELVE</h2> + + +<p>Lydia Carr, still clothed in the black cotton dress and white apron of +her maid's uniform, struggled to a sitting position on the edge of her +basement room bed.</p> + +<p>"No, no! That's a lie! It was an accident, I tell you—my own +fault!... Who dared to say Nita—Miss Nita—did it?"</p> + +<p>"Better lie down, Lydia," Dundee suggested gently. "I won't want you +fainting. You've had a hard day with the abscessed tooth, the dope the +dentist gave you, and—other things. I don't wonder that you lost your +head, went a little crazy, perhaps—"</p> + +<p>The detective's sinister implication seemed to make no impression at all +upon the woman with the scarred face.</p> + +<p>"I asked you—" she gasped, her single eye glaring at him, "who dared +say Nita burned me?"</p> + +<p>"It was Nita herself who told me," Dundee answered softly. "Just a few +minutes ago."</p> + +<p>"Holy Mother!" the maid gasped, and crossed herself dazedly.</p> + +<p>Let her think the dead woman had appeared to him in a vision, Dundee +told himself. Perhaps her confession would come the quicker—</p> + +<p>The maid began to rock her gaunt body, her arms crossed over her flat +chest. "My poor little girl! Even in death she thinks of me, she's +sorry—. She sent me a message, didn't she? Tell me! She was always +trying to comfort me, sir! The poor little thing couldn't believe I'd +forgiven her as soon as she done it—. Tell me!"</p> + +<p>"Yes," Dundee agreed, his eyes watching her keenly. "She sent you a +message—of a sort.... But I can't give it to you until you have told me +all about the—accident in which you were burned."</p> + +<p>"I'll tell," Lydia promised eagerly. Gone were the harshness and +secretiveness with which she had met his earlier questioning.... "You +see, sir, I loved Miss Nita—I called her Nita, if you don't mind, sir. +I loved her like she was my own child. And she was fond of me, too, +fonder of me than of anybody in the world, she used to tell me, when +some man had hurt her bad.... And there was always some man or other, +she was so sweet and so pretty.... Well, I found her in the bathroom one +day, just ready to drink carbolic acid, to kill her poor little self—"</p> + +<p>"When was that, Lydia?" Dundee interrupted.</p> + +<p>"It was in February—Sunday, the ninth of February," Lydia went on, +still rocking in an agony of grief. "I tried to take the glass out of +her hands. She'd poured a lot of the stuff out of the bottle.... You +see, she was already in a fit of hysterics, or she'd never have tried to +kill herself.... It was my own fault, trying to take the glass away from +her, like I did—"</p> + +<p>"She flung the acid into your face?" Dundee asked, shuddering.</p> + +<p>"She didn't know what she was doing!" the woman cried, glaring at him. +"Nearly went out of her mind, they told me at the hospital, because +she'd hurt me.... A private room in the best hospital in New York she +got for me, trained nurses night and day, and so many doctors fussing +around me I wanted to fire the whole outfit and save some of my poor +girl's money—which I don't know till this day how she got hold of—"</p> + +<p>Dundee let her sob and rock her arms for a while unmolested. In February +Nita Selim had had to borrow money to pay doctor and hospital bills. Had +borrowed it or "gold-dug" it.... And in May she had been rich enough to +have $9,000 to invest!</p> + +<p>"Lydia, you never forgave Nita Selim for ruining your life as well as +your face!" Dundee charged her suddenly.</p> + +<p>"You're a liar!" she cried passionately. "I know what I felt. It's <i>my</i> +face and <i>my</i> life, ain't it? I tell you I didn't even bear a grudge +against her—the poor little thing! Eating her heart out with sorrow for +what she'd done—till the very day of her death! Always trying to make +it up to me—paying me too much money for the handful of work I had to +do, what with her eating out nearly all the time and throwing away +stockings the minute they got a run in 'em—. Forgive her? I'd have +crawled from here to New York on my hands and knees for Nita Leigh!"</p> + +<p>Dundee studied her horribly scarred face, made more horrible now by what +looked like genuine grief.</p> + +<p>"Lydia, who was the man over whom your mistress wanted to commit +suicide?"</p> + +<p>The single, tear-reddened eye glared at him suspiciously, then became +wary. "I don't know."</p> + +<p>"Was it Dexter Sprague, Lydia?"</p> + +<p>"Sprague?" She spat the name out contemptuously. "No! She didn't know +him then, except to speak to at the moving picture studio."</p> + +<p>"When did he become her—lover, Lydia?" Dundee asked casually.</p> + +<p>The woman stiffened, became menacingly hostile. "Who says he was her +lover? You can't trick me, Mr. Detective! I'd cut my tongue out before +I'd let you make me say one word against my poor girl!"</p> + +<p>Dundee shrugged. He knew a stone wall when he ran up against one.</p> + +<p>"Lydia," he began again, after a thoughtful pause, "I have proof that +Nita Selim was sure you had never forgiven her for the injury she did +you." His fingers touched the letter in his pocket—that incredible +"Last Will and Testament" which Nita had written the day before she was +murdered....</p> + +<p>"And that's another lie!" the woman cried, shaking with anger. She +struggled to her feet, stood swaying dizzily a moment. "Come upstairs +with me to her room, and I'll show <i>you</i> some proof that I had forgiven +her!... Come along, I tell you!... Trying to make me say <i>I</i> killed my +poor girl, when I'd have died for her—Come on, I tell you!"</p> + +<p>And Dundee, wondering, beginning to doubt his own conviction a +little—that conviction which had sprung full-grown out of Nita's +strange, informal will, and which had seemed to explain +everything—followed Lydia Carr from her basement room to the bedroom in +which Nita had been murdered....</p> + +<p>"See this!" and Lydia Carr snatched up the powder box from the +dressing-table. Her long, bony fingers busied themselves with frantic +haste, and suddenly, into the silence of the room came the tinkle of +music. "<i>I</i> bought her this—for a present, out of my own money, soon as +I got out of the hospital!" the maid's voice shrilled, over the slow, +sweet, tinkly notes. "It's playing her name song—<i>Juanita</i>. It was +playing that song when she died. I stood there in the doorway and heard +it—" and she pointed toward the door leading from Nita's room into the +back hall. "She loved it and used it all the time, because I gave it to +her.... And <i>this</i>!"</p> + +<p>She set the musical powder box upon the dressing-table and rushed across +the room to one of the several lamps that Dundee had noticed on his +first survey of the room. It was the largest and gaudiest of the +collection—a huge bowl of filigreed bronze, set with innumerable +stones, as large as marbles, or larger. Red, yellow and green stones +that must have cast a strange radiance over the pretty head that had +been wont to lie just beneath it, on the heaped lace pillows of the +chaise lounge, Dundee reflected.</p> + +<p>As if Lydia had read his thoughts, she jerked at the little chain which +hung from the bottom of the big bronze bowl against the heavy metal +standard.</p> + +<p>"I gave her this—saved up for it out of my own money!" she was assuring +him with savage triumph in proving her point. "And she loved it so she +brought it with us when we came from New York—It won't light! It was +working all right last night, because my poor little girl was lying +there, looking so pretty under the colored lights—"</p> + +<p>With strong twists of her big hands Lydia began to unscrew the filigreed +bronze bowl. As she lifted it off she exclaimed blankly:</p> + +<p>"Why, look! The light bulb's—<i>broke</i>!"</p> + +<p>But Dundee had already seen—not only the broken light bulb but the +explanation of the queer noise that Flora Miles had described +hysterically over and over, as "a bang or a bump." The chaise lounge +stood between the two windows that opened upon the drive. And at the +head of it stood the big lamp, just a few inches from the wall and only +a foot from the window frame upon which Dr. Price had pencilled the +point to indicate the end of the imaginary line along which the shot +which killed Nita Leigh Selim had traveled.</p> + +<p>The "bang or bump" which Flora Miles had heard had been made by the +knocking of the big lamp against the wall. Undoubtedly the one who had +bumped into the lamp was Nita's murderer—or murderess—in frantic haste +to make an escape.</p> + +<p><i>And that meant that the murderer had fled toward the back hall, not +through the window in front of which he had stood, not through the door +leading onto the front porch....</i> A little progress, at least!</p> + +<p>But Lydia was not through proving that she had forgiven her mistress. +She was snatching things from Nita's clothes closet—</p> + +<p>"See these mules with ostrich feathers?—I give 'em to my girl!... And +this bed jacket? I embroidered the flowers on it with my own hands—"</p> + +<p>Through her flood of proof Dundee heard the whir of a car's engine, then +the loud banging of a car's door.... Running footsteps on the flagstone +path.... Dundee reached the front door just as the bell pealed shrilly.</p> + +<p>"Hello, Dundee! Awfully glad I caught you before you left.... Is poor +Lydia still here?"</p> + +<p>"Come in, Mr. Miles," Dundee invited, searching with a puzzled frown the +round, blond face of Tracey Miles. "Yes, Lydia is still here.... Why?"</p> + +<p>"Then I'm in luck, and I think Lydia is, too—poor old girl!... You see, +Dundee," Miles began to explain, as he took off his new straw hat to mop +his perspiring forehead, "the crowd all ganged up when our various cars +reached Sheridan Road, and by unanimous vote we elected to drive over to +the Country Club for a meal in one of the small private dining rooms—to +escape the questions of the morbidly curious, you know—"</p> + +<p>"Yes.... What about it?" Dundee interrupted impatiently.</p> + +<p>"Well, I admit we were all pretty hungry, in spite of—well, of course +we were all fond of Nita, but—"</p> + +<p>"What about Lydia?" Dundee cut him short.</p> + +<p>"I'm getting to it, old boy," Miles protested, with the injured air of +an unappreciated small boy. "While we were waiting for our food, +somebody said, 'Poor Lydia! What's going to become of <i>her</i>?' And +somebody else said that it was harder on her—Nita's death, I mean—than +on anybody else, because Nita was all she had in the world, and then +Lois—Lois is always practical, you know—ran to telephone Police +Headquarters, to see what had been done with Lydia, and to see if it +would be all right for Flora and me to take her home with us—"</p> + +<p>"Just a minute, Miles! Whom did Mrs. Dunlap talk to at Headquarters?"</p> + +<p>"Why, Captain Strawn, of course," Miles answered. "He told Lois that you +were still out here, questioning Lydia again, and that it was all right +with him, whatever you decided. So as soon as I had finished eating, I +drove over—"</p> + +<p>"Is Mrs. Miles with you?" Dundee interrupted again.</p> + +<p>"Well, no," Miles admitted uncomfortably. "You see, the girls felt a +little squeamish about coming back, even on an errand of mercy—"</p> + +<p>Dundee grinned. He had no doubt that Flora Miles had emphatically +refused the possibility of another gruelling interview.</p> + +<p>"Why do you and Mrs. Miles want to take Lydia home with you?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"To give her a home and a job," Miles answered promptly. "She knows us, +we're used to her poor old scarred face, and the youngsters, Tam and +Betty, are not a bit afraid of her. In fact, Betty pats that scarred +cheek and says, over and over, 'Poo Lyddy! Poo Lyddy! Betty 'oves +Lyddy!' and Tam—he's T. A. Miles, junior, you know, and we call him +Tam, from the initials, because he hates being called Junior and two +Tracey's are a nuisance—"</p> + +<p>"I gather that you want to hire Lydia as a nurse for the children," +Dundee interrupted the fond father's verbose explanations.</p> + +<p>"Right, old man! You see, our nurse left us yesterday—"</p> + +<p>"Wait here, Miles. I'll speak to Lydia. She's in Mrs. Selim's +bedroom.... By the way, Miles, since you and your wife are kind enough +to want to take Lydia in and give her a home and a job, I think it only +fair to tell you that it is highly improbable that Lydia Carr will take +any job at all."</p> + +<p>"You mean—?" Miles gasped, his ruddy face turning pale. "I say, Dundee, +it's absurd to think for a minute that good old faithful Lydia had a +thing to do with Nita's murder—"</p> + +<p>"I rather think you're right about that, Miles," Dundee interrupted. +"Now will you excuse me?"</p> + +<p>He found Lydia where he had left her—in her dead mistress' bedroom. The +tall, gaunt woman was crouching beside the chaise longue, her arms +outstretched to encircle a little pile of the gifts she claimed to have +given Nita Selim to prove that she bore no grudge for the terrible +injury her mistress had done her. At Dundee's entrance she flung up her +head, and the detective saw that tears were streaming from both the +sightless eye and the unharmed one.</p> + +<p>Taking his seat on the chaise longue, Dundee explained gently but +briefly the offer which Tracey Miles had just made.</p> + +<p>"They want—<i>me</i>?" she gasped brokenly, incredulously, and her fingers +faltered to her horrible cheek. "I didn't think anybody but my poor girl +would have me around—"</p> + +<p>"It is true they want you," Dundee assured her. "But you don't have to +take a job now unless you wish, Lydia."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?" the maid demanded harshly, her good eye hardening +with suspicion.</p> + +<p>"Lydia," the young detective began slowly, and almost praying that he +was doing the right thing, "when I woke you up tonight to question you, +I said that Nita herself had just told me that it was she who had burned +your face.... And you asked me if she had also given you a message—"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir!" the maid interrupted with pitiful eagerness. "And you'll +tell me now? You don't still think <i>I</i> killed her, do you?"</p> + +<p>"No, I don't think you killed your mistress, Lydia, but I think, if you +would, you could help me find out who did," Dundee assured her gravely. +"No, wait!" and he drew from his pocket the envelope inscribed: "To Be +Opened In Case of My Death—Juanita Leigh Selim."</p> + +<p>"Do you recognize this handwriting, Lydia?"</p> + +<p>"It was wrote by her own hand," the maid answered, her voice husky with +tears. "Is that the message, sir?"</p> + +<p>"You never saw it before?" Dundee asked sharply.</p> + +<p>"No, no! I didn't know my poor girl was thinking about death," Lydia +moaned. "I thought she was happy here. She was tickled to pieces over +being taken up by all them society people, and on the go day and +night——"</p> + +<p>"Lydia, this is Mrs. Selim's last will and testament," Dundee +interrupted, withdrawing the sheets slowly and unfolding them. "It was +written yesterday, and it begins:</p> + +<p>"'Knowing that any of us may die any time, and that I, Juanita Leigh +Selim, have good cause to fear that my own life hangs by a thread that +may break any minute—'"</p> + +<p>"What did my poor girl mean?" Lydia Carr cried out vehemently. "She +wasn't sick, ever—"</p> + +<p>"I think, Lydia, that she feared exactly what happened today—murder! +And I want you to tell me who it was she feared. <i>For I believe you +know!</i>"</p> + +<p>The woman shrank from him, until she was sitting on her lean haunches, +her hands flattening against her cheeks. For a long minute she did not +attempt to answer. Her right eye widened enormously, then slowly grew as +expressionless as the milky left ball.</p> + +<p>"I—don't—know," she said dully. Then, with vehement emphasis: "<i>I +don't know!</i> If I did, I'd kill him with my own hands!"</p> + +<p>Dundee had no choice but to take her word.</p> + +<p>"You said there was a message for me," Lydia reminded him.</p> + +<p>"I'll read you her will first," Dundee said quietly, lifting the sheets +again: "I am herewith setting down my last will and testament, in my own +handwriting. I do here and now solemnly will and bequeath to my faithful +and beloved maid, Lydia Carr, all property, including all moneys, stocks +and personal belongings of which I die possessed—"</p> + +<p>"To—<i>me</i>?" Lydia whispered. "To me?"</p> + +<p>"To you, Lydia," Dundee assured her gravely.</p> + +<p>"Then I can have all her pretty clothes to keep always?"</p> + +<p>"And her money, to do as you like with, if the court accepts this will +for probate—as I think it will, regardless of the fact that it is very +informal and was not witnessed."</p> + +<p>"But—she didn't have any money," Lydia protested. "Nothing but what +Mrs. Dunlap paid her in advance for the work she was going to do—"</p> + +<p>"Lydia, your mistress died possessed of nearly ten thousand dollars!" +Dundee fixed her bewildered grey eye with his blue ones. "<i>Ten thousand +dollars!</i> All of which she got right here in Hamilton! And I want you to +tell me how she got it!"</p> + +<p>"But—I don't know! I don't believe she had it!"</p> + +<p>Dundee shrugged. Either this woman would perjure her soul to protect her +mistress' name from scandal, or she really knew nothing.</p> + +<p>"That is all of the will itself, Lydia," he went on finally, "except her +command that her body be cremated without funeral services of any kind, +and that nobody be allowed to accompany the remains to the crematory +except yourself and Mrs. Peter Dunlap, in case her death takes place in +Hamilton—"</p> + +<p>"She <i>did</i> love Mrs. Dunlap," Lydia sobbed. "Oh, my poor little girl—"</p> + +<p>"And there is also a note for you, which I took the liberty of reading, +in which Mrs. Selim minutely describes the clothes in which she wishes +to be cremated, as well as the fashion in which her hair is to be +dressed—"</p> + +<p>"Let me see it!" Lydia plunged forward on her knees and snatched at the +papers he held. "For God's sake, let me see!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_THIRTEEN" id="CHAPTER_THIRTEEN"></a>CHAPTER THIRTEEN</h2> + + +<p>"I'll read you the note, Lydia, but I can't let you touch it," Dundee +said sternly, taking good care that she should not touch either the +paper on which the note to herself had been written or the sheet which +contained that strange, informal will. Informal, in spite of the dead +woman's obvious effort to couch it in legal phraseology....</p> + +<p>Was Lydia's frenzy assumed? Did she hope to leave fingerprints now which +would account for fingerprints she had already left upon it? Was it not +possible that Lydia's had been the prying fingers which had opened the +envelope after Nita Selim had sealed it with God only knew what fears in +her heart? If so, Lydia Carr had found that she was her mistress' sole +legatee.... <i>Revenge, coupled with greed....</i> What better motive for +murder could a detective ask? And who had had so good an opportunity as +Lydia Carr to dispose of the weapon?</p> + +<p>The woman crouched back on her haunches, an agony of pleading in her +single eye.</p> + +<p>"Lydia, I think you know already what this note tells you," Dundee said +slowly.</p> + +<p>To his astonishment the maid nodded, the tears starting again. "I asked +her once what she wanted to keep that old dress for, and she—she said +I'd find out some day, but I never dreamed she'd want it for a—oh, my +God!—for a <i>shroud</i>!"</p> + +<p>For the second time that evening Lydia Carr completely routed Dundee's +carefully worked-up case against her. It was inconceivable, he told +himself, that a mind cunning enough to have executed this murder would +give itself away in such a fashion. If she had indeed pried among her +mistress' papers and found the will and note, would she not, from the +most primitive instinct of self-preservation, have pretended total +ignorance of the note's contents?</p> + +<p>"I'll read the note, Lydia," he said gently. "It is addressed: 'My +precious old Lydia'—"</p> + +<p>"She was always calling me that!" the maid sobbed.</p> + +<p>"And she writes: 'If you ever read this it will be because I'm dead, and +you'll know that I've tried to make it up to you the only way I knew. I +never could believe you really forgave me, but maybe you will now. And +there is one last thing I want you to do for me, Lydia darling. You +remember that old royal blue velvet dress of mine that you were always +sniffing at and either trying to make me give away or have made over? +And remember that I told you that you'd know some time why I kept it? +Well, I want you to lay me out in it, Lydia. Such a funny old-fashioned +shroud, isn't it?... But with dresses long again, maybe it won't look so +funny, and there'll be nobody but you and Lois to see me in it, because +I've said so in my will. And I want my hair dressed as it was the only +time I ever wore the royal blue velvet. A French roll, Lydia, with +little curls coming out the left side of it and hanging down to the left +ear. You brush the hair straight up the back of the head, gather it +together and tie a little bit of black shoestring around it, then you +twist the hair into a roll and spread it high, pinning it down on each +side of the head. <i>And don't forget the little curls on the left side!</i> +I hope I have enough hair, but if it hasn't grown long enough, you +know where those switches are that I had made when I first bobbed my +hair.... You won't mind touching me when I'm dead, will you, Lydia? I do +love you.... Nita.'"</p> + +<p>Dundee was silent for a minute after he had finished reading the strange +note and had returned it to the envelope, along with the will. At last, +speaking against a lump in his throat, he broke in on the desolate +sobbing of Nita's maid:</p> + +<p>"Lydia, how old was your mistress?"</p> + +<p>"You won't put it in the papers, will you?" Lydia pleaded. "She—she +was—thirty-three. But not a soul knew it except me—"</p> + +<p>"And will you tell me how old the royal blue velvet dress is?" he +continued. "Also, how long since girls dressed their hair in a French +roll?"</p> + +<p>"The dress is twelve or thirteen years old," Lydia said, her voice dull +now with grief. "I know, because I used to do dressmaking during the +war. And it was during the war that girls wore their hair that way—I +did mine in a Psyche knot, but the French roll was more stylish."</p> + +<p>"Did your mistress ever tell you about the one time she wore the dress?"</p> + +<p>Lydia shook her head. "No. She wouldn't talk about it—just said I'd +know sometime why she kept it.... Royal blue velvet, it is, the skirt +halfway to the ankles, and sleeves with long pointed ends, lined with +gold taffeta, and finished off with gold tassels. It's in a dress bag, +hanging in her closet."</p> + +<p>"Do you think it was her wedding dress, Lydia?" Dundee suggested, the +idea suddenly flashing into his mind.</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I didn't ask her that," Lydia denied dully. "Can I take +it with me—and the switches she had made out of her curls?"</p> + +<p>"I'll have to get authority to remove anything from the house, Lydia," +Dundee told her. "But I am sure you will be permitted to follow Mrs. +Selim's instructions.... So you're going to accept the Miles' offer of a +job as nurse?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I'd rather work. Mr. and Mrs. Miles have always been specially +nice to me, and I—I could love their children. They're not—afraid of +me—"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps you're wise," Dundee agreed. "By the way, Lydia, did Mrs. Selim +have a pistol in her possession at any time during the past week?"</p> + +<p>The maid shook her head. "Not that I seen. And if she'd got one because +she was afraid, she'd a-kept it handy and I'd a-been bound to see it."</p> + +<p>Convinced of her sincerity, he was about to let her go to pack her bag +when another belated question occurred to him. "Lydia, will you tell me +what engagements Mrs. Selim had this last week?"</p> + +<p>The woman scowled, fanatically jealous, Dundee guessed, of her mistress' +reputation, but at last she answered defiantly: "Let me see.... Mr. +Sprague had Sunday dinner here, and spent the afternoon, but Sunday +night it was young Mr. Ralph Hammond. He come whenever she'd let +him.... Monday night?... Oh, yes! She had dinner at the Country Club +with the Mileses and the Drakes and the Dunlaps. Mr. Miles brought her +home, because Mr. Sprague wasn't invited.... Tuesday night—let me +think!... Yes, that's the night Judge Marshall was here. Nita had sent +for him to talk about finishing up the attic—"</p> + +<p>So that was the "business engagement" which Judge Marshall had hemmed +and hawed over, Dundee reflected triumphantly.</p> + +<p>"—and Wednesday night," Lydia was continuing, with a certain pride in +her mistress' popularity, "she was at a dinner party at the Dunlaps'."</p> + +<p>"Did Mr. Peter Dunlap ever call on Mrs. Selim—alone?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Him?</i>" Lydia was curiously resentful. "He wasn't ever here. Nita said +to me she wished Mr. Peter liked her as well as Mis' Lois did."</p> + +<p>"Thursday night?"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Ralph Hammond took her somewhere to dinner, to some other town, I +think, but I wasn't awake when they got home. Nita never would let me +set up for her—said I needed my rest. So I always went to bed early."</p> + +<p>"And yesterday—Friday?" Dundee demanded tensely. For Friday she had +been driven to making her last will and testament....</p> + +<p>"She was home all day, but about half past four Mr. Drake came," Lydia +said slowly, as if she too were wondering. "She was awfully restless, +couldn't set still or eat. I ought to have suspicioned something, but +she was often like that—lately. Mr. Drake stayed about an hour. I +didn't see him leave, because I was cooking Nita's dinner.... But little +good it did, because she didn't eat it, so there was plenty for Mr. +Sprague when he dropped in about seven."</p> + +<p>"Did Sprague spend the evening?"</p> + +<p>"I guess so, but I don't know. Nita made me take the Ford and drive into +town for a picture show. She was in bed when I got back, and—" but she +checked herself hastily.</p> + +<p>"Did Nita seem strange—troubled, excited? Did she look as if she'd been +crying?" Dundee prodded.</p> + +<p>"I didn't see her," the maid acknowledged. "I knocked on her door, but +she told me to go on to bed, that she wouldn't need me. But now I think +back, her voice sounded queer.... Maybe she <i>was</i> crying, but I don't +know—"</p> + +<p>"And this morning?"</p> + +<p>"She seemed all right—just excited about the party and worried about my +tooth. Mr. Ralph Hammond come to make the estimates on finishing up the +top floor, and we left him here—"</p> + +<p>"What was her attitude toward Mr. Miles when he dropped in on her this +morning?" Dundee interrupted.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Miles?" Lydia echoed, frowning. "He wasn't here this morning, or if +he was, it was after Nita and I left for town."</p> + +<p>While the maid was packing a bag, which Dundee would examine before she +was allowed to take it away with her, the detective rejoined Tracey +Miles, who had made himself as comfortable as possible in the living +room.</p> + +<p>"Lydia's going with you, and is grateful for your wife's kindness," +Dundee informed him, and felt his heart warm to the boresome, +egotistical little cherub of a man when he saw how Miles' face lit up +with real pleasure. "By the way, Miles, you saw Ralph Hammond when you +called here this morning, didn't you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," Miles answered with some reluctance. "He answered the door when I +rang and told me Lydia and Nita had gone into town."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Miles," Dundee began slowly, throwing friendliness and persuasion +into his voice, "I know how all you folks stick together, but I'd +appreciate it a lot if you'd tell me frankly whether you noticed +anything unusual in Hammond's manner this morning."</p> + +<p>"Unusual?" Miles repeated, frowning. "He was a little short with me +because he was busy, and, I suspect, a little jealous because I'd come +calling on Nita—" He broke off abruptly, in obvious distress. "Look +here, Dundee! I didn't mean to say that, but I suppose you'll find out +sooner or later.... Well, the fact is, the whole crowd knows Ralph +Hammond was absolutely mad about Nita Selim. Wanted to marry her, and +made no secret of it, though we all thought or hoped it would be little +Penny Crain. He's been devoted to Penny for years, and since Roger Crain +made a mess of things and skipped out, leaving Penny and her poor mother +high and dry, we've all done our best to throw Penny and Ralph together. +But since Nita came to town—"</p> + +<p>"Was Nita in love with Ralph?" Dundee cut in, rather curtly, for he had +a curious distaste for hearing Penny Crain discussed in this manner.</p> + +<p>"Sometimes we were sure she was," Miles answered. "She flirted with all +of us men—had a way with her of making every man she talked to think he +was the only pebble on the beach. But there was something special in the +way she looked at Ralph.... Yes, I think she <i>was</i> in love with him! But +then again," he frowned, "she would treat him like a dog. Seemed to want +to drive him away from her—but she always called him back—Oh, Lord!" +he interrupted himself with a groan. "Now I suppose I <i>have</i> put my foot +in it! You've got the damnedest way of making a chap tell everything he +would cut his tongue out rather than spill, Dundee! But just because a +young man's in love, and happens not to show up at a party, is no reason +to think he sneaked up to the house and killed the woman he loved and +wanted to marry. For I'm not so dumb that I haven't seen the drift of +your damnable questions, Dundee!... Do you know Ralph Hammond, by any +chance?" he concluded, his round face red with anger.</p> + +<p>"No—but I should like to meet him," Dundee retorted. "He seems quite +hard to locate this evening."</p> + +<p>"Well, when you do meet him," Tracey Miles began violently, his blue +eyes blazing with anger, "you'll soon find you've been barking up the +wrong tree! There's not a cleaner, finer, straighter—"</p> + +<p>"In fact, he is a friend of yours, Miles," Dundee answered soothingly, +"and I respect you for every word you've said.... By the way, did all of +you go to the Country Club for dinner after you left here?"</p> + +<p>Somewhat mollified, Miles answered: "All of us but Clive Hammond. He +said he was going to have a look around for Ralph himself. Seemed to +have an idea where he might find him.... And, oh, yes, Sprague +disappeared in the scramble. He hasn't a car and nobody thought of +offering him a lift. Guess he took a bus into Hamilton.... Ah! Here's +Lydia!... Hello, Lydia!" he called heartily to the woman who was +standing, tall and gaunt, in the doorway. "Mighty glad you're coming to +look after the kids!"</p> + +<p>From behind the black veil which draped her ugly black hat and hid her +scarred face, Lydia answered in the dull, harsh voice that was +characteristic of her:</p> + +<p>"Thank you, sir. I'll do my best."</p> + +<p>She made no protest when Dundee, with a word of embarrassed apology, +went rapidly through the heavy suitcase she had brought up from the +basement with her. And when he had finished his fruitless search, she +knelt and silently smoothed the coarse, utilitarian garments he had +disarranged.</p> + +<p>Five minutes later Dundee was alone in the house where murder had been +committed under such strange and baffling circumstances that afternoon. +He was not nervous, but again he made a tour of inspection of the first +floor and basement, looking into closets, and testing windows to make +sure they were all locked. Everywhere there were evidences of the +thoroughness of the police detectives who had searched for the weapon +with which Nita Selim had been murdered. In the basement, as he had +subconsciously noted on his headlong dash to question Lydia Carr, the +furnace doors swung open, and the lids of the laundry tubs had been left +propped up, after the unavailing search....</p> + +<p>He plodded wearily up the basement stairs and on into the kitchen. +Perhaps the ice-box had something fit to eat in it—the fruit intended +for Nita's and Lydia's Sunday breakfast. Those caviar and anchovy +sandwiches had certainly not stuck with him long....</p> + +<p>He was making his way toward the electric refrigerator when he stopped +as suddenly as if he had been shot.</p> + +<p>The kitchen door, which he had taken especial pains to assure himself +was locked, when he had made the rounds immediately after the departure +of Captain Strawn and his men, was standing slightly ajar!</p> + +<p><i>Someone had entered this house!</i></p> + +<p>Dundee stared blankly at the door, which was equipped with a Yale lock. +Someone with a key.... But why had the door been left ajar? <i>To make +escape more noiseless?</i></p> + +<p>With the toe of his shoe Dundee pushed the door to and heard the click +of the lock, then, all thought of food routed from his mind, made a +quick but almost silent dash into the dining room to secure one of the +pair of tall wax tapers, which, in their silver candlesticks, served as +ornaments for the sideboard.</p> + +<p>If the intruder was still in the house he could be nowhere but in that +unfinished half of the gabled top story. The nearer stairs were those in +the back hall, and Dundee took them two at a time, regardless of the +noise. Who had preceded him stealthily?... By the aid of his lighted +candle he discovered an electric switch at the head of the stairs, +flicked it on, and found himself in a wide hall, one wall of which was +finished with buff-tinted plaster and with three doors, the other of +rough boards with but a single door.</p> + +<p>With his candle held high, so that its light should not blind him, and +well aware that it made him a perfect target, Dundee opened the +unpainted door and found himself in the dark, musty-smelling room that +had served Nita Selim and the Crains before her as a storeroom. From the +ceiling dangled a green cord ending in a cheap, clear-glass bulb, but +its light was sufficient to penetrate even the farthest low nooks made +by the three gables. He blew out his candle and dropped it, as useless +now.</p> + +<p>A quick tour convinced him that nothing human was concealed behind one +of Nita Selim's empty wardrobe trunks, or behind one of the several +pieces of heavy old furniture, undoubtedly left behind by the +dispossessed Crain family.</p> + +<p>Big footprints on the thick dust which coated the floor showed him that +he was being no more thorough than Captain Strawn's brace of +plainclothes detectives had been much earlier that evening. Two pairs of +giant footprints....</p> + +<p>With an exclamation he discovered a smaller, narrow pair of prints, and +followed their winding trail all around and across the attic. And then +he remembered.... Ralph Hammond's footprints, of course, made that +morning as he went about his legitimate business of measuring and +estimating for the job of turning the storeroom into bedrooms and +bathrooms.</p> + +<p>Dundee had not realized that he was frightened until he was in the hall +again, facing one of the three doors in the plastered wall. With +surprise, and some amusement, he became aware that his hands were +trembling, and that his knees had a curious tendency to buckle.</p> + +<p>The fact that the door directly in front of him was open about two +inches served, for some odd reason, to steady his nerves. Pushing the +door wide open with his foot—for he never forgot the possibility of +incriminating fingerprints which might easily be obliterated, he +discovered a light switch near the door frame.</p> + +<p>The instant illumination from a ceiling cluster revealed a large +bedroom, and less clearly, another and smaller room beyond it, facing as +the house faced—toward the south. Knees and hands steady again, he +investigated the finished portion of the gabled story swiftly. A +charming layout, he told himself. Had Penny Crain once enjoyed this +delightful little sitting-room, with its tiny balcony built out upon the +sloping roof?... And it gave him pleasure to think that this big, +well-furnished but not fussily feminine bedroom had once been hers, as +well as the small but perfect bathroom whose high narrow window +overlooked the back garden. The closets, dresser drawers and highboy +drawers were completely empty, however, of any traces of her occupancy +or that of any other....</p> + +<p>With these rooms going to waste, why—he suddenly asked himself—had +Nita Selim coaxed Judge Marshall to have the unfinished half of the +gabled attic turned into bedrooms and baths? Why couldn't Lydia have +slept up here, if Nita thought so much of her "faithful and beloved +maid"?</p> + +<p>But even as he asked himself the question Dundee realized that the +answer to it had been struggling to attract his attention.</p> + +<p><i>These rooms had not been wasted!</i> Someone had been occupying them as +late as last night! Weaving swiftly through the three rooms, like a +bloodhound on the scent, Dundee collected the few but sufficient proofs +to back up his intuitive conviction. A copy of <i>The Hamilton Evening +Sun</i>, dated Friday, May 23, left in an armchair in the sitting-room. All +windows raised about six inches from the bottom, so that the night +breeze stirred the hand-blocked linen drapes. And, clinging to these +drapes, the faint but unmistakable odor of cigarette smoke. Finally, +with a low cry of triumph, Bonnie Dundee flung back the colored linen +spread which covered the three-quarter bed and discovered that the +sheets and pillow cases, though clean, had, beyond the shadow of a +doubt, been slept upon.</p> + +<p>Bending so that his nose almost touched a pillow case he sniffed. +<i>Pomade!...</i> Who was the man who had slept in this bed last night?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_FOURTEEN" id="CHAPTER_FOURTEEN"></a>CHAPTER FOURTEEN</h2> + + +<p>With the thrill of his discovery singing blithely along his nerves, +Bonnie Dundee, Special Investigator for the District Attorney, had at +first hugged the intention of following the new trail alone. Hadn't +Captain Strawn taunted him not too good-naturedly about his ability to +get along without the younger man's help?</p> + +<p>But he was glad, both selfishly and unselfishly, when, half an hour +later, he threw open the front door of dead Nita's house to the chief of +the Homicide Squad, Carraway, the fingerprint expert, and the two +plainclothesmen who had searched the top floor for the missing weapon or +the murderer himself soon after the murder had been committed. For if +Strawn needed his help, Dundee needed the expert machinery which Strawn +captained. And it was good to feel the grip of gratitude in the old +chief's handclasp and to see the almost shy twinkle of apology in his +hard old grey eyes....</p> + +<p>Dundee led the way up the front stairs to the upper floor, glad to hear +the heavy tread of official feet behind him.</p> + +<p>"I guess you've got it all doped out who the Selim woman's gentleman +friend was," Strawn commented genially, as he followed Dundee into the +pleasant, big bedroom.</p> + +<p>"I believe I have, but I need Carraway to prove my hunch," Dundee +acknowledged.</p> + +<p>Eagerly, swiftly, he displayed his first tangible finds—the open +windows, the drapes smelling of cigarette smoke, the evening paper of +the day before, the faint odor and greasiness of barber's pomade upon +the pillow case of the bed which had clearly been slept in since the +linen was changed.</p> + +<p>"Now, Collins—Harmon—" Dundee whirled upon the two silent +plainclothesmen, "I want to know what you saw in these rooms when you +searched them early this evening that you don't see now. You looked into +the closets and drawers, of course?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir," Collins answered. "And they was all empty, Dundee. Me and +Harmon didn't waste time smelling pillow cases, and I admit we didn't +pay no attention to that there newspaper—"</p> + +<p>"<i>Empty!</i>" Dundee echoed. "Are you sure?... You, too, Harmon?"</p> + +<p>"What are you driving at, boy?" Captain Strawn asked indulgently.</p> + +<p>Briefly, with disappointment flattening his voice, Dundee told of his +finding the kitchen door ajar, after he had made sure it was locked on +his first rounds of the house.</p> + +<p>"I worked it out this way," he continued, despite Strawn's grin. "Dexter +Sprague was Nita's lover, as I had thought all along. He was in the +habit of spending the night here whenever Nita would give him an evening +of her company. He was here last night, according to the maid, Lydia +Carr. Nita sent her into Hamilton to a picture show. Nita and Sprague +quarreled last night, but I am positive he spent the night here anyway. +Certainly there was no actual rupture, since Sprague worded his note to +her as he did. I have another strong reason for thinking his belongings +were here at least until noon today, but that can wait for the moment. +Furthermore, I am positive that Sprague descended by the backstairs and +went around the house to join the cocktail party which was to follow the +hen bridge party."</p> + +<p>"How do you make that out, Bonnie?" Strawn asked, his grin wiped away.</p> + +<p>"Try to remember how Sprague looked when you first got here," Dundee +suggested. "I saw him twenty minutes after you did, but—<i>he was wearing +an immaculate stiff collar, and there were still traces of talcum powder +over a close shave</i>! And you will remember that he said he had made a +half hour's trip by bus, and had walked the quarter of a mile from the +bus stop on Sheridan Road to this house. It was a mighty hot afternoon, +chief!"</p> + +<p>"Not conclusive," Strawn growled.</p> + +<p>"Then here's another straw to add to the weight of my conclusion," +Dundee went on unshaken. "You remember that Janet Raymond was on the +front porch <i>watching for Sprague</i>, while the 'death hand of bridge' was +being played?... Oh, she tried to protect him.... Wait, I'll read you +the notes I made when I was questioning her. I looked them up while I +was waiting for you.... Here! I had said to Miss Raymond: 'You observed +Mr. Sprague toiling down the rutty road, hot and weary, but romantic in +the sunset?' And she answered, stammering: 'I—I wasn't looking that +way....' And I knew she was lying, knew that she had been taken +completely by surprise when Sprague suddenly appeared <i>from the rear of +the house</i>! What's more, she betrayed herself and him by admitting that +she was surprised. Then—because the girl is undoubtedly in love with +Sprague and was mortally afraid he had killed Nita Selim, she tried +frantically to throw suspicion on Lydia Carr, by telling how Lydia had +failed to answer Mrs. Dunlap's first ring—Good Lord! Wait a minute! I +want to think!" he interrupted himself to exclaim.</p> + +<p>After a full minute, while he had stood very still, with his fingers +pressed against his closed eyes, Dundee began slowly:</p> + +<p>"I believe that's it.... Listen, boys!" He turned to the two +plainclothesmen, urgent pleading in his voice. "Would you both take your +oath that there was no bag—say a small Gladstone overnight +bag—anywhere in these rooms when you searched them this evening?"</p> + +<p>The two detectives glanced at each other, their faces reddening. It was +Harmon, the older of the pair, who swallowed hard before answering:</p> + +<p>"We'd been told to look for a man hiding, and for a gun—" Then he +squared his shoulders as if to receive the blame like a man. "Yes, sir! +There was a little black grip on the closet shelf. I went through it +myself, but there wasn't no gun in it. Just a pair of pajamas and a +couple of shirts, one of 'em dirty, some socks and collars and a +shaving-kit—"</p> + +<p>Dundee drew a deep breath, and clapped the red-faced detective on the +back in high good humor.</p> + +<p>"There simply <i>had</i> to be a bag somewhere!" he laughed.</p> + +<p>"This is the way of it, Strawn.... Nita and Sprague rowed last night. +Sprague tried to make it up, but Nita must have been through with him. +Probably told him last night to clear his things out and not come back. +She thought he had done so; probably he did leave before she got up. At +any rate she was so sure he was gone and his things with him that she +and Lydia went to town this morning and left Ralph Hammond here to go +through the place as freely as he liked, making his estimates on the job +of finishing up the other half of this floor. And Ralph—but let that +wait for the moment."</p> + +<p>"Got any real proof that it was Sprague who stayed here and not the +Hammond boy?" Strawn interrupted shrewdly.</p> + +<p>"I'm coming to the proof," Dundee assured him, "or rather, the rest of +the proof that I haven't already given you. You're damned hard to +convince, chief! But let me go on with my theory, which I think covers +the facts.... At luncheon, when Nita received that note from Sprague, I +imagine she got a hunch that he hadn't taken her seriously, that he had +not removed his belongings. You remember Penny Crain said Nita had Lydia +follow her into her bedroom, as soon as Nita got home from the +luncheon?... Well, it's my hunch that Nita asked Lydia if Sprague's +things were gone when she cleaned these rooms this morning, and that +Lydia said no. Nita then probably told Lydia to pack them herself, and I +feel positive that Lydia did so, for she must have felt safe when she +protested to me that Sprague was not Nita's lover. I also feel sure that +Sprague arrived at least half an hour before he said he did, by some +back path across the meadow; that he came up to these rooms that he +considered his, found his things packed, but went about shaving and +changing his shirt and collar, regardless. I also feel sure that Lydia +followed him upstairs to explain and impress upon him that Nita had +meant what she said. And it is quite likely that she was not through +picking up after him when he descended by the back stairs and surprised +Janet Raymond on the front porch. That accounts, of course, for Lydia's +not hearing the kitchen bell the first time Mrs. Dunlap rang."</p> + +<p>"Umm," Strawn grunted. "What about the proofs you're holding back?"</p> + +<p>"Come along, chief—you, too, Carraway!" Dundee answered, and led the +way into the bathroom. "I felt sure these rooms would yield a very +definite clue, even though Sprague, when he sneaked back tonight to get +his tell-tale bag, apparently made every effort to wipe his fingerprints +off the furniture and bathroom fixtures.... Now, Carraway, if you'll +step upon this little stool and look along the top of this medicine +cabinet, you'll find what I found—and didn't touch."</p> + +<p>The fingerprint expert did as he was told. When he stepped down he was +holding, between the very tips of his fingers, a safety razor blade.</p> + +<p>"No dust on it, you see," Dundee pointed out. "Now if you don't find +Dexter Sprague's fingerprints on it, my whole theory topples."</p> + +<p>"How am I going to know whose fingerprints they are till we get hold of +Sprague?" Carraway asked reasonably.</p> + +<p>"We don't need him—for that purpose, at least," Dundee assured him. +"Downstairs in the living room, on a little table in the southeast +corner of the room, you'll find a red glass ashtray which no one but +Dexter Sprague used all evening. It was clean and empty when I saw him +use it first. I think you'll find on it all the prints you need."</p> + +<p>"So you think Sprague killed her because she was through with him?" +Strawn asked.</p> + +<p>Dundee shook his head. "Since I don't like Dexter Sprague a little bit, +chief, I'd like to think so, but—"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_FIFTEEN" id="CHAPTER_FIFTEEN"></a>CHAPTER FIFTEEN</h2> + + +<p>Bonnie Dundee's first thought upon awakening that Sunday morning was +that it might prove to be rather a pity that his new bachelor apartment, +as he loved to call his three rooms at the top of a lodging house which +had once been a fashionable private home, faced south and west, rather +than east. At the Rhodes House, whose boarding-house clamor and lack of +privacy he had abandoned upon taking the flattering job and decent +salary of "Special Investigator attached to the District Attorney's +office," he had grown accustomed to using the hot morning sun upon his +reluctant eyelids as an alarm clock.</p> + +<p>But—he continued the train of thought, after discovering by his watch +that it was not late; only 8:40—it was pretty darned nice having +"diggings" like these. Quiet and private. For he was the only tenant +now on the top floor. His pleased, lazy eyes roved over the plain +severity but solid comfort of his bedroom, and on past the open door to +take in appreciatively the equally comfortable and masculine living +room.... Pretty nice! That leather-upholstered couch and armchair had +been a real bargain, and he liked them all the better for being rather +scuffed and shabby. Then his eyes halted upon a covered cage, swung from +a pedestal....</p> + +<p>"Poor old Cap'n!... Must be wondering when the devil I'm going to get +up!" and he swung out of bed, lounged sleepily into the small living +room and whisked the square of black silk from the cage.</p> + +<p>The parrot, formerly the property of murdered old Mrs. Hogarth of the +Rhodes House, but for the past year the young detective's official +"Watson," ruffled his feathers, poked his green-and-yellow head between +the bars of his cage and croaked hoarsely: "Hullo! Hullo!"</p> + +<p>"Hullo, yourself, my dear Watson!" Dundee retorted. "Your vacation is +over, old top! It's back on the job for you and me both!... Which +reminds me that I ought to be taking a squint at the Sunday papers, to +see how much Captain Strawn thought fit to tell the press."</p> + +<p>He found <i>The Hamilton Morning News</i> in the hall just outside his living +room door.</p> + +<p>"Listen, Cap'n.... 'NITA SELIM MURDERED AT BRIDGE'.... Probably the +snappiest streamer headline the News has had for many a day.... Now +let's see—" He was silent for two minutes, while his eyes leaped down +the lesser headlines and the column one, page one story of the murder. +Then: "Good old Strawn! Not a word, my dear Watson, about your absurd +master's absurd performance in having 'the death hand at bridge' +replayed. Not a word about Ralph Hammond, the missing guest! Not a word +about Mrs. Tracey Miles' being hidden away in the clothes closet while +her hostess was being murdered!... In fact, my dear Watson, not a word +about anything except Strawn's own theory that a hired gunman from New +York or Chicago—preferably Nita's home town, New York, of +course—sneaked up, crouched in her window, and bumped her off. <i>And</i> +life-size photographs of the big footprints under the window to prove +his theory!... By golly, Cap'n! I clean forgot to tell my former chief +that I'd found Nita's will and note to Lydia! He'll think I deliberately +held out on him.... Well—I can't sit here all day gossiping with you, +'my dear Watson....' Work—much work—to be done; then—Sunday dinner +with poor little Penny."</p> + +<p>Four hours later a tired and dispirited young detective was climbing the +stairs of an ugly, five-story "walk-up" apartment house in which Penny +Crain and her mother had been living since the financial failure and +flight of the husband and father, Roger Crain.</p> + +<p>"Hello, there!" It was Penny's friendly voice, hailing him from the +topmost landing of the steep stairs. "All winded, poor thing?"</p> + +<p>His tired, unhappy eyes drank her in—the freshness and sweetness of a +domestic Penny, so different from the thorny little office Penny who +prided herself on her efficiency as secretary to the district +attorney.... Penny in flowered voile, with a saucy, ruffled white +apron.... But there were purplish shadows under her brown eyes, and her +gayety lasted only until he had reached her side.</p> + +<p>"Sh-h-h!—Have they found Ralph?" she whispered anxiously.</p> + +<p>He could only answer "No," and he almost choked on the word.</p> + +<p>"Mother's all of a twitter at my having a detective to dinner," she +whispered, trying to be gay again. "She fancies you'll be wearing size +11 shoes and a 'six-shooter' at your belt—Yes, Mother! It's Mr. +Dundee!"</p> + +<p>She did not look "all of a twitter," this pretty but rather faded +middle-aged little mother of Penny's. A gentle dignity and patient +sadness, which Dundee was sure were habitual to her, lay in the faded +blue eyes and upon the soft, sweet mouth....</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Crain was ushering him into the living room, and its charm made +him forget for the moment that the Crains were to be pitied, because of +their "come-down" in life. For every piece of furniture seemed to be +authentic early American, and the hooked rugs and fine, brocaded damasks +allied themselves with the fine old furniture to defeat the ugliness +with which the Maple Court Apartments' architect had been fiercely +determined to punish its tenants.</p> + +<p>"'Scuse me! Gotta dish up!" Penny flung over her shoulder as she ran +away and left him alone with her mother.</p> + +<p>Dundee liked Mrs. Crain for making no excuses about a maid they could +not afford, liked the way she settled into a lovely, ancient +rocking-chair and set herself to entertain him while her daughter made +ready the dinner.</p> + +<p>Not a word was said about the horrible tragedy which had occurred the +day before in the house which had once been her home. They talked of +Penny's work, and the little gentlewoman listened eagerly, with only the +faintest of sighs, as Dundee humorously described Penny's fierce +efficiency and District Attorney Sanderson's keen delight in her work.</p> + +<p>"Bill Sanderson is a nice boy," the woman of perhaps 48 said of +Hamilton's 35-year-old district attorney. "It is nice for Penny to work +with an old friend of the family, or was—until—"</p> + +<p>And that was the nearest she came to mentioning the murder before Penny +summoned them to the little dining room.</p> + +<p>Because Penny was watching him and was obviously proud of her skill as a +cook—skill recently acquired, he was sure—Dundee ate as heartily as +his carefully concealed depression would permit. There was a beautifully +browned two-rib roast of beef, pan-browned potatoes, new peas, +escalloped tomatoes, and, for dessert, a gelatine pudding which Penny +proudly announced was "Spanish cream," the secret of which she had +mastered only that morning.</p> + +<p>"I was up almost at dawn to make it, so that it would 'set' in time," +she told him, and by the quiver of her lip Dundee knew that it was not +Spanish cream which had got her up....</p> + +<p>"I'm going to help wash dishes," he announced firmly, and Penny, with a +quick intake of breath, agreed.</p> + +<p>"Hadn't you better take a nap, Mother?" she added a minute later, as +Mrs. Crain, with a slight flush on her faded cheeks, began to stack the +dessert dishes. "You mustn't lay a hand on these dishes, or Bonnie and I +will have our dishwashing picnic spoiled.... Run along now. You need +sleep, dear."</p> + +<p>"Not any more than you do, poor baby!" Mrs. Crain quavered, and then +hurried out of the room, since gentlewomen do not weep before strangers.</p> + +<p>"I called you 'Bonnie' so Mother would know we are really friends," +Penny explained, her cheeks red, as she preceded him through the +swinging door into the miniature kitchen.</p> + +<p>"You'll stick to that—being friends, I mean, no matter what happens, +won't you, Penny?" Dundee said in a low voice, setting the fragile +crystal dishes he carried upon the porcelain drainboard of the sink.</p> + +<p>"I knew you had something bad to tell me.... It's about—Ralph, I +suppose?" Her husky voice was scarcely audible above the rush of hot +water into the dishpan. "You'd better tell me straight off, Bonnie. I'm +not a very patient person.... Are they going to arrest Ralph when they +find him? There wasn't a word in the paper about him this morning—"</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid they are, Penny," Dundee told her miserably. "Captain Strawn +has a warrant ready, but of course—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, you don't have to tell me you hope Ralph isn't guilty!" she cut in +with sudden passionate vehemence. "Don't <i>I</i> know he couldn't have done +it? They always arrest the wrong person first, the blundering idiots—"</p> + +<p>It was the thorny Penny again, the Penny with glittering eyes which +matched her nickname. But Dundee felt better able to cope with this +Penny....</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid I'm the chief idiot, but you must believe that I'm sorry it +should be a friend of yours," he told her, and reached for the plate she +had rinsed of its suds under the hot water tap.</p> + +<p>"Shoot the works!" she commanded, with hard flippancy. "Of course I +might have known that Captain Strawn's theory about a gunman was just +dust in our eyes, and that only a miracle could keep you from fastening +on poor Ralph, since he and the gun are both missing.... Naturally it +wouldn't occur to you that it might be an outsider, someone who had +followed Nita and her lover, Sprague, from New York, to kill her for +having left him for Sprague.... Oh, no! Certainly not!" she gibed, to +keep from bursting into tears.</p> + +<p>"An outsider would hardly have had access to Judge Marshall's pistol and +Maxim silencer," he reminded her. "And Captain Strawn received a wire +from a ballistics expert in Chicago this morning, confirming our +conviction that the same gun which fired the bullets against Judge +Marshall's target fired the bullet which killed Nita Selim.... You've +washed that plate long enough. Let me dry it now.... And there are other +things, Penny—"</p> + +<p>"Such as—" she challenged in her angry, husky contralto.</p> + +<p>"Sprague admitted to me this morning, after I had confronted him with +proofs, that he sometimes slept in the upstairs bedroom—"</p> + +<p>"I told you they were lovers!" Penny interrupted.</p> + +<p>"—and that he slept there Friday night, after he and Nita had +quarreled. He still contends that the row was over that +movie-of-Hamilton business," Dundee went on, as if she had not spoken. +"He admitted also that Nita had told him to take his things away when he +left Saturday morning, but he says it was only because she didn't want +Ralph Hammond to find a man's belongings there if he had occasion to go +into the upstairs rooms in making his estimates for the finishing-up of +the other side. But he contends, and Lydia Carr, whom I also saw again +this morning, supports him in it, that he stayed in the house +occasionally when Nita was particularly nervous about being alone, and +that they were <i>not</i> lovers."</p> + +<p>"Pooh!... Don't wipe the flowers off that plate. Here's another."</p> + +<p>"I'm inclined to say 'Pooh!', too, Penny," Dundee assured her, "but +Tracey Miles told me last night when he came to get Lydia that Nita +really seemed to be in love with Ralph—part of the time, at least."</p> + +<p>"Nita thought enough of Dexter Sprague to send for him to come down +here, and to root her head off for him to get the job of making the +movie," Penny reminded him fiercely, making a great splashing in the +dishpan.</p> + +<p>"Then—<i>you</i> don't think she was in love with Ralph?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>I don't know</i>!" the girl cried. "I thought so sometimes—had the +grace to hope so, anyway, since Ralph was so crazy about her."</p> + +<p>"That's the point, Penny," Dundee told her gently. "Everyone I've talked +to this morning, including Sprague, seems sure that Ralph Hammond was +mad about Nita Selim."</p> + +<p>"So of course he would kill her!" Penny scoffed bitterly.</p> + +<p>"Yes, Penny—when he discovered Sprague's easily-recognized cravats +draped over the mirror frame in a bedroom in Nita's house.... For they +were there to be seen when Ralph went into that bedroom yesterday +morning."</p> + +<p>"How do you know he saw them?"</p> + +<p>"Because he left this behind him," Dundee admitted reluctantly, and +wiped his hands before drawing an initialed silver pencil from his +breast pocket. "I found it under the edge of the bed. The initials are +R. H."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I recognize it," Penny admitted, turning sharply away. "I gave it +to him myself, for a Christmas present. I thought I could afford to give +silver pencils away then. Dad hadn't bolted yet—" She crooked an elbow +and leaned her face against it for a moment. Then she flung up her brown +bobbed head defiantly. "Well?"</p> + +<p>"Ralph must have been—well, in a pretty bad way, since he loved Nita +and wanted to—marry her," Dundee persisted painfully. "Remember that +Polly Beale found him still there when she stopped to offer Nita a lift +to Breakaway Inn. It is not hard to imagine what took place. We <i>know</i> +that Polly curtly cancelled her luncheon engagement with Nita and the +rest of you, and went into town with Ralph, after making sure that Clive +would join them. I saw young Hammond myself for an instant, without +knowing who he was, and I remember now thinking that he looked far too +ill to eat. I was lunching at the Stuart House myself when they came +into the dining room, you know."</p> + +<p>"Plenty to hang him on, I see!" Penny cried furiously.</p> + +<p>"There's a little more, Penny," Dundee went on. "Polly Beale and Clive +Hammond were mortally afraid that Ralph <i>would</i> come to the cocktail +party! I'm sure Clive made Ralph promise to stay away, and that both +Clive and Polly did not trust him to keep his promise. That is why, I am +sure, Clive beckoned Polly to join him in the solarium, without entering +the living room to speak to Nita. You remember they said they stayed +there all during the playing of—"</p> + +<p>"If you call it the 'death hand' again, I'll scream!"</p> + +<p>"All right.... They stayed there until Karen discovered the murder. I am +sure they chose that place because of its many windows—they could watch +for Ralph's car, dash out and head him off. Take him away by force, if +necessary, to keep him from making a scene. I believe they knew he had +murder in his heart, and that he would find a way to get a gun—"</p> + +<p>"Have you also found out that he stole Hugo's gun yesterday?"</p> + +<p>"I have found that it was possible for him to do so," Dundee said +slowly. "The butler was off for the afternoon until six o'clock. There +was no one in the house but the nursemaid and the-three-months-old +baby."</p> + +<p>"Well? And I suppose you think Clive and Polly didn't have a chance to +head Ralph off, as you say, but that they did see him running away after +he killed her?" Her voice was still brittle with anger, but there were +indecision and fear in it, too.</p> + +<p>"No," Dundee replied. "I don't think they saw him. I feel pretty sure he +came into the house by the back way, and through the back hall into +Nita's room. He must have known Clive and Polly would be on the lookout +for him.... At any rate, I have proof that whoever shot Nita from in +front of that window near the porch door fled toward the back hall."</p> + +<p>And he told her of the big bronze lamp, whose bulb had been broken, +reminding her of its place at the head of the chaise longue which was +set between the two west windows.</p> + +<p>"That was the 'bang or bump' Flora Miles heard while she was hiding in +the closet," he explained. "I suppose Flora has told all of you about +it?... I thought so. Muffled as she was in the closet, it is unlikely +that she could have heard Nita's frantic whisperings to Ralph.... I +doubt if he spoke at all. Nita must have been sure he was about to leave +by the porch door—"</p> + +<p>Dimly there came the ring of the telephone. With a curt word, Penny +excused herself to answer it. Dundee went on polishing glasses with a +fresh towel....</p> + +<p>"Bonnie!" Penny was coming back, walking like a somnambulist, her brown +eyes wide and fixed. "That was—Ralph!... <i>And he doesn't even know Nita +is dead!</i>"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_SIXTEEN" id="CHAPTER_SIXTEEN"></a>CHAPTER SIXTEEN</h2> + + +<p>"Of course I recognized his voice instantly when he said, 'That you, +Penny?' and it's a wonder I didn't scream," said Penny Crain, fighting +her way up through dazed bewilderment to explain in detail, in answer to +Dundee's pelting questions. "I said, 'Of course, Ralph.... Where <i>have</i> +you been?...' And <i>he</i> said, in that coaxing, teasing voice of his that +I know so well: 'Peeved, Penny?... I don't blame you, honey. You really +ought not to let me come over and explain why I stood you up last night, +but you will, won't you?... Ni-i-ze Penny!...' That's exactly how he +talked, Bonnie Dundee! Exactly! <i>Oh, don't you see he couldn't know that +Nita is dead?</i>"</p> + +<p>"Did you ask him where he was?" Dundee asked finally.</p> + +<p>"No. I just told him to come on over, and he said I could depend on it +that he wouldn't waste any time.... Oh, Bonnie! What shall we <i>do</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Listen, Penny!" Dundee urged rapidly. "You must realize that I've got +to see and hear, but I don't want Ralph Hammond to see <i>me</i> until after +he's had a talk with you. Will you let me eavesdrop behind these +portieres?... I know it's a beastly thing to do, but—"</p> + +<p>Penny agreed at last, and within ten minutes after that amazing +telephone call Dundee, from behind the portieres that separated the +dining and living room, heard Penny greeting her visitor in the little +foyer. She had played fair; had not gone out into the hall to whisper a +warning—if any warning was needed.</p> + +<p>He had seen Ralph Hammond enter the dining room of the Stuart House the +day before, in company with Clive Hammond and Polly Beale, when the +three had been strangers to him; but Dundee told himself now that he +would hardly have recognized the young man whom Penny was preceding into +her living room. The Ralph Hammond of Saturday had had a white, drawn +face and sick eyes. But this boy....</p> + +<p>Like his older brother, Clive, Ralph Hammond had dark-red, curling hair. +But unlike his brother's, his eyes were a wide, candid hazel—the green +iris thickly flecked with brown. A little shorter than Clive, a trifle +more slender. But that which held the detective's eyes was something +less tangible but at once more evident than superlative masculine good +looks. It was a sort of shy joyousness and buoyance, which flushed the +tan of his cheeks, sang in his voice, made his eyes almost unbearably +bright....</p> + +<p>Before Penny Crain, very pale and quiet, could sink into the chair she +was groping toward, Ralph Hammond was at her side, one arm going out to +encircle her shoulders.</p> + +<p>"Don't look like that, Penny!" Dundee heard him plead, his voice +suddenly humble. "You've every right to be sore at me, honey, but please +don't be. I know I've been an awful cad these last few weeks, but I'm +myself again. I'm cured now, Penny—"</p> + +<p>"Wait, Ralph!" Penny protested faintly, holding back as he would have +hugged her hard against his breast. "What about—Nita?"</p> + +<p>Dundee saw the young man's face go darkly red, but heard him answer +almost steadily: "I hoped you'd understand without making me put it into +words, honey.... I'm cured of—Nita. I can't express it any other way +except to say I was sick, and now I'm cured—"</p> + +<p>"You mean—" Penny faltered, but with a swift, imploring glance toward +Dundee, "—you don't love Nita any more? You can't deny you were +terribly in love with her, Ralph. Lois told us—told <i>me</i> last night +that Nita had told her in strictest confidence that she had promised to +marry you, just Thursday night—"</p> + +<p>The boy's face was very pale as he dropped his hands from Penny's +shoulders, but Dundee, from behind the portieres, was not troubling to +spy for the moment. He was too indignant with Penny for having withheld +from him the vital fact of Nita's engagement to Ralph Hammond....</p> + +<p>"That's true, Penny," Ralph was saying dully. "You have a right to know, +because I'm asking <i>you</i> to marry me now.... I did propose to Nita again +Thursday night, and she did accept me. I confess now I was wild with +happiness—"</p> + +<p>"Why did she refuse you before?" Penny cut in, and Dundee silently +thanked her for asking the question he would have liked to ask himself. +"Was it because she wasn't sure she was in love with you?"</p> + +<p>"You're making it awfully hard for me, honey," the boy protested, +then admitted humbly, "Of course you want to know, and you should +know.... No, she said all along, almost from the first that she loved +me more than I could love her, but that there were—reasons.... <i>Two +reasons</i>, she always said, and once I asked her jealously if they were +both men, but she looked so startled and then laughed so queerly that I +didn't ask again.... Then I thought it might be because I was younger +than she was, though I can't believe she is more than twenty-three or so, +and I'm twenty-five, you know. And once I got cold-sick because I thought +she might still be married, but she said her husband was married again, +and I wasn't to ask questions or worry about him—"</p> + +<p>"But she <i>did</i> accept you Thursday night?" Penny persisted.</p> + +<p>"Yes," the boy admitted, his face darkly flushed again. "This is awfully +hard, honey, but I'll tell you once for all and get it over with.... I +took her to dinner. We drove to Burnsville because she said she was sick +of Hamilton. When we were driving back she suddenly became very +queer—reckless, defiant.... And she asked me if I still wanted to marry +her, and I said I did. I asked her right then to say when, and she said +she'd marry me June first, but she added—" and the boy, to Dundee's +watching eyes, seemed to be genuinely puzzled again by what must have +sounded so odd at the time—"that she'd marry me June first <i>if she +lived to see the day</i>."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" Penny gasped, then, controlling her horror, she asked with what +sounded like real curiosity, "Then what—happened, Ralph? Why do you +propose to <i>her</i> on Thursday and to <i>me</i> on—on Sunday?"</p> + +<p>"A gorgeous actress sacrificed to the typewriter," Dundee told himself, +as he waited for Ralph Hammond's reluctant reply.</p> + +<p>"Can't we forget it, honey?... You do love me a little, don't you? Can't +you take my word for it that—I'm cured now—forever?"</p> + +<p>Penny's hands went up to cover her face, and Dundee had the grace to +feel very sorry indeed for her—sorry even if she intended to give her +promise to Ralph Hammond, as a sick feeling in his stomach prophesied +that she was about to do....</p> + +<p>"How can I know you're really—cured, if I don't know what cured you?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose you're right," the boy admitted miserably. "There's no need +to ask you not to tell anyone else. Although I don't want to see her +again ever—. Why, Penny, I wouldn't even tell Polly and Clive +yesterday, after it happened, though Polly guessed and went upstairs—. +I tried to keep her back—."</p> + +<p>"I don't—quite understand, Ralph," Penny interrupted. "You mean +something happened when you were at Nita's house yesterday morning?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Judge Marshall had promised Nita to have the unfinished half of +the top story turned into a maid's bedroom and bath and a guest bedroom +and bath. Clive let me go to make the estimates. Of course I was glad of +the chance to see Nita again—I hadn't been with her since Thursday +night. But she had to take Lydia in for a dentist's appointment, and +they left me alone in the house. I had to go into the finished half to +make some measurements, and in the bedroom I found—oh, God!" he +groaned, and pressed a fist against his trembling mouth.</p> + +<p>"You found that Dexter Sprague was staying there, was using the bedroom +that used to be mine—didn't you?" Penny helped him at last, in +desperation.</p> + +<p>"How did you know?" The boy stared at the girl blankly for a moment, +then seemed to crumple as if from a new blow. "I suppose it was common +gossip that Nita and Sprague were lovers, and I was the only one she +fooled!... My God! To think all of you would stand by and let me <i>marry</i> +her—a cheap little gold-digger from Broadway, living with a cheap +four-flusher she couldn't get along without and had to send for—"</p> + +<p>"Did you—want to kill her, Ralph?" Penny whispered, touching one of his +knotted fists with a trembling hand.</p> + +<p>"Kill her?... Good Lord, <i>no</i>!" the boy flung at her violently. "I'm not +such an ass as that! You girls are all alike! Polly had so little sense +as to think I'd want to kill Nita and Sprague both! She couldn't see, +and neither could Clive, that all I wanted was to get away from +everybody and get so drunk I could forget what a fool I'd been—"</p> + +<p>"What <i>did</i> you do, Ralph?" Penny asked urgently.</p> + +<p>"Why, I got drunk, of course," the boy answered, as if surprised at her +persistence. "Darling, you wouldn't believe me if I told you how much +rot-gut Scotch it took to put me under, but that filthy bootlegging +hotel clerk would have charged me twice what he did for the stuff if he +had known how much good it would do me."</p> + +<p>"Hotel?" Penny snatched at the vital word. "Where did you go to get +drunk, Ralph?"</p> + +<p>"I never realized before you had so much curiosity, honey," the boy +grinned at her. "After I shook Clive—Polly went on to Nita's bridge +party, because she couldn't throw her down at the last minute—I +wandered around till I came to the Railroad Men's Hotel, down on State +Street, you know, the other side of the tracks. It's a miserable dump, +but I sort of hankered for a place to hide in that was as miserable and +cheap as I felt—"</p> + +<p>"Did you register under your own name?"</p> + +<p>"Ashamed of me, Penny?... No, I registered under my first two +names—Ralph Edwards. And the rat-faced, filthy little hotel clerk +turned out to be a bootlegger.... Well, when I woke up about eleven this +morning I give you my word I wasn't sick and headachy, though God knows +I'd drunk enough to put me out for a week.... Penny, I woke up +feeling—well, I can't explain it but to say I felt light and new +and—and clean.... All washed-up! At first I thought my heart was +empty—it felt so free of pain. But as I lay there thanking God that +<i>that was that</i>, I found my heart wasn't empty at all. It was brimming +full of love—Gosh, honey! I sound like a Laura Jean Libbey hero, don't +I?... But before I rang you from the lunch room where I ate breakfast I +wrote Nita a special delivery note, telling her it was all off. I had to +be free actually, before I could ask you.... You <i>will</i> marry me, won't +you, Penny honey?... I knew this morning I had never really loved anyone +else—"</p> + +<p>Penelope Crain remained rigid for a moment, then very slowly she laid +both her hands on his head, for he had knelt and buried his face against +her skirt. But as she spoke, her brown eyes, enormous in her white face, +were upon Dundee, who had stepped silently from behind the portieres.</p> + +<p>"Yes. I'll marry you, Ralph!... You may come in now, Mr. Dundee!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_SEVENTEEN" id="CHAPTER_SEVENTEEN"></a>CHAPTER SEVENTEEN</h2> + + +<p>It was nearly nine o'clock Monday morning, and Special Investigator +Dundee sat alone in the district attorney's office, impatiently awaiting +Sanderson's arrival. Coroner Price, with the approval of Captain Strawn +of the Homicide Squad, had set the inquest into the murder of Juanita +Leigh Selim for ten o'clock, and there was much that Dundee wished to +say to the district attorney before that hour arrived.</p> + +<p>When the thoroughly tired and dispirited young detective had returned to +his apartment late Sunday afternoon, after having seen Ralph Hammond +completely exonerated of any possible complicity in the murder of Nita +Selim, he had found a telegram from the district attorney, filed in +Chicago:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"CALLED CHICAGO SERIOUS ILLNESS OF MOTHER STOP RETURNING HAMILTON +EIGHT TEN MONDAY MORNING STOP SEE BY PAPERS YOU ARE ON SELIM JOB +STOP GOOD BUT WATCH YOUR STEP—SANDERSON"</p></div> + +<p>Well—and Dundee grinned ruefully—he had been on the job all right, but +would Sanderson consider that he had "watched his step"? At any rate, he +had been thorough, he congratulated himself, as he weighed the big +manilla envelope containing his own transcription of the copious +shorthand notes he had taken during the first hours of the +investigation. A smaller envelope held Nita's tell-tale checkbook, her +amazing last will and testament, and the still more startling note she +had written to Lydia Carr. The last two Dundee had retrieved from +Carraway only this morning, after having submitted them to the +fingerprint expert on Sunday.</p> + +<p>Carraway's report had rather dashed him at first, for it proved that no +other hands than Nita's—and his own, of course—had touched either +envelope or contents. But he was content now to believe that Nita +herself had unsealed the envelope she had inscribed, "To Be Opened in +Case of My Death".... Why?... Had she been moved by an impulse to give a +clue to the identity of the person of whom she stood in fear, but had +stifled the impulse?</p> + +<p>Strawn had said, too, that the little rosewood desk had been in a fairly +orderly condition, before his big, official hands had clawed through it +in search of a clue or the gun itself.... Well, Strawn had been properly +chagrined when Dundee had produced the will and note....</p> + +<p>"Why did she stick it away in a pack of new envelopes, if she wanted it +to be found?" Strawn had demanded irritably, and had not been appeased +by Dundee's suggestion: "Because she did not want Lydia, in dusting the +desk, to see it and be alarmed."</p> + +<p>Yes, he had been busy enough, but what, actually, had he to show for his +industry? He had worked up three good cases—the first against Lydia +Carr, the second against Dexter Sprague, and the third against Ralph +Hammond—only to have them knocked to pieces almost as fast as he had +conceived them.... Of course Lydia Carr might be lying to give Sprague +an alibi, but Dundee was convinced that she was telling the truth and +that she hated Sprague too much to fake an alibi for him.... Of course +there was always Judge Marshall, but—</p> + +<p>Through the closed door came sounds which Dundee presently identified as +connected with Penny Crain's arrival—the emphatic click of her heels; +the quick opening and shutting of desk drawers....</p> + +<p>The down-hearted young detective debated the question of taking his +perplexities out to her, but decided against it. She probably wanted to +hear no more of his theories, was undoubtedly burning with righteous +indignation against him because of Ralph Hammond.... Did she still +consider herself engaged to Ralph, in spite of the fact that young +Hammond had gallantly insisted upon releasing her from her promise as +soon as he suspected that it had been given merely to prove her faith in +his innocence?</p> + +<p>It was a decidedly unhappy young detective whom Sanderson greeted upon +his arrival at nine o'clock.</p> + +<p>The new district attorney, who had held office since November, was a +big, good-natured, tolerant man, who looked younger than his 35 years +because of his freckles and his always rumpled mop of sandy hair. But +those who sought to take advantage of his good nature in the courtroom +found themselves up against as keen a lawyer and prosecutor as could be +found in the whole state, or even in the Middle West.</p> + +<p>"Well, boy!" he greeted Dundee genially but with an undertone of +solemnity in his rich, jury-swaying baritone. "Looks like we've got a +sensational murder on our hands. It's not every day Hamilton can rate a +headline like 'BROADWAY BELLE MURDERED AT BRIDGE'—to quote a Chicago +paper.... But I'm afraid there's not enough mystery in it to suit your +tastes."</p> + +<p>Dundee grinned wryly. "I've been pretty down in the mouth all morning +because there's a little too much mystery, chief."</p> + +<p>"Fairly open-and-shut, isn't it?" Sanderson asked, obviously surprised. +"New York gets too hot for this Selim baby—probably mixed up with some +racketeer, racketeers being the favorite boy-friends of 'Broadway +belles', if one can believe the tabloids. Lois Dunlap offers her a job +to organize a Little Theater in Hamilton—which the fair Nita would +certainly have described as a hick town and which she wouldn't have been +found dead in if she could have helped it—" and the district attorney +grinned at his own witticism, "—but Broadway Nita jumps at it. Her +racketeer sweetie has a long arm, however, and Nita gets hers. Justly +enough, probably, but I wish to the Lord she had chosen some other town +to hide in. Lois Dunlap is the finest woman in Hamilton, but she's too +damned promiscuous in her friendships. As it is now, some of the best +friends I have in the world are mixed up in this mess, even if it is +only as innocent victims of circumstance—"</p> + +<p>Until then Dundee had let his chief express his pent-up convictions +without interruption, and indeed Sanderson's courtroom training had +fitted him admirably for long speeches. But he could keep silent no +longer.</p> + +<p>"That is what has been worrying me, chief," he interrupted. "Captain +Strawn has given the papers very little real information, but the truth +is I am afraid <i>one</i> of your friends was not an innocent victim of +circumstance."</p> + +<p>District Attorney Sanderson sat down abruptly in the swivel chair at his +desk. "Just what do you mean, Dundee?"</p> + +<p>"I mean I am convinced that one of Mrs. Selim's <i>guests</i> was her +murderer, but I'd like to tell you the whole story, and let you judge +for yourself."</p> + +<p>"My God!" Sanderson ejaculated. Slowly he drew out a handkerchief and +mopped his freckled brow. "If I hadn't had a good many years of +experience with criminals, Dundee, I'd say it is obvious on the face of +it that none of those four men—Judge Marshall, Tracey Miles, Johnny +Drake, Clive Hammond—could have committed such a cheap, sensational +crime as murdering a hostess during a bridge game.... Not that I haven't +wanted to commit murder myself over many a game of bridge," he added, +with the irrepressible humor for which he was famous. Then he groaned, +the rueful twinkle still in his eye: "I'm afraid we're in for a lot of +gruesome kidding. Why, last night, in the club car of my train, three +tables of bridge players could scarcely play a hand for wisecracking +about the dangers of being dummy!... Well, boy, now that I've talked +myself past the worst shock, suppose you give me the low-down. But I +warn you I'm going to take a powerful lot of convincing."</p> + +<p>Painstakingly, and in the greatest detail, Dundee told the whole story, +beginning with his arrival Saturday evening at the Selim house, +including the ghastly replaying of the "death hand at bridge"—a phrase, +by the way, which the prosecutor instantly adopted—and ending with +Ralph Hammond's establishing of an alibi, to the entire satisfaction of +Captain Strawn, as well as of Dundee himself. He was interrupted +frequently of course, scoffingly at first, then with deepening solemnity +and respect on the part of the district attorney.</p> + +<p>"Let me see the plan of the house again," he said, when Dundee had +finished. "Also that table you've worked up showing the approximate time +and order of arrival of the four men.... Thanks!... Hmm!... Hmm!"</p> + +<p>"You see, sir," Dundee repeated at last, "the list of possible suspects +includes Lydia Carr, Dexter Sprague, John C. Drake, Judge Marshall, +Polly Beale, Flora Miles, Janet Raymond, Clive Hammond—"</p> + +<p>"But Polly and Clive were in the solarium <i>together</i> all the time!" +Sanderson objected.</p> + +<p>"So they said," Dundee agreed. "But it is a very short trip from the +solarium by way of the side porch into Nita's bedroom. And either Polly +Beale or Clive Hammond could have made that trip, on the pretext of +speaking to Nita about Ralph!... Motive: murder to end blackmail. +Naturally such a theory would not include <i>both</i> of them, but if <i>one of +them</i> was being blackmailed and made use of the pretext of warning Nita +of Ralph's overwrought condition—"</p> + +<p>"Sprague's your man!" Sanderson interrupted with relief. "Motive: +jealousy because Nita was ditching him to marry Ralph.... As for the gun +and silencer, it seems pretty clear to me that Nita herself stole it +from Judge Marshall, and that Sprague got it away from her. You say the +maid, Lydia, went upstairs to tell Sprague he had to pack his things and +take them away—for good!... Very well! Sprague goes down the backstairs +with the gun in his pocket, through the back hall into Nita's bedroom, +shoots her, bumps into the lamp, goes out by the back door, and comes +around front to join the party.... You say yourself he has admitted to +everything but the trip to Nita's room and the shooting—even to +sneaking back to get his bag, which I believe also contained the gun +until he had a chance to dispose of it on his way to his hotel in +Hamilton."</p> + +<p>Dundee shook his head. "I'd like to agree, chief, but I believe Lydia is +telling the truth. She says she was in the upstairs bedroom with Sprague +and remained behind only two or three minutes at most, to put his +shaving kit into the packed bag, and to clean up the bathroom basin. On +her way down the backstairs she says she heard Lois Dunlap's second ring +and went to answer it. Sprague and Janet Raymond, with whom Janet says +he stopped to talk a minute on the front porch, were in the dining room +<i>before</i> Lydia entered it.... I'm convinced Lydia hates Sprague and +would be glad to believe him guilty.... No, Mr. Sanderson, I don't +believe Sprague did it, but I do believe it was Sprague's revenge that +Nita was afraid of when she made her will Friday night. Naturally she +figured she'd have time to tell the person she was blackmailing that she +was through with him—or her, but I believe Sprague and Nita were +lovers, even partners in blackmail, and that she feared he would kill +her when he knew she was going to marry Ralph Hammond and give up their +source of income."</p> + +<p>Sanderson considered for a long minute, pulling at his full lower lip. +"Well, thank God for those precious footprints Strawn is building on! +Don't think I fail to follow your reasoning that the crime <i>must</i> have +been committed in the bedroom, and not from the window sill, but those +footprints may save us yet, and will certainly get us through the +inquest. You agree, of course, that none of all this you've told me must +even be hinted at during the inquest?... Good! Let's be going. It's +nearly ten."</p> + +<p>Dundee's whole soul revolted at the very thought of the barbaric farce +of an inquest—the small morgue chapel crowded to the doors with +goggle-eyed, blood-loving humanity; the stretcher with its sheeted +corpse; reporters avid of sensation and primed with questions which, if +answered by indiscreet witnesses, would defeat the efforts of police and +district attorney; news photographers with their insatiable cameras +aimed at every person connected with the case in any way.</p> + +<p>Mercifully, this particular inquest upon the body of Juanita Leigh Selim +promised to be quickly over. For Coroner Price, in conference with +Sanderson, Dundee and Captain Strawn, had gladly agreed to call only +those witnesses and extract from them only such information as the +authorities deemed advisable.</p> + +<p>Lydia Carr, whose black veil had defeated the news camera levelled at +her poor scarred face, was the first witness called by Coroner Price, +and she was required for the single purpose of identifying the body as +that of her mistress. To two perfunctory questions—"Have you any +information to give this jury regarding the cause and manner of the +deceased's death?" and "Have you any personal knowledge of the identity +of any person, man or woman, of whom the deceased stood in fear of her +life?"—Lydia answered a flat "No!" and was then dismissed.</p> + +<p>Karen Marshall, looking far too young to be the wife of the elderly +ex-judge, Hugo Marshall, was the second witness called. Dr. Price guided +her gently to a brief recital of her discovery of the dead body of her +hostess, emphasizing only the fact that, so far as she could see, the +bedroom was unoccupied except by the corpse at the time of the +discovery.</p> + +<p>He then handed her the photostatic copy of a blueprint of the ground +floor of the Selim house, with a pencilled ring drawn around the +bedroom. Karen falteringly identified it, as well as the pencil-drawn +furniture, and was immediately dismissed—to the packed rows of +spectators and reporters.</p> + +<p>Dr. Price himself took the stand next and described, in technical terms, +the wound which had caused death and the caliber of the bullet he had +extracted from the dead woman's heart.</p> + +<p>"I find, also, from the autopsy," he concluded, "that the bullet +traveled a downward-slanting path. I should add, moreover, that I have +made exact mathematical calculations, using the position of the body and +of the wound as a basis, and found that a line drawn from the wound, and +extended, at the correct slant, ends at a point 51.8 inches high, upon +the right-hand side of the frame of the window nearest the porch door." +And he obligingly passed the marked blueprint among the jury. When it +was in his own hands again, he added: "It is impossible to state the +exact distance the bullet traveled, more nearly than to say the shot was +fired along the line I have indicated, at a distance of not more than +fifteen feet and not less than ten."</p> + +<p>Captain Strawn rose and was permitted to question the witness:</p> + +<p>"Dr. Price, that blueprint shows that the bedroom is fifteen feet in +width, don't it?"</p> + +<p>"That is correct."</p> + +<p>"Have you also measured the height of that window sill from the floor?"</p> + +<p>"I have," the coroner answered. "The height from floor to sill is 26 +inches."</p> + +<p>"Now, doctor, from your calculations, would it be possible for a man +crouching in the open window to fire a shot along the path you have +calculated?"</p> + +<p>"It would," Dr. Price answered. "But as I have pointed out, it is +impossible for me to say at exactly what distance from the body the shot +was fired."</p> + +<p>But Strawn, of course, was amply satisfied. And so were Dundee and the +district attorney, for it suited their purposes admirably for the public +to be convinced at this time that an intruding gunman had murdered Nita +Selim.</p> + +<p>Captain Strawn, sworn in, told briefly of his being called to the scene +of the crime, of the activities of Carraway, the fingerprint expert, and +of the exhaustive search of his squad of detectives.</p> + +<p>"Did you find any person concealed upon the premises, that is, within +the house itself, or in the garage or on the grounds?" Dr. Price asked.</p> + +<p>"No, sir."</p> + +<p>"Did you or your men discover the weapon with which the deceased was +killed?"</p> + +<p>"No, sir."</p> + +<p>"Did you question all persons in the house at the time of the crime, as +to whether or not a shot had been heard?"</p> + +<p>"I did. The answer in every case was that they heard no shot."</p> + +<p>"And you also questioned every person present in an effort to place +responsibility for the death of Mrs. Selim?"</p> + +<p>"I did. I couldn't find that anyone present had anything to do with it."</p> + +<p>"Who were these persons?" Dr. Price then asked.</p> + +<p>"Judge and Mrs. Hugo Marshall, Mr. and Mrs. Tracey A. Miles, Mr. and +Mrs. John C. Drake, Mrs. Peter Dunlap, Miss Janet Raymond, Miss Polly +Beale, Miss Penelope Crain, Mr. Clive Hammond, Mr. Dexter Sprague—of +New York, and Mrs. Selim's maid, Lydia Carr," Captain Strawn answered +promptly, rolling out the names of Hamilton's elect with sonorous +satisfaction, which obviously had the desired effect in convincing the +jury that not among those proud names, at least, could be found the name +of the murderer.</p> + +<p>"Did you find on the premises any clue which you consider of importance +to this jury?"</p> + +<p>"I did! A bunch of footprints under the window you've been talking +about. Here are life-size photographs of 'em, doctor.... And the rambler +rose vines that climb up the outside of the window had been torn."</p> + +<p>After the photographs had been duly inspected by the jury of six Dr. +Price said: "That is all, and thank you, Captain Strawn.... Mr. Dundee!"</p> + +<p>As had been agreed between the coroner and the district attorney, +Dundee's testimony, after the preliminary questions, was confined to the +offering of Nita Selim's "last will and testament" and the note to +Lydia.</p> + +<p>The reporters, who had obviously feared that nothing new would +eventuate, sat up with startled interest, then their pencils flew, as +Dundee read the two documents, after he had told when and where he had +discovered them. As District Attorney Sanderson had said; "Better give +the press something new to chew on, but for God's sake don't mention +that checkbook of Nita's. It's dynamite, boy—dynamite!"</p> + +<p>While the morgue chapel was still in a buzz of excitement, Dundee was +dismissed, and District Attorney Sanderson requested an adjournment of +the inquest for one week.</p> + +<p>The police were urging the crowd upon its way before it became fully +aware that it had been cheated of the pleasure of hearing, at first +hand, the stories of that fatal bridge and cocktail party from the +guests themselves.</p> + +<p>"Tell the Carr woman I want to speak to her," Sanderson directed Dundee. +"She'll thank you for rescuing her from the reporters."</p> + +<p>As Dundee pushed his way through the jam he heard a reporter earnestly +pleading with Lois Dunlap: "But I'm sure you can remember the cards each +player held in that 'death hand,' Mrs. Dunlap—"</p> + +<p>Cheerfully sure that he could trust Lois Dunlap's discretion and +distaste for publicity, Dundee went on, grinning at the reporter's use +of his own lurid phrase.</p> + +<p>Two minutes later Sanderson, Strawn and Dundee were closeted in Dr. +Price's own office with Lydia Carr.</p> + +<p>"First, Lydia," began Sanderson, "I want to warn you to give the +reporters no information at all regarding the nature or extent of your +mistress' bequest."</p> + +<p>"It was little enough she had, poor girl, beyond her clothes and a few +pieces of jewelry," Lydia answered stubbornly. "Are you going to let me +do what she told me to, in that note?... Not that I hold with burning—"</p> + +<p>"I see no reason why you should not take charge of the body, Lydia, and +arrange it immediately for cremation.... Do you, Captain Strawn?" +Sanderson answered.</p> + +<p>"No, sir. The quicker the better."</p> + +<p>"Then, Lydia, if Captain Strawn will send you out to the Selim house +with one of his boys, you may get the dress described in Mrs. Selim's +note—"</p> + +<p>"And the curls she cut off and had made into switches," Lydia +interrupted. "I can't dress my poor girl's hair in a French roll without +them!"</p> + +<p>"The curls, too," Sanderson agreed. "Now as to the cremation—"</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Miles let me come in early to see about that," Lydia interrupted +again. "They can do it this afternoon, and you don't need to worry about +the expense. I've got money enough of my own to pay my girl's funeral +expenses."</p> + +<p>"Good!" Sanderson applauded. "The will shall be probated as soon as +possible, of course, but it makes it simpler if you will pay the +necessary expenses now."</p> + +<p>"Just a minute, chief," Dundee halted the district attorney as he was +about to leave. "Under the circumstances, I think it highly advisable +that we get pictures of the burial dress. I suggest you have Lydia bring +the things to your office before she lays out the body, and that +Carraway photograph the dress there, from all angles. I should also like +to have a picture of the body after Lydia has finished her services."</p> + +<p>The maid's scarred face flushed a deep, angry red, but she offered no +protest when the district attorney accepted both of Dundee's +suggestions.</p> + +<p>"Then you'll have Carraway with his camera at my office in about an +hour?" Sanderson turned to Captain Strawn. "Let's say twelve o'clock. By +the way, Lydia, you may bring in with you the few pieces of jewelry you +mentioned. I'll keep them safely in my offices until the will is +probated and they are turned over to you."</p> + +<p>"I don't know where she kept them," Lydia answered.</p> + +<p>"<i>What?</i>" exclaimed Bonnie Dundee.</p> + +<p>"I said I don't know where she kept her jewelry," Lydia Carr retorted. +"It wasn't worth much—not a hundred dollars altogether, I'll be bound, +because Nita sold her last diamond not a week before we left New York. +She owed so many bills then that the money she got for directing that +play at the Forsyte School hardly made a dent on them."</p> + +<p>"Do you know whether the jewelry was kept in the house or in a safe +deposit box?" Dundee asked, excitement sharpening his voice.</p> + +<p>"It must have been in the house, because she wore the different pieces +any time she pleased," the maid answered. "I didn't ask no questions, +and I didn't happen to see her get it out or put it away. I didn't ever +do much lady's-maid work for her, like dressing her or fixing her +hair—just kept her clothes and the house in order, and did what little +cooking there was to do—"</p> + +<p>"Her dressing-table?" Dundee prodded. "Her desk?"</p> + +<p>The maid shook her head. "I was always straightening up the drawers in +both her dressing-table and her desk, and she didn't keep the jewelry in +either one of them places."</p> + +<p>"Captain Strawn, when you searched the dressing-table and desk for the +gun or anything of importance, did you have any reason to suspect a +secret drawer in either of them?"</p> + +<p>"No, Bonnie. They're just ordinary factory furniture. I tapped around +for a secret drawer, of course, but there wasn't even any place for +one," Strawn assured him with an indulgent grin.</p> + +<p>"I want to see Penny Crain!" Dundee cried, making for the door.</p> + +<p>"Then you'd better come along to the courthouse with me," Sanderson +called after him. "I sent her back to the office as soon as the inquest +was adjourned."</p> + +<p>The two men passed through the now deserted morgue chapel and almost +bumped into a middle-aged man, obviously of the laboring class in spite +of his slicked-up, Sunday appearance.</p> + +<p>"You're the district attorney, ain't you, sir?" he addressed Sanderson +in a nervous, halting undertone.</p> + +<p>"Yes. What is it?"</p> + +<p>"I come to the inquest to give some information, sir, but it was +adjourned so quick I didn't have time—"</p> + +<p>"Who are you?" Sanderson interrupted impatiently.</p> + +<p>"I'm Rawlins, sir. I worked for the poor lady, Mrs. Selim—gardening one +day a week—"</p> + +<p>"Come to my office!" Sanderson commanded quickly, as a lingering +reporter approached on a run.... "No, no! I'm sorry, Harper," he said +hastily, cutting into the reporter's questions. "Nothing new! You may +say that the police have thrown out a dragnet—" and he grinned at the +trite phrase "—for the gunman who killed Mrs. Selim, and will offer a +reward for the recovery of the weapon—a Colt's .32 equipped with a +Maxim silencer.... Come along, George, and I'll explain just what Mrs. +Sanderson and I have in mind."</p> + +<p>The district attorney and Dundee strode quickly away, and the man, +Rawlins, after a moment of indecision, trotted after them.</p> + +<p>"I don't understand, sir, and my name ain't George. It's Elmer."</p> + +<p>"You don't have to understand anything, except that you're not to answer +any question that any reporter asks you," Sanderson retorted.</p> + +<p>When the trio entered the reception room of the district attorney's +suite in the courthouse Sanderson paused at Penny Crain's desk:</p> + +<p>"Bring in your notebook, Penny. This man has some information he +considers important."</p> + +<p>A minute later Sanderson had begun to question his voluntary but highly +nervous witness.</p> + +<p>"Your name?"</p> + +<p>"It's Elmer Rawlins, like I told you, sir," the man protested, and +flinched as Penny recorded his words in swift shorthand. "It was my wife +as made me come. She said as long as me and her knowed I didn't do +nothing wrong, I'd oughta come forward and tell what I knowed."</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes!" Sanderson encouraged him impatiently. "You say you worked +for Mrs. Selim as gardener one day a week—"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir, but I 'tended to her hot water and her garbage, too—twice a +day it was I had to go and stoke the little laundry heater that heats +the hot water tank in summertime when the steam furnace ain't being +used. I live about a mile beyant the Crain place, that is, the house the +poor lady was killed in—"</p> + +<p>"Did you come to stoke the laundry heater Saturday evening?" Dundee +interrupted. "Excuse me, sir," he turned to the district attorney, "but +this is the first time I've seen this man."</p> + +<p>"No, sir, I didn't stoke it Sat'dy night," Rawlins answered uneasily. +"You see, I was comin' up the road to do my chores at half past six, +like I always do, but before I got to the house I seen a lot of +policemen's cars and motorcycles, and I didn't want to get mixed up in +nothing, so I turned around and went home again. I didn't know what was +up, but when me and the wife went into Hamilton Sat'dy night in our +flivver we seen one of the extries and read about how the poor lady was +murdered. But that ain't what I was gittin' at, sir—"</p> + +<p>"Well, what <i>are</i> you getting at?" Sanderson urged.</p> + +<p>"Well, the extry said the police had found some footprints under the +frontmost of them two side windows to Mis' Selim's bedroom, and went on +to talk about the rose vines being tore, and straight off I said to the +missus, 'Them's <i>my</i> footprints, Minnie'—Minnie's my wife's name—"</p> + +<p>"<i>Your</i> footprints!" Sanderson ejaculated, then shook with silent +laughter. "There goes Strawn's case, Bonnie!" But immediately he was +serious again, as the import of this new evidence came to him. "Tell us +all about it, Rawlins.... When did you make those footprints?"</p> + +<p>"Friday, sir. That's the day I gardened for Mis' Selim.... You see, sir, +the poor little lady told me she was kept awake nights when they was a +high wind, by the rose vines tapping against the windows. Says she, 'I +think they's somebody tryin' to git into my room, Elmer,' and I could +see the poor little thing was mighty nervous anyway, so I didn't waste +no time. I cut away a lot of the rose vine and burned it when I was +burnin' the garbage and papers in the 'cinerator out back."</p> + +<p>"Is that all, Rawlins?" Sanderson asked.</p> + +<p>"'Bout all that 'mounts to anything," the laborer deprecated. "But they +was somethin' else that struck me as a little funny, when I come to +think of it—"</p> + +<p>"Well?" Sanderson prodded, as the man halted uncertainly.</p> + +<p>"Well, it's like I told you, it was my job to burn the papers. That +scar-face maid of Mis' Selim's put everything—garbage and trash—in a +big garbage can outside the back door, and I burnt 'em up. So I was +kinder surprised Sat'dy mornin', when I went to stoke up the laundry +heater, to find somebody'd been meddlin' with my drafts and had let the +fire go clean out. I had to clean out the ashes and build a new fire—"</p> + +<p>"You're trying to say, I suppose, that you could tell by the ashes that +someone had been burning papers in the laundry heater?" Sanderson asked, +with a quick glance at Dundee's tense face.</p> + +<p>"That's right, sir," Rawlins agreed eagerly. "You know what kind of +ashes a mess o' paper makes—layers of white ashes, sir, that kinder +looks like papers yit."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know.... And you found layers of white ashes, which you took +particular pains to clean out?" Sanderson asked bitterly.</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir. So's I could build a new fire—"</p> + +<p>"Did you speak to the maid—ask her if she'd been 'meddlin' with your +drafts'?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir, I did!" the man answered with a trace of the belligerence he +had undoubtedly shown to Lydia. "She said <i>she</i> didn't open no dampers, +claimed the heater was the same as usual when she left Friday night to +go to a movie. So I reckin it was the poor lady herself, burnin' up love +letters, maybe, or some such truck—"</p> + +<p>"You're to keep your 'reckins' to yourself, Rawlins," Sanderson cut in +emphatically. "Remember, now, you're not to tell anybody else what +you've just told me.... If that's all, you can go now, and I'm much +obliged to you. Leave your address with the young lady here. You'll be +needed later, of course."</p> + +<p>The relieved man hurried out of the room on Penny's heels. Sanderson +shrugged, then, when the door had closed, began heavily:</p> + +<p>"It looks like you're right, Bonnie, about that blackmail business. +As the astute Rawlins says, 'love letters, maybe, or some such +truck....' Of course it all fits in with your theory that Nita had made +up her mind to reform, marry Ralph Hammond, and be a very good girl +indeed.... All right! You can have Penny in now. I think I know pretty +well what you're going to ask her. And I may as well tell you that when +Roger Crain skipped town with some securities he was known to possess, he +hadn't got them from a safe deposit box, because he didn't have one," and +Sanderson pressed a button on the edge of his desk....</p> + +<p>"Penny, do you know whether there is a concealed safe in the Selim +house?"</p> + +<p>The girl, startled, began to shake her head, then checked herself. "Not +that I ever saw, or knew of when Dad and Mother and I lived there, +but—" She hesitated, her cheeks turning scarlet.</p> + +<p>"Out with it, Penny!" Sanderson urged, his voice very kind.</p> + +<p>"It's just that, if you really think there's a secret hiding place in +the house, I believe I understand something that puzzled me when it +happened," Penny confessed, her head high. "I was at the Country Club +one night—a Saturday night when the whole crowd is usually there for +the dinner and dance. I'd been dancing with—with Ralph, and when the +music stopped we went out on the porch, where several of our crowd were +sitting. It was—just two or three weeks after—after Dad left town. +Lois wouldn't let me drop out of things.... Anyway, it was dark and I +heard Judge Marshall saying something about 'the simplest and most +ingenious arrangement you ever saw. Of course that's where the rascal +kept his securities—...' I knew they were talking about Dad, from the +way Judge Marshall shut up and changed the subject as soon as he saw +me."</p> + +<p>"Who was on the porch, Penny?" Dundee asked tensely.</p> + +<p>"Why, let's see—Flora, and Johnny Drake, and Clive," she answered +slowly. "I think that was all, besides Judge Marshall. The others hadn't +come out from dancing.... Of course I don't know whether or not it was +some 'arrangement' in the house—"</p> + +<p>"Where are you going, boy?" Sanderson checked Dundee, who was already on +his way to the door.</p> + +<p>"To find that gun, of course!"</p> + +<p>"Well, if it's tucked away in the 'simplest and most ingenious +arrangement you ever saw' it will stay put for a while," Sanderson said. +"Lydia's due here within half an hour, and you don't want to miss her, +do you?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_EIGHTEEN" id="CHAPTER_EIGHTEEN"></a>CHAPTER EIGHTEEN</h2> + + +<p>It was exactly twelve o'clock when Lydia Carr, accompanied by Detective +Collins of the Homicide Squad carrying a small suitcase, arrived at the +district attorney's office.</p> + +<p>"I kept my eye on her every minute of the time, to see that there wasn't +no shenanigans," Collins informed Dundee and Sanderson importantly, +callous to the fact that the maid could hear him. "But I let her bring +along everything she said she needed to lay the body out in.... Was that +right?"</p> + +<p>"Right!" agreed the district attorney, as Dundee opened the suitcase +upon Sanderson's desk.</p> + +<p>The royal blue velvet dress lay on top, neatly folded. Dundee shook out +its folds. It looked remarkably fresh and new, in spite of the years it +had hung in Nita Selim's various clothes closets, preserved because of +God alone knew what tender memories. Perhaps the beautiful little dancer +had intended all those years that it should be her shroud....</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's lovely!" Penny Crain, who was looking on, cried out +involuntarily. "It looks like a French model."</p> + +<p>"It's a copy of a French model. You can see by the label on the back of +the neck," Lydia answered, her one good eye softening for Penny.</p> + +<p>"So it is!" Dundee agreed, and took out his penknife to snip the threads +which fastened the white satin, gold-lettered label to the frock. +"'Pierre Model. Copied by Simonson's—New York City'," he read aloud, +and slipped the little square of satin into the envelope containing the +murdered woman's will. "Well, Penny, I'm glad you like the dress, for +I'm going to ask you to do the mannikin stunt in it as soon as Carraway +arrives with his camera."</p> + +<p>Penny turned very pale, but she said nothing in protest, and Dundee +continued to unpack the suitcase. His masculine hands looked clumsy as +they lifted out the costume slip and miniature "dancing set"—brassiere +and step-ins—all matching, of filmiest white chiffon and lace. His +fingers flinched from contact with the switch of long, silky black +curls....</p> + +<p>"She bought them after we came to Hamilton," Lydia informed him, +pointing to the undergarments. "Them black moiré pumps and them French +stockings are brand new, too—hundred-gauge silk them stockings are, and +never on her feet—"</p> + +<p>"Ready for me?" Carraway had appeared in the doorway, with camera and +tripod.</p> + +<p>"Yes, Carraway.... Just the dress, Penny.... I want full-length +front, back and side views of Miss Crain wearing this dress, +Carraway.... Flashlights, of course. Better take the pictures in Miss +Crain's office," Dundee directed. "You stay here, Lydia. I want to talk +with you while that job is being done."</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir," Lydia answered, and accepted without thanks the chair he +offered.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you have read <i>The Hamilton Morning News</i> today, Lydia?"</p> + +<p>"I have!"</p> + +<p>"May I have that paper, chief?... Thanks!... Now, Lydia, I want you to +read again the paragraphs that are headed 'New York, May 25—' and tell +us if the statements are correct."</p> + +<p>Lydia accepted the paper and her single eye scanned the following lines +obediently:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>New York, May 25 (UP)</p> + +<p>Mrs. Juanita Leigh Selim, who was murdered Saturday afternoon +in Hamilton, ——, was known along Broadway as Nita Leigh, chorus +girl and specialty dancer. Her last known address in New York was +No. — West 54th St., where she had a three-room apartment. +According to the superintendent, E. J. Black, Miss Leigh, as he +knew her, lived there alone except for her maid, Lydia Carr, and +entertained few visitors.</p> + +<p>Irving Wein, publicity director for Altamont Pictures, when +interviewed by a reporter in his rooms at the Cadillac Hotel late +today, said that Nita Leigh had been used for "bits" and as a +dancing "double" for stars in a number of recent pictures, +including "Night Life" and "Boy, Howdy!", both of which have +dancing sequences. Musical comedy programs for the last year carry +her name only once, in the list of "Ladies of the Ensemble" of the +revue, "What of it?"</p> + +<p>Miss Eloise Pendleton, head-mistress of Forsyte-on-the-Hudson, +mentioned in the dispatches from Hamilton, confirms the report that +Mrs. Selim, as she was known there, twice directed the annual +Easter musical comedy presented by that fashionable school for +young ladies, but could add nothing of interest to the facts given +above, beyond asserting that Mrs. Selim had proved to be an +unusually competent and popular director of their amateur +theatricals.</p></div> + +<p>"Yes, that's correct, as far as it goes," Lydia commented, resentment +strong in her harsh voice as she returned the paper to Dundee.</p> + +<p>"Have you anything to add?" Dundee caught her up quickly.</p> + +<p>"No, sir!" Lydia shook her head, her lips in a grim line. Then +resentment burst through: "They don't have to talk like she was a back +number on Broadway, just because she was tired of the stage and going in +for movies!"</p> + +<p>District Attorney Sanderson took her in hand then, pelting her with +questions about Nita's New York "gentlemen friends," but he made no more +headway than Dundee.</p> + +<p>"We <i>know</i> that Nita Selim was afraid of <i>someone</i>!" Sanderson began +again, angrily. "Who was it—someone she'd known in New York, or +somebody in Hamilton?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know!" Lydia told him flatly.</p> + +<p>"But you do know she was living in fear of her life, don't you?" Dundee +interposed.</p> + +<p>"I—well, yes, I suppose she was," Lydia admitted reluctantly. "But I +thought she was just afraid to live out there in that lonesome house +away off at the end of nowhere."</p> + +<p>"Was she afraid of Dexter Sprague?" Sanderson shot at her.</p> + +<p>"Would she have asked him to stay all night if she'd been afraid of +<i>him</i>?" Lydia demanded scornfully. "And would she have asked <i>him</i> to +rig up a bell from her bedroom to mine, if it was <i>him</i> she was afraid +of?"</p> + +<p>"A bell?" Dundee echoed.</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir. It has a contraption under the rug, right beside her bed, +so's she could step on it and it would ring in my room, which was +underneath hers.... Mr. Sprague bought the wire and stuff, bored a hole +through her bedroom floor, and fixed it all hisself."</p> + +<p>"Did anyone know Nita had taken this precaution to protect herself?" +Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"Mis' Lois did, because one day not long ago she stepped on it +accidentally, when she was in Nita's room. The bell buzzed in my room +and I come up to answer it, and Nita explained it to Mis' Lois."</p> + +<p>So that was why no attempt had been made to murder Nita while she +slept!—Dundee told himself triumphantly. For of course it was more than +probable that Lois Dunlap had innocently spread the news of Nita's +nervousness and her ingenious method of summoning help instantly....</p> + +<p>There was a knock at the door.</p> + +<p>"Come in!... All finished, Carraway?... Fine! I'd like to see the prints +as soon as possible, and now I'd like you to go over to the morgue with +Lydia, and wait there until she has the body dressed in these clothes, +and the hair done according to the instructions Mrs. Selim left.... I'll +leave the posing to you, but I want a full-length picture as well as a +head portrait."</p> + +<p>As Lydia's work-roughened, knuckly hands were returning the funeral +clothes to the suitcase, another question occurred to Dundee:</p> + +<p>"Lydia, did you know, before I questioned you at the Miles home +yesterday, that Sprague had returned for that bag he had left in the +bedroom upstairs?"</p> + +<p>Her scarred cheek flushed livid, but the maid answered with defiant +honesty: "Yes, I did! He spoke to me through my basement window just +before you come running down to talk to me. He'd sneaked back, but he +could tell from seeing your car outside that you was there, and he asked +me to go up and get the bag and set it outside the kitchen door for him. +I said I wouldn't do it; it was too risky."</p> + +<p>"Then you were pretending to be asleep when I entered your room?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I was! But I <i>had</i> been asleep before Mr. Sprague called me. While +you was ding-donging at me about Nita burning my face I heard Mr. +Sprague open the kitchen door. He had a key Nita had give him, so's he +could slip in unnoticed if he happened to come when Nita had other +company. He didn't hardly make any noise at all, but I heard it, because +I was listening for it.... You'd left the door to the basement stairs +open, and my door, too, so I heard him."</p> + +<p>"Did you hear him come down?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I did! There's a board on the backstairs that squeaks, and I heard +it plain, while you was still at me, hammer and tongs," Lydia answered. +"He was in the house not more'n two minutes, all told, and when I +figured he was safely out, I went upstairs with you to show you the +presents I'd give Nita after she burnt me, to prove I'd forgive her."</p> + +<p>"Why didn't you tell me, Lydia? Why did you protect Sprague? I know you +don't like him," Dundee puzzled.</p> + +<p>"I wasn't thinking about him," Lydia told him flatly. "I was thinking +about Nita. I didn't want any scandal on her, and I knew what the police +and the newspapers would say if they found out Mr. Sprague had been +staying all night sometimes."</p> + +<p>"Are you prepared to swear Sprague had time to do nothing but go up to +the bedroom and get his bag?"</p> + +<p>"I am!"</p> + +<p>When Lydia and Carraway had left together, Dundee rose and addressed the +district attorney:</p> + +<p>"I'm going out to the Selim house now, to look for that secret hiding +place where Roger Crain kept his securities, and which Judge Marshall +evidently displayed to Nita, as one of the charms of the house when she +'rented' it."</p> + +<p>"Why not simply telephone Judge Marshall and ask him where and what it +is?" Sanderson asked reasonably.</p> + +<p>"Do you think he'd tell?" Dundee retorted. "The old boy's no fool. Even +if he didn't kill Nita himself and hide the gun there, my question would +throw him into a panic of fear lest one of his best friends had done +just that.... No, I'll find it myself, if it's all right with you!"</p> + +<p>But after a solid hour of hard and fruitless work, Bonnie Dundee was +forced to admit ruefully to himself that his parting words to the +district attorney might have been the youthful and empty boast that +Sanderson had evidently considered them.</p> + +<p>For nowhere in the house Roger Crain had built and in which Nita Selim +had been murdered could the detective find anything remotely resembling +a concealed safe. The two plainclothesmen whom Strawn had detailed to +guard the house and to continue the search for the missing gun and +silencer looked on with unconcealed amusement as Dundee tapped walls, +floors and ceilings in a house that seemed to be exceptionally free of +architectural eccentricities.</p> + +<p>Finally Dundee grew tired of their ribald comments and curtly ordered +them to make a new and exhaustive search of the unused portions of the +basement—those dark earth banks, with their overhead networks of water +and drain pipes, heavily insulated cables of electric wires, cobwebby +rafters and rough shelves holding empty fruit jars and liquor +bottles—which contrasted sharply with the neatly ceiled and +cement-floored space devoted to furnace, laundry and maid's room. Dundee +himself had given those regions only a cursory inspection with his +flashlight, for it was highly improbable that Nita Selim would have made +use of a secret hiding place for her jewelry and valuable papers, if +that hiding place was located in such dark, awesome surroundings.</p> + +<p>No. The hiding place, if it really existed—and it must exist—had been +within easy reach of Nita dressing and bedecking herself for a party, or +Lydia Carr could not have been kept in complete ignorance of its +location.</p> + +<p>With that conviction in mind, Dundee returned to Nita's bedroom, to +which he had already devoted at least half an hour. Nothing in the big +clothes closet, where Flora Miles had been hiding while Nita was being +murdered. No secret drawers in desk or dressing-table or bedside table. +No false bottom in boudoir chair or chaise longue.... He had even taken +every book out of the four-shelf bookcase which stood against the west +wall near the north corner of the room, and had satisfied himself that +no book was a leafless fake.</p> + +<p>His minute inspection of the bathroom and back hall, upon which Nita's +bedroom opened, had proved as fruitless, although he had removed every +drawer from the big linen press which stood in the hall, and measured +spaces to a fraction of an inch. As for the walls, they were, except for +the doors, unbroken expanses of tinted plaster.</p> + +<p>And yet—</p> + +<p>He stepped into the clothes closet again, hammer in hand for a fresh +tapping of the cedar-board walls. Nothing here.... And then he tapped +again, his ear against the end wall of the closet—the wall farthest +from the side porch....</p> + +<p>Yes! There was a faintly hollow echo of the hammer strokes!</p> + +<p>Excitement blazing high again, he took the tape measure with which he +had provided himself on his way out, and calculated the length of the +closet from end to end. Six feet....</p> + +<p>Emerging from the closet he closed his eyes in an effort to recall in +exact detail the architect's blueprint of the lower floor, which Coroner +Price had submitted to his jury at the inquest that morning. Yes, that +was right! The inner end wall of Nita's clothes closet was also the back +of the guest closet in the little foyer that lay between Nita's bedroom +and the main hall.</p> + +<p>Within ten minutes, much laying-on of the tape measure had produced a +startling result. Instead of having a wall in common, the guest closet +and Nita's clothes closet were separated by exactly eleven inches! Why +the waste space? The blueprint, bearing the imprint of the architects, +Hammond & Hammond, showed no such walled-up cubbyhole!</p> + +<p>Exultantly, Dundee again entered Nita's closet and went over every inch +of the narrow, horizontal cedar boards, which formed the end wall. But +he met with no reward. Not through this workmanlike, solidly constructed +wall had an opening been made....</p> + +<p>But in the foyer closet he read a different story. Its back wall had an +amateurish look. This closet was not cedar-lined, as was Nita's, but was +painted throughout in soft ivory. But it was the back wall of the closet +in which Dundee was interested. Unlike the other walls, which were of +plaster, the back was constructed of six-inch-wide boards—the cheapness +of the lumber not concealed by its coat of ivory paint. No +self-respecting builder had put in that wall of broad, horizontal +boards....</p> + +<p>And then, directly beneath the shelf which was set regulation height, +just above the pole on which swung a dozen coat hangers, Dundee found +what he was looking for.</p> + +<p>A short length of the cheap board, a queer scrap to have been used even +in so shoddy a job as that wall was.... Eight inches long. And set +square in the center of the wall, just below the shelf and pole. If he +had not been looking for something odd, however, Dundee acknowledged to +himself, he would not have noticed it. Did anyone ever notice the back +walls of closets?</p> + +<p>Sure of the result, he pressed with his finger tips upon the lower end +of that short piece of board. And slowly it swung inward, the top +slanting outward.</p> + +<p><i>He had found the secret hiding place.</i> And Dundee silently agreed with +Judge Marshall that it was "the simplest and most ingenious arrangement +you ever saw," for it was nothing more nor less than a shelf set between +the two closets, in those eleven inches of unaccounted for space!</p> + +<p>"I take off my hat to Roger Crain!" Dundee reflected. "No burglar in the +world would ever have thought of pressing upon a short piece of board in +a foyer closet, in search of a safe.... But how did Judge Marshall know +of its existence?"</p> + +<p>The only answer Dundee could think of was that Crain, overseeing the +building of his house, had suddenly conceived this brilliant and simple +plan, and had tipped one of the carpenters to carry it out for him. +Possibly, or probably, he had bragged to Clive or Ralph Hammond, his +architects, of his clever invention. And the Hammond boys had passed on +the information to Judge Marshall, when, after Crain's failure and +flight, the house had become the property of the ex-judge.</p> + +<p>These thoughts rushed through his mind as his flashlight explored the +shelf through the tilted opening. The gun and silencer <i>must</i> be here, +since they could be no place else!... But the shelf was bare except for +a small brass box, fastened only by a clasp. In his acute disappointment +Dundee took little interest in the collection of pretty but inexpensive +jewelry—Nita's trinkets, undoubtedly—which the brass box +contained.... No wedding ring among them....</p> + +<p>In spite of his chagrin at not finding the gun, Dundee studied the +simple mechanism which Roger Crain's ingenuity had conceived. From the +outside, the eight-inch length of board fitted smoothly, giving no +indication whatever that it was otherwise than what it seemed—part of a +cheaply built wall. But Dundee's flashlight played upon the beveled +edges of both the short board and the two neighboring planks between +which it was fitted. The pivoting arrangement was of the simplest, the +small nickel-plated pieces being set into the short board and the other +two planks with small screws which did not pierce the painted outside +surface.</p> + +<p>His curiosity satisfied, Dundee stepped out of the closet into the tiny +foyer. He was about to leave when a terrific truth crashed through his +mind and froze his feet to the floor.</p> + +<p><i>Of course the gun and silencer were not there!</i></p> + +<p>This was the <i>guest closet</i>! In it had hung the hat of every person who +had been Nita's guest, either for bridge or cocktails, that fatal +Saturday afternoon!</p> + +<p><i>And to this closet, to retrieve hat, stick or—in the case of the +women, summer coat and hat—had come every person who had been +questioned and then searched by the police.</i></p> + +<p>Dundee tried to recapture the picture of the stampede which had followed +upon his permission for all guests to go to their homes. But it was +useless. He had stayed in the living room with Strawn, had taken not the +slightest interest in the scramble for hats, coats and sticks. For +Strawn had previously assured him that the guest closet had been +thoroughly searched.</p> + +<p>So quickly that he felt slightly dizzy, Dundee's thoughts raced around +the new discovery. This changed everything, of course. Any one of half a +dozen persons could have arrived with the gun and silencer—not screwed +together, of course, because of the ungainly length—and seized the +opportunity presented by Nita's being alone in her bedroom to shoot her. +What easier, then, than to hide the weapon on this secret shelf, the +"door" of which yielded to the slightest pressure? And what easier than +to retrieve the weapon after permission had been granted to all to +return to their homes? Easy enough to manage to go alone to the closet +for a hat, the extra minute of time unnoticed in the general excitement. +It had been vitally necessary, too, to retrieve the weapon, since any +innocent member of that party might have remembered later to mention the +secret hiding place to the police—secret no longer since Judge Marshall +had gossiped about it....</p> + +<p>Then another thought boiled up and demanded attention. In the new +theory, what place did the "bang or bump" have—that noise which Flora +Miles, concealed in Nita's closet, had dimly heard? Dundee had been +positive, when Lydia had discovered the shattered electric bulb in the +big bronze lamp that its position in Nita's room indicated the progress +of the flight of the murderer—flight diagonally across the room toward +the back hall. But now—</p> + +<p>A little dashed, Dundee returned to the bedroom. The big lamp was where +he had first seen it—about a foot beyond the window nearest the porch, +and at the head of the chaise longue which was set between the two west +windows, where, according to Lydia, the lamp always stood. The too-long +cord lay slackly along the floor near the west wall, and extended to the +double outlet on the baseboard behind the bookcase.... <i>A slack cord!</i></p> + +<p>Down on his hands and knees Dundee went, to peer under the low bottom +shelf of the bookcase.... Yes! The pronged plug of the lamp cord had +been jerked almost out of the baseboard outlet! It was easy to visualize +what had happened: The murderer, after firing the shot, had +involuntarily taken a step or even several steps backward, until his +foot had caught in the loop of electric cord, causing the big lamp to be +thrown violently against the wall near which it stood.... But who?</p> + +<p><i>Any one of half a dozen people!</i> But—<i>who</i>?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_NINETEEN" id="CHAPTER_NINETEEN"></a>CHAPTER NINETEEN</h2> + + +<p>Having ticketed the big bronze lamp, which he had brought with him from +the Selim house, and locked it away in the room devoted to "exhibits for +the state," Bonnie Dundee hurried into Penny's office, primed with the +news of his discovery of the secret hiding place and eager to lay his +new theory before the district attorney.</p> + +<p>"Bill's gone," Penny interrupted her swift typing to inform him. "To +Chicago. He had only fifteen minutes to make the three o'clock train, +after he received a wire saying his mother is not expected to live. He +tried to reach you at the Selim house, but one of Captain Strawn's men +said you had left."</p> + +<p>"I stopped on my way in to get a bite to eat," Dundee explained +mechanically. "I'd dashed off without my lunch, you know."</p> + +<p>"Did you find the gun and silencer?" Penny asked.</p> + +<p>"No. Whoever used it Saturday afternoon walked out of the house with it, +in plain view of the police, and still has it.... Very convenient, too, +in case another murder seems to be expedient—or amusing."</p> + +<p>"Don't joke!" Penny shuddered. "But what in the world do you mean?"</p> + +<p>Briefly Dundee told her, minimizing the hard work, the concentrated +thinking, and the meticulous use of a tape measure which had resulted in +the discovery of the shelf between Nita's bedroom closet and the guest +closet in the little foyer.</p> + +<p>"I see," Penny agreed, her husky voice slow and weighted with horror. +She sat in dazed thought for a minute. "That rather brings it home to my +crowd—doesn't it?... To think that Dad—!... Probably everyone at the +party—except me—had heard all about Dad's 'simple and ingenious' +arrangement for hiding the securities he sent on to New York before he +ran away.... And no outsiders—nobody but <i>us</i>—had a legitimate excuse +for entering that closet.... Not even Dexter Sprague. It's one of his +affectations not to wear a hat—"</p> + +<p>"Is it?" Dundee pounced. "You're sure he wore no hat that afternoon? Did +you notice him when he left after I had dismissed you all?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," Penny acknowledged honestly. "I paid attention to him, because I +was hating him so. I believed then that he was the murderer, and I was +furious with you and Captain Strawn for not arresting him.... He was +the first to leave—just walked straight out; wouldn't even stop to talk +with Janet Raymond, who was trying to get a word with him. I saw him +start toward Sheridan Road—walking. He had no car, you know."</p> + +<p>"Did you observe the others?" Dundee demanded eagerly. "Do you know who +went <i>alone</i> to the guest closet?"</p> + +<p>Penny shook her head. "Everybody was milling around in the hall, and I +paid no attention. Lois said she would drive me home, and then I went in +to ask you to let me stay behind with you—"</p> + +<p>"I remember.... Listen, Penny! I'm going to tell you something else that +nobody knows yet but Sanderson, Lydia and me. I don't have to ask you +not to tell any of your friends. You know well enough that anything you +learn from either Sanderson or me is strictly confidential."</p> + +<p>Penny nodded, her face very white and her brown eyes big with misery.</p> + +<p>"I have every reason to believe that Nita Selim was a blackmailer, that +she came to Hamilton for the express purpose of bleeding someone she had +known before, or someone on whom she had 'the goods' from some +underworld source or other.... At any rate, Nita banked ten thousand +mysterious dollars—$5,000 on April 28, and $5,000 on May 5. I talked to +Drake last night, and I have his word for it that the money was in bills +of varying denomination—none large—when Nita presented it for deposit. +Therefore it seems clear to me that Nita got the money right here in +Hamilton; otherwise it would have come to her in the form of checks or +drafts or money orders. And it seems equally clear to me that she did +not bring that large amount of cash from New York with her, or she would +have deposited it in a lump sum in the bank immediately after her +arrival."</p> + +<p>"Yes," Penny agreed. "But why are you telling <i>me</i>?... Of course I'm +interested—"</p> + +<p>"Because I want you to tell me the financial status of each of your +friends," Dundee said gently. "I know how hard it is for you—"</p> + +<p>"You could find out from others, so I might as well tell you," Penny +interrupted, with a weary shrug. "Judge Marshall is well-to-do, and +Karen's father—her mother is dead—settled $100,000 on her when she +married. She has complete control of her own money.... The Dunlaps are +the richest people in Hamilton, and have been for two or three +generations. Lois was 'first-family' but poor when she married Peter, +but he's been giving her an allowance of $20,000 a year for several +years—not for running the house, but for her personal use. Clothes, +charities, hobbies, like the Little Theater she brought Nita here to +organize—"</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't say she spends a great deal of it on dress," Dundee +interrupted with a grin.</p> + +<p>"Lois doesn't give a hang how she looks or what anyone thinks of +her—which is probably one reason she is the best-loved woman in our +crowd," Penny retorted loyally. "The Miles' money is really Flora's, +and she has the reputation of being one of the shrewdest business +'men' in town. When she married Tracey nearly eight years ago, he was +just a salesman in her father's business—the biggest dairy in the +state ... 'Cloverblossom' butter, cream, milk and cheese, you +know.... Well, when Flora married Tracey, her father retired and let +Tracey run the business for Flora, and he's still managing it, but Flora +is the real head.... Now, let's see.... Oh, yes, the Drakes!... Johnny +is vice president of the Hamilton National Bank, as you know, and owns +a big block of the stock. Carolyn has no money of her own, except what +Johnny gives her, and I rather think he isn't any too generous—"</p> + +<p>"They don't get along very well together, do they?"</p> + +<p>"N-no!" Penny agreed reluctantly. "You see, Johnny Drake was simply not +cut out for love and marriage. He's a born ascetic, would have been a +monk two or three centuries ago, but he cares as much for Carolyn as he +could for any woman.... The Hammond boys have some inherited money, and +Clive has made a big financial success of architecture.... That leaves +only Janet and Polly, doesn't it?... Polly's an orphan and has barrels +of money, and will have barrels more when her aunt, with whom she lives, +dies and leaves her the fortune she has always promised her."</p> + +<p>"And Janet Raymond?"</p> + +<p>"Janet's father is pretty rich—owns a big wire-fence factory, but Janet +has only a reasonable allowance," Penny answered. "As for me—I'm <i>very</i> +rich: I get thirty-five whole dollars a week, to support myself and +Mother on."</p> + +<p>Dundee remained thoughtfully silent for a long minute. Then: "All you +girls are alumnae of Forsyte-on-the-Hudson, and Nita Selim came here +immediately after she had directed a Forsyte play.... Tell me, +Penny—was any of the Hamilton girls ever in disgrace while in the +Forsyte School?"</p> + +<p>Penny's face flamed. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, but so far as I know +there was never anything of the sort. Of course we all graduated +different years, except Karen and I, and I might not have heard—But +no!" she denied vehemently. "There wasn't any scandal on a Hamilton girl +ever! I'm sure of it!"</p> + +<p>But her very vehemence convinced Bonnie Dundee that she was not at all +sure....</p> + +<p>He looked at his watch. Four o'clock.... By this time Nita Selim—tiny +cold body, royal blue velvet dress, black curls piled high in an +old-fashioned "French roll," bullet-torn heart—were nothing more than a +little heap of grey ashes.... Would Lydia Carr have them put in a sealed +urn and carry them about with her always?</p> + +<p>"I'm going out now, Penny, and I shan't be back today," he told the girl +who had returned to her furious typing. "I'll telephone in about an hour +to see if anything has come up.... By the way, how do I get to the +Dunlap house?"</p> + +<p>"It's in the Brentwood section. You know—that cluster of hills around +Mirror Lake. Most of the crowd live out there—the Drakes, the Mileses, +the Beales, the Marshalls. The Dunlap house stands on the highest hill +of all. It's grey stone, a little like a French chateau. We used to live +out there, too, in a Colonial house my mother's father built, but Dad +persuaded Mother to sell, when he went into that Primrose Meadows +venture. The Raymonds bought it.... But why do you want to see Lois?"</p> + +<p>"Thanks much, Penny. I don't know what I should do without you," Dundee +said, without answering her question, and reached for his hat.</p> + +<p>After ten minutes of driving, the last mile of which had circled a +smooth silver coin of a lake, Dundee stopped his car and let his eyes +rove appreciatively. He had made this trip the day before to question +Lydia, already installed as nurse for the Miles children, but he had +been in too great a hurry then to see much of this section consecrated +to Hamilton's socially elect....</p> + +<p>Georgian "cottage," Spanish hacienda, Italian villa, Tudor mansion—that +was the Miles home; Colonial mansion where Penny had once lived; grey +stone chateau.... Not one of them blatantly new or marked with the +dollar sign. Dundee sighed a little enviously as he turned his car into +the winding driveway that led up the highest hill to the Dunlap home.</p> + +<p>Lois Dunlap betrayed no surprise when the butler led Dundee to the +flag-stoned upper terrace overlooking Mirror Lake, where she was having +tea with her three children and their governess. For a moment the +detective had the illusion that he was in England again....</p> + +<p>"How do you do, Mr. Dundee?... This is Miss Burden.... My three +offspring—Peter the third, Eleanor, and Bobby.... Will you please take +the children to the playroom now, Miss Burden?... Thank you!... Tea, Mr. +Dundee? Or shall I order you a highball?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing, thanks," Dundee answered, grateful for her friendliness but +nonplussed by it. Not for the first time he felt a sick distaste for the +profession he had chosen....</p> + +<p>"It's all over," Lois Dunlap said in a low voice, as the butler +retreated. "Lydia made her look very beautiful.... I thought it would be +rather horrible, having to see her, as the poor child requested in her +note to Lydia, but I'm glad now I did. She looked as sweet and young and +innocent as she must have been when she first wore the royal blue +velvet."</p> + +<p>"I'm glad," Dundee said sincerely. Then he leaned toward her across the +tea table. "Mrs. Dunlap, will you please tell me just how you persuaded +Mrs. Selim to come to Hamilton—so far from Broadway?"</p> + +<p>"Why certainly!" Lois Dunlap looked puzzled. "But it really did not take +much persuasion after I showed her some group photographs we had made +when we Forsyte girls put on 'The Beggar's Opera' here last October—a +benefit performance for the Forsyte Alumnae Scholarship fund."</p> + +<p>With difficulty Dundee controlled his excitement. "May I see those +photographs, please?"</p> + +<p>"I had to hunt quite a bit for them," his hostess apologized ten minutes +later, as she spread the glossy prints of half a dozen photographs for +Dundee's inspection. "Do you know 'The Beggar's Opera'?"</p> + +<p>"John Gay—eighteenth century, isn't it?... As I remember it, it is +quite—" and Dundee hesitated, grinning.</p> + +<p>"Bawdy?" Lois laughed. "Oh, very! We couldn't have got away with it if +it hadn't been a classic. As it was, we had to tone down some of the +naughtiest passages and songs. But it was lots of fun, and the boys +enjoyed it hugely because it gave them an opportunity to wear tight +satin breeches and lace ruffles.... This is my husband, Peter. He adored +being the highwayman, 'Robin of Bagshot'," and she pointed out a stocky, +belligerent-looking man near the end of the long row of costumed +players, in a photograph which showed the entire cast.</p> + +<p>"You say that Mrs. Selim accepted your proposal <i>after</i> she saw these +photographs?" Dundee asked. "Had she refused before?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I'd gone to New York for the annual Easter Play which the Forsyte +School puts on, because I'm intensely interested in semi-professional +theatricals," Lois explained. "Nita had done a splendid job with the +play the year before, and I spoke to her, after this year's show was +over, about coming to Hamilton. She was not at all interested, but +polite and sweet about it, so I invited her to have lunch with me the +next day, and showed her these photographs of our own play in the hope +that they would make her take the idea more seriously. We had borrowed a +Little Theater director from Chicago and I knew we had done a really +good job of 'The Beggar's Opera.' The local reviews—"</p> + +<p>"These 'stills' look extremely professional. I don't wonder that they +interested Nita," Dundee cut in. "Will you tell me what she said?"</p> + +<p>"She rather startled me," Lois Dunlap confessed. "I first showed her +this picture of the whole cast, and as I was explaining the play a +bit—she didn't know 'The Beggar's Opera'—she almost snatched the +photograph out of my hands. As she studied it, her lovely black eyes +grew perfectly enormous. I've never seen her so excited since—"</p> + +<p>"What did she say?" Dundee interrupted tensely.</p> + +<p>"Why, she said nothing just at first, then she began to laugh in the +queerest way—almost hysterically. I asked her why she was laughing—I +was a little huffy, I'm afraid—and she said the men looked so adorably +conceited and funny. Then she began to ask the names of the players. I +told her that 'Macheath'—he's the highwayman hero, you know—was played +by Clive Hammond; that my Peter was 'Robin of Bagshot', that Johnny +Drake was another highwayman, 'Mat of the Mint', that Tracey Miles +played the jailor, 'Lockit'—"</p> + +<p>"Did she show more interest in one name than another?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. When I pointed out Judge Marshall as 'Peachum', the fence, she +cried out suddenly: 'Why, I know him! I met him once on a party.... Is +he really a <i>judge</i>?' and she laughed as if she knew something very +funny about Hugo—as no doubt she did. He was an inveterate +'lady-killer' before his marriage, as you may have heard."</p> + +<p>"Do you think her first excitement was over seeing Judge Marshall among +the players?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"No," Lois answered, after considering a moment. "I'm sure she didn't +notice him until I pointed him out. The face in this group that seemed +to interest her most was Flora Miles'. Flora played the part of 'Lucy +Lockit', the jailor's daughter, and Karen Marshall the other feminine +lead, 'Polly Peachum', you know. But it was Flora's picture she lingered +over, so I showed her this picture," and Lois Dunlap reached for the +portrait of Flora Miles, unexpectedly beautiful in the eighteenth +century costume—tight bodice and billowing skirts.</p> + +<p>"She questioned you about Mrs. Miles?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes. All sorts of questions—her name, and whether she was married and +then who her husband was, and if she had had stage experience," Lois +answered conscientiously. "She explained her interest by saying Flora +looked more like a professional actress than any of the others, and that +we should give her a real chance when we got our Little Theater going. I +asked her if that meant she was going to accept my offer, and she said +she might, but that she would have to talk it over with a friend first. +Just before midnight she telephoned me at my hotel that she had decided +to accept the job."</p> + +<p>Dundee's heart leaped. It was very easy to guess who that "friend" was! +But he controlled his excitement, asked his next question casually:</p> + +<p>"Did she show particular interest in any other player?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. She asked a number of questions about Polly Beale, and seemed +incredulous when I told her that Polly and Clive were engaged. Polly +played 'Mrs. Peachum', and was a riot in the part.... But Nita's +intuition was correct. Flora carried off the acting honors.... Oh, yes, +she also asked, quite naïvely, if all my friends were rich, too, and +could help support a Little Theater. I reassured her on that point."</p> + +<p>"And," Dundee reflected silently, "upon a point much more important to +Nita Selim." Aloud he said: "I don't see <i>you</i> among the cast."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I haven't a grain of talent," Lois Dunlap laughed. "I can't act for +two cents—can I, Peter darling?... Here's the redoubtable 'Robin of +Bagshot' in person, Mr. Dundee—my husband!"</p> + +<p>The detective rose to shake hands with the man he had been too absorbed +to see or hear approaching.</p> + +<p>"You're the man from the district attorney's office?" Peter Dunlap +scowled, his hand barely touching Dundee's. "I suppose you're trying to +get at the bottom of the mystery of why my wife brought that Selim +woman—"</p> + +<p>"Don't call her 'that Selim woman', Peter!" Lois Dunlap interrupted with +more sharpness than Dundee had ever seen her display. "You never liked +the poor girl, were never just to her—"</p> + +<p>"Well, it looks as if my hunch was correct, doesn't it?" the stocky, +rugged-faced man retorted. "I told you at the beginning to pay her off +and send her back to New York—"</p> + +<p>"You knew I couldn't do that, even to please you, dear," Lois said. "But +please don't let's quarrel about poor Nita again. She's dead now, and I +want to do anything I can to help bring her murderer to justice."</p> + +<p>"There's nothing you can do, Lois, and I hope Mr.—ah—Dundee will not +find it necessary to quiz you again."</p> + +<p>Dundee reached for his hat. "I hope so, too, Mr. Dunlap.... By the way, +you are president of the Chamber of Commerce, aren't you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I am! And we're having a meeting tonight, at which that Sprague +man's bid on making a historical movie of Hamilton will be turned +down—unanimously. Now that the Selim woman isn't here to vamp my +fellow-members into doing anything she wants, I think I can safely +promise you that Dexter Sprague will have no further business in +Hamilton—unless it is police business!"</p> + +<p>"Thanks for the tip, Mr. Dunlap," Dundee said evenly. "I hope you +enjoyed your fishing trip. Where do you fish, sir?"</p> + +<p>"A tactful way of asking for my alibi, eh?" Dunlap was heavily +sarcastic. "I left Friday afternoon for my own camp in the mountains, up +in the northwest part of the state. I drove my own car, went alone, +spent the week-end alone, and got back this noon. I read of the murder +in a paper I picked up in a village on my way home. I didn't like Nita +Selim, and I don't give a damn about her being murdered, except that my +wife's name is in all the papers.... Any questions?"</p> + +<p>"None, thanks!" Dundee answered curtly, then turned to Lois Dunlap who +was watching the two men with troubled, embarrassed eyes. "I am very +grateful to you, Mrs. Dunlap, for your kindness."</p> + +<p>The detective's angry resentment of Peter Dunlap's attitude lasted until +he had circled Mirror Lake and was on the road into Hamilton. Then +commonsense intervened. Dunlap was undoubtedly devoted to his wife. +Penny had said that he had "never looked at another woman." It was +rather more than natural that he should be in a futile, blustering rage +at the outcome of Lois' friendship for the little Broadway dancer....</p> + +<p>Free of anger, his mind reverted to the story Lois Dunlap had told him. +For in it, he was sure, was hidden the key to the mystery of Nita +Selim's murder. Not at all interested in the proposition to organize a +Little Theater in Hamilton, Nita had been seized with a strange +excitement as soon as she was shown photographs of a large group of +Hamilton's richest and most prominent inhabitants.... But there was the +rub! <i>A large group!</i> Would that group of possible suspects never narrow +down to one? Of course there was Judge Marshall, but if Lois Dunlap's +memory was to be trusted Nita had not noticed the elderly Beau Brummel's +picture until <i>after</i> that strange, hysterical excitement had taken +possession of her. And if it had been Judge Marshall whom she had come +to Hamilton to blackmail would Nita not have guarded her tongue before +Lois? The same was true about her extraordinary interest in Flora +Miles....</p> + +<p>Dundee tried to put himself in Nita's place, confronted suddenly with a +group picture containing the likeness of a person—man or woman—against +whom she knew something so dreadful and so secret that her silence would +be worth thousands of dollars. Would <i>he</i> have chattered of that very +person? No! Of anyone else but that particular person! It was easy to +picture Nita, her head whirling with possibilities, hitting upon the +most conspicuous player in the group—dark, tense, theatrical Flora, +already pointed out to her as one of the two female leads in the +opera.... But of whom had she really been thinking?</p> + +<p>Again a blank wall! For in that group photograph of the cast of "The +Beggar's Opera" had appeared every man, woman and girl who had been +Nita's guest on the day of her murder....</p> + +<p>Dundee, paying more attention to his driving, now that he was in the +business section of the city, saw ahead of him the second-rate hotel +where Dexter Sprague had been living since Nita had wired him to join +her in Hamilton. On a sudden impulse the detective parked his car in +front of the hotel and five minutes later was knocking upon Sprague's +door.</p> + +<p>"Well, what do you want now?" the unshaven, pallid man demanded +ungraciously.</p> + +<p>Dundee stepped into the room and closed the door. "I want you to tell me +the name of the man Nita Selim came here to blackmail, Sprague."</p> + +<p>"Blackmail?" Sprague echoed, his pallid cheeks going more yellow. +"You're crazy! Nita came here to take a job—"</p> + +<p>"She came here to blackmail someone, and I am convinced that she sent +for you to act as a partner in her scheme.... No, wait! I'm <i>convinced</i>, +I tell you," Dundee assured him grimly. "But I'll make a trade with you, +in behalf of the district attorney. Tell me the name of the person she +blackmailed, and I will promise you immunity from prosecution as her +accomplice."</p> + +<p>"Get out of my room!" and Dexter Sprague's right forefinger trembled +violently as it pointed toward the door in a melodramatic gesture.</p> + +<p>"Very well, Sprague," Dundee said. "But let me give you a friendly +warning. <i>Don't try to carry on the good work.</i> Nita got ten thousand +dollars, but she also got a bullet through her heart. And the gun which +fired that bullet is safely back in the hands of the killer.... You're +not going to get that movie job, and I was just afraid you might be +tempted!... Good afternoon!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_TWENTY" id="CHAPTER_TWENTY"></a>CHAPTER TWENTY</h2> + + +<p>It was Wednesday evening, four whole days since Nita Leigh Selim, +Broadway dancer, had been murdered while she was dummy at bridge. +Plainclothesmen, in pairs, day and night shifts, still guarded the +lonely house in Primrose Meadows, but Dundee had taken no interest in +the actual scene of the crime since Carraway, fingerprint expert, had +reported negatively upon the secret shelf between Nita's bedroom closet +and the guest closet. So far as any tangible evidence went, only +Dundee's fingers had pressed upon the pivoting panel and explored the +narrow shelf.</p> + +<p>The very lack of fingerprints had of course confirmed Dundee's belief +that the murderer's hand had pressed upon that swinging panel, had +quested in vain for the incriminating documents or letters which had +been the basis of Nita's blackmail scheme, had deposited upon the shelf +the gun and silencer with which the murder had been accomplished, and +had later retrieved the weapon in perfect safety. A hand loosely wrapped +in a handkerchief or protected by a glove.... The hand of a cunning, +careful, cold-blooded murderer—or murderess.... But—who? <i>Who?</i></p> + +<p>Bonnie Dundee, brooding at his desk in the living room of his small +apartment, reflected bitterly that he was no nearer the answer to that +question than he had been an hour after Nita Selim's death.</p> + +<p>"Well, 'my dear Watson'," he addressed his caged parrot finally. "What +do you say?... Who killed Nita Selim?"</p> + +<p>The parrot stirred on his perch, thrust out his hooked beak to nip his +master's prodding finger, then disdainfully turned his back.</p> + +<p>"I don't blame you, Cap'n," Dundee chuckled. "You must be as sick of +that question as I am.... And what a pity it ever had to be asked! If +the murderer had not been so hasty—or so pressed for time that he +really could not wait to listen to Nita—he would have learned from +Nita herself that she had decided to be a very good girl, and had burned +the 'papers'—all because she was genuinely in love with Ralph +Hammond.... One comfort we have, 'my dear Watson': the murderer still +does not know that Nita burned the papers Friday night. Sooner or later, +when he believes police vigilance has been relaxed, he'll go prowling +about that house, and to Captain Strawn, who doesn't take the slightest +stock in my theory, will go credit for the arrest.... Unless—"</p> + +<p>Dundee reached for a telegraph form and again scanned the pencilled +message. Only that afternoon had it occurred to him to ask the telegraph +company for a copy of the wire by which Dexter Sprague, according to his +own story, had been summoned to Hamilton by Nita Selim.</p> + +<p>The manager had been obliging, had looked up the message and copied it +with his own hand. It was a night letter, and had been filed in Hamilton +April 24—the third day after Nita's arrival. Addressed to Dexter +Sprague, at a hotel in the theatrical district, New York City, the +message read:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"EVERYTHING JAKE SO FAR BUT WOULD FEEL SAFER YOU HERE CHAMBER OF +COMMERCE PLANNING BOOSTER MOVIE FOUNDING AND DEVELOPMENT OF +HAMILTON LOOKING GOOD DIRECTOR WHY NOT TRY FOR JOB AS GOOD EXCUSE +ALL MY LOVE—NITA"</p></div> + +<p>Dundee laid the paper on his desk, locked his hands behind his head, and +addressed the parrot again. The habit of using the bird for an audience +and as an excuse for puzzling and mulling aloud had grown on him during +the year he had owned the doughty old Cap'n.</p> + +<p>"As I was about to say, 'my dear Watson', Captain Strawn's boys out at +the Selim house will have their chance to nab our man—or woman—unless +Dexter Sprague ignores my warning, pretends to have the papers himself, +and tries to carry on the blackmail scheme, which he undoubtedly knew +all about and which, most probably, he encouraged Nita to undertake—the +'friend' she had to consult, you know, before she decided to accept Lois +Dunlap's offer."</p> + +<p>The parrot interrupted with a hoarse cackle.</p> + +<p>"Have you gone over to the enemy, Cap'n?" Dundee reproved the bird. "You +sound exactly like Strawn when he laughed at my interpretation of this +message this afternoon. My late chief contends—and it is just possible, +of course, that he is right—that Nita was afraid she couldn't swing the +job of organizing and directing Lois' Little Theater, and wanted Sprague +here, both as lover and unofficial assistant. But that's a pretty thin +explanation, don't you think, 'my dear Watson'?... Oh, all right! Laugh, +damn you! But I'd feel better if Strawn had taken my advice and set a +dick to trail Sprague, to see that he keeps out of mischief.... All +this, however, gets us no nearer to answering that eternal +question—'Who?'"</p> + +<p>With a deep sigh the troubled young special investigator reached for the +"Time Table" he had drafted from his notes made during the grisly +replaying of the "death hand at bridge," and scanned it again:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>5:20—Flora Miles, dummy, Table No. 1, leaves living room to +telephone.</p> + +<p>5:22—Clive Hammond arrives and goes directly into solarium.</p> + +<p>5:23—End of rubber at Table No. 1. Players: Polly Beale, Janet +Raymond, Lois Dunlap, Flora Miles (dummy). Polly Beale leaves +living room to join Clive Hammond in solarium.</p> + +<p>5:24—Janet Raymond leaves room; says she went straight to front +porch.</p> + +<p>5:25—Tracey Miles parks car at curb; walks up to the house, hangs +up hat in clothes closet and at (his estimate)</p> + +<p>5:27—Miles enters living room, talks with Nita, who, as dummy, has +just laid down her cards at Table No. 2. Players: Karen Marshall, +Penny Crain, Carolyn Drake.</p> + +<p>5:28—Nita leaves living room, goes to her bedroom to make up.</p> + +<p>5:28-1/2—Lois Dunlap and Miles go into dining room, Miles to make +cocktails.</p> + +<p>5:31—Judge Marshall enters living room, interrupts bridge game.</p> + +<p>5:33—John C. Drake enters living room, having walked from Country +Club, which he says he left at 5:10, and which is only +three-quarters of a mile from the Selim house.</p> + +<p>5:36—Karen finishes playing of hand, and Dexter Sprague and Janet +Raymond enter from front porch, proceeding into dining room.</p> + +<p>5:37—Penny Crain finishes scoring, and Karen leaves room to tell +Nita the score.</p> + +<p>5:38—Karen screams upon discovering the dead body at the +dressing-table.</p></div> + +<p>Dundee laid aside the typed sheet and reached for another, the typing of +which was perfect, since Penny's efficient fingers had manipulated the +keys.</p> + +<p>When he had telephoned to the office just before five o'clock Monday +afternoon to see if anything had come up, Dundee had learned from Penny +that Peter Dunlap had issued an informal call to "the crowd" for a +meeting at his home that evening.</p> + +<p>"You're going, of course?" Dundee had asked. "Then, during the +discussion of the case, I wish you'd try to get the answers to some +questions which need clearing up—if you can do so without getting +yourself 'in Dutch' with your friends.... Fine! Got a pencil?... Here +goes!"</p> + +<p>And now he was re-reading the "report" she had conscientiously written +and left on his desk Tuesday morning:</p> + +<p>"Peter, declaring he wanted to get at the bottom of this case, presided +almost like a judge on the bench, and asked nearly every question you +wanted the answer to. Everyone in the crowd adores gruff old Peter and +no one dreamed of resenting his barrage of questions. What a detective +<i>he</i> would make!</p> + +<p>"First: Janet admitted that she did not go directly to the front porch +when she left the living room after her table finished the last rubber. +Went first to the hall lavatory to comb her hair and renew her make-up. +Said she was there alone about five minutes, then went to the front +porch. (Revised her story after Tracey had said he did not see her on +the porch when he arrived.)</p> + +<p>"Second: Judge Marshall said he glanced into the living room when he +arrived, saw Karen, Carolyn and me absorbed in our game, and went on +down the hall, to hang up his hat and stick. Proceeded immediately to +the living room.</p> + +<p>"Third: John Drake told Peter he entered the front hall and passed on to +the lavatory to wash up. Felt sticky after his walk from the Country +Club. Hung up hat in the guest closet. Went to living room within three +minutes after reaching the house.</p> + +<p>"Fourth: Polly and Clive told Peter they stayed together in the solarium +the whole time, stationed at a front window, watching for Ralph. When +Peter asked them if they could confirm Judge Marshall's story and Johnny +Drake's story, they said they had seen them both arrive, but had paid no +attention to them after they were in the house. It occurred to Peter, +too, to wonder if either Polly or Clive went to Nita's room to warn her +that Ralph knew about Sprague's having slept the night before in the +upstairs bedroom. They both denied emphatically that they had done so.</p> + +<p>"Fifth: Judge Marshall—the pompous old darling—still smarting under +the insinuations you made about him and Nita right after the murder, +volunteered the information to Peter that Nita had <i>not</i> paid her rent, +on the plea that she was short of funds, and that he had told her to let +it go until it was quite convenient.</p> + +<p>"Sixth: The word 'blackmail' was not mentioned, and Johnny Drake, +because of professional ethics, I suppose, did not tell about Nita's two +deposits of $5,000 each in his bank.</p> + +<p>"Seventh: The secret shelf in the foyer closet was not mentioned.</p> + +<p>"Peter's verdict, after he got through with us, was that only Sprague +could have done it—using the gun and silencer which Nita herself had +stolen from Hugo. I couldn't tell him that you are convinced that +Lydia's alibi for him is a genuine one, for apparently Lydia hasn't told +either Flora or Tracey that she was able to furnish Sprague an alibi.</p> + +<p>"And that's all, except that Peter asked me to convey to you his +apologies for his rudeness Monday afternoon.... Penelope Crain."</p> + +<p>With a deep sigh Dundee laid Penny's report aside.</p> + +<p>"And that does seem to be all, 'my dear Watson'," he told the parrot. +"Exactly half a dozen possible suspects, and not an atom of actual +evidence against one of them—except that Judge Marshall owned the gun. +Six—count 'em: Judge Marshall, John Drake, Flora Miles, Clive Hammond, +Polly Beale, Janet Raymond.... Every single one of them a possible +victim of blackmail, since the girls all attended the Forsyte School, +where Nita directed the Easter play for two years, and since the men +make several trips a year to New York.... Six people, all of whom +probably knew of the existence of the secret shelf.... Six people who +knew Nita was in her bedroom, either from having seen her go or from +hearing her powder box tinkling its damnable tune!... Yes, Penny! You're +right! That's all—so far as Hamilton is concerned! If Sanderson won't +let me go to New York—which is where this damned business started—I'll +resign and go on my own, without wasting another day here!"</p> + +<p>But Dundee did not go to New York the next morning. He was far too busy +in Hamilton....</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_TWENTY-ONE" id="CHAPTER_TWENTY-ONE"></a>CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE</h2> + + +<p>"Hello, Penny!" Dundee greeted the district attorney's private secretary +Thursday morning at five minutes after nine. "Any news from Sanderson?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," Penny Crain answered listlessly. "A night letter. He says his +mother is still very low and that we're to wire him at the Good +Samaritan Hospital in Chicago if anything turns up."</p> + +<p>"Then I suppose I can reach him there by long distance," and Dundee +lifted the telephone from Penny's desk to put in the call.</p> + +<p>"What's happened?" Penny demanded, her brown eyes wide and startled.</p> + +<p>"And hurry it up, will you, please?" Dundee urged the long distance +operator before hanging up the receiver and answering Penny's question. +"That's just the trouble—nothing's happened, and nothing is very likely +to happen here. I'm determined to go to New York and work on this pesky +case from that end—"</p> + +<p>"Then you've come around to Captain Strawn's theory that it was a New +York gunman?" Penny asked hopefully.</p> + +<p>"Not by a jugful!... But what's the matter with you this morning, young +woman? You're looking less like a new penny and more like one that has +been too much in circulation."</p> + +<p>"Thanks!" Penny retorted sarcastically; then she grinned wryly. "You are +right, as a matter of fact. I was up too late last night—bridge at the +Mileses'."</p> + +<p>"<i>Bridge!</i>" Dundee ejaculated incredulously. "So the bridge party <i>did</i> +take place, in spite of the society editor's discreet announcement +yesterday that 'owing to the tragic death of Mrs. Selim, the regular +every-other-Wednesday dinner-bridge of the Forsyte Alumnae Association +will not be held this evening at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Tracey Miles, +as scheduled'."</p> + +<p>"It wasn't a 'dinner-bridge' and it really wasn't intended to be a +party," Penny corrected him. "It just sort of happened, and of all the +ghastly evenings—"</p> + +<p>"Tell me about it," Dundee suggested. "Knowing this town's telephone +service as I do, I'll have plenty of time to listen, and you don't know +how all-agog I am for inside gossip on Hamilton's upper crust."</p> + +<p>"Idiot!" Penny flung at him scornfully. "You know society would bore you +to death, but I don't think you would have been exactly bored last +night, knowing, as I do, your opinion of Dexter Sprague."</p> + +<p>"Sprague? Good Lord! Was he there?... This does promise to be +interesting! Tell me all!"</p> + +<p>"Give me time!" Penny snapped. "I might as well talk, since there's +almost no work for me to do, with Bill away.... Ralph called me up last +night at dinner time, and asked me if I felt equal to playing bridge +again. He said that he, Clive, Tracey and Johnny Drake had lunched +together yesterday—as they frequently do—at the Athletic Club, and +that Judge Marshall, who had been lunching at another table with his +friend, Attorney Sampson, stopped at their table and suggested a bridge +game at his home for last night. Hugo said he wanted to coax Karen into +playing again, so she would get over her hysterical aversion to the game +since she had to replay that awful 'death hand'.... You see," Penny +explained parenthetically, "Hugo is a regular bridge fiend, and +naturally he doesn't want to be kept out of his game."</p> + +<p>"Brute!" Dundee cried disgustedly. "Why couldn't he give the poor girl a +few days more?"</p> + +<p>"That's what I thought," Penny acknowledged. "But <i>I</i> didn't get an +inhibition against bridge, and the idea rather appealed to me +personally. The last few days haven't been particularly cheerful ones, +so I told Ralph I'd be glad to go. Tracey had suggested his house, +instead of Hugo's, because Betty wasn't well yesterday and Flora +wouldn't want to leave her for a whole evening. Well, Ralph and I—"</p> + +<p>"Are you going to marry Ralph Hammond, Penny?" Dundee interrupted, as if +prompted by casual interest.</p> + +<p>Penny's pale face flushed vividly. "No. I'm not in love with him, and +I'm sure he realizes I'm not and won't ask me again. But I <i>had</i> to say +yes Sunday! I simply couldn't let you walk in on us, after I'd permitted +you to eavesdrop while he was talking, without first saying the one +thing that would convince him that I believed in his innocence and +hadn't set a trap for him."</p> + +<p>"I see!" Dundee acknowledged soberly, but his blue eyes shone +with sudden joy. "Oh! There's long distance! Just a minute, +darling!... Hello! Hello!... Yes, this is Dundee.... Oh! All right! +Try again in fifteen minutes, will you?" He hung up the receiver and +explained to Penny: "Sanderson hasn't reached the hospital yet, but is +expected soon.... Go on with your story.... Who all played bridge at +the Mileses'? You don't mean to say Dexter Sprague was invited, too!"</p> + +<p>Penny's face was still a brilliant pink as she answered: "I refuse to +have my climax spoiled!... When Ralph and I got there at eight, we found +that Peter and Lois had dined with Tracey and Flora and that they were +delighted at the prospect of bridge, as a relief from endless +discussions of the murder. We'd hardly got there when the Marshalls +came, poor little Karen not suspecting that she was going to have to +play. Then came Johnny Drake alone, with the news that Carolyn was in +bed and very miserable with a summer cold. Polly walked over from her +house, which is on the next hill to the right, you know. She said Clive +had decided to work late at the office, and had promised to call for her +about eleven, to take her home."</p> + +<p>"What about Janet Raymond? Was she left out?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"I told you it wasn't a planned affair," Penny reminded him. "But Flora +did telephone her, and she said she didn't feel like coming. She's been +moping about like a sick cat since Nita's death. We all knew she was +idiotically in love with Dexter Sprague, and it must have been an awful +blow to her to hear you read aloud that note Nita received from +Sprague."</p> + +<p>"So I noticed," Dundee nodded, recalling the deathly pallor of the +girl's face as Sprague had glibly explained away that damning note and +all its implications.</p> + +<p>"Well," Penny continued, "Tracey suggested bridge, and at first Karen +flatly refused to play, but Hugo finally persuaded her.... Karen would +do absolutely <i>anything</i> for that ridiculous old husband of hers! I +simply can't understand it—how she can be in love with him, I mean!"</p> + +<p>"I thought you liked Judge Marshall," Dundee laughed.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I do—in a way.... But fancy a young girl like Karen being in love +with him!... Well, anyway, we all went out to the east porch, which is +kept in readiness for bridge all summer. Iron bridge tables, covered +with oilcloth, and with oilcloth pouches for the cards and score pads, +so there's never any bother about scurrying in with things on account of +rain. It's a roofed, stone-floored porch, right outside the living-room, +and under it are the garages, so it's high and cool, with a grand view +of Mirror Lake down below, and of the city in the distance." She sighed, +and Dundee knew that she was thinking of her own lost home in +Brentwood—the fine old Colonial mansion which had been sacrificed to +her father's disastrous Primrose Meadows venture. Then she went on: "I +don't know why I am telling you all this, except that the setting was so +pleasant that we should have had a much better time than we did."</p> + +<p>"You're an artful minx, Penny!" Dundee chuckled. "You're working up +suspense for the entrance of the villain!"</p> + +<p>"Then let me do it justice," Penny retorted. "Lois and Peter, Ralph and +I, made up one table for bridge; Tracey and Polly, Judge Marshall and +Karen the other. Flora said she didn't want to play, because she wanted +to be free to keep an eye on Betty, although she protested she had +perfect faith in Lydia, who, Flora says, is proving to be a marvel with +the children. And Johnny Drake asked her to play anagrams with him, in +between trips to the nursery. Johnny has a perfect pash for anagrams, +and is a wow at 'em. So Tracey got the box of anagrams out of the trophy +room—"</p> + +<p>"The trophy room?" Dundee repeated, amused.</p> + +<p>"That's what Tracey calls it," Penny explained impatiently, "because he +has a couple of golf cups and Flora has an immense silver atrocity which +testifies to the fact that she was the 'lady's tennis champion' of the +state for one year. There are also some mounted fish and some deer heads +with incredible antlers, but the room is really used as a catch-all for +all the sports things—racquets, golf clubs, skis, ping-pong table, +etc.... Anyway, Tracey brought out the box of anagrams, and we were all +having a pretty good time when, at half past eight, the butler announced +'<i>Mr. Dexter Sprague</i>'!"</p> + +<p>"Your tone makes me wish I'd been there," Dundee acknowledged. "What +happened?"</p> + +<p>"You know how slap-em-on-the-back Tracey always is?" Penny asked, +grinning. "Well, you should have seen him and heard him as he dismissed +poor Whitson—the butler—as if he were giving him notice, instead of +letting him off for the night! And the icy dignity with which he greeted +poor Sprague—"</p> + +<p>"<i>Poor</i> Sprague?" Dundee echoed.</p> + +<p>"Well, after all, Sprague <i>had</i> been received by all the crowd before +Nita's death," Penny retorted. "I think it was rather natural for him to +think he'd still be welcome. He began to apologize for his uninvited +presence, saying he had felt lonesome and depressed and had just 'jumped +into a taxi' and come along, hoping to find the Mileses in. Flora tried +to act the lady hostess, but Peter got up from his bridge table and said +in tones even icier than Tracey's: 'Will you excuse me, Flora? And will +you take my place, Drake?... I'm going into the library. I don't enjoy +the society of murderers!'"</p> + +<p>"Good Lord!" Dundee ejaculated, shocked but admiring. "Did Sprague make +a quick exit?"</p> + +<p>"Not just then," Penny said mysteriously. "Of course everyone was simply +stunned, but Sprague retorted cheerfully, 'Neither do I, Dunlap!' Peter +stalked on into the living room on his way to the library, Johnny took +his place at the bridge table, and Tracey, at an urgent signal from +Flora, offered his seat at the other table to Sprague, as if he were +making way for a leper. Poor Polly had to be Sprague's partner. Flora, +as if she were terrified at what might happen—you know how frightfully +tense and nervous she is—made an excuse to run upstairs for a look at +Betty."</p> + +<p>"And something terrible did happen," Dundee guessed. "You're looking +positively ghoulish. Out with it!"</p> + +<p>"After about half an hour of playing without pivoting," Penny went on +imperturbably, "Hugo bid three spades, Karen raised him—in a trembling +voice—to five spades, Hugo of course went to a little slam, and Dexter +Sprague, if you can believe me, said: 'Better not leave the table, +Karen. <i>A little slam-bid in spades has been known to be fatal to the +dummy!</i>'"</p> + +<p>"<i>No!</i>" Dundee was genuinely shocked, but before he could say more the +telephone rang. "Sanderson at last.... Hello! Chicago?... Oh, hello, +Captain Strawn!... <i>What's that?</i>... Oh, my God!... Where did you say +the body is?"</p> + +<p>He listened for a long minute, then, with a dazed "Thanks! I'll be +over," he hung up the receiver.</p> + +<p>"Sprague—murdered!" he answered the horrified question in Penny's eyes. +"Body discovered this morning about nine by one of the Miles' maids, in +what you described just now as the 'trophy room'.... Shot—just below +the breastbone, Captain Strawn says."</p> + +<p>"The trophy room!" Penny cried. "Then—<i>that's</i> where he was all the +time after he disappeared so strangely last night—"</p> + +<p>"Whoa, Penny!" Dundee commanded. "Get hold of yourself! You're shaking +all over.... I want to know everything <i>you</i> know—as quickly and as +accurately as you can tell it. Go right on—"</p> + +<p>"Poor Dexter!" Penny groaned, covering her convulsed face with her +hands. "To think that he was <i>dead</i> when we were saying such horrid +things about him—"</p> + +<p>"Don't waste sympathy on him, honey!" Dundee cut in, his voice very +gentle but urgent. "If he had heeded my warning Monday he wouldn't be +dead now."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?" Penny gasped, but she was already calmer. "Your +warning—?"</p> + +<p>"I had a strong suspicion that he was mixed up with Nita in her +blackmail scheme and I took the trouble to warn him not to try to carry +on with it. Yesterday afternoon I begged Strawn to have him shadowed to +see that he kept out of mischief. I was afraid the temptation would be +too strong for him, but Strawn wouldn't listen to me—still clinging to +his theory of a New York gunman.... Feeling better now, honey? Can you +go on? I want to get out to the Miles house as soon as I can."</p> + +<p>"You're getting very—affectionate, aren't you?" Penny gave him a wobbly +smile in which, however, there was no reproof. "I think I can go on +now—. Where was I?"</p> + +<p>"Good girl!" Dundee applauded, but his heart was beating hard with +something more than excitement over Sprague's murder. "You'd just told +me about Sprague's warning Karen not to leave the table when she became +dummy after Judge Marshall's little slam bid in spades."</p> + +<p>"I remember," Penny said, pressing her fingers into her temples. "But +Karen <i>did</i> leave the table. When Sprague said that awful thing, poor +Karen burst into tears and ran from the porch into the living room, Hugo +started to follow her, but Sprague halted him by apologizing very +humbly, and then by adding: 'I'd really like to see you play this hand, +sir. I believe I've got the cards to set you with....' Of course he +could not have said anything better calculated to hold Hugo, who, as I +said, is a regular fiend when it comes to bridge.... Well, Hugo played +the hand and made his little slam, and then he again started to go look +for Karen, but Polly, who was Sprague's partner, you know, told him in +that brusque way of hers to go on with the game and give Karen a chance +to have her little weep in peace. Probably Hugo would have gone to look +for her anyway, but just then Flora came back. She said Betty was asleep +at last and that her temperature was normal, and when she heard about +Karen, she offered to take her hand until Karen felt like coming back."</p> + +<p>"What did Drake do then? He'd been playing anagrams with Mrs. Miles, you +said," Dundee interrupted.</p> + +<p>"Don't you remember?—I told you Johnny had taken Peter's place at our +table after Peter refused to breathe the same air as Dexter Sprague," +Penny reminded him. "Ralph and I, Lois and Johnny were playing together, +and just at the time I became dummy, Sprague became dummy at the other +table. He rose, saying he had to go telephone for a taxi, and passed +from the porch into the living room—"</p> + +<p>"Where is the telephone?"</p> + +<p>"The one the guests use is on a table in the hall closet, where we put +our things," Penny explained. "You can shut the door and hold a +perfectly private conversation.... Well, <i>we never saw Dexter Sprague +again</i>!"</p> + +<p>"Good Lord! Another bridge dummy murdered!" Dundee groaned. "At least +the newspapers will be happy!... Didn't anyone go to look for him after +the hand was played?"</p> + +<p>"Not straight off," Penny answered, with an obvious effort to remember +clearly every detail. "Let's see—Oh, yes! That hand was played out +before Ralph had finished playing his, at our table, so I was free to +pay attention to the other table. Flora said that since they couldn't +play another hand until Dexter came back, she thought she'd better hunt +up Karen, who hadn't come back yet."</p> + +<p>"How long was Mrs. Miles away from the porch?" Dundee asked quickly.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know—ten minutes, maybe. She came back alone, saying she +had found Karen in her bedroom—Flora's room, of course—crying +inconsolably. Flora told Hugo he'd better go up to her himself, since +she evidently had her feelings hurt because he hadn't followed her in +the first place. Tracey, who wasn't playing bridge, you remember, +because he had given up his place to Sprague, asked Flora if she'd seen +Sprague, and Flora said, in a surprised voice, 'No! I wonder where he is +all this time,' and Polly said that probably he'd gone to the lavatory, +which opens into the main hall and is next to the library.... Well, +pretty soon Judge Marshall and Karen came back—"</p> + +<p>"Pretty soon?—Just how long was Judge Marshall gone?" Dundee pressed +her, his pencil, which had been flying to take down her every word, +poised over the notebook he had snatched from her desk.</p> + +<p>"I can't say exactly!" Penny protested thornily. "I was playing again at +the other table. I suppose it was about ten minutes, for Ralph and I had +made another rubber, I remember.... Anyway, Karen was smiling like a +baby that has had a lot of petting, but she said Hugo had promised her +she wouldn't have to play bridge any more that evening, so Flora +remained at that table, playing opposite Hugo, while Tracey played with +Polly. As soon as Tracey became dummy, Flora suggested he go look for +Sprague."</p> + +<p>"And how long was <i>he</i> gone from the porch?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"Less than no time," Penny assured him. "He was back before Polly had +finished playing the hand. He said he'd gone to the hall closet, where +Whitson, the butler, would have put Sprague's hat and stick, and that he +had found they were gone.... Well—and you needn't put down 'well' every +time I say it!" Penny interrupted herself tartly. "Tracey said he +supposed Sprague had ordered his taxi and had decided to walk down the +hill to meet it, and he added that that was exactly the kind of courtesy +you could expect from a cad and a bounder like Sprague—walking in +uninvited, making Karen cry, then walking out, without a word, leaving +the game while he was dummy. Flora spoke up then and said it was no +wonder Dexter had left without saying good-by, considering how he'd been +treated. Then Tracey said something ugly and sarcastic about Flora's +being disappointed because Sprague had decided not to spend the whole +evening—"</p> + +<p>"A first-class row, eh?" Dundee interrupted, with keen interest.</p> + +<p>"Rather! Flora almost cried, said Tracey knew good and well that she had +only been playing-up to Sprague before Nita's death, in the hope of +getting the lead in the Hamilton movie, if Sprague got the job of +directing it, and Tracey said, 'So you call it playing-up, do you? It +looked like high-powered flirting to me—or maybe it was more than a +flirtation!...' Then Flora told him he hadn't acted jealous at the +time, and that he <i>knew</i> he'd have been glad if she'd got the +lead.... Well, just then along came Janet—"</p> + +<p>"<i>Janet Raymond?</i>" Dundee ejaculated. "I thought you said she had +refused the invitation when Mrs. Miles phoned her."</p> + +<p>"So she had, but she said she changed her mind, had been blue all +evening, and needed cheering up."</p> + +<p>"How did she get in?"</p> + +<p>"She walked over from her house, which isn't very far from the Mileses', +and simply came up the path to the porch," Penny explained. "Tracey +asked her if she had seen Sprague on the road—it's the same road Dexter +would have had to take going down the hill to the main road—and she +acted awfully queer—"</p> + +<p>"How?" Dundee demanded.</p> + +<p>"Exactly as she would act, since she was in love with him," Penny +retorted. "She turned very red, and asked if Sprague had inquired for +her, and Flora quite sharply told her he hadn't. Then Janet said she was +very much surprised that Sprague had been there, and that she couldn't +understand why he had behaved so strangely. Then Lois said she might as +well go fetch Peter from the library, since Sprague was no longer there +to contaminate the atmosphere. She came back—"</p> + +<p>"After how long a time?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, about five minutes, I suppose," Penny answered wearily. "She came +in, her arm linked with Peter's, and laughing. Said she had found him +reading a 'Deadwood Dick' thriller.... One of Tracey's hobbies—" she +broke off to explain, "—is collecting old-fashioned thrillers, like the +Nick Carter, Diamond King Brady, Buffalo Bill and Deadwood Dick +paper-bound books. Of course he didn't take up that hobby until a lot of +other rich men had done it first. There was never anybody less original +than poor Tracey.... Well, Flora gave up her place to Janet, and again +played anagrams with Johnny, Peter taking his original place at our +table. Suddenly Polly threw down her cards—she'd been having rotten +luck and seemed out of sorts—and said she didn't want to play bridge +any more. So poor Flora again had to be the perfect hostess, and switch +from anagrams to bridge."</p> + +<p>"And Polly played anagrams with Drake?" Dundee prompted.</p> + +<p>"No. She said she thought anagrams were silly, and wandered off the +porch and down the path, calling over her shoulder that she was going to +take a walk. Tracey asked Johnny if he'd mind mixing the highballs and +bringing out the sandwiches. Said Whitson had left a thermos bucket of +ice cubes on the sideboard, some bottles of ginger ale, and a tray of +glasses and sandwiches. Told him he'd find decanters of Scotch and rye, +and to bring out both."</p> + +<p>"So Drake left the room, too," Dundee mused. "Oh, Lord. I <i>knew</i> I'd +find that every last one of the six had a chance to kill Sprague, as +well as Nita!... How long was Polly Beale gone on this walk of hers?"</p> + +<p>"She came in with a pink water lily—said she'd been down to the lily +ponds, and that Flora had enough to spare her one," Penny answered. "She +couldn't have been away more than ten minutes, because Johnny was just +mixing the highballs, according to our preference for Scotch or rye—or +plain ginger ale, which both Ralph and I chose. After we'd had our +drinks and the sandwiches, we went on with bridge. Polly and Johnny just +wandered about the porch or watched the game at the two tables. And +about five minutes after eleven Clive Hammond arrived, coming up the +path to the porch, just as Janet had. After he came, there was no more +bridge, but we sat around on the porch and talked until midnight. Clive +said he was too tired to play bridge—that he'd been struggling all +evening with a knotty problem."</p> + +<p>"I can sympathize with him!" Dundee said grimly, as he rose. "I've got +my own knotty problem awaiting me.... When that call comes through from +Chicago, tell Sanderson the bad news, and say I'll telephone him later."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_TWENTY-TWO" id="CHAPTER_TWENTY-TWO"></a>CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO</h2> + + +<p>The Miles home, still known in Hamilton as the Hackett place, since it +had been built more than thirty years before by Flora's father, old +Silas Hackett, dead these seven years, dominated one of the most +beautiful of the wooded hills which encircled Mirror Lake in the +Brentwood section. Of modified Tudor architecture, its deep red, +mellowed bricks had achieved in three decades almost the same aged +dignity and impressiveness as characterized the three-century-old +mansion in England which Silas Hackett's architect had used as an +inspiration.</p> + +<p>The big house faced the lake, a long series of landscaped terraces +leading down to the water's edge, but the driveway wound from the state +road up a side of the hill, to the main entrance at the rear of the +house.</p> + +<p>Once before—on Sunday, the day after Nita Selim's murder, when he had +come to interview Lydia Carr and had secured the alibi which had +eliminated Dexter Sprague as a suspect—Dundee had driven his car up +this hill between the tall yew hedges. But then he had taken the fork +which led to the hooded doorway over the kitchen; had descended the +kitchen stairs with Lydia, to the servants' sitting room in the +basement. Now he continued along the main driveway to the more +impressive entrance, whose flanking, slim turrets frowned down upon a +line of police cars and motorcycles.</p> + +<p>His approach must have been expected and observed, for it was the master +of the house who opened the great, iron-studded doors and invited the +detective into the broad main hall, at the end of which, down three +steps, lay the immense living room. The detective's first glance took in +stately armchairs of the Cromwell period, thick, mellow-toned rugs, and, +in the living room beyond, splendid examples of Jacobean furniture.</p> + +<p>"A horrible thing to happen in a man's home, Dundee," Miles was saying, +his plump, rosy face blighted with horror. "I can't realize yet that we +actually slept as usual with a corpse lying down here all night! And I +have only myself to blame—"</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"Why, that the—the body wasn't discovered sooner," Miles explained. "If +it had occurred to me that Whitson hadn't closed the trophy room +windows, I should have gone in to close and lock them when I made the +rounds of living room, dining room and library, after our guests were +gone last night."</p> + +<p>A pale-faced, bald-headed butler had materialized while his master was +speaking. "Beg pardon, sir, but I did not close the trophy room windows +because I thought you might be using the room again.... You see, sir," +and Whitson turned to Dundee, "Mr. Miles and Mr. Dunlap played ping-pong +in the trophy room after dinner until the other guests began to arrive, +and I did not want them to find the room stuffy—it was a warm night—if +any of the guests—"</p> + +<p>"I see," Dundee interrupted. "Who, to your knowledge, was the last +person to enter the trophy room last night, Mr. Miles?"</p> + +<p>"I was, except Sprague, of course, and I had no idea he'd gone there. +Drake wanted to play anagrams, and before the bridge game started, I +went to the trophy room to get the box," Miles explained. "I turned off +the light when I left, and there was no light burning in there this +morning when Celia, the parlor maid, went there to put the anagram box +back in the cabinet, and found the body.... Flora—Mrs. Miles—had +brought the anagrams in from the porch and left them on a table in the +living room, as our guests were getting ready to leave. There was +nothing else to bring in, in case of rain. The bridge tables are of +iron, covered with oilcloth, and fitted with oilcloth bags for the +cards, score pads, and pencils—"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know," Dundee interrupted. "Miss Crain has already told me all +about that, and a good many details of the party itself.... By the way, +where is Mrs. Miles now?"</p> + +<p>"In bed. The doctor is with her. She is prostrated from the shock."</p> + +<p>"Where is this room you call the trophy room?" Dundee asked. "No, don't +bother to come with me. Just point it out. It's on this floor, I +understand."</p> + +<p>Miles pointed past the great circular staircase that wound upward from +the main hall. "You can't see the door from here, but it's behind the +staircase. Celia found the door closed this morning, and no light on, as +I said—"</p> + +<p>Dundee cut him short by marching toward the door which was again closed. +He entered so noiselessly that Captain Strawn, Dr. Price and the +fingerprint expert, Carraway, did not hear him. For a moment he stood +just inside the door and let his eyes wander about the room which Penny +Crain had already described. It was not a large room—twelve by fourteen +feet, possibly—but it looked even smaller, crowded as it was with the +long ping-pong table, bags of golf clubs, fishing tackle, tennis +racquets, skis and sleds. There were two windows in the north wall of +the room, looking out upon the yew-hedged driveway, and between them +stood a cabinet of numerous big and little drawers.</p> + +<p>Not until he had taken in the general aspect of the room did Dundee look +at the thing over which Captain Strawn and the coroner were bending—the +body of Dexter Sprague.</p> + +<p>The alien from New York had fallen about four feet from the window +nearer the east wall of the trophy room. He lay on his side, his left +cheek against the floor, the fingers of his left hand still clutching +the powder-burned bosom of his soft shirt, now stiff with dried blood, a +pool of which had formed and then half congealed upon the rug. The right +hand, the fingers curled but not touching each other, lay palm-upward on +the floor at the end of the rigid, outstretched arm. The one visible eye +was half open, but on the sallow, thin face, which had been strikingly +handsome in an obvious sort of way, was a peace and dignity which Dundee +had never seen upon Sprague's face when the man was alive. The left leg +was drawn upward so that the knee almost touched the bullet-pierced +stomach.</p> + +<p>"How long has he been dead, doctor?" Dundee asked quietly.</p> + +<p>"Hello, boy!" Dr. Price greeted him placidly. "Always the same question! +I've been here only a few minutes, and I've already told Strawn that I +shall probably be unable to fix the hour of death with any degree of +accuracy."</p> + +<p>"Took your time, didn't you, Bonnie?" Captain Strawn greeted his former +subordinate on the Homicide Squad. "Doc says he's been dead between ten +and twelve hours. Since it's nearly ten now, that means Sprague was +killed some time between nine and eleven o'clock last night."</p> + +<p>"Better say between nine o'clock and midnight last night," Dr. Price +suggested. "He may have lived an hour or more—unconscious, of course. +For the indications are that he did not die instantly, but staggered a +few steps, clutching at the wound. But of course I shall have to perform +an autopsy first——"</p> + +<p>Dundee crossed the room, stepping over the dead man's stick—a swank +affair of dark, polished wood, with a heavy knob of carved onyx, which +lay about a foot beyond the reach of the curled fingers of the stiff +right hand.</p> + +<p>"Sprague's hat?" he asked, pointing to a brightly banded straw which lay +upon the top of the cabinet.</p> + +<p>"Yes," Strawn answered. "And did you notice the window screen?"</p> + +<p>He pointed to the window in front of which the body lay. The sash of +leaded panes was raised as high as it would go, and beneath it was a +screen of the roller-curtain type, raised about six inches from the +window sill. A pair of curved, nickel-plated catches in the center of +the inch-wide metal band on the bottom of the coppernet curtain showed +how the screen was raised or lowered.</p> + +<p>Dundee nodded, frowning, and Strawn began eagerly:</p> + +<p>"You'll have to admit I was right now, boy. You've sneered at my gunman +theory and tried to pin Nita's murder on one of Hamilton's finest bunch +of people, but you'll have to admit now that every detail of this set-up +bears me out."</p> + +<p>"Yes?"</p> + +<p>"Sure. This is the way I figure it out: Sprague has good reason to be +afraid he's next on the program. He's nervous. He hops a taxi at his +hotel and comes here—can't stick to his room any longer. Wants a little +human companionship. This crowd here—and I have Miles' word for +it—ain't any too glad to see him, and shows it. He phones for a taxi to +go back to his hotel—about 9:15, that was, Miles says—but decides to +walk down the hill to meet it. Don't want to go back out on the porch +and lie about having had a good time, when he hasn't.... Well, he opens +the front door, or what would be the front door if this was any ordinary +house, but before he steps out he sees or hears something—probably a +rustling in the hedge across the driveway, or maybe he even sees a face, +in the light from the lanterns on each side of the door. He feels sure +Nita's murderer has trailed him and is lying in wait for him. In a panic +he darts into this room, and don't turn on the light for fear he'll be +seen from the windows, but he can see well enough to make out how the +screens work, and he was familiar with the house anyway. I'll bet you +anything you like Sprague stayed in this room for an hour or two, till +he thought the coast was clear, then eased up this screen, intending to +climb out of the window and drop to the ground.... Not much of a drop at +that. You can see that the tall hedge on this side of the driveway comes +pretty near up to these windows.... Well, I figure he laid his hat on +this cabinet, intending to reach in for it when he was outside, but that +he had already made some little noise which the gunman was listening +for, and that when he got the screen up this high, the gunman, crouching +under the window, let go with the same gun and silencer that he used to +bump off Nita.... I've got Miles' word for it that neither he nor +anybody else heard a shot.... Of course, nobody knew Sprague was in +here, and since his hat and stick was both missing from the hall closet, +they took it for granted he'd beat it.... Any objections to that theory, +boy?"</p> + +<p>"Just a few—one in particular," Dundee said. "But I grant it's a good +one, provided Dr. Price's autopsy bears you out as to the course of the +bullet, and that Carraway finds Sprague's fingerprints on that +contrivance for raising the screen. Even then——"</p> + +<p>But Dundee was not allowed to finish his sentence, for Strawn was +summoned to the telephone, by Whitson. When he returned there was a +slightly bewildered look on his heavy old face.</p> + +<p>"That's funny.... Collins—the lad I sent to check up on the taxi +companies—says he's located the driver that answered Sprague's call +last night. The driver says he was called about 9:15, told to come +immediately, and to wait for Sprague at the foot of the hill, on the +main road. He says he waited there until half past ten, then went on +back to town, sore'n a boiled owl."</p> + +<p>"It doesn't look exactly as if Sprague were afraid of anyone <i>outside of +this house</i> last night, does it?" Dundee asked. "By the way, I suppose +you've sent for everyone who was here?"</p> + +<p>"Sure!" But again Captain Strawn looked uncomfortable. "But we haven't +been able to locate the Beale girl and Clive Hammond."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_TWENTY-THREE" id="CHAPTER_TWENTY-THREE"></a>CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE</h2> + + +<p>"I'd give a good deal to know which of those two suggested that it would +be a good idea to get married the first thing this morning," Dundee +mused aloud, as he put down the second extra which <i>The Hamilton Morning +News</i> had had occasion to issue that Thursday.</p> + +<p>It was two o'clock, and the district attorney's "special investigator" +sat across the desk from Captain Strawn, in his former chief's office at +Police Headquarters.</p> + +<p>The first extra had screamed in its biggest head type: SECOND BRIDGE +DUMMY MURDER! and had carried, in detail, Captain Strawn's comforting +theory that Dexter Sprague's erstwhile friends had again been made the +victims of a New York gunman's fiendish cleverness in committing his +murders under circumstances which would inevitably involve Hamilton's +most highly respected and socially prominent citizens in the police +investigation.</p> + +<p>But the second extra had a more romantic streamer headline: HAMMOND +WEDDING DELAYS MURDER QUIZ.</p> + +<p>The story beneath a series of smaller headlines began:</p> + +<p>"At the very moment—9:05 o'clock this morning—when Celia Hunt, maid in +the Tracey Miles home in the Brentwood district of Hamilton, was +screaming the news of her discovery of the dead body of Dexter Sprague, +New York motion picture director, in what is known as the 'trophy room,' +Miss Polly Beale and Mr. Clive Hammond were applying for a marriage +license in the Municipal Building.</p> + +<p>"At 9:30, when Miss Beale and Mr. Hammond were exchanging their vows in +the rectory of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, of which both bride and +groom have been members since childhood, Captain John Strawn of the +Homicide Squad was listening to Tracey Miles' account of the strange +disappearance of Dexter Sprague last night from an impromptu bridge +game, after he had announced his intention of taking advantage of the +fact that he was 'dummy' to telephone for a taxi.</p> + +<p>"And at 10 o'clock, when the new Mrs. Hammond called her home to break +the news of her marriage to her aunt, Mrs. Amelia Beale, the bride was +in turn acquainted with the news of Sprague's murder and the fact that +both she and her husband were wanted at the Miles home for questioning +by the police, since both had been guests of Mr. and Mrs. Miles last +night, although Mr. Hammond did not arrive until about 11 o'clock."</p> + +<p>There followed a revision of the murder story as it had appeared in the +first extra, with additional details supplied by Strawn, and with a line +drawing of the scene of the crime—the trophy room itself and the forked +driveway with its tall yew hedges. A dotted line illustrated Strawn's +theory of Sprague's plan to elude the murderer who had followed him to +the Miles home. Because of the curved sweep of the driveway toward the +main entrance of the house, the tall hedge was less than two feet from +the window with the partly opened screen.</p> + +<p>"Captain Strawn's theory," read the text below the large drawing, "is +that Sprague had good cause to fear he was being followed on his way to +the Miles home; that he telephoned for a taxi to wait for him at the +foot of the hill, and that he planned to leave the Miles house by way of +the trophy room window, so that his lurking pursuer might have no +knowledge of his departure. The drawing shows that his proposed flight +would have been protected by hedges until he reached the wooded slope of +the hill, provided his Nemesis was lurking in the opposite hedge across +the driveway, where he could observe every departure from the Miles +home."</p> + +<p>"You've sure got a single-track mind, boy," Strawn chuckled. "So you +think those two got married in such a hurry this morning because the law +says a husband or a wife can't be made to testify against the other?"</p> + +<p>"Possibly." Dundee grinned, unruffled. "But there is another +possibility—which is why I should like to know who suggested this +sudden wedding. I mean that we can't overlook the possibility that these +two murders made either the bride or the groom feel perfectly safe in +going on with the marriage. Polly Beale and Clive Hammond had been +engaged for more than a year, you know, with no apparent reason for a +long engagement.... As for my having a single-track mind, Captain, what +about you? I have six possible suspects, all of whose names I know, and +you have only one—whose name you do not know, and whose motive you can +only guess at, while <i>I</i> have a perfectly good motive that might fit any +one of my six—blackmail!"</p> + +<p>"Is that so?" Strawn growled. "I'm not telling the papers everything, +and if they are satisfied to call these murders '<i>crimes passionnels</i>,' +it's all right with me. But I'm not forgetting that Nita Selim banked +ten thousand dollars cash after she got to Hamilton. My real theory now +that Sprague has been killed is that Nita and Sprague had cooked up some +sort of racket between them, and that when Nita got the chance to come +to Hamilton with Mrs. Dunlap, she jumped at it, and she and Sprague +sprung their racket, whatever it was, either just before or just after +Nita left New York. Probably it was Nita's tip-off and Sprague did the +actual dirty work himself, which explains that telegram that Nita sent +him April 24, just three days after she got to Hamilton. Let's see again +just what it says," and Strawn reached for a copy of the night letter +which Dundee himself had unearthed the day before. "See: '<i>Everything +Jake so far, but would feel safer you here</i>—'"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I remember the wording quite well," Dundee interrupted. "But you +did not take it so seriously when I showed it to you yesterday. If you +had—"</p> + +<p>"All right! Rub it in!" Strawn snapped, flushing darkly. "If I had +assigned a man to 'tail' Sprague, as you suggested, he wouldn't have +been murdered—"</p> + +<p>"He probably would have been murdered just the same," Dundee comforted +the older man, "but we might have been lucky enough to have had an +eye-witness."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you and your theory!" Strawn growled. "But let me go on.... Nita +meant she would feel safer about Sprague if he was here in Hamilton, +too. But the guy they double-crossed in New York, or worked the badger +game on, or something like that, got on their trail. But it took him +weeks to do it, and Sprague followed Nita's advice. He got here on +Sunday April 27, and on Monday the 28th Nita banked the first $5,000! +Don't you see it, boy? Sprague brought with him the dough they'd got for +their stunt, and thought it was safer for Nita to bank it in her name, +since it wasn't the name she was known by in New York anyway. We've +checked up on Sprague pretty thoroughly. He didn't have a bank book, +either on his body or in his room, and every bank in town denies he had +an account with them."</p> + +<p>"If that theory is correct, it makes Nita Selim a pretty low character," +Dundee mused aloud. "Not only did she kick him out as a lover, but she +double-crossed him as her partner in crime, by willing the whole wad to +Lydia Carr. Sprague must have received quite a shock when he heard +Nita's will read at the inquest."</p> + +<p>"Yeah," Strawn agreed. "It looks like Mrs. Dunlap picked a sweet +specimen to make a friend out of.... Well, that's my theory, and I think +it explains everything. Their victim in New York simply hired a gunman, +or come down here himself, when he got on their tracks. Of course it was +a good stunt to make it look like a local crime—figured he'd fool <i>me</i> +just as he fooled <i>you</i>! So the murderer simply trailed Nita around, and +saw that whole bunch of society people shooting at a target at Judge +Marshall's place, with a gun equipped with a Maxim silencer. Too good an +opportunity to be missed, so he bides his chance to swipe the gun and +silencer. To make sure it will look like a local crime, he pops off Nita +when that same bunch is at her house, but it takes a few days longer +before he has the same opportunity to get Sprague. But it come last +night and he grabbed it."</p> + +<p>"A very plausible theory, and one which, in general, the whole city of +Hamilton has been familiar with since the night Nita was murdered," +Dundee remarked significantly.</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?" Strawn demanded. "It's waterproof, ain't it? Doc +Price says the bullet—and a .32 caliber one at that—entered Sprague's +body just below the breastbone and traveled an upward course till it +struck the extreme right side of the heart. The bullet entered exactly +where it would have to, if the murderer was crouching under that window +while Sprague was raising the screen. And we have Carraway's report that +it was Sprague's fingerprints on those nickleplated things you have to +press together to make the screen roll up or down. Furthermore, I +haven't a doubt in the world that the ballistics expert in Chicago will +report that the bullet was fired from the same gun that killed Nita +Selim."</p> + +<p>"Neither have I," Dundee agreed. "But what I meant was that you had +obligingly furnished the murderer who fits <i>my</i> theory with a theory +he—or she—would not have upset for the world!... Listen!" and he bent +forward very earnestly: "I'm willing to grant that Sprague was shot from +the outside, through the window, when Sprague raised the screen. But +there our theories part company. I believe that the murderer was a guest +in the Selim home last night, that he or she had made an appointment to +meet Sprague there, on the promise of paying the hush money he had +demanded, in spite of my warning to him not to carry on with the +blackmail scheme. Naturally he or she—and I'll say 'he' from now on, +for the sake of convenience—had no intention of being seen entering +that room. The bridge game was suggested by Judge Marshall at noon. +There was plenty of time for the rendezvous to be made with Sprague. As +I see it, the murderer told Sprague to excuse himself from the game when +he became dummy, and to go to the trophy room and wait there until the +murderer had a chance to slip away and appear beneath the window. +Sprague had been promised that, when he raised the screen at a tap or a +whispered request, a roll of bills would be handed to him, but—he +received a bullet instead."</p> + +<p>"And which one of your six suspects have you picked on?" Strawn asked +sarcastically.</p> + +<p>"That's just the trouble. There are still six," Dundee acknowledged with +a wry grin. "After Sprague's disappearance, every one of the six was +absent from the porch at one time or another.... No, by George! There +are <i>seven</i> suspects now! I was about to forget Peter Dunlap, who admits +he was alone on a fishing trip when Nita was murdered and who left the +porch last night to go to the library, as soon as Sprague arrived!... As +for the movements of the original six after Sprague disappeared: Polly +Beale took a walk about the grounds; Flora Miles went upstairs to hunt +for Karen Marshall, and was gone more than ten minutes; Drake went to +the dining room to get the refreshments, and no one can say exactly how +long he was gone; Judge Marshall went up to get his wife, and had time +to make a little trip on the side; Janet Raymond walked over from her +home, and passed that very window, arriving after Sprague had +disappeared; and, finally, Clive Hammond arrived alone in his car, which +he parked within a few feet of that window. This morning he gets +married——"</p> + +<p>"A telegram, sir!" interrupted a plainclothesman, who had entered +without knocking.</p> + +<p>Strawn snatched at it, read it, then exulted: "Read this, boy! I guess +<i>this</i> settles the business!"</p> + +<p>The telegram had been filed half an hour before and was from the city +editor of <i>The New York Evening Press</i>:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"WORKING ON YOUR THEORY OF NEW YORK GUNMAN RESPONSIBLE MURDERS OF +JUANITA LEIGH SELIM AND DEXTER SPRAGUE THIS PAPER HAS DISCOVERED +THAT SELIM WOMAN WAS SEEN AT NIGHT CLUBS SEVERAL TIMES DURING +JANUARY FEBRUARY WITH QUOTE SWALLOW TAIL SAMMY END QUOTE UNDERWORLD +NAME FOR SAM SAVELLI STOP SAVELLI TAKEN FOR RIDE TUESDAY APRIL +TWENTY SECOND TWO DAYS AFTER SELIM WOMAN LEFT NEW YORK STOP POLICE +HERE WORKING ON THEORY SAVELLI SLAIN BY OWN GANG AFTER THEY WERE +TIPPED OFF SAVELLI WAS DOUBLE CROSSING THEM STOP IN EXCHANGE FOR +THIS TIP CAN YOU GIVE US ANY SUPPRESSED INFORMATION YOUR POSSESSION +STOP SAVELLI HAD BROTHER WHO IS KNOWN TO US TO HAVE PROMISED +REVENGE SWALLOW TAIL SAMMYS MURDER STOP BE A SPORT CAPTAIN."</p></div> + +<p>"Well, that puts the lid on it, don't it?" Strawn crowed. "I'll send +Sergeant Turner to New York on the five o'clock train.... Pretty decent +of that city editor to wire me this tip, I'll say!"</p> + +<p>"And are you going to reciprocate by wiring him about the $10,000 Nita +banked here?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"Sure! Why not? There's no use that I can see to keep it back any +longer, now that no one can have any excuse to think as you've been +doing—that it was blackmail paid by a Hamiltonian."</p> + +<p>"Then," Dundee began very slowly, "if you really think your case is +solved, I'll make one suggestion: take charge of Lydia Carr and put her +in a very safe place."</p> + +<p>"Why?" Strawn looked puzzled.</p> + +<p>"Because, when you publish the fact that Nita and Sprague got $10,000 +for tipping off Savelli's gang that he was double-crossing them, and +that Nita willed the money to Lydia, the avenger's next and last job +would be to 'get' Lydia, since his natural conclusion would be that +Lydia had been in on the scheme from the beginning," Dundee explained.</p> + +<p>"God, boy! You're right!" Strawn exclaimed, and his heavy old face was +very pale as he reached for the telephone, and called the number of the +Miles residence. "I'm going to put it up to her that it will be best for +her to be locked up as a material witness, for her own protection."</p> + +<p>Five minutes later Strawn restored the receiver to the hook with a bang. +"Says she won't budge!" he explained unnecessarily. "Says she ain't +afraid and the Miles kids need her.... Well, it's her own funeral! But I +guess <i>you</i> are convinced at last?"</p> + +<p>Dundee slowly shook his head. "Almost—but not quite, chief!"</p> + +<p>"Lord, but you're stubborn! Here's a water-tight case——"</p> + +<p>"A very pretty and a very satisfactory case, but not exactly +water-tight," Dundee interrupted. "There's just one little thing——"</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?" Strawn demanded irritably.</p> + +<p>"Have you forgotten the secret shelf behind the guest closet in the +Selim house?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"I can afford to forget it, since it hasn't got a thing to do with the +case!" Strawn retorted angrily. "There's not a scrap of evidence——"</p> + +<p>"Of course it does not fit into <i>your</i> theory," Dundee agreed, "for +'Swallow-tail Sammy's' avenging brother could not have known of its +existence, but there is one thing about that secret shelf and its pivot +door which I don't believe you can afford to forget, Captain!"</p> + +<p>"Yeah?" Strawn snarled.</p> + +<p>"Yeah!... I refer, of course, to the complete absence of fingerprints on +the door and on the shelf itself! Carraway didn't even find Nita Selim's +fingerprints. Since Nita would have had no earthly reason for carefully +wiping off her fingerprints after she removed the papers she burned on +Friday night, it's a dead sure fact that someone else who had no +legitimate business to do so, touched that pivoting panel and the shelf, +and carefully removed all traces that he had done so!... And—" he +continued grimly, "until I find out who that someone is, I, for one, +won't consider the case solved!"</p> + +<p>Fifteen minutes later Dundee was sitting at Penny Crain's desk in her +office of the district attorney's suite, replacing the receiver upon the +telephone hook, after having put in a call for Sanderson, who was still +in Chicago, keeping vigil at the bedside of his dying mother.</p> + +<p>"Did you find out anything new when you questioned the crowd this +morning?" Penny asked. "Besides the fact that Polly and Clive got +married this morning, I mean.... I wasn't surprised when I read about +the wedding in the extra. It was exactly like Polly to make up her mind +suddenly, after putting Clive off for a year——"</p> + +<p>"So it was Polly who held back," Dundee said to himself. Aloud: "No, I +didn't learn much new, Penny. You're a most excellent and accurate +reporter.... But there were one or two things that came out. For +instance, I got Drake to admit to me, in private, that Nita did give him +an explanation as to where she got the $10,000."</p> + +<p>"Yes?" Penny prompted eagerly.</p> + +<p>"Drake says," Dundee answered dryly, "that Nita told him it was 'back +alimony' which she had succeeded in collecting from her former husband. +Unfortunately, she did not say who or where the mysterious husband is."</p> + +<p>"Pooh!" scoffed Penny. "Don't you see? She just said that to satisfy +Johnny's curiosity. After all, it was the most plausible explanation of +how a divorcee got hold of a lot of money."</p> + +<p>"So plausible that Drake may have thought of it himself," Dundee +reflected silently. Aloud, he continued his report to the girl who had +been of so much help to him: "Among other minor things that came out +this morning, and which the papers did not report, was the fact that +Janet Raymond tried to commit suicide this morning by drinking shoe +polish. Fortunately her father discovered what she had done almost as +soon as she had swallowed the stuff, and made her take ipecac and then +sent for the doctor."</p> + +<p>"Oh, poor Janet!" Penny groaned. "She must have been terribly in love +with Dexter Sprague, though what she saw in him——"</p> + +<p>Dundee made no comment, but continued with his information: "Another +minor development was that Tracey Miles admitted that he and Flora had +quarreled over Sprague after all of you left, and that Flora took two +sleeping tablets to make sure of a night's rest."</p> + +<p>"She's been awfully unstrung ever since Nita's murder," Penny defended +her friend. "She told us all Monday night at Peter's that the doctor had +prescribed sleeping medicine.... Now, you look here, Bonnie Dundee!" she +cried out sharply, answering an enigmatic smile on the detective's face, +"if you think Flora Miles killed Nita Selim and Dexter Sprague, because +she was in love with Dexter and learned he was Nita's lover from that +silly note——"</p> + +<p>"Whoa, Penny!" Dundee checked her. "I'm not linking exactly that. But +I've just remembered something that had seemed of no importance to me +before."</p> + +<p>"And what's that, Mr. Smart Aleck?" Penny demanded furiously.</p> + +<p>"Before I answer that question, will you let me do a little theorizing?" +Dundee suggested gently. "Let us suppose that Flora Miles was <i>not</i> in +love with Sprague, but that she was being blackmailed by Nita for some +scandal Nita had heard gossiped about at the Forsyte School.... No, +wait!... Let us suppose further that Nita recognized Flora's picture in +the group Lois Dunlap showed her, as the portrait of the girl whose +story she had heard; that she was able, somehow, to secure incriminating +evidence of some sort—letters, let us say. Nita tells Sprague about it, +and Sprague advises her to blackmail Flora, who, Lois has told Nita, is +very rich. So Nita comes to Hamilton and bleeds Flora of $10,000. Not +satisfied, Nita makes another demand, the money to be paid to her the +day of the bridge luncheon——"</p> + +<p>"Silly!" Penny scoffed furiously. "The only evidence you have against +poor Flora is that she stole the note Dexter had written to Nita!"</p> + +<p>"That's the crux of the matter, Penny darling!" Dundee assured her in a +maddeningly soothing voice, at which Penny clinched her hands in +impotent rage. "Flora, seeing Nita receive a letter written on her +husband's business stationery, jumps to the conclusion that Nita had +carried out her threat to tell Tracey, or that Nita has at least given +Tracey a hint of the truth and that Tracey's special-messenger note is, +let us say, a confirmation of an appointment suggested by Nita.... Very +well! Flora goes to Nita's bedroom at the first opportunity, knowing +that Nita will come there to make up for the men's arrival. Let's +suppose Flora had brought the gun and silencer with her, intending to +frighten Nita, rather than kill her. But having had proof, as she +believes, that Nita means business, Flora waits in the closet until Nita +comes in and sits down at her dressing-table, then steps out and shoots +her. Then she recoils step by step, until her foot catches in the slack +cord of the bronze lamp, causing the very 'bang or bump' which Flora +herself describes later, for fear someone else has heard it. Her first +concern, of course, is to hide the gun and silencer. She remembers Judge +Marshall's tale of the secret shelf in the guest closet, and not only +hides the gun there but seeks in vain for the incriminating evidence +Nita has against her. But she also remembers the note she believes +Tracey has written to Nita, and which, if found after Nita's death, may +give her away. So she goes to the closet in Nita's bedroom, finds the +note, and faints with horror at her perhaps needless crime when she +realizes that the note was written by Sprague, and not Tracey. Of course +she is too ill and panic-stricken to leave the closet until the murder +is discovered——"</p> + +<p>"But you think she was not too panic-stricken to have the presence of +mind to retrieve the gun and silencer and walk out with them, under the +very eyes of the police," Penny scoffed.</p> + +<p>"<i>No! I think she was!</i>" Dundee amazed her by admitting. "And that is +where my sudden recollection of something I had considered unimportant +comes in! Let us suppose that Flora, half-suspected by Tracey, confesses +to him in their car as they are going to the Country Club for their +long-delayed dinner, as were the rest of you. Tracey, loyal to her, +decides to help her. He tells her to suggest, at dinner, that Lydia come +to them as nurse, so that he can go back to the house and get the gun +and silencer from the guest-closet hiding place, if an opportunity +presents itself—as it did, since I left Tracey Miles alone in the hall +while I went into Nita's bedroom to talk with Lydia before I permitted +her to go with Tracey."</p> + +<p>"You're crazy!" Penny told him fiercely, when he had finished. "I +suppose you are going to ask me to believe that Tracey was a big enough +fool to leave the gun and silencer where Flora could get hold of it and +kill Sprague last night."</p> + +<p>"Why not let us suppose that Tracey himself killed Sprague to protect +his wife, not only from scandal, but from a charge of murder?" Dundee +countered. "Tell me honestly: do you think Tracey Miles loves Flora +enough to do that for her?"</p> + +<p>Suddenly, inexplicably, Penny began to laugh—not hysterically, but with +genuine mirth.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_TWENTY-FOUR" id="CHAPTER_TWENTY-FOUR"></a>CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR</h2> + + +<p>"What are you laughing at?" Dundee demanded indignantly, but the +sustained ringing of the telephone bell checked Penny Crain's mirthful +laughter. "My Chicago call!... Hello!... Yes, this is Dundee.... All +right, but make it snappy, won't you?... Hello, Mr. Sanderson! How is +your mother?... That's fine! I certainly hope—Yes, the inquest is +slated for tomorrow morning, but there's no use your leaving your mother +to come back for it.... Yes, sir, one important new development. Can you +hear me plainly?... Then hold the line a moment, please!"</p> + +<p>With the receiver still at his ear, Dundee fumbled in his pocket for a +folded sheet of paper. "No, operator! We're not through! Please keep off +the line.... Listen, chief!" he addressed the district attorney at the +other end of the long distance wire. "This is a telegram Captain Strawn +received this afternoon from the city editor of The New York Evening +Press.... Can you hear me?... All right!" and he read slowly, repeating +when necessary.</p> + +<p>When he had finished reading the telegram, he listened for a long +minute, but not with so much concentration that he could not grin at +Penny's wide-eyed amazement and joy. "That's what I think, sir!" he +cried jubilantly. "I'd like to take the five o'clock train for New York +and work on the case from that end till we actually get our teeth into +something.... Thanks a lot, and my best wishes for your mother!"</p> + +<p>"Why didn't you tell me about this 'Swallow-tail Sammy'?" Penny demanded +indignantly. "Tormenting me with your silly theory about poor Flora and +Tracey, when all the time you knew the case was practically solved—"</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid I gave the district attorney a slightly false impression," +Dundee interrupted, but there was no remorse in his shining blue eyes. +"But just so I get to New York—By the way, young woman, what <i>were</i> you +laughing at so heartily? I didn't know I had made an amusing remark when +I asked you if you thought Tracey Miles loved his wife well enough to +commit murder for her."</p> + +<p>Penny laughed again, white teeth and brown eyes gleaming. "I was +laughing at something else. It suddenly occurred to me, while you were +spinning your foolish theory, how <i>flattered</i> Tracey would have been if +Flora had confessed to him Saturday night that she had killed Nita +because she was jealous!"</p> + +<p>"Which was <i>not</i> my theory, if you remember!" Dundee retorted. "But why +is the idea so amusing? Deep in his heart, I suppose any man would +really be a bit flattered if his wife loved him enough to be that +jealous."</p> + +<p>"You don't know Tracey Miles as well as I do," Penny assured him, her +eyes still mirthful. "He's really a dear, in spite of being a dreadful +bore most of the time, but the truth is, Tracey hasn't an atom of sex +appeal, and he <i>must</i> realize it.... Of course we girls have all +pampered his poor little ego by pretending to be crazy about him and +terribly envious that it was Flora who got him—"</p> + +<p>"But Flora Hackett <i>did</i> marry him," Dundee interrupted. "She must have +been a beautiful girl, and she was certainly rich enough to get any man +she wanted—"</p> + +<p>"You would think so, wouldn't you?" Penny agreed, her tongue loosened by +relief. "I was only twelve years old when Flora Hackett made her debut, +but a twelve-year-old has big ears and keen eyes. It is true that Flora +was beautiful and rich, but—well, there was something queer about her. +She was simply crazy to get married, and if a man danced with her as +many as three times in an evening she literally seized upon him and +tried to drag him to the altar.... Her eagerness and her intensity +repelled every man who was in the least attracted to her, and I think +she was beginning to be frightened to death that she wouldn't get +married at all, when she happened to meet Tracey, who had just got a job +as salesman in her father's business. She began to rush him—there's no +other word for it—and none of the other girls minded a bit, because, +without Flora, Tracey would have been the perfect male wallflower. They +became engaged almost right away, and were married six months or so +later. All the girls freely prophesied that even Tracey, flattered by +her passion for him as he so evidently was, would get tired of it, but +he didn't, and there were three marriages in 'the crowd' that June."</p> + +<p>"Three?" Dundee repeated absently, for his interest was waning.</p> + +<p>"Yes.... Lois Morrow and Peter Dunlap; Johnny Drake and Carolyn Swann; +and Tracey and Flora," Penny answered. "Although I was thirteen then and +really too old for the role, I had the fun of being flower girl for Lois +and Flora both."</p> + +<p>"Do you think Flora was really in love with Tracey?" Dundee asked +curiously.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes! But she'd have been in love with anyone who wanted to +marry her, and the funny thing is that, with the exception of Peter +and Lois, they are the happiest married couple I have ever known.... You +see, Tracey has never got over being flattered that so pretty and +passionate a girl as Flora Hackett wanted <i>him</i>!... And that's why I +laughed!... Tracey, with that deep-rooted sexual inferiority complex of +his, would have been so flattered if Flora had told him she killed Nita +out of jealousy that he would have forgiven her on the spot. On the other +hand," she went on, "if Flora had told him that Nita had documentary +proofs of some frightful scandal against her, can't you see how +violently Tracey would have reacted against her?... Oh, no! Tracey would +not have taken the trouble to murder Sprague, when Sprague popped up for +more blackmail!"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps he might have, if the scandal dated back to before the +marriage," Dundee argued. "Let's suppose Sprague did pop up, and Flora +turned him over to Tracey. When Sprague appeared apparently uninvited +last night, Flora must have been on pins and needles, trying to make +Tracey treat him decently and hoping against hope that Tracey would +simply pay the scoundrel all the blackmail he was demanding——"</p> + +<p>"Which is exactly what Tracey would have done, instead of taking the +awful risk of murdering him in his own home," Penny cut in spiritedly. +"Besides, Tracey wasn't gone from the porch long enough to go outside, +signal to Sprague in the trophy room, shoot him when Sprague raised the +screen, and then hide the gun. I told you Tracey was gone only about a +minute when he went to see if Sprague's hat and stick were gone from the +closet."</p> + +<p>"Did Tracey and Flora both step outside to see their guests into their +cars?" Dundee asked suddenly.</p> + +<p>"Tracey did," Penny answered. "Flora told us all good night in the +living room, then ran upstairs to see if Betty was still asleep.... But +remember we didn't leave until midnight, and Dr. Price says Sprague was +killed between nine and eleven last night."</p> + +<p>"Dr. Price would be the first to grant a leeway of an hour, one way or +another," Dundee told her. "Of course, if Tracey did kill him, he let +Flora believe that he had given Sprague the blackmail money he was +demanding. For it is inconceivable that a woman of Flora Miles' +hysterical temperament could have slept—even with two sleeping +tablets—knowing that a corpse was in the house."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm sick of your silly theorizing!" Penny told him with vehement +scorn. "Listen here, Bonnie Dundee! You probably laugh at 'woman's +intuition', but take it from me—<i>you're on the wrong track</i>!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm not so wedded to that particular theory!" Dundee laughed. "I +can spin you exactly six more just as convincing—"</p> + +<p>"And I shan't listen! You'd better dash home and pack your bag if you +want to catch the five o'clock train for New York."</p> + +<p>"It's already packed and in my office," Dundee assured her lazily. "Got +lots of time.... Hullo! Here's the home edition of <i>The Evening Sun</i>," +he interrupted himself, as a small boy, making his rounds of the +courthouse, flung the paper into the office. He reached for it, and +read the streamer headline aloud: "ITALIAN GANGSTER SOUGHT IN BRIDGE +MURDERS ... I wager a good many heads will lie easier on their pillows +tonight."</p> + +<p>"Let me see!" Penny commanded, and snatched the paper unceremoniously. +"Oh! Did you see this?" and she pointed to a boxed story in the middle +of the front page. "'Bridge Parties Cancelled'," she read aloud. "'The +society editor of <i>The Evening Sun</i> was kept busy at her telephone +today, receiving notices of cancellations of bridge parties scheduled +for the remainder of the week. Eight frantic hostesses, terrified by +Hamilton's second murder at bridge——' Oh, that's simply a <i>crime</i>! The +newspapers deliberately work up mob hysteria and then——"</p> + +<p>"I'd rather not play bridge for a while myself!" Dundee laughed, as he +rose and started for his own office. "And don't <i>you</i> dare leave the +room when you become dummy, if you have the nerve to play again! +Remember, that gun and silencer are still missing!"</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?.... You don't think there'll be more——?"</p> + +<p>Dundee became instantly contrite before her terror. "I didn't mean it, +honey," he said gently. "I think it is more than likely that the gun is +at the bottom of Mirror Lake. But do take care of yourself, and by that +I mean don't work yourself to death.... Any messages for anyone in New +York?"</p> + +<p>Penny's pale face quivered. "If you—happen to run across my father, +which of course you won't, tell him that—Mother would like him to come +home."</p> + +<p>At intervals during the sixteen-hour run to New York, Penny's faltering +words returned to haunt the district attorney's special investigator, +although he would have preferred to devote his entire attention to +mapping out the program he intended to follow when he reached the city +which, he fully believed, had been the scene of the first act of the +tragic drama he was bent upon bringing to an equally tragic conclusion.</p> + +<p>As soon as he had registered at a hotel near the Pennsylvania Station, +and had shaved and breakfasted, he took from his bag a large envelope +containing the photographs Carraway had made of Penny alive and of Nita +dead, both clad in the royal blue velvet dress. In the envelope also was +the white satin, gold-lettered label which the dress had so proudly +borne: "Pierre Model. Copied by Simonson's. New York City."</p> + +<p>Half an hour later he was showing the photographs and the label to a +woman buyer, in the French Salon of Simonson's, one of New York's most +"exclusive" department stores.</p> + +<p>"Can you tell me when the original Pierre model was bought, and when +this copy was made and sold?" he asked.</p> + +<p>The white-haired, smartly dressed buyer accepted the sheaf of +photographs Bonnie Dundee was offering. "I'll do my best, of course," +she began briskly, then paled and uttered a sharp exclamation as her +eyes took in the topmost picture. "This is Juanita Leigh, isn't +it?... But—" she shuddered, "how odd she looks—as if—"</p> + +<p>"Yes," Dundee agreed gravely. "She was dead when that picture was taken. +Did you know Mrs. Selim?"</p> + +<p>"No," the woman breathed, her eyes still bulging with horror. "But I've +seen so many pictures of her in the papers.... To think that it was one +of <i>our</i> dresses she chose for her shroud! But you want to know when the +dress was sold to her, don't you?" she asked, brisk again. "I can find +out. We keep a record of all our French originals and of the number of +copies made of each.... Let me think! I've been going to Paris myself +for the firm for the last fifteen years, but I can't remember buying +this Pierre model.... Oh, of course! I didn't go over during 1917 and +1918, on account of the war, you know, but the big Paris designers +managed to send us a limited number of very good models, and this must +have been one of them. Otherwise, I'd remember buying it.... If you'll +excuse me a moment——"</p> + +<p>When she returned about ten minutes later, Miss Thomas brought him a +pencilled memorandum. "This Pierre model was imported in the summer of +1917, several months in advance of the winter season, of course. Only +five copies were made—in different colors and materials, naturally, +since we make a point of exclusiveness. The royal blue velvet copy was +sold to Juanita Leigh in January, 1918. I am sorry I cannot give you the +exact day of the month, but our records show the month only. I took the +liberty of showing a picture of the dress to the only saleswoman in the +department who has been with us that long, but she cannot remember the +sale. Twelve years is a long time, you know."</p> + +<p>"Indeed it is," Dundee agreed regretfully. "You have been immensely +helpful, however, Miss Thomas, and I thank you with all my heart."</p> + +<p>"If you could just tell <i>me</i>—confidentially, of course," Miss Thomas +whispered, "what sort of clue this dress is—"</p> + +<p>"I don't know, myself!" the detective admitted. "But," he added to +himself, after he had escaped the buyer's natural curiosity, "I intend +to find out!"</p> + +<p>Before he could take any further steps along that particular path, +however, Dundee had an appointment to keep. Upon arriving at his hotel +that morning he had made two telephone calls. He smiled now as he +recalled the surprise and glee of one of his former Yale classmates, now +a discouraged young bond salesman, with whom he had kept in touch.</p> + +<p>"You want to borrow my name and my kid sister?" Jimmy Randolph had +chortled. "Hop to it, old sport! But you might tell me what you want +with such intimate belongings of mine."</p> + +<p>"You may not know it," Dundee had retorted, "but young Mr. James +Wadley Randolph, Jr., scion of the famous old Boston family, is going +to visit that equally famous school, Forsyte-on-the-Hudson, to see +whether it is the ideal finishing school for his beloved young sister, +Barbara.... She's about fifteen now, isn't she, Jimmy?"</p> + +<p>"Going on sixteen, and one of Satan's prize hellions," Jimmy Randolph +had answered. "The family would be eternally grateful if you could get +Forsyte to take her, but make them promise not to have any more chorus +girls who plan to get murdered, as directors of their amateur +theatricals. Bab would be sure to be mixed up in the mess.... I suppose +that's the job you're on, you flat-footed dick, you!"</p> + +<p>The second telephone call had secured an appointment at the Forsyte +School for "Mr. James Wadley Randolph, Jr., of Boston," and Dundee, +rather relishing his first need for such professional tactics, relaxed +to enjoy the ten-mile drive along the Hudson.</p> + +<p>It was a quarter to twelve when his taxi swept up the drive toward the +big grey-stone, turreted building, sedately lonely in the midst of its +valuable acres.</p> + +<p>"Miss Earle says to come to the office," a colored maid told him, when +he had given his borrowed name, and led him from the vast hall to a +fairly large room, whose windows looked upon a tennis court, and whose +walls were almost covered with group pictures of graduating classes, +photographs of amateur theatrical performances, and portrait studies of +alumnae.</p> + +<p>A very thin, sharp-faced woman of about forty, with red-rimmed eyes +which peered nearsightedly, rose from an old-fashioned roll-top desk and +came forward to greet him.</p> + +<p>"I am Miss Earle, Miss Pendleton's private secretary," she told him, as +he shook her bony, clammy hand. "I should have told you when you +telephoned this morning that both Miss Pendleton and Miss Macon sailed +for Europe yesterday. We always have our commencement the last Tuesday +in May, you know.... But if there is anything I can do for you——"</p> + +<p>"I should like to know something at first hand of the history of the +school, its—well, prestige, special advantages, curriculum, and so on," +Dundee began deprecatingly.</p> + +<p>"I should certainly be able to answer any question you may wish to ask, +Mr. Randolph, since I have been with the school for fifteen years," Miss +Earle interrupted tartly.</p> + +<p>"Then Forsyte must take younger pupils than I had been led to believe, +Miss Earle," Dundee said, with his most winning smile.</p> + +<p>"I was never a pupil here," the secretary corrected him, but she thawed +visibly. "Of course, I was a mere child when I finished business school, +but I <i>have</i> been here fifteen years—fifteen years of watching rich +society girls dawdle away four or five years, just because they've got +to be <i>somewhere</i> before they make their debut.... But I mustn't talk +like that, or I'll give you a wrong impression, Mr. Randolph. Of its +kind, it is really a very fine school—very exclusive; riding masters, +dancing masters, a golf 'pro' and our own golf course, native teachers +for French, Italian, German and Spanish.... Oh, the <i>school</i> is all +right, and will probably not suffer any loss of prestige on account of +that dreadful murder out in the Middle West——"</p> + +<p>"Murder?" Dundee echoed, as if he had no idea what she was talking +about.</p> + +<p>"Haven't you been reading the papers?" Miss Earle rallied him, with a +coquettish smile. "But I don't suppose Boston bothers with such sordid +things," she added, her thin-lipped mouth tightening. "Miss Pendleton +was all cut up about it, because Mrs. Selim, or Juanita Leigh, as she +was known on Broadway, had directed our Easter play the last two years, +and the reporters simply hounded us the first two days after she was +murdered out in Hamilton, where a number of our richest girls have come +from——"</p> + +<p>"By Jove!" Dundee exclaimed. "Was the Selim woman connected with this +school, really?... I only read the headlines—never pay much attention +to murders in the papers—"</p> + +<p>"I wish," Miss Earle interrupted tartly, fresh tears reddening her eyes, +"that people wouldn't persist in referring to her as 'that Selim +woman'.... When I think how sweet and friendly she was, how—how +<i>kind</i>!" and to Dundee's surprise she choked on tears before she could +go on: "Of course I know it's dreadful for the school, and I ought not +to talk about it, when you've come to see about putting your sister into +the school, but Nita was <i>my friend</i>, and it simply makes me <i>wild</i>——"</p> + +<p>"You admired and liked her very much?" Dundee asked, forgetting his role +for the moment.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I did! And Miss Pendleton liked her, too. And you can imagine how +clever and popular she was, when a wonderful woman like Mrs. Peter +Dunlap, who was Lois Morrow when she was in school here, admired her so +much she took her to Hamilton with her to direct plays for a Little +Theater.... Why, I never met anyone I was so congenial with!" the +secretary went on passionately. "The girls here snub me and make silly +jokes about me behind my back and call me nicknames, but Nita was just +as sweet to me as she was to anyone—even Miss Pendleton herself!"</p> + +<p>"Were you with her much?" Dundee dared ask.</p> + +<p>"<i>With her much?...</i> I should say I was!" she asserted proudly. "I have +a room here, live here the year 'round, and both years Nita shared my +room, so she would not have to make the long trip back to New York every +night during the last week of rehearsals. We used to talk until two or +three o'clock in the morning—Say!" she broke off, in sudden terror. +"You aren't a reporter, are you?"</p> + +<p>"A reporter? Good Lord, no!" Dundee denied, in all sincerity. Then he +made up his mind swiftly. This woman hated the school and all connected +with it, had grown more and more sour and envy-bitten every year of the +fifteen she had served here—and she liked Nita Leigh Selim better than +anyone she had ever met. The opportunity for direct questioning was too +miraculous to be ignored. So he changed his tone suddenly and said very +earnestly: "No, I am not a reporter, Miss Earle. But I am <i>not</i> James +Wadley Randolph, Jr. I am James F. Dundee, special investigator attached +to the office of the district attorney of Hamilton, and I want you to +help me solve the mystery of Mrs. Selim's murder."</p> + +<p>It took nearly ten precious minutes for Dundee to nurse the terrified +but obviously thrilled woman over the shock, and to get her into the +mood to answer him freely.</p> + +<p>"But I shan't and <i>can't</i> tell you anything bad about Nita!" she +protested vehemently, wiping her red-rimmed eyes. "The papers are all +saying now that she got $10,000 for double-crossing some awful racketeer +named 'Swallow-tail Sammy', but I <i>know</i> she didn't get the money that +way! She was too good——"</p> + +<p>"From Nita's confidences to you, do you have any idea how she did get +the money?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>Miss Earle shook her head. "I don't know, but she got it honorably. I +know that!... Maybe she found her husband and made him pay alimony——"</p> + +<p>Dundee controlled his excitement with difficulty. "Did she tell you all +about her marriage and divorce?"</p> + +<p>Again Miss Earle shook her head. "The only time she ever spoke of it was +last year—the first year she directed our play, you know. I asked her +why she didn't get married again, and she said she couldn't—she wasn't +divorced, because she didn't know where her husband was, and it was too +expensive to go to Reno.... Of course she may have found him or +something—and got a divorce some time this last year, and this money +she got was a settlement——"</p> + +<p>"She must have got a divorce, since she was planning to be married again +to a young man in Hamilton," Dundee assured her soothingly.</p> + +<p>"The way everybody puts the very worst interpretation on everything, +when a person gets murdered!" Miss Earle stormed. "If poor Nita had +belonged to a rich family, like the girls here, they would have spent a +million if necessary to hush up any scandal on her!... I've seen it +done!" she added, darkly and venomously.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_TWENTY-FIVE" id="CHAPTER_TWENTY-FIVE"></a>CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE</h2> + + +<p>Bonnie Dundee's heart leaped, but he forced himself to go softly. "I +suppose," he said casually, "a fashionable school like this has plenty +of carefully hushed-up scandals——"</p> + +<p>"I'll say it has!" Miss Earle retorted inelegantly, and with ghoulish +satisfaction. "<i>Money</i> can do anything! It makes my blood simply boil +when I think of how those Forsyte girls in Hamilton—so smug and +snobbish in their hick town 'society'—must be running poor Nita down, +now that she's dead and can't defend herself!... If the truth were only +known about some of <i>them</i>——"</p> + +<p>Dundee could almost have embraced the homely, life-soured spinster—she +was making his task so easy for him.</p> + +<p>"I've met them all, of course, since Mrs. Selim was murdered," he said +deprecatingly, "and I must say they seem to be remarkably fine women and +girls——"</p> + +<p>"Oh <i>are</i> they?" Miss Earle snorted. "Flora Hackett—Mrs. Tracey Miles +she is now—didn't happen to tell you the nice little fuss <i>she</i> kicked +up when she was here, did she? Oh, no! I guess not!"</p> + +<p>"She looks," Dundee agreed, "like a girl who would have made things +lively."</p> + +<p>"I'll say so! Miss Pendleton nearly had nervous prostration!" Miss Earle +plunged on, then fear blanched her face for a moment. "You know you've +promised you'll never tell Miss Pendleton or Miss Macon that you talked +to me!"</p> + +<p>"You can depend on it that I will protect you," Dundee assured her. +"When did Flora Hackett kick up her little fuss?"</p> + +<p>"Let's see.... Flora graduated in June, 1920," Miss Earle obliged +willingly. "So it must have been in 1919—yes, because she had one more +year here. Of course they let her come back!... <i>Money!</i>... She took the +lead in our annual Easter play in 1919, and just because Serena Hart +complimented her and told her she was almost as good as a +professional—"</p> + +<p>"<i>Serena Hart!</i>" Dundee wonderingly repeated the name of one of +America's most popular and beloved stage stars.</p> + +<p>"Yes—Serena Hart," Miss Earle repeated proudly. "She was a Forsyte +girl, too, and of course she <i>did</i> go into the chorus herself, after she +graduated in—let's see—1917, because it was the second year after I'd +come to work here—and Miss Pendleton nearly died, because she was +afraid Forsyte's precious prestige would be lowered, but when Serena +became a star everything was grand, of course, and Forsyte was proud to +claim her.... Anyway, Serena comes to the Easter play every year she +can, if she isn't in a Broadway play herself, of course, and so she saw +Flora acting in the Easter play in 1919, and told her she was awfully +good. She was, too, but not half the actress that little Penny Crain +was, when she had the lead in the play four or five years ago."</p> + +<p>Dundee's heart begged him to ask for more details of Penny's triumph, +but his job demanded that he keep the now too-voluble Miss Earle to the +business in hand.</p> + +<p>"And Flora Hackett——?" he prompted.</p> + +<p>"Well, the next day after the play the Easter vacation began, you know, +and Flora <i>forged</i> a letter from her father, giving her permission to +spend the ten-days' Easter holiday with one of the girls who lived in +Atlanta," Miss Earle continued, with great relish. "Well, sir, right in +the middle of the holidays, here came her father and mother—they were +both alive then—and asked for Flora! They wired the girl in Atlanta, +and Flora wasn't there, and the Hacketts were nearly crazy. But as luck +would have it, Mr. Hackett ran into a friend of theirs on Broadway, and +this friend began to tease Mr. Hackett about his daughter's being a +chorus girl!"</p> + +<p>"A chorus girl!" Dundee echoed, taking care not to show his +disappointment.</p> + +<p>"Of course they nabbed her right out of the show, but that wasn't the +worst of it!" Miss Earle went on dramatically and mysteriously. "They +tried to hush it up, of course, but the word went through the school +like wildfire that Flora wasn't only in the chorus, but that she was +<i>living with an actor</i> she'd been writing fan letters to long before the +Easter play went on!"</p> + +<p>"Did you hear his name?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"No," Miss Earle acknowledged regretfully. "But I'll bet anything it was +the truth!... Why, Flora Hackett was so man-crazy she flirted +scandalously with every male teacher in the school. The golf 'pro' we +had then got so scared of her he quit his job!"</p> + +<p>"I suppose," Dundee prompted craftily, "she wasn't any worse than some +of the other Hamilton girls."</p> + +<p>"We-ell," Miss Earle admitted reluctantly, "nothing ever <i>came out</i> on +any of the others, but it looked mighty funny to me when Janet Raymond's +mother took her out of school right in the middle of a term and hauled +her off to Europe <i>for a whole year</i>!... I guess,"—she suggested, with +raised eyebrows, "you know what it <i>usually</i> means when a girl has to +spend a whole year abroad, and her mother says she's taking her away for +her health—and Janet looking as healthy as any other girl in the +school, except that she was crying half the time, and smuggling special +delivery letters in and out by one of the maids—"</p> + +<p>"Did you tell Nita these stories and point out the pictures of the +girls?" Dundee had to risk asking.</p> + +<p>Miss Earle froze instantly. "Naturally she was interested in the school, +and once when she said it always made her mad the way chorus girls were +run down, I told her that in my opinion society girls were worse than +actresses, and—well, of course I gave her some examples, a lot of them +worse than anything I've told you about Flora Hackett and Janet +Raymond.... I hope," she added viciously, "that Nita dropped a hint or +two if Flora or Janet had the nerve to high-hat her when she was in +Hamilton!"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps she did," Dundee agreed softly. "By the way, how did Nita +happen to get the job here of directing the Easter plays?"</p> + +<p>"That's what the reporters wanted to know," Miss Earle smiled. "But Miss +Pendleton wouldn't tell them, for fear Serena wouldn't like it, and +maybe be drawn into the scandal, when everybody knows she's as straight +as a string——"</p> + +<p>"Did Serena Hart get her the job?" Dundee was amazed.</p> + +<p>"Yes.... Wait, I'll show you the letter of recommendation she wrote for +Nita to Miss Pendleton," Miss Earle offered eagerly. "Remember, now, +you're not to tell on me!"</p> + +<p>She went to a tall walnut filing cabinet, and quickly returned with a +note, which she thrust into Dundee's willing hands. He read:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>"Dear Miss Pendleton: The bearer, Juanita Leigh, is rather badly +in need of a job, and I have suggested that she apply to you for a +chance to direct the Easter play. I have known Miss Leigh +personally for ten years, and have the highest regard, both +for her character and for her ability. Since you usually stage +musical comedies, I think Miss Leigh, who has been a specialty +dancer as well as an actress in musical comedy for about twelve +years, would be admirably suited for the work. Knowing my love +for Forsyte as you do, I do not have to assure you that I would +suggest nothing which would be detrimental to the school's best +interests.... Fondly yours, Serena Hart."</i></p></div> + +<p>"She was wrong there, but I know it wasn't Nita's fault," Miss Earle, +who had been looking over his shoulder, commented upon the last sentence +of the letter.</p> + +<p>"Is Miss Hart appearing in a play now?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"No, but she's rehearsing in one—'Temptation'—which will open at the +Warburton Theater next Monday night," the secretary answered. "At +commencement Tuesday night, Serena told Miss Pendleton how awfully sorry +she was about Nita, and gave me tickets for the opening.... You go to +see her, but don't tell her <i>I</i> told you anything.... I know she's +rehearsing at the theater this afternoon, because she said she would be +all week, and couldn't go to the boat to see Miss Pendleton and Miss +Macon off for Europe."</p> + +<p>"I will!" Dundee accepted the suggestion gratefully, as if it had not +occurred to him. "But first I want you to come out to lunch with me. I'm +sure you know of some nice tearoom or roadhouse in the neighborhood."</p> + +<p>During the luncheon, which Miss Earle devoured avidly, without its +interfering with her flow of reminiscences concerning the girls she +hated, Dundee was able to learn nothing more to the detriment of +Forsyte's Hamilton alumnae, but he did add considerably to his knowledge +and pity of female human nature.</p> + +<p>It was nearly three o'clock when he presented his card, with a message +pencilled upon its back, to the aged doorkeeper who drowsed in the alley +which led to the stage entrance of the Warburton Theater, just off +Broadway near Times Square, and fifteen minutes later he was being +received in the star's dressing-room by Serena Hart herself.</p> + +<p>"You're working on poor Nita's murder?" she began without preamble, as +she seated herself at her dressing-table and indicated a decrepit chair +for the detective. "I was wondering how much longer I could keep out of +it.... Of course you've been pumping that poor, foolish virgin—Gladys +Earle.... Why girls who look like that are always called <i>Gladys</i>—God! +I'm tired! We've been at it since ten this morning, but thank the Lord +we're through now for the day."</p> + +<p>Dundee studied her with keen interest, and decided that, almost plain +though she was, she was even more magnetic than when seen from the +footlights.... Rather carelessly dressed, long brown hair rather +tousled, her face very pale and haggard without the make-up which would +give it radiance on Monday night, Serena Hart was nevertheless one of +the most attractive women Dundee had ever met—and one of the kindest, +he felt suddenly sure....</p> + +<p>"When did I first meet Nita Leigh?" she repeated his question. "Let me +think—Oh, yes! The first year after I went on the stage—1917. We were +in the chorus together in 'Teasing Tilly'—a rotten show, by the way. +The other girls of the chorus were awfully snooty to me, because I was +that anathema, a 'society girl', but Nita was a darling. She showed me +the ropes, and we became quite intimate—around the theater only, +however, since my parents kept an awfully strict eye on me. The show was +a great hit—ran on into 1918, till February or March, I believe."</p> + +<p>"Then do you know, Miss Hart, whether Nita got married during the +winter?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes, she did!" Serena Hart answered, her brow clearing after a +frown of concentration. "I can't remember exactly when, but it was +before the show closed—certainly a few weeks before, because the poor +child was a deserted bride days before the closing notice was posted."</p> + +<p>"Deserted!" Dundee exclaimed. "Did you meet her husband, Miss Hart?"</p> + +<p>"No," Serena Hart replied. "As a matter of fact, she told me +extraordinarily little about him, and did not discuss her marriage with +the other girls of the chorus at all. I got the impression that Mr. +Selim—Mat, she called him—wanted it kept secret for a while, but I +don't know why.... This was early in 1918, as I've told you, though I +have no way of fixing even the approximate date, and New York was full +of soldiers. I remember I jumped to the conclusion that Nita had +succumbed to a war romance, but I don't think she said anything to +confirm my suspicion."</p> + +<p>"When did she tell you of her marriage—that is, when—in relation to +the date of the wedding itself?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"The very day she was married," Serena Hart answered. "She was late for +the matinee. Our dressing-tables were side by side, and as she slipped +out of her dress——"</p> + +<p>"This dress?" Dundee asked, and handed her the photograph of dead Nita +in the royal blue velvet dress she had kept for twelve years.</p> + +<p>"Yes," and Serena Hart shuddered. "And her hair was dressed like that, +too, although she had been wearing it in long curls, and had to take it +down before she would go on for the opening number. She whispered to me +that she had been married that day, that she was terribly happy, very +much in love, and that her husband had asked her to dress her hair in +the French roll, a favorite hair-dress with him. Between numbers she +whispered to me again, telling me that her husband was 'so different', +'such a lamb'—totally unlike any man she had met on Broadway, poor +child.... For she was a child still—only twenty, but she had been in +the 'show business' since she was a motherless, fatherless little +drifter of sixteen.... No, she did not tell me how old he was, where he +came from, his business, or what he looked like, and I did not inquire. +As the days passed—weeks, probably, she became more and more silent and +reserved, though once or twice she protested she was still 'terribly +happy.' Then came a day when she did not show up for the performance at +all. The next night she told me—in just a few words, that her husband +had left her, after a quarrel, and had not returned. It seems that she +had innocently told him how she had 'vamped' Benny Steinfeld, the big +revue producer, you know, into giving her a 'spot' in his summer show, +and that her 'Mat' had flown into a rage, accusing her of having been +untrue to him. She never mentioned his desertion to me again, but——"</p> + +<p>"Yes?" Dundee prompted.</p> + +<p>"Well," Serena Hart went on, uncomfortably, "I'm afraid I rather forgot +poor Nita after 'Teasing Tilly' closed, for my next work was in stock in +Des Moines. After a year of stock I got my chance in a legitimate show +on Broadway, and one day I met her on the street. Not having much to +talk with her about, I asked her if she and her husband were reconciled. +She said no, that she had never seen him again. Then, in a burst of +confidence, she told me that she had hired a private detective out of +her meager earnings to investigate him in his home town, or rather the +city he had told her he came from. The detective had reported that no +such person as Mat or Matthew Selim had ever lived there, so far as he +could find out. I asked her if she was going to get a divorce and she +said she was not—that being already married was a protection against +getting married in haste again. After that, I rather lost sight of Nita, +and practically forgot her, our paths being so very divergent."</p> + +<p>"And you never saw her again?" Dundee asked, very much disappointed.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, two or three times—at openings, or on the street, but we +never held any significant conversation," Serena Hart answered, reaching +for her plain, rather dowdy little hat. "Wait! I was about to forget! I +had quite a shock in connection with Nita. One afternoon—let's see, +that was when I opened in 'Hullabaloo,' in which I made my first real +success, you know—I bought <i>The New York Evening Star</i>, which devotes +considerable space to theatrical doings, to see what sort of review the +show had got, and on the first page I saw a picture of Nita, beneath a +headline which said, 'Famous Model Commits Suicide'——"</p> + +<p>"What!" Dundee exclaimed, astounded.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it wasn't Nita Leigh," Serena Hart reassured him. "There was a +correction the next day. You see, an artists' model named Anita +Lee—spelled L-e-e, instead of Le-i-g-h—had committed suicide, and, as +the <i>Star</i> explained it the next day, the similarity of both the first +name and the last had caused the error in getting a photograph from the +'morgue' to accompany the story. There was a picture of Nita Leigh, with +Nita's statement that 'the report of my death has been exaggerated,' and +a picture of the real Anita Lee."</p> + +<p>"When did the mistake occur?" Dundee asked, in great excitement.</p> + +<p>"Let me think!" Serena Hart frowned. "'Hullabaloo' opened in—yes, about +the first of May, 1922.... Just a little more than eight years ago."</p> + +<p>Dundee reached for his own hat, in a fever to be gone, but to his +surprise the actress stopped him, a faint color in her pale cheeks.</p> + +<p>"Since you're from Hamilton, and are investigating the murder, you have +undoubtedly met little Penelope Crain?"</p> + +<p>"I know her very well. It happens that she is private secretary to the +district attorney, under whom I work.... Why?"</p> + +<p>"I saw her play the lead in the Easter show at Forsyte four or five +years ago," Miss Hart explained, her face turned from the detective as +she dusted it with powder, "and I was impressed with her talent. In +fact, I advised her father, who had come from Hamilton to witness the +performance, as proud parents are likely to do, to let her go on the +stage."</p> + +<p>"So you met Roger Crain?" Dundee paused to ask.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes.... A charming man, with even more personality than his +daughter," the actress answered carelessly, so carelessly that Dundee +had a sudden hunch.</p> + +<p>"Have you seen Mr. Crain recently?... He deserted his family and fled +Hamilton, under rather unsavory circumstances."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?" Miss Hart asked sharply.</p> + +<p>"Oh, there was nothing actually criminal, I suppose, but he is believed +to have withheld some securities which would have helped satisfy his +creditors, when bankruptcy was imminent," Dundee explained. "Have you +seen him since then—January it was, I believe?"</p> + +<p>"January?" Miss Hart appeared to need time for reflection. "Oh, yes! He +sent in his card on the 'first night' of my show that opened in +January.... It was a flop—lasted only five weeks.... We chatted of the +Forsyte girls who are now in Hamilton, most of whom I went to school +with or have met at the Easter plays."</p> + +<p>"Do you know where Mr. Crain is now?" Dundee asked. "I have a message +for him from Penny—if you should happen to see him again——"</p> + +<p>"Why <i>should</i> I see him again?" Miss Hart shrugged. "And I haven't the +least idea where he is living or what he is doing now.... Of course, if +he should come to see me backstage after 'Temptation' opens—What is the +message from Penny?"</p> + +<p>"That her mother wants him to come home," Dundee answered. "And I am +very sure Penny wants him back, too.... The mother is one of the +sweetest, gentlest, most tragic women I have ever met—and you have seen +Penny for yourself.... The disgrace has been very hard on them. It would +be splendid if Roger Crain would come back and redeem himself."</p> + +<p>Half an hour later Bonnie Dundee, in the file room of <i>The New York +Evening Star</i>, was in possession of the bound volume of that newspaper +for the month of May, 1922. On the front page of the issue of May 3, +under the caption which Serena Hart had quoted so accurately, was a +picture of a young, laughing Nita Leigh, her curls bobbed short, a rose +between her gleaming teeth. And in the issue of May 4 appeared two +pictures side by side—exotic, straight-haired, slant-eyed Anita Lee, +who had found life so insupportable that she had ended it, and the same +photograph of living, vital Nita Leigh.</p> + +<p>When he returned the files he asked the girl in charge:</p> + +<p>"Does this copyright line beneath this picture—" and he pointed to the +photograph of Nita which had appeared erroneously, "—mean that the +picture was syndicated?"</p> + +<p>The girl bent her head to see. "'Copyright by Metropolitan Picture +Service'," she read aloud. "Yes, that's what it means. When <i>The Evening +Star</i> was owned by Mr. Magnus, he formed a separate company called the +Metropolitan Picture Service, which supplied papers all over the country +with a daily picture service, in mat form. But the picture syndicate was +discontinued about five years ago when the paper was sold to its present +owners."</p> + +<p>"Are their files available?" Dundee asked.</p> + +<p>"If they are, I don't know anything about it," the girl told him, and +turned to another seeker after bound volumes of the paper.</p> + +<p>"It doesn't matter," Dundee assured her, and asked for a sheet of blank +paper, on which he quickly composed the following telegram, addressed to +Penny Crain:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"PLEASE SEARCH FILES ALL THREE HAMILTON PAPERS WEEK OF MAY FOURTH +TO ELEVENTH YEAR OF NINETEEN TWENTY TWO FOR STORY AND PICTURES ON +SUICIDE ANITA LEE ARTISTS MODEL STOP SAY NOTHING TO ANYONE NOT EVEN +SANDERSON IF HE IS THERE STOP WIRE RESULT"</p></div> + +<p>In his hotel, while impatiently awaiting an answer from Penny, Dundee +passed the time by scanning all the New York papers of Thursday and +Friday, on the chance of meeting with significant revelations concerning +the private life of Dexter Sprague or Juanita Leigh Selim united by +death—in the press, at least. There was much space devoted to the +theory involving the two New Yorkers with the murder of the racketeer +and gambler, "Swallow-tail Sammy" Savelli, but only two pieces of +information held Dundee's interest.</p> + +<p>The first was a reminder to the public that certain theatrical columns +of Sunday, February 9, had carried the rumor of Dexter Sprague's +engagement to Dolly Martin, popular "baby" star of Altamont Pictures, +and that the same columns of Tuesday, February 11, had carried Sprague's +own denial of the engagement—Dolly having "nothing to say."</p> + +<p>"So that is why Nita tried to commit suicide on February 9—and her +attempted suicide, with its tragic consequences for Lydia Carr, is +probably the reason Sprague gave up his movie star," Dundee mused. "Did +Nita let him persuade her to go into the blackmail business, in order to +hold his wandering, mercenary affections?... Lord! The men some women +love!"</p> + +<p>The second bit of information which the papers supplied him was winnowed +by Dundee himself, from a news summary of Nita Leigh's last year of life +as chorus girl, specialty dancer, "double" in pictures, and director of +the Easter play at Forsyte-on-the-Hudson.</p> + +<p>"If Nita got a divorce or even a legal separation from her husband after +her talk with Gladys Earle a year ago, she got it in New York and so +secretly that no New York paper has been able to dig it up," Dundee +concluded. "<i>And yet she had promised to marry Ralph Hammond!</i>"</p> + +<p>A bellboy with a telegram interrupted the startling new train of thought +which that conclusion had started.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_TWENTY-SIX" id="CHAPTER_TWENTY-SIX"></a>CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX</h2> + + +<p>With a sharp exclamation of excitement and triumph, Dundee read Penny's +telegram:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"HAMILTON EVENING SUN DATE OF MAY FIFTH NINETEEN TWENTY TWO +PUBLISHED STORY OF SUICIDE ANITA LEE ARTISTS MODEL BUT PICTURE +ACCOMPANYING WAS UNDOUBTEDLY NITA LEIGH SELIM'S STOP NO CORRECTION +FOLLOWED STOP WHAT DOES IT MEAN"</p></div> + +<p>"What does it mean?" Dundee repeated exultantly to himself. "It means, +my darling little Penny, that <i>anyone in Hamilton who had any interest +in the matter believed Nita Leigh Selim was dead, and thought the +spelling of her name was wrong, not the picture itself</i>!... The question +is <i>who</i> read that story and gazed on that picture with exquisite +relief?"</p> + +<p>Two hours before he had dismissed as impossible or highly impractical +his impulse to investigate the eleven-year-old scandal on Flora Hackett, +who was now Flora Miles, as told him by Gladys Earle of the Forsyte +School. Even more difficult would it be to find out why Janet Raymond's +mother had taken her abroad for a year. Of course—he had ruefully told +himself—Nita Leigh might have been lucky—or unlucky enough to run +across documentary proof of one of the scandals of which Gladys Earle +had told her, or had dared to blackmail her victim by dark hints, as +Miss Earle had unconsciously suggested to her.</p> + +<p>But this new development could not be ignored. A picture of Nita Leigh +as a suicide had appeared eight years ago in a Hamilton paper, and the +paper had either remained unaware of the error or had thought it not +worth the space for a correction.... <i>Eight years ago!...</i></p> + +<p>Eight years ago in June three weddings had occurred in Hamilton! The +Dunlap, the Miles, the Drake wedding. And within the last year and a +half Judge Marshall, after proposing season after season to the most +popular debutante, had married lovely little Karen Plummer. Suddenly a +sentence from Ralph Hammond's story of his engagement to Nita Leigh +Selim popped up in Dundee's memory: "And once I got cold-sick because I +thought she might still be married, but she said her husband had married +again, and I wasn't to ask questions or worry about him."</p> + +<p>If Ralph Hammond had reported Nita accurately she had not said she was +<i>divorced</i>. She had merely said her husband was <i>married again</i>! Why was +Ralph to ask no questions? Divorced wives were not usually so +reticent....</p> + +<p>Had Nita planned to commit the crime of bigamy? If not, when and where +and how had she secured a divorce?</p> + +<p>To Serena Hart, years before, she had denied any intention of getting a +divorce, for two reasons—<i>because she did not know where her husband +was</i>, and because, being married although husbandless, was a protection +against matrimonial temptations.</p> + +<p>To Gladys Earle, a year ago in April, she had confided that she could +not marry again, because she was not divorced and because she did not +know the whereabouts of her husband.</p> + +<p>And so far as New York reporters had been able to find out, Nita Leigh +had done nothing to alter her status as a married woman during the past +year. Moreover, if Nita had secured either a divorce or a legal +separation, her "faithful and beloved maid," Lydia Carr, would certainly +have known of it. And Lydia had vehemently protested more than once to +Bonnie Dundee that she knew nothing of Nita's husband, although she had +worked for the musical comedy dancer for five years. Surely if Nita, +loving and trusting Lydia as she did, had entered into negotiations of +any kind with or concerning her husband during the last year, her maid +would have been the first to know of them. And yet——</p> + +<p>Suddenly Dundee jumped to his feet and began to pace the floor of his +hotel bedroom. He was remembering the belated confidence that John C. +Drake, banker, had made to him the morning before—after the discovery +of Dexter Sprague's murder. He recalled Drake's reluctant statement +almost word for word:</p> + +<p>"About that $10,000 which Nita deposited with our bank, Dundee.... When +she made the first deposit of $5,000 on April 28, she explained it with +an embarrassed laugh as 'back alimony', an instalment of which she had +succeeded in collecting from her former husband. And, naturally, when +she made the second deposit on May 5, I presumed the same explanation +covered that sum, too, though I confess I was puzzled by the fact that +both big deposits had been made in cash."</p> + +<p><i>In cash!</i></p> + +<p>Had Nita, by any chance, been telling a near-truth? Had she been +blackmailing her own husband—a husband who had dared marry again, +believing his deserted wife to be dead—and justifying herself by +calling it "back alimony?"</p> + +<p>But—wasn't it, in reality, no matter what coercion Nita had used in +getting the money, exactly that?... <i>Back alimony! And the price of her +silence before the world and the wife who was not really a wife....</i></p> + +<p>In a new light, Bonnie Dundee studied the character of the woman who had +been murdered—possibly to make her silence eternal.</p> + +<p>Lois Dunlap had liked, even loved her. The other women and girls of "the +crowd"—that exclusive, self-centered clique of Hamilton's most socially +prominent women—must have liked her fairly well and found her +congenial, in spite of their jealousy of her popularity with the men of +the crowd, or they would not have tolerated her, regardless of Lois +Dunlap's championship of her protegée.</p> + +<p>Gladys Earle had found her "the sweetest, kindest, most generous person +I ever met"—Gladys Earle, who envied and hated all girls who were more +fortunate than she.</p> + +<p>Serena Hart, former member of New York's Junior League and still listed +in the Social Register, had found her the only congenial member of the +chorus she had invaded as the first step toward stardom. And Serena Hart +had the reputation of being a woman of character and judgment, a kind +and wise and great woman....</p> + +<p>Finally, Ralph Hammond had loved Nita and wanted to marry her.</p> + +<p>Was it possible that Nita Selim's only crime, into which she had been +led by her infatuation for Dexter Sprague, had been to demand, secretly, +financial compensation from a husband who had married and deserted her, +a husband who, believing her dead, had married again?</p> + +<p>But who was the man whose picture—to spin a new theory—Nita had +recognized as that of her husband among the male members of the cast of +"The Beggar's Opera," when Lois Dunlap had proudly exhibited the +"stills" of that amateur performance?</p> + +<p>With excitement hammering at his pulses, Dundee took the bunch of +photographs which Lois Dunlap had willingly given him, and studied the +picture that contained the entire cast—the picture which had first +attracted Nita's attention. And again despair overwhelmed him, for every +one of his possible male suspects was in that group....</p> + +<p>But he could not keep his thoughts from racing on.... Men who stepped +out of their class and went on parties with chorus girls frequently did +so under assumed names, he reflected. Serena Hart was authority for the +information that Nita's had been a sudden marriage. Was it not entirely +possible that the man who married Nita in 1918 had done so half-drunk, +both on liquor and infatuation, and that he had not troubled to explain +to Nita his motives for having used an assumed name or to write in his +real name on the application for a marriage license? Had Nita's private +detective journeyed out to <i>Hamilton</i> years ago in a fruitless attempt +to locate "Matthew Selim?"</p> + +<p>Bonnie Dundee lay awake for hours Friday night turning these and a +hundred other questions over and over in his too-active mind, and slept +at last, only to awake Saturday with a plan of procedure which he was +sensible enough to realize promised small chance of success.</p> + +<p>And he was right. Not in Manhattan, or in any of the other boroughs of +New York City, did he find any record of a marriage license issued to +Juanita Leigh and Matthew Selim. Not only was it entirely probable that +Juanita Leigh was a stage name and that Nita had married conscientiously +under her real name, but it was equally possible that the license had +been secured in New Jersey or Connecticut.</p> + +<p>When he gave up his quest at noon Saturday and returned to his hotel, +Dundee bought at the newsstand a paper whose headline convinced him that +Sergeant Turner was, at that moment, even more discouraged than himself. +For the big type told the world:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>JOE SAVELLI "GETS" BROTHER'S SLAYER</p></div> + +<p>And smaller headlines informed the sensation-loving public:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"SWALLOW-TAIL SAMMY" SAVELLI'S DEATH AVENGED BY BROTHER WHO +SURRENDERS TO POLICE; "SLICK" THOMPSON, ALLEGED MEMBER OF SAMMY'S +GANG, SHOT TO DEATH ON SIXTH AVENUE.</p></div> + +<p>Still smaller head-type acknowledged that Joe Savelli, after giving +himself up, with a revolver in his hand, had disclaimed any knowledge of +or connection with the murders of Juanita Leigh Selim and Dexter +Sprague.</p> + +<p>Two hours later, Dundee received a long telegram from District Attorney +Sanderson:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"INFORMED BY EVENING SUN SAVELLI ANGLE COMPLETE WASHOUT STOP HAVE +YOU MADE ANY PROGRESS ALONG OTHER LINES STOP HAVE INFORMED +REPORTERS YOU WORKING INDEPENDENTLY WITH STRONG CHANCE OF SOLVING +BOTH CASES STOP WOULD LIKE YOU HERE FOR ADJOURNED INQUESTS ON BOTH +MURDERS MONDAY STOP MOTHER IMPROVED AM ON JOB AGAIN"</p></div> + +<p>Since Dundee felt that there was little chance of following through +either on the scandals which Gladys Earle had hinted at, or on Nita's +strangely secret marriage of twelve years before, he immediately +dispatched a wire to Sanderson, assuring him that vital progress had +been made and that he would leave New York on the four o'clock train +west, arriving in Hamilton Sunday morning at 8:50. The concluding +sentence of the wire was:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"SUGGEST YOU PACIFY PRESS WITH ONLY VAGUEST OF HINTS."</p></div> + +<p>Sanderson's wire, with its confession of an interview on Dundee's trip +to New York, had upset him and left him with a cold, sick feeling of +fear that, stumbling half in darkness, the district attorney had +unwittingly warned the murderer of Nita Selim and Dexter Sprague that +his special investigator was on the right track. But he consoled himself +with the hope that the final sentence of his answering telegram would +prevent any further damage.</p> + +<p>But he was wrong. An hour before he reached his destination on Sunday +morning he went into the dining car and found a copy of <i>The Hamilton +Morning News</i> beside his plate. And on the front page was a photograph +of dead Nita, her black hair in a French roll, her slim, recumbent body +clad in the royal blue velvet dress. Beneath the picture was the +caption:</p> + +<p>"What part does the outmoded royal blue velvet dress which Nita Selim +chose as a shroud play in the solution of her murder?... That is the +question which Special Investigator Dundee, attached to the district +attorney's office, who is due home this morning from fruitful detective +work in New York, is undoubtedly prepared to answer."</p> + +<p>Dundee was still seething with futile rage when he climbed the stairs to +his apartment. On the floor just inside his living room door he found an +envelope—unstamped and bearing his name in typing.</p> + +<p>The note inside, on paper as plain as the envelope, was typed and +unsigned.</p> + +<p>"If Detective Dundee will consult page 410 of the latest WHO'S WHO IN +AMERICA, he will find a tip which should aid him materially in solving +the two murder cases which seem to be proving too difficult for his +inexperience."</p> + +<p>A wry grin at his anonymous correspondent's unfriendly gibe was just +twisting his lips when a double knock sounded on the living room door, +which he had not completely closed.</p> + +<p>"Come in, Belle!"</p> + +<p>A morose, slack-mouthed mulatto girl in ancient felt slippers sidled +into the room.</p> + +<p>"Howdy, Mistah Dundee," Belle greeted him listlessly. "You got back, lak +de papers said you would, didn' yuh? An' I ain't sayin' I ain't glad! +Dat parrot o' yoahs sho is Gawd's own nuisance—nippin' at mah fingahs +an' screechin' his fool head off.... 'Cose I ain't sayin' it's +<i>his</i> fault—keepin' dat young gemman on de secon' flo' awake las' +night.... But lak I say to Mistah Wilson, when he lights into me dis +mawnin', runnin' off at de mouf 'cause I fo'got to put Cap'n's covah on +his cage las' night, I ain't de onliest one what fo'gits in dis hyar +house.... Comin' home Gawd knows when, leavin' de front do' unlocked de +res' o' de night, so's bugglers and murderers and Gawd knows who could +walk right in hyar——"</p> + +<p>Dundee, itching to consult his own copy of "Who's Who", flung a glance +at the parrot's cage, intending to pacify the mournful mulatto by +scolding his "Watson" roundly. But he changed his mind and consoled the +chambermaid instead:</p> + +<p>"Just tell Mr. Wilson that for once he's wrong. You did <i>not</i> forget to +cover Cap'n's cage, Belle. Look!"</p> + +<p>The girl's dull eyes bulged as they took in the cage, completely swathed +in a square of black silk.</p> + +<p>"Gawd's sake, Mistah Dundee!" she ejaculated. "<i>I</i> didn't put dat covah +on dat bird's cage! An' neithah did Mis' Bowen, 'cause she been laid up +with rheumatiz eveh since you lef, an' eveh las' endurin' thing in dis +ol' house has been lef fo' me to do!"</p> + +<p>"Then I suppose the indignant Mr. Wilson came up and covered Cap'n +himself," Dundee suggested, crossing the room to the bookcase which +stood within reaching distance of his big leather-covered armchair.</p> + +<p>"Him?" Belle snorted. "How he gonna get in hyer widout no key? 'Sides, +he'd a-tol' me if'n——"</p> + +<p>"Belle, how many times must I ask you not to misplace my things?" Dundee +cut in irritably, for he was tired of the discussion, and angry that his +copy of "Who's Who" was missing from its customary place in the +bookcase.</p> + +<p>"Me?... I ain't teched none o' yoah things, 'cep'n to dus' 'em and lay +'em down whar I foun' 'em," Belle retorted, mournfulness submerged in +anger.</p> + +<p>Dundee looked about the room, then his eyes alighted upon the missing +book, lying upon a shelf that extended across the top of an +old-fashioned hot-air register, set high in the wall between the two +windows. The thick red volume lay close against the wall, its +gold-lettered "rib" facing the room.</p> + +<p>"Belle, tell me the truth, and I shall not be angry: did you put that +red book on that shelf?" Dundee asked, his voice steady and kindly in +spite of his excitement.</p> + +<p>"Nossuh! I ain't teched it!"</p> + +<p>"And you did not put the cover over my parrot's cage, although I had +tipped you well to feed Cap'n and cover him at night," Dundee said +severely.</p> + +<p>"I gotta heap o' wuk to do——"</p> + +<p>"And you say that Mr. Wilson, one of the two young men on the second +floor, left the front door unlocked when he came in last night?" Dundee +asked. "Does he admit it?"</p> + +<p>"Yassuh," Belle told him sulkily. "He say he was tiahed when he got home +'long 'bout midnight, an' he clean fo'got to turn de key in de do' an' +shoot de bolt."</p> + +<p>"Thanks, Belle. That will be all now," and Dundee did a great deal to +dispel the chambermaid's gloom by presenting her with a dollar bill.</p> + +<p>When she had gone, the detective read the note again, then looked +at it and its envelope more closely. They had a strangely familiar +look.... Suddenly he jerked open a drawer of his desk, on which his new +noiseless typewriter stood, selected a sheet of plain white bond, and +rolled it into the machine. Quickly he tapped out a copy of the strange, +taunting message.</p> + +<p>Yes! The left-hand margin was identical, the typing and its degree of +blackness were identical, and the paper on which he had made the copy +was exactly the same as that on which the original had been written.</p> + +<p>The truth flashed into his mind. It was no coincidence that he had a +copy of the very book to which his unknown correspondent referred him. +For the note had been written in this very room, on stationery +conveniently at hand, on the noiseless typewriter which had been far +more considerate about not betraying the intruder than had the parrot +whose slumbers had been disturbed.</p> + +<p>"But why did my unknown friend risk arrest as a burglar if he wanted to +give me an honest tip?" Dundee remarked aloud to the parrot, who croaked +an irrelevant answer:</p> + +<p>"Bad Penny! Bad Penny!"</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid, 'my dear Watson,' that those words will not be so helpful +in this case as they were when your mistress was murdered," Dundee +assured his parrot absently, for he was studying the peculiar situation +from every angle. "Another question, Cap'n—why did the unknown bother +to take my 'Who's Who' out of the bookcase, where I should normally have +looked for it, and put it on that particular shelf?"</p> + +<p>Warily, for his scalp was prickling with a premonition of danger, Dundee +crossed the room to the shelf, but his hand did not reach out for the +red book, which might have been expected to solve one problem, at least. +"<i>Why the shelf?</i>" he asked himself again. Why not the desk top, or the +mantelpiece, or the smoking table beside the big armchair?</p> + +<p>The shelf, with its drapery of rather fine old silk tapestry, offered no +answer in itself, for it held nothing except the red book, a Chinese +bowl, and a humidor of tobacco. And beneath the shelf was nothing but +the old-fashioned register, the opening covered with a screwed-on metal +screen which was a mass of big holes to permit the escape of hot air +when the furnace was going in the winter....</p> + +<p>Suddenly Dundee stooped and stared with eyes that were widened with +excitement and a certain amount of horror. Then he rose, and, standing +far to one side, picked up the fat volume which lay on the shelf. As he +had expected, a bullet whizzed noiselessly across the room and buried +itself in the plaster of the wall opposite—a bullet which would have +ploughed through his own heart if he had obeyed his first impulse and +gone directly to the shelf to obey the instructions in the note.</p> + +<p>But more had happened than the whizzing flight of a bullet through one +of the holes of the hot-air register. The "Who's Who" had been jerked +almost out of Dundee's hand before he had lifted the heavy volume many +inches from the shelf. Coincidental with the disappearance of a bit of +white string which had been pinned to a thin page of the book was a +metallic clatter, followed swiftly by the faint sound of a bump far +below.</p> + +<p>Dropping "Who's Who" to the floor, Dundee flung open his living room +door and raced down three flights of stairs. He brought up, panting, at +the door of the basement. It was not locked and in another minute he was +standing before the big hot-air furnace. Above the fire box was a big +metal compartment—the reservoir for the heated air. And set into the +reservoir, to conduct the heat to the regions above, were three huge +pipes.</p> + +<p>With strength augmented by excitement, Dundee tugged and tore at one of +the pipes until he had dislodged it. Then thrusting his hand into the +heat reservoir, he groped until he had found what he had known must be +there—<i>Judge Marshall's automatic, with the Maxim silencer screwed upon +the end of its short nose</i>.</p> + +<p>At last he held in his hands the weapon with which Nita Leigh Selim and +Dexter Sprague had been murdered.</p> + +<p>The ingeniousness of his own attempted murder moved him to such profound +admiration that he could scarcely feel resentment. If, in the excitement +of hunting for a promised clue, he had gone directly to the shelf, +standing in front of the hole in the register into which the end of the +silencer had been jammed, so that it showed scarcely at all, even to +eyes looking for it, he would now have been dead. And the gun and +silencer, after hurtling down the big hot-air pipe behind the register, +could have lain hidden for months, even years, in the heat reservoir of +the furnace.</p> + +<p>With the weapon carefully wrapped in his handkerchief, Dundee went up +the stairs almost as swiftly as he had gone down them, meeting no one on +the way to his rooms on the top floor.</p> + +<p>"My most heartfelt thanks to you, Cap'n!" he greeted his parrot. "If you +had not squawked last night and so frightened the murderer that he made +the vital error of covering your cage, I should never have annoyed you +again with my Sherlock ruminations on cases which do not interest you in +the slightest."</p> + +<p>The parrot cackled hoarsely, but Dundee paid him scant attention. He +picked up the now harmless "Who's Who" and turned to page 410, a corner +of which had disappeared with the string that was still fastened to the +hair-trigger hammer of the Colt's .32. Very clever and very simple! The +murderer of two people and the would-be murderer of a third had had only +to unscrew the metal covering of the register, wedge the end of the +silencer into one of the many holes, replace the screws, and paste the +end of the string, drawn through another hole hidden by the tapestry, to +a page of the book he had selected as the one most likely to appeal to a +detective as a clue source....</p> + +<p>No, wait! He had had to do more! Dundee bent and examined the metal +cover of the register. The circumference of the hole the murderer had +chosen as the one which would be directly in front of Dundee's heart +gleamed brightly. It had been necessary to enlarge it considerably. <i>The +murderer had left a trace after all!</i></p> + +<p>But the book was open in Dundee's hands and his eyes rapidly scanned +page 410. And he found what the murderer had not expected him to live to +read, but which he had counted on as an explanation of the note which +the police would have puzzled over, if all had gone well with his +scheme....</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_TWENTY-SEVEN" id="CHAPTER_TWENTY-SEVEN"></a>CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN</h2> + + +<p>Dundee laughed, the parrot which had saved his life echoing his mirth +raucously, as his eyes hit upon the following lines of fine print +halfway down the third column of page 410 of "Who's Who in America":</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><b>BURNS, William John, detective; b. Baltimore, Oct. 19, 1861—</b></p></div> + +<p>"A taunt and a joke which turned sour, 'my dear Watson'!" he exulted to +the parrot. "A joke I was not intended to live to laugh over!"</p> + +<p>He closed the book and replaced it in the bookcase, careless of +fingerprints, for he was sure the murderer had been too clever to leave +any behind him in that room—or upon the gun and silencer either, for +that matter.</p> + +<p>Interestedly, Dundee surveyed the scene of his attempted murder. If he +had unsuspectingly gone up to the high shelf to reach for the book he +would have stood so close to the register that there would have been +powder burns on his shirt front—just as there had been on Dexter +Sprague's. And he would have been shot so near an open window—no chance +for fingerprints there, either, since he had not closed the windows on +his departure for New York, not wishing to return to a stuffy +apartment—that the police would have been justified in thinking he had +been shot from outside. It was an old-fashioned house in more ways than +in the manner of its heating. Outside of one of his two unscreened +windows there was an iron grating—the topmost landing of a fire escape. +Dundee could imagine Captain Strawn's positiveness in placing the +murderer there—crouching in wait for his victim....</p> + +<p>Yes, damned ingenious, this attempted murder! Undoubtedly Strawn would +have dismissed the note as the work of a crank, not hitting upon the +fact that it had been written in that very room, on Dundee's own +typewriter and stationery. Strawn might even have got a mournful sort of +amusement out of the fact that Dundee had been advised to call upon a +greater detective than himself for assistance!... Yes, ingenious indeed! +And so amazingly simple——</p> + +<p>Suddenly the young detective snatched for his hat. If the murderer was +so ingenious in this case, might he not have been equally clever in +planning and executing the murder of Nita Leigh Selim?</p> + +<p>Twenty minutes later he parked his car in the rutty road before the +Selim house in Primrose Meadows, and honked his horn loudly to attract +the attention of the plainclothesmen Captain Strawn had detailed +immediately after the murder to guard the premises during the day. There +was no answer. And a violent ringing of the doorbell also brought no +response. The guard had been withdrawn, probably to join the small army +of plainclothesmen and patrolmen who had been foolishly and futilely +searching for the New York gunman—the keystone of Captain Strawn's +exploded theory.</p> + +<p>With an oath, Dundee used his skeleton key to release the Yale lock with +which the front door was equipped. Straight down the main hall he went +and into the little foyer between the hall and Nita's bedroom. He +snatched up the telephone and to his relief it was not dead. He gave the +number of Captain Strawn's home, and had the pleasure of learning that +he had interrupted his former chief at a late Sunday breakfast.</p> + +<p>"When did you withdraw the guard from the Selim house?" he asked +abruptly, cutting short Strawn's cordial welcome-home.</p> + +<p>"Late Thursday afternoon," the Chief of the Homicide Squad answered +belligerently. "I needed all my men, and the Selim house had been gone +over with a fine tooth comb half a dozen times.... Why?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, nothing!" Dundee retorted wearily, and hung up the receiver after +assuring his old friend that he would call on him later in the day.</p> + +<p>No use to explain now to Strawn that the murderer had been given every +chance to remove any betraying traces of his crime. Besides, his first +excited hunch, after his own attempted murder, might very well be a +wild, groundless one. In his—Dundee's case—the impossibility of the +murder's being delayed or arranged so that the detective might be slain +when the whole "crowd" was assembled was obvious. The murderer had read +in a late Saturday afternoon extra—a copy of which was now in Dundee's +pocket—District Attorney Sanderson's boast to the press that his office +had been working on an entirely different theory than that which +connected the two murders with "Swallow-tail Sammy," that Special +Investigator Dundee, <i>expected back in Hamilton early Sunday morning</i>, +had been investigating Nita Leigh's past life in New York. And despite +Dundee's telegraphed warning, he had hinted sensational revelations +connected with the twelve-year-old royal blue velvet dress which Nita +had chosen to be her shroud. And in his desire to reassure the public +through the press, Sanderson had mysteriously promised even more +specific revelations than Dundee had actually brought home with him. +Prodded by reporters, Sanderson had admitted that he did not himself +know the nature of those revelations.</p> + +<p>The exasperated young detective could picture the murderer reading those +sensational hints and promises, could imagine his panic, the need for +immediate action, so that Special Investigator Dundee should not live to +tell the tale of his New York discoveries to the district attorney or +anyone else.</p> + +<p>But whether he was right or wrong, Dundee determined to give his hunch a +chance. He went into the over-ornate bedroom in which Nita Leigh Selim +had been murdered—shot through the back as she sat at her +dressing-table powdering her face. If her murder had been accomplished +by mechanical means, how had it been done? There was no hot-air register +here....</p> + +<p>From the dressing-table Dundee walked to the window, upon whose +pale-green frame there was still the tiny pencil mark which Dr. Price +had drawn, to indicate the end of the path along which the bullet had +traveled, provided it had traveled so far. Nothing <i>here</i> to aid in a +mechanical murder—</p> + +<p>But in a flash Dundee changed his mind. For just slightly above the +pencil mark there was a small dent in the soft painted pine of the +window frame.</p> + +<p>And before his mind could frame words and sentences he thought he saw +how Nita Leigh had been murdered.</p> + +<p>Nothing here?... <i>Not now, because he himself had taken the lamp to the +courthouse for safe-keeping.</i></p> + +<p>He saw it clearly in imagination—that bronze floor-lamp which Lydia +Carr had given to Nita Leigh, its big round bowl studded with great +jewels of colored glass. And in recalling every detail of the lamp he +saw what he had dismissed as of no importance at the time, in the +excitement of finding that the lamp's bulb had been shattered by the +"bang or bump" which Flora Miles had described. <i>One of the big glass +jewels had been missing, leaving an unsightly hole.</i></p> + +<p>No wonder there had been a "bang or bump" hard enough to dent the frame +of the window! For if his hunch was correct, the gun, wedged into the +big bowl, with the silencer slightly protruding from the jewel-hole, had +"kicked," just as it had kicked an hour before, when it had dislodged +itself from the hole in the hot-air register and clattered down the big +pipe to the heat reservoir of the furnace.</p> + +<p>That the big lamp, when he, following Strawn, had first examined the +scene of Nita's murder, had not stood in front of the window frame, did +not dampen Dundee's excitement in the least. After Karen Marshall's +scream that room had been filled with excited people, who had rushed +about, looking out of the window for the murderer and doing all the +other things which terror-stricken people do in such a crisis. No, the +murderer—or murderess—had found no difficulty in shifting the big lamp +one foot nearer the chaise longue, to the place it had always occupied +before.</p> + +<p>But—<i>how</i> had the gun been fired from the lamp? Electrically? Another +picture flashed into Dundee's mind. He saw himself stooping, on Monday +afternoon, to see if the plug of the lamp's cord had been pulled from +the socket, saw it again as it was then—nearly out, so that no current +could pass from the baseboard outlet under the bookcase into the bronze +lamp. How far from the truth his conclusion that Monday had been!</p> + +<p>But what was the <i>real</i> truth?</p> + +<p>Suddenly Dundee flung back the moss-green Wilton rug which almost +entirely covered the bedroom floor and revealed the bell which Dexter +Sprague had rigged up so that Nita might summon Lydia from her basement +room, in case of dire need—a precaution with which the murderer was +probably familiar, since Lois Dunlap might innocently have spread the +news of its existence.</p> + +<p>There was a half-inch hole in the hardwood floor, and out of it issued a +length of green electric cord, connected with two small, flat metal +plates, one upon the other, so that when stepped upon a bell would ring +in Lydia's basement room.</p> + +<p>But there was something odd about the wire. Although it was obviously +new, a section of it near the two metal plates was wrapped with black +adhesive tape. Another memory knocked for attention upon Dundee's mind. +<i>The long cord of the bronze lamp had been mended with exactly the same +sort of tape—about a foot from where it ended in the contact plug.</i></p> + +<p>Within another two minutes, Dundee, with a flashlight he had found in +the kitchen, was exploring the dark, earthy portion of the basement +which lay directly to the east of Lydia Carr's basement room. And he +found what he was looking for—adhesive tape wrapped about the wire +which had been dropped through the floor of Nita's room before it had +been carried, by means of another hole, into Lydia's room.</p> + +<p>He was too late—thanks to Captain Strawn. The bell which Sprague had +rigged up was in working order again. But as he was passing out of the +basement he glanced at the ceiling of the large room devoted to furnace, +hot-water heater and laundry tubs. And in the ceiling he saw a hole....</p> + +<p>The murderer had left a trace he could not obliterate!</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>At three o'clock that Sunday afternoon Bonnie Dundee, fatigued after a +strenuous day, and suffering, to his own somewhat disgusted amusement, +from reaction—even a detective feels some shock at having narrowly +escaped death—permitted himself the luxury of a call upon Penny Crain.</p> + +<p>He found the girl and her mother playing anagrams. After greeting him, +Mrs. Crain rose, to surrender her place to the visitor.</p> + +<p>"<i>You</i> play with this girl of mine, Mr. Dundee. She's too clever for me! +She's beaten me every game so far, and when I plead for two-handed +bridge as a chance to get even, she shudders at the very word."</p> + +<p>"Why did you drag poor Ralph away from his dinner here today?" Penny +demanded, scrambling the little wooden blocks until they made a weird +pattern of letters.</p> + +<p>"Because I wanted to find out exactly <i>how</i> Nita Selim was killed—and I +did," Dundee answered. "I wish I knew as well <i>who</i> murdered her!"</p> + +<p>Mute before Penny's excited questions, the detective idly selected +letters from the mass of face-up blocks on the table, and spelled out, +in a long row, the names of all the guests at Nita's fatal bridge party. +Suddenly, and with a cry that startled Penny, Dundee made a new name +with the little wooden letters....</p> + +<p>Now he knew the answers to both "<i>How?</i>" and "<i>Who?</i>"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_TWENTY-EIGHT" id="CHAPTER_TWENTY-EIGHT"></a>CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT</h2> + + +<p>"I fail to see any necessity for all this secrecy and hocus-pocus," +District Attorney Sanderson protested irritably. "Why the devil don't +you come clean and give us the low-down—if you have it!—on this +miserable business, instead, of high-handedly summoning Captain Strawn +to my office, so that you can give orders to us both?"</p> + +<p>Before Dundee could answer, Captain Strawn came to his assistance.</p> + +<p>"I worked with this boy for pretty near a year, Bill, and never yet did +he fail to make good when he said he had a pot on to boil. If he says it +will boil over this evening, provided we help him, boil over it will, or +I don't know Bonnie Dundee!"</p> + +<p>Sanderson scowled but capitulated. "All right! What do you want?"</p> + +<p>"Thanks, chief! And thanks, Captain!" Dundee cried, with heartfelt +gratitude. "First, I want to be excused from attending the adjourned +inquests into the two murders, scheduled for three o'clock today."</p> + +<p>"O.K." Sanderson agreed shortly.</p> + +<p>"Second, after about an hour of routine stuff, I wish you'd ask for +another adjournment until tomorrow, on the plea that important +developments are expected today."</p> + +<p>"O.K. again!"</p> + +<p>"Third, I'd like you personally to request the appearance of every +person connected in any way with each of the murders, in your office +this afternoon at four o'clock—so the whole bunch will be kept together +and have no chance to go to their homes or anywhere else until I am +ready for them. You can say that, owing to the illness of your mother +during the investigations, you want to question everyone personally."</p> + +<p>"Do you want all the servants brought here, too?" Sanderson asked.</p> + +<p>"None but Lydia Carr," Dundee answered. "After about an hour's innocuous +questioning, please invite them to accompany you to the Selim house. For +that—" and he grinned, "—is where the pot is scheduled to boil over. +I'd like everybody to be there by 5:15."</p> + +<p>"Where do I come in?" Captain Strawn demanded, almost jealously.</p> + +<p>"Now that you are no longer looking for a New York gunman, I suppose you +have plenty of plainclothesmen at your disposal?" Dundee asked, and was +instantly sorry he had reminded his former chief of the collapse of his +cherished and satisfying theory.</p> + +<p>"Plenty," Strawn answered gruffly. "How many will you need?"</p> + +<p>"Enough to keep every person on Mr. Sanderson's invitation list under +strictest observation until—the pot boils over," Dundee replied.</p> + +<p>"When do you want them to get on the job?"</p> + +<p>"As soon as they can do so, after you get back to your office."</p> + +<p>"Are they to follow the whole gang clear out to the Selim house?"</p> + +<p>"Most decidedly! After the unwilling guests are safely within the house, +your boys must guard the premises so that <i>no one</i> leaves without +permission."</p> + +<p>"That's all as good as done," Strawn assured him. "Now—about them +inquiries you asked me to make yesterday of the secretary of the +American Legion." He drew a scrap of paper from his breast pocket. "I +find that John Drake, Peter Dunlap and Clive Hammond were all in +service, in the ——th Division, which was held up late in January, +1918, for nearly two weeks, in Hoboken, before the War Department could +get transports to send 'em to France. Miles, who enlisted the day war +was declared, was wounded and shipped home late in 1917. He was +discharged as unfit for further service—spinal operation—from a New +Jersey base hospital on January 12, 1918. Furthermore, Judge Marshall +was in New York the whole winter of 1917-'18, attached to the Red Cross +in some legal capacity. He donated his services and—"</p> + +<p>"All that doesn't matter now, Captain, but thanks just the same," Dundee +interrupted. "Now if you will both excuse me, I've got a lot of work to +do before five o'clock today!"</p> + +<p>Dundee had not exaggerated. That Monday was one of the busiest days he +had ever spent in all the twenty-seven years of his life. He began, +rather strangely, by visiting half a dozen of Hamilton's hardware +stores, exhibiting a peculiar instrument and making annoying inquiries +as to when and to whom it had been sold. But at his sixth port of call +success so completely rewarded his efforts that he was jubilant when he +bade the mystified proprietor good day, a signed statement reposing in +his wallet.</p> + +<p>Two other calls—both in office buildings—took up only an hour of his +time, and a taxicab delivered him at Police Headquarters just as the +factory whistles were sirening the news that it was twelve o'clock.</p> + +<p>He was lucky enough to find the fingerprint expert, Carraway, in his +cubbyhole of an office, his desk almost crowded out by immense filing +cabinets.</p> + +<p>Five minutes later Dundee sat at that desk, photographs of Dexter +Sprague's dead body, just as it had been discovered on the floor of the +trophy room in the Miles home, and a labelled set of fingerprints spread +out before him.</p> + +<p>"You're sure there can have been no mistake?" he asked. "No chance that +these fingerprint photographs were <i>reversed</i> when the prints were +made?"</p> + +<p>"Not a chance—with my system!" Carraway retorted positively.</p> + +<p>"Fine!" Dundee cried. "May I take these photographs?... You have copies, +I presume?"</p> + +<p>It was half past two o'clock when Dundee, after a much needed lunch, +parked his car in the driveway of one of the most splendid houses +overlooking Mirror Lake—a home whose master and mistress were now +attending an inquest into two murders....</p> + +<p>Half an hour later he climbed into his roadster again, his head +spinning. "Did I say <i>ingenious</i>?" he marvelled....</p> + +<p>He drove directly to the Selim house, for he had much to do before the +arrival of Sanderson's compulsory guests at 5:15.</p> + +<p>His first visit there was to a small room in the basement—a dark +cubbyhole next to the coal room. He had locked it carefully after +exploring it the day before, for he had taken no chance on leaving +unguarded—as he had found it—treasure worth more to him than its +weight in gold.</p> + +<p>And queer treasure it was that he extracted now—a coiled length of +electric wire, which he and Ralph Hammond had measured the day before, +with triumphant excitement; a box of thumb tacks, many of them +surprisingly bent at the point; an augur with a set of bits of varying +sizes, a step-ladder, and a hammer. If Dexter Sprague had not +overestimated the amount of electric wire needed for the job of +installing an alarm bell between Nita's bedroom and Lydia's.... Dundee +was about to close the tool chest when his eyes fell upon a piece of +hardware he had not expected ever to find, although he had known of its +existence for more than an hour.</p> + +<p>At 5:15 he was entirely ready for D. A. Sanderson, Captain Strawn and +their party of indignant and unwilling guests....</p> + +<p>"Oh, Mr. Dundee!" Carolyn Drake squealed. "You're not going to make us +play that awful 'death hand' again, are you?"</p> + +<p>They were all crowding about him—the men and women who had been Nita +Selim's guests at her last bridge and cocktail party....</p> + +<p>"Not only are the bridge tables exactly where they were at this time on +the evening of May 24," Dundee answered <i>so</i> significantly that all +stopped chattering to listen, "<i>but everything else in the house is +precisely as it was then</i>. Fortunately, not even the <i>electricity</i> has +been cut off! But to make sure I have forgotten nothing, I wish you +would all follow me into Mrs. Selim's bedroom and look for yourselves."</p> + +<p>Like sheep, they crowded into the little foyer and on into the bedroom. +There stood the big bronze lamp, set squarely in front of the window +frame and in a direct line with the musical powder box on dead Nita's +dressing table.</p> + +<p>At 5:25, Penny Crain, Karen Marshall, Carolyn Drake, and Flora Miles, +who had been requisitioned by Dundee to play the part of the murdered +woman, were seated at table No. 2, and behind Karen's chair stood Lois +Dunlap. Clive Hammond and his new wife were again together in the +solarium. But there Dundee's restaging of the original scene in the +tragic drama ended. Everyone else, including Lydia Carr and Peter +Dunlap, were huddled together in a far corner of the living room.</p> + +<p>"Now, Mr. Miles!" Dundee called. "Your cue! Never mind the comedy about +'How's tricks?' Simply go into the dining room, with Mrs. Dunlap, to mix +cocktails. You'll find all the ingredients still on the sideboard, +exactly as there were when Mrs. Selim sent you to mix drinks on May +24.... And Mrs. Miles, will you, pretending that you are Nita Selim, go +to powder your face at Mrs. Selim's dressing-table?"</p> + +<p>Her face white and drawn, Flora Miles stumbled from the room, just as +her husband, dumb for once with rage, entered the dining room with Lois +Dunlap.</p> + +<p>Dundee was about to follow the latter two when an interruption occurred. +Followed by a plainclothesman, a middle-aged man entered the living +room. Tall, broad-shouldered, determined, he strode to the bridge table, +his handsome head upflung, his brown eyes fixed upon the widened brown +eyes of Penny Crain.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"Dad!" the girl breathed; then, joyously: "Oh, Dad! You've come home!"</p> + +<p>But Dundee halted the reconciliation with a stern word of command. +"Please join the group in the corner, Mr. Crain!"</p> + +<p>Regardless of the ensuing hubbub Dundee strode into the dining room, +where Tracey Miles stood at the sideboard, pouring whiskey from an +almost empty decanter into a small glass.</p> + +<p>"May I drink the Scotch Tracey has poured for me, Mr. Dundee?" Mrs. +Dunlap asked shakily, leaning against the big round table.</p> + +<p>"Yes, but—Silence, please!" he cried, as there came the first faint, +tinkling notes of <i>Juanita</i>, from Nita's musical powder box, penetrating +the thin wall between the bedroom and dining room.</p> + +<p>"As I have said," the detective spoke loudly and clearly above the +tinkle of music, "<i>everything is now exactly as it was when Nita Selim +was murdered</i>! Permit me to show you all how that murder was +accomplished!"</p> + +<p>A chair at the bridge table was overturned. Lois Dunlap almost choked on +her drink of Scotch. Women screamed. In a few seconds every person in +the living room, including the district attorney and Strawn, was huddled +in the wide opening into the dining room, their eyes fixed in horror +upon Bonnie Dundee.</p> + +<p>He spoke again, his voice very clear, but slow and weighted with a +dreadful significance:</p> + +<p><i>"Mrs. Dunlap, step on the bell beneath the dining table!"</i></p> + +<p>Lois Dunlap dropped the empty whiskey glass, her face suddenly wiped of +all expression.</p> + +<p>"Step on that bell, Mrs. Dunlap—<i>just as you did before</i>!"</p> + +<p>As if hypnotized, Lois Dunlap began to grope with the toe of her right +pump for the slight bulge under the rug which indicated the position of +the bell used for summoning the maid from the kitchen.</p> + +<p>With a strangled cry Tracey Miles lunged across the few feet which +separated the woman and himself, seized her arm and whirled her +violently away from the table.</p> + +<p>"<i>Do you want to kill my wife, too?</i>" he panted, his usually florid face +the color of putty. "You—<i>you</i>—!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_TWENTY-NINE" id="CHAPTER_TWENTY-NINE"></a>CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE</h2> + + +<p>"That would be impossible, Miles," Dundee said deliberately. "<i>For your +wife is already dead!</i>" Then his clear words rang out like the knell of +doom:</p> + +<p>"Tracey Arthur Miles, I arrest you for the murder of your wife, known as +Juanita Leigh Selim, and for the murder of Dexter Sprague. And it is my +duty to warn you that anything you say may be used against you."</p> + +<p>Tracey Miles lifted his ashen face and stared at the detective blankly, +as though he had gone deaf and blind. "All—over—isn't it? May I—have +a—drink?" he managed to articulate at last.</p> + +<p>"Poor devil! He needs it," the too-soft-hearted young detective told +himself, as Miles poured a drink from the almost empty whiskey decanter +and raised the little glass to his lips.</p> + +<p>"I have—nothing—to say!" the murderer gasped thickly, then fell +heavily to the floor.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>It was three-quarters of an hour later. District Attorney Sanderson, +Captain Strawn and Dundee were alone in the house where Nita "Selim" had +been murdered and where her husband had confessed his crimes by +committing suicide. The morgue ambulance had come and gone....</p> + +<p>"I should have known," Dundee admitted ruefully, as the three men +entered Nita's bedroom, "that so ingenious a criminal as Tracey Miles +would not have failed to provide against the possibility of discovery. +He must have seized an opportunity to spill cyanide of potassium into +the decanter when my eyes were off him for a moment—and upon Lois +Dunlap."</p> + +<p>"I'm glad he did," Sanderson said curtly. "But it was ghastly that poor +Lois had to know that it was she, in all innocence, who fired the shot +that killed her friend."</p> + +<p>"It was," Dundee sighed. "But I believed that the only way I could make +Miles confess was to frighten him into thinking Flora would be killed in +the same manner.... Well, it worked!"</p> + +<p>"Captain Strawn and I are still in the dark as to exactly how Miles +managed his wife's murder," Sanderson reminded him. "This morning you +chose to tell us nothing more than that a Hamilton man had married Nita +Leigh in New York in January, 1918, and that eight years ago, when he +saw her picture in <i>The Hamilton Evening Sun</i>, along with the story that +'Anita Lee' had committed suicide, he felt free to marry again.... You +said then you knew who the man was but you would not even tell us how +you knew—"</p> + +<p>"Because I had very little actual proof then," Dundee answered. "As to +who he was, the salient clue had been staring me in the face the whole +time, but it was not until I was fooling with a set of anagrams last +night, idly spelling out the names of all the men who <i>might</i> have +married her and then murdered her, that I saw it—"</p> + +<p>"Saw <i>what</i>?" Strawn demanded irritably.</p> + +<p>"That Selim is simply Miles spelled backwards," Dundee explained. +"Possibly because he considered it the sophisticated thing to do, Miles +used an assumed name at the party at which he met Nita Leigh—and +married her under that name shortly afterward. Even the first name, +'Mat', by which she knew him, was only his initials reversed."</p> + +<p>"Simple—but clever," Sanderson commented.</p> + +<p>"Just as were all of Miles' schemes after Nita, egged on by Sprague, +turned up in Hamilton to demand 'back alimony' as the price of her +silence.... But let me show you how he killed his wife."</p> + +<p>He strode to the big bronze lamp. "It took me less than an hour today to +reconstruct the death machine so that it would be almost exactly as it +was when Miles finished his work just before 2:30 on Saturday, May +24—and as it remained until he had an opportunity to come back here and +dismantle it. Trust him to find out that the guard was removed from the +house Thursday!"</p> + +<p>As he spoke, he was unscrewing the big, jewel-studded bowl of the bronze +lamp. Wedged, at a down-slanting angle inside the bowl, which was twelve +inches in diameter, was Judge Marshall's snub-nosed automatic, the +attached Maxim silencer projecting slightly from the hole whose jewel +was missing.</p> + +<p>"Lydia told me last night over the telephone—and very much surprised +she was, too, when I swore her to secrecy—that the jewel had been lost +when the lamp was shipped from New York," Dundee explained. "There's a +blank cartridge in the gun now, of course, but Miles, in his panic, took +my words literally.... See the electro-magnet strapped to the gun butt? +He got it from the bell Sprague had installed in Lydia's bedroom, and he +returned it when he was 'cleaning up', so that the bell would ring +again. The magnet he connected with the electric wire in one of the two +lamp sockets, as you see it now, and the long cord of the lamp was +connected with the wire of the bell in the dining room—so connected +that when anyone stepped on the two little metal plates under the dining +room rug, the kitchen bell would ring and the gun would be fired +simultaneously. But if you will examine the jewel hole," he suggested, +"you will see that Miles had to enlarge it considerably, using a reamer, +which I found in the tool chest in the basement, along with all the +apparatus Sprague had bought for installing Nita's alarm bell. I could +see no reason for Sprague's having needed a reamer for his little job, +however, and this morning I was lucky enough to get proof that Miles +himself had purchased it at a hardware store on the Tuesday before +Nita's murder."</p> + +<p>"How did he connect the lamp cord with the dining room bell?" Strawn +puzzled. "These modern houses don't have exposed wiring—"</p> + +<p>"You forget Sprague's wiring for the alarm bell from here to Lydia's +room!" and Dundee threw back the rug, showing them the hole in the +floor, out of which came a short length of electric wire, ending in two +small metal plates. But attached now to the wire was the cord from the +bronze lamp.</p> + +<p>"The plug of the lamp cord is nearly out of the baseboard outlet behind +the bookcase, just as Miles left it, so that there is no contact with +electricity there. And the rug, which almost entirely covers the floor, +hides, as you have seen, the joining of the two wires. An inexplicable +wrapping of adhesive tape both on the lamp cord and on the wire of +Nita's alarm bell here gave me the clue.... In installing the alarm +bell, Sprague copied the arrangement under the dining table, of course. +And Miles simply had to drop a bit, fastened to the augur Sprague had +bought and used for his own job, down the four inches which separate the +dining room floor from the basement ceiling, boring a hole through the +ceiling. It was that fresh-bored hole in the ceiling that I could not +understand, and which Ralph Hammond assured me was not there Saturday +morning before Nita was killed.... Miles joined a piece of electric wire +to the dining room bell wires, and pushed it down through the hole he +had bored into the basement ceiling. Now if you'll come down with me—"</p> + +<p>When the three men stood staring upward at the basement ceiling, Dundee +continued:</p> + +<p>"See this long wire running along the ceiling from the hole beneath the +dining room bell? The tacks Miles used to secure it were also returned +to the tool chest, but he could not get rid of either the augur hole or +the tiny holes showing the course of the wire.... Let's follow it."</p> + +<p>He led them across the basement to a door leading into a dank, +unfinished portion of the cellar, directly east of Lydia's bedroom and +beneath Nita's. The wire whose course they were following led under the +top frame of the door, and, with a flashlight in his hand, Dundee showed +how it continued along a rafter until it reached the place where it was +joined, by adhesive tape, to the wire Sprague had dropped from Nita's +bedroom floor above.</p> + +<p>"Miles simply cut the wire here where it enters another hole through +Lydia's bedroom wall, and attached the new wire," Dundee explained. "The +connection between the dining room bell and the electro-magnet in the +lamp upstairs was then complete.... Sprague had bought yards too much of +the wire—fortunately for Miles' scheme."</p> + +<p>"But what a chance Miles took on the bullet's not hitting her in a fatal +spot!" Sanderson commented in an awed voice.</p> + +<p>"Not much of a chance!" Dundee denied. "He would fire the gun only when +he knew Nita was seated before her dressing-table. Experienced marksman +that he was, he could calculate the path of the bullet to a nicety. Of +course the machine had to be used that very day. As you know Nita +herself gave him his chance. Miles, standing at the sideboard, which was +separated from Nita's dressing table only by a thin wall, listened until +the first faint notes of <i>Juanita</i> told him that Nita was powdering her +face. He could be almost positive that Nita was sitting down to her +task.... The poor girl saw nothing to alarm her, but the gun kicked when +the shot was fired by Lois' innocent stepping upon the dining room bell, +and the big lamp was rocked so that it banged against the window frame, +shattering the one bulb Miles had left in it. Of course he moved the +lamp a foot or so, in the resulting excitement. And if Nita had been +wounded only, living to tell how the shot was fired, Miles would have +committed suicide then and there."</p> + +<p>"What if Nita had not asked him to mix cocktails or had not gone to +powder her face?" Strawn asked.</p> + +<p>"The whole party was going to dine and dance at the Country Club. +Miles would have escorted her home, as he had done on Monday night, when +Nita had probably made her last demand. He could have counted on Nita's +going into her bedroom to powder her face, even if he had had to tell +her that her nose was shiny, and would himself then have gone to the +dining room, on the excuse that he needed a drink before discussing +'business'.... But I must tell you that on Saturday morning, according +to the telephone operator in Miles' office, into whom I put the fear of +the Lord and the law when I interviewed her this morning, Nita rang Miles +to say she must see him as soon as possible, her unexpressed intention +being to tell him that she was not going to make him come across again. +Miles—the telephone operator confessed to having listened-in on the +Whole conversation—told her he would be right out, but Nita said she and +Lydia were going into Hamilton and would not be back until 2:30—the +time the bridge game was scheduled to begin. That was the opportunity +Miles had been praying for, and he came on out, having previously stolen +the gun and silencer and having studied this house—"</p> + +<p>"How had he got in?" Sanderson wanted to know.</p> + +<p>"Judge Marshall had lent him a key in February, when Miles wanted to +show the house to an engaged young man in his offices, and Miles had +neglected to return it.... Well, when he arrived, he found Ralph Hammond +here, and had to leave, waiting at a safe distance, probably, until the +coast was clear about one o'clock. Even so, he had more than an hour to +do his carefully planned job.... <i>Nita had to die!</i> Miles could not +continue to pay her large sums of money, since he was really only an +employe of Flora's. Everything he held dear in the world was threatened. +He loved Flora, he adored his children, and he could not give up the +luxury and social position which his bigamous marriage with Flora——"</p> + +<p>"Why didn't he make a clean breast of the whole mess to Flora, since he +had not married her until he believed Nita Leigh was dead?" Sanderson +interrupted.</p> + +<p>"You must remember that Flora was carrying on a violent flirtation with +Sprague—'vamping' him to get the lead in the Hamilton movie, if Sprague +got the job of directing it," Dundee reminded him. "Miles, victim of a +deep-rooted sexual inferiority complex, must have felt sure that Flora, +on discovering she was not legally married, would snatch at the chance +to marry Sprague—which was of course what Sprague had planned in case +Nita published the truth."</p> + +<p>"But you were wrong about the secret shelf! The gun was never there!" +Strawn gloated.</p> + +<p>"No. But it was the absence of fingerprints on the pivoting panel and +shelf which kept me on the right track. Miles had searched the shelf for +the marriage certificate which he could not know Nita had already +burned. Probably, too, he had written her a few letters during their +short courtship——"</p> + +<p>"How was Sprague killed?" Sanderson interrupted impatiently.</p> + +<p>Dundee led the way across the basement to a cubbyhole next to the coal +room, entered and came out with a narrow, deep drawer of ebony inlaid +with mother-of-pearl....</p> + +<p>"First I must tell you that Miles got the gun out of the lamp that +Saturday night, parking his car at a distance and sneaking into the +house while I was talking with Lydia in the basement. We can guess that +he stowed gun, silencer and electro-magnet in a pocket of his car. At +any rate, he came back noisily enough a little later, to offer Lydia a +job as nurse in his home. Doubtless he assured himself that she knew +nothing, or poor Lydia would have gone the way of her mistress and +Sprague."</p> + +<p>"Was Sprague——?" Strawn began.</p> + +<p>"Despite my warning," Dundee went on, refusing to be hurried, "Sprague +made a demand for blackmail money upon Miles. It is possible that +Sprague, also sneaking into the house that Saturday night to get his +bag, saw Miles retrieve the gun. At any rate, Sprague knew that Miles +was the only person among all the company who had a real motive for +killing Nita Selim, and he undoubtedly blackmailed Miles as a murderer +as well as a bigamist. Perhaps Miles put him off for a day or two, but +on Wednesday Judge Marshall begged for a bridge game, and Miles seized +the opportunity of again having the original crowd present—a sort of +wall of integrity surrounding and including him. For I don't think he +really wanted to involve his best friends as suspects. I believe he +merely wanted to hide among them—apparently as above suspicion as they +were. And there is safety in numbers, you know.... At any rate, Miles +made an appointment Wednesday afternoon with Sprague, telling him that, +if he would come to his home that evening, and manage to leave the +bridge game while he was dummy, he would find the money he was +demanding—<i>in a drawer of the cabinet that stood between the two +windows in the trophy room</i>!"</p> + +<p>Dundee exhibited the drawer he had taken from the basement tool room. +"This drawer! I took it away from the Miles home this afternoon while +everyone but a chambermaid was at the inquest. Miles did not have time +to go home before going to your office, Mr. Sanderson, with the rest of +the crowd you had summoned for questioning. If he had, he would have +killed himself as soon as he found the incriminating drawer was missing +from the cabinet."</p> + +<p>"But—<i>how</i>——?" Sanderson began, frowning with bewilderment.</p> + +<p>"Very simple!" Dundee answered. "When Sprague pulled open this drawer, +which was set in the cabinet at just the height of his stomach, he +received a bullet in his heart.... See these four little holes?... A +vise was screwed into the bottom of the drawer so that it gripped the +gun with its silencer, at an upward angle. A piece of string was tied to +the trigger and fastened somehow to the underside of the drawer, so that +when Sprague pulled the drawer open the string was drawn taut and the +trigger pulled. Practically the same mechanism by which he tried to +murder me.... The kick of the gun jerked the drawer shut. All Miles had +to do when he was pretending to look for Sprague was to turn off the +trophy room light by a button—one of a series on the outside wall of +the hall closet. Probably it had been agreed between them that Sprague +would not return to the bridge game, hence Sprague's telephoning for a +taxi to wait for him at the foot of the hill, and his taking his hat and +stick into the trophy room with him."</p> + +<p>"Then Miles had from midnight till dawn to remove the gun!"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Some time during the night, after Flora was asleep with a +sedative, which she badly needed because of the quarrel—a genuine +one—which she and Tracey had had over Sprague—Miles slipped down to +the trophy room and removed the gun and vise. But he could not remove +the holes the screws had made, although he did cover the bottom of the +usually empty drawer with old pamphlets on the care and feeding of +dogs.... By the way, the chambermaid told me that her master spent about +half an hour before dinner that Thursday night in the trophy room, +'going over his fishing tackle'.... His next concern was to make the +murder jibe completely with Captain Strawn's theory of a gunman who had +trailed his quarry to the Miles home and shot him through the window. +The window was already open, but the screen had to be raised, too, and +Sprague's fingerprints had to be on the nickel catches by which the +screen curtain is raised or lowered. Of course Sprague had not touched +the screen——"</p> + +<p>"Do you mean to say he lugged the corpse to the window and lifted it up +so that he could press the stiff fingers upon the nickel catches?" +Sanderson asked with a shudder. "What a fiend——"</p> + +<p>"No," Dundee assured him. "That was unnecessary. He simply removed the +curtain screen, which is so designed that it can be taken down and put +up as easily as a window shade. He carried the screen—his own hands +protected by gloves, I suppose—to where Sprague's right hand lay <i>palm +upward</i>, on the floor, and pressed the thumb and forefinger against the +catches, making fingerprints all right, but they were reversed—as I +discovered when it occurred to me to examine the photographs of +Sprague's fingerprints in Carraway's office today. Miles could not turn +the stiff hand over without bruising the dead flesh; consequently the +print of the forefinger was on the catch where the thumb would normally +have left its mark—and vice versa.... Before I forget it, I should also +tell you that I found a master key hanging on the keyboard in the +butler's pantry. Big houses, with their many locks, are usually provided +with a master key, and Miles undoubtedly used that one to gain entrance +into my room after midnight Saturday morning."</p> + +<p>"Where did you find the vise?" Strawn asked.</p> + +<p>"In the tool chest right here, where he had also placed the reamer he +had bought. The vise probably belonged to Miles originally, but he was +taking no chances on anything's being found in his possession, provided +we tumbled to <i>how</i> the two crimes were committed.... The reamer he must +have brought out here after he used it to enlarge the hole in my hot-air +register after midnight Sunday morning. It is possible he did his +cleaning up job here at the same time. It was safe enough to have lights +on, since the house is so isolated and there had been no guard here +since Thursday."</p> + +<p>"Well—" Sanderson drew a deep breath. "He was a far cleverer man than +any of us suspected. The mechanical arrangements were absurdly easy to +rig up, in all three cases, but the <i>thinking</i> of them——. It is a pity +Nita did not fear him as she feared Sprague's vengeance——"</p> + +<p>"You're right," Dundee answered. "Nita did not fear Miles, not even when +she was making him pay and pay.... No woman could look at Miles and +believe him capable of murder. But a conviction of sexual inferiority +leads to strange things, as psychologists can tell you.... I believe +Miles married the only two women who ever fell in love with him, and +there can be no doubt that Nita really loved him, for she kept her +wedding dress for more than twelve years and chose it to be her shroud. +It is possible she was still fond of him, although she was infatuated +with Sprague when she came down here and was later sincerely in love +with Ralph Hammond. Another reason she did not fear Miles when she made +her will was that she counted on being able to tell him Saturday night +at the latest that she would never ask him for money again, if he would +trade silence for silence. How she hoped to secure Sprague's silence we +can only guess at. Probably she meant to buy it with the remainder of +the $10,000 she had already got from Miles—provided Sprague did not +kill her for ditching him as a lover. We know she foresaw that +possibility, since she willed the money to Lydia. Of course if Sprague +had proved tractable, Nita as Ralph's wife would have been able to +compensate Lydia handsomely for the injury she had done her."</p> + +<p>"Poor Nita—and poor Flora!" Sanderson sighed, as he led the way up the +basement stairs. "Hello! Someone's calling you, Bonnie——"</p> + +<p>Dundee ran through the kitchen and dining room and into the living room, +for he had recognized Penny Crain's sweet, husky contralto.</p> + +<p>"What are <i>you</i> doing back here, young woman?" he demanded. "You were +told to go home and forget all this ugly business——"</p> + +<p>"Dad wants a private word with you," Penny explained, her brown eyes +luminous with happiness. "He's on the front porch.... And you ought to +see Mother! She looks like a twenty-year-old bride!"</p> + +<p>When Dundee joined him on the porch, Roger Crain flushed painfully but +there was happiness in his eyes, too....</p> + +<p>"Serena asked me to thank you for giving her Penny's message to pass +on to me," Crain began in a low voice. "I'm sure you've guessed a lot, +but what you probably don't know is that Serena used the securities +I had sent her for safe keeping, to play the market with. When she +knew what I had done here, she wouldn't let me touch a penny of the +money until she had turned it into enough to clear up all my debts in +Hamilton.... Then," and he sighed slightly, "she sent me home.... Not +that I'm sorry. I'm going to try to make Margaret and Penny happy, make +them and the town forget that I disgraced them——"</p> + +<p>"Through?" Penny called from the doorway, and Bonnie Dundee forgot +Tracey Miles and all his ingenious schemes.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MURDER AT BRIDGE***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 19403-h.txt or 19403-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/4/0/19403">http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/4/0/19403</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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For +example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at: + +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/2/3/10234 + +or filename 24689 would be found at: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/6/8/24689 + +An alternative method of locating eBooks: +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL</a> + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** +</pre> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/19403-h/images/floorplan.jpg b/19403-h/images/floorplan.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..69303ab --- /dev/null +++ b/19403-h/images/floorplan.jpg diff --git a/19403.txt b/19403.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..edb1b0b --- /dev/null +++ b/19403.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10701 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Murder at Bridge, by Anne Austin + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Murder at Bridge + + +Author: Anne Austin + + + +Release Date: September 28, 2006 [eBook #19403] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MURDER AT BRIDGE*** + + +E-text prepared by Mark C. Orton, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg +Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustration. + See 19403-h.htm or 19403-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/4/0/19403/19403-h/19403-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/4/0/19403/19403-h.zip) + + + + + +MURDER AT BRIDGE + +A Mystery Novel + +by + +ANNE AUSTIN + +Author of "Murder Backstairs" + + + + + + + +Grosset & Dunlap Publishers New York +Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1931. Reprinted March, +April, 1931; February, 1932. +Printed in the United States of America + + + + +For ARLINE AND F. HUGH HERBERT + + + + +[Illustration: Ground-floor plan of Nita Selim's house in Primrose +Meadows, showing the bedroom in which the murder was committed.] + + + + +CHAPTER ONE + + +Bonnie Dundee stretched out a long and rather fine pair of legs, +regarding the pattern of his dark-blue socks with distinct satisfaction; +then he rested his black head against the rich upholstery of an armchair +not at all intended for his use. + +His cheerful blue eyes turned at last--but not too long a last--to the +small, upright figure seated at a typewriter desk in the corner of the +office. + +"Good morning, Penny," he called out lazily, and good-humoredly waited +for the storm to break. + +"Miss Crain--to _you_!" The flying fingers did not stop an instant, but +Dundee noticed with glee that the slim back stiffened even more rigidly +and that there was a decided toss of the brown bobbed head. + +"But Penny is so much more like you," Dundee protested, unruffled. "And +why should I be forced always to think of you as a long-legged bird, +when even our mutual boss, District Attorney William S. Sanderson, has +the privilege of calling you what you are--a bright and shining new +penny?" + +"I've known Bill Sanderson since I was born," the unseen lips informed +him truculently, even as the unseen fingers continued their fiercely +staccato typing. + +"Ah! That explains a lot!" Dundee conceded handsomely. "I just wondered, +amidst all this bonhommie of 'Bill' and 'Penny,' why I--" + +"I only call Mr. Sanderson 'Bill' when I forget!" the small creature +defended herself sharply. "Goodness knows I _try_ to be an efficient +private secretary! And I could be a lot more efficient if lazy strangers +didn't plump themselves down in our best visitors' chair, and try to +flirt with me. I don't flirt! Do you hear?--_I don't flirt with +anybody!_" + +"Flirt with you, you funny little Penny?" Dundee's voice was a little +sad, the voice of a man who finds himself grievously misunderstood. "I +only want you to like me, if you can, and be a little nice to me, for +after all I--" + +"Oh, I know!" Penny Crain jerked the finished letter from her typewriter +and spun about on her narrow-backed swivel chair to face him. "I know +you are 'Mr. James F. Dundee, Special Investigator attached to the +office of the District Attorney,' and that you have a right to drive me +crazy if you want to." + +"_Crazy?_" Dundee was genuinely amazed, contrite. "I beg your pardon +most humbly, Miss Crain. I'll go back to my cell--" + +"Your office is almost as big and nice as this one," Penny retorted, but +her sharp, bright brown eyes--really almost the color of a new +penny--softened until they took on a velvety depth. + +Dundee did not fail to notice the softening, nor did the little +heart-shaped face, with its low widow's-peak, its straight, short nose, +and its pointed little chin, made almost childish by the deep cleft +which cut through its obvious effort to look mature and determined, fail +to please him any more acutely than on the other days of the one short +week he had been privileged at intervals to gaze upon it. + +"But the files, and--other things--are in this office," he told her, his +blue eyes twinkling happily once more. + +"Don't you _dare_ touch my files again!" Penny cried, springing to her +feet and running toward the wall which was completely concealed by +drawers, cabinets and shelves, filled with the records of which she was +the proud custodian. "That's why I said just now that you were driving +me crazy. Thursday you took a whole folder of correspondence out of the +letter files and put it back under the wrong initial. I had to hunt for +it for two hours, with Bill--I mean, Mr. Sanderson--gnawing his nails +with impatience. He thought I had filed it wrong, and you might have +made me lose my job." + +Unconsciously her slightly husky contralto voice had sunk lower and +trembled audibly. + +"I'm awfully sorry. I shan't touch your files again, Miss Crain." + +"Oh--go on and call me Penny," she conceded impatiently. "What do you +want now?... And you can get anything you need out of the files if +you'll just put the folder in the bottom drawer of my desk, so that I +can file it myself--correctly!" + +"Thank you, Penny," Bonnie Dundee said gravely. "I'd like awfully to +have the complete transcript of 'The State versus Maginty.' Mr. +Sanderson is determined to get a conviction where our former district +attorney most ingloriously failed. The new trial comes up in two weeks, +and he wants me to try to uncover a missing link of evidence." + +"I know," she nodded, and stretched her short, slender body to pull down +the two heavy volumes he required. + +Without a by-your-leave, Special Investigator Dundee resumed his +comfortable seat, and laid the first of the volumes open upon his knees. +But he did not seem to take a great deal of interest in the impanelling +of jurors in the case of one Rufus Maginty, who had won the temporary +triumph of a "hung jury" under the handling of the state's case by +District Attorney Sherwood, deposed in November's election. + +Rather, his eyes followed the small, brisk figure of Miss Penelope +Crain, as it moved about the room, and his ears listened to the somehow +charming though emphatic tapping of her French heels.... French heels! +Hadn't she been wearing sensible, Cuban-heeled Oxfords all other days of +this first week of his "attachment" to the district attorney's +office?... Cunning little thing, for all her thorniness and her +sharpness with him, which he now saw that he had deserved.... Pretty, +too.... Damned pretty!... What color was that dress of hers?... Ummm, +let's see ... Chartreuse, didn't they call it? Chartreuse with big brown +dots in it. Bet it was sleeveless under that short little jacket of +golden-brown chiffon velvet.... By Jove--and Dundee lapsed into one of +the Englishisms he had picked up during his six months' work in England +as a tyro in the records department of Scotland Yard, before he had come +to Hamilton to make a humble beginning as a cub detective on the +Homicide Squad--yes, by Jove, she was all dressed up, for some reason or +other. + +"Of course! Because it's Saturday and you have the afternoon off!" +Dundee finished his reverie aloud, to the astonishment of the small +person trying to reach a file drawer just a little too high for her. "I +mean," he hastened to explain, "that I've just noticed how beautiful +your costume is, and found a reason for it." + +There was sudden color in the creamy face. The French heels tapped an +angry progress across the big office, and Penny sat down abruptly in her +swivel chair, reached across the immaculate desk, snatched up a morning +paper and tossed it, without a glance, in the general direction of her +tormentor. + +"Page three, column two, first item," she informed him ungraciously, and +then began to search with a funny sort of desperation for more work to +consume her extraordinary energy. + +Bonnie Dundee grinned indulgently as he opened _The Hamilton Morning +News_ and turned to the specified page and column. + +"Ah! My old friend, the 'society editress,' in her very best style," he +commented as he began to read aloud: + +"'Mrs. Juanita Selim, new and charming member, is entertaining the +Forsyte Alumnae Bridge Club this afternoon, luncheon to be served at the +exclusive new Breakaway Inn on Sheridan Road--'" + +"I've read it--and I'm busy, so shut up!" Penny commanded, as she +gathered up pencils to sharpen. + +Quite meekly, Bonnie Dundee subsided into silent perusal of an item he +was sure could have no possible interest for himself, in either a +personal or professional capacity, unless Penny's name was in it +somewhere: + +"--after which the jolly party of young matrons and maids will adjourn +to Mrs. Selim's delightful home in the Primrose Meadows Addition." He +chuckled, and dared to interrupt the high importance of pointing-up +pencils. "I say, that's funny, isn't it?... 'Primrose Meadows +Addition'!" + +"I don't think it's funny," Penny retorted coldly. "It so happens that +my mother named it, that my father went into bankruptcy trying to make a +go of it, and that 'Mrs. Selim's delightful home' was built to be our +home, and in which we were fortunate enough to live only two months +before the crash came." + +"Oh!" Dundee groaned. "Penny, Penny! I'm dreadfully sorry." + +"Shut up!" she ordered, but her voice was huskier than ever with tears. + +Dundee's now thoroughly interested eyes raced down the absurdly written +paragraphs: + +"Although not an alumna of that famous and select school for girls, +Forsyte-on-the-Hudson, graduation from which places any Hamilton girl in +the very inner circle of Hamilton society, Mrs. Selim has been closely +identified with the school, having for the past two years directed and +staged Forsyte's annual play which ushers in the Easter vacation. + +"Indeed it was Mrs. Selim's remarkable success with this year's play +which caused Mrs. Peter Dunlap, long interested in a Little Theater for +Hamilton, to induce the beautiful and charming young directress to come +to Hamilton with her. Plans for the Little Theater are growing apace, +and it is safe to conjecture that not all the conversation flying thick +and fast about 'Nita's' bridge tables this afternoon will be concerned +with contract 'conventions,' scores, and finesses which failed. + +"Lovely 'Nita' was elected to membership a fortnight ago, when a vacancy +occurred, due to the resignation of Miss Alice Humphrey, who has gone +abroad for a year's study in the Sorbonne. The two-table club now +includes: Mesdames Hugo Marshall, Tracey A. Miles, Peter Dunlap, John C. +Drake, Juanita Selim, and Misses Polly Beale, Janet Raymond, and +Penelope Crain." + +Dundee lowered the paper and stared at the profile of District Attorney +Sanderson's private secretary. So she was a "society girl," a "Forsyte" +girl! Was that the reason, perhaps, why she had been so thorny with him, +a mere "dick"? Well, he wasn't just a dick any longer. He was a Special +Investigator ... A society girl, playing at work.... + +But there was more, and he read on: "As is well known, the 'girls' have +their 'hen-fight' bridge-luncheon every Saturday afternoon from the +first of October to the first of June, and a bridge-dinner, in which +mere men are graciously included, every other Wednesday evening during +the season. Mr. and Mrs. Tracey A. Miles are scheduled as next +Wednesday's host and hostess." + +"I take off my hat to your 'society editress'," Dundee commented with +false cheerfulness, when he had laid the paper back upon Penny's desk. +"She makes half a column of this one item in what must be a meager +Saturday bunch of 'Society Notes,' then writes it all over again, in the +past tense, for an equally meager Monday column.... Like bridge, Miss +Crain?" + +Penny snatched up the paper and crushed it into her wastebasket. "I do! +And I like my old friends, even if I am not able, financially, to keep +up with them.... If that's why you've suddenly decided to stop +being--comrades--" + +"Please forgive me again, Penny," he begged gently. + +"I was born into that crowd, and I still belong to it, because all of +them are my real friends, but get this into your thick Scotch-Irish +head, Mr. Dundee--I'm working because I have to, and--and because I love +it, too, and because I want to earn enough before I'm many years older +to give Mother some of the things she's missing so dreadfully +since--since my father failed and--and ran away." + +"Ran away?" Dundee echoed incredulously. How could any man desert a +daughter like this! + +"Yes! Ran away!" she repeated fiercely. "I might as well tell you +myself. Plenty of others will be willing to, as soon as they know you +are--my friend.... As I told you, my father"--her voice broke--"my +father went bankrupt, but before the courts knew it he had sent some +securities to a--to a _woman_ in New York, and when he--left us, he went +to her, because he left Mother a note saying so. His defrauded creditors +here have tried to--to catch him, but they haven't--yet--" + +Very gently Bonnie Dundee took the small hand that was distractedly +rumpling the brown waves which swept back from the widow's-peak. It lay +fluttering in his bigger palm for a moment, then snatched itself away. + +"I won't have you feeling sorry for me!" she cried angrily. + +"Who owns your--the Primrose Meadows house now?--Mrs. Selim?" he asked. + +"The 'lovely Nita'?" Her voice was scornful. "No. She rents it from +Judge Hugo Marshall--or is supposed to pay him rent," she added with a +trace of malice. "Hugo is an old darling, but he is fearfully weak where +pretty women are concerned. Nita Selim had known Hugo in New +York--somehow--and as soon as Lois--Mrs. Dunlap, I mean--had got Nita +off the train, the stranger in our midst hied herself to Hugo's office +and he's been tagging after her ever since.... Though most of the men in +our crowd are as bad as or worse than poor old Hugo. How Karen keeps on +looking so blissfully happy--" + +"Karen?" Dundee interrupted. + +"Mrs. Hugo Marshall," she explained impatiently. "Karen Plummer made her +debut a year ago this last winter--a darling of a girl. Judge +Marshall--retired judge, you know--had been proposing to the prettiest +girl in each season's crop of debs for the last twenty years, and Hugo +must have been the most nonplussed 'perennial bachelor' who ever led a +grand march when Karen snapped him up.... Loved him--actually! And it +seems to have worked out marvelously.... A baby boy three months old," +she concluded in her laconic style. Then, ashamed; "I don't know why I'm +gossiping like this!" + +"Because you can't find another blessed scrap of work to do, you little +efficiency fiend," Dundee laughed, "Come on! Gossip some more. My +Maginty case will wait till afternoon, to be mulled over while you're +losing your hard-earned salary at bridge with rich women." + +"We don't play for high stakes," she corrected him. "Just a twentieth of +a cent a point, though contract can run into money even at that. The +winnings all go to the Forsyte Scholarship Fund. On Wednesday evenings +the crowd plays for higher stakes--a tenth--and winners keepers. +Therefore I can't afford to go, unless I sink so low as to let my escort +pay my losses--which I sometimes do," she confessed, her brown head low +for a moment. + +"Is this Mrs. Peter Dunlap a deep-bosomed club woman, who starts +Movements?" he asked, more to bring her out of her depression than +anything else. "Bigger and Better Babies Movements, and Homes for Fallen +Girls, and Little Theater Movements?" + +The brown head flung itself up sharply, and the brown eyes hardened into +bright pennies again. "Lois Dunlap is the sweetest, finest, most +_comfortable_ woman in Hamilton, and I adore her--as does everyone else, +Peter Dunlap hardly more than the rest of us. She _is_ interested in a +Little Theater for Hamilton, but she won't manage it. That's why she got +hold of Nita Selim. Lois will simply put up barrels of money, without +missing them, and give a grand job to a little Broadway gold-digger. +Funny thing is, she really delights in Nita. Thinks she's sweet and has +never had a real chance." + +"And what do you think?" Dundee asked softly. + +"Oh--I suppose I'm a cat, but I can see through her so clearly. Not that +she's bad; she's simply an opportunist. She's awfully sweet and +deferential and 'frank' with women, but with men--well, she simply tucks +her head so that her shoulder-length black curls fall forward +enchantingly, gives them one wistful smile out of her big eyes that are +like black pansies and--the clink of slave chains!... Now go on and +think I'm catty, which I suppose I am!" + +Bonnie Dundee grinned at her reassuringly. Not for him to explain that +practically all women and many men found themselves "gossiping" when he +led them on adroitly, for reasons of his own. Which of course helped +make him the excellent detective he was. + +"So all the men in your crowd have fallen for Nita Selim, have they?" + +"Practically all, in varying degrees, except Peter Dunlap, who has never +looked at another woman since he was lucky enough to get Lois, and Clive +Hammond, who's engaged to Polly Beale," Penny answered reluctantly, her +color high. + +"Including _your_ young man?" + +"I haven't a 'young man,' in the sense of being engaged," Penny +retorted, then added honestly: "I _have_ been letting Ralph +Hammond--that's Clive's brother, you know--take me about a good +deal.... Ralph and Clive have plenty of money," she defended herself +hastily. "They are architects, Clive being the head of the firm and +Ralph, who hasn't been out of college so very long, a junior partner. +It was the Hammond firm that drew up the plans for Dad's--I mean, my +father's--Primrose Meadows Addition houses. He had our house built as a +sort of show-place, you know, so that prospective builders out there +could see how artistic a home could be put up for a moderate sum of +money. But he didn't quite finish even that--left half the gabled top +story unfinished, and Nita has been teasing Hugo to finish it up for +her. It looks," she added with a shrug, "as if Nita will get what she +wants--as usual." + +"And Ralph has acquired a set of slave chains?" Dundee suggested, with +just the slightest note of sympathy. + +"_And how!_" Penny assured him, grimly. "A simile as out-of-date as my +clothes are going to be if I don't get some new ones soon. Not that the +crowd minds what I wear," she added loyally. "I could dress up in a +window drape--" + +"And be just as charming as you are in that grand new party dress you +have on now," Dundee finished for her gallantly. + +"_New!_" Penny snorted and turned back to her desk in a futile effort to +find something left undone. + +Dundee ignored the rebuff. "How many suckers--I mean, how many gentlemen +with moderate incomes actually built in Primrose Meadows?" + +"You are inquisitive, aren't you?... None! Our house, or rather the one +Nita Selim is living in now, is the only house on what used to be a big +farm.... Why?" + +"I was just wondering," Dundee said softly, almost absent-mindedly, +"why the 'lovely Nita' chose so isolated a place in which to live, +when Hamilton has rather a large number of 'For Rent' signs out just +now.... By the way, know what time it is now?... Twenty to one! Get your +hat on, young woman. I'm going to drive you out to Breakaway Inn." + +"You're not! I'm going to take a bus. One runs from the Square right +past the Inn," she told him firmly. + +And just as firmly Dundee escorted her out of the almost deserted, +rather dirty old courthouse to where his brand-new sports +roadster--bought "on time"--was awaiting them in the parking space +devoted to the motors of those who officially served Hamilton County. + +"I know why you want to drive me out to the Inn," Penny told him +suddenly, as the proud owner maneuvered his car through Saturday noon +traffic. "You want to see Nita Selim. Clank! Clank! I can hear the +padlocks snapping on the slave chains right now." + +"Meow!" Dundee retorted, then grinned down at her with as much comradely +affection as if they had been friends for years instead of for a couple +of hours. "Is Nita very small?" he added. + +"Little enough to tuck herself under the arm of a man a lot shorter than +you," Penny assured him with curious vehemence. "And if Penelope Crain +is no mean prophet, that's exactly what she'll do within five minutes +after she meets you--just as she is wistfully inviting you to join the +other men for the cocktail party which is scheduled to break up the +bridge game at 5:30. Then, of course, you'll be urged to join us all at +the dinner-dance at the Country Club tonight." + +"Will she?" Dundee pretended to be vastly intrigued, which caused the +remainder of the drive to be a rather silent one, due to Penny's +unresponsiveness. + +Breakaway Inn was intensely Spanish in architecture and transplanted +shrubbery, but its stucco walls were of a rather more violent raspberry +color than is considered quite esthetic in Spain or Mexico. + +"There's Lois Dunlap's car just driving up," Penny cried, her face +softening with the adoration she had freely professed for her friend. +But it clouded again almost instantly. "And Nita Selim. I suppose Nita +was a little ashamed to drive up in her own Ford coupe." + +As Dundee helped his new friend to alight his eyes were upon the two +women being assisted by a uniformed chauffeur from Lois Dunlap's +limousine. + +In a moment the four were a laughing, exclamatory group. + +"Oh, what a tall, grand man you've got yourself, Penny darling!" the +tiny, beautiful creature who could only be Mrs. Selim cried out happily. +"_May_ I meet him?" + +"I shouldn't let you," Penny answered frankly, "but I will.... Mrs. +Selim, Mr. Dundee.... And Mrs. Dunlap, Mr. Dundee.... How are you, Lois? +And Peter and the brats?" + +"All well, Penny. Petey's off on a week-end fishing trip, and not one of +the brats has measles, scarlet fever or hay fever, thank God," Dundee +heard Mrs. Dunlap say in the comfortable, affectionate voice that went +with her comfortable, pleasant face and body.... Nice woman! + +But his eyes were of necessity upon Nita Selim, for that miniature Venus +was, as Penny had predicted, almost tucked under his arm by this time, +her black-pansy eyes wide and wistful, her soft black curls falling +forward as she coaxed: + +"You'll come to the cocktail party at my house at 5:30, won't you, Mr. +Dundee?" + +"Afraid I can't make it," Dundee smiled down at her. "I'm a busy man, +Mrs. Selim.... You see, I'm Special Investigator attached to the +District Attorney's office," he explained very deliberately. + +"O-o-oh!" Nita Selim breathed. Than, step by step, she withdrew, so that +he was no longer submitted to the temptation to put his arm about her +too intriguing little body. And as she retreated, Dundee's keen eyes +noted a hardening of the black-pansy eyes, the sudden throbbing of a +pulse in her very white neck.... + +"No, don't mind about calling for me," Penny protested a moment later. +"Ralph has already volunteered.... Thanks awfully!" + +As Dundee backed out of the driveway his last glance was for a very +small figure in a brown silk summer coat and palest yellow chiffon +frock, slowly rejoining Penelope Crain and Lois Dunlap. What the devil +had frightened her so? For she had been almost terrified.... Of course +she might be one of those silly women who shudder at the sight of a +detective, because they've smuggled in a diamond from Paris or a bottle +of Bacardi from Havana.... + +But long before his car made the distance back to the city Dundee had +shrugged off the riddle and was concentrating on all the facts he knew +regarding the Maginty case. It was his first real assignment from +Sanderson, and he was determined to make good. + +Four hours later he was interrupted in his careful reading of the trial +of Rufus Maginty by the ringing of the telephone bell. That made four +times he had had to snap out the fact that District Attorney Sanderson +was playing some well-earned golf on the Country Club links, Dundee +reflected angrily, as he picked up the receiver. + +But the call was for Dundee himself, and the voice on the other end of +the wire was Penny Crain's, although almost unrecognizable. + +"Speak more slowly, Penny!" Dundee urged. "What's that again.... Good +Lord! You say that Nita Selim...." + +After a minute of listening, and a promise of instant obedience, Dundee +hung up the receiver. + +"My God!" he said slowly, blankly. "Of all things--_murder at bridge_!" + + + + +CHAPTER TWO + + +As Special Investigator Dundee drove through the city of Hamilton at a +speed of sixty miles an hour, his way being cleared by traffic policemen +warned by the shrill official siren which served him as a horn, he had +little time to think connectedly of the fact that Nita Selim had been +murdered during a bridge game in her rented home in Primrose Meadows. + +Even after the broad sleekness of Sheridan Road stretched before him he +could do little more than try to realize the shock which had numbed +him.... "Lovely Nita," as the society editor of _The Morning News_ had +called her, was--_dead_! How, why, he did not know. He had asked no +details of Penny Crain.... Funny, thorny little Penny! Loyal little +Penny! + +"Judge Marshall has telephoned Police Headquarters," she had told him +breathlessly over the telephone, "but I made him let me call you as soon +as he had hung up. I wanted _our_ office to be in on this right from the +first." + +Beautiful, seductive Nita Selim, almost cuddling under his arm within +three minutes of meeting him--_dead_! A vision of her black-pansy eyes, +so wide and luminous and wistful as they had looked sideways and upward +to his, pleading for him to join her after-bridge cocktail party, nearly +made him crash into a lumbering furniture van. Those eyes were luminous +no longer, could never again snap the padlocks of slave chains upon any +man--as Penny had expressed it.... Dead! And she had been so warmly +alive, even as she had retreated from him at his mention of the fact +that he was attached to the office of the district attorney as a special +investigator. What had she feared then? Was her death a payment for some +recent or long-standing crime? Or had she simply been withdrawing from +contamination with a "flat-foot"?... No! She had been _afraid_--horribly +afraid of some ulterior purpose behind his innocent courtesy in driving +Penelope Crain to Breakaway Inn. + +Well, speculation now was idle, he told himself, as he noted that his +speedometer had dropped from sixty to thirty in his preoccupation. He +speeded again, but was soon forced to stop and ask his way into Primrose +Meadows. The vague directions of a farmer's son lost him nearly eight +precious minutes, during which his friend, Captain Strawn of the +Homicide Squad, might be bungling things rather badly. But at last he +found the ornate pair of pillars spanned by the painted legend, +"Primrose Meadows," and drove through them into what soon became a +rutted lane. Almost a quarter of a mile from the entrance he found the +isolated house, unmistakable because of the line-up of private cars +parked before the short stretch of paved sidewalk, and the added +presence of police cars and motorcycles. + +Dundee turned his own car into the driveway leading from the street +along the right side of the house toward the two-car garage in the rear. +Ahead of his roadster were two other cars, and a glance toward the open +garage showed that a Ford coupe was housed there. + +As he was descending Captain Strawn's voice hailed him from an open +window of the room nearest the garage. + +"Hello, Bonnie! Been expecting you.... Damnedest business you ever +saw.... There's a door from this room onto the porch. Hop up and come on +in." + +Dundee obeyed. Driving in he had noted that a wide porch, upheld by +round white pillars, stretched across the front of the gabled brick +house and extended halfway along its right side, past a room which was +obviously a solarium, with its continuous windows, gay awnings, +and--visible through the glittering panes--orange-and-black wicker +furniture. + +It was easy to swing himself up to the floor of the porch. Strawn flung +open the door which led into the back room, remarking with a grin: + +"Don't be afraid I'm gumming up any fingerprints. Carraway has already +been over the room.... The Selim woman's bedroom," he explained. "The +room she was killed in." + +"You _have_ been on the job," Dundee complimented his former chief. + +"Sure!" Strawn acknowledged proudly. "Can't be too quick on our stumps +when it's one of these 'high sassiety' murders. Dr. Price will be here +any minute now, and my men have been all over the premises, basement to +attic. Of course it was an outside job--plain as the nose on your +face--and we haven't found a trace of the murderer." + +Although Mrs. Selim had taken the house furnished, it was obvious that +this big bedroom of hers was not exactly as the Crain family had left +it. A little too pretty, a little too aggressively feminine, with its +chaise longue heaped with silk and lace pillows, its superfluity of big +and little lamps, its bed draped with golden-yellow taffeta, its +dressing table-- + +But he could not let critical eyes linger on the triple-mirrored vanity +dresser. For on the bench before it sat a tiny figure, the head bowed so +low that some of the black curls had fallen into a large open bowl of +powder. She was no longer wearing the brown silk summer coat whose open +front had given him a glimpse of pale yellow chiffon. + +He saw the dress now, a low-cut, sleeveless, fluffy affair, but he +really had eyes only for the brownish-red hole on the left side of the +back of the bodice, about halfway between shoulder and waist--a waist so +small he could have spanned it with his two hands, including its band of +fuchsia velvet ribbon. There also had been a bow of fuchsia velvet +ribbon on the lace and straw hat she had swung so charmingly less than +five hours ago. + +"Shot through the heart, I guess," Strawn commented. "Took a good +marksman to find her heart, shooting her through the back.... Funny +thing, too. Nobody heard the shot--leastways none of that crowd penned +up in the living room will admit they did. They'll all hang together, +and lie like sixty to keep us from finding out anything that might point +to one of _their_ precious bunch! But if a gun with a Maxim silencer +_was_ used, as it must have been if that whole crew ain't lying, the +gunman musta been _good_, because you can't sight with a Maxim screwed +onto a rod, you know." + +"Have your men found the gun?" Dundee asked. + +"Of course not, or I'd know whether it had a Maxim on it or not," Strawn +retorted. "My theory is," he added impressively, "that somebody with a +grudge against this dame hired a gunman to hang around till he got her +dead to rights, then--plop!" and he imitated the soft, thudding sound +made by the discharge of a bullet from a gun equipped with a silencer. + +"Doesn't it seem rather strange that a professional gunman should have +chosen such a time--with men arriving in cars, and the house full of +women who might wander into this room at any minute--to bump off his +victim?" Dundee asked. + +"Well, there ain't no other explanation," Captain Strawn contended. +"Outside of the fact that my men have gone over the whole house and +grounds without finding the gun, I've got other evidence it was an +outside job.... Look!" + +Dundee followed the Chief of the Homicide Squad to one of the two +windows that looked out upon the driveway. Both were open, since the May +day was exceptionally warm, even for the Middle West. The unscreened +window from which he obediently leaned was almost directly in line with +the vanity dressing-table across the room. + +"Look! See how them vines have been torn," Strawn directed, pointing to +a rambler rose which hugged the outside frame of the window. "And look +hard enough at the flower bed down below and you'll see his +footprints.... Of course we've measured them and Cain, as you see, is +guarding them till my man comes to make plaster casts of them.... Yes, +sir, he hoisted himself up to the window ledge, aimed as best he could, +then slipped down and beat it across the meadow." + +"Then," Dundee began slowly, "I wonder why Mrs. Selim didn't see that +figure crouched in the window, since she must have been powdering her +face and looking into the middle of the three mirrors--the one which +reflects this very window?" + +"How do you know she was powdering her face, not looking for something +in a drawer?" Strawn demanded truculently. + +"For three reasons," Dundee answered almost apologetically. "First: her +powder puff, as I'm sure you noticed, is still clutched in her right +hand; second: there is no drawer open, and no drawer _was_ open, unless +someone has closed it since the murder, whereas on the other hand her +powder box _is_ open; third: the left side of her face is unevenly +coated with powder, while the other is heavily but _evenly_ powdered. +Therefore I can't see why she didn't scream, or turn around when she +heard your gunman clambering up to her window, or even when he had +crouched in it. I don't see how she could _help_ seeing him!" + +"Well--what do _you_ think?" Strawn asked sourly, after he had tested +the visibility of the window from the dressing-table mirror. + +"I'm afraid, Captain Strawn, that there are only two explanations +possible. The first, of course, is that Nita Selim was quite deaf or +very nearsighted. I happen to know from having met her today--" + +"_You_ met her today?" Strawn interrupted incredulously. + +Dundee explained briefly, then went on: "As I was saying I have good +reason to know she was not deaf, but I can't say as to her being +nearsighted, except that it is my observation that people who are +extremely nearsighted do not have very wide eyes and no creases between +the brows. I am fairly sure she did not wear glasses at all, because +glasses worn even a few hours a day leave a mark across the nose or show +pinched red spots on each side of the bridge of the nose." + +"You must have had a good hard look at her," Strawn gibed, his grey eyes +twinkling, and his harsh, thin-lipped mouth pulling down at one corner +in what he thought was a genial smile. + +"I did," Dundee retorted. "Well, conceding that she was neither deaf nor +half-blind, she would necessarily have heard and seen her assailant +before he shot her." + +"What's the other explanation?" Strawn was becoming impatient. + +"That the person who killed her was so well known to her, and his--or +her--presence in this room so natural a thing that she paid no attention +to his or her movements and was concentrating on the job of powdering +her very pretty face." + +"You mean--one of that gang of society folks in there?" and Strawn +jerked a thumb toward the left side of the house. + +"Very probably," Dundee agreed. + +"But where's the gun?" Strawn argued. "I tell you my men--" + +"This was a premeditated murder, of course," Dundee interrupted. "The +Maxim silencer--unless they are all lying about not hearing a +shot--proves that. Silencers are damned hard to get hold of, but people +with plenty of money can manage most things. And since the murder was +premeditated, it is better to count on the fact that the murderer--or +murderess--had planned a pretty safe hiding place for the gun and the +silencer.... Oh, not necessarily in the house or even near the house," +he hastened to assure Strawn, who was trying to break in.... "By the +way, how long after Mrs. Selim was killed was her death discovered? Or +do you know?" + +"I haven't been able to get much out of that bunch in there--not even +out of Penelope Crain, who ought to be willing to help, seeing as how +she works for the district attorney. But I guess she's waiting to spill +it all to you, if she knows anything, so you and Sanderson will get all +the credit." + +"Now, look here, chief," Dundee protested, laying a hand on Strawn's +shoulder as he reverted to the name by which he had addressed the head +of the Homicide Squad for nearly a year, "we're going to be friends, +aren't we? Same as always? We know pretty well how to work together, +don't we? No use to begin pulling against each other." + +"Guess so," Strawn growled, but he was obviously pleased and relieved. +"Maybe you'd better have a crack at that crowd yourself. I hear Doc +Price's car--always has a bum spark plug. I'll stick around with him +until he gets going good on his job; then, if you'll excuse me for +butting in, I'll join your party in the living room.... And good luck to +you, Bonnie!" + +Dundee took the door he knew must lead into the central hall, but found +himself in an enclosed section of it--a small foyer between the main +hall and Nita Selim's bedroom. There was room for a telephone table and +its chair, as well as for a small sofa, large enough for two to sit upon +comfortably. He paused to open the door across from the telephone table +and found that it opened into a closet, whose hangers and hat forms now +held the outdoor clothing belonging to Nita's guests. Nice clothes--the +smart but unostentatious hats and coats of moneyed people of good taste, +he observed a little enviously, before he opened the door which led into +the main hall which bisected the main floor of the house until it +reached Nita's room. + +Another door in the section behind the staircase leading to the gabled +second story next claimed his attention. Opening it, he discovered a +beautifully fitted guests' lavatory. There was even a fully appointed +dressing-table for women's use, so that none of her guests had had the +slightest excuse to invade the privacy of Mrs. Selim's bedroom and bath, +unless specifically invited to do so. Rather a well planned house, this, +Dundee concluded, as he closed the door upon the green porcelain +fixtures, and walked slowly toward the wide archway that led from the +hall into a large living room. + +He had a curious reluctance to intrude upon that assembled and guarded +company of Hamilton's "real society." They were all Penny's friends, and +Penny was _his_ friend.... + +But his first swift, all-seeing glance about the room reassured him. No +hysterics here. These people brought race and breeding even into the +presence of death. Whatever emotions had torn them when Nita Selim's +body was discovered were almost unguessable now. A stout, short woman of +about thirty was tapping a foot nervously, as she talked to the man who +was bending over her chair. John C. Drake, that was. Dundee had met him, +knew him to be a vice president of the Hamilton National Bank, in charge +of the trust department. Penelope Crain was occupying half of a +"love-seat" with Lois Dunlap, the hands of the girl and of the woman +clinging together for mutual comfort. That tall, thin, oldish man, with +the waxed grey mustache, must be Judge Hugo Marshall, and the pretty +girl leaning trustingly against his shoulder must be his wife--Karen +Marshall, who had jumped at her first proposal during her first season. + +"Yes, well-bred people," he concluded, as his eyes swept on, and then +stopped, a little bewildered. Who was _that_ man? He didn't belong +somehow, and his hands trembled visibly as he tried to light a +cigarette. Leaning--not nonchalantly, but actually for support--against +the brocaded coral silk drapes of a pair of wide, long windows set in +the east wall. Suddenly Dundee had it.... Broadway! This was no +Hamiltonian, no comfortably rich and socially secure Middle-westerner. +Broadway in every line of his too-well-tailored clothes, in the polished +smoothness of his dark hair.... + +"Why, it's Mr. Dundee at last!" Penny cried, turning in the S-shaped +seat before he had time to finish his mental inventory of the room's +occupants. + +She jumped to her feet and threaded a swift way over Oriental rugs and +between the two bridge tables, still occupying the center of the big +room, still cluttered with score pads, tally cards, and playing cards. + +"I've been wondering if you had stopped to have dinner first," she +taunted him. Then, laying a hand on his arm, she faced the living room +eagerly. "This is Mr. Dundee, folks--special investigator attached to +the district attorney's office, and a grand detective. He solved the +Hogarth murder case, you know, and the Hillcrest murder. And he's _my_ +friend, so I want you all to trust him--and tell him things without +being afraid of him." + +Then, rather ceremoniously but swiftly, she presented her friends--Judge +and Mrs. Hugo Marshall, Mr. and Mrs. Tracey Miles, Mr. and Mrs. John C. +Drake, Mrs. Dunlap, Janet Raymond, Polly Beale, Clive Hammond, and-- + +At that point Penny hesitated, then rather stiffly included the +"Broadway" man, as "Mr. Dexter Sprague--of New York." + +"Thank you, Miss Crain," Dundee said. "Now will you please tell me, if +you know, whether all those invited to both the bridge party and the +cocktail party are here?" + +Penny's face flamed. "Ralph Hammond, Clive's brother, hasn't come +yet.... I--I rather imagine I've been 'stood up,'" she confessed, with a +faint attempt at gayety. + +And Ralph Hammond was the man who had once belonged rather exclusively +to Penny, and who, according to her own confession, had succumbed most +completely to Nita Selim's charms!--Dundee noted, filing the reflection +for further reference. + +"Please, Mr. Dundee, won't you detain us as short a time as possible?" +Lois Dunlap asked, as she advanced toward him. "Mr. Dunlap is away on a +fishing trip, and I don't like to leave my three youngsters too long. +They are really too much of a handful for the governess, over a period +of hours." + +"I shall detain all of you no longer than is absolutely necessary," +Dundee told her gently, "but I am afraid I must warn you that I can't +let you go home very soon--unless one or more of you has something of +vital importance to tell--something which will clear up or materially +help to clear up this bad business." + +He paused a long half-minute, then asked curtly: "I am to conclude that +no one has anything at all to volunteer?" + +There was no answer, other than a barely perceptible drawing together in +self-defence of the minds and hearts of those who had been friends for +so long. + +"Very well," Dundee conceded abruptly. "Then I must put all of you +through a routine examination, since every one of you is, of course, a +possible suspect." + + + + +CHAPTER THREE + + +"Good-by, dinner!" groaned the plump, blond little man who had been +introduced as Tracey Miles, as he sorrowfully patted his rather +prominent stomach. + +"Don't worry, darling," begged the dark, neurotic-looking woman who was +Flora Miles, his wife. "I'm sure Mr. Dundee will ask Lydia--poor Nita's +maid, you know--" she explained in an aside to Dundee, "--to prepare a +light supper for us if he really needs to detain us long--which I am +sure he won't." + +"How can you think of food now?" Polly Beale, the tall, sturdy girl with +an almost masculine bob and a quite masculine tweed suit, demanded +brusquely. Her voice had an unfeminine lack of modulation, but when +Dundee saw her glance toward Clive Hammond he realized that she was +wholly feminine where he was concerned, at least. + +"Of course, we are all _dreadfully_ cut up over poor Nita's--death," +gasped a rather pretty girl, whose most distinguishing feature was her +crop of crinkly, light-red hair. + +"I assume that to be true, Miss Raymond," Dundee answered. "But we must +lose no more time getting at the facts. Just when was Mrs. Selim +murdered?" + +At the brutal use of the word a shudder rippled over the small crowd. +Dexter Sprague, "of New York," dropped his lighted cigarette where it +would have burned a hole in a fine Persian rug, if Sergeant Turner, on +guard over the room for Captain Strawn, had not slouched from his corner +to plant a big foot upon it. + +"We don't know exactly when it happened," Penny volunteered. "We were +playing bridge, the last hand of the last rubber, because the men were +arriving for cocktails, when Nita became dummy and went to her bedroom +to--" + +"To make herself 'pretty-pretty' for the men," Mrs. Drake mimicked; +then, realizing the possible effect of her cattiness on Dundee, she +defended herself volubly: "Of course I _liked_ Nita, but she _did_ think +so terribly much about her effect on men--and all that, and was always +fixing her make-up, and besides--you _can't_ suspect me, because I was +playing against Karen and Nita--" + +"Thank you, Mrs. Drake," Dundee cut in. "Does anyone know the exact time +Mrs. Selim left the room, when she became dummy?" + +"I can tell you, because I had just arrived--the first of the men to get +here," Tracey Miles volunteered, obviously glad of the chance to talk--a +characteristic of the man, Dundee decided. "I looked at my watch just +after I stepped out of my car, because I like to be on time to the dot, +and Nita--Mrs. Selim--had said 5:30.... Well, it was exactly 5:25, so I +had five minutes to spare." + +"Yes?" Dundee speeded him up impatiently. + +"Well, I came right into the hall, and hung my hat in the closet out +there, and then came in here. It must have been about 5:27 by that +time," he explained, with the meticulousness of a man on the witness +stand. "I shouted, 'Hello, everybody! How's tricks?...' That's a joke, +you know. 'How's tricks?'--meaning tricks in bridge--" + +"Yes, yes," Dundee admitted, frowning, but the rest of the company +exchanged indulgent smiles, and Flora Miles patted her husband's hand +fondly. + +"Well, Nita jumped up from the bridge table--that one right there," +Miles pointed to the table nearer the arched doorway, "and she said, +'Good heavens! Is it half past five already? I've got to run and make +myself 'pretty-pretty' for just such great big men as you, Tracey--" + +"'Tracey, darling'!" Judge Marshall corrected, with a chuckle that +sounded odd in the tensely silent room. + +Tracey Miles flushed a salmon pink, and his wife's fingers clutched at +his hand warningly. "Oh, Nita called everybody 'darling,' and didn't +mean anything by it, I guess," he explained uneasily. "Just one of her +cute little ways--. Well, anyway, she came up to me and straightened +my necktie--another one of her funny little ways--and said, 'Tracey, +my _own_ lamb, won't you shake up the cocktails for poor little +Nita?...' You know, a sort of way she had of coaxing people--" + +"Yes, I know," Dundee agreed, with a trace of a grin. "Go on as rapidly +as you can, please." + +"I thought you wanted to know everything!" Miles was a little peevish; +he had evidently been enjoying himself. "Of course I said I'd make the +cocktails--she said everything was ready on the sideboard. That's the +dining room right behind this room," he explained unnecessarily, since +the French doors were open. "Well, Nita blew me a kiss from her +fingertips, and ran out of the room.... Now, let's see," he ruminated, +creasing his sunburned forehead beneath his carefully combed blond hair, +"that must have been at exactly 5:30 that she left the room. I went on +into the dining room, and Lois--I mean, Mrs. Dunlap came with me, +because she said she was simply dying for a caviar sandwich and a nip +of--of--" + +"Of Scotch, Tracey," Lois Dunlap cut in, grinning. "I'm sure Mr. Dundee +won't think I'm a confirmed tippler, so you might as well tell the +truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.... Poor Tracey has a +deadly fear that we are all going to lose the last shred of our +reputations in this deplorable affair, Mr. Dundee," she added in a +rather shaky version of the comfortable, rich voice he had heard earlier +in the day. + +"I'm not going to pry into cellars," Dundee assured her in the same +spirit. "What else, Mr. Miles?" + +"Nothing much," Tracey Miles confessed, with apparent regret. "I was +still mixing--no, I'd begun to shake the cocktails--when I heard a +scream--" + +"Whose scream?" Dundee demanded, looking about the room, and dismissing +Miles thankfully. + +"It was--I," Judge Marshall's fair-haired, blue-eyed little bride +volunteered in a voice that threatened to rise to hysteria. + +"Tell me all about it," Dundee urged gently. + +"Yes, sir," she quavered, while her husband's arm encircled her +shoulders in courtly fashion. "As Tracey told you, Nita was dummy, and I +was declarer--that is, I got the bid, and played the hand. It--it was +quite an exciting end for me to the afternoon of bridge, for I'm not +usually awfully lucky, so when Penny had figured up the score, because +I'm not good at arithmetic, and I knew Nita and I had rolled up an +awfully big score, I jumped up and ran into her room to tell her the +good news, because she hadn't come back. And--and--there she was--all +bowed over her dressing-table, and she--she was--was--" + +"She was dead when you reached her?" Dundee assisted her. + +"Yes," Karen Marshall answered faintly, and turned to hide her face +against her elderly husband's breast. + +Dundee's swift eyes took in the varying degrees of whiteness and sick +horror that claimed every face in the room as surely as if all present +had not already heard Karen tell her story to Captain Strawn. Tracey +Miles looked as if he would have no immediate craving for his dinner, +and Judge Marshall's fine, thin face no longer looked so +"well-preserved" as he prided himself that it did. As for Dexter +Sprague, he almost folded up against the coral brocade draperies. It was +the women, oddly enough, who kept the better control over their +emotions. + +"Of course you all rushed in when Mrs. Marshall screamed?" he asked +casually. + +Twelve heads nodded mutely. + +"Did any or all of you touch the body, or things in the room?" + +"Mr. Sprague touched her hair, and--and lifted one of her hands," Penny +contributed quietly. "But you know how it must have been! We can't any +of us tell _exactly_ every move we made, but there was some rushing +about. The men, mostly, looking for--for whoever did it--" + +"Mrs. Marshall, did you see anyone--_anyone at all_--in or near that +room when you entered it?" + +The white-faced young wife lifted her head, and looked at him dazedly +with drowned blue eyes. "There wasn't anyone in--in that room, I know," +she faltered. "It felt horrible--being in there with--with _her_--all +alone--" + +"But near the room? In the main hall or in the little foyer where the +telephone is?" Dundee persisted. + +"I--don't think so ... I can't--remember--seeing _anyone_.... Oh, Hugo!" +and again she crouched against her husband, who soothed her with +trembling hands that looked incongruously old against her childish fair +hair and face. + +"Where were the rest of you--_exactly_ where, I mean?" Dundee demanded, +conscious that Captain Strawn had entered the room and was standing +slightly behind him. + +There was such a babel of answers, given and then hastily corrected, +that Dundee broke in suddenly: + +"I want a connected story of 'the events leading up to the tragedy.' And +I want someone to tell it who hasn't lost his--or her--head at all." He +looked about the company, as if speculatively, but his mind was already +made up. "Miss Crain, will you tell the story, beginning with the moment +I left you and Mrs. Dunlap and Mrs. Selim today?" + +Penny nodded miserably and was about to begin. + +"Just a minute, before you begin, Miss Crain," Dundee requested. "I'd +like to make notes on your story," and he drew from a coat pocket a +shorthand book, hastily filched from Penny's own tidy desk. "Yes," he +answered the girl's frank stare of amazement, "I can write shorthand--of +a sort, and pretty fast, at that, though no other human being, I am +afraid, could read it but myself.... As for you folks," he addressed the +uneasy, silent group of men and women in dead Nita's living room, "I +shall ask you not to interrupt Miss Crain unless you are very sure that +her memory is at fault." + +Penelope Crain was about to begin for the second time, when again Dundee +interrupted. "Another half second, please." + +On the first sheet of the new shorthand notebook Dundee scribbled: +"Suggest you try to locate Ralph Hammond immediately. Very much in love +with Mrs. Selim. Invited to cocktail party; did not show up." Tearing +the sheet from the notebook, he passed it to Captain Strawn, who read +it, frowning, and then nodded. + +"Doc Price has done all he can here," Strawn whispered huskily. "Wants +to know if you'd like to speak to him before he takes the body to the +morgue." + +"Certainly," Dundee answered as he grinned apologetically to the girl +who was waiting, white-faced but patiently, to tell the story of the +afternoon. + +Quickly suppressed shudders and low exclamations of horror followed him +and the chief of the Homicide Squad from the room. + +"Well, Bonnie boy, we meet again, for the usual reason," old Dr. Price +greeted the district attorney's new special investigator. "Another +shocking affair--that.... A nice clean wound, one of the neatest jobs I +ever saw. Shot entered the back, and penetrated the heart.... _Very_ +nicely calculated. If the bullet had struck a quarter of an inch higher, +it would have been deflected by the--" + +"But the _path_ of the bullet, doctor!" Dundee broke in. "Have you made +any calculations as to the place and distance at which the shot was +fired?" + +"Roughly speaking--yes," the coroner answered. "The gun was fired at a +distance, probably, of ten or fifteen feet--perhaps closer, but I don't +think so," he amended meticulously. "As for the path of the bullet, I +have fixed it, judging from the position of the body, which I am assured +had not been moved before my arrival, as coming from a point somewhere +along a straight line drawn from the wound, with the body upright, of +course, to--here!" + +Dundee and Strawn followed the brisk little white-haired old doctor +across the bedroom to a window opening upon the drive--the one nearest +the door leading out upon the porch. + +"I've marked the end of the line here," Dr. Price went on, pointing to a +faint pencil mark made upon the window frame--the pale-green strip of +woodwork near the chaise longue, which was set between the two windows. + +"I told you she was shot from the window!" Strawn reminded Dundee +triumphantly. "You see, doc, it's my theory that the murderer climbed up +to the sill of this window, which was open as it is now, crouched in it, +and shot her while she sat there powdering her face." + +"Not necessarily, Captain, not necessarily," Dr. Price deprecated. "I +merely say that this pencil mark indicated the _end_ of the line showing +the path of the bullet. Certainly she was not shot _through_ the frame +of the window, but she might have been shot by anyone stationed just in +front of it, or anywhere along the line, up to, say, within ten feet of +the woman.... Now, if that's all, Captain, I'll be getting this corpse +into the morgue for an autopsy. And I'll send you both a copy of my +findings." + +"Just a minute, Dr. Price," Dundee detained him. "How old would you say +Mrs. Selim was?" + +The little doctor pursed his wrinkled lips and considered for a moment, +eyeing the body stretched upon the chaise longue speculatively. + +"We-ell, between thirty and thirty-four years old," he answered finally. +"Of course, you understand that that estimate is unofficial, and must +remain so, until I have completed the autopsy--" + +Dundee stared down at the upturned face of the dead woman with startled +incredulity. Between thirty and thirty-four years old! That tiny, +lovely--But she was not quite so lovely in death, in spite of the +serenity it had brought to those once-vivacious features. Peering more +closely, he could see--without those luminous, wide eyes to center his +attention--numerous fine lines on the waxen face, the slackness of a +little pouch of soft flesh beneath her round chin, an occasional white +hair among the shoulder-length dark curls.... Dundee sighed. How easy it +was for a beautiful woman to deceive men with a pair of wide, velvety +black eyes! But he'd bet the women had not been quite so thoroughly +taken in by her cuddly childishness, her odd mixture of demureness and +youthful impudence! + +Back in the living room, whose occupants stopped whispering and grew +taut with suspense, Dundee seated himself at a little red-lacquer table, +notebook spread, while Strawn settled himself heavily in the nearest +overstuffed armchair. + +"Now, Miss Crain, I am quite ready, if you will forgive me for having +kept you waiting." + +In a very quiet voice--slightly husky, as always--Penny began her story: + +"I think it lacked two or three minutes of one o'clock when you drove +away. Nita, Lois--do you mind if I use the names I am most accustomed +to?... Thank you!--and I went immediately into the lounge of Breakaway +Inn, where we found Carolyn Drake and Flora Miles waiting for us. Nita +soon left us to see about the arrangement of the table, and while she +was away the rest of the girls arrived." + +"Except--" a woman's voice broke in. + +"I was going to say all eight of us were ready for lunch except Polly +Beale. She hadn't come," Penny went on, her husky voice a little sharp +with annoyance. "When Nita came to ask us into the private dining room, +one of the Inn's employees came and told her there was a call for her +and showed her to the private booth in the lounge. In a minute Nita +returned and told us that Polly wasn't coming to the luncheon, but would +join us later for bridge here." + +"Why don't you tell him how funny Nita acted?" Janet Raymond prompted. + +Penny flushed, but she accepted the prompting. "I think any of us might +have been a little--annoyed," she said steadily, as if striving to be +utterly truthful. "Nita told us--" she turned to Dundee, whose pencil +was flying, "that Polly had made no excuse at all; in fact, she quoted +Polly exactly: 'Sorry, Nita. Can't make it for lunch. I'll show up at +your place at 2:30 for bridge.'" + +"Nita couldn't bear the least hint of being slighted," Janet Raymond +explained, with a malicious gleam in her pale blue eyes. "If it hadn't +been for Lois and Hugo--Judge Marshall, I mean--Nita Selim would never +have been included in any of our affairs--and she _knew_ it! The Dunlaps +can do anything they please, because they're--" + +"Please, Janet!" Lois Dunlap cut in, her usually placid voice becoming +quite sharp. "You must know by this time that I make friends wherever I +please, and that I liked--yes, I was _extremely_ fond of poor little +Nita. In fact, I am forced to believe that, of all the women she met in +this town, I was her only real friend." + +There was a flush of anger on her lovably plain face as her grey eyes +challenged first one and then another of the "Forsyte girls." One or two +looked a little ashamed, but there was not a single voice to contradict +Lois Dunlap's flat assertion. + +"Will you please go on, Pen--Miss Crain?" Dundee urged, but he had +missed nothing of the little by-play. + +"I wish you would call me Penny so I'd feel more like a person than a +witness," Penny retorted thornily. "Where was I?... Oh, yes! Nita cooled +right off when Lois reminded her that Polly was always abrupt like +that--" and here Penny paused to grin apologetically at the girl with +the masculine-looking haircut, "and then we all went into the private +dining room, where Nita had ordered a perfectly gorgeous lunch, with a +heavenly centerpiece of green-striped yellow orchids--Well, I don't +suppose you're interested in what we ate and things like that--" she +hesitated. + +"Was there anything unusual in the conversation--anything like a +quarrel?" Dundee prompted. + +"Oh, no!" Penny protested. "Nothing happened out of the ordinary at +all--No, wait! Nita received a letter by messenger--or rather a note, +when we were about half through luncheon--" + +There was a low, strangled-in-the-throat cry from someone. Who had +uttered it Dundee could not be sure, since his eyes had been on his +notebook. But what had really interrupted Penny Crain was a crash. + + + + +CHAPTER FOUR + + +"Pardon! Awfully sorry," Clive Hammond muttered, as he bent to pick up +the fragments of a colored pottery ashtray which he and his fiancee, +Polly Beale, had been sharing. + +"Don't worry--about picking it up," Polly commanded in her brusque +voice, but Dundee, listening acutely, was sure of a very slight pause +between the two parts of her sentence. + +He glanced at the couple--the tall, masculine-looking girl, lounging +deep in an armchair, Clive Hammond, rather unusually good-looking with +his dark-red hair, brown eyes, and a face and body as compactly and +symmetrically designed as one of the buildings which had been pointed +out to Dundee as the product of the young architect's genius, now +resuming his seat upon the arm of the chair. His chief concern seemed +to be for another ashtray, which Sergeant Turner, with a grin, +produced from one of the many little tables with which the room was +provided.... Rather strange that those two should be engaged, Dundee +mused.... + +"Go on, Miss Crain," the detective urged, as if he were impatient of the +delay. "About that note or letter--" + +"It was in a blue-grey envelope, with printing or engraving in the upper +left-hand corner," Penny went on, half closing her eyes to recapture the +scene in its entirety. "Like business firms use," she amended. "I +couldn't help seeing, since I sat so near Nita. She seemed startled--or, +well maybe I'd better say surprised and a little sore, but she tore it +open and read it at a glance almost, which is why I say it must have +been only a note. But while she was reading it she frowned, then smiled, +as if something had amused or--or--" + +"She smiled like any woman reading a love letter," Carolyn Drake +interrupted positively. "I myself was sure that one of her _many_ +admirers had broken an engagement, but had signed himself, 'With all my +love, darling--your own So-and-so!'" + +Dundee wondered if even Carolyn Drake's husband, the carefully groomed +and dignified John C. Drake, bank vice-president, had ever sent _her_ +such a note, but he did not let his pencil slow down, for Penny was +talking again: + +"I think you are assuming a little too much, Carolyn.... But let that +pass. At any rate, Nita didn't say a word about the contents of the note +and naturally no one asked a question. She simply tucked it into the +pocket of her silk summer coat, which was draped over the back of her +chair, and the luncheon went on. Then we all drove over here, and found +Polly waiting in her own coupe, in the road in front of the house. She +told Nita she had rung the bell, but the maid, Lydia, didn't answer, so +she had just waited. + +"Nita didn't seem surprised; said she had a key, if Lydia hadn't come +back yet.... You see," she interrupted herself to explain to Dundee, +"Nita had already told us at luncheon that 'poor, darling Lydia,' as she +called her, had had to go in to town to get an abscessed tooth +extracted, and was to wait in the dentist's office until she felt equal +to driving herself home again in Nita's coupe.... Yes, Nita had taken +her in herself," she answered the beginning of a question from Dundee. + +"At what time?" Dundee queried. + +"I don't know exactly, but Nita said she'd had to dash away at an +ungodly hour, so that Lydia could make her ten o'clock dentist's +appointment, and so that she herself could get a manicure and a shampoo +and have her hair dressed, so I imagine she must have left not later +than fifteen or twenty minutes to ten." + +"How did Mrs. Selim get out to Breakaway Inn, if she left her own car +with the maid?" + +"You saw her arrive with Lois," Penny reminded him. + +"Nita had told us all about Lydia's dentist's appointment when she was +at my house for dinner Wednesday night," Lois Dunlap contributed. "I +offered to call for her anywhere she said, and take her out to Breakaway +Inn in my car today. I met her, at her suggestion, in the French hat +salon of the shop where she got her shampoo and manicure--Redmond's +department store." + +"A large dinner party, Mrs. Dunlap?" Dundee asked. + +"Not large at all.... Just twelve of us--the crowd here except for Mr. +Sprague, Penny and Janet." + +"Who was Mrs. Selim's dinner partner?" Dundee asked. + +"That's right! He _isn't_ here!" Lois Dunlap corrected herself. "Ralph +Hammond brought her and was her dinner partner." + +"Thank you.... Now, Penny. You were saying the maid had not returned." + +"Oh, but she had!" Penny answered impatiently. "If I'm going to be +interrupted so much--. Well, Nita rang the bell and Lydia came, tying on +her apron. Nita kissed her on the cheek that wasn't swollen, and asked +her why she hadn't let Polly in. And Lydia said she hadn't heard the +bell, because she had dropped asleep in her room in the basement--dopey +from the local anesthetic, you know," she explained to Dundee. + +"I--see," Dundee acknowledged, and underlined heavily another note in +his scrawled shorthand. + +"So Lydia took our hats and summer coats and put them in the hall +closet, and then followed Nita, who was calling to her, on into Nita's +bedroom. We thought she either wanted to give directions about the +makings for the cocktails and the sandwiches, or to console poor Lydia +for the awful pain she had had at the dentist's, so we didn't intrude. +We made a dive for the bridge tables, found our places, and were ready +to play when Nita joined us. Nita and Karen--" + +"Just a minute, Penny.... Did any of you, then or later, until Mrs. +Marshall discovered the tragedy, go into Mrs. Selim's bedroom?" + +"There was no need for us to," Penny told him. "There's a lavatory with +a dressing-table right behind the staircase. I, for one, didn't go into +Nita's room until after Karen screamed." + +There was a chorus of similar denials on the part of every woman +present. At Dundee's significant pressing of the same question upon the +men, he was met with either laconic negatives or sharply indignant ones. + +"All right, Penny. Go ahead, please." + +"I was going to tell you how we were seated for bridge, if that +interests you," Penny said, rather tartly. + +"It interests me intensely," Dundee assured her, smiling. + +"Then it was this way," began Penny, thawing instantly. "Karen and Nita, +Carolyn and I were at this table," and she pointed to the table nearer +the hall. "Flora, Polly, Janet and Lois were at the other. We played at +those tables all afternoon. We simply pivoted at our own table after the +end of each rubber. When Nita became dummy--" + +"Forgive me," Dundee begged, as he interrupted her again. "I'd like to +ask a question ... Mrs. Dunlap, since you were at the other table, +perhaps you will tell me what your partner and opponents were doing just +before Mrs. Selim became dummy." + +Lois Dunlap pressed her fingertips into her temples, as if in an effort +to remember clearly. + +"It's--rather hard to think of bridge now, Mr. Dundee," she said at +last. "But--yes, of course I remember! We had finished a rubber and had +decided there would be no time for another, since it was so near 5:30--" + +"That last rubber, please, Mrs. Dunlap," Dundee suggested. "Who were +partners, and just when was it finished?" + +"Flora--" Lois turned toward Mrs. Miles, who had sat with her hands +tightly locked and her great haggard dark eyes roving tensely from one +to another--"you and I were partners, weren't we?... Of course! Remember +you were dummy and I played the hand? You went out to telephone, didn't +you?... That's right! I remember clearly now! Flora said she had to +telephone the house to ask how her two babies--six and four years old, +they are, Mr. Dundee, and the rosiest dumplings--. Well, anyway, Flora +went to telephone--" + +"In the little foyer between the main hall and Mrs. Selim's room?" + +"Yes, of course," Lois Dunlap answered, but Dundee's eyes were upon +Flora Miles, and he saw her naturally sallow face go yellow under its +too-thick rouge. "I played the hand and made my bid, although Flora and +I had gone down 400 on the hand before," Lois continued, with a rueful +twinkle of her pleasant grey eyes. "When the score was totted up, I +found I'd won a bit after all. Our winnings go to the Forsyte Alumnae +Scholarship Fund," she explained. + +"Yes, I know," Dundee nodded. "And then--?" + +"Polly asked the other table how they stood, and Nita said, 'One game to +go on this rubber, provided we make it....' Karen was dealing the cards +then, and Nita was looking very happy--she'd been winning pretty +steadily, I think--" + +"Pardon, Mrs. Dunlap.... How did the players at your table dispose of +themselves then--that is, immediately after you had finished playing the +last hand, and Mrs. Marshall was dealing at the other table?" + +Lois screwed up her forehead. "Let me think--I know what _I_ did. I went +over to watch the game at the other table, and stayed there till +Tracey--Mr. Miles--came in for cocktails. I can't tell you exactly what +the other three did." + +There was a strained silence. Dundee saw Polly Scale's hand tighten +convulsively on Clive Hammond's, saw Janet Raymond flush scarlet, +watched a muscle jerk in Flora Miles' otherwise rigid face. + +Suddenly he sprang to his feet. "I am going to make what will seem an +absurd request," he said tensely. "I am going to ask you all--the women, +I mean--to take your places at the bridge tables. And then--" he paused +for an instant, his blue eyes hard: "I want to see the death hand played +exactly as it was played while Nita Selim was being murdered!" + + + + +CHAPTER FIVE + + +"Shame on you, Bonnie Dundee!" cried Penny Crain, her small fists +clenched belligerently. "'Death hand', indeed! You talk like a New York +tabloid! And if you don't realize that all of us have stood pretty +nearly as much as we can without having to play the hand at bridge--the +_very_ hand we played while Nita Selim was being murdered!--then you +haven't the decency and human feelings I've credited you with!" + +A murmur of indignant approval accompanied her tirade and buzzed on for +a moment after she had finished, but it ceased abruptly as Dundee spoke: + +"Who's conducting this investigation, Penny Crain--you or I? You will +kindly let me do it in my own fashion, and try to be content when I tell +you that, in my humble opinion, what I propose is absolutely necessary +to the solution of this case!" + +Bickering--Dundee grinned to himself--exactly as if they had known each +other always, had quarreled and made up with fierce intensity for years. + +"Really, Mr. Dundee," Judge Hugo Marshall began pompously, embracing his +young wife protectingly, "I must say that I agree with Miss Crain. This +is an outrage, sir--an outrage to all of us, and particularly to this +frail little wife of mine, already half-hysterical over the ordeal she +has endured." + +"Take your places!" Dundee ordered curtly. After all, there was a limit +to the careful courtesy one must show to Hamilton's "inmost circle of +society." + +Penny led the way to the bridge tables, the very waves of her brown bob +seeming to bristle with futile anger. But she obeyed, Dundee exulted. +The way to tame this blessed little shrew had been solved by old Bill +Shakespeare centuries ago.... + +As the women took their places at the two tables, arguing a bit among +themselves, with semi-hysterical edges to their voices, Dundee watched +the men, but all of them, with the exception of Dexter Sprague--that +typical son of Broadway, so out of place in this company--had managed at +least a fine surface control, their lips tight, their eyes hard, +narrowed and watchful. Sprague slumped into a vacated chair and closed +his eyes, revealing finely-wrinkled, yellowish lids. + +"Where shall we begin?" Polly Beale demanded brusquely. "Remember this +table had finished playing when Karen began to deal what you call the +'death hand,'" she reminded him scornfully. "And Flora wasn't here at +all--she had been dummy for our last hand--" + +"And had gone out to telephone," Dundee interrupted. "Mrs. Miles, will +you please leave the room, and return exactly when you did return--or as +nearly so as you can remember?" + +Dundee was sure that Mrs. Miles' sallow face took on a greyish tinge as +she staggered to her feet and wound an uncertain way toward the hall. +Tracey Miles sprang to his wife's assistance, but Sergeant Turner took +it upon himself to lay a detaining hand on the too-anxious husband's +arm. With no more than the lifting of an eyebrow, Dundee made Captain +Strawn understand that Flora Miles' movements were to be kept under +strict observation, and the chief of the Homicide Squad as unobtrusively +conveyed the order to a plainclothesman loitering interestedly in the +wide doorway. + +"Now," he was answering Polly Beale's question, "I should like the +remaining three of you to behave exactly as you did when your last hand +was finished. Did you keep individual score, as is customary in +contract?--or were you playing auction?" + +"Contract," Polly Beale answered curtly. "And when we're playing among +ourselves like this, one at each table is usually elected to keep score. +Janet was score-keeper for us this afternoon, but we all waited, after +our last hand was played, for Janet to give us the result for our tally +cards." + +Dundee drew near the table, picked up the three tally cards--ornamental +little affairs, and rather expensive--glanced over the points recorded, +then asked abruptly: + +"Where is Mrs. Miles' tally? I don't see it here." + +There was no answer to be had, so he let the matter drop, temporarily, +though his shorthand notebook received another deeply underlined series +of pothooks. + +"Go on, please, at both tables," Dundee commanded. "Your table--" he +nodded toward Penny, who was already over her flare of temper, "will +please select the cards each held at the conclusion of Mrs. Marshall's +deal." + +"Oooh, I'd never remember _all_ my cards in the world," Carolyn Drake +wailed. "I know I had five Clubs--Ace, King, Queen--" + +"You had the Jack, not the Queen, for I held it myself," Penny +contradicted her crisply. + +"Until this matter of who held which cards after Mrs. Marshall's deal is +settled, I shall have to ask you all to remain as you are now," Dundee +said to the players seated at the other table. + +At last it was threshed out, largely between Penny Crain and Karen +Marshall, the latter proving to have a better memory than Dundee had +expected. At last even Carolyn Drake's querulous fussiness was +satisfied, or trampled down. + +Both Judge Marshall and John Drake started forward to inspect the cards, +which none of the players was trying to conceal, but Dundee waved them +back. + +"Please--I want you men--all of you, to take your places outside, and +return to this room in the order of your arrival this afternoon. Try to +imagine that it is now--if I can trust Mr. Miles' apparently excellent +memory--exactly 5:25--" + +"Pretty hard to do, considering it's now a quarter past seven and +there's still no dinner in sight," Tracey Miles grumbled, then +brightened: "I can come right back in then--at 5:27, can't I?" + +That point settled, and the men sent away, to be watched by several +pairs of apparently indolent police eyes, Dundee turned to the bridge +table, Nita's leaving of which had provided her murderer with his +opportunity. + +"The cards are 'dealt'," Penny reminded him. + +"Now I want you other three to scatter exactly as you did before," +Dundee commanded, hurry and excitement in his voice. + +Lois Dunlap rose, laid down her tally card, and strolled over to the +remaining table. After a moment's hesitation, Polly Beale strode +mannishly out of the room, straight into the hall. Dundee, watching as +the bridge players earlier that afternoon certainly had not, was amazed +to see Clive Hammond beckoning to her from the open door of the +solarium. + +So Clive Hammond had arrived ahead of Tracey Miles! Had somehow entered +the solarium unnoticed, and had managed to beckon his fiancee to join +him there! Prearranged?... And why had Clive Hammond failed to enter and +greet his hostess first? Moreover, _how_ had he entered the solarium? + +But things were happening in the living room. Janet Raymond, flushing so +that her sunburned face outdid her red hair for vividness, was slowly +leaving the room also. Through a window opening upon the wide front +porch Dundee saw the girl take her position against a pillar, then--a +thing she had not done before very probably--press her handkerchief to +her trembling lips. + +But the bidding was going on, Karen Marshall piping in her childish +treble: "Three spades!" + +Dundee took his place behind her chair, then silently beckoned to Penny +to shift from her own chair opposite Carolyn Drake to the chair Nita +Selim had left to go to her death. She nodded understandingly. + +"Double!" quavered Carolyn Drake, next on the left to the dealer, and +managed to raise her eyebrows meaningly to Penny, her partner, who had +not yet changed places. + +Penny, throwing herself into the spirit of the thing, scowled warningly. +No exchanging of illicit signals for Penny Crain! But the instant she +slipped into Nita Selim's chair her whole face and body took on a +different manner, underwent almost a physical change. She _was_ Nita +Selim now! She tucked her head, considered her cards, laughed a little +breathless note, then cried triumphantly: + +"And I say--_five spades_! What do you think of _that_, partner?" + +Then the girl who was giving an amazing imitation of Nita Selim changed +as suddenly into her own character as she changed chairs. + +"Nita, I don't think it's quite Hoyle to be so jubilant about the +strength of your hand," she commented tartly. "I pass." + +Karen Marshall pretended to study her hand for a frowning instant, then, +under Penny's spell, announced with a pretty air of bravado: + +"Six spades!... Your raise to five makes a little slam obligatory, +doesn't it, Nita?" + +Carolyn Drake flushed and looked uneasily toward Penny, a bit of by-play +which Dundee could see had not figured in the original game. But she +bridled and shifted her plump body in her chair, as she must have done +before. + +"I double a little slam!" she declared. Then, still acting the role she +had played in earnest that afternoon, she explained importantly: "I +always double a little slam on principle!" + +Penny, in the role of Nita, redoubled with an exultant laugh, then, as +herself, said, "Pass!" with a murderous glance at Mrs. Drake. + +"Let's see your hand, partner," Karen quavered, addressing a woman who +had been dead nearly two hours; then she shuddered: "Oh, this is too +horrible!" as Penny Crain again slipped into Nita Selim's chair and +prepared to lay down the dummy hand. + +And it _was_ horrible--even if vitally necessary--for these three to +have to go through the farce of playing a bridge hand while one of the +original players was lying on a marble slab at the morgue, her cold +flesh insensible to the coroner's expert knife. + +But Dundee said nothing, for Tracey Miles was already hovering in the +doorway, ready for his cue to enter. + +Penny, or rather "Nita," was saying: + +"How's _this_, Karen darling?" as she laid down the Ace and deuce of +Spades, Karen's trumps. + +"I hope you remember _you_ are vulnerable, as well as we," Carolyn +remarked in a sorry imitation of her original cocksureness, as she +opened the play by leading the Ace of Clubs. + +"And how's _this_, partner?... A singleton in Clubs!" Nita's imitator +demanded triumphantly, as she continued to lay down her dummy hand, +slapping the lone nine of Clubs down beside trumps; "and this little +collection of Hearts!" as she displayed and arranged the King, Jack, +eight and four of Hearts; "_and_ this!" as a length of Diamonds--Ace, +Jack, ten, eight, seven and six slithered down the glossy linen cover of +the bridge table toward Karen Marshall. "Now if you don't make your +little slam, infant, don't dare say I shouldn't have jumped you to +five!... I figured you for a blank or a singleton in Diamonds, and at +least the Ace of Hearts, or you--cautious as you are--wouldn't have made +an original three Spade bid without the Ace.... Hop to it, darling!" + +"This is where I enter," Tracey Miles whispered to Dundee, and, at a nod +from the young detective, the pudgy little blond man strode jauntily +into the living room, proud of himself in the role of actor. + +"Hello, everybody! How's tricks?" he called genially, but there was a +quiver of horror in his voice under its blitheness. + +Penny was quite pale when she sprang from her chair, but her voice +seemed to be Nita's very own, as she sang out: + +"It _can't_ be 5:30 already!... Thank heaven I'm dummy, and can run away +and make myself pretty-pretty for you and all the other great big men, +Tracey darling!" + +Dundee's keen memory registered the slight difference in the wording of +the greeting as reported by this pseudo-Nita and the man she was running +to meet. But Penny, as Nita, was already straightening Tracey Miles' +necktie with possessive, coquettish fingers, was coaxing, with head +tucked alluringly: + +"Tracey, my ownest lamb, won't you shake up the cocktails for Nita? The +makings are all on the sideboard, or I don't know my precious old +Lydia--even if her poor jaw does ache most horribly." + +Then Penny, as Nita, was on her way, pausing in the doorway to blow a +kiss from her fingertips to the fatuously grinning but now quite pale +Tracey Miles. She was out of sight for only an instant, then reappeared +and very quietly retraced her steps to the bridge table. + +Unobtrusively, Dundee drew his watch from his pocket, palmed it as he +noted the exact minute, then commanded curtly: "On with the game!" + +As Tracey Miles passed the first bridge table Lois Dunlap linked her arm +in his, saying in a voice she tried to make gay and natural: + +"I'm trailing along, Tracey. Simply dying for a nip of Scotch! Nita's is +the real stuff--which is more than my fussy old Pete can get half the +time!--and you know I loathe cocktails." + +The two passed on into the dining room, the players scarcely raising +their eyes from their cards, which they held as if the game were real. + +Dundee, his watch still in his hand, advanced to the bridge table. +Strolling from player to player he made mental photographs of each hand, +then took his stand behind Penny's chair to observe the horribly +farcical playing of it. Poor little Penny! he reflected. She hadn't had +a chance against that dumb-bell across the table from her. Fancy +anyone's doubling a little slam bid on a hand like Carolyn Drake's--or +even calling an informatory double in the first place! Why hadn't she +bid four Clubs after Karen's original three Spade bid, if she simply +wanted to give her partner information?... Not that she really had a +bid-- + +Karen's hand trembled as she drew the lone nine of Clubs from the dummy, +to place beside Carolyn's Ace, but Penny's fingers were quite steady as +she followed with the deuce of Clubs, to which Karen added, with a trace +of characteristic uncertainty, the eight. + +"There's our book!" Carolyn Drake exulted obediently, but she cast an +apologetic glance toward Penny. "If we take one more trick we set them." + +"Fat chance!" Penny obligingly responded, and Dundee, relieved, knew +that the farcical game would now be played almost exactly, and with the +same comments, as it had been played while Nita Selim was being +murdered. Thanks to Penny Crain! + +With a shamefaced glance upward at Dundee, Carolyn Drake then led the +deuce of Diamonds, committing the gross tactical error of leading from +the Queen. Karen added the Jack from the dummy, and Penny shruggingly +contributed her King, to find the trick, as she had suspected in the +original game, trumped by the five of Spades, since Karen had no +Diamonds. + +"So _that_ settles _us_, Carolyn!" Penny commented acidly. + +Her partner rose to the role she was playing. "Well, as I said, I always +double a little slam on principle. Besides, how could I know they would +have a chance for cross-ruffing in _both_ Clubs and Diamonds? I thought +you would at least hold the Ace of Diamonds and that Karen would +certainly have one, as I only had four--" + +Penny shrugged. "Oh, well! Let's play bridge!" for Karen was staring at +her cards helplessly. "Sorry, Karen! I realize a post mortem is usually +held after the playing of a hand--not before." + +"I--I guess I'd better get my trumps out," Karen--now almost a genuine +actress, too--breathed tremulously. "I _do_ wish Nita were playing this +hand. I know I'll muff it somehow--" + +"Good kid!" Dundee commented silently, and allowed himself the liberty +of patting Karen on her slim shoulder. + +The girl threw an upward glance of gratitude through misty eyes, then +led the six of Spades, Mrs. Drake contributing the four, dummy taking +the trick with the Ace, and Penny relinquishing the three. + +"Let's see--that makes five of 'em in, since I trumped one trick," Karen +said, as she reached across the table to lead from dummy. + +As if the words were a cue--which they probably were--Judge Marshall +entered the room at that moment, making a great effort to be as jaunty, +debonair, and "young for his age" as he must have thought he looked when +he made his entrance when the real game was being played. + +At his step Karen lifted her head and greeted her elderly husband with a +curious mixture of childlike joy and womanly tenderness: + +"Hullo, darling!... I'm trying to make a little slam I may have been +foolish to bid, but Nita jumped me from three to five Spades--" + +"Let's have a look, sweetheart," the retired judge suggested pompously, +and Dundee gave way to make room for him behind Karen's chair. + +But before Judge Marshall looked at his wife's cards he bent and kissed +her on her flushed cheek, and Karen raised a trembling hand to tweak his +grey mustache. Dundee, with uplifted eyebrow, queried Penny, who nodded +shortly, conveying the information that this was the way the scene had +really been played when there was no question of acting. + +"I'm getting out my trumps, darling," Karen confided sweetly, as she +reached for the deuce of Spades--the only remaining trump in the dummy. + +"What's your hurry, child?" her husband asked indulgently. "Lead this!" +and he pointed toward the six of Diamonds. + +"I wish you'd got a puncture, Hugo, so you couldn't have butted in +before this hand was played," Carolyn Drake spluttered. "Remember this +is a little slam bid, doubled and redoubled--" + +"I should think _you_ would like to forget that, Carolyn!" Penny +commented bitingly. "But I agree with Carolyn, Hugo, that Karen is quite +capable of making her little slam without your assistance." + +"Please don't mind," Karen begged. "Hugo just wanted to help me, because +I'm such a dub at bridge--" + +"The finest little player in town!" Judge Marshall encouraged her +gallantly, but with a jaunty wink at the belligerent Penny. + +Smiling adoringly at him again, Karen took his suggestion and led the +six of Diamonds from the dummy; Penny covered it with the nine; Karen +ruffed with the seven of Spades from her own hand, and Mrs. Drake +lugubriously contributed the four of Diamonds. + +"I can get my trumps out now, can't I, Hugo?" Karen asked deprecatingly, +and at her husband's smiling permission, she led the King of Spades, +Carolyn had to give up the Jack, which she must have foolishly thought +would take a trick; the dummy contributed the deuce, and Penny followed +with her own last trump--the eight. + +Karen counted on her fingers, her eyes on the remaining trumps in her +hand, then smiled triumphantly up at her husband. + +"Why not simply tell us, Karen, that the rest of the trumps are in your +own hand?" Penny suggested caustically. + +"I--I didn't mean to do anything wrong," Karen pleaded, as she led now +with the ten of Hearts, which drew in Carolyn's Queen to cover--Carolyn +murmuring religiously: "Always cover an honor with an honor--or should I +have played second hand low, Penny?"--topped by the King in the dummy, +the trick being completed by Penny's three of Hearts. + +At that point John C. Drake marched into the room, strode straight to +Dundee, and spoke with cold anger: + +"Enough of this nonsense! I, for one, refuse to act like a puppet for +your amusement! If you are so vitally interested in contract bridge, I +should advise you to take lessons from an expert, not from three +terrified women who are rather poor players at best. I also advise you +to get about the business you are supposed to be here for--the finding +of a murderer!" + + + + +CHAPTER SIX + + +Before Drake had reached his side, his purpose plain upon his stern, +rather ascetic features, Dundee had taken a hasty glance at the watch +cupped in his palm and noted the exact minute and second of the +interruption. Time out! + +"One moment, Mr. Drake," he said calmly. "I quite agree with you--from +your viewpoint. What mine is, you can't be expected to know. But believe +me when I say that I consider it of vital importance to the +investigation of the murder of Mrs. Selim that this particular bridge +hand, with all its attending remarks, the usual bickering, and its +interruptions of arriving guests for cocktails, be played out, exactly +as it was this afternoon. I thought I had made myself clear before. If +you don't wish me to believe that _you have something to conceal_ by +refusing to take part in a rather grisly game--" + +"Certainly I have nothing to conceal!" John C. Drake snorted angrily. + +"Then please bow as gracefully as possible to necessity," Dundee urged +without rancor. "And may I ask, before we go on, if you made your +entrance at this time, and the facts of your arrival?" + +Drake considered a moment, gnawing a thin upper lip. Beads of sweat +stood on his high, narrow forehead. + +"I walked over from the Country Club, after eighteen holes of golf with +your _superior_, the district attorney," Drake answered, with nasty +emphasis. "I left the clubhouse at 5:10, calculating that it would take +me about twenty minutes for the walk of--of about a mile." + +Dundee made a mental note to find out exactly how far from this lonely +house in Primrose Meadows the Country Club actually was, but his next +question was along another line: + +"You _walked_, Mr. Drake?--after eighteen holes of golf on a warm day?" + +Drake flushed. "My wife had the car. I had driven out with Mr. +Sanderson, but he was called away by a long distance message. I lingered +at the club for a while, chatting and--er--having a cool drink or two, +then I set out afoot." + +"No one offered you a lift?" Dundee inquired suavely. + +"No. I presume my fellow-members thought I had my car with me, and I +asked no one for a lift, for I rather fancied the idea of a walk across +the meadows." + +"I see," said Dundee thoughtfully. "Now as to your arrival here--" + +"I walked in. The door had been left on the latch, as it usually is, +when a party is on," Drake explained coldly. "And I was just entering +the room when I heard my wife make the remark about covering an honor +with an honor, and then her question of Penny as to whether she should +have played second hand low." + +"So you entered this time at the correct moment," said Dundee. "Now, Mr. +Drake, I am going to ask you to re-enter the room and do exactly as you +did upon your arrival at approximately 5:33. I am sure you would not +willingly hamper me--or _my superior_--in this investigation." + +Drake wheeled, ungraciously, and returned to the doorway, while Dundee +again consulted his watch, mentally subtracting the minutes which had +been wasted upon this interruption, from the time he had marked upon his +memory as the moment at which Drake had interfered. But an undercurrent +of skepticism nagged at his mind. Why had Drake chosen to _walk_? And +why had it taken him from 5:10 to approximately 5:33 to walk a mile or +less? The average walker, and especially one accustomed to playing golf, +could easily have covered a mile in fifteen minutes, instead of the +twenty-three minutes Drake had admitted to.... If it _was_ a +mile!... Was it possible that the banker loved wildflowers? + +With head up aggressively, Drake was undoubtedly making an effort to +throw himself into the role--or perhaps into a role chosen on the spot! + +"Where's everybody?" he called from the doorway. "Am I early?" + +"Don't interrupt, please, dear," Carolyn Drake answered, her voice +trembling now, where before it must have been sharp and querulous. + +Silently Drake took his place behind his wife's chair, laying a hand +affectionately upon her shoulder. Dundee, watching closely, saw Penny's +eyes widen with something like shocked surprise. So Drake _was_ trying +to deceive him, counting on the oneness of this group, his closest +friends! + +Karen, obviously flustered, too, reached to the dummy for the Ace of +Diamonds, to which Penny played the three, Karen herself discarding the +ten of Clubs, and Mrs. Drake the five of Diamonds. + +"You asked no questions, Mr. Drake?" Dundee interpolated. + +The banker flushed again. "I--yes, I believe I did. Carolyn--Mrs. +Drake--explained that Karen was playing for a little slam in Spades, and +that she had doubled--'on principle'," he added acidly--a voice which +Mrs. Drake must be very well accustomed to, Dundee surmised. + +"And when I told you that Nita had redoubled and it looked as if she was +going to make it," Carolyn Drake whimpered and shifted her short, stout +body in the little bridge chair, "you said--why not tell the truth?--you +said it was just like me and I might as well take to tatting at bridge +parties." + +"That was said jokingly, my dear," Drake retorted, with a coldness that +tried to be affectionate warmth. + +"Play bridge!" Dundee commanded, sure that the approximate length of the +previous dispute had now been taken up, whatever retort Carolyn Drake +had made. Then he checked himself, again looking at his watch: "And just +what did you answer to your husband's little joke, Mrs. Drake?" + +"I--I--" The woman looked helplessly around the table, her slate-colored +eyes reddened with tears, then she plunged recklessly, after a fearful +glance at Dundee's implacable face. "I said that if it was Nita he was +talking to, he wouldn't speak in that tone; that she could make all the +foolish mistakes of over-bidding or revoking or doubling that she wanted +to, and he wouldn't say a word except to praise her--" + +"Then I may as well confess," Drake said acidly, "that I answered +substantially as follows: 'Nita is an _intelligent_ bridge player as +well as a charming woman, my dear!...' Now make the most of that little +family tiff, sir--and be damned to you!" + +"Did that end the scene, Mrs. Drake?" Dundee asked gently. + +"I--I said something about all the men thinking Nita was perfect," Mrs. +Drake confessed, "and I cried a little, but we went on with the hand. +And Johnny--Mr. Drake went away, walking up and down the room, waiting +for Nita to come back, I suppose!" + +"Then go on with the game," Dundee ordered. + +Silently now, as silently as the real game must have been played, +because of the embarrassing scene between husband and wife, the sinister +game was carried to its conclusion. Karen led the Jack of Hearts from +the dummy, Penny played her seven, Karen contributed her own deuce, and +Mrs. Drake followed suit with the five. + +Again Karen led from the dummy, with the four of Hearts, followed by +Penny's nine, taking it with her own Ace, Mrs. Drake throwing off the +five of Clubs. Karen then led the six of Hearts, Carolyn Drake discarded +the six of Clubs, dummy took the trick with the eight of Hearts, and +Penny sloughed the three of Clubs. + +With a faint imitation of the triumph with which she had played the hand +the first time, Karen threw down her remaining three trumps. + +"I've made it--a little slam!" she tried to sound very triumphant. +"Doubled and redoubled!... How much did I--did Nita and I make, Penny?" + +"Plenty!" But before putting pencil to score pad, Penny cupped her chin +in her hands and stared at Carolyn Drake. "I'd like to know, Carolyn, if +it isn't one of your most cherished secrets, _what_ possessed you to +double in the first place?" + +Carolyn Drake flushed scarlet as she protested feebly: "I thought of +course I could take two Club tricks with my Ace and King.... That's why +I doubled the little slam, of course. And my first double simply meant +that I had one good suit.... I thought if you could bid at all that my +two doubletons--" + +"Oh, what's the use?" Penny groaned. "But may I remind you that it is +_not_ bridge to lead from a Queen?... You led the deuce of Diamonds, +when of course the play, since you had seen the Ace in the dummy, was to +lead your Queen, forcing the Ace and leaving my King guarded to take a +trick later." + +"But Karen didn't have any Diamonds at all," Carolyn defended herself. + +"A secret you weren't in on when you led from your Queen," Penny +reminded her. "Oh, well! We'll pay up and shut up!" and she made a +pretense of totting up the score, while Karen, who had risen, stood over +her like a bird poised for flight. + +At that instant Dexter Sprague began to advance into the room, Janet +Raymond at his side, her face flaming. + +"Behave exactly as you did before!" Dundee commanded in a harsh whisper. +No time for coddling these people now! + +Dexter Sprague's face took on a yellower tinge, but he obeyed. + +"Greetings!" he called in the jaunty, over-cordial tones of a man who +knows himself not too welcome. "Where's Nita--and everybody? Isn't that +the cocktail shaker I hear?" + +Having received no answer from anyone present, Sprague strolled through +the living room and on into the dining room, Janet following. Judge +Marshall had nodded stiffly, and John C. Drake had muttered the +semblance of a greeting.... Were they all overdoing it a bit--this +reacting of their hostility to the sole remaining outsider of their +compact little group?... Dundee stroked his chin thoughtfully. + +But Penny was saying in her abrupt, husky voice: "Above the line, 1250; +below the line 720, making a total of 1970 on this hand, Karen." + +"Won't Nita be glad?" Karen gasped, then began to run totteringly, +calling: "Nita! Nita!" But in the hall she collapsed, shuddering, crying +in a child's whimper: "No, no! I--can't--go in there--again!" + +It was Dundee who reached her first--Dundee and not her outraged and +excited old husband. + +"Mrs. Marshall--listen, please," he begged in a low voice, as he lifted +her so that her head rested against his arm. "You have been +splendid--wonderful! Please believe that I am truly sorry to distress +you so, and that very soon, I hope, you may go home and rest." + +"I--can't bear any--more," Karen whimpered. + +Ignoring Judge Marshall's blustering, Dundee continued softly: "You +don't want the wrong person to be accused of this terrible crime, do +you, Mrs. Marshall?... Of course not! And you _do_ want to help us all +you can to discover who really killed Mrs. Selim?" + +"I--I suppose so," Karen conceded, on a sob. + +"Then I'll help you. I'll go to the bedroom with you," Dundee promised +her with a sigh of relief. To the others he spoke sharply: + +"Go back to the exact positions in living room and dining room and +solarium, that you occupied when Mrs. Marshall ran from the room." + +"I think you're overdoing it, Bonnie," Captain Strawn protested. +"But--sure I'll see that they mind you." + +With Karen Marshall clinging to his arm, Dundee walked down the hall, +beyond the staircase to an open door on his left--a door guarded by a +lounging plainclothesman. Seated at the dressing-table of the guests' +lavatory was Flora Miles, her sallow dark face so ravaged that she +looked ten years older than when he had first seen her an hour before. + +"So you were in here when you heard Mrs. Marshall scream, Mrs. Miles?" +Dundee paused to ask. + +"Yes--yes!" she gasped, rising. "And that horrible man has made me stay +in here--. Of course, the door was closed--before. I telephoned home to +ask about my children, and then I came in here to--to do my face over--" + +"You didn't hear your husband arrive?" + +"No,--I didn't hear him arrive," Flora Miles faltered, her handkerchief +dabbing at her trembling, over-rouged lips. + +"I--see," Dundee said slowly. + +He stepped into the little room, leaving Karen to stand weakly against +the door frame. Without a word to Mrs. Miles he looked closely at the +top of the dressing-table and into the small wastebasket that stood +beside it. + +"You--you can see that I cold-creamed my face before I put on fresh +powder and--and rouged," Flora Miles pointed out, with an obvious effort +at offended dignity. "After I came back, while you were making those +poor girls play the hand over again, I went through the same +motions--because you told all of us to behave exactly as we had done +before--" + +"I--see," Dundee agreed. + +Pretty clever, in spite of being almost frightened to death, Dundee said +to himself. But he had been just a shade cleverer than she, for he had +been in this room ahead of her, and there had been no balls of greasy +face tissue in the wastebasket then! + +He was passing out of the room, offering his arm to Karen, when one of +his underlined notes thrust itself upon his memory: + +"May I see your bridge tally, please, Mrs. Miles?" + +"My--bridge tally!" she echoed blankly. "Why--it must be on the table +where I was playing--" + +"It is not," Dundee assured her quietly. "Perhaps it is in your +handbag?" and he glanced at the rather large raffia bag that lay on the +table. + +She snatched it up, slightly averting her body as she looked hastily +through its contents. + +"It--isn't here.... Oh, I don't know _where_ it is! What does it +matter?" + +Without replying, Dundee escorted the trembling little discoverer of +Nita Selim's body into the large ornate bedroom, murmuring as he did so: + +"Don't be frightened, Mrs. Marshall. The bod--I mean Mrs. Selim isn't +here now.... And you shan't have to scream. I'll give the signal myself. +I just want you to go through the same motions you did before." On jerky +feet the girl advanced to Nita's now deserted vanity dresser. + +"I--I was calling to her all the time," she whispered. "I didn't even +wait to knock, and I--I began to tell her how much we'd made off that +hand, when I--when she didn't answer.... I didn't touch her, but I +saw--I saw--" Again she gripped her face with her hands and was about to +scream. + +"I know," Dundee assured her gently. Then he shouted: "Ready!" + +Herded by Strawn, the small crowd of men and women came running into the +room, Judge Marshall leading the way, Penny being second in line. Penny +_second_! Why not Flora Miles, who had been nearer to that room than any +of the others, if her story was true--Dundee asked himself. But all had +crowded into the room, including Polly Beale and Clive Hammond, before +Mrs. Miles crept in. + +"Is this the order of your arrival?" Dundee asked them all. + +Penny, who was standing against the wall, just inside the doorway, spoke +up, staring at Flora with frowning intentness. + +"You're sort of mixed up, aren't you, Flora? I was standing right here +until the worst of it was over--I didn't even go near Nita, and I know +you didn't pass me. I remember that Tracey stepped away from the--body, +and called you, and you weren't here. And then almost the next minute I +saw you coming toward him from--from--_over there_!" + +And Penny pointed toward that corner of the room which held, on one +angle, the door leading to the porch, and on its other angle the window +from which, or from near which Nita Selim had been shot. + +"You're lying, Penny Crain! I did no such thing!" Flora Miles cried +hysterically. "I came running in--with--with the rest of you, and I +rushed over there just to see if I could see anybody running away across +the meadow--" + +"My wife is right, sir," Tracey Miles added his word aggressively. "I +saw what she was doing--the most sensible of all of us--and I ran to +join her. We looked out of the windows, both the side windows and the +rear ones, and out onto the porch. But we didn't see anything." + +Surprisingly, Dundee abandoned the point. + +"And you were the only one to touch her, Sprague?" + +"I--believe so," Dexter Sprague answered in a strained voice. "I--laid +my hand on her--her hair, for an instant, then I picked up her hand to +see if--if there was any pulse left." + +"Yes?" + +"She--she was dead." + +"And her hand--did it feel cold?" + +"Neither cold nor warm--just cool," Sprague answered in a voice that was +nearly strangled with emotion. "She--she always had cool hands--" + +"What did you do, Judge Marshall?" Dundee asked abruptly. + +"I took my poor little wife away from this room, laid her on a couch in +the living room, and then telephoned the police. Miss Crain stood at my +elbow, urging me to hurry, so that she might ring you--as she did. Your +line was busy, and she lost about five minutes before getting you." + +"And the rest of you?" Dundee asked. + +"Nothing spectacular, I'm afraid, Mr. Dundee," Polly Beale answered in +her brusque, deep voice, now edged with scorn. + +Further questioning elicited little more, beyond the fact that Clive +Hammond had dashed out to circle the house and look over the grounds, +and that John Drake had been fully occupied with an hysterical wife. + +"Better let this bunch go for the present, hadn't we, boy?" Captain +Strawn whispered uneasily. "Not a thing on any of them--" + +"Not quite yet, sir, if you don't mind," Dundee answered in a low voice. +"Will you take them back into the living room and put them under +Sergeant Turner's charge for a while? Then there are one or two things +I'd like to talk over with you." + +Mollified by the younger man's deference and persuasiveness, Strawn +obeyed the suggestion, to return within five minutes, his grey brows +drawn into a frown. + +"I hope you'll be willing to take full credit for that fool bridge game, +Bonnie," he worried. "_I_ don't want to look a chump in the newspapers!" + +"I'll take the blame," Dundee assured him, with a grin. "But that 'fool +bridge game'--and I admit it was a horrible thing to have to do--told me +a whole bunch of facts that ought to be very, very useful." + +"For instance?" Strawn growled. + +"For instance," Dundee answered, "it told me that it took approximately +eight minutes to play out a little slam bid, when ordinarily it would +have taken not more than two or three minutes. Not only that, but it +told me the names of everyone in _this_ party who could have killed Nita +Selim, and--. Good Lord! Of course!" + +And to Captain Strawn's amazement Dundee threw open the door of Nita's +big clothes closet, jerked on the light, and stooped to the floor. + + + + +CHAPTER SEVEN + + +Almost immediately Special Investigator Dundee rose from his crouching +position on the floor of Nita Selim's closet, and faced the chief of the +Homicide Squad of Hamilton's police force. + +"I think," he said quietly, for all the excitement that burned in his +blue eyes, "that we'd better have Mrs. Miles in for a few questions." + +"What have you got there--a dance program?" Strawn asked curiously, but +as Dundee continued to stare silently at the thing he held, the older +man strode to the door and relayed the order to a plainclothes +detective. + +"I sent for _Mrs._ Miles," Dundee said coldly, when husband and wife +appeared together, Flora's thin, tense shoulders encircled by Tracey's +plump arm. + +"If you're going to badger my wife further, I intend to be present, +sir!" Miles retorted, thrusting out his chest. + +"Very well!" Dundee conceded curtly. "Mrs. Miles, why didn't you tell me +in the first place that you were _in this room_ when Nita Selim was +shot?" + +"Because I wasn't--in--in the room," Flora protested, clinging with both +thin, big-veined hands to her husband's arm. + +"Sir, you have no proof of this absurd accusation, and I shall +personally take this matter up--" + +"I have the best of proof," Dundee said quietly, and took his hand from +his pocket. "You recognize this, Mrs. Miles?... You admit that it is the +tally card you used while playing bridge this afternoon?" + +"No, no! It isn't mine!" Flora cried hysterically, cringing against her +husband, who began to protest in a voice falsetto with rage. + +Dundee ignored his splutterings. "May I point out that it is identical +with the other tally cards used at Mrs. Selim's party today, and that on +its face it bears your name, 'Flora'?" and he politely extended the card +for her inspection. + +"I--yes, it _must_ be mine, but I was _not_ in this room when Nita +was--was shot!" + +"But you will admit that you _were_ in her clothes closet at some time +during the twenty or more minutes that elapsed between your leaving the +bridge game, when you became dummy, and the moment when Karen Marshall +screamed?" + +As Flora Miles said nothing, staring at him with great, terrified black +eyes, Dundee went on relentlessly: "Mrs. Miles, when you left the bridge +game, you did not intend to telephone your house. You came _here_--into +this room!--and you lay in wait, hiding in her closet until Nita Selim +appeared, as you knew she would, sooner or later--" + +"No, no! That's a lie--a lie, I tell you!" the woman shrilled at him. "I +_did_ telephone my house, and I talked to Junior, when the maid put him +up to the phone.... You can ask her yourself, if you don't believe me!" + +"But _after_ you telephoned, you stole into this room--" + +"No, no! I--I made up my face all fresh, just as I told you--" + +Dundee did not bother to tell her how well he knew she was lying, for +suddenly something knocked on the door of his mind. He strode to the +closet, searched for a moment among the multitude of garments hanging +there, then emerged with the brown silk summer coat which Nita Selim had +worn to Breakaway Inn that noon. Before the terrified woman's eyes he +thrust a hand first into one deep pocket and then another, finding +nothing except a handkerchief of fine embroidered linen and a pair of +brown suede gauntlet gloves. + +"Will you let me have the note, please, Mrs. Miles? The note Nita +received during her luncheon party, and which she thrust, before your +eyes, into a pocket of this coat?... It is in your handbag, I am sure, +since you have had no opportunity, unobserved, to destroy it." + +"What ghastly nonsense is this, Dundee?" Tracey Miles demanded +furiously. + +But Dundee again ignored him. His implacable eyes held Flora Miles' +until the woman broke suddenly, piteously. She fumbled in the raffia bag +which had been hanging from her arm. + +"Good God, Flora! What does it all mean?" Tracey Miles collapsed like a +pricked pink balloon. "That's _my_ stationery--one of my business +envelopes--" + +Flora Miles dropped the bag which she need no longer watch and clutch +with terror, as she dug her thin fingers into her husband's shoulders +and looked down at his puzzled face, for she was a little taller than +he. + +"Forgive me, darling! Oh, I knew God would punish me for being jealous! +I thought _you_ were writing love letters to--to that woman--" + +Dundee did not miss the slightest significance of that scene as he +retrieved the blue-grey envelope she had dropped. It was inscribed, in a +curious handwriting: "Mrs. Selim, Private Dining Room, Breakaway Inn." + +"Let's see, boy," Strawn said, with respect in his harsh voice. + +Dundee withdrew the single sheet of business stationery, and obligingly +held it so that the chief of detectives could read it also. + +"Nita, my sweet," the note began, without date-line, "Forgive your bad +boy for last night's row, but I _must_ warn you again to watch your +step. You've already gone too far. Of course I love you and understand, +_but_--Be good, Baby, and you won't be sorry." + +The note was signed "Dexy." + +Dundee tapped the note for a long minute, while Tracey Miles continued +to console his wife. A new avenue, he thought--perhaps a long, long +avenue.... + +"Mrs. Miles," he began abruptly, and the tear-streaked face turned +toward him. "You say you thought this letter to Mrs. Selim had been +written by your husband?" + +"Yes!" She gasped. "I'm jealous-natured. I admit it, and when I saw one +of our own--I mean, one of Tracey's business envelopes--" + +"You made up your mind to steal it and read it?" + +"Yes, I did! A wife has a right to know what her husband's doing, if +it's anything--like that--" Her haggard black eyes again implored her +husband for forgiveness, before she went on: "I _did_ slip into Nita's +room and go into her closet to see if she had left the letter in her +coat pocket. I closed the door on myself, thinking I could find the +light cord, but it was caught in one of the dresses or something, and it +took me a long time to find it in the dark of the closet, but I did find +it at last, and was just reading the note--" + +"You _read_ it, even after you saw that the handwriting on the envelope +wasn't your husband's?" Dundee queried in assumed amazement. + +Flora's thin body sagged. "I--I thought maybe Tracey had disguised his +Handwriting.... So I read it, and saw it was from Dexter--" + +"Mr. Miles, do you know how some of your business stationery got into +Sprague's hands?" + +"He's had plenty of opportunity to filch stationery or almost anything +he wants, hanging around my offices, as he does--an idler--" + +But Dundee was in a hurry. He wheeled from the garrulity of the husband +to the tense terror of the wife. + +"Mrs. Miles, I want you to tell me exactly what you know, unless you +prefer to consult a lawyer first--" + +"Sir, if you are insinuating that _my wife_--" + +"Oh, let me tell him, Tracey," Mrs. Miles capitulated suddenly, +completely. "I _was_ in the closet when Nita was killed, I suppose, but +I didn't _know_ she was being killed! _Because I was lying in there on +the closet floor in a dead faint!_" + +Dundee stared at the woman incredulously, then suppressed a groan of +almost unbearable disappointment. If Flora Miles was telling the truth, +here went a-flying his only eye-witness, probably, or rather, his only +ear-witness. + +"Just when did you faint, Mrs. Miles?" he asked, struggling for +patience. "Before or after Nita came into this room?" + +"I was just finishing the note, with the light on in the closet, and the +door shut, when I heard Nita come into the room. I knew it was Nita +because she was singing one of those Broadway songs she is--was--so +crazy about. I jerked off the light, and crouched way back in a corner +of the closet. A velvet evening wrap fell down over my head, and I was +nearly smothering, but I was afraid to try to dislodge it for fear a +hanger would fall to the floor and make an awful clatter. And then--and +then--" She shuddered, and clung to her husband. + +"What caused you to faint, Mrs. Miles?" + +"Sir, my wife has heart trouble--" + +"What did you hear, Mrs. Miles?" Dundee persisted. + +"I couldn't hear very well, all tangled up in the coat and 'way back in +the closet, but I did hear a kind of bang or bump--no, no, not a pistol +shot!--and because it came from so near me I thought it was Nita or +Lydia coming to get something out of the closet, and I'd be discovered, +so I--I fainted--" She drew a deep breath and went on: "When I came to I +heard Karen scream, and then people running in--. But all the time that +awful tune was going on and on--" + +"Tune?" Dundee gasped. "Do you mean--Nita Selim's--_song_?" + +Flora Miles seemed to be dazed by Dundee's vehement question. + +"Why, yes--Nita's own tune. That's what she called it--her own tune--" + +"But, Mrs. Miles," Dundee protested, ashamed that his scalp was +prickling with horror, "do you mean to tell me that Nita was not dead +_then_--when Karen Marshall screamed?" + +"Dead?" Flora repeated, more bewildered. "Of course she was, or at +least, they all said so--. Oh, I know what you mean! And you don't mean +what I mean at all--" + +"Steady, honey-girl!" Tracey Miles urged, putting his arm about his +wife. "I'd better tell you, Dundee.... When we all came running into the +room, there was Nita's powder box playing its tune over and over--" + +"Oh!" Dundee wiped his forehead. "You mean it's a musical box?" + +"Yes, and plays when the lid is off," Tracey answered, obviously +delighted to have the limelight again. "Well, of course, since Nita +couldn't put the lid back on, it was still playing.... What was the +tune, honey?" he asked his wife tenderly. "I haven't much ear for music +at best, but at a time like that--" + +"It was playing _Juanita_," Flora answered wearily. "Over and +over--_'Nita, Jua-a-n-ita, be my own fair bride_'," she quavered +obligingly. "Only not the words, of course, just the tune. That's why +Nita bought the box, I suppose, because it played her namesake song--" + +"Maybe one of her beaus gave it to her," Tracey suggested lightly, +patting his wife's trembling shoulder. "Anyway, Dundee, the thing ran on +and on, until it ran down, I suppose. I confess I wanted to put the lid +back on, to stop the damned thing, but Hugo said we mustn't touch +anything--" + +"And quite right!" Dundee cut in. "Now, Mrs. Miles, about that noise you +heard.... Did you hear anyone enter the room?... No?... Well, then, did +you hear Nita speak to anyone? You said you thought it might be Lydia, +coming to get something out of the closet." + +"I didn't hear Nita speak a word to anybody, though she might have and I +wouldn't have heard, all muffled up in that velvet evening wrap and so +far back in the closet--" + +"Did you hear the door onto the porch--it's _quite_ near the closet--" + +"The door was open when we came in, Dundee," Tracey interposed. "It must +have been open all the time." + +"I didn't hear it open," Mrs. Miles confirmed him wearily. "I tell you I +didn't hear _anything_, except Nita's coming in singing, then the powder +box playing its tune, and that bang or bump I told you about." + +"And just where was that?" Dundee persisted. + +"_I don't know!_" she shrilled, hysteria rising in her voice again. "I +told you it sounded fairly near the closet, as if--as if somebody bumped +into something. That's what it was like! That's exactly what it was +like. And I was so frightened of being found in the closet that I +fainted, and didn't come to until Karen screamed--" + +She was babbling on, but Dundee was thinking hard. A very convenient +faint--that! For the murderer, at least! But--why not for Mrs. Miles +herself? Odd that she should _faint_! Why hadn't she trumped up some +excuse immediately and left the closet as Nita was entering the room? +Was it, possibly, because she could think of nothing but the great +relief of finding that it was Sprague, not her husband, who had been +writing love letters to Nita Selim?... A jealous woman-- + +"Miles," he began abruptly, "I think you'd better tell me how your wife +became so jealous of you and Nita Selim that she could get herself into +such a false position." + +Tracey Miles reddened, but a gesture of one of his sunburned hands +restrained his wife's passionate defense of him. "It's the truth that +Flora is jealous-natured. And I suppose--" he faltered a moment, and his +eyes did not meet his wife's, "--that I liked seeing her a little bit +jealous of her old man. Sort of makes a man feel--well, big, you know. +And pretty important to somebody!" + +"So you were just having a bit of fun with your wife, so far as Mrs. +Selim was concerned?" Dundee asked coldly. + +The blood flowed through the thinning blond hair. "We-el, not exactly," +he admitted frankly. "You see, I _did_ take a shine to Nita, and if I do +say so myself, she liked me a lot.... Oh, nothing serious! Just a little +flirtation, like most of our crowd have with each other--" + +"Mrs. Miles," Dundee interrupted with sudden harshness, "are you _sure_ +you did not know that that letter was from Dexter Sprague before you +looked for it?" + +"Sir, if you are insinuating that _my wife_ carried on a flirtation +or--an--an _affair_ with that Sprague insect--" Tracey began to bluster. + +But Dundee's eyes were on Flora Miles, and he saw that her sallow skin +had tightened like greyish silk over her thin cheek bones, and that her +eyes looked suddenly dead and glassy. + +"You _fainted_, you say, Mrs. Miles," Dundee went on inexorably. "Was it +because, by any chance, this note--" and he tapped the sheet which had +caused so much trouble--"revealed the fact that Nita Selim and Dexter +Sprague were sweethearts or--lovers?" + +It was a battle between those two now. Both ignored Tracey's red-faced +rage. + +Flora licked her dry lips. "No--no," she whispered. "_No!_ It was +because I was jealous of Tracey and Nita--" + +"Yes, and I'd given her cause to be jealous, too!" Tracey forced himself +into the conversation. "One night, at the Country Club, Flora saw me and +Nita stroll off the porch and down onto the grounds, and she had a right +to be sore at me when I got back, because I'd cut a dance with her--my +own wife!... And it was only this very morning that I made a point of +driving--out of my way too--by this house to see Nita. Not that I meant +any harm, but I was being a little silly about her--and she was about +me, too! Not that I'd leave my wife and babies for any Broadway beauty +under the sun--" + +"Oh, Tracey! And you weren't going to tell me--" Was there _real_ +jealousy now, or just pretense on Flora's part? + +"You understand, don't you, Dundee?" Tracey demanded, man to man. "I was +just having a little fun on the side--nothing serious, mind you! But of +course I didn't tell Flora every little thing--. No man does! There've +been other girls--other women--" + +"Tracey isn't worse than the other men!" Flora flamed up. "He's such a +darling that all the girls pet him, and spoil him--" + +Dundee could stand no more of Miles' complacent acceptance of his own +rakishness. And certainly a girl like Nita Selim would have been able to +bear precious little of it.... Conceited ass! But Flora Miles was +another matter--and so was Dexter Sprague! + +"You can join me in the living room, if you like," Dundee said shortly, +as he wheeled and strode toward the door. Was that quick, passionate +kiss between husband and wife being staged for his benefit? + +"Pretty near through, boy?" Strawn, who had been silent and bewildered +for a long time, asked anxiously, as the two detectives passed into the +hall. + +"Not quite. I've got to know several things yet," Dundee answered +absently. + +But in the living room his mind was wholly upon the business in hand. + +"I'll keep you all no longer than is absolutely necessary," he began, +and again the close-knit group--in which only Dexter Sprague was an +alien--grew taut with suspense. "From the playing out of the 'death +hand' at bridge," he went on, using the objectionable phrase again very +deliberately, "I found that no two of you men arrived together.... Mr. +Hammond, you were the first to arrive, I believe?" + +"It seems that I was!" Clive Hammond answered curtly. + +"And yet you did not enter the living room to greet your hostess?" + +"I wanted a private word with Polly--Miss Beale--my fiancee," Hammond +explained briefly. + +"How and when did you arrive?" + +"I don't know the exact time. Never thought of looking at my watch," +Hammond offered. "I came out in my own roadster--that tan Stutz you may +have noticed in the driveway. As for how I entered the house, I leaped +upon the porch and opened a door of the solarium. I walked across the +solarium, saw Polly just finishing with bridge for the afternoon, and +beckoned to her. She joined me in the solarium, and we stayed there +until Karen screamed.... That's all." + +"Have you been engaged long, Mr. Hammond--you and Miss Beale?" Dundee +asked, as if quite casually. + +"Nearly a year,--if it's any of your business, Dundee!" + +"And just when had you seen Miss Beale last, before late this +afternoon?" Dundee asked. + +"I refuse to answer!" Hammond flared. "That at least is none of your +damned business!" + +"I believe I can answer my own question, Mr. Hammond," Dundee said very +softly. + + + + +CHAPTER EIGHT + + +"Then why ask me?" Hammond shrugged, but his eyes flickered toward Polly +Beale. + +"I thought perhaps you could give me a little additional information," +Dundee soothed him. "You see, it happens that I saw you, Miss Beale and +another young man come into the Stuart House dining room about half past +one today, just when I was thinking of lunch for myself." + +"The mysterious 'other young man' was Clive's brother, Ralph Hammond," +Polly Beale cut in brusquely. + +"Your decision to lunch with your fiance and his brother was quite a +sudden one?" Dundee asked courteously. "Just when did you change your +mind about Mrs. Selim's luncheon party at Breakaway Inn, Miss Beale?" + +The tall girl threw up her mannishly cropped, chestnut head. "There is +nothing at all sinister or even queer about it, Mr. Dundee! I was on my +way to the luncheon, when I decided to drive past Nita's house, on the +chance that she might like me to drive her over." + +"Then you didn't know that Mrs. Dunlap had already arranged to meet Mrs. +Selim downtown this morning and to take her to the Inn?" Dundee asked. + +"No! I didn't hear of the arrangement," Polly answered decidedly. + +"You were a close friend of Mrs. Selim's perhaps?" Dundee prodded. + +"Not at all! But that would not keep me from doing my hostess a +courtesy.... She hated her Ford and liked expensive cars," Polly added +unemotionally. "It was about a quarter to one when I got here, I should +say. Nita wasn't here, nor was her maid, but I saw Ralph's car parked in +front of the house--" + +"_Ralph Hammond's car?_" a woman squealed, but Dundee let Polly +continue. + +"I rang and he answered the door. Said he was alone in the house, going +over the premises at Judge Marshall's request," Polly said evenly. + +"That's right--that's right!" Judge Marshall agreed hastily. "Nita--Mrs. +Selim--wanted the unfinished half of the gabled top story finished up. +Wanted a maid's room and bath, and a guest room and bath added to the +living quarters already completed. I gave the commission, for an +estimate, at least, to the Hammond firm, since they had built the house +originally for Crain--Penny's father." + +"I see," Dundee agreed. "And you sent your brother, Mr. Hammond?" + +"He was the natural one to send," Clive Hammond retorted. "Small job. +All he had to do was to get together an estimate on additional furnace +lines and radiators, electric wiring, plumbing, plastering, etc." + +"Go on, Miss Beale," Dundee directed. + +"Thanks!" There was sarcasm in her brusque voice. "But that's really +about all I have to tell. Ralph complained that he was hungry and +charged me with giving him too little of my time--the usual thing. I +picked up Nita's phone, called Clive and made the date for the three of +us. Then I called Breakaway Inn, cancelled the luncheon part of the +bridge party with Nita, and Ralph and I drove back to Hamilton." + +Dundee studied her strong, clever, almost plain face for a long minute. +Certainly Polly Beale did not look like a liar--but he would have taken +his oath that she was lying now. Or rather not revealing the whole truth +behind the actual facts of her movements that day. For instance, could a +simple plea of her future brother-in-law make her do so discourteous a +thing as to break a luncheon appointment, especially when such a course +would not only disappoint her hostess and her friends but disarrange the +seating plan of a rather formal party? + +Of course the explanation was obvious. She had wanted, first, to see +Nita and remonstrate privately with her for having so enslaved Ralph +Hammond, when he was tacitly known to "belong" to Penny Crain--one of +the sacred crowd. Failing that, she had found Ralph himself, and had not +expected to find him; had talked with him about Nita, and had quarreled +a bit with him, perhaps, over his love-sodden behavior. And the crisis +had become so acute that Polly had arbitrarily called upon Clive Hammond +and then had forced Ralph to accompany her. + +"Do you know, Miss Beale, why Ralph Hammond did not keep _his_ +engagement with Mrs. Selim this afternoon? Or rather, his promise to +appear for cocktails and to be Miss Crain's partner for the rest of the +evening--dinner and dancing at the Country Club?" + +"I do not!" Polly said crisply. + +"Hammond?" + +"Neither do I," Hammond retorted angrily. + +"Then it was not to discuss Ralph Hammond and his--affairs, that you +beckoned Miss Beale to meet you in the solarium upon your arrival?" + +"It--_was not_!" + +A shade too much anger and emphasis, Dundee decided. And he wished +heartily that Strawn's detectives would not delay much longer in +bringing the missing young man into this already involved examination. + +"You say that you both were in the solarium from the time of your +arrival, Hammond, until Mrs. Marshall screamed," Dundee continued. "Just +what did you see and hear?" + +Dundee watched their faces keenly, but again they were well-bred, +expressionless. It was Polly Beale who answered: "Naturally there was +not absolute silence, but I am afraid we were not listening. We were +rather engrossed in our conversation. We were seated--near no +windows--and I for one _saw_ nothing, as well as heard nothing that I +can recall." + +"Hammond?" + +"That goes for me, too--absolutely!" + +Abruptly abandoning the engaged couple, Dundee returned to Miles. "You +were the second arrival, then?" + +"Yes. I parked my car along the curb in front of the house," Tracey +answered readily. "And I came right on in, and Nita jumped up--" + +"Yes. We've had all that twice before," Dundee interrupted cruelly. +"Now, Judge Marshall--" + +"One of my friends gave me a lift from town," Judge Marshall volunteered +pompously. "Chap named Sampson. You may have heard of him--fine fellow, +splendid lawyer. We played billiards together at the Athletic Club, and +when I was about to call a taxi--my wife having the car here--he offered +to drop me here on his way to the Country Club.... N-no, I don't +remember the exact time, did not consult my watch." + +"You came directly from the road into the house, Judge Marshall?" + +"Certainly, sir!" + +"Did you--er, see anyone?" + +"You mean, sir, did anyone see _me_?" Judge Marshall demanded with +pompous indignation. "No, no one, sir! If my word is not good enough for +you, you can think what you damned please!" + +"I think we are all getting a little too tired, Mr. Dundee," Penny Crain +suggested, almost humble in her weariness. + +"I'm truly sorry," the young detective apologized. "But I can't leave +things like this ... Mr. Drake, you have said you walked over from the +Country Club. You must have approached the house from the driveway side, +the side of the house which contains Mrs. Selim's bedroom.... Is that +right?" + +"More or less, except that I skirted the house rather widely and arrived +from the road, stepping upon the front porch, and walking directly into +the hall. I saw no one outside or near the house when I arrived," Drake +answered, with less than his usual nastiness. + +"And saw no one running away across the meadows?" Dundee pressed. + +"No one at all," Drake retorted. "I wish to God I could truthfully say +that I saw a gunman, with a mask and a smoking revolver, skulking +through the wildflowers, but the absolute truth is that I saw no one." + +"Thank you, Mr. Drake.... Now--Mr. Sprague, 'of New York'!" + +Sprague's nervously twitching face reddened darkly. "I--I took a bus. I +have no car of my own. I got off the bus on Sheridan Road, at the +entrance to Primrose Meadows." + +"I see. And you walked the quarter of a mile to this house?" + +Sprague's hand fumbled with his cravat. "I--of course I did!" + +"I see.... Now, Miss Raymond," Dundee pounced unexpectedly, so that the +red-haired girl went very white beneath her freckles, "you observed Mr. +Sprague toiling down the rutty road, hot and weary, but romantic in the +sunset?" + +Mrs. Drake let out a nervous giggle, then clapped her hand over her +mouth. + +"I--I wasn't looking that way," Janet Raymond stammered. "I--I just went +out on the porch for a breath of fresh air--" + +"And you were _completely_ surprised when Mr. Sprague came walking up +the flagstone path?" Dundee persisted, for he knew she was lying, knew +that she had stationed herself there to watch for Sprague. + +"I--yes, I was! He stopped and talked for a while, before we came in and +joined Tracey and Lois in the dining room, where Tracey was mixing +cocktails.... But," she flared suddenly, "I don't see why you have to +badger all of us, when it _must_ have been Lydia, the maid, who killed +Nita, because--" + +"Oh, Janet! Shame on you!" Penny cried furiously. + +"Where is the maid now, Captain Strawn?" Dundee asked. "I haven't seen +her yet--" + +"Because she's in her room in the basement, Bonnie," Strawn answered. +"Sort of forgot about her, didn't you?" and he chuckled at the younger +man's discomfiture. "But _I_ got her story out of her, you bet! Nothing +to it, though. One of my boys--Collins, it was--found her in that short, +dark hall that runs between the Selim woman's bedroom and the kitchen. +Sicker'n a pup she was; it was a mess. Said she'd--" + +"I'd better have her up and question her, if she's well enough," Dundee +interrupted, as tactfully as possible. "It seems that she had an +abscessed tooth out today, with gas and a local anesthetic.... Now, Miss +Raymond, will you tell me exactly what you meant by saying it must have +been Lydia who killed her mistress?" + +"I certainly will!" the red-haired girl cried defiantly. "What I can't +see is why Tracey and Lois and Dex--Mr. Sprague--didn't think of it, +too. It's as plain as--" + +"Yes, as the nose on my face," Dundee cut in grimly, but with a glance +at Strawn. "Just stick to the facts, however, Miss Raymond, and maybe we +can all agree with you." + +"Well, when Mr. Sprague and I went into the dining room, there were Lois +and Tracey cutting up like a couple of children," Janet began, +determined to take her time. "When they saw us, Lois said: 'Good Lord, +Tracey! Get busy! Or your job as bartender will be taken away from you,' +and Tracey began to shake cocktails at the sideboard--" + +"Guess I'd better tell it, Janet, for what it's worth," Lois cut in +impatiently. "It's nothing more nor less than that I had to ring twice +for poor Lydia before she came," she explained to Dundee. "Tracey is +full of original ideas about cocktails, and wanted some sort of bitters. +He was going to shout for Lydia, but I stepped on the button under the +dining table, and the poor thing--in the basement nursing her jaw, +probably--didn't hear. Tracey and I got to kidding, as Janet says, and +had scarcely noticed how long Lydia was in coming. I rang again, and she +came.... That's all!" + +"That isn't all!" Janet denied angrily. "I was there when Lydia came +in, and she was looking white as a ghost--except for her swollen jaw. +What's more, she acted so dumb Tracey had to tell her twice what he +wanted.... And then she said Nita didn't have any of those bitters +anyway." + +"An open-and-shut case against poor Lydia!" Penny Crain broke in +derisively. "Go pluck daisies, Janet! You'd be of a lot more help!" + +"Here's your maid, Bonnie," Captain Strawn announced lazily, as one of +his plainclothesmen appeared in the arch between dining and living room, +dragging by the hand a woman who was resisting strangely, her apron +pressed to her face. + +"You are Lydia?" Dundee asked, his voice kinder than it had been for +many minutes. "Oh, it's Lydia Carr, Captain Strawn? Thank you.... Don't +be afraid. And I'm sorry about the tooth.... Come along in. I'll not +keep you long." + +The woman's knees seemed about to fail her, but with a sudden effort she +released the detective's grip on her wrist. Very tall she was, very bony +in her black cotton dress. Pathetic, too, with her thin, iron-grey hair, +and that apron concealing the left half of her face. It was odd, Dundee +thought, that it was not the swollen jaw she chose to cover. + +Mrs. Dunlap sprang to her feet and hurried across the room. + +"Don't mind, Lydia, please. You must not be so sensitive," she said +gently, and even more gently pulled down the concealing apron.... + +"Good God!" Dundee breathed, and Strawn nodded his understanding of the +younger man's horror. + +For the left half of Lydia Carr's face was drawn and puckered and ridged +almost out of human semblance. Even the eye was ruined--a milky ball +which the puckered, hairless eyelid could never cover again. + +"Poor Lydia is ashamed of her scarred face," Lois Dunlap explained, her +arm still about the maid's shoulder. "She isn't quite used to it yet, +but none of _us_ mind--" + +"You were burned recently, Lydia?" Dundee asked pityingly. + +"That's my business!" the woman astounded him by retorting harshly. + +"How did it happen, Lydia?" Dundee persisted, puzzled. + +"I had an accident. It was my own fault." + +Lois Dunlap's kind grey eyes caught and held Dundee's firmly. "I think, +if Nita could speak to you now, Mr. Dundee, that she would beg you not +to try to force Lydia's confidence on this subject. Nita was devoted to +Lydia--we can all testify to that!--and one of the sweetest things about +her was her constant effort to protect Lydia from questions and curious +glances. I, for one, know that Nita often begged Lydia to submit to a +skin-grafting operation, regardless of expense--" + +When that kind voice choked on tears, Dundee abruptly abandoned his +intention to press the matter further. + +"Lydia, your mistress had been married, or was still married, wasn't +she?" + +The woman's single, slate-grey eye stared into his expressionlessly. +"She had 'Mrs.' in front of her name, to use when she felt like it. +That's all I know. I never saw her husband--if she had one. I only +worked for her about five years." + +"You say she used her married name 'when she felt like it....' What do +you mean by that, Lydia?" + +"I mean she was an actress, and used her stage name--Juanita +Leigh--pronounced like it was spelled plain 'Lee'; but she was mostly +called 'Nita Leigh'." + +"An actress, you say?" Dundee repeated thoughtfully. "I had heard of her +only as director of the Forsyte School plays.... What shows was she in?" + +"She was what they call a specialty dancer in musical comedy," Lydia +answered. "Sometimes she had a real part and sometimes she only danced. +She was a good hoofer and a good trouper," she added, the Broadway terms +falling strangely from those austere lips. "And when she wasn't in a +show she sometimes got a job in the pictures. She never had a real +chance in the movies, though, because they mostly wanted her to double +for the star in long shots, where dancing comes into the picture, or in +close-ups where they just show the legs, you know." + +"I see," Dundee agreed gravely. "Where were you during the fifteen +minutes or so before your mistress was shot, Lydia?" + +"I was down in my room in the basement," the woman answered. "Nita--I +mean Miss Nita was going to get Judge Marshall to build me a room on the +top floor. She hated for me to have to sleep in the basement, but I +didn't mind." + +"You were not required to be on duty for the party?" + +"No," she answered in her harsh, flat voice. "I'd fixed the sandwiches +and put out the liquors for the cocktails--set them all out on the +dining table and sideboard, and Miss Nita had told me to go and lie down +as soon as I was through. So I did. I had an abscessed tooth pulled this +morning, and I was feeling sick." + +"Did you hear the kitchen bell at all?" Dundee went on. + +"I dropped off to sleep--that fool dentist had shot me full of dope--but +I did hear the bell and I come up to answer it. Mrs. Dunlap said she'd +rung twice, and I said I was sorry--" + +"Lydia, did you go into your mistress' bedroom before or after you +answered that bell?" Dundee asked with sudden sharpness. + +"I did not! I didn't even know she was in her bedroom, until I saw her +sitting at her dressing-table--dead." The harsh voice hesitated over the +last word, but it did not break. + +"And just when did you first see her--after she was dead?" + +"I went into the kitchen, thinking something else might be needed. Then +I heard a scream. It sounded like it come from Nita's--Miss Nita's +bedroom, and I run along the back hall that leads from the kitchen to +her bedroom. I heard a lot of people running and yelling. Nobody paid +any attention to me." + +"You came into the room?" + +"No, sir, I did not. I stopped in the doorway. I heard Mr. Sprague say +she was dead. I was sick and dizzy anyway, and I couldn't move for a +minute. I sort of slipped down to the floor, and I guess I must have +passed out. And then I was sick to my stomach, and--I didn't seem to +care if I never moved again." + +"Why, Lydia?" Dundee asked gently. + +"Because she was the only friend I had in the world, and I couldn't have +loved her better if she'd been my own child," Lydia answered. And the +stern voice had broken at last. "I was still there in the back hall when +a cop come and asked me a lot of questions, and then that man--" she +pointed to Captain Strawn, "--said I could go and lay down. He helped me +down the basement stairs." + +Dundee tapped his teeth with the long pencil he had kept so busy that +evening--tapped them long and thoughtfully. Then: + +"Lydia, did you see anyone--_anyone at all!_--from your basement room +window before you answered Mrs. Dunlap's ring?" + + + + +CHAPTER NINE + + +For the first time during the difficult interview Dundee was sure that +Lydia Carr was lying. For a fraction of a second her single eye wavered, +the lid flickered, then came her harsh, flat denial: + +"I didn't see nobody." + +"I presume your basement room has a window looking out upon the back +garden?" Dundee persisted. + +"Yes, it has, but I didn't waste no time looking out of it," Lydia +answered grimly. "I was laying down, with an ice cap against my jaw." + +She _had_ seen someone, Dundee told himself. But the truth would be +harder to extract from that stern, scar-twisted mouth, than the +abscessed tooth had been. + +Finally, when her lone eye did not again waver under his steady gaze, he +dismissed her, or rather, returned her to Captain Strawn's custody. + +"Well, Janet, I hope you're satisfied!" Penny Crain said bitingly, as +she dashed unashamed tears from her brown eyes. "If ever a maid was +absolutely crazy about her mistress--" + +"I'm _not_ satisfied!" Janet Raymond retorted furiously. "She's just the +sort that would harbor a grudge for _years_, and then, all hopped up +with dope--" + +"Stop it, Janet!" Lois Dunlap commanded with a curtness that set oddly +upon her kind, pleasant face. + +"Listen here, Dundee," Tracey Miles broke in, almost humbly. "My wife is +getting pretty anxious about the kiddies. The nurse quit on us +yesterday, and--" + +"And _my_ little wife is worrying herself sick over our boy--just three +months old," Judge Marshall joined the protest. "I'm all for assisting +justice, sir, having served on the bench myself, as you doubtless know, +but--" + +"I'm all right, really, Hugo," Karen Marshall faltered. + +"Please be patient a little longer," Dundee urged apologetically. After +all, only one of these people could be guilty of Nita Selim's murder, +and it _was_ beastly to have to hold them like this.... _But one was +guilty!_ + +"You knew Mrs. Selim in New York, Sprague?" he asked, whirling suddenly +upon the man with the Broadway stamp. + +"I met Nita Leigh, as I always heard her called, when I was assistant +director in the Altamont Studios, out on Long Island," Sprague answered, +his black eyes trying to meet Dundee's with an air of complete +frankness. "Wonderful little girl, and a great dancer ... Screened +damned well, too. I had hoped to give her a break some day, at something +better than doubling for stars who can't dance. But it happened that +Nita, who never forgot even a casual friend, had a chance to give me a +leg up herself--a chance to show what I can really do with a camera." + +"I knew I'd seen your name somewhere!" Dundee exclaimed. "So you're the +man the Chamber of Commerce is dickering with.... Going to make a movie +of the founding, growth and beauties of the city of Hamilton, aren't +you?" + +"If I get the contract--yes," Sprague answered with palpably assumed +modesty. "My plans, naturally, call for a great deal of research work, a +large expenditure of money, a very careful selection of 'stars'--" + +"I see," Dundee interrupted. Then his tone changed, became slow and +menacing in its terrible emphasis: "_And you really couldn't let even a +good friend like Nita Selim upset those fine plans of yours, could you, +Sprague?_" + +Even as he put the sinister question, the detective was exulting to +himself: "Light at last! Now I know why this Broadway bounder was +received into an exclusive crowd like this! Every last female in the +bunch hoped to be the star of Sprague's motion picture!" + +"I don't know what you're driving at, Dundee!" Sprague was on his feet, +his black eyes blazing out of a chalky face. "If you're accusing me +of--of--" + +"Of killing Nita Selim?" Dundee asked lazily. "Oh, no! Not--yet, +Sprague! I was just remembering a rather puzzling note of yours I +happened to read this afternoon.... That note you sent by special +messenger to Breakaway Inn this noon, you know." + +He had little interest for the sudden crumpling of Dexter Sprague into +the chair from which he had risen. Instead, as Dundee drew the note from +his coat pocket, his eyes swept around the room, noted the undisguised +relief on every face, the almost ghoulish satisfaction with which that +close-knit group of friends seized upon an outsider as the probable +murderer of that other outsider whom they had rashly taken into their +sacred circle. Even Penny Crain, thorny little stickler for fair play +that she was, relaxed with a tremulous sigh. + +"You admit that this note, signed by what I take to be your 'pet name,' +was written by your hand, Sprague?" Dundee asked matter-of-factly, as he +extended the sheet of bluish notepaper. + +"I--no--yes, I wrote it," Sprague faltered. "But it doesn't mean a +thing--not a damned thing! Just a little private matter between Nita and +myself--" + +"Rather queer wording for an unimportant message, Sprague," Dundee +interrupted. "Let me refresh your memory: 'Nita, my sweet,'" he began to +read slowly, "'Forgive your bad boy for last night's row, but I _must_ +warn you again to watch your step. You've already gone too far. Of +course I love you and understand, _but_--Be good, Baby, _and you won't +be sorry_!--Dexy....' Well, Sprague?" + +Sprague wiped his perspiring hands on his handkerchief. "I know it +sounds--odd, under the circumstances," he admitted desperately, "but +listen, Dundee, and I'll try to make that damned note as clear as +possible to a man who doesn't know his Broadway.... Why, man, it isn't +even a love letter! Everybody on Broadway talks and writes to each other +like that, without meaning a thing!... As I told you, Nita Leigh, or +Mrs. Selim, remembered some little kindnesses I had done her on the +Altamont lot, when they got her to take up that Little Theater work Mrs. +Dunlap is interested in, and found that the Chamber of Commerce was +interested in putting Hamilton into the movies, in a big booster +campaign. She wired me and I thought it looked good enough to drop +everything and come.... Of course Nita and I got to be closer friends, +but I swear to God we were just friends--" + +"And what was the 'friendly' row about last night, Sprague?" + +"There wasn't a row, really," Sprague protested with desperate +earnestness. "It was merely that Nita insisted on my casting her for the +heroine of the movie--a thing I knew would alienate the whole crowd +that's been so kind to us--" + +"Why--since she was a professional actress?" Dundee demanded. + +"Because she isn't a Hamilton girl, of course, and the Chamber of +Commerce wants the cast to be all local talent," Sprague answered, +lapsing unconsciously into the present tense. + +"And just what were you warning her against?" + +"I'd told her before to watch her step," Sprague went on more easily. +"You see, Dundee, Nita Leigh is--was--a first-class little vamp, and I +could see she was playing her cards with the men here--" he indicated +four of Hamilton's most prominent Chamber of Commerce members with a +wave of his hand--"to get them all so crazy about her that they'd vote +for her as the star of the picture. I could see her point, all right. It +would have been a big chance for her to show how she could act.... Well, +I could see it was dangerous business, and that the girls--" and he +smiled jerkily at the tense women in the living room, "--were getting +pretty wrought up over the way Nita was behaving.... All except Mrs. +Dunlap," he added. "_She_ didn't want to act in the picture, and Nita +didn't make any headway at all with Peter Dunlap." + +"Thanks, Mr. Sprague," Lois Dunlap drawled, with an amused quirk of her +broad mouth. + +"Get along with the row, Sprague!" Dundee commanded impatiently. + +"As I said, it wasn't really a row. I just pleaded with Nita last night +to smooth down the girls' rumpled feathers, and to make it clear to them +that she didn't want the star part in the picture any more than she +wanted any other woman's husband or sweetheart.... Just a friendly +warning--" Sprague drew a deep breath. "And that's all the note +meant--absolutely!" + +"I see," Dundee said quietly, then quoted: _"'Be good, Baby, and you +won't be sorry!'"_ + +"That meant, of course," Sprague took him up eagerly, "that I'd see she +got a real part in a regular movie, after I'd made my hit with the +Hamilton picture." + +Very plausible, very plausible indeed, Dundee reflected. And yet-- + +Finally he lifted his head and let his eyes dart from face to face. + +"All of you have stated, separately and collectively, that you heard no +shot fired in Nita Selim's bedroom this afternoon," he said sharply. "Is +that true?" + +He was answered by weary nods or sullen affirmations. + +"Then," he continued, "I must conclude that you are all lying or that +Nita Selim was killed with a gun equipped with a Maxim silencer." + +Never was a detective more unprepared for the effect of his words upon a +group of possible suspects than was Special Investigator Dundee.... + + + + +CHAPTER TEN + + +As Dexter Sprague had glibly and plausibly explained away every sinister +aspect of the note he had written to Nita Selim that day, Special +Investigator Dundee was recalling with verbatim vividness his argument +with Captain Strawn of the Homicide Squad immediately after his arrival +into the house of violent death. + +He had said then: "The person who killed Nita Selim, was so well known +to her, and his--or her--presence in this room so natural a thing that +she paid no attention to his or her movements and was concentrating on +the job of powdering her very pretty face." + +And he had said further, in face of the disappearance of the gun and in +explanation of the fact that all twelve of these people had immediately +protested to Strawn that they had heard no shot: + +"This was a premeditated murder, of course. The Maxim silencer--unless +they are all lying about not hearing a shot--proves that. Silencers are +damned hard to get hold of, but people with plenty of money can manage +most things." + +And as Dexter Sprague had talked on, more and more glibly, Dundee had +suddenly found an explanation which fitted his own argument with such +perfection that he wondered, naively, if he were perhaps gifted with +clairvoyance. + +Of all these twelve people, whom he had questioned so relentlessly, only +Dexter Sprague could easily have come into possession of a Maxim +silencer. He had dilated proudly upon the fact that he had been an +assistant director at the Altamont Studios on Long Island. And the +Altamont company had recently finished making a series of "underworld" +motion pictures--crook dramas featuring gunmen with "rods" made eerily +noiseless by Maxim silencers. + +A bit of information he had picked up in a motion picture magazine had +hurtled into the logical chain of Dundee's reasoning: assistant +directors were in charge of "props"; it was their business to see that +no article needed for the production of a picture was lost or missing +when the director needed it. Dexter Sprague had said that he had +"dropped everything" to come when Nita Selim wired him of the Chamber of +Commerce project to make a "booster" movie of Hamilton. + +Perhaps he _had_ dropped everything. But--_had he hesitated long enough +to pick up a Maxim silencer and a blunt-nosed automatic_? And was the +"row" which Sprague had been so glibly explaining away an ancient one--a +row so deadly that, when Nita Selim had refused to heed his written +warning, her murder had become necessary? + +It was with all this in mind that Bonnie Dundee flung his challenge: "I +must conclude that you are all lying or that Nita Selim was killed with +a gun equipped with a Maxim silencer." + +And his eyes, terrible with their command that the weakling should break +and confess, were upon Dexter Sprague. But Sprague did not break. He +stared back blankly.... + +If his eyes and his attention had included the whole group it is +possible that what happened would not have taken Dundee so completely by +surprise. He had paid little attention to a sort of concerted gasp, a +slight movement among the group farthest from him. + +But not even his intense concentration upon Sprague could prevent his +hearing Karen Marshall's childish voice, tremulous with fear: + +"No, no, Hugo! Don't--don't!" + +He whirled from Sprague in time to see Judge Marshall disengaging his +arm from his young wife's clinging fingers, to note, with profound +astonishment, that Drake was stepping hastily aside, so that not even +his coat sleeve might be brushed by the advancing figure of the elderly, +retired judge. And before Judge Marshall had time to speak, Dundee saw +that a blight had touched, at last, the solid friendship of the women; +that they did not look at each other with that air of standing together +whatever happened, but that their eyes, not meeting at all, became +secret, calculating, afraid.... + +"Sir!" Judge Marshall began pompously, when he had planted himself +squarely before the young detective, "It shall never be said of me that +I have tried, even in the slightest way, to hamper the course of +justice." + +"I am sure of that, Judge Marshall," Dundee replied courteously, but his +pulses were hammering. What, in God's name, did this long-winded old +fool have to tell him?... "You have some information you believe may be +valuable, Judge?" + +"I do not believe it will be at all valuable, sir. On the contrary!" the +old man retorted indignantly. "But to suppress the fact at this juncture +might lead to grave misunderstandings later, when it inevitably comes to +light. So, sir, it is my duty to inform you that I myself own a Colt's +.32, as well as a Maxim silencer." + +"What!" Dundee exclaimed incredulously. He was conscious that, behind +him, Captain Strawn was getting to his feet. + +"There is no need to get out your handcuffs, Captain Strawn!" Judge +Marshall warned him majestically. "I assure you that I have not violated +the law. Every judge, active and retired, is entitled to a permit to +carry a weapon, and I long ago availed myself of the privilege. Nor am I +about to make a confession of murder!" + +"There ain't no permit, so far as I know, Judge," Strawn growled, "for +any man, whoever he may be--God A'mighty himself not excepted--to tote a +gun with a silencer on it." + +Karen Marshall was crying now, with the abandoned grief of a petted +child. + +"Granted, Captain!" Judge Marshall snapped. "But it happens that I do +not 'tote' my gun with the silencer on it. If it interests you, I may as +well explain that I came by the silencer several years ago, when I was +on the bench. A notorious Chicago gunman, on trial for murder here, and +acquitted by a feeble-minded jury, made me a present of the very +silencer he had used in killing his victim--an ironic gesture, a gesture +of supreme insolence, but an entirely safe gesture, since he well knew +that a man once acquitted of a crime cannot again be placed in jeopardy +for the same offence." + +"So you kept the silencer as a curiosity, Judge Marshall?" Dundee +interrupted the pompous flow of rhetoric. + +"For years--yes," the ex-judge answered, then his face went yellow +and very old. "As I told you just now, I will withhold no fact that +may be of any relevance whatever.... About two months ago--in March, +I believe--our little group here took up target-shooting as a fad. +Several of us became quite expert with revolver and rifle. Mr. +Drake--" and he nodded toward the banker, who instantly averted his eyes, +"--conceived the idea of practising the draw-from-the-hip sort of +revolver-shooting--the kind one sees in Wild West movies, you know--" + +"I think you might add, Hugo," Drake cut in angrily, "that I had in mind +the hope of being able to protect the bank in case of a holdup!" + +"And the silencer, Judge Marshall?" Captain Strawn prodded. + +Judge Marshall flushed, and fingered the end of a waxed mustache. "The +silencer, sir, was my wife's idea. You see, sir, we are fortunate enough +to be the parents of an infant son. He was just a month old when I +painted a bull's eye upon the brick wall of our back garden and invited +our friends to indulge their fad as our guests. The shooting awakened +the baby so frequently that Karen--Mrs. Marshall--dug up the silencer, +which I had shown her as a memento of my career on the bench. Thereafter +we confined our practice almost exclusively to drawing from the hip and +shooting without sighting. It is impossible to sight with a gun equipped +with a silencer, you know, since the silencer covers the sighter on the +barrel." + +"It sure does," Strawn drawled. "So every last one of you folks had a +good deal of this sort of practice, I take it?" + +Judge Marshall glanced about the room, as if he could not recall the +face of everyone present. + +"Yes, all of us--except Mr. Sprague and--Penny, my dear, did you join us +at all?" + +The girl who had once been in on every sport that this crowd of +Hamilton's socially elect indulged in, flushed a painful red. + +"No, Hugo. I--I have to stay with Mother on Sunday mornings, you know." + +"Your target practice was a Sunday morning diversion, then, Judge +Marshall?" Dundee asked. + +"Yes. We usually have an hour of the sport--between eleven and noon, on +Sundays. We've been having a sort of tournament--quite sharply +competitive--" + +"When did you and your friends practise last?" Dundee asked. + +"Last Sunday. Tomorrow was to mark the end of the 'tournament'," the +Judge answered. + +"And when did you last see your gun and silencer?" Dundee persisted. + +"Last Sunday, of course.... Why, Good Lord!" Marshall ejaculated. _"It +was Nita herself who put the gun away!_" + +There was a collective gasp of relief. Eyes could meet eyes--now. But it +was Flora Miles who voiced the thought or hope that seemed apparent on +every face. + +"That's why I didn't hear anyone talking when I was in the closet!" she +cried, her voice almost hysterical in its vehemence. "_There wasn't +anybody but Nita in the room!_ She committed suicide! She stole poor +Hugo's gun and the silencer and committed suicide!" + +"At a distance of from ten to fifteen feet?" Dundee asked with +ill-concealed sarcasm. "And when she was powdering her face? And just +after entering the room, blithely singing a Broadway hit?" + +"Maybe the lady is right, boy," Captain Strawn interposed mildly. "I've +heard of people rigging up contrivances--" + +"Which make the gun and the silencer disappear by magic?" Dundee +demanded. "No, folks, I'm afraid the suicide theory is no good.... Now, +Judge Marshall," and he turned again to the creator of the biggest +sensation since the investigation into Nita Selim's death had got under +way, "you say that Mrs. Selim herself put the gun away.... Will you +explain the circumstances?" + +The elderly man's face had gone yellowish again. "Certainly! Nita Selim +and I were the last to leave the back garden. She was particularly poor +at the sport--never made a bull's eye during the four or five Sunday +mornings after Lois--Mrs. Dunlap--drew her into our set. She begged for +a few more shots, and I stayed with her, after the others had gone into +the house for--er--refreshment. She fired the last bullet in the chamber +of the Colt's, and together we walked to the house, entering the little +room at the rear where all sorts of sports equipment are kept--fishing +rods and tackle, golf clubs, bows and arrows, skis, etc. She was +carrying the gun, unscrewing the silencer as we walked. It is my habit +to keep the pistol and the silencer in a drawer in a little corner +cupboard--" + +"Locked, up?" Dundee asked sharply. + +"Usually locked, but not always, I am afraid," Judge Marshall answered +reluctantly. + +"And you saw Mrs. Selim place the gun and the silencer in the drawer?" + +"I--thought I did, but I was really not watching closely. As a matter of +fact, I stopped to look over a fishing rod, with a view to trying it out +the first good fishing weather--" + +"Was Mrs. Selim wearing a coat or cloak?" Dundee cut in impatiently. + +"Why, I don't know--" + +"Yes, she was, Hugo!" Karen cried out eagerly. "It was quite chilly last +Sunday morning. Remember? We all had on coats or sweaters. Nita wore a +dark-green leather jacket with big pockets--" + +"And she left in a great hurry, without even waiting for a drink," Flora +Miles contributed triumphantly. "I tell you, she took them away in her +pockets." + +"Your guess may be correct, Mrs. Miles," Dundee agreed, "but I think we +had better not come to any definite conclusion until we know that Judge +Marshall's automatic and silencer are really missing.... Is there anyone +at your house now, Judge, whom you can ask to look for it?" + +"Certainly. The butler.... Shall I telephone him?" + +Accompanied by Captain Strawn, the ex-judge went to the telephone in the +little foyer between Nita Selim's bedroom and the main hall. And within +five minutes he was back, nodding his head gravely. + +"Hinson tells me that the Colt's and the silencer are both missing, +sir.... May I express my profound regret that my possession of--" + +"Some other time, Judge Marshall!" Dundee interrupted curtly, and +hurried from the room, followed by Strawn, who nodded to Sergeant +Turner, still lounging wearily in a far corner of the living room, to +stand guard vigilantly. + +"Well, Bonnie, here's the devil to pay," Strawn gloomed, but Dundee made +for the telephone without answering. + +He called a number, then curtly demanded: "Dr. Price, please!... Yes, I +know he's busy on an autopsy. Just tell him that Dundee, of the district +attorney's office, wants to speak to him." + +There was a long pause, then: "Hello, Dr. Price!... Dundee.... What are +the caliber and type of bullet that killed Nita Selim?... Thanks much, +doctor.... Anything new?... Fine! Thanks again!" + +He hung up the receiver and faced Strawn. "Bullet from a Colt's .32," he +said grimly. "I suggest you send one of your men around to the Marshall +home to pick up a bullet that was shot in their damned target practice. +If you send the two bullets tonight, registered mail, to Wright, the +ballistics expert in Chicago, he can probably wire you tomorrow morning +as to whether the same gun was used to fire both." + +"Sure, Bonnie," Strawn agreed lugubriously. "I was going to do just +that.... Say, this town is getting to be worse than Chicago!" + +When he re-entered the living room Dundee began upon the judge again, +regardless of the fact that the elderly husband was murmuring +consolatory endearments to his young wife. + +"Judge Marshall, how many keys are there to the cupboard drawer in which +your gun and silencer were kept?" + +"Just one. I have it with me," the old man answered wearily. + +"Then when Hinson, your butler, looked for them, he found the drawer +unlocked?" + +"He did. I confess to almost criminal negligence--" + +"Then so far as you know, the gun and silencer could have been removed +at any time by any guest of yours between noon last Sunday and--today?" +Dundee went on relentlessly. + +"I--suppose so. But these people have been my close friends for years," +the judge answered. "Not one of them, sir--" + +"After Mrs. Selim's departure last Sunday, did your other guests remain +for any length of time?" + +"For an hour or more, I think. Lois and Peter Dunlap remained for our +two o'clock Sunday dinner, but the others drifted away to various +engagements." + +"Did any of you return to the room where the gun was kept?" + +"I can speak only for myself and Peter--Mr. Dunlap," Judge Marshall +answered, flushing with indignation. "The two of us went down just +before dinner was served. I wanted to show him some new flies for trout +casting." + +"Your home is a popular rendezvous for your intimates, is it not?" + +"I pride myself that it is, sir!" + +"And guests run in and out, having the freedom of the place?" + +"Certainly, sir!... And since I am not so stupid as you imagine, I can +tell you now that I understand the drift of your questions, and can +forestall them: Yes, all of these people--_my friends_!--have had +opportunity to take the gun and the silencer from the cupboard since it +was placed there last Sunday, if it _was_ placed there by Mrs. Selim. +But may I remind you, sir, that opportunity alone is not sufficient; +that _motive_--" + +"Since Mrs. Selim is dead, murdered by the weapon which was stolen, we +can assume, Judge Marshall, that someone had motive," Dundee reminded +him implacably, for in his mind there was no doubt that the ballistics +expert would bear him out. + +There was a heavy, throbbing silence. The group that, with the exception +of Dexter Sprague, had been so united, so cemented with long-sustained +friendship, again dissolved visibly before Dundee's eyes into eleven +individuals, each shrinking into himself, mentally drawing away from any +possible contamination with a murderer.... + +"You have said, Judge Marshall," Dundee went on at last, "that Miss +Crain and Mr. Sprague were not at your home for target practice Sunday. +Has either of them been in your home during this past week?" + +"Penny--Miss Crain--spent an evening with my wife when I was--er--away +from home on business. That was last Tuesday, I believe--" + +"Yes, it was Tuesday, Hugo," Penny Crain interrupted firmly. "And Karen +can vouch for the fact that I did not go into the gun room." + +"Don't be silly, Penny!" Carolyn Drake scolded, as if she had long been +bursting to speak. "Giving an alibi! As if _any_ of us who were playing +bridge while that woman was being shot _needs_ any alibi!... But I'll +tell you what _I_ think, Mr. Detective! I think Nita herself stole the +gun and the silencer, to kill Dexter Sprague with, and that _he_ stole +it from her and murdered _her_! Nobody else has the slightest scrap of a +motive, and that note he wrote her ought to be enough to hang him on!" + +Dexter Sprague had struggled to his feet during the woman's hysterical +attack, his face like chalk, his eyes blazing. But Dundee waved him +aside peremptorily. + +"One more question, Judge Marshall," he said suavely, as if he had not +heard a word that Carolyn Drake had said. "You knew Mrs. Selim before +her arrival in Hamilton with Mrs. Dunlap, I believe.... Just when and +where did you meet her?" + + + + +CHAPTER ELEVEN + + +"You are damned impertinent, sir!" Judge Marshall shouted, the ends of +his waxed grey mustache trembling with anger. + +"Then I take it that you do not wish to divulge the circumstances of +your friendship with Mrs. Selim?" Dundee asked. + +"Friendship!" the old man snorted. "Your implications, sir, are +dastardly! I met Mrs. Selim, or rather, Nita Leigh, as she was +introduced to me, only once, several years ago when I was in New York. +Naturally--" + +"Just a moment, Judge. You say she was introduced to you as Nita Leigh. +Then you knew her as an actress, I presume?" + +"I refuse to submit to such a cowardly attack, sir!" + +"_Attack_, Judge?" Dundee repeated with assumed astonishment. "I merely +thought you might be able to shed a little light on the past of the +woman who has been murdered here today, with a weapon you admit to +having owned.... However--" + +The elderly ex-judge stared at his tormentor for a moment as if murder +was in his heart. He gasped twice, then suddenly his whole manner +changed. + +"I apologize, Dundee. You must realize how--But that is beside the +point. I met Nita Leigh at--er--at a social gathering, arranged by some +New York friends of mine. She was young, attractive, more refined +than--er--than the average young woman in musical comedy. Naturally I +told her if she was ever in Hamilton to look me up. And she did." + +"And because she was 'more refined than the average young woman in +musical comedy'--than the average chorus girl, to put it simply," Dundee +took him up, "you co-operated with Mrs. Dunlap to introduce her to your +most intimate friends--including your wife?" + +"Oh, Hugo! Why didn't you tell me?" Karen Marshall wailed. + +"You see, sir, what you are doing!" Judge Marshall stormed. + +"I am truly sorry if I have distressed you, Mrs. Marshall," Dundee +protested sincerely. "But--" He shrugged and turned again to the +husband. "I understand you were Mrs. Selim's landlord.... May I ask how +much rent she paid?" + +"The house rents for one hundred dollars a month--furnished." + +"And did Mrs. Selim pay her rent promptly?" Dundee persisted. + +"Since this is the 24th of May, sir, Mrs. Selim's rent for June was not +yet due." + +Not before poor little Karen could Dundee force himself to ask what, +inevitably, would have been his next question--one which could not have +been evaded, as the ex-judge had evaded the other two questions: "_Is it +not true, Judge Marshal, that Nita Leigh Selim paid you no rent at +all?_" But there were other ways to find out.... + +"Look here, Dundee!" a brusque voice challenged, and the detective +whirled to face Polly Beale. It was like her, he thought with a slight +grin, to address him as one man to another.... + +"Yes, Miss Beale?" + +"I'm no fool, and I don't think any of my friends here are +either--though two or three of them have acted like it today," the +masculine-looking girl stated flatly. "You've made it very plain that +any one of us here, except the Sprague man, could have stolen Hugo's gun +and silencer.... Has the gun been found?" + +"It has not, Miss Beale." + +"O. K.!" The queer girl snapped her fingers. "I move that you or +Captain Strawn search the men for the weapon, and that I search the +Women.... Wait!" she harshly stopped a flurry of feminine protests. "I'll +ask you, Dundee, to search me first yourself. I believe the technical +term is 'frisking,' isn't it?... Then 'frisk' me.... Here is my handbag. +I wore no coat, except this--" and she pointed to the jacket of her tweed +suit. + +As she strode toward the detective Clive Hammond sprang after her with +an oath and a sharp command. + +"Shut up, Clive! I'm not married to you yet!" she retorted, but her eyes +were gentler than her voice. + +His face burning with embarrassment, Dundee went through the traditional +gestures of police "frisking"--running his hands rapidly down the girl's +tall, sturdy body, slapping her pockets. And his fingers fumbled sadly +as he opened her tooled leather handbag. + +"Satisfied?" Polly Beale demanded, and at Dundee's miserable nod, the +girl faced her friends: "Well, come along, girls!" + +"Lord! What a girl!" Dundee muttered to Strawn, as the young Amazon +herded Flora Miles, Penny Crain, Karen Marshall, Carolyn Drake, Lois +Dunlap and Janet Raymond into the dining room. + +Silently, and almost meekly, as if shamed into submission by Polly +Beale's example, John Drake, Tracey Miles, Clive Hammond, Judge +Marshall, and Dexter Sprague permitted Captain Strawn and Sergeant +Turner to search them. + +"How about the guest closet and the cars?" Dundee asked of Strawn in a +low voice, when the fruitless, unpleasant task was finished. + +"Gone over with a fine tooth comb long ago," Strawn assured him +gloomily. "And not a hiding place in or outside the house that the boys +haven't poked into--including the meadow as far as anyone could throw +from the bedroom window." + +The women were filing back into the room, some pale, some flushed, but +all able to look each other in the eye again. + +With surprising jauntiness Polly Beale saluted Dundee. "Nothing more +deadly on any of us than Flora's triple-deck compact." + +"I thank you with all my heart, Miss Beale," Dundee said sincerely. "And +now I think you may all go to your homes.... Of course you understand," +he interrupted a chorus of relieved ejaculations, "that all of you will +be wanted for the inquest, which will probably be held Monday." + +"And what's more," Captain Strawn cut in, to show his authority, "I want +all of you to hold yourselves ready for further questioning at any +time." + +There was a stampede for coats and hats, a rush for cars as if the house +were on fire, or--Dundee reflected wryly--as if those he had tortured +were afraid he would change his mind. Rushing away with hatred of him in +their hearts.... + +Only Penny Crain held back, maneuvering for a chance to speak with him. + +"I don't have to go with the rest, do I?" she begged in a husky whisper. + +"And why not?" Dundee grinned at her, but he was glad there was no +hatred in _her_ eyes. + +"I'm 'attached' to the district attorney's office, too, aren't I?" + +"Right! And you've been a brick this evening. I don't know what I should +have done without you--" + +"Well, I can't see that you've done much _with_ me," she gibed. "But I'd +like to stick around, if you're going to do some real Sherlocking--" + +"Can't be done, Penny. I want to stay here alone for a while and mull +things over. But I'd like to have a long talk with you tomorrow." + +"Come to Sunday dinner. Mother loves murder mysteries," she suggested. +Then realization swept over her. Her brown eyes widened, filled with +terror. "Stop thinking one of us did it! _Stop_, I tell you!" + +"Can _you_ stop, Penny?" he asked gently. + +But she fled from him, sobbing wildly for the first time that long, +horrible evening. Dundee, watching from the doorway of the lighted hall, +saw the chauffeur open the rear door of the Dunlap limousine, saw Penny +catapult herself into Lois Dunlap's outstretched arms.... + +"When did the Dunlap chauffeur call for his mistress?" he asked Strawn, +who stood beside him. + +"About ten minutes after you arrived," Strawn answered wearily. "Said +he'd dropped Mrs. Dunlap and the Selim woman at about 2:30 and had been +ordered to return around 6:30.... Knows nothing, of course." The chief +of the Homicide Squad drew a deep breath. "Well, Bonnie, he has nothing +on me. In spite of all the palaver I don't know nothing either." + +"You need some dinner, chief," Dundee suggested. "And the boys must be +getting hungry, too." + +"Somebody's got to guard the house, I suppose," Strawn gloomed. "Not +that it will do any good.... And what about that maid--that Carr woman? +Shall I lock her up on general principles?" + +"No. I want to have another talk with her, and if she bucks at spending +the night here, I'll take her to the Rhodes House, and turn her over to +my old friend, Mother Rhodes. We haven't anything on her, you know." + +"No, nor on anybody else, except that old fool, Marshall, and we can't +clap him into jail--yet," Strawn agreed, his grey eyes twinkling. + +"Take your crew on in, chief," Dundee urged. "I'll stick till midnight +or longer, if you don't mind. You can arrange to have a couple of the +boys to relieve me about twelve.... And by the way, will you telephone +me the minute you get hold of Ralph Hammond?" + +"Well, maybe not so quick as all that," Strawn drawled. "I'll take the +first crack at _that_ baby, my lad!... Not so dumb, am I, Bonnie-boy? +Not so dumb! I can put two and two together as well as the next +one--pretty near as well as the district attorney's new 'special +investigator!'" + + * * * * * + +Although Bonnie Dundee had taken Captain Strawn's none-too-gentle +parting gibe with good grace, it was a very thoughtful young detective +who set about locking himself into the house in which Nita Selim had +been murdered. + +Captain Strawn had beaten him to the job that evening by at least twenty +minutes. Had the old detective stumbled upon something which Dundee, for +all his spectacular thoroughness, had overlooked or had been unable to +turn up because Strawn had suppressed it? + +What if Strawn's parting boast was not an idle one, and he really had +"the goods" on Ralph Hammond? Had the old chief been laughing up his +sleeve during the farce of playing out the "death hand at bridge," and +during the merciless quizzing of old Judge Marshall? + +But Dundee's native common sense quickly routed his gloom. Captain +Strawn was too direct in his methods, too afraid of antagonizing the +rich and influential, to have permitted even a "special investigator" +from the district attorney's office to torment those twelve people +needlessly. Probably Strawn, feeling a little hurt at having played +second fiddle all evening, had simply wanted to get him fussed, was even +now chuckling over the effect of his parting boast.... + +Much cheered, Dundee lingered in the dining room whose windows he had +made fast against any intrusion, so that his task of guarding the house +alone might be minimized. As he glanced at the table, with its silver +plates heaped with tiny sandwiches of caviar and anchovy paste, its +little silver boats of olives and sweet pickles, he discovered that he +was very hungry indeed.... + +As he munched the drying sandwiches and sipped charged water--the +various liquors for cocktails on the sideboard offered a temptation +which he sternly resisted--Dundee's thought boiled and churned, throwing +up picture after picture of Nita Selim, alive and then dead; of Penny +Crain--bless her!--helping him at the expense of her loyalty to +life-long friends; of Flora Miles, lying desperately and then confessing +to a shameful theft; of Karen Marshall gallantly playing out the "death +hand"; of Karen's stricken, childish face when she learned that her +elderly husband had met and at least flirted with Nita Selim at a chorus +girls' party.... + +At that last picture Dundee flushed so that his skin prickled. Had he +made a fool of himself, or was he right in his suspicion that Hugo +Marshall had given Nita Selim this cottage rent free? That point should +be easily settled, at any rate.... + +Ruefully reflecting that appetizers do not make a satisfactory meal he +betook himself to the dead woman's bedroom.... Yes, his memory had +served him well. Here was her desk--a small feminine affair of rosewood, +set in the corner of the room nearest the porch door. + +The desk was not locked. As Dundee let down the slanting lid, whose +polish was marred with many fingerprints, he saw that its contents were +in a hopeless jumble. So Strawn had beaten him to this, too! Had he +found an all-important clue in one of the many little pigeon-holes and +drawers, stuffing it into his pocket just before a bumptious young +"special investigator" had arrived? + +But Dundee's returning gloom was instantly dispelled. Here was Nita's +checkbook, a flutter of filled-in stubs attached to only one remaining +blank check. So Nita had banked with the Hamilton National Bank, of +which John C. Drake--who apparently hated his fattish, fussy wife--was a +vice president! Another tiny fact to be tucked away.... She had opened +her account, apparently, on April 21, the day of her arrival in +Hamilton--the guest and employe of Mrs. Peter Dunlap. Probably Lois +Dunlap had advanced her the two hundred dollars as first payment for her +prospective work in organizing a Little Theater movement in Hamilton. + +Turning rapidly through stubs, Dundee stopped twice, whistling softly +with amazement each time. For on April 28th, and again on May 5th, Nita +Selim had deposited $5,000! Where had she got the money? Were the sums +transfers from accounts in New York banks? But it was hardly likely that +a little Broadway hanger-on had had so much hard cash on deposit. Then +where had she got it--$5,000 at a time, here in Hamilton? + +_Blackmail!_ + +Hastily but thoroughly Dundee ran through the remaining check +stubs.... _No record at all of a check for rent made out to Judge Hugo +Marshall!_ + +But there was a stub that interested him. Check No. 17--Nita had spent +her money lavishly--was filled in as follows, in Nita's pretty backhand: + + No. 17 $9,000 + _May 9, 1930_ + To _Trust Dept._ + For _Investment_ + +Had John C. Drake, who as vice president in charge of trusts and +investments had doubtless handled the check, wondered at all where the +$9,000 had come from? + +One other revelation came out of the twenty-three filled-in stubs. On +every Monday Nita Selim had drawn a check for $40 to her maid, Lydia +Carr. + +Again Dundee whistled. Forty dollars a week was, he wagered to himself, +more money than any other maid in Hamilton was lucky enough to receive! +Nita in a new light--an over-generous Nita! Or--_was Nita herself paying +blackmail on a small scale_? + +He reached into a pigeon-hole whose contents--a thick packet of unused +envelopes--had not been disturbed by Strawn, and was about to remove an +envelope in which to place the all-important checkbook, when he noticed +something slightly peculiar. An envelope in the middle of the packet +looked rather thicker than an empty case should.... + +_But it was not empty._ And across the face of the expensive, +cream-colored linen paper was written, in that same pretty, very legible +backhand: + + TO BE OPENED IN CASE OF MY DEATH + --JAUNITA LEIGH SELIM + +His heart hammering painfully, and his fingers trembling, Dundee drew +out the two close-written sheets of creamy notepaper. After all, who had +better right than he to open it? Was he not the representative of the +district attorney?... And he hadn't damaged the envelope. It had opened +very easily indeed--its flap had yielded instantly to his thumb-nail.... + +Wait! It had been _too easy_! Before unfolding the letter or whatever it +was, Dundee examined the flap of the envelope.... Yes! He was not the +first to open it since its original sealing. God grant he hadn't +destroyed any tell-tale fingerprints in his criminal haste to learn any +secret that Nita Selim had recorded here!... Perhaps Nita herself had +unsealed the letter to make an addition or a correction? + +Well, whatever damage had been done was done now, and he might as well +read.... + +Five minutes later Bonnie Dundee was racing through the dining room, +pushing open the swinging door that led into the butler's pantry. Where +the devil were the steps that led down into the basement? A precious +minute was lost before he discovered that a door in the dark back hall +opened upon the steep stairs.... + +An unshaded light, dangling from the ceiling, revealed the furnace in +one corner of the big basement, laundry equipment in another. He plunged +on.... That must be the maid's room, behind that closed door.... God! +What if she had escaped, while he had been munching caviar and anchovy +sandwiches? A fine guard he'd been!... And it wasn't as if he hadn't had +a dim suspicion of the truth.... + +The knob turned easily. He flung open the door. And then his knees +nearly gave way, so tremendous was his relief. For there, on the thin +mattress of a white-enameled iron bed, lay the woman he so ardently +desired to see. + +She had apparently been asleep, and the noise he had made had startled +her into panicky wakefulness. Instinctively her hand flew to the ruined +left side of her face--that hideous expanse of livid flesh, scarred and +ridged so that it did not look human.... + +"What--? Who--?" Lydia Carr gasped, struggling to a sitting position, +only to fall back as nausea swept over her. + +"You remember me?" Dundee panted. "Dundee of the district attorney's +office. I questioned you this afternoon--" + +The woman closed the single eye that had escaped the accident which had +marred her face so hideously. "I--remember.... I'm sick.... I told you +all I know--" + +"Lydia, why didn't you tell me that it was your mistress, Mrs. Selim who +did--that?" Dundee demanded sternly, pointing to the woman's sightless +left eye and ruined cheek. + + + + +CHAPTER TWELVE + + +Lydia Carr, still clothed in the black cotton dress and white apron of +her maid's uniform, struggled to a sitting position on the edge of her +basement room bed. + +"No, no! That's a lie! It was an accident, I tell you--my own +fault!... Who dared to say Nita--Miss Nita--did it?" + +"Better lie down, Lydia," Dundee suggested gently. "I won't want you +fainting. You've had a hard day with the abscessed tooth, the dope the +dentist gave you, and--other things. I don't wonder that you lost your +head, went a little crazy, perhaps--" + +The detective's sinister implication seemed to make no impression at all +upon the woman with the scarred face. + +"I asked you--" she gasped, her single eye glaring at him, "who dared +say Nita burned me?" + +"It was Nita herself who told me," Dundee answered softly. "Just a few +minutes ago." + +"Holy Mother!" the maid gasped, and crossed herself dazedly. + +Let her think the dead woman had appeared to him in a vision, Dundee +told himself. Perhaps her confession would come the quicker-- + +The maid began to rock her gaunt body, her arms crossed over her flat +chest. "My poor little girl! Even in death she thinks of me, she's +sorry--. She sent me a message, didn't she? Tell me! She was always +trying to comfort me, sir! The poor little thing couldn't believe I'd +forgiven her as soon as she done it--. Tell me!" + +"Yes," Dundee agreed, his eyes watching her keenly. "She sent you a +message--of a sort.... But I can't give it to you until you have told me +all about the--accident in which you were burned." + +"I'll tell," Lydia promised eagerly. Gone were the harshness and +secretiveness with which she had met his earlier questioning.... "You +see, sir, I loved Miss Nita--I called her Nita, if you don't mind, sir. +I loved her like she was my own child. And she was fond of me, too, +fonder of me than of anybody in the world, she used to tell me, when +some man had hurt her bad.... And there was always some man or other, +she was so sweet and so pretty.... Well, I found her in the bathroom one +day, just ready to drink carbolic acid, to kill her poor little self--" + +"When was that, Lydia?" Dundee interrupted. + +"It was in February--Sunday, the ninth of February," Lydia went on, +still rocking in an agony of grief. "I tried to take the glass out of +her hands. She'd poured a lot of the stuff out of the bottle.... You +see, she was already in a fit of hysterics, or she'd never have tried to +kill herself.... It was my own fault, trying to take the glass away from +her, like I did--" + +"She flung the acid into your face?" Dundee asked, shuddering. + +"She didn't know what she was doing!" the woman cried, glaring at him. +"Nearly went out of her mind, they told me at the hospital, because +she'd hurt me.... A private room in the best hospital in New York she +got for me, trained nurses night and day, and so many doctors fussing +around me I wanted to fire the whole outfit and save some of my poor +girl's money--which I don't know till this day how she got hold of--" + +Dundee let her sob and rock her arms for a while unmolested. In February +Nita Selim had had to borrow money to pay doctor and hospital bills. Had +borrowed it or "gold-dug" it.... And in May she had been rich enough to +have $9,000 to invest! + +"Lydia, you never forgave Nita Selim for ruining your life as well as +your face!" Dundee charged her suddenly. + +"You're a liar!" she cried passionately. "I know what I felt. It's _my_ +face and _my_ life, ain't it? I tell you I didn't even bear a grudge +against her--the poor little thing! Eating her heart out with sorrow for +what she'd done--till the very day of her death! Always trying to make +it up to me--paying me too much money for the handful of work I had to +do, what with her eating out nearly all the time and throwing away +stockings the minute they got a run in 'em--. Forgive her? I'd have +crawled from here to New York on my hands and knees for Nita Leigh!" + +Dundee studied her horribly scarred face, made more horrible now by what +looked like genuine grief. + +"Lydia, who was the man over whom your mistress wanted to commit +suicide?" + +The single, tear-reddened eye glared at him suspiciously, then became +wary. "I don't know." + +"Was it Dexter Sprague, Lydia?" + +"Sprague?" She spat the name out contemptuously. "No! She didn't know +him then, except to speak to at the moving picture studio." + +"When did he become her--lover, Lydia?" Dundee asked casually. + +The woman stiffened, became menacingly hostile. "Who says he was her +lover? You can't trick me, Mr. Detective! I'd cut my tongue out before +I'd let you make me say one word against my poor girl!" + +Dundee shrugged. He knew a stone wall when he ran up against one. + +"Lydia," he began again, after a thoughtful pause, "I have proof that +Nita Selim was sure you had never forgiven her for the injury she did +you." His fingers touched the letter in his pocket--that incredible +"Last Will and Testament" which Nita had written the day before she was +murdered.... + +"And that's another lie!" the woman cried, shaking with anger. She +struggled to her feet, stood swaying dizzily a moment. "Come upstairs +with me to her room, and I'll show _you_ some proof that I had forgiven +her!... Come along, I tell you!... Trying to make me say _I_ killed my +poor girl, when I'd have died for her--Come on, I tell you!" + +And Dundee, wondering, beginning to doubt his own conviction a +little--that conviction which had sprung full-grown out of Nita's +strange, informal will, and which had seemed to explain +everything--followed Lydia Carr from her basement room to the bedroom in +which Nita had been murdered.... + +"See this!" and Lydia Carr snatched up the powder box from the +dressing-table. Her long, bony fingers busied themselves with frantic +haste, and suddenly, into the silence of the room came the tinkle of +music. "_I_ bought her this--for a present, out of my own money, soon as +I got out of the hospital!" the maid's voice shrilled, over the slow, +sweet, tinkly notes. "It's playing her name song--_Juanita_. It was +playing that song when she died. I stood there in the doorway and heard +it--" and she pointed toward the door leading from Nita's room into the +back hall. "She loved it and used it all the time, because I gave it to +her.... And _this_!" + +She set the musical powder box upon the dressing-table and rushed across +the room to one of the several lamps that Dundee had noticed on his +first survey of the room. It was the largest and gaudiest of the +collection--a huge bowl of filigreed bronze, set with innumerable +stones, as large as marbles, or larger. Red, yellow and green stones +that must have cast a strange radiance over the pretty head that had +been wont to lie just beneath it, on the heaped lace pillows of the +chaise lounge, Dundee reflected. + +As if Lydia had read his thoughts, she jerked at the little chain which +hung from the bottom of the big bronze bowl against the heavy metal +standard. + +"I gave her this--saved up for it out of my own money!" she was assuring +him with savage triumph in proving her point. "And she loved it so she +brought it with us when we came from New York--It won't light! It was +working all right last night, because my poor little girl was lying +there, looking so pretty under the colored lights--" + +With strong twists of her big hands Lydia began to unscrew the filigreed +bronze bowl. As she lifted it off she exclaimed blankly: + +"Why, look! The light bulb's--_broke_!" + +But Dundee had already seen--not only the broken light bulb but the +explanation of the queer noise that Flora Miles had described +hysterically over and over, as "a bang or a bump." The chaise lounge +stood between the two windows that opened upon the drive. And at the +head of it stood the big lamp, just a few inches from the wall and only +a foot from the window frame upon which Dr. Price had pencilled the +point to indicate the end of the imaginary line along which the shot +which killed Nita Leigh Selim had traveled. + +The "bang or bump" which Flora Miles had heard had been made by the +knocking of the big lamp against the wall. Undoubtedly the one who had +bumped into the lamp was Nita's murderer--or murderess--in frantic haste +to make an escape. + +_And that meant that the murderer had fled toward the back hall, not +through the window in front of which he had stood, not through the door +leading onto the front porch...._ A little progress, at least! + +But Lydia was not through proving that she had forgiven her mistress. +She was snatching things from Nita's clothes closet-- + +"See these mules with ostrich feathers?--I give 'em to my girl!... And +this bed jacket? I embroidered the flowers on it with my own hands--" + +Through her flood of proof Dundee heard the whir of a car's engine, then +the loud banging of a car's door.... Running footsteps on the flagstone +path.... Dundee reached the front door just as the bell pealed shrilly. + +"Hello, Dundee! Awfully glad I caught you before you left.... Is poor +Lydia still here?" + +"Come in, Mr. Miles," Dundee invited, searching with a puzzled frown the +round, blond face of Tracey Miles. "Yes, Lydia is still here.... Why?" + +"Then I'm in luck, and I think Lydia is, too--poor old girl!... You see, +Dundee," Miles began to explain, as he took off his new straw hat to mop +his perspiring forehead, "the crowd all ganged up when our various cars +reached Sheridan Road, and by unanimous vote we elected to drive over to +the Country Club for a meal in one of the small private dining rooms--to +escape the questions of the morbidly curious, you know--" + +"Yes.... What about it?" Dundee interrupted impatiently. + +"Well, I admit we were all pretty hungry, in spite of--well, of course +we were all fond of Nita, but--" + +"What about Lydia?" Dundee cut him short. + +"I'm getting to it, old boy," Miles protested, with the injured air of +an unappreciated small boy. "While we were waiting for our food, +somebody said, 'Poor Lydia! What's going to become of _her_?' And +somebody else said that it was harder on her--Nita's death, I mean--than +on anybody else, because Nita was all she had in the world, and then +Lois--Lois is always practical, you know--ran to telephone Police +Headquarters, to see what had been done with Lydia, and to see if it +would be all right for Flora and me to take her home with us--" + +"Just a minute, Miles! Whom did Mrs. Dunlap talk to at Headquarters?" + +"Why, Captain Strawn, of course," Miles answered. "He told Lois that you +were still out here, questioning Lydia again, and that it was all right +with him, whatever you decided. So as soon as I had finished eating, I +drove over--" + +"Is Mrs. Miles with you?" Dundee interrupted again. + +"Well, no," Miles admitted uncomfortably. "You see, the girls felt a +little squeamish about coming back, even on an errand of mercy--" + +Dundee grinned. He had no doubt that Flora Miles had emphatically +refused the possibility of another gruelling interview. + +"Why do you and Mrs. Miles want to take Lydia home with you?" he asked. + +"To give her a home and a job," Miles answered promptly. "She knows us, +we're used to her poor old scarred face, and the youngsters, Tam and +Betty, are not a bit afraid of her. In fact, Betty pats that scarred +cheek and says, over and over, 'Poo Lyddy! Poo Lyddy! Betty 'oves +Lyddy!' and Tam--he's T. A. Miles, junior, you know, and we call him +Tam, from the initials, because he hates being called Junior and two +Tracey's are a nuisance--" + +"I gather that you want to hire Lydia as a nurse for the children," +Dundee interrupted the fond father's verbose explanations. + +"Right, old man! You see, our nurse left us yesterday--" + +"Wait here, Miles. I'll speak to Lydia. She's in Mrs. Selim's +bedroom.... By the way, Miles, since you and your wife are kind enough +to want to take Lydia in and give her a home and a job, I think it only +fair to tell you that it is highly improbable that Lydia Carr will take +any job at all." + +"You mean--?" Miles gasped, his ruddy face turning pale. "I say, Dundee, +it's absurd to think for a minute that good old faithful Lydia had a +thing to do with Nita's murder--" + +"I rather think you're right about that, Miles," Dundee interrupted. +"Now will you excuse me?" + +He found Lydia where he had left her--in her dead mistress' bedroom. The +tall, gaunt woman was crouching beside the chaise longue, her arms +outstretched to encircle a little pile of the gifts she claimed to have +given Nita Selim to prove that she bore no grudge for the terrible +injury her mistress had done her. At Dundee's entrance she flung up her +head, and the detective saw that tears were streaming from both the +sightless eye and the unharmed one. + +Taking his seat on the chaise longue, Dundee explained gently but +briefly the offer which Tracey Miles had just made. + +"They want--_me_?" she gasped brokenly, incredulously, and her fingers +faltered to her horrible cheek. "I didn't think anybody but my poor girl +would have me around--" + +"It is true they want you," Dundee assured her. "But you don't have to +take a job now unless you wish, Lydia." + +"What do you mean?" the maid demanded harshly, her good eye hardening +with suspicion. + +"Lydia," the young detective began slowly, and almost praying that he +was doing the right thing, "when I woke you up tonight to question you, +I said that Nita herself had just told me that it was she who had burned +your face.... And you asked me if she had also given you a message--" + +"Yes, sir!" the maid interrupted with pitiful eagerness. "And you'll +tell me now? You don't still think _I_ killed her, do you?" + +"No, I don't think you killed your mistress, Lydia, but I think, if you +would, you could help me find out who did," Dundee assured her gravely. +"No, wait!" and he drew from his pocket the envelope inscribed: "To Be +Opened In Case of My Death--Juanita Leigh Selim." + +"Do you recognize this handwriting, Lydia?" + +"It was wrote by her own hand," the maid answered, her voice husky with +tears. "Is that the message, sir?" + +"You never saw it before?" Dundee asked sharply. + +"No, no! I didn't know my poor girl was thinking about death," Lydia +moaned. "I thought she was happy here. She was tickled to pieces over +being taken up by all them society people, and on the go day and +night----" + +"Lydia, this is Mrs. Selim's last will and testament," Dundee +interrupted, withdrawing the sheets slowly and unfolding them. "It was +written yesterday, and it begins: + +"'Knowing that any of us may die any time, and that I, Juanita Leigh +Selim, have good cause to fear that my own life hangs by a thread that +may break any minute--'" + +"What did my poor girl mean?" Lydia Carr cried out vehemently. "She +wasn't sick, ever--" + +"I think, Lydia, that she feared exactly what happened today--murder! +And I want you to tell me who it was she feared. _For I believe you +know!_" + +The woman shrank from him, until she was sitting on her lean haunches, +her hands flattening against her cheeks. For a long minute she did not +attempt to answer. Her right eye widened enormously, then slowly grew as +expressionless as the milky left ball. + +"I--don't--know," she said dully. Then, with vehement emphasis: "_I +don't know!_ If I did, I'd kill him with my own hands!" + +Dundee had no choice but to take her word. + +"You said there was a message for me," Lydia reminded him. + +"I'll read you her will first," Dundee said quietly, lifting the sheets +again: "I am herewith setting down my last will and testament, in my own +handwriting. I do here and now solemnly will and bequeath to my faithful +and beloved maid, Lydia Carr, all property, including all moneys, stocks +and personal belongings of which I die possessed--" + +"To--_me_?" Lydia whispered. "To me?" + +"To you, Lydia," Dundee assured her gravely. + +"Then I can have all her pretty clothes to keep always?" + +"And her money, to do as you like with, if the court accepts this will +for probate--as I think it will, regardless of the fact that it is very +informal and was not witnessed." + +"But--she didn't have any money," Lydia protested. "Nothing but what +Mrs. Dunlap paid her in advance for the work she was going to do--" + +"Lydia, your mistress died possessed of nearly ten thousand dollars!" +Dundee fixed her bewildered grey eye with his blue ones. "_Ten thousand +dollars!_ All of which she got right here in Hamilton! And I want you to +tell me how she got it!" + +"But--I don't know! I don't believe she had it!" + +Dundee shrugged. Either this woman would perjure her soul to protect her +mistress' name from scandal, or she really knew nothing. + +"That is all of the will itself, Lydia," he went on finally, "except her +command that her body be cremated without funeral services of any kind, +and that nobody be allowed to accompany the remains to the crematory +except yourself and Mrs. Peter Dunlap, in case her death takes place in +Hamilton--" + +"She _did_ love Mrs. Dunlap," Lydia sobbed. "Oh, my poor little girl--" + +"And there is also a note for you, which I took the liberty of reading, +in which Mrs. Selim minutely describes the clothes in which she wishes +to be cremated, as well as the fashion in which her hair is to be +dressed--" + +"Let me see it!" Lydia plunged forward on her knees and snatched at the +papers he held. "For God's sake, let me see!" + + + + +CHAPTER THIRTEEN + + +"I'll read you the note, Lydia, but I can't let you touch it," Dundee +said sternly, taking good care that she should not touch either the +paper on which the note to herself had been written or the sheet which +contained that strange, informal will. Informal, in spite of the dead +woman's obvious effort to couch it in legal phraseology.... + +Was Lydia's frenzy assumed? Did she hope to leave fingerprints now which +would account for fingerprints she had already left upon it? Was it not +possible that Lydia's had been the prying fingers which had opened the +envelope after Nita Selim had sealed it with God only knew what fears in +her heart? If so, Lydia Carr had found that she was her mistress' sole +legatee.... _Revenge, coupled with greed...._ What better motive for +murder could a detective ask? And who had had so good an opportunity as +Lydia Carr to dispose of the weapon? + +The woman crouched back on her haunches, an agony of pleading in her +single eye. + +"Lydia, I think you know already what this note tells you," Dundee said +slowly. + +To his astonishment the maid nodded, the tears starting again. "I asked +her once what she wanted to keep that old dress for, and she--she said +I'd find out some day, but I never dreamed she'd want it for a--oh, my +God!--for a _shroud_!" + +For the second time that evening Lydia Carr completely routed Dundee's +carefully worked-up case against her. It was inconceivable, he told +himself, that a mind cunning enough to have executed this murder would +give itself away in such a fashion. If she had indeed pried among her +mistress' papers and found the will and note, would she not, from the +most primitive instinct of self-preservation, have pretended total +ignorance of the note's contents? + +"I'll read the note, Lydia," he said gently. "It is addressed: 'My +precious old Lydia'--" + +"She was always calling me that!" the maid sobbed. + +"And she writes: 'If you ever read this it will be because I'm dead, and +you'll know that I've tried to make it up to you the only way I knew. I +never could believe you really forgave me, but maybe you will now. And +there is one last thing I want you to do for me, Lydia darling. You +remember that old royal blue velvet dress of mine that you were always +sniffing at and either trying to make me give away or have made over? +And remember that I told you that you'd know some time why I kept it? +Well, I want you to lay me out in it, Lydia. Such a funny old-fashioned +shroud, isn't it?... But with dresses long again, maybe it won't look so +funny, and there'll be nobody but you and Lois to see me in it, because +I've said so in my will. And I want my hair dressed as it was the only +time I ever wore the royal blue velvet. A French roll, Lydia, with +little curls coming out the left side of it and hanging down to the left +ear. You brush the hair straight up the back of the head, gather it +together and tie a little bit of black shoestring around it, then you +twist the hair into a roll and spread it high, pinning it down on each +side of the head. _And don't forget the little curls on the left side!_ +I hope I have enough hair, but if it hasn't grown long enough, you +know where those switches are that I had made when I first bobbed my +hair.... You won't mind touching me when I'm dead, will you, Lydia? I do +love you.... Nita.'" + +Dundee was silent for a minute after he had finished reading the strange +note and had returned it to the envelope, along with the will. At last, +speaking against a lump in his throat, he broke in on the desolate +sobbing of Nita's maid: + +"Lydia, how old was your mistress?" + +"You won't put it in the papers, will you?" Lydia pleaded. "She--she +was--thirty-three. But not a soul knew it except me--" + +"And will you tell me how old the royal blue velvet dress is?" he +continued. "Also, how long since girls dressed their hair in a French +roll?" + +"The dress is twelve or thirteen years old," Lydia said, her voice dull +now with grief. "I know, because I used to do dressmaking during the +war. And it was during the war that girls wore their hair that way--I +did mine in a Psyche knot, but the French roll was more stylish." + +"Did your mistress ever tell you about the one time she wore the dress?" + +Lydia shook her head. "No. She wouldn't talk about it--just said I'd +know sometime why she kept it.... Royal blue velvet, it is, the skirt +halfway to the ankles, and sleeves with long pointed ends, lined with +gold taffeta, and finished off with gold tassels. It's in a dress bag, +hanging in her closet." + +"Do you think it was her wedding dress, Lydia?" Dundee suggested, the +idea suddenly flashing into his mind. + +"I don't know. I didn't ask her that," Lydia denied dully. "Can I take +it with me--and the switches she had made out of her curls?" + +"I'll have to get authority to remove anything from the house, Lydia," +Dundee told her. "But I am sure you will be permitted to follow Mrs. +Selim's instructions.... So you're going to accept the Miles' offer of a +job as nurse?" + +"Yes. I'd rather work. Mr. and Mrs. Miles have always been specially +nice to me, and I--I could love their children. They're not--afraid of +me--" + +"Perhaps you're wise," Dundee agreed. "By the way, Lydia, did Mrs. Selim +have a pistol in her possession at any time during the past week?" + +The maid shook her head. "Not that I seen. And if she'd got one because +she was afraid, she'd a-kept it handy and I'd a-been bound to see it." + +Convinced of her sincerity, he was about to let her go to pack her bag +when another belated question occurred to him. "Lydia, will you tell me +what engagements Mrs. Selim had this last week?" + +The woman scowled, fanatically jealous, Dundee guessed, of her mistress' +reputation, but at last she answered defiantly: "Let me see.... Mr. +Sprague had Sunday dinner here, and spent the afternoon, but Sunday +night it was young Mr. Ralph Hammond. He come whenever she'd let +him.... Monday night?... Oh, yes! She had dinner at the Country Club +with the Mileses and the Drakes and the Dunlaps. Mr. Miles brought her +home, because Mr. Sprague wasn't invited.... Tuesday night--let me +think!... Yes, that's the night Judge Marshall was here. Nita had sent +for him to talk about finishing up the attic--" + +So that was the "business engagement" which Judge Marshall had hemmed +and hawed over, Dundee reflected triumphantly. + +"--and Wednesday night," Lydia was continuing, with a certain pride in +her mistress' popularity, "she was at a dinner party at the Dunlaps'." + +"Did Mr. Peter Dunlap ever call on Mrs. Selim--alone?" + +"_Him?_" Lydia was curiously resentful. "He wasn't ever here. Nita said +to me she wished Mr. Peter liked her as well as Mis' Lois did." + +"Thursday night?" + +"Mr. Ralph Hammond took her somewhere to dinner, to some other town, I +think, but I wasn't awake when they got home. Nita never would let me +set up for her--said I needed my rest. So I always went to bed early." + +"And yesterday--Friday?" Dundee demanded tensely. For Friday she had +been driven to making her last will and testament.... + +"She was home all day, but about half past four Mr. Drake came," Lydia +said slowly, as if she too were wondering. "She was awfully restless, +couldn't set still or eat. I ought to have suspicioned something, but +she was often like that--lately. Mr. Drake stayed about an hour. I +didn't see him leave, because I was cooking Nita's dinner.... But little +good it did, because she didn't eat it, so there was plenty for Mr. +Sprague when he dropped in about seven." + +"Did Sprague spend the evening?" + +"I guess so, but I don't know. Nita made me take the Ford and drive into +town for a picture show. She was in bed when I got back, and--" but she +checked herself hastily. + +"Did Nita seem strange--troubled, excited? Did she look as if she'd been +crying?" Dundee prodded. + +"I didn't see her," the maid acknowledged. "I knocked on her door, but +she told me to go on to bed, that she wouldn't need me. But now I think +back, her voice sounded queer.... Maybe she _was_ crying, but I don't +know--" + +"And this morning?" + +"She seemed all right--just excited about the party and worried about my +tooth. Mr. Ralph Hammond come to make the estimates on finishing up the +top floor, and we left him here--" + +"What was her attitude toward Mr. Miles when he dropped in on her this +morning?" Dundee interrupted. + +"Mr. Miles?" Lydia echoed, frowning. "He wasn't here this morning, or if +he was, it was after Nita and I left for town." + +While the maid was packing a bag, which Dundee would examine before she +was allowed to take it away with her, the detective rejoined Tracey +Miles, who had made himself as comfortable as possible in the living +room. + +"Lydia's going with you, and is grateful for your wife's kindness," +Dundee informed him, and felt his heart warm to the boresome, +egotistical little cherub of a man when he saw how Miles' face lit up +with real pleasure. "By the way, Miles, you saw Ralph Hammond when you +called here this morning, didn't you?" + +"Yes," Miles answered with some reluctance. "He answered the door when I +rang and told me Lydia and Nita had gone into town." + +"Mr. Miles," Dundee began slowly, throwing friendliness and persuasion +into his voice, "I know how all you folks stick together, but I'd +appreciate it a lot if you'd tell me frankly whether you noticed +anything unusual in Hammond's manner this morning." + +"Unusual?" Miles repeated, frowning. "He was a little short with me +because he was busy, and, I suspect, a little jealous because I'd come +calling on Nita--" He broke off abruptly, in obvious distress. "Look +here, Dundee! I didn't mean to say that, but I suppose you'll find out +sooner or later.... Well, the fact is, the whole crowd knows Ralph +Hammond was absolutely mad about Nita Selim. Wanted to marry her, and +made no secret of it, though we all thought or hoped it would be little +Penny Crain. He's been devoted to Penny for years, and since Roger Crain +made a mess of things and skipped out, leaving Penny and her poor mother +high and dry, we've all done our best to throw Penny and Ralph together. +But since Nita came to town--" + +"Was Nita in love with Ralph?" Dundee cut in, rather curtly, for he had +a curious distaste for hearing Penny Crain discussed in this manner. + +"Sometimes we were sure she was," Miles answered. "She flirted with all +of us men--had a way with her of making every man she talked to think he +was the only pebble on the beach. But there was something special in the +way she looked at Ralph.... Yes, I think she _was_ in love with him! But +then again," he frowned, "she would treat him like a dog. Seemed to want +to drive him away from her--but she always called him back--Oh, Lord!" +he interrupted himself with a groan. "Now I suppose I _have_ put my foot +in it! You've got the damnedest way of making a chap tell everything he +would cut his tongue out rather than spill, Dundee! But just because a +young man's in love, and happens not to show up at a party, is no reason +to think he sneaked up to the house and killed the woman he loved and +wanted to marry. For I'm not so dumb that I haven't seen the drift of +your damnable questions, Dundee!... Do you know Ralph Hammond, by any +chance?" he concluded, his round face red with anger. + +"No--but I should like to meet him," Dundee retorted. "He seems quite +hard to locate this evening." + +"Well, when you do meet him," Tracey Miles began violently, his blue +eyes blazing with anger, "you'll soon find you've been barking up the +wrong tree! There's not a cleaner, finer, straighter--" + +"In fact, he is a friend of yours, Miles," Dundee answered soothingly, +"and I respect you for every word you've said.... By the way, did all of +you go to the Country Club for dinner after you left here?" + +Somewhat mollified, Miles answered: "All of us but Clive Hammond. He +said he was going to have a look around for Ralph himself. Seemed to +have an idea where he might find him.... And, oh, yes, Sprague +disappeared in the scramble. He hasn't a car and nobody thought of +offering him a lift. Guess he took a bus into Hamilton.... Ah! Here's +Lydia!... Hello, Lydia!" he called heartily to the woman who was +standing, tall and gaunt, in the doorway. "Mighty glad you're coming to +look after the kids!" + +From behind the black veil which draped her ugly black hat and hid her +scarred face, Lydia answered in the dull, harsh voice that was +characteristic of her: + +"Thank you, sir. I'll do my best." + +She made no protest when Dundee, with a word of embarrassed apology, +went rapidly through the heavy suitcase she had brought up from the +basement with her. And when he had finished his fruitless search, she +knelt and silently smoothed the coarse, utilitarian garments he had +disarranged. + +Five minutes later Dundee was alone in the house where murder had been +committed under such strange and baffling circumstances that afternoon. +He was not nervous, but again he made a tour of inspection of the first +floor and basement, looking into closets, and testing windows to make +sure they were all locked. Everywhere there were evidences of the +thoroughness of the police detectives who had searched for the weapon +with which Nita Selim had been murdered. In the basement, as he had +subconsciously noted on his headlong dash to question Lydia Carr, the +furnace doors swung open, and the lids of the laundry tubs had been left +propped up, after the unavailing search.... + +He plodded wearily up the basement stairs and on into the kitchen. +Perhaps the ice-box had something fit to eat in it--the fruit intended +for Nita's and Lydia's Sunday breakfast. Those caviar and anchovy +sandwiches had certainly not stuck with him long.... + +He was making his way toward the electric refrigerator when he stopped +as suddenly as if he had been shot. + +The kitchen door, which he had taken especial pains to assure himself +was locked, when he had made the rounds immediately after the departure +of Captain Strawn and his men, was standing slightly ajar! + +_Someone had entered this house!_ + +Dundee stared blankly at the door, which was equipped with a Yale lock. +Someone with a key.... But why had the door been left ajar? _To make +escape more noiseless?_ + +With the toe of his shoe Dundee pushed the door to and heard the click +of the lock, then, all thought of food routed from his mind, made a +quick but almost silent dash into the dining room to secure one of the +pair of tall wax tapers, which, in their silver candlesticks, served as +ornaments for the sideboard. + +If the intruder was still in the house he could be nowhere but in that +unfinished half of the gabled top story. The nearer stairs were those in +the back hall, and Dundee took them two at a time, regardless of the +noise. Who had preceded him stealthily?... By the aid of his lighted +candle he discovered an electric switch at the head of the stairs, +flicked it on, and found himself in a wide hall, one wall of which was +finished with buff-tinted plaster and with three doors, the other of +rough boards with but a single door. + +With his candle held high, so that its light should not blind him, and +well aware that it made him a perfect target, Dundee opened the +unpainted door and found himself in the dark, musty-smelling room that +had served Nita Selim and the Crains before her as a storeroom. From the +ceiling dangled a green cord ending in a cheap, clear-glass bulb, but +its light was sufficient to penetrate even the farthest low nooks made +by the three gables. He blew out his candle and dropped it, as useless +now. + +A quick tour convinced him that nothing human was concealed behind one +of Nita Selim's empty wardrobe trunks, or behind one of the several +pieces of heavy old furniture, undoubtedly left behind by the +dispossessed Crain family. + +Big footprints on the thick dust which coated the floor showed him that +he was being no more thorough than Captain Strawn's brace of +plainclothes detectives had been much earlier that evening. Two pairs of +giant footprints.... + +With an exclamation he discovered a smaller, narrow pair of prints, and +followed their winding trail all around and across the attic. And then +he remembered.... Ralph Hammond's footprints, of course, made that +morning as he went about his legitimate business of measuring and +estimating for the job of turning the storeroom into bedrooms and +bathrooms. + +Dundee had not realized that he was frightened until he was in the hall +again, facing one of the three doors in the plastered wall. With +surprise, and some amusement, he became aware that his hands were +trembling, and that his knees had a curious tendency to buckle. + +The fact that the door directly in front of him was open about two +inches served, for some odd reason, to steady his nerves. Pushing the +door wide open with his foot--for he never forgot the possibility of +incriminating fingerprints which might easily be obliterated, he +discovered a light switch near the door frame. + +The instant illumination from a ceiling cluster revealed a large +bedroom, and less clearly, another and smaller room beyond it, facing as +the house faced--toward the south. Knees and hands steady again, he +investigated the finished portion of the gabled story swiftly. A +charming layout, he told himself. Had Penny Crain once enjoyed this +delightful little sitting-room, with its tiny balcony built out upon the +sloping roof?... And it gave him pleasure to think that this big, +well-furnished but not fussily feminine bedroom had once been hers, as +well as the small but perfect bathroom whose high narrow window +overlooked the back garden. The closets, dresser drawers and highboy +drawers were completely empty, however, of any traces of her occupancy +or that of any other.... + +With these rooms going to waste, why--he suddenly asked himself--had +Nita Selim coaxed Judge Marshall to have the unfinished half of the +gabled attic turned into bedrooms and baths? Why couldn't Lydia have +slept up here, if Nita thought so much of her "faithful and beloved +maid"? + +But even as he asked himself the question Dundee realized that the +answer to it had been struggling to attract his attention. + +_These rooms had not been wasted!_ Someone had been occupying them as +late as last night! Weaving swiftly through the three rooms, like a +bloodhound on the scent, Dundee collected the few but sufficient proofs +to back up his intuitive conviction. A copy of _The Hamilton Evening +Sun_, dated Friday, May 23, left in an armchair in the sitting-room. All +windows raised about six inches from the bottom, so that the night +breeze stirred the hand-blocked linen drapes. And, clinging to these +drapes, the faint but unmistakable odor of cigarette smoke. Finally, +with a low cry of triumph, Bonnie Dundee flung back the colored linen +spread which covered the three-quarter bed and discovered that the +sheets and pillow cases, though clean, had, beyond the shadow of a +doubt, been slept upon. + +Bending so that his nose almost touched a pillow case he sniffed. +_Pomade!..._ Who was the man who had slept in this bed last night? + + + + +CHAPTER FOURTEEN + + +With the thrill of his discovery singing blithely along his nerves, +Bonnie Dundee, Special Investigator for the District Attorney, had at +first hugged the intention of following the new trail alone. Hadn't +Captain Strawn taunted him not too good-naturedly about his ability to +get along without the younger man's help? + +But he was glad, both selfishly and unselfishly, when, half an hour +later, he threw open the front door of dead Nita's house to the chief of +the Homicide Squad, Carraway, the fingerprint expert, and the two +plainclothesmen who had searched the top floor for the missing weapon or +the murderer himself soon after the murder had been committed. For if +Strawn needed his help, Dundee needed the expert machinery which Strawn +captained. And it was good to feel the grip of gratitude in the old +chief's handclasp and to see the almost shy twinkle of apology in his +hard old grey eyes.... + +Dundee led the way up the front stairs to the upper floor, glad to hear +the heavy tread of official feet behind him. + +"I guess you've got it all doped out who the Selim woman's gentleman +friend was," Strawn commented genially, as he followed Dundee into the +pleasant, big bedroom. + +"I believe I have, but I need Carraway to prove my hunch," Dundee +acknowledged. + +Eagerly, swiftly, he displayed his first tangible finds--the open +windows, the drapes smelling of cigarette smoke, the evening paper of +the day before, the faint odor and greasiness of barber's pomade upon +the pillow case of the bed which had clearly been slept in since the +linen was changed. + +"Now, Collins--Harmon--" Dundee whirled upon the two silent +plainclothesmen, "I want to know what you saw in these rooms when you +searched them early this evening that you don't see now. You looked into +the closets and drawers, of course?" + +"Yes, sir," Collins answered. "And they was all empty, Dundee. Me and +Harmon didn't waste time smelling pillow cases, and I admit we didn't +pay no attention to that there newspaper--" + +"_Empty!_" Dundee echoed. "Are you sure?... You, too, Harmon?" + +"What are you driving at, boy?" Captain Strawn asked indulgently. + +Briefly, with disappointment flattening his voice, Dundee told of his +finding the kitchen door ajar, after he had made sure it was locked on +his first rounds of the house. + +"I worked it out this way," he continued, despite Strawn's grin. "Dexter +Sprague was Nita's lover, as I had thought all along. He was in the +habit of spending the night here whenever Nita would give him an evening +of her company. He was here last night, according to the maid, Lydia +Carr. Nita sent her into Hamilton to a picture show. Nita and Sprague +quarreled last night, but I am positive he spent the night here anyway. +Certainly there was no actual rupture, since Sprague worded his note to +her as he did. I have another strong reason for thinking his belongings +were here at least until noon today, but that can wait for the moment. +Furthermore, I am positive that Sprague descended by the backstairs and +went around the house to join the cocktail party which was to follow the +hen bridge party." + +"How do you make that out, Bonnie?" Strawn asked, his grin wiped away. + +"Try to remember how Sprague looked when you first got here," Dundee +suggested. "I saw him twenty minutes after you did, but--_he was wearing +an immaculate stiff collar, and there were still traces of talcum powder +over a close shave_! And you will remember that he said he had made a +half hour's trip by bus, and had walked the quarter of a mile from the +bus stop on Sheridan Road to this house. It was a mighty hot afternoon, +chief!" + +"Not conclusive," Strawn growled. + +"Then here's another straw to add to the weight of my conclusion," +Dundee went on unshaken. "You remember that Janet Raymond was on the +front porch _watching for Sprague_, while the 'death hand of bridge' was +being played?... Oh, she tried to protect him.... Wait, I'll read you +the notes I made when I was questioning her. I looked them up while I +was waiting for you.... Here! I had said to Miss Raymond: 'You observed +Mr. Sprague toiling down the rutty road, hot and weary, but romantic in +the sunset?' And she answered, stammering: 'I--I wasn't looking that +way....' And I knew she was lying, knew that she had been taken +completely by surprise when Sprague suddenly appeared _from the rear of +the house_! What's more, she betrayed herself and him by admitting that +she was surprised. Then--because the girl is undoubtedly in love with +Sprague and was mortally afraid he had killed Nita Selim, she tried +frantically to throw suspicion on Lydia Carr, by telling how Lydia had +failed to answer Mrs. Dunlap's first ring--Good Lord! Wait a minute! I +want to think!" he interrupted himself to exclaim. + +After a full minute, while he had stood very still, with his fingers +pressed against his closed eyes, Dundee began slowly: + +"I believe that's it.... Listen, boys!" He turned to the two +plainclothesmen, urgent pleading in his voice. "Would you both take your +oath that there was no bag--say a small Gladstone overnight +bag--anywhere in these rooms when you searched them this evening?" + +The two detectives glanced at each other, their faces reddening. It was +Harmon, the older of the pair, who swallowed hard before answering: + +"We'd been told to look for a man hiding, and for a gun--" Then he +squared his shoulders as if to receive the blame like a man. "Yes, sir! +There was a little black grip on the closet shelf. I went through it +myself, but there wasn't no gun in it. Just a pair of pajamas and a +couple of shirts, one of 'em dirty, some socks and collars and a +shaving-kit--" + +Dundee drew a deep breath, and clapped the red-faced detective on the +back in high good humor. + +"There simply _had_ to be a bag somewhere!" he laughed. + +"This is the way of it, Strawn.... Nita and Sprague rowed last night. +Sprague tried to make it up, but Nita must have been through with him. +Probably told him last night to clear his things out and not come back. +She thought he had done so; probably he did leave before she got up. At +any rate she was so sure he was gone and his things with him that she +and Lydia went to town this morning and left Ralph Hammond here to go +through the place as freely as he liked, making his estimates on the job +of finishing up the other half of this floor. And Ralph--but let that +wait for the moment." + +"Got any real proof that it was Sprague who stayed here and not the +Hammond boy?" Strawn interrupted shrewdly. + +"I'm coming to the proof," Dundee assured him, "or rather, the rest of +the proof that I haven't already given you. You're damned hard to +convince, chief! But let me go on with my theory, which I think covers +the facts.... At luncheon, when Nita received that note from Sprague, I +imagine she got a hunch that he hadn't taken her seriously, that he had +not removed his belongings. You remember Penny Crain said Nita had Lydia +follow her into her bedroom, as soon as Nita got home from the +luncheon?... Well, it's my hunch that Nita asked Lydia if Sprague's +things were gone when she cleaned these rooms this morning, and that +Lydia said no. Nita then probably told Lydia to pack them herself, and I +feel positive that Lydia did so, for she must have felt safe when she +protested to me that Sprague was not Nita's lover. I also feel sure that +Sprague arrived at least half an hour before he said he did, by some +back path across the meadow; that he came up to these rooms that he +considered his, found his things packed, but went about shaving and +changing his shirt and collar, regardless. I also feel sure that Lydia +followed him upstairs to explain and impress upon him that Nita had +meant what she said. And it is quite likely that she was not through +picking up after him when he descended by the back stairs and surprised +Janet Raymond on the front porch. That accounts, of course, for Lydia's +not hearing the kitchen bell the first time Mrs. Dunlap rang." + +"Umm," Strawn grunted. "What about the proofs you're holding back?" + +"Come along, chief--you, too, Carraway!" Dundee answered, and led the +way into the bathroom. "I felt sure these rooms would yield a very +definite clue, even though Sprague, when he sneaked back tonight to get +his tell-tale bag, apparently made every effort to wipe his fingerprints +off the furniture and bathroom fixtures.... Now, Carraway, if you'll +step upon this little stool and look along the top of this medicine +cabinet, you'll find what I found--and didn't touch." + +The fingerprint expert did as he was told. When he stepped down he was +holding, between the very tips of his fingers, a safety razor blade. + +"No dust on it, you see," Dundee pointed out. "Now if you don't find +Dexter Sprague's fingerprints on it, my whole theory topples." + +"How am I going to know whose fingerprints they are till we get hold of +Sprague?" Carraway asked reasonably. + +"We don't need him--for that purpose, at least," Dundee assured him. +"Downstairs in the living room, on a little table in the southeast +corner of the room, you'll find a red glass ashtray which no one but +Dexter Sprague used all evening. It was clean and empty when I saw him +use it first. I think you'll find on it all the prints you need." + +"So you think Sprague killed her because she was through with him?" +Strawn asked. + +Dundee shook his head. "Since I don't like Dexter Sprague a little bit, +chief, I'd like to think so, but--" + + + + +CHAPTER FIFTEEN + + +Bonnie Dundee's first thought upon awakening that Sunday morning was +that it might prove to be rather a pity that his new bachelor apartment, +as he loved to call his three rooms at the top of a lodging house which +had once been a fashionable private home, faced south and west, rather +than east. At the Rhodes House, whose boarding-house clamor and lack of +privacy he had abandoned upon taking the flattering job and decent +salary of "Special Investigator attached to the District Attorney's +office," he had grown accustomed to using the hot morning sun upon his +reluctant eyelids as an alarm clock. + +But--he continued the train of thought, after discovering by his watch +that it was not late; only 8:40--it was pretty darned nice having +"diggings" like these. Quiet and private. For he was the only tenant +now on the top floor. His pleased, lazy eyes roved over the plain +severity but solid comfort of his bedroom, and on past the open door to +take in appreciatively the equally comfortable and masculine living +room.... Pretty nice! That leather-upholstered couch and armchair had +been a real bargain, and he liked them all the better for being rather +scuffed and shabby. Then his eyes halted upon a covered cage, swung from +a pedestal.... + +"Poor old Cap'n!... Must be wondering when the devil I'm going to get +up!" and he swung out of bed, lounged sleepily into the small living +room and whisked the square of black silk from the cage. + +The parrot, formerly the property of murdered old Mrs. Hogarth of the +Rhodes House, but for the past year the young detective's official +"Watson," ruffled his feathers, poked his green-and-yellow head between +the bars of his cage and croaked hoarsely: "Hullo! Hullo!" + +"Hullo, yourself, my dear Watson!" Dundee retorted. "Your vacation is +over, old top! It's back on the job for you and me both!... Which +reminds me that I ought to be taking a squint at the Sunday papers, to +see how much Captain Strawn thought fit to tell the press." + +He found _The Hamilton Morning News_ in the hall just outside his living +room door. + +"Listen, Cap'n.... 'NITA SELIM MURDERED AT BRIDGE'.... Probably the +snappiest streamer headline the News has had for many a day.... Now +let's see--" He was silent for two minutes, while his eyes leaped down +the lesser headlines and the column one, page one story of the murder. +Then: "Good old Strawn! Not a word, my dear Watson, about your absurd +master's absurd performance in having 'the death hand at bridge' +replayed. Not a word about Ralph Hammond, the missing guest! Not a word +about Mrs. Tracey Miles' being hidden away in the clothes closet while +her hostess was being murdered!... In fact, my dear Watson, not a word +about anything except Strawn's own theory that a hired gunman from New +York or Chicago--preferably Nita's home town, New York, of +course--sneaked up, crouched in her window, and bumped her off. _And_ +life-size photographs of the big footprints under the window to prove +his theory!... By golly, Cap'n! I clean forgot to tell my former chief +that I'd found Nita's will and note to Lydia! He'll think I deliberately +held out on him.... Well--I can't sit here all day gossiping with you, +'my dear Watson....' Work--much work--to be done; then--Sunday dinner +with poor little Penny." + +Four hours later a tired and dispirited young detective was climbing the +stairs of an ugly, five-story "walk-up" apartment house in which Penny +Crain and her mother had been living since the financial failure and +flight of the husband and father, Roger Crain. + +"Hello, there!" It was Penny's friendly voice, hailing him from the +topmost landing of the steep stairs. "All winded, poor thing?" + +His tired, unhappy eyes drank her in--the freshness and sweetness of a +domestic Penny, so different from the thorny little office Penny who +prided herself on her efficiency as secretary to the district +attorney.... Penny in flowered voile, with a saucy, ruffled white +apron.... But there were purplish shadows under her brown eyes, and her +gayety lasted only until he had reached her side. + +"Sh-h-h!--Have they found Ralph?" she whispered anxiously. + +He could only answer "No," and he almost choked on the word. + +"Mother's all of a twitter at my having a detective to dinner," she +whispered, trying to be gay again. "She fancies you'll be wearing size +11 shoes and a 'six-shooter' at your belt--Yes, Mother! It's Mr. +Dundee!" + +She did not look "all of a twitter," this pretty but rather faded +middle-aged little mother of Penny's. A gentle dignity and patient +sadness, which Dundee was sure were habitual to her, lay in the faded +blue eyes and upon the soft, sweet mouth.... + +But Mrs. Crain was ushering him into the living room, and its charm made +him forget for the moment that the Crains were to be pitied, because of +their "come-down" in life. For every piece of furniture seemed to be +authentic early American, and the hooked rugs and fine, brocaded damasks +allied themselves with the fine old furniture to defeat the ugliness +with which the Maple Court Apartments' architect had been fiercely +determined to punish its tenants. + +"'Scuse me! Gotta dish up!" Penny flung over her shoulder as she ran +away and left him alone with her mother. + +Dundee liked Mrs. Crain for making no excuses about a maid they could +not afford, liked the way she settled into a lovely, ancient +rocking-chair and set herself to entertain him while her daughter made +ready the dinner. + +Not a word was said about the horrible tragedy which had occurred the +day before in the house which had once been her home. They talked of +Penny's work, and the little gentlewoman listened eagerly, with only the +faintest of sighs, as Dundee humorously described Penny's fierce +efficiency and District Attorney Sanderson's keen delight in her work. + +"Bill Sanderson is a nice boy," the woman of perhaps 48 said of +Hamilton's 35-year-old district attorney. "It is nice for Penny to work +with an old friend of the family, or was--until--" + +And that was the nearest she came to mentioning the murder before Penny +summoned them to the little dining room. + +Because Penny was watching him and was obviously proud of her skill as a +cook--skill recently acquired, he was sure--Dundee ate as heartily as +his carefully concealed depression would permit. There was a beautifully +browned two-rib roast of beef, pan-browned potatoes, new peas, +escalloped tomatoes, and, for dessert, a gelatine pudding which Penny +proudly announced was "Spanish cream," the secret of which she had +mastered only that morning. + +"I was up almost at dawn to make it, so that it would 'set' in time," +she told him, and by the quiver of her lip Dundee knew that it was not +Spanish cream which had got her up.... + +"I'm going to help wash dishes," he announced firmly, and Penny, with a +quick intake of breath, agreed. + +"Hadn't you better take a nap, Mother?" she added a minute later, as +Mrs. Crain, with a slight flush on her faded cheeks, began to stack the +dessert dishes. "You mustn't lay a hand on these dishes, or Bonnie and I +will have our dishwashing picnic spoiled.... Run along now. You need +sleep, dear." + +"Not any more than you do, poor baby!" Mrs. Crain quavered, and then +hurried out of the room, since gentlewomen do not weep before strangers. + +"I called you 'Bonnie' so Mother would know we are really friends," +Penny explained, her cheeks red, as she preceded him through the +swinging door into the miniature kitchen. + +"You'll stick to that--being friends, I mean, no matter what happens, +won't you, Penny?" Dundee said in a low voice, setting the fragile +crystal dishes he carried upon the porcelain drainboard of the sink. + +"I knew you had something bad to tell me.... It's about--Ralph, I +suppose?" Her husky voice was scarcely audible above the rush of hot +water into the dishpan. "You'd better tell me straight off, Bonnie. I'm +not a very patient person.... Are they going to arrest Ralph when they +find him? There wasn't a word in the paper about him this morning--" + +"I'm afraid they are, Penny," Dundee told her miserably. "Captain Strawn +has a warrant ready, but of course--" + +"Oh, you don't have to tell me you hope Ralph isn't guilty!" she cut in +with sudden passionate vehemence. "Don't _I_ know he couldn't have done +it? They always arrest the wrong person first, the blundering idiots--" + +It was the thorny Penny again, the Penny with glittering eyes which +matched her nickname. But Dundee felt better able to cope with this +Penny.... + +"I'm afraid I'm the chief idiot, but you must believe that I'm sorry it +should be a friend of yours," he told her, and reached for the plate she +had rinsed of its suds under the hot water tap. + +"Shoot the works!" she commanded, with hard flippancy. "Of course I +might have known that Captain Strawn's theory about a gunman was just +dust in our eyes, and that only a miracle could keep you from fastening +on poor Ralph, since he and the gun are both missing.... Naturally it +wouldn't occur to you that it might be an outsider, someone who had +followed Nita and her lover, Sprague, from New York, to kill her for +having left him for Sprague.... Oh, no! Certainly not!" she gibed, to +keep from bursting into tears. + +"An outsider would hardly have had access to Judge Marshall's pistol and +Maxim silencer," he reminded her. "And Captain Strawn received a wire +from a ballistics expert in Chicago this morning, confirming our +conviction that the same gun which fired the bullets against Judge +Marshall's target fired the bullet which killed Nita Selim.... You've +washed that plate long enough. Let me dry it now.... And there are other +things, Penny--" + +"Such as--" she challenged in her angry, husky contralto. + +"Sprague admitted to me this morning, after I had confronted him with +proofs, that he sometimes slept in the upstairs bedroom--" + +"I told you they were lovers!" Penny interrupted. + +"--and that he slept there Friday night, after he and Nita had +quarreled. He still contends that the row was over that +movie-of-Hamilton business," Dundee went on, as if she had not spoken. +"He admitted also that Nita had told him to take his things away when he +left Saturday morning, but he says it was only because she didn't want +Ralph Hammond to find a man's belongings there if he had occasion to go +into the upstairs rooms in making his estimates for the finishing-up of +the other side. But he contends, and Lydia Carr, whom I also saw again +this morning, supports him in it, that he stayed in the house +occasionally when Nita was particularly nervous about being alone, and +that they were _not_ lovers." + +"Pooh!... Don't wipe the flowers off that plate. Here's another." + +"I'm inclined to say 'Pooh!', too, Penny," Dundee assured her, "but +Tracey Miles told me last night when he came to get Lydia that Nita +really seemed to be in love with Ralph--part of the time, at least." + +"Nita thought enough of Dexter Sprague to send for him to come down +here, and to root her head off for him to get the job of making the +movie," Penny reminded him fiercely, making a great splashing in the +dishpan. + +"Then--_you_ don't think she was in love with Ralph?" Dundee asked. + +"Oh, _I don't know_!" the girl cried. "I thought so sometimes--had the +grace to hope so, anyway, since Ralph was so crazy about her." + +"That's the point, Penny," Dundee told her gently. "Everyone I've talked +to this morning, including Sprague, seems sure that Ralph Hammond was +mad about Nita Selim." + +"So of course he would kill her!" Penny scoffed bitterly. + +"Yes, Penny--when he discovered Sprague's easily-recognized cravats +draped over the mirror frame in a bedroom in Nita's house.... For they +were there to be seen when Ralph went into that bedroom yesterday +morning." + +"How do you know he saw them?" + +"Because he left this behind him," Dundee admitted reluctantly, and +wiped his hands before drawing an initialed silver pencil from his +breast pocket. "I found it under the edge of the bed. The initials are +R. H." + +"Yes, I recognize it," Penny admitted, turning sharply away. "I gave it +to him myself, for a Christmas present. I thought I could afford to give +silver pencils away then. Dad hadn't bolted yet--" She crooked an elbow +and leaned her face against it for a moment. Then she flung up her brown +bobbed head defiantly. "Well?" + +"Ralph must have been--well, in a pretty bad way, since he loved Nita +and wanted to--marry her," Dundee persisted painfully. "Remember that +Polly Beale found him still there when she stopped to offer Nita a lift +to Breakaway Inn. It is not hard to imagine what took place. We _know_ +that Polly curtly cancelled her luncheon engagement with Nita and the +rest of you, and went into town with Ralph, after making sure that Clive +would join them. I saw young Hammond myself for an instant, without +knowing who he was, and I remember now thinking that he looked far too +ill to eat. I was lunching at the Stuart House myself when they came +into the dining room, you know." + +"Plenty to hang him on, I see!" Penny cried furiously. + +"There's a little more, Penny," Dundee went on. "Polly Beale and Clive +Hammond were mortally afraid that Ralph _would_ come to the cocktail +party! I'm sure Clive made Ralph promise to stay away, and that both +Clive and Polly did not trust him to keep his promise. That is why, I am +sure, Clive beckoned Polly to join him in the solarium, without entering +the living room to speak to Nita. You remember they said they stayed +there all during the playing of--" + +"If you call it the 'death hand' again, I'll scream!" + +"All right.... They stayed there until Karen discovered the murder. I am +sure they chose that place because of its many windows--they could watch +for Ralph's car, dash out and head him off. Take him away by force, if +necessary, to keep him from making a scene. I believe they knew he had +murder in his heart, and that he would find a way to get a gun--" + +"Have you also found out that he stole Hugo's gun yesterday?" + +"I have found that it was possible for him to do so," Dundee said +slowly. "The butler was off for the afternoon until six o'clock. There +was no one in the house but the nursemaid and the-three-months-old +baby." + +"Well? And I suppose you think Clive and Polly didn't have a chance to +head Ralph off, as you say, but that they did see him running away after +he killed her?" Her voice was still brittle with anger, but there were +indecision and fear in it, too. + +"No," Dundee replied. "I don't think they saw him. I feel pretty sure he +came into the house by the back way, and through the back hall into +Nita's room. He must have known Clive and Polly would be on the lookout +for him.... At any rate, I have proof that whoever shot Nita from in +front of that window near the porch door fled toward the back hall." + +And he told her of the big bronze lamp, whose bulb had been broken, +reminding her of its place at the head of the chaise longue which was +set between the two west windows. + +"That was the 'bang or bump' Flora Miles heard while she was hiding in +the closet," he explained. "I suppose Flora has told all of you about +it?... I thought so. Muffled as she was in the closet, it is unlikely +that she could have heard Nita's frantic whisperings to Ralph.... I +doubt if he spoke at all. Nita must have been sure he was about to leave +by the porch door--" + +Dimly there came the ring of the telephone. With a curt word, Penny +excused herself to answer it. Dundee went on polishing glasses with a +fresh towel.... + +"Bonnie!" Penny was coming back, walking like a somnambulist, her brown +eyes wide and fixed. "That was--Ralph!... _And he doesn't even know Nita +is dead!_" + + + + +CHAPTER SIXTEEN + + +"Of course I recognized his voice instantly when he said, 'That you, +Penny?' and it's a wonder I didn't scream," said Penny Crain, fighting +her way up through dazed bewilderment to explain in detail, in answer to +Dundee's pelting questions. "I said, 'Of course, Ralph.... Where _have_ +you been?...' And _he_ said, in that coaxing, teasing voice of his that +I know so well: 'Peeved, Penny?... I don't blame you, honey. You really +ought not to let me come over and explain why I stood you up last night, +but you will, won't you?... Ni-i-ze Penny!...' That's exactly how he +talked, Bonnie Dundee! Exactly! _Oh, don't you see he couldn't know that +Nita is dead?_" + +"Did you ask him where he was?" Dundee asked finally. + +"No. I just told him to come on over, and he said I could depend on it +that he wouldn't waste any time.... Oh, Bonnie! What shall we _do_?" + +"Listen, Penny!" Dundee urged rapidly. "You must realize that I've got +to see and hear, but I don't want Ralph Hammond to see _me_ until after +he's had a talk with you. Will you let me eavesdrop behind these +portieres?... I know it's a beastly thing to do, but--" + +Penny agreed at last, and within ten minutes after that amazing +telephone call Dundee, from behind the portieres that separated the +dining and living room, heard Penny greeting her visitor in the little +foyer. She had played fair; had not gone out into the hall to whisper a +warning--if any warning was needed. + +He had seen Ralph Hammond enter the dining room of the Stuart House the +day before, in company with Clive Hammond and Polly Beale, when the +three had been strangers to him; but Dundee told himself now that he +would hardly have recognized the young man whom Penny was preceding into +her living room. The Ralph Hammond of Saturday had had a white, drawn +face and sick eyes. But this boy.... + +Like his older brother, Clive, Ralph Hammond had dark-red, curling hair. +But unlike his brother's, his eyes were a wide, candid hazel--the green +iris thickly flecked with brown. A little shorter than Clive, a trifle +more slender. But that which held the detective's eyes was something +less tangible but at once more evident than superlative masculine good +looks. It was a sort of shy joyousness and buoyance, which flushed the +tan of his cheeks, sang in his voice, made his eyes almost unbearably +bright.... + +Before Penny Crain, very pale and quiet, could sink into the chair she +was groping toward, Ralph Hammond was at her side, one arm going out to +encircle her shoulders. + +"Don't look like that, Penny!" Dundee heard him plead, his voice +suddenly humble. "You've every right to be sore at me, honey, but please +don't be. I know I've been an awful cad these last few weeks, but I'm +myself again. I'm cured now, Penny--" + +"Wait, Ralph!" Penny protested faintly, holding back as he would have +hugged her hard against his breast. "What about--Nita?" + +Dundee saw the young man's face go darkly red, but heard him answer +almost steadily: "I hoped you'd understand without making me put it into +words, honey.... I'm cured of--Nita. I can't express it any other way +except to say I was sick, and now I'm cured--" + +"You mean--" Penny faltered, but with a swift, imploring glance toward +Dundee, "--you don't love Nita any more? You can't deny you were +terribly in love with her, Ralph. Lois told us--told _me_ last night +that Nita had told her in strictest confidence that she had promised to +marry you, just Thursday night--" + +The boy's face was very pale as he dropped his hands from Penny's +shoulders, but Dundee, from behind the portieres, was not troubling to +spy for the moment. He was too indignant with Penny for having withheld +from him the vital fact of Nita's engagement to Ralph Hammond.... + +"That's true, Penny," Ralph was saying dully. "You have a right to know, +because I'm asking _you_ to marry me now.... I did propose to Nita again +Thursday night, and she did accept me. I confess now I was wild with +happiness--" + +"Why did she refuse you before?" Penny cut in, and Dundee silently +thanked her for asking the question he would have liked to ask himself. +"Was it because she wasn't sure she was in love with you?" + +"You're making it awfully hard for me, honey," the boy protested, +then admitted humbly, "Of course you want to know, and you should +know.... No, she said all along, almost from the first that she loved +me more than I could love her, but that there were--reasons.... _Two +reasons_, she always said, and once I asked her jealously if they were +both men, but she looked so startled and then laughed so queerly that I +didn't ask again.... Then I thought it might be because I was younger +than she was, though I can't believe she is more than twenty-three or so, +and I'm twenty-five, you know. And once I got cold-sick because I thought +she might still be married, but she said her husband was married again, +and I wasn't to ask questions or worry about him--" + +"But she _did_ accept you Thursday night?" Penny persisted. + +"Yes," the boy admitted, his face darkly flushed again. "This is awfully +hard, honey, but I'll tell you once for all and get it over with.... I +took her to dinner. We drove to Burnsville because she said she was sick +of Hamilton. When we were driving back she suddenly became very +queer--reckless, defiant.... And she asked me if I still wanted to marry +her, and I said I did. I asked her right then to say when, and she said +she'd marry me June first, but she added--" and the boy, to Dundee's +watching eyes, seemed to be genuinely puzzled again by what must have +sounded so odd at the time--"that she'd marry me June first _if she +lived to see the day_." + +"Oh!" Penny gasped, then, controlling her horror, she asked with what +sounded like real curiosity, "Then what--happened, Ralph? Why do you +propose to _her_ on Thursday and to _me_ on--on Sunday?" + +"A gorgeous actress sacrificed to the typewriter," Dundee told himself, +as he waited for Ralph Hammond's reluctant reply. + +"Can't we forget it, honey?... You do love me a little, don't you? Can't +you take my word for it that--I'm cured now--forever?" + +Penny's hands went up to cover her face, and Dundee had the grace to +feel very sorry indeed for her--sorry even if she intended to give her +promise to Ralph Hammond, as a sick feeling in his stomach prophesied +that she was about to do.... + +"How can I know you're really--cured, if I don't know what cured you?" + +"I suppose you're right," the boy admitted miserably. "There's no need +to ask you not to tell anyone else. Although I don't want to see her +again ever--. Why, Penny, I wouldn't even tell Polly and Clive +yesterday, after it happened, though Polly guessed and went upstairs--. +I tried to keep her back--." + +"I don't--quite understand, Ralph," Penny interrupted. "You mean +something happened when you were at Nita's house yesterday morning?" + +"Yes. Judge Marshall had promised Nita to have the unfinished half of +the top story turned into a maid's bedroom and bath and a guest bedroom +and bath. Clive let me go to make the estimates. Of course I was glad of +the chance to see Nita again--I hadn't been with her since Thursday +night. But she had to take Lydia in for a dentist's appointment, and +they left me alone in the house. I had to go into the finished half to +make some measurements, and in the bedroom I found--oh, God!" he +groaned, and pressed a fist against his trembling mouth. + +"You found that Dexter Sprague was staying there, was using the bedroom +that used to be mine--didn't you?" Penny helped him at last, in +desperation. + +"How did you know?" The boy stared at the girl blankly for a moment, +then seemed to crumple as if from a new blow. "I suppose it was common +gossip that Nita and Sprague were lovers, and I was the only one she +fooled!... My God! To think all of you would stand by and let me _marry_ +her--a cheap little gold-digger from Broadway, living with a cheap +four-flusher she couldn't get along without and had to send for--" + +"Did you--want to kill her, Ralph?" Penny whispered, touching one of his +knotted fists with a trembling hand. + +"Kill her?... Good Lord, _no_!" the boy flung at her violently. "I'm not +such an ass as that! You girls are all alike! Polly had so little sense +as to think I'd want to kill Nita and Sprague both! She couldn't see, +and neither could Clive, that all I wanted was to get away from +everybody and get so drunk I could forget what a fool I'd been--" + +"What _did_ you do, Ralph?" Penny asked urgently. + +"Why, I got drunk, of course," the boy answered, as if surprised at her +persistence. "Darling, you wouldn't believe me if I told you how much +rot-gut Scotch it took to put me under, but that filthy bootlegging +hotel clerk would have charged me twice what he did for the stuff if he +had known how much good it would do me." + +"Hotel?" Penny snatched at the vital word. "Where did you go to get +drunk, Ralph?" + +"I never realized before you had so much curiosity, honey," the boy +grinned at her. "After I shook Clive--Polly went on to Nita's bridge +party, because she couldn't throw her down at the last minute--I +wandered around till I came to the Railroad Men's Hotel, down on State +Street, you know, the other side of the tracks. It's a miserable dump, +but I sort of hankered for a place to hide in that was as miserable and +cheap as I felt--" + +"Did you register under your own name?" + +"Ashamed of me, Penny?... No, I registered under my first two +names--Ralph Edwards. And the rat-faced, filthy little hotel clerk +turned out to be a bootlegger.... Well, when I woke up about eleven this +morning I give you my word I wasn't sick and headachy, though God knows +I'd drunk enough to put me out for a week.... Penny, I woke up +feeling--well, I can't explain it but to say I felt light and new +and--and clean.... All washed-up! At first I thought my heart was +empty--it felt so free of pain. But as I lay there thanking God that +_that was that_, I found my heart wasn't empty at all. It was brimming +full of love--Gosh, honey! I sound like a Laura Jean Libbey hero, don't +I?... But before I rang you from the lunch room where I ate breakfast I +wrote Nita a special delivery note, telling her it was all off. I had to +be free actually, before I could ask you.... You _will_ marry me, won't +you, Penny honey?... I knew this morning I had never really loved anyone +else--" + +Penelope Crain remained rigid for a moment, then very slowly she laid +both her hands on his head, for he had knelt and buried his face against +her skirt. But as she spoke, her brown eyes, enormous in her white face, +were upon Dundee, who had stepped silently from behind the portieres. + +"Yes. I'll marry you, Ralph!... You may come in now, Mr. Dundee!" + + + + +CHAPTER SEVENTEEN + + +It was nearly nine o'clock Monday morning, and Special Investigator +Dundee sat alone in the district attorney's office, impatiently awaiting +Sanderson's arrival. Coroner Price, with the approval of Captain Strawn +of the Homicide Squad, had set the inquest into the murder of Juanita +Leigh Selim for ten o'clock, and there was much that Dundee wished to +say to the district attorney before that hour arrived. + +When the thoroughly tired and dispirited young detective had returned to +his apartment late Sunday afternoon, after having seen Ralph Hammond +completely exonerated of any possible complicity in the murder of Nita +Selim, he had found a telegram from the district attorney, filed in +Chicago: + + "CALLED CHICAGO SERIOUS ILLNESS OF MOTHER STOP RETURNING HAMILTON + EIGHT TEN MONDAY MORNING STOP SEE BY PAPERS YOU ARE ON SELIM JOB + STOP GOOD BUT WATCH YOUR STEP--SANDERSON" + +Well--and Dundee grinned ruefully--he had been on the job all right, but +would Sanderson consider that he had "watched his step"? At any rate, he +had been thorough, he congratulated himself, as he weighed the big +manilla envelope containing his own transcription of the copious +shorthand notes he had taken during the first hours of the +investigation. A smaller envelope held Nita's tell-tale checkbook, her +amazing last will and testament, and the still more startling note she +had written to Lydia Carr. The last two Dundee had retrieved from +Carraway only this morning, after having submitted them to the +fingerprint expert on Sunday. + +Carraway's report had rather dashed him at first, for it proved that no +other hands than Nita's--and his own, of course--had touched either +envelope or contents. But he was content now to believe that Nita +herself had unsealed the envelope she had inscribed, "To Be Opened in +Case of My Death".... Why?... Had she been moved by an impulse to give a +clue to the identity of the person of whom she stood in fear, but had +stifled the impulse? + +Strawn had said, too, that the little rosewood desk had been in a fairly +orderly condition, before his big, official hands had clawed through it +in search of a clue or the gun itself.... Well, Strawn had been properly +chagrined when Dundee had produced the will and note.... + +"Why did she stick it away in a pack of new envelopes, if she wanted it +to be found?" Strawn had demanded irritably, and had not been appeased +by Dundee's suggestion: "Because she did not want Lydia, in dusting the +desk, to see it and be alarmed." + +Yes, he had been busy enough, but what, actually, had he to show for his +industry? He had worked up three good cases--the first against Lydia +Carr, the second against Dexter Sprague, and the third against Ralph +Hammond--only to have them knocked to pieces almost as fast as he had +conceived them.... Of course Lydia Carr might be lying to give Sprague +an alibi, but Dundee was convinced that she was telling the truth and +that she hated Sprague too much to fake an alibi for him.... Of course +there was always Judge Marshall, but-- + +Through the closed door came sounds which Dundee presently identified as +connected with Penny Crain's arrival--the emphatic click of her heels; +the quick opening and shutting of desk drawers.... + +The down-hearted young detective debated the question of taking his +perplexities out to her, but decided against it. She probably wanted to +hear no more of his theories, was undoubtedly burning with righteous +indignation against him because of Ralph Hammond.... Did she still +consider herself engaged to Ralph, in spite of the fact that young +Hammond had gallantly insisted upon releasing her from her promise as +soon as he suspected that it had been given merely to prove her faith in +his innocence? + +It was a decidedly unhappy young detective whom Sanderson greeted upon +his arrival at nine o'clock. + +The new district attorney, who had held office since November, was a +big, good-natured, tolerant man, who looked younger than his 35 years +because of his freckles and his always rumpled mop of sandy hair. But +those who sought to take advantage of his good nature in the courtroom +found themselves up against as keen a lawyer and prosecutor as could be +found in the whole state, or even in the Middle West. + +"Well, boy!" he greeted Dundee genially but with an undertone of +solemnity in his rich, jury-swaying baritone. "Looks like we've got a +sensational murder on our hands. It's not every day Hamilton can rate a +headline like 'BROADWAY BELLE MURDERED AT BRIDGE'--to quote a Chicago +paper.... But I'm afraid there's not enough mystery in it to suit your +tastes." + +Dundee grinned wryly. "I've been pretty down in the mouth all morning +because there's a little too much mystery, chief." + +"Fairly open-and-shut, isn't it?" Sanderson asked, obviously surprised. +"New York gets too hot for this Selim baby--probably mixed up with some +racketeer, racketeers being the favorite boy-friends of 'Broadway +belles', if one can believe the tabloids. Lois Dunlap offers her a job +to organize a Little Theater in Hamilton--which the fair Nita would +certainly have described as a hick town and which she wouldn't have been +found dead in if she could have helped it--" and the district attorney +grinned at his own witticism, "--but Broadway Nita jumps at it. Her +racketeer sweetie has a long arm, however, and Nita gets hers. Justly +enough, probably, but I wish to the Lord she had chosen some other town +to hide in. Lois Dunlap is the finest woman in Hamilton, but she's too +damned promiscuous in her friendships. As it is now, some of the best +friends I have in the world are mixed up in this mess, even if it is +only as innocent victims of circumstance--" + +Until then Dundee had let his chief express his pent-up convictions +without interruption, and indeed Sanderson's courtroom training had +fitted him admirably for long speeches. But he could keep silent no +longer. + +"That is what has been worrying me, chief," he interrupted. "Captain +Strawn has given the papers very little real information, but the truth +is I am afraid _one_ of your friends was not an innocent victim of +circumstance." + +District Attorney Sanderson sat down abruptly in the swivel chair at his +desk. "Just what do you mean, Dundee?" + +"I mean I am convinced that one of Mrs. Selim's _guests_ was her +murderer, but I'd like to tell you the whole story, and let you judge +for yourself." + +"My God!" Sanderson ejaculated. Slowly he drew out a handkerchief and +mopped his freckled brow. "If I hadn't had a good many years of +experience with criminals, Dundee, I'd say it is obvious on the face of +it that none of those four men--Judge Marshall, Tracey Miles, Johnny +Drake, Clive Hammond--could have committed such a cheap, sensational +crime as murdering a hostess during a bridge game.... Not that I haven't +wanted to commit murder myself over many a game of bridge," he added, +with the irrepressible humor for which he was famous. Then he groaned, +the rueful twinkle still in his eye: "I'm afraid we're in for a lot of +gruesome kidding. Why, last night, in the club car of my train, three +tables of bridge players could scarcely play a hand for wisecracking +about the dangers of being dummy!... Well, boy, now that I've talked +myself past the worst shock, suppose you give me the low-down. But I +warn you I'm going to take a powerful lot of convincing." + +Painstakingly, and in the greatest detail, Dundee told the whole story, +beginning with his arrival Saturday evening at the Selim house, +including the ghastly replaying of the "death hand at bridge"--a phrase, +by the way, which the prosecutor instantly adopted--and ending with +Ralph Hammond's establishing of an alibi, to the entire satisfaction of +Captain Strawn, as well as of Dundee himself. He was interrupted +frequently of course, scoffingly at first, then with deepening solemnity +and respect on the part of the district attorney. + +"Let me see the plan of the house again," he said, when Dundee had +finished. "Also that table you've worked up showing the approximate time +and order of arrival of the four men.... Thanks!... Hmm!... Hmm!" + +"You see, sir," Dundee repeated at last, "the list of possible suspects +includes Lydia Carr, Dexter Sprague, John C. Drake, Judge Marshall, +Polly Beale, Flora Miles, Janet Raymond, Clive Hammond--" + +"But Polly and Clive were in the solarium _together_ all the time!" +Sanderson objected. + +"So they said," Dundee agreed. "But it is a very short trip from the +solarium by way of the side porch into Nita's bedroom. And either Polly +Beale or Clive Hammond could have made that trip, on the pretext of +speaking to Nita about Ralph!... Motive: murder to end blackmail. +Naturally such a theory would not include _both_ of them, but if _one of +them_ was being blackmailed and made use of the pretext of warning Nita +of Ralph's overwrought condition--" + +"Sprague's your man!" Sanderson interrupted with relief. "Motive: +jealousy because Nita was ditching him to marry Ralph.... As for the gun +and silencer, it seems pretty clear to me that Nita herself stole it +from Judge Marshall, and that Sprague got it away from her. You say the +maid, Lydia, went upstairs to tell Sprague he had to pack his things and +take them away--for good!... Very well! Sprague goes down the backstairs +with the gun in his pocket, through the back hall into Nita's bedroom, +shoots her, bumps into the lamp, goes out by the back door, and comes +around front to join the party.... You say yourself he has admitted to +everything but the trip to Nita's room and the shooting--even to +sneaking back to get his bag, which I believe also contained the gun +until he had a chance to dispose of it on his way to his hotel in +Hamilton." + +Dundee shook his head. "I'd like to agree, chief, but I believe Lydia is +telling the truth. She says she was in the upstairs bedroom with Sprague +and remained behind only two or three minutes at most, to put his +shaving kit into the packed bag, and to clean up the bathroom basin. On +her way down the backstairs she says she heard Lois Dunlap's second ring +and went to answer it. Sprague and Janet Raymond, with whom Janet says +he stopped to talk a minute on the front porch, were in the dining room +_before_ Lydia entered it.... I'm convinced Lydia hates Sprague and +would be glad to believe him guilty.... No, Mr. Sanderson, I don't +believe Sprague did it, but I do believe it was Sprague's revenge that +Nita was afraid of when she made her will Friday night. Naturally she +figured she'd have time to tell the person she was blackmailing that she +was through with him--or her, but I believe Sprague and Nita were +lovers, even partners in blackmail, and that she feared he would kill +her when he knew she was going to marry Ralph Hammond and give up their +source of income." + +Sanderson considered for a long minute, pulling at his full lower lip. +"Well, thank God for those precious footprints Strawn is building on! +Don't think I fail to follow your reasoning that the crime _must_ have +been committed in the bedroom, and not from the window sill, but those +footprints may save us yet, and will certainly get us through the +inquest. You agree, of course, that none of all this you've told me must +even be hinted at during the inquest?... Good! Let's be going. It's +nearly ten." + +Dundee's whole soul revolted at the very thought of the barbaric farce +of an inquest--the small morgue chapel crowded to the doors with +goggle-eyed, blood-loving humanity; the stretcher with its sheeted +corpse; reporters avid of sensation and primed with questions which, if +answered by indiscreet witnesses, would defeat the efforts of police and +district attorney; news photographers with their insatiable cameras +aimed at every person connected with the case in any way. + +Mercifully, this particular inquest upon the body of Juanita Leigh Selim +promised to be quickly over. For Coroner Price, in conference with +Sanderson, Dundee and Captain Strawn, had gladly agreed to call only +those witnesses and extract from them only such information as the +authorities deemed advisable. + +Lydia Carr, whose black veil had defeated the news camera levelled at +her poor scarred face, was the first witness called by Coroner Price, +and she was required for the single purpose of identifying the body as +that of her mistress. To two perfunctory questions--"Have you any +information to give this jury regarding the cause and manner of the +deceased's death?" and "Have you any personal knowledge of the identity +of any person, man or woman, of whom the deceased stood in fear of her +life?"--Lydia answered a flat "No!" and was then dismissed. + +Karen Marshall, looking far too young to be the wife of the elderly +ex-judge, Hugo Marshall, was the second witness called. Dr. Price guided +her gently to a brief recital of her discovery of the dead body of her +hostess, emphasizing only the fact that, so far as she could see, the +bedroom was unoccupied except by the corpse at the time of the +discovery. + +He then handed her the photostatic copy of a blueprint of the ground +floor of the Selim house, with a pencilled ring drawn around the +bedroom. Karen falteringly identified it, as well as the pencil-drawn +furniture, and was immediately dismissed--to the packed rows of +spectators and reporters. + +Dr. Price himself took the stand next and described, in technical terms, +the wound which had caused death and the caliber of the bullet he had +extracted from the dead woman's heart. + +"I find, also, from the autopsy," he concluded, "that the bullet +traveled a downward-slanting path. I should add, moreover, that I have +made exact mathematical calculations, using the position of the body and +of the wound as a basis, and found that a line drawn from the wound, and +extended, at the correct slant, ends at a point 51.8 inches high, upon +the right-hand side of the frame of the window nearest the porch door." +And he obligingly passed the marked blueprint among the jury. When it +was in his own hands again, he added: "It is impossible to state the +exact distance the bullet traveled, more nearly than to say the shot was +fired along the line I have indicated, at a distance of not more than +fifteen feet and not less than ten." + +Captain Strawn rose and was permitted to question the witness: + +"Dr. Price, that blueprint shows that the bedroom is fifteen feet in +width, don't it?" + +"That is correct." + +"Have you also measured the height of that window sill from the floor?" + +"I have," the coroner answered. "The height from floor to sill is 26 +inches." + +"Now, doctor, from your calculations, would it be possible for a man +crouching in the open window to fire a shot along the path you have +calculated?" + +"It would," Dr. Price answered. "But as I have pointed out, it is +impossible for me to say at exactly what distance from the body the shot +was fired." + +But Strawn, of course, was amply satisfied. And so were Dundee and the +district attorney, for it suited their purposes admirably for the public +to be convinced at this time that an intruding gunman had murdered Nita +Selim. + +Captain Strawn, sworn in, told briefly of his being called to the scene +of the crime, of the activities of Carraway, the fingerprint expert, and +of the exhaustive search of his squad of detectives. + +"Did you find any person concealed upon the premises, that is, within +the house itself, or in the garage or on the grounds?" Dr. Price asked. + +"No, sir." + +"Did you or your men discover the weapon with which the deceased was +killed?" + +"No, sir." + +"Did you question all persons in the house at the time of the crime, as +to whether or not a shot had been heard?" + +"I did. The answer in every case was that they heard no shot." + +"And you also questioned every person present in an effort to place +responsibility for the death of Mrs. Selim?" + +"I did. I couldn't find that anyone present had anything to do with it." + +"Who were these persons?" Dr. Price then asked. + +"Judge and Mrs. Hugo Marshall, Mr. and Mrs. Tracey A. Miles, Mr. and +Mrs. John C. Drake, Mrs. Peter Dunlap, Miss Janet Raymond, Miss Polly +Beale, Miss Penelope Crain, Mr. Clive Hammond, Mr. Dexter Sprague--of +New York, and Mrs. Selim's maid, Lydia Carr," Captain Strawn answered +promptly, rolling out the names of Hamilton's elect with sonorous +satisfaction, which obviously had the desired effect in convincing the +jury that not among those proud names, at least, could be found the name +of the murderer. + +"Did you find on the premises any clue which you consider of importance +to this jury?" + +"I did! A bunch of footprints under the window you've been talking +about. Here are life-size photographs of 'em, doctor.... And the rambler +rose vines that climb up the outside of the window had been torn." + +After the photographs had been duly inspected by the jury of six Dr. +Price said: "That is all, and thank you, Captain Strawn.... Mr. Dundee!" + +As had been agreed between the coroner and the district attorney, +Dundee's testimony, after the preliminary questions, was confined to the +offering of Nita Selim's "last will and testament" and the note to +Lydia. + +The reporters, who had obviously feared that nothing new would +eventuate, sat up with startled interest, then their pencils flew, as +Dundee read the two documents, after he had told when and where he had +discovered them. As District Attorney Sanderson had said; "Better give +the press something new to chew on, but for God's sake don't mention +that checkbook of Nita's. It's dynamite, boy--dynamite!" + +While the morgue chapel was still in a buzz of excitement, Dundee was +dismissed, and District Attorney Sanderson requested an adjournment of +the inquest for one week. + +The police were urging the crowd upon its way before it became fully +aware that it had been cheated of the pleasure of hearing, at first +hand, the stories of that fatal bridge and cocktail party from the +guests themselves. + +"Tell the Carr woman I want to speak to her," Sanderson directed Dundee. +"She'll thank you for rescuing her from the reporters." + +As Dundee pushed his way through the jam he heard a reporter earnestly +pleading with Lois Dunlap: "But I'm sure you can remember the cards each +player held in that 'death hand,' Mrs. Dunlap--" + +Cheerfully sure that he could trust Lois Dunlap's discretion and +distaste for publicity, Dundee went on, grinning at the reporter's use +of his own lurid phrase. + +Two minutes later Sanderson, Strawn and Dundee were closeted in Dr. +Price's own office with Lydia Carr. + +"First, Lydia," began Sanderson, "I want to warn you to give the +reporters no information at all regarding the nature or extent of your +mistress' bequest." + +"It was little enough she had, poor girl, beyond her clothes and a few +pieces of jewelry," Lydia answered stubbornly. "Are you going to let me +do what she told me to, in that note?... Not that I hold with burning--" + +"I see no reason why you should not take charge of the body, Lydia, and +arrange it immediately for cremation.... Do you, Captain Strawn?" +Sanderson answered. + +"No, sir. The quicker the better." + +"Then, Lydia, if Captain Strawn will send you out to the Selim house +with one of his boys, you may get the dress described in Mrs. Selim's +note--" + +"And the curls she cut off and had made into switches," Lydia +interrupted. "I can't dress my poor girl's hair in a French roll without +them!" + +"The curls, too," Sanderson agreed. "Now as to the cremation--" + +"Mrs. Miles let me come in early to see about that," Lydia interrupted +again. "They can do it this afternoon, and you don't need to worry about +the expense. I've got money enough of my own to pay my girl's funeral +expenses." + +"Good!" Sanderson applauded. "The will shall be probated as soon as +possible, of course, but it makes it simpler if you will pay the +necessary expenses now." + +"Just a minute, chief," Dundee halted the district attorney as he was +about to leave. "Under the circumstances, I think it highly advisable +that we get pictures of the burial dress. I suggest you have Lydia bring +the things to your office before she lays out the body, and that +Carraway photograph the dress there, from all angles. I should also like +to have a picture of the body after Lydia has finished her services." + +The maid's scarred face flushed a deep, angry red, but she offered no +protest when the district attorney accepted both of Dundee's +suggestions. + +"Then you'll have Carraway with his camera at my office in about an +hour?" Sanderson turned to Captain Strawn. "Let's say twelve o'clock. By +the way, Lydia, you may bring in with you the few pieces of jewelry you +mentioned. I'll keep them safely in my offices until the will is +probated and they are turned over to you." + +"I don't know where she kept them," Lydia answered. + +"_What?_" exclaimed Bonnie Dundee. + +"I said I don't know where she kept her jewelry," Lydia Carr retorted. +"It wasn't worth much--not a hundred dollars altogether, I'll be bound, +because Nita sold her last diamond not a week before we left New York. +She owed so many bills then that the money she got for directing that +play at the Forsyte School hardly made a dent on them." + +"Do you know whether the jewelry was kept in the house or in a safe +deposit box?" Dundee asked, excitement sharpening his voice. + +"It must have been in the house, because she wore the different pieces +any time she pleased," the maid answered. "I didn't ask no questions, +and I didn't happen to see her get it out or put it away. I didn't ever +do much lady's-maid work for her, like dressing her or fixing her +hair--just kept her clothes and the house in order, and did what little +cooking there was to do--" + +"Her dressing-table?" Dundee prodded. "Her desk?" + +The maid shook her head. "I was always straightening up the drawers in +both her dressing-table and her desk, and she didn't keep the jewelry in +either one of them places." + +"Captain Strawn, when you searched the dressing-table and desk for the +gun or anything of importance, did you have any reason to suspect a +secret drawer in either of them?" + +"No, Bonnie. They're just ordinary factory furniture. I tapped around +for a secret drawer, of course, but there wasn't even any place for +one," Strawn assured him with an indulgent grin. + +"I want to see Penny Crain!" Dundee cried, making for the door. + +"Then you'd better come along to the courthouse with me," Sanderson +called after him. "I sent her back to the office as soon as the inquest +was adjourned." + +The two men passed through the now deserted morgue chapel and almost +bumped into a middle-aged man, obviously of the laboring class in spite +of his slicked-up, Sunday appearance. + +"You're the district attorney, ain't you, sir?" he addressed Sanderson +in a nervous, halting undertone. + +"Yes. What is it?" + +"I come to the inquest to give some information, sir, but it was +adjourned so quick I didn't have time--" + +"Who are you?" Sanderson interrupted impatiently. + +"I'm Rawlins, sir. I worked for the poor lady, Mrs. Selim--gardening one +day a week--" + +"Come to my office!" Sanderson commanded quickly, as a lingering +reporter approached on a run.... "No, no! I'm sorry, Harper," he said +hastily, cutting into the reporter's questions. "Nothing new! You may +say that the police have thrown out a dragnet--" and he grinned at the +trite phrase "--for the gunman who killed Mrs. Selim, and will offer a +reward for the recovery of the weapon--a Colt's .32 equipped with a +Maxim silencer.... Come along, George, and I'll explain just what Mrs. +Sanderson and I have in mind." + +The district attorney and Dundee strode quickly away, and the man, +Rawlins, after a moment of indecision, trotted after them. + +"I don't understand, sir, and my name ain't George. It's Elmer." + +"You don't have to understand anything, except that you're not to answer +any question that any reporter asks you," Sanderson retorted. + +When the trio entered the reception room of the district attorney's +suite in the courthouse Sanderson paused at Penny Crain's desk: + +"Bring in your notebook, Penny. This man has some information he +considers important." + +A minute later Sanderson had begun to question his voluntary but highly +nervous witness. + +"Your name?" + +"It's Elmer Rawlins, like I told you, sir," the man protested, and +flinched as Penny recorded his words in swift shorthand. "It was my wife +as made me come. She said as long as me and her knowed I didn't do +nothing wrong, I'd oughta come forward and tell what I knowed." + +"Yes, yes!" Sanderson encouraged him impatiently. "You say you worked +for Mrs. Selim as gardener one day a week--" + +"Yes, sir, but I 'tended to her hot water and her garbage, too--twice a +day it was I had to go and stoke the little laundry heater that heats +the hot water tank in summertime when the steam furnace ain't being +used. I live about a mile beyant the Crain place, that is, the house the +poor lady was killed in--" + +"Did you come to stoke the laundry heater Saturday evening?" Dundee +interrupted. "Excuse me, sir," he turned to the district attorney, "but +this is the first time I've seen this man." + +"No, sir, I didn't stoke it Sat'dy night," Rawlins answered uneasily. +"You see, I was comin' up the road to do my chores at half past six, +like I always do, but before I got to the house I seen a lot of +policemen's cars and motorcycles, and I didn't want to get mixed up in +nothing, so I turned around and went home again. I didn't know what was +up, but when me and the wife went into Hamilton Sat'dy night in our +flivver we seen one of the extries and read about how the poor lady was +murdered. But that ain't what I was gittin' at, sir--" + +"Well, what _are_ you getting at?" Sanderson urged. + +"Well, the extry said the police had found some footprints under the +frontmost of them two side windows to Mis' Selim's bedroom, and went on +to talk about the rose vines being tore, and straight off I said to the +missus, 'Them's _my_ footprints, Minnie'--Minnie's my wife's name--" + +"_Your_ footprints!" Sanderson ejaculated, then shook with silent +laughter. "There goes Strawn's case, Bonnie!" But immediately he was +serious again, as the import of this new evidence came to him. "Tell us +all about it, Rawlins.... When did you make those footprints?" + +"Friday, sir. That's the day I gardened for Mis' Selim.... You see, sir, +the poor little lady told me she was kept awake nights when they was a +high wind, by the rose vines tapping against the windows. Says she, 'I +think they's somebody tryin' to git into my room, Elmer,' and I could +see the poor little thing was mighty nervous anyway, so I didn't waste +no time. I cut away a lot of the rose vine and burned it when I was +burnin' the garbage and papers in the 'cinerator out back." + +"Is that all, Rawlins?" Sanderson asked. + +"'Bout all that 'mounts to anything," the laborer deprecated. "But they +was somethin' else that struck me as a little funny, when I come to +think of it--" + +"Well?" Sanderson prodded, as the man halted uncertainly. + +"Well, it's like I told you, it was my job to burn the papers. That +scar-face maid of Mis' Selim's put everything--garbage and trash--in a +big garbage can outside the back door, and I burnt 'em up. So I was +kinder surprised Sat'dy mornin', when I went to stoke up the laundry +heater, to find somebody'd been meddlin' with my drafts and had let the +fire go clean out. I had to clean out the ashes and build a new fire--" + +"You're trying to say, I suppose, that you could tell by the ashes that +someone had been burning papers in the laundry heater?" Sanderson asked, +with a quick glance at Dundee's tense face. + +"That's right, sir," Rawlins agreed eagerly. "You know what kind of +ashes a mess o' paper makes--layers of white ashes, sir, that kinder +looks like papers yit." + +"Yes, I know.... And you found layers of white ashes, which you took +particular pains to clean out?" Sanderson asked bitterly. + +"Yes, sir. So's I could build a new fire--" + +"Did you speak to the maid--ask her if she'd been 'meddlin' with your +drafts'?" + +"Yes, sir, I did!" the man answered with a trace of the belligerence he +had undoubtedly shown to Lydia. "She said _she_ didn't open no dampers, +claimed the heater was the same as usual when she left Friday night to +go to a movie. So I reckin it was the poor lady herself, burnin' up love +letters, maybe, or some such truck--" + +"You're to keep your 'reckins' to yourself, Rawlins," Sanderson cut in +emphatically. "Remember, now, you're not to tell anybody else what +you've just told me.... If that's all, you can go now, and I'm much +obliged to you. Leave your address with the young lady here. You'll be +needed later, of course." + +The relieved man hurried out of the room on Penny's heels. Sanderson +shrugged, then, when the door had closed, began heavily: + +"It looks like you're right, Bonnie, about that blackmail business. +As the astute Rawlins says, 'love letters, maybe, or some such +truck....' Of course it all fits in with your theory that Nita had made +up her mind to reform, marry Ralph Hammond, and be a very good girl +indeed.... All right! You can have Penny in now. I think I know pretty +well what you're going to ask her. And I may as well tell you that when +Roger Crain skipped town with some securities he was known to possess, he +hadn't got them from a safe deposit box, because he didn't have one," and +Sanderson pressed a button on the edge of his desk.... + +"Penny, do you know whether there is a concealed safe in the Selim +house?" + +The girl, startled, began to shake her head, then checked herself. "Not +that I ever saw, or knew of when Dad and Mother and I lived there, +but--" She hesitated, her cheeks turning scarlet. + +"Out with it, Penny!" Sanderson urged, his voice very kind. + +"It's just that, if you really think there's a secret hiding place in +the house, I believe I understand something that puzzled me when it +happened," Penny confessed, her head high. "I was at the Country Club +one night--a Saturday night when the whole crowd is usually there for +the dinner and dance. I'd been dancing with--with Ralph, and when the +music stopped we went out on the porch, where several of our crowd were +sitting. It was--just two or three weeks after--after Dad left town. +Lois wouldn't let me drop out of things.... Anyway, it was dark and I +heard Judge Marshall saying something about 'the simplest and most +ingenious arrangement you ever saw. Of course that's where the rascal +kept his securities--...' I knew they were talking about Dad, from the +way Judge Marshall shut up and changed the subject as soon as he saw +me." + +"Who was on the porch, Penny?" Dundee asked tensely. + +"Why, let's see--Flora, and Johnny Drake, and Clive," she answered +slowly. "I think that was all, besides Judge Marshall. The others hadn't +come out from dancing.... Of course I don't know whether or not it was +some 'arrangement' in the house--" + +"Where are you going, boy?" Sanderson checked Dundee, who was already on +his way to the door. + +"To find that gun, of course!" + +"Well, if it's tucked away in the 'simplest and most ingenious +arrangement you ever saw' it will stay put for a while," Sanderson said. +"Lydia's due here within half an hour, and you don't want to miss her, +do you?" + + + + +CHAPTER EIGHTEEN + + +It was exactly twelve o'clock when Lydia Carr, accompanied by Detective +Collins of the Homicide Squad carrying a small suitcase, arrived at the +district attorney's office. + +"I kept my eye on her every minute of the time, to see that there wasn't +no shenanigans," Collins informed Dundee and Sanderson importantly, +callous to the fact that the maid could hear him. "But I let her bring +along everything she said she needed to lay the body out in.... Was that +right?" + +"Right!" agreed the district attorney, as Dundee opened the suitcase +upon Sanderson's desk. + +The royal blue velvet dress lay on top, neatly folded. Dundee shook out +its folds. It looked remarkably fresh and new, in spite of the years it +had hung in Nita Selim's various clothes closets, preserved because of +God alone knew what tender memories. Perhaps the beautiful little dancer +had intended all those years that it should be her shroud.... + +"Oh, it's lovely!" Penny Crain, who was looking on, cried out +involuntarily. "It looks like a French model." + +"It's a copy of a French model. You can see by the label on the back of +the neck," Lydia answered, her one good eye softening for Penny. + +"So it is!" Dundee agreed, and took out his penknife to snip the threads +which fastened the white satin, gold-lettered label to the frock. +"'Pierre Model. Copied by Simonson's--New York City'," he read aloud, +and slipped the little square of satin into the envelope containing the +murdered woman's will. "Well, Penny, I'm glad you like the dress, for +I'm going to ask you to do the mannikin stunt in it as soon as Carraway +arrives with his camera." + +Penny turned very pale, but she said nothing in protest, and Dundee +continued to unpack the suitcase. His masculine hands looked clumsy as +they lifted out the costume slip and miniature "dancing set"--brassiere +and step-ins--all matching, of filmiest white chiffon and lace. His +fingers flinched from contact with the switch of long, silky black +curls.... + +"She bought them after we came to Hamilton," Lydia informed him, +pointing to the undergarments. "Them black moire pumps and them French +stockings are brand new, too--hundred-gauge silk them stockings are, and +never on her feet--" + +"Ready for me?" Carraway had appeared in the doorway, with camera and +tripod. + +"Yes, Carraway.... Just the dress, Penny.... I want full-length +front, back and side views of Miss Crain wearing this dress, +Carraway.... Flashlights, of course. Better take the pictures in Miss +Crain's office," Dundee directed. "You stay here, Lydia. I want to talk +with you while that job is being done." + +"Yes, sir," Lydia answered, and accepted without thanks the chair he +offered. + +"I suppose you have read _The Hamilton Morning News_ today, Lydia?" + +"I have!" + +"May I have that paper, chief?... Thanks!... Now, Lydia, I want you to +read again the paragraphs that are headed 'New York, May 25--' and tell +us if the statements are correct." + +Lydia accepted the paper and her single eye scanned the following lines +obediently: + + New York, May 25 (UP) + + Mrs. Juanita Leigh Selim, who was murdered Saturday afternoon + in Hamilton, ----, was known along Broadway as Nita Leigh, chorus + girl and specialty dancer. Her last known address in New York was + No. -- West 54th St., where she had a three-room apartment. + According to the superintendent, E. J. Black, Miss Leigh, as he + knew her, lived there alone except for her maid, Lydia Carr, and + entertained few visitors. + + Irving Wein, publicity director for Altamont Pictures, when + interviewed by a reporter in his rooms at the Cadillac Hotel late + today, said that Nita Leigh had been used for "bits" and as a + dancing "double" for stars in a number of recent pictures, + including "Night Life" and "Boy, Howdy!", both of which have + dancing sequences. Musical comedy programs for the last year carry + her name only once, in the list of "Ladies of the Ensemble" of the + revue, "What of it?" + + Miss Eloise Pendleton, head-mistress of Forsyte-on-the-Hudson, + mentioned in the dispatches from Hamilton, confirms the report that + Mrs. Selim, as she was known there, twice directed the annual + Easter musical comedy presented by that fashionable school for + young ladies, but could add nothing of interest to the facts given + above, beyond asserting that Mrs. Selim had proved to be an + unusually competent and popular director of their amateur + theatricals. + +"Yes, that's correct, as far as it goes," Lydia commented, resentment +strong in her harsh voice as she returned the paper to Dundee. + +"Have you anything to add?" Dundee caught her up quickly. + +"No, sir!" Lydia shook her head, her lips in a grim line. Then +resentment burst through: "They don't have to talk like she was a back +number on Broadway, just because she was tired of the stage and going in +for movies!" + +District Attorney Sanderson took her in hand then, pelting her with +questions about Nita's New York "gentlemen friends," but he made no more +headway than Dundee. + +"We _know_ that Nita Selim was afraid of _someone_!" Sanderson began +again, angrily. "Who was it--someone she'd known in New York, or +somebody in Hamilton?" + +"I don't know!" Lydia told him flatly. + +"But you do know she was living in fear of her life, don't you?" Dundee +interposed. + +"I--well, yes, I suppose she was," Lydia admitted reluctantly. "But I +thought she was just afraid to live out there in that lonesome house +away off at the end of nowhere." + +"Was she afraid of Dexter Sprague?" Sanderson shot at her. + +"Would she have asked him to stay all night if she'd been afraid of +_him_?" Lydia demanded scornfully. "And would she have asked _him_ to +rig up a bell from her bedroom to mine, if it was _him_ she was afraid +of?" + +"A bell?" Dundee echoed. + +"Yes, sir. It has a contraption under the rug, right beside her bed, +so's she could step on it and it would ring in my room, which was +underneath hers.... Mr. Sprague bought the wire and stuff, bored a hole +through her bedroom floor, and fixed it all hisself." + +"Did anyone know Nita had taken this precaution to protect herself?" +Dundee asked. + +"Mis' Lois did, because one day not long ago she stepped on it +accidentally, when she was in Nita's room. The bell buzzed in my room +and I come up to answer it, and Nita explained it to Mis' Lois." + +So that was why no attempt had been made to murder Nita while she +slept!--Dundee told himself triumphantly. For of course it was more than +probable that Lois Dunlap had innocently spread the news of Nita's +nervousness and her ingenious method of summoning help instantly.... + +There was a knock at the door. + +"Come in!... All finished, Carraway?... Fine! I'd like to see the prints +as soon as possible, and now I'd like you to go over to the morgue with +Lydia, and wait there until she has the body dressed in these clothes, +and the hair done according to the instructions Mrs. Selim left.... I'll +leave the posing to you, but I want a full-length picture as well as a +head portrait." + +As Lydia's work-roughened, knuckly hands were returning the funeral +clothes to the suitcase, another question occurred to Dundee: + +"Lydia, did you know, before I questioned you at the Miles home +yesterday, that Sprague had returned for that bag he had left in the +bedroom upstairs?" + +Her scarred cheek flushed livid, but the maid answered with defiant +honesty: "Yes, I did! He spoke to me through my basement window just +before you come running down to talk to me. He'd sneaked back, but he +could tell from seeing your car outside that you was there, and he asked +me to go up and get the bag and set it outside the kitchen door for him. +I said I wouldn't do it; it was too risky." + +"Then you were pretending to be asleep when I entered your room?" + +"Yes, I was! But I _had_ been asleep before Mr. Sprague called me. While +you was ding-donging at me about Nita burning my face I heard Mr. +Sprague open the kitchen door. He had a key Nita had give him, so's he +could slip in unnoticed if he happened to come when Nita had other +company. He didn't hardly make any noise at all, but I heard it, because +I was listening for it.... You'd left the door to the basement stairs +open, and my door, too, so I heard him." + +"Did you hear him come down?" + +"Yes, I did! There's a board on the backstairs that squeaks, and I heard +it plain, while you was still at me, hammer and tongs," Lydia answered. +"He was in the house not more'n two minutes, all told, and when I +figured he was safely out, I went upstairs with you to show you the +presents I'd give Nita after she burnt me, to prove I'd forgive her." + +"Why didn't you tell me, Lydia? Why did you protect Sprague? I know you +don't like him," Dundee puzzled. + +"I wasn't thinking about him," Lydia told him flatly. "I was thinking +about Nita. I didn't want any scandal on her, and I knew what the police +and the newspapers would say if they found out Mr. Sprague had been +staying all night sometimes." + +"Are you prepared to swear Sprague had time to do nothing but go up to +the bedroom and get his bag?" + +"I am!" + +When Lydia and Carraway had left together, Dundee rose and addressed the +district attorney: + +"I'm going out to the Selim house now, to look for that secret hiding +place where Roger Crain kept his securities, and which Judge Marshall +evidently displayed to Nita, as one of the charms of the house when she +'rented' it." + +"Why not simply telephone Judge Marshall and ask him where and what it +is?" Sanderson asked reasonably. + +"Do you think he'd tell?" Dundee retorted. "The old boy's no fool. Even +if he didn't kill Nita himself and hide the gun there, my question would +throw him into a panic of fear lest one of his best friends had done +just that.... No, I'll find it myself, if it's all right with you!" + +But after a solid hour of hard and fruitless work, Bonnie Dundee was +forced to admit ruefully to himself that his parting words to the +district attorney might have been the youthful and empty boast that +Sanderson had evidently considered them. + +For nowhere in the house Roger Crain had built and in which Nita Selim +had been murdered could the detective find anything remotely resembling +a concealed safe. The two plainclothesmen whom Strawn had detailed to +guard the house and to continue the search for the missing gun and +silencer looked on with unconcealed amusement as Dundee tapped walls, +floors and ceilings in a house that seemed to be exceptionally free of +architectural eccentricities. + +Finally Dundee grew tired of their ribald comments and curtly ordered +them to make a new and exhaustive search of the unused portions of the +basement--those dark earth banks, with their overhead networks of water +and drain pipes, heavily insulated cables of electric wires, cobwebby +rafters and rough shelves holding empty fruit jars and liquor +bottles--which contrasted sharply with the neatly ceiled and +cement-floored space devoted to furnace, laundry and maid's room. Dundee +himself had given those regions only a cursory inspection with his +flashlight, for it was highly improbable that Nita Selim would have made +use of a secret hiding place for her jewelry and valuable papers, if +that hiding place was located in such dark, awesome surroundings. + +No. The hiding place, if it really existed--and it must exist--had been +within easy reach of Nita dressing and bedecking herself for a party, or +Lydia Carr could not have been kept in complete ignorance of its +location. + +With that conviction in mind, Dundee returned to Nita's bedroom, to +which he had already devoted at least half an hour. Nothing in the big +clothes closet, where Flora Miles had been hiding while Nita was being +murdered. No secret drawers in desk or dressing-table or bedside table. +No false bottom in boudoir chair or chaise longue.... He had even taken +every book out of the four-shelf bookcase which stood against the west +wall near the north corner of the room, and had satisfied himself that +no book was a leafless fake. + +His minute inspection of the bathroom and back hall, upon which Nita's +bedroom opened, had proved as fruitless, although he had removed every +drawer from the big linen press which stood in the hall, and measured +spaces to a fraction of an inch. As for the walls, they were, except for +the doors, unbroken expanses of tinted plaster. + +And yet-- + +He stepped into the clothes closet again, hammer in hand for a fresh +tapping of the cedar-board walls. Nothing here.... And then he tapped +again, his ear against the end wall of the closet--the wall farthest +from the side porch.... + +Yes! There was a faintly hollow echo of the hammer strokes! + +Excitement blazing high again, he took the tape measure with which he +had provided himself on his way out, and calculated the length of the +closet from end to end. Six feet.... + +Emerging from the closet he closed his eyes in an effort to recall in +exact detail the architect's blueprint of the lower floor, which Coroner +Price had submitted to his jury at the inquest that morning. Yes, that +was right! The inner end wall of Nita's clothes closet was also the back +of the guest closet in the little foyer that lay between Nita's bedroom +and the main hall. + +Within ten minutes, much laying-on of the tape measure had produced a +startling result. Instead of having a wall in common, the guest closet +and Nita's clothes closet were separated by exactly eleven inches! Why +the waste space? The blueprint, bearing the imprint of the architects, +Hammond & Hammond, showed no such walled-up cubbyhole! + +Exultantly, Dundee again entered Nita's closet and went over every inch +of the narrow, horizontal cedar boards, which formed the end wall. But +he met with no reward. Not through this workmanlike, solidly constructed +wall had an opening been made.... + +But in the foyer closet he read a different story. Its back wall had an +amateurish look. This closet was not cedar-lined, as was Nita's, but was +painted throughout in soft ivory. But it was the back wall of the closet +in which Dundee was interested. Unlike the other walls, which were of +plaster, the back was constructed of six-inch-wide boards--the cheapness +of the lumber not concealed by its coat of ivory paint. No +self-respecting builder had put in that wall of broad, horizontal +boards.... + +And then, directly beneath the shelf which was set regulation height, +just above the pole on which swung a dozen coat hangers, Dundee found +what he was looking for. + +A short length of the cheap board, a queer scrap to have been used even +in so shoddy a job as that wall was.... Eight inches long. And set +square in the center of the wall, just below the shelf and pole. If he +had not been looking for something odd, however, Dundee acknowledged to +himself, he would not have noticed it. Did anyone ever notice the back +walls of closets? + +Sure of the result, he pressed with his finger tips upon the lower end +of that short piece of board. And slowly it swung inward, the top +slanting outward. + +_He had found the secret hiding place._ And Dundee silently agreed with +Judge Marshall that it was "the simplest and most ingenious arrangement +you ever saw," for it was nothing more nor less than a shelf set between +the two closets, in those eleven inches of unaccounted for space! + +"I take off my hat to Roger Crain!" Dundee reflected. "No burglar in the +world would ever have thought of pressing upon a short piece of board in +a foyer closet, in search of a safe.... But how did Judge Marshall know +of its existence?" + +The only answer Dundee could think of was that Crain, overseeing the +building of his house, had suddenly conceived this brilliant and simple +plan, and had tipped one of the carpenters to carry it out for him. +Possibly, or probably, he had bragged to Clive or Ralph Hammond, his +architects, of his clever invention. And the Hammond boys had passed on +the information to Judge Marshall, when, after Crain's failure and +flight, the house had become the property of the ex-judge. + +These thoughts rushed through his mind as his flashlight explored the +shelf through the tilted opening. The gun and silencer _must_ be here, +since they could be no place else!... But the shelf was bare except for +a small brass box, fastened only by a clasp. In his acute disappointment +Dundee took little interest in the collection of pretty but inexpensive +jewelry--Nita's trinkets, undoubtedly--which the brass box +contained.... No wedding ring among them.... + +In spite of his chagrin at not finding the gun, Dundee studied the +simple mechanism which Roger Crain's ingenuity had conceived. From the +outside, the eight-inch length of board fitted smoothly, giving no +indication whatever that it was otherwise than what it seemed--part of a +cheaply built wall. But Dundee's flashlight played upon the beveled +edges of both the short board and the two neighboring planks between +which it was fitted. The pivoting arrangement was of the simplest, the +small nickel-plated pieces being set into the short board and the other +two planks with small screws which did not pierce the painted outside +surface. + +His curiosity satisfied, Dundee stepped out of the closet into the tiny +foyer. He was about to leave when a terrific truth crashed through his +mind and froze his feet to the floor. + +_Of course the gun and silencer were not there!_ + +This was the _guest closet_! In it had hung the hat of every person who +had been Nita's guest, either for bridge or cocktails, that fatal +Saturday afternoon! + +_And to this closet, to retrieve hat, stick or--in the case of the +women, summer coat and hat--had come every person who had been +questioned and then searched by the police._ + +Dundee tried to recapture the picture of the stampede which had followed +upon his permission for all guests to go to their homes. But it was +useless. He had stayed in the living room with Strawn, had taken not the +slightest interest in the scramble for hats, coats and sticks. For +Strawn had previously assured him that the guest closet had been +thoroughly searched. + +So quickly that he felt slightly dizzy, Dundee's thoughts raced around +the new discovery. This changed everything, of course. Any one of half a +dozen persons could have arrived with the gun and silencer--not screwed +together, of course, because of the ungainly length--and seized the +opportunity presented by Nita's being alone in her bedroom to shoot her. +What easier, then, than to hide the weapon on this secret shelf, the +"door" of which yielded to the slightest pressure? And what easier than +to retrieve the weapon after permission had been granted to all to +return to their homes? Easy enough to manage to go alone to the closet +for a hat, the extra minute of time unnoticed in the general excitement. +It had been vitally necessary, too, to retrieve the weapon, since any +innocent member of that party might have remembered later to mention the +secret hiding place to the police--secret no longer since Judge Marshall +had gossiped about it.... + +Then another thought boiled up and demanded attention. In the new +theory, what place did the "bang or bump" have--that noise which Flora +Miles, concealed in Nita's closet, had dimly heard? Dundee had been +positive, when Lydia had discovered the shattered electric bulb in the +big bronze lamp that its position in Nita's room indicated the progress +of the flight of the murderer--flight diagonally across the room toward +the back hall. But now-- + +A little dashed, Dundee returned to the bedroom. The big lamp was where +he had first seen it--about a foot beyond the window nearest the porch, +and at the head of the chaise longue which was set between the two west +windows, where, according to Lydia, the lamp always stood. The too-long +cord lay slackly along the floor near the west wall, and extended to the +double outlet on the baseboard behind the bookcase.... _A slack cord!_ + +Down on his hands and knees Dundee went, to peer under the low bottom +shelf of the bookcase.... Yes! The pronged plug of the lamp cord had +been jerked almost out of the baseboard outlet! It was easy to visualize +what had happened: The murderer, after firing the shot, had +involuntarily taken a step or even several steps backward, until his +foot had caught in the loop of electric cord, causing the big lamp to be +thrown violently against the wall near which it stood.... But who? + +_Any one of half a dozen people!_ But--_who_? + + + + +CHAPTER NINETEEN + + +Having ticketed the big bronze lamp, which he had brought with him from +the Selim house, and locked it away in the room devoted to "exhibits for +the state," Bonnie Dundee hurried into Penny's office, primed with the +news of his discovery of the secret hiding place and eager to lay his +new theory before the district attorney. + +"Bill's gone," Penny interrupted her swift typing to inform him. "To +Chicago. He had only fifteen minutes to make the three o'clock train, +after he received a wire saying his mother is not expected to live. He +tried to reach you at the Selim house, but one of Captain Strawn's men +said you had left." + +"I stopped on my way in to get a bite to eat," Dundee explained +mechanically. "I'd dashed off without my lunch, you know." + +"Did you find the gun and silencer?" Penny asked. + +"No. Whoever used it Saturday afternoon walked out of the house with it, +in plain view of the police, and still has it.... Very convenient, too, +in case another murder seems to be expedient--or amusing." + +"Don't joke!" Penny shuddered. "But what in the world do you mean?" + +Briefly Dundee told her, minimizing the hard work, the concentrated +thinking, and the meticulous use of a tape measure which had resulted in +the discovery of the shelf between Nita's bedroom closet and the guest +closet in the little foyer. + +"I see," Penny agreed, her husky voice slow and weighted with horror. +She sat in dazed thought for a minute. "That rather brings it home to my +crowd--doesn't it?... To think that Dad--!... Probably everyone at the +party--except me--had heard all about Dad's 'simple and ingenious' +arrangement for hiding the securities he sent on to New York before he +ran away.... And no outsiders--nobody but _us_--had a legitimate excuse +for entering that closet.... Not even Dexter Sprague. It's one of his +affectations not to wear a hat--" + +"Is it?" Dundee pounced. "You're sure he wore no hat that afternoon? Did +you notice him when he left after I had dismissed you all?" + +"Yes," Penny acknowledged honestly. "I paid attention to him, because I +was hating him so. I believed then that he was the murderer, and I was +furious with you and Captain Strawn for not arresting him.... He was +the first to leave--just walked straight out; wouldn't even stop to talk +with Janet Raymond, who was trying to get a word with him. I saw him +start toward Sheridan Road--walking. He had no car, you know." + +"Did you observe the others?" Dundee demanded eagerly. "Do you know who +went _alone_ to the guest closet?" + +Penny shook her head. "Everybody was milling around in the hall, and I +paid no attention. Lois said she would drive me home, and then I went in +to ask you to let me stay behind with you--" + +"I remember.... Listen, Penny! I'm going to tell you something else that +nobody knows yet but Sanderson, Lydia and me. I don't have to ask you +not to tell any of your friends. You know well enough that anything you +learn from either Sanderson or me is strictly confidential." + +Penny nodded, her face very white and her brown eyes big with misery. + +"I have every reason to believe that Nita Selim was a blackmailer, that +she came to Hamilton for the express purpose of bleeding someone she had +known before, or someone on whom she had 'the goods' from some +underworld source or other.... At any rate, Nita banked ten thousand +mysterious dollars--$5,000 on April 28, and $5,000 on May 5. I talked to +Drake last night, and I have his word for it that the money was in bills +of varying denomination--none large--when Nita presented it for deposit. +Therefore it seems clear to me that Nita got the money right here in +Hamilton; otherwise it would have come to her in the form of checks or +drafts or money orders. And it seems equally clear to me that she did +not bring that large amount of cash from New York with her, or she would +have deposited it in a lump sum in the bank immediately after her +arrival." + +"Yes," Penny agreed. "But why are you telling _me_?... Of course I'm +interested--" + +"Because I want you to tell me the financial status of each of your +friends," Dundee said gently. "I know how hard it is for you--" + +"You could find out from others, so I might as well tell you," Penny +interrupted, with a weary shrug. "Judge Marshall is well-to-do, and +Karen's father--her mother is dead--settled $100,000 on her when she +married. She has complete control of her own money.... The Dunlaps are +the richest people in Hamilton, and have been for two or three +generations. Lois was 'first-family' but poor when she married Peter, +but he's been giving her an allowance of $20,000 a year for several +years--not for running the house, but for her personal use. Clothes, +charities, hobbies, like the Little Theater she brought Nita here to +organize--" + +"I wouldn't say she spends a great deal of it on dress," Dundee +interrupted with a grin. + +"Lois doesn't give a hang how she looks or what anyone thinks of +her--which is probably one reason she is the best-loved woman in our +crowd," Penny retorted loyally. "The Miles' money is really Flora's, +and she has the reputation of being one of the shrewdest business +'men' in town. When she married Tracey nearly eight years ago, he was +just a salesman in her father's business--the biggest dairy in the +state ... 'Cloverblossom' butter, cream, milk and cheese, you +know.... Well, when Flora married Tracey, her father retired and let +Tracey run the business for Flora, and he's still managing it, but Flora +is the real head.... Now, let's see.... Oh, yes, the Drakes!... Johnny +is vice president of the Hamilton National Bank, as you know, and owns +a big block of the stock. Carolyn has no money of her own, except what +Johnny gives her, and I rather think he isn't any too generous--" + +"They don't get along very well together, do they?" + +"N-no!" Penny agreed reluctantly. "You see, Johnny Drake was simply not +cut out for love and marriage. He's a born ascetic, would have been a +monk two or three centuries ago, but he cares as much for Carolyn as he +could for any woman.... The Hammond boys have some inherited money, and +Clive has made a big financial success of architecture.... That leaves +only Janet and Polly, doesn't it?... Polly's an orphan and has barrels +of money, and will have barrels more when her aunt, with whom she lives, +dies and leaves her the fortune she has always promised her." + +"And Janet Raymond?" + +"Janet's father is pretty rich--owns a big wire-fence factory, but Janet +has only a reasonable allowance," Penny answered. "As for me--I'm _very_ +rich: I get thirty-five whole dollars a week, to support myself and +Mother on." + +Dundee remained thoughtfully silent for a long minute. Then: "All you +girls are alumnae of Forsyte-on-the-Hudson, and Nita Selim came here +immediately after she had directed a Forsyte play.... Tell me, +Penny--was any of the Hamilton girls ever in disgrace while in the +Forsyte School?" + +Penny's face flamed. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, but so far as I know +there was never anything of the sort. Of course we all graduated +different years, except Karen and I, and I might not have heard--But +no!" she denied vehemently. "There wasn't any scandal on a Hamilton girl +ever! I'm sure of it!" + +But her very vehemence convinced Bonnie Dundee that she was not at all +sure.... + +He looked at his watch. Four o'clock.... By this time Nita Selim--tiny +cold body, royal blue velvet dress, black curls piled high in an +old-fashioned "French roll," bullet-torn heart--were nothing more than a +little heap of grey ashes.... Would Lydia Carr have them put in a sealed +urn and carry them about with her always? + +"I'm going out now, Penny, and I shan't be back today," he told the girl +who had returned to her furious typing. "I'll telephone in about an hour +to see if anything has come up.... By the way, how do I get to the +Dunlap house?" + +"It's in the Brentwood section. You know--that cluster of hills around +Mirror Lake. Most of the crowd live out there--the Drakes, the Mileses, +the Beales, the Marshalls. The Dunlap house stands on the highest hill +of all. It's grey stone, a little like a French chateau. We used to live +out there, too, in a Colonial house my mother's father built, but Dad +persuaded Mother to sell, when he went into that Primrose Meadows +venture. The Raymonds bought it.... But why do you want to see Lois?" + +"Thanks much, Penny. I don't know what I should do without you," Dundee +said, without answering her question, and reached for his hat. + +After ten minutes of driving, the last mile of which had circled a +smooth silver coin of a lake, Dundee stopped his car and let his eyes +rove appreciatively. He had made this trip the day before to question +Lydia, already installed as nurse for the Miles children, but he had +been in too great a hurry then to see much of this section consecrated +to Hamilton's socially elect.... + +Georgian "cottage," Spanish hacienda, Italian villa, Tudor mansion--that +was the Miles home; Colonial mansion where Penny had once lived; grey +stone chateau.... Not one of them blatantly new or marked with the +dollar sign. Dundee sighed a little enviously as he turned his car into +the winding driveway that led up the highest hill to the Dunlap home. + +Lois Dunlap betrayed no surprise when the butler led Dundee to the +flag-stoned upper terrace overlooking Mirror Lake, where she was having +tea with her three children and their governess. For a moment the +detective had the illusion that he was in England again.... + +"How do you do, Mr. Dundee?... This is Miss Burden.... My three +offspring--Peter the third, Eleanor, and Bobby.... Will you please take +the children to the playroom now, Miss Burden?... Thank you!... Tea, Mr. +Dundee? Or shall I order you a highball?" + +"Nothing, thanks," Dundee answered, grateful for her friendliness but +nonplussed by it. Not for the first time he felt a sick distaste for the +profession he had chosen.... + +"It's all over," Lois Dunlap said in a low voice, as the butler +retreated. "Lydia made her look very beautiful.... I thought it would be +rather horrible, having to see her, as the poor child requested in her +note to Lydia, but I'm glad now I did. She looked as sweet and young and +innocent as she must have been when she first wore the royal blue +velvet." + +"I'm glad," Dundee said sincerely. Then he leaned toward her across the +tea table. "Mrs. Dunlap, will you please tell me just how you persuaded +Mrs. Selim to come to Hamilton--so far from Broadway?" + +"Why certainly!" Lois Dunlap looked puzzled. "But it really did not take +much persuasion after I showed her some group photographs we had made +when we Forsyte girls put on 'The Beggar's Opera' here last October--a +benefit performance for the Forsyte Alumnae Scholarship fund." + +With difficulty Dundee controlled his excitement. "May I see those +photographs, please?" + +"I had to hunt quite a bit for them," his hostess apologized ten minutes +later, as she spread the glossy prints of half a dozen photographs for +Dundee's inspection. "Do you know 'The Beggar's Opera'?" + +"John Gay--eighteenth century, isn't it?... As I remember it, it is +quite--" and Dundee hesitated, grinning. + +"Bawdy?" Lois laughed. "Oh, very! We couldn't have got away with it if +it hadn't been a classic. As it was, we had to tone down some of the +naughtiest passages and songs. But it was lots of fun, and the boys +enjoyed it hugely because it gave them an opportunity to wear tight +satin breeches and lace ruffles.... This is my husband, Peter. He adored +being the highwayman, 'Robin of Bagshot'," and she pointed out a stocky, +belligerent-looking man near the end of the long row of costumed +players, in a photograph which showed the entire cast. + +"You say that Mrs. Selim accepted your proposal _after_ she saw these +photographs?" Dundee asked. "Had she refused before?" + +"Yes. I'd gone to New York for the annual Easter Play which the Forsyte +School puts on, because I'm intensely interested in semi-professional +theatricals," Lois explained. "Nita had done a splendid job with the +play the year before, and I spoke to her, after this year's show was +over, about coming to Hamilton. She was not at all interested, but +polite and sweet about it, so I invited her to have lunch with me the +next day, and showed her these photographs of our own play in the hope +that they would make her take the idea more seriously. We had borrowed a +Little Theater director from Chicago and I knew we had done a really +good job of 'The Beggar's Opera.' The local reviews--" + +"These 'stills' look extremely professional. I don't wonder that they +interested Nita," Dundee cut in. "Will you tell me what she said?" + +"She rather startled me," Lois Dunlap confessed. "I first showed her +this picture of the whole cast, and as I was explaining the play a +bit--she didn't know 'The Beggar's Opera'--she almost snatched the +photograph out of my hands. As she studied it, her lovely black eyes +grew perfectly enormous. I've never seen her so excited since--" + +"What did she say?" Dundee interrupted tensely. + +"Why, she said nothing just at first, then she began to laugh in the +queerest way--almost hysterically. I asked her why she was laughing--I +was a little huffy, I'm afraid--and she said the men looked so adorably +conceited and funny. Then she began to ask the names of the players. I +told her that 'Macheath'--he's the highwayman hero, you know--was played +by Clive Hammond; that my Peter was 'Robin of Bagshot', that Johnny +Drake was another highwayman, 'Mat of the Mint', that Tracey Miles +played the jailor, 'Lockit'--" + +"Did she show more interest in one name than another?" + +"Yes. When I pointed out Judge Marshall as 'Peachum', the fence, she +cried out suddenly: 'Why, I know him! I met him once on a party.... Is +he really a _judge_?' and she laughed as if she knew something very +funny about Hugo--as no doubt she did. He was an inveterate +'lady-killer' before his marriage, as you may have heard." + +"Do you think her first excitement was over seeing Judge Marshall among +the players?" Dundee asked. + +"No," Lois answered, after considering a moment. "I'm sure she didn't +notice him until I pointed him out. The face in this group that seemed +to interest her most was Flora Miles'. Flora played the part of 'Lucy +Lockit', the jailor's daughter, and Karen Marshall the other feminine +lead, 'Polly Peachum', you know. But it was Flora's picture she lingered +over, so I showed her this picture," and Lois Dunlap reached for the +portrait of Flora Miles, unexpectedly beautiful in the eighteenth +century costume--tight bodice and billowing skirts. + +"She questioned you about Mrs. Miles?" Dundee asked. + +"Yes. All sorts of questions--her name, and whether she was married and +then who her husband was, and if she had had stage experience," Lois +answered conscientiously. "She explained her interest by saying Flora +looked more like a professional actress than any of the others, and that +we should give her a real chance when we got our Little Theater going. I +asked her if that meant she was going to accept my offer, and she said +she might, but that she would have to talk it over with a friend first. +Just before midnight she telephoned me at my hotel that she had decided +to accept the job." + +Dundee's heart leaped. It was very easy to guess who that "friend" was! +But he controlled his excitement, asked his next question casually: + +"Did she show particular interest in any other player?" + +"Yes. She asked a number of questions about Polly Beale, and seemed +incredulous when I told her that Polly and Clive were engaged. Polly +played 'Mrs. Peachum', and was a riot in the part.... But Nita's +intuition was correct. Flora carried off the acting honors.... Oh, yes, +she also asked, quite naively, if all my friends were rich, too, and +could help support a Little Theater. I reassured her on that point." + +"And," Dundee reflected silently, "upon a point much more important to +Nita Selim." Aloud he said: "I don't see _you_ among the cast." + +"Oh, I haven't a grain of talent," Lois Dunlap laughed. "I can't act for +two cents--can I, Peter darling?... Here's the redoubtable 'Robin of +Bagshot' in person, Mr. Dundee--my husband!" + +The detective rose to shake hands with the man he had been too absorbed +to see or hear approaching. + +"You're the man from the district attorney's office?" Peter Dunlap +scowled, his hand barely touching Dundee's. "I suppose you're trying to +get at the bottom of the mystery of why my wife brought that Selim +woman--" + +"Don't call her 'that Selim woman', Peter!" Lois Dunlap interrupted with +more sharpness than Dundee had ever seen her display. "You never liked +the poor girl, were never just to her--" + +"Well, it looks as if my hunch was correct, doesn't it?" the stocky, +rugged-faced man retorted. "I told you at the beginning to pay her off +and send her back to New York--" + +"You knew I couldn't do that, even to please you, dear," Lois said. "But +please don't let's quarrel about poor Nita again. She's dead now, and I +want to do anything I can to help bring her murderer to justice." + +"There's nothing you can do, Lois, and I hope Mr.--ah--Dundee will not +find it necessary to quiz you again." + +Dundee reached for his hat. "I hope so, too, Mr. Dunlap.... By the way, +you are president of the Chamber of Commerce, aren't you?" + +"Yes, I am! And we're having a meeting tonight, at which that Sprague +man's bid on making a historical movie of Hamilton will be turned +down--unanimously. Now that the Selim woman isn't here to vamp my +fellow-members into doing anything she wants, I think I can safely +promise you that Dexter Sprague will have no further business in +Hamilton--unless it is police business!" + +"Thanks for the tip, Mr. Dunlap," Dundee said evenly. "I hope you +enjoyed your fishing trip. Where do you fish, sir?" + +"A tactful way of asking for my alibi, eh?" Dunlap was heavily +sarcastic. "I left Friday afternoon for my own camp in the mountains, up +in the northwest part of the state. I drove my own car, went alone, +spent the week-end alone, and got back this noon. I read of the murder +in a paper I picked up in a village on my way home. I didn't like Nita +Selim, and I don't give a damn about her being murdered, except that my +wife's name is in all the papers.... Any questions?" + +"None, thanks!" Dundee answered curtly, then turned to Lois Dunlap who +was watching the two men with troubled, embarrassed eyes. "I am very +grateful to you, Mrs. Dunlap, for your kindness." + +The detective's angry resentment of Peter Dunlap's attitude lasted until +he had circled Mirror Lake and was on the road into Hamilton. Then +commonsense intervened. Dunlap was undoubtedly devoted to his wife. +Penny had said that he had "never looked at another woman." It was +rather more than natural that he should be in a futile, blustering rage +at the outcome of Lois' friendship for the little Broadway dancer.... + +Free of anger, his mind reverted to the story Lois Dunlap had told him. +For in it, he was sure, was hidden the key to the mystery of Nita +Selim's murder. Not at all interested in the proposition to organize a +Little Theater in Hamilton, Nita had been seized with a strange +excitement as soon as she was shown photographs of a large group of +Hamilton's richest and most prominent inhabitants.... But there was the +rub! _A large group!_ Would that group of possible suspects never narrow +down to one? Of course there was Judge Marshall, but if Lois Dunlap's +memory was to be trusted Nita had not noticed the elderly Beau Brummel's +picture until _after_ that strange, hysterical excitement had taken +possession of her. And if it had been Judge Marshall whom she had come +to Hamilton to blackmail would Nita not have guarded her tongue before +Lois? The same was true about her extraordinary interest in Flora +Miles.... + +Dundee tried to put himself in Nita's place, confronted suddenly with a +group picture containing the likeness of a person--man or woman--against +whom she knew something so dreadful and so secret that her silence would +be worth thousands of dollars. Would _he_ have chattered of that very +person? No! Of anyone else but that particular person! It was easy to +picture Nita, her head whirling with possibilities, hitting upon the +most conspicuous player in the group--dark, tense, theatrical Flora, +already pointed out to her as one of the two female leads in the +opera.... But of whom had she really been thinking? + +Again a blank wall! For in that group photograph of the cast of "The +Beggar's Opera" had appeared every man, woman and girl who had been +Nita's guest on the day of her murder.... + +Dundee, paying more attention to his driving, now that he was in the +business section of the city, saw ahead of him the second-rate hotel +where Dexter Sprague had been living since Nita had wired him to join +her in Hamilton. On a sudden impulse the detective parked his car in +front of the hotel and five minutes later was knocking upon Sprague's +door. + +"Well, what do you want now?" the unshaven, pallid man demanded +ungraciously. + +Dundee stepped into the room and closed the door. "I want you to tell me +the name of the man Nita Selim came here to blackmail, Sprague." + +"Blackmail?" Sprague echoed, his pallid cheeks going more yellow. +"You're crazy! Nita came here to take a job--" + +"She came here to blackmail someone, and I am convinced that she sent +for you to act as a partner in her scheme.... No, wait! I'm _convinced_, +I tell you," Dundee assured him grimly. "But I'll make a trade with you, +in behalf of the district attorney. Tell me the name of the person she +blackmailed, and I will promise you immunity from prosecution as her +accomplice." + +"Get out of my room!" and Dexter Sprague's right forefinger trembled +violently as it pointed toward the door in a melodramatic gesture. + +"Very well, Sprague," Dundee said. "But let me give you a friendly +warning. _Don't try to carry on the good work._ Nita got ten thousand +dollars, but she also got a bullet through her heart. And the gun which +fired that bullet is safely back in the hands of the killer.... You're +not going to get that movie job, and I was just afraid you might be +tempted!... Good afternoon!" + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY + + +It was Wednesday evening, four whole days since Nita Leigh Selim, +Broadway dancer, had been murdered while she was dummy at bridge. +Plainclothesmen, in pairs, day and night shifts, still guarded the +lonely house in Primrose Meadows, but Dundee had taken no interest in +the actual scene of the crime since Carraway, fingerprint expert, had +reported negatively upon the secret shelf between Nita's bedroom closet +and the guest closet. So far as any tangible evidence went, only +Dundee's fingers had pressed upon the pivoting panel and explored the +narrow shelf. + +The very lack of fingerprints had of course confirmed Dundee's belief +that the murderer's hand had pressed upon that swinging panel, had +quested in vain for the incriminating documents or letters which had +been the basis of Nita's blackmail scheme, had deposited upon the shelf +the gun and silencer with which the murder had been accomplished, and +had later retrieved the weapon in perfect safety. A hand loosely wrapped +in a handkerchief or protected by a glove.... The hand of a cunning, +careful, cold-blooded murderer--or murderess.... But--who? _Who?_ + +Bonnie Dundee, brooding at his desk in the living room of his small +apartment, reflected bitterly that he was no nearer the answer to that +question than he had been an hour after Nita Selim's death. + +"Well, 'my dear Watson'," he addressed his caged parrot finally. "What +do you say?... Who killed Nita Selim?" + +The parrot stirred on his perch, thrust out his hooked beak to nip his +master's prodding finger, then disdainfully turned his back. + +"I don't blame you, Cap'n," Dundee chuckled. "You must be as sick of +that question as I am.... And what a pity it ever had to be asked! If +the murderer had not been so hasty--or so pressed for time that he +really could not wait to listen to Nita--he would have learned from +Nita herself that she had decided to be a very good girl, and had burned +the 'papers'--all because she was genuinely in love with Ralph +Hammond.... One comfort we have, 'my dear Watson': the murderer still +does not know that Nita burned the papers Friday night. Sooner or later, +when he believes police vigilance has been relaxed, he'll go prowling +about that house, and to Captain Strawn, who doesn't take the slightest +stock in my theory, will go credit for the arrest.... Unless--" + +Dundee reached for a telegraph form and again scanned the pencilled +message. Only that afternoon had it occurred to him to ask the telegraph +company for a copy of the wire by which Dexter Sprague, according to his +own story, had been summoned to Hamilton by Nita Selim. + +The manager had been obliging, had looked up the message and copied it +with his own hand. It was a night letter, and had been filed in Hamilton +April 24--the third day after Nita's arrival. Addressed to Dexter +Sprague, at a hotel in the theatrical district, New York City, the +message read: + + "EVERYTHING JAKE SO FAR BUT WOULD FEEL SAFER YOU HERE CHAMBER OF + COMMERCE PLANNING BOOSTER MOVIE FOUNDING AND DEVELOPMENT OF + HAMILTON LOOKING GOOD DIRECTOR WHY NOT TRY FOR JOB AS GOOD EXCUSE + ALL MY LOVE--NITA" + +Dundee laid the paper on his desk, locked his hands behind his head, and +addressed the parrot again. The habit of using the bird for an audience +and as an excuse for puzzling and mulling aloud had grown on him during +the year he had owned the doughty old Cap'n. + +"As I was about to say, 'my dear Watson', Captain Strawn's boys out at +the Selim house will have their chance to nab our man--or woman--unless +Dexter Sprague ignores my warning, pretends to have the papers himself, +and tries to carry on the blackmail scheme, which he undoubtedly knew +all about and which, most probably, he encouraged Nita to undertake--the +'friend' she had to consult, you know, before she decided to accept Lois +Dunlap's offer." + +The parrot interrupted with a hoarse cackle. + +"Have you gone over to the enemy, Cap'n?" Dundee reproved the bird. "You +sound exactly like Strawn when he laughed at my interpretation of this +message this afternoon. My late chief contends--and it is just possible, +of course, that he is right--that Nita was afraid she couldn't swing the +job of organizing and directing Lois' Little Theater, and wanted Sprague +here, both as lover and unofficial assistant. But that's a pretty thin +explanation, don't you think, 'my dear Watson'?... Oh, all right! Laugh, +damn you! But I'd feel better if Strawn had taken my advice and set a +dick to trail Sprague, to see that he keeps out of mischief.... All +this, however, gets us no nearer to answering that eternal +question--'Who?'" + +With a deep sigh the troubled young special investigator reached for the +"Time Table" he had drafted from his notes made during the grisly +replaying of the "death hand at bridge," and scanned it again: + + 5:20--Flora Miles, dummy, Table No. 1, leaves living room to + telephone. + + 5:22--Clive Hammond arrives and goes directly into solarium. + + 5:23--End of rubber at Table No. 1. Players: Polly Beale, Janet + Raymond, Lois Dunlap, Flora Miles (dummy). Polly Beale leaves + living room to join Clive Hammond in solarium. + + 5:24--Janet Raymond leaves room; says she went straight to front + porch. + + 5:25--Tracey Miles parks car at curb; walks up to the house, hangs + up hat in clothes closet and at (his estimate) + + 5:27--Miles enters living room, talks with Nita, who, as dummy, has + just laid down her cards at Table No. 2. Players: Karen Marshall, + Penny Crain, Carolyn Drake. + + 5:28--Nita leaves living room, goes to her bedroom to make up. + + 5:28-1/2--Lois Dunlap and Miles go into dining room, Miles to make + cocktails. + + 5:31--Judge Marshall enters living room, interrupts bridge game. + + 5:33--John C. Drake enters living room, having walked from Country + Club, which he says he left at 5:10, and which is only + three-quarters of a mile from the Selim house. + + 5:36--Karen finishes playing of hand, and Dexter Sprague and Janet + Raymond enter from front porch, proceeding into dining room. + + 5:37--Penny Crain finishes scoring, and Karen leaves room to tell + Nita the score. + + 5:38--Karen screams upon discovering the dead body at the + dressing-table. + +Dundee laid aside the typed sheet and reached for another, the typing of +which was perfect, since Penny's efficient fingers had manipulated the +keys. + +When he had telephoned to the office just before five o'clock Monday +afternoon to see if anything had come up, Dundee had learned from Penny +that Peter Dunlap had issued an informal call to "the crowd" for a +meeting at his home that evening. + +"You're going, of course?" Dundee had asked. "Then, during the +discussion of the case, I wish you'd try to get the answers to some +questions which need clearing up--if you can do so without getting +yourself 'in Dutch' with your friends.... Fine! Got a pencil?... Here +goes!" + +And now he was re-reading the "report" she had conscientiously written +and left on his desk Tuesday morning: + +"Peter, declaring he wanted to get at the bottom of this case, presided +almost like a judge on the bench, and asked nearly every question you +wanted the answer to. Everyone in the crowd adores gruff old Peter and +no one dreamed of resenting his barrage of questions. What a detective +_he_ would make! + +"First: Janet admitted that she did not go directly to the front porch +when she left the living room after her table finished the last rubber. +Went first to the hall lavatory to comb her hair and renew her make-up. +Said she was there alone about five minutes, then went to the front +porch. (Revised her story after Tracey had said he did not see her on +the porch when he arrived.) + +"Second: Judge Marshall said he glanced into the living room when he +arrived, saw Karen, Carolyn and me absorbed in our game, and went on +down the hall, to hang up his hat and stick. Proceeded immediately to +the living room. + +"Third: John Drake told Peter he entered the front hall and passed on to +the lavatory to wash up. Felt sticky after his walk from the Country +Club. Hung up hat in the guest closet. Went to living room within three +minutes after reaching the house. + +"Fourth: Polly and Clive told Peter they stayed together in the solarium +the whole time, stationed at a front window, watching for Ralph. When +Peter asked them if they could confirm Judge Marshall's story and Johnny +Drake's story, they said they had seen them both arrive, but had paid no +attention to them after they were in the house. It occurred to Peter, +too, to wonder if either Polly or Clive went to Nita's room to warn her +that Ralph knew about Sprague's having slept the night before in the +upstairs bedroom. They both denied emphatically that they had done so. + +"Fifth: Judge Marshall--the pompous old darling--still smarting under +the insinuations you made about him and Nita right after the murder, +volunteered the information to Peter that Nita had _not_ paid her rent, +on the plea that she was short of funds, and that he had told her to let +it go until it was quite convenient. + +"Sixth: The word 'blackmail' was not mentioned, and Johnny Drake, +because of professional ethics, I suppose, did not tell about Nita's two +deposits of $5,000 each in his bank. + +"Seventh: The secret shelf in the foyer closet was not mentioned. + +"Peter's verdict, after he got through with us, was that only Sprague +could have done it--using the gun and silencer which Nita herself had +stolen from Hugo. I couldn't tell him that you are convinced that +Lydia's alibi for him is a genuine one, for apparently Lydia hasn't told +either Flora or Tracey that she was able to furnish Sprague an alibi. + +"And that's all, except that Peter asked me to convey to you his +apologies for his rudeness Monday afternoon.... Penelope Crain." + +With a deep sigh Dundee laid Penny's report aside. + +"And that does seem to be all, 'my dear Watson'," he told the parrot. +"Exactly half a dozen possible suspects, and not an atom of actual +evidence against one of them--except that Judge Marshall owned the gun. +Six--count 'em: Judge Marshall, John Drake, Flora Miles, Clive Hammond, +Polly Beale, Janet Raymond.... Every single one of them a possible +victim of blackmail, since the girls all attended the Forsyte School, +where Nita directed the Easter play for two years, and since the men +make several trips a year to New York.... Six people, all of whom +probably knew of the existence of the secret shelf.... Six people who +knew Nita was in her bedroom, either from having seen her go or from +hearing her powder box tinkling its damnable tune!... Yes, Penny! You're +right! That's all--so far as Hamilton is concerned! If Sanderson won't +let me go to New York--which is where this damned business started--I'll +resign and go on my own, without wasting another day here!" + +But Dundee did not go to New York the next morning. He was far too busy +in Hamilton.... + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE + + +"Hello, Penny!" Dundee greeted the district attorney's private secretary +Thursday morning at five minutes after nine. "Any news from Sanderson?" + +"Yes," Penny Crain answered listlessly. "A night letter. He says his +mother is still very low and that we're to wire him at the Good +Samaritan Hospital in Chicago if anything turns up." + +"Then I suppose I can reach him there by long distance," and Dundee +lifted the telephone from Penny's desk to put in the call. + +"What's happened?" Penny demanded, her brown eyes wide and startled. + +"And hurry it up, will you, please?" Dundee urged the long distance +operator before hanging up the receiver and answering Penny's question. +"That's just the trouble--nothing's happened, and nothing is very likely +to happen here. I'm determined to go to New York and work on this pesky +case from that end--" + +"Then you've come around to Captain Strawn's theory that it was a New +York gunman?" Penny asked hopefully. + +"Not by a jugful!... But what's the matter with you this morning, young +woman? You're looking less like a new penny and more like one that has +been too much in circulation." + +"Thanks!" Penny retorted sarcastically; then she grinned wryly. "You are +right, as a matter of fact. I was up too late last night--bridge at the +Mileses'." + +"_Bridge!_" Dundee ejaculated incredulously. "So the bridge party _did_ +take place, in spite of the society editor's discreet announcement +yesterday that 'owing to the tragic death of Mrs. Selim, the regular +every-other-Wednesday dinner-bridge of the Forsyte Alumnae Association +will not be held this evening at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Tracey Miles, +as scheduled'." + +"It wasn't a 'dinner-bridge' and it really wasn't intended to be a +party," Penny corrected him. "It just sort of happened, and of all the +ghastly evenings--" + +"Tell me about it," Dundee suggested. "Knowing this town's telephone +service as I do, I'll have plenty of time to listen, and you don't know +how all-agog I am for inside gossip on Hamilton's upper crust." + +"Idiot!" Penny flung at him scornfully. "You know society would bore you +to death, but I don't think you would have been exactly bored last +night, knowing, as I do, your opinion of Dexter Sprague." + +"Sprague? Good Lord! Was he there?... This does promise to be +interesting! Tell me all!" + +"Give me time!" Penny snapped. "I might as well talk, since there's +almost no work for me to do, with Bill away.... Ralph called me up last +night at dinner time, and asked me if I felt equal to playing bridge +again. He said that he, Clive, Tracey and Johnny Drake had lunched +together yesterday--as they frequently do--at the Athletic Club, and +that Judge Marshall, who had been lunching at another table with his +friend, Attorney Sampson, stopped at their table and suggested a bridge +game at his home for last night. Hugo said he wanted to coax Karen into +playing again, so she would get over her hysterical aversion to the game +since she had to replay that awful 'death hand'.... You see," Penny +explained parenthetically, "Hugo is a regular bridge fiend, and +naturally he doesn't want to be kept out of his game." + +"Brute!" Dundee cried disgustedly. "Why couldn't he give the poor girl a +few days more?" + +"That's what I thought," Penny acknowledged. "But _I_ didn't get an +inhibition against bridge, and the idea rather appealed to me +personally. The last few days haven't been particularly cheerful ones, +so I told Ralph I'd be glad to go. Tracey had suggested his house, +instead of Hugo's, because Betty wasn't well yesterday and Flora +wouldn't want to leave her for a whole evening. Well, Ralph and I--" + +"Are you going to marry Ralph Hammond, Penny?" Dundee interrupted, as if +prompted by casual interest. + +Penny's pale face flushed vividly. "No. I'm not in love with him, and +I'm sure he realizes I'm not and won't ask me again. But I _had_ to say +yes Sunday! I simply couldn't let you walk in on us, after I'd permitted +you to eavesdrop while he was talking, without first saying the one +thing that would convince him that I believed in his innocence and +hadn't set a trap for him." + +"I see!" Dundee acknowledged soberly, but his blue eyes shone +with sudden joy. "Oh! There's long distance! Just a minute, +darling!... Hello! Hello!... Yes, this is Dundee.... Oh! All right! +Try again in fifteen minutes, will you?" He hung up the receiver and +explained to Penny: "Sanderson hasn't reached the hospital yet, but is +expected soon.... Go on with your story.... Who all played bridge at +the Mileses'? You don't mean to say Dexter Sprague was invited, too!" + +Penny's face was still a brilliant pink as she answered: "I refuse to +have my climax spoiled!... When Ralph and I got there at eight, we found +that Peter and Lois had dined with Tracey and Flora and that they were +delighted at the prospect of bridge, as a relief from endless +discussions of the murder. We'd hardly got there when the Marshalls +came, poor little Karen not suspecting that she was going to have to +play. Then came Johnny Drake alone, with the news that Carolyn was in +bed and very miserable with a summer cold. Polly walked over from her +house, which is on the next hill to the right, you know. She said Clive +had decided to work late at the office, and had promised to call for her +about eleven, to take her home." + +"What about Janet Raymond? Was she left out?" Dundee asked. + +"I told you it wasn't a planned affair," Penny reminded him. "But Flora +did telephone her, and she said she didn't feel like coming. She's been +moping about like a sick cat since Nita's death. We all knew she was +idiotically in love with Dexter Sprague, and it must have been an awful +blow to her to hear you read aloud that note Nita received from +Sprague." + +"So I noticed," Dundee nodded, recalling the deathly pallor of the +girl's face as Sprague had glibly explained away that damning note and +all its implications. + +"Well," Penny continued, "Tracey suggested bridge, and at first Karen +flatly refused to play, but Hugo finally persuaded her.... Karen would +do absolutely _anything_ for that ridiculous old husband of hers! I +simply can't understand it--how she can be in love with him, I mean!" + +"I thought you liked Judge Marshall," Dundee laughed. + +"Oh, I do--in a way.... But fancy a young girl like Karen being in love +with him!... Well, anyway, we all went out to the east porch, which is +kept in readiness for bridge all summer. Iron bridge tables, covered +with oilcloth, and with oilcloth pouches for the cards and score pads, +so there's never any bother about scurrying in with things on account of +rain. It's a roofed, stone-floored porch, right outside the living-room, +and under it are the garages, so it's high and cool, with a grand view +of Mirror Lake down below, and of the city in the distance." She sighed, +and Dundee knew that she was thinking of her own lost home in +Brentwood--the fine old Colonial mansion which had been sacrificed to +her father's disastrous Primrose Meadows venture. Then she went on: "I +don't know why I am telling you all this, except that the setting was so +pleasant that we should have had a much better time than we did." + +"You're an artful minx, Penny!" Dundee chuckled. "You're working up +suspense for the entrance of the villain!" + +"Then let me do it justice," Penny retorted. "Lois and Peter, Ralph and +I, made up one table for bridge; Tracey and Polly, Judge Marshall and +Karen the other. Flora said she didn't want to play, because she wanted +to be free to keep an eye on Betty, although she protested she had +perfect faith in Lydia, who, Flora says, is proving to be a marvel with +the children. And Johnny Drake asked her to play anagrams with him, in +between trips to the nursery. Johnny has a perfect pash for anagrams, +and is a wow at 'em. So Tracey got the box of anagrams out of the trophy +room--" + +"The trophy room?" Dundee repeated, amused. + +"That's what Tracey calls it," Penny explained impatiently, "because he +has a couple of golf cups and Flora has an immense silver atrocity which +testifies to the fact that she was the 'lady's tennis champion' of the +state for one year. There are also some mounted fish and some deer heads +with incredible antlers, but the room is really used as a catch-all for +all the sports things--racquets, golf clubs, skis, ping-pong table, +etc.... Anyway, Tracey brought out the box of anagrams, and we were all +having a pretty good time when, at half past eight, the butler announced +'_Mr. Dexter Sprague_'!" + +"Your tone makes me wish I'd been there," Dundee acknowledged. "What +happened?" + +"You know how slap-em-on-the-back Tracey always is?" Penny asked, +grinning. "Well, you should have seen him and heard him as he dismissed +poor Whitson--the butler--as if he were giving him notice, instead of +letting him off for the night! And the icy dignity with which he greeted +poor Sprague--" + +"_Poor_ Sprague?" Dundee echoed. + +"Well, after all, Sprague _had_ been received by all the crowd before +Nita's death," Penny retorted. "I think it was rather natural for him to +think he'd still be welcome. He began to apologize for his uninvited +presence, saying he had felt lonesome and depressed and had just 'jumped +into a taxi' and come along, hoping to find the Mileses in. Flora tried +to act the lady hostess, but Peter got up from his bridge table and said +in tones even icier than Tracey's: 'Will you excuse me, Flora? And will +you take my place, Drake?... I'm going into the library. I don't enjoy +the society of murderers!'" + +"Good Lord!" Dundee ejaculated, shocked but admiring. "Did Sprague make +a quick exit?" + +"Not just then," Penny said mysteriously. "Of course everyone was simply +stunned, but Sprague retorted cheerfully, 'Neither do I, Dunlap!' Peter +stalked on into the living room on his way to the library, Johnny took +his place at the bridge table, and Tracey, at an urgent signal from +Flora, offered his seat at the other table to Sprague, as if he were +making way for a leper. Poor Polly had to be Sprague's partner. Flora, +as if she were terrified at what might happen--you know how frightfully +tense and nervous she is--made an excuse to run upstairs for a look at +Betty." + +"And something terrible did happen," Dundee guessed. "You're looking +positively ghoulish. Out with it!" + +"After about half an hour of playing without pivoting," Penny went on +imperturbably, "Hugo bid three spades, Karen raised him--in a trembling +voice--to five spades, Hugo of course went to a little slam, and Dexter +Sprague, if you can believe me, said: 'Better not leave the table, +Karen. _A little slam-bid in spades has been known to be fatal to the +dummy!_'" + +"_No!_" Dundee was genuinely shocked, but before he could say more the +telephone rang. "Sanderson at last.... Hello! Chicago?... Oh, hello, +Captain Strawn!... _What's that?_... Oh, my God!... Where did you say +the body is?" + +He listened for a long minute, then, with a dazed "Thanks! I'll be +over," he hung up the receiver. + +"Sprague--murdered!" he answered the horrified question in Penny's eyes. +"Body discovered this morning about nine by one of the Miles' maids, in +what you described just now as the 'trophy room'.... Shot--just below +the breastbone, Captain Strawn says." + +"The trophy room!" Penny cried. "Then--_that's_ where he was all the +time after he disappeared so strangely last night--" + +"Whoa, Penny!" Dundee commanded. "Get hold of yourself! You're shaking +all over.... I want to know everything _you_ know--as quickly and as +accurately as you can tell it. Go right on--" + +"Poor Dexter!" Penny groaned, covering her convulsed face with her +hands. "To think that he was _dead_ when we were saying such horrid +things about him--" + +"Don't waste sympathy on him, honey!" Dundee cut in, his voice very +gentle but urgent. "If he had heeded my warning Monday he wouldn't be +dead now." + +"What do you mean?" Penny gasped, but she was already calmer. "Your +warning--?" + +"I had a strong suspicion that he was mixed up with Nita in her +blackmail scheme and I took the trouble to warn him not to try to carry +on with it. Yesterday afternoon I begged Strawn to have him shadowed to +see that he kept out of mischief. I was afraid the temptation would be +too strong for him, but Strawn wouldn't listen to me--still clinging to +his theory of a New York gunman.... Feeling better now, honey? Can you +go on? I want to get out to the Miles house as soon as I can." + +"You're getting very--affectionate, aren't you?" Penny gave him a wobbly +smile in which, however, there was no reproof. "I think I can go on +now--. Where was I?" + +"Good girl!" Dundee applauded, but his heart was beating hard with +something more than excitement over Sprague's murder. "You'd just told +me about Sprague's warning Karen not to leave the table when she became +dummy after Judge Marshall's little slam bid in spades." + +"I remember," Penny said, pressing her fingers into her temples. "But +Karen _did_ leave the table. When Sprague said that awful thing, poor +Karen burst into tears and ran from the porch into the living room, Hugo +started to follow her, but Sprague halted him by apologizing very +humbly, and then by adding: 'I'd really like to see you play this hand, +sir. I believe I've got the cards to set you with....' Of course he +could not have said anything better calculated to hold Hugo, who, as I +said, is a regular fiend when it comes to bridge.... Well, Hugo played +the hand and made his little slam, and then he again started to go look +for Karen, but Polly, who was Sprague's partner, you know, told him in +that brusque way of hers to go on with the game and give Karen a chance +to have her little weep in peace. Probably Hugo would have gone to look +for her anyway, but just then Flora came back. She said Betty was asleep +at last and that her temperature was normal, and when she heard about +Karen, she offered to take her hand until Karen felt like coming back." + +"What did Drake do then? He'd been playing anagrams with Mrs. Miles, you +said," Dundee interrupted. + +"Don't you remember?--I told you Johnny had taken Peter's place at our +table after Peter refused to breathe the same air as Dexter Sprague," +Penny reminded him. "Ralph and I, Lois and Johnny were playing together, +and just at the time I became dummy, Sprague became dummy at the other +table. He rose, saying he had to go telephone for a taxi, and passed +from the porch into the living room--" + +"Where is the telephone?" + +"The one the guests use is on a table in the hall closet, where we put +our things," Penny explained. "You can shut the door and hold a +perfectly private conversation.... Well, _we never saw Dexter Sprague +again_!" + +"Good Lord! Another bridge dummy murdered!" Dundee groaned. "At least +the newspapers will be happy!... Didn't anyone go to look for him after +the hand was played?" + +"Not straight off," Penny answered, with an obvious effort to remember +clearly every detail. "Let's see--Oh, yes! That hand was played out +before Ralph had finished playing his, at our table, so I was free to +pay attention to the other table. Flora said that since they couldn't +play another hand until Dexter came back, she thought she'd better hunt +up Karen, who hadn't come back yet." + +"How long was Mrs. Miles away from the porch?" Dundee asked quickly. + +"Oh, I don't know--ten minutes, maybe. She came back alone, saying she +had found Karen in her bedroom--Flora's room, of course--crying +inconsolably. Flora told Hugo he'd better go up to her himself, since +she evidently had her feelings hurt because he hadn't followed her in +the first place. Tracey, who wasn't playing bridge, you remember, +because he had given up his place to Sprague, asked Flora if she'd seen +Sprague, and Flora said, in a surprised voice, 'No! I wonder where he is +all this time,' and Polly said that probably he'd gone to the lavatory, +which opens into the main hall and is next to the library.... Well, +pretty soon Judge Marshall and Karen came back--" + +"Pretty soon?--Just how long was Judge Marshall gone?" Dundee pressed +her, his pencil, which had been flying to take down her every word, +poised over the notebook he had snatched from her desk. + +"I can't say exactly!" Penny protested thornily. "I was playing again at +the other table. I suppose it was about ten minutes, for Ralph and I had +made another rubber, I remember.... Anyway, Karen was smiling like a +baby that has had a lot of petting, but she said Hugo had promised her +she wouldn't have to play bridge any more that evening, so Flora +remained at that table, playing opposite Hugo, while Tracey played with +Polly. As soon as Tracey became dummy, Flora suggested he go look for +Sprague." + +"And how long was _he_ gone from the porch?" Dundee asked. + +"Less than no time," Penny assured him. "He was back before Polly had +finished playing the hand. He said he'd gone to the hall closet, where +Whitson, the butler, would have put Sprague's hat and stick, and that he +had found they were gone.... Well--and you needn't put down 'well' every +time I say it!" Penny interrupted herself tartly. "Tracey said he +supposed Sprague had ordered his taxi and had decided to walk down the +hill to meet it, and he added that that was exactly the kind of courtesy +you could expect from a cad and a bounder like Sprague--walking in +uninvited, making Karen cry, then walking out, without a word, leaving +the game while he was dummy. Flora spoke up then and said it was no +wonder Dexter had left without saying good-by, considering how he'd been +treated. Then Tracey said something ugly and sarcastic about Flora's +being disappointed because Sprague had decided not to spend the whole +evening--" + +"A first-class row, eh?" Dundee interrupted, with keen interest. + +"Rather! Flora almost cried, said Tracey knew good and well that she had +only been playing-up to Sprague before Nita's death, in the hope of +getting the lead in the Hamilton movie, if Sprague got the job of +directing it, and Tracey said, 'So you call it playing-up, do you? It +looked like high-powered flirting to me--or maybe it was more than a +flirtation!...' Then Flora told him he hadn't acted jealous at the +time, and that he _knew_ he'd have been glad if she'd got the +lead.... Well, just then along came Janet--" + +"_Janet Raymond?_" Dundee ejaculated. "I thought you said she had +refused the invitation when Mrs. Miles phoned her." + +"So she had, but she said she changed her mind, had been blue all +evening, and needed cheering up." + +"How did she get in?" + +"She walked over from her house, which isn't very far from the Mileses', +and simply came up the path to the porch," Penny explained. "Tracey +asked her if she had seen Sprague on the road--it's the same road Dexter +would have had to take going down the hill to the main road--and she +acted awfully queer--" + +"How?" Dundee demanded. + +"Exactly as she would act, since she was in love with him," Penny +retorted. "She turned very red, and asked if Sprague had inquired for +her, and Flora quite sharply told her he hadn't. Then Janet said she was +very much surprised that Sprague had been there, and that she couldn't +understand why he had behaved so strangely. Then Lois said she might as +well go fetch Peter from the library, since Sprague was no longer there +to contaminate the atmosphere. She came back--" + +"After how long a time?" + +"Oh, about five minutes, I suppose," Penny answered wearily. "She came +in, her arm linked with Peter's, and laughing. Said she had found him +reading a 'Deadwood Dick' thriller.... One of Tracey's hobbies--" she +broke off to explain, "--is collecting old-fashioned thrillers, like the +Nick Carter, Diamond King Brady, Buffalo Bill and Deadwood Dick +paper-bound books. Of course he didn't take up that hobby until a lot of +other rich men had done it first. There was never anybody less original +than poor Tracey.... Well, Flora gave up her place to Janet, and again +played anagrams with Johnny, Peter taking his original place at our +table. Suddenly Polly threw down her cards--she'd been having rotten +luck and seemed out of sorts--and said she didn't want to play bridge +any more. So poor Flora again had to be the perfect hostess, and switch +from anagrams to bridge." + +"And Polly played anagrams with Drake?" Dundee prompted. + +"No. She said she thought anagrams were silly, and wandered off the +porch and down the path, calling over her shoulder that she was going to +take a walk. Tracey asked Johnny if he'd mind mixing the highballs and +bringing out the sandwiches. Said Whitson had left a thermos bucket of +ice cubes on the sideboard, some bottles of ginger ale, and a tray of +glasses and sandwiches. Told him he'd find decanters of Scotch and rye, +and to bring out both." + +"So Drake left the room, too," Dundee mused. "Oh, Lord. I _knew_ I'd +find that every last one of the six had a chance to kill Sprague, as +well as Nita!... How long was Polly Beale gone on this walk of hers?" + +"She came in with a pink water lily--said she'd been down to the lily +ponds, and that Flora had enough to spare her one," Penny answered. "She +couldn't have been away more than ten minutes, because Johnny was just +mixing the highballs, according to our preference for Scotch or rye--or +plain ginger ale, which both Ralph and I chose. After we'd had our +drinks and the sandwiches, we went on with bridge. Polly and Johnny just +wandered about the porch or watched the game at the two tables. And +about five minutes after eleven Clive Hammond arrived, coming up the +path to the porch, just as Janet had. After he came, there was no more +bridge, but we sat around on the porch and talked until midnight. Clive +said he was too tired to play bridge--that he'd been struggling all +evening with a knotty problem." + +"I can sympathize with him!" Dundee said grimly, as he rose. "I've got +my own knotty problem awaiting me.... When that call comes through from +Chicago, tell Sanderson the bad news, and say I'll telephone him later." + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO + + +The Miles home, still known in Hamilton as the Hackett place, since it +had been built more than thirty years before by Flora's father, old +Silas Hackett, dead these seven years, dominated one of the most +beautiful of the wooded hills which encircled Mirror Lake in the +Brentwood section. Of modified Tudor architecture, its deep red, +mellowed bricks had achieved in three decades almost the same aged +dignity and impressiveness as characterized the three-century-old +mansion in England which Silas Hackett's architect had used as an +inspiration. + +The big house faced the lake, a long series of landscaped terraces +leading down to the water's edge, but the driveway wound from the state +road up a side of the hill, to the main entrance at the rear of the +house. + +Once before--on Sunday, the day after Nita Selim's murder, when he had +come to interview Lydia Carr and had secured the alibi which had +eliminated Dexter Sprague as a suspect--Dundee had driven his car up +this hill between the tall yew hedges. But then he had taken the fork +which led to the hooded doorway over the kitchen; had descended the +kitchen stairs with Lydia, to the servants' sitting room in the +basement. Now he continued along the main driveway to the more +impressive entrance, whose flanking, slim turrets frowned down upon a +line of police cars and motorcycles. + +His approach must have been expected and observed, for it was the master +of the house who opened the great, iron-studded doors and invited the +detective into the broad main hall, at the end of which, down three +steps, lay the immense living room. The detective's first glance took in +stately armchairs of the Cromwell period, thick, mellow-toned rugs, and, +in the living room beyond, splendid examples of Jacobean furniture. + +"A horrible thing to happen in a man's home, Dundee," Miles was saying, +his plump, rosy face blighted with horror. "I can't realize yet that we +actually slept as usual with a corpse lying down here all night! And I +have only myself to blame--" + +"What do you mean?" Dundee asked. + +"Why, that the--the body wasn't discovered sooner," Miles explained. "If +it had occurred to me that Whitson hadn't closed the trophy room +windows, I should have gone in to close and lock them when I made the +rounds of living room, dining room and library, after our guests were +gone last night." + +A pale-faced, bald-headed butler had materialized while his master was +speaking. "Beg pardon, sir, but I did not close the trophy room windows +because I thought you might be using the room again.... You see, sir," +and Whitson turned to Dundee, "Mr. Miles and Mr. Dunlap played ping-pong +in the trophy room after dinner until the other guests began to arrive, +and I did not want them to find the room stuffy--it was a warm night--if +any of the guests--" + +"I see," Dundee interrupted. "Who, to your knowledge, was the last +person to enter the trophy room last night, Mr. Miles?" + +"I was, except Sprague, of course, and I had no idea he'd gone there. +Drake wanted to play anagrams, and before the bridge game started, I +went to the trophy room to get the box," Miles explained. "I turned off +the light when I left, and there was no light burning in there this +morning when Celia, the parlor maid, went there to put the anagram box +back in the cabinet, and found the body.... Flora--Mrs. Miles--had +brought the anagrams in from the porch and left them on a table in the +living room, as our guests were getting ready to leave. There was +nothing else to bring in, in case of rain. The bridge tables are of +iron, covered with oilcloth, and fitted with oilcloth bags for the +cards, score pads, and pencils--" + +"Yes, I know," Dundee interrupted. "Miss Crain has already told me all +about that, and a good many details of the party itself.... By the way, +where is Mrs. Miles now?" + +"In bed. The doctor is with her. She is prostrated from the shock." + +"Where is this room you call the trophy room?" Dundee asked. "No, don't +bother to come with me. Just point it out. It's on this floor, I +understand." + +Miles pointed past the great circular staircase that wound upward from +the main hall. "You can't see the door from here, but it's behind the +staircase. Celia found the door closed this morning, and no light on, as +I said--" + +Dundee cut him short by marching toward the door which was again closed. +He entered so noiselessly that Captain Strawn, Dr. Price and the +fingerprint expert, Carraway, did not hear him. For a moment he stood +just inside the door and let his eyes wander about the room which Penny +Crain had already described. It was not a large room--twelve by fourteen +feet, possibly--but it looked even smaller, crowded as it was with the +long ping-pong table, bags of golf clubs, fishing tackle, tennis +racquets, skis and sleds. There were two windows in the north wall of +the room, looking out upon the yew-hedged driveway, and between them +stood a cabinet of numerous big and little drawers. + +Not until he had taken in the general aspect of the room did Dundee look +at the thing over which Captain Strawn and the coroner were bending--the +body of Dexter Sprague. + +The alien from New York had fallen about four feet from the window +nearer the east wall of the trophy room. He lay on his side, his left +cheek against the floor, the fingers of his left hand still clutching +the powder-burned bosom of his soft shirt, now stiff with dried blood, a +pool of which had formed and then half congealed upon the rug. The right +hand, the fingers curled but not touching each other, lay palm-upward on +the floor at the end of the rigid, outstretched arm. The one visible eye +was half open, but on the sallow, thin face, which had been strikingly +handsome in an obvious sort of way, was a peace and dignity which Dundee +had never seen upon Sprague's face when the man was alive. The left leg +was drawn upward so that the knee almost touched the bullet-pierced +stomach. + +"How long has he been dead, doctor?" Dundee asked quietly. + +"Hello, boy!" Dr. Price greeted him placidly. "Always the same question! +I've been here only a few minutes, and I've already told Strawn that I +shall probably be unable to fix the hour of death with any degree of +accuracy." + +"Took your time, didn't you, Bonnie?" Captain Strawn greeted his former +subordinate on the Homicide Squad. "Doc says he's been dead between ten +and twelve hours. Since it's nearly ten now, that means Sprague was +killed some time between nine and eleven o'clock last night." + +"Better say between nine o'clock and midnight last night," Dr. Price +suggested. "He may have lived an hour or more--unconscious, of course. +For the indications are that he did not die instantly, but staggered a +few steps, clutching at the wound. But of course I shall have to perform +an autopsy first----" + +Dundee crossed the room, stepping over the dead man's stick--a swank +affair of dark, polished wood, with a heavy knob of carved onyx, which +lay about a foot beyond the reach of the curled fingers of the stiff +right hand. + +"Sprague's hat?" he asked, pointing to a brightly banded straw which lay +upon the top of the cabinet. + +"Yes," Strawn answered. "And did you notice the window screen?" + +He pointed to the window in front of which the body lay. The sash of +leaded panes was raised as high as it would go, and beneath it was a +screen of the roller-curtain type, raised about six inches from the +window sill. A pair of curved, nickel-plated catches in the center of +the inch-wide metal band on the bottom of the coppernet curtain showed +how the screen was raised or lowered. + +Dundee nodded, frowning, and Strawn began eagerly: + +"You'll have to admit I was right now, boy. You've sneered at my gunman +theory and tried to pin Nita's murder on one of Hamilton's finest bunch +of people, but you'll have to admit now that every detail of this set-up +bears me out." + +"Yes?" + +"Sure. This is the way I figure it out: Sprague has good reason to be +afraid he's next on the program. He's nervous. He hops a taxi at his +hotel and comes here--can't stick to his room any longer. Wants a little +human companionship. This crowd here--and I have Miles' word for +it--ain't any too glad to see him, and shows it. He phones for a taxi to +go back to his hotel--about 9:15, that was, Miles says--but decides to +walk down the hill to meet it. Don't want to go back out on the porch +and lie about having had a good time, when he hasn't.... Well, he opens +the front door, or what would be the front door if this was any ordinary +house, but before he steps out he sees or hears something--probably a +rustling in the hedge across the driveway, or maybe he even sees a face, +in the light from the lanterns on each side of the door. He feels sure +Nita's murderer has trailed him and is lying in wait for him. In a panic +he darts into this room, and don't turn on the light for fear he'll be +seen from the windows, but he can see well enough to make out how the +screens work, and he was familiar with the house anyway. I'll bet you +anything you like Sprague stayed in this room for an hour or two, till +he thought the coast was clear, then eased up this screen, intending to +climb out of the window and drop to the ground.... Not much of a drop at +that. You can see that the tall hedge on this side of the driveway comes +pretty near up to these windows.... Well, I figure he laid his hat on +this cabinet, intending to reach in for it when he was outside, but that +he had already made some little noise which the gunman was listening +for, and that when he got the screen up this high, the gunman, crouching +under the window, let go with the same gun and silencer that he used to +bump off Nita.... I've got Miles' word for it that neither he nor +anybody else heard a shot.... Of course, nobody knew Sprague was in +here, and since his hat and stick was both missing from the hall closet, +they took it for granted he'd beat it.... Any objections to that theory, +boy?" + +"Just a few--one in particular," Dundee said. "But I grant it's a good +one, provided Dr. Price's autopsy bears you out as to the course of the +bullet, and that Carraway finds Sprague's fingerprints on that +contrivance for raising the screen. Even then----" + +But Dundee was not allowed to finish his sentence, for Strawn was +summoned to the telephone, by Whitson. When he returned there was a +slightly bewildered look on his heavy old face. + +"That's funny.... Collins--the lad I sent to check up on the taxi +companies--says he's located the driver that answered Sprague's call +last night. The driver says he was called about 9:15, told to come +immediately, and to wait for Sprague at the foot of the hill, on the +main road. He says he waited there until half past ten, then went on +back to town, sore'n a boiled owl." + +"It doesn't look exactly as if Sprague were afraid of anyone _outside of +this house_ last night, does it?" Dundee asked. "By the way, I suppose +you've sent for everyone who was here?" + +"Sure!" But again Captain Strawn looked uncomfortable. "But we haven't +been able to locate the Beale girl and Clive Hammond." + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE + + +"I'd give a good deal to know which of those two suggested that it would +be a good idea to get married the first thing this morning," Dundee +mused aloud, as he put down the second extra which _The Hamilton Morning +News_ had had occasion to issue that Thursday. + +It was two o'clock, and the district attorney's "special investigator" +sat across the desk from Captain Strawn, in his former chief's office at +Police Headquarters. + +The first extra had screamed in its biggest head type: SECOND BRIDGE +DUMMY MURDER! and had carried, in detail, Captain Strawn's comforting +theory that Dexter Sprague's erstwhile friends had again been made the +victims of a New York gunman's fiendish cleverness in committing his +murders under circumstances which would inevitably involve Hamilton's +most highly respected and socially prominent citizens in the police +investigation. + +But the second extra had a more romantic streamer headline: HAMMOND +WEDDING DELAYS MURDER QUIZ. + +The story beneath a series of smaller headlines began: + +"At the very moment--9:05 o'clock this morning--when Celia Hunt, maid in +the Tracey Miles home in the Brentwood district of Hamilton, was +screaming the news of her discovery of the dead body of Dexter Sprague, +New York motion picture director, in what is known as the 'trophy room,' +Miss Polly Beale and Mr. Clive Hammond were applying for a marriage +license in the Municipal Building. + +"At 9:30, when Miss Beale and Mr. Hammond were exchanging their vows in +the rectory of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, of which both bride and +groom have been members since childhood, Captain John Strawn of the +Homicide Squad was listening to Tracey Miles' account of the strange +disappearance of Dexter Sprague last night from an impromptu bridge +game, after he had announced his intention of taking advantage of the +fact that he was 'dummy' to telephone for a taxi. + +"And at 10 o'clock, when the new Mrs. Hammond called her home to break +the news of her marriage to her aunt, Mrs. Amelia Beale, the bride was +in turn acquainted with the news of Sprague's murder and the fact that +both she and her husband were wanted at the Miles home for questioning +by the police, since both had been guests of Mr. and Mrs. Miles last +night, although Mr. Hammond did not arrive until about 11 o'clock." + +There followed a revision of the murder story as it had appeared in the +first extra, with additional details supplied by Strawn, and with a line +drawing of the scene of the crime--the trophy room itself and the forked +driveway with its tall yew hedges. A dotted line illustrated Strawn's +theory of Sprague's plan to elude the murderer who had followed him to +the Miles home. Because of the curved sweep of the driveway toward the +main entrance of the house, the tall hedge was less than two feet from +the window with the partly opened screen. + +"Captain Strawn's theory," read the text below the large drawing, "is +that Sprague had good cause to fear he was being followed on his way to +the Miles home; that he telephoned for a taxi to wait for him at the +foot of the hill, and that he planned to leave the Miles house by way of +the trophy room window, so that his lurking pursuer might have no +knowledge of his departure. The drawing shows that his proposed flight +would have been protected by hedges until he reached the wooded slope of +the hill, provided his Nemesis was lurking in the opposite hedge across +the driveway, where he could observe every departure from the Miles +home." + +"You've sure got a single-track mind, boy," Strawn chuckled. "So you +think those two got married in such a hurry this morning because the law +says a husband or a wife can't be made to testify against the other?" + +"Possibly." Dundee grinned, unruffled. "But there is another +possibility--which is why I should like to know who suggested this +sudden wedding. I mean that we can't overlook the possibility that these +two murders made either the bride or the groom feel perfectly safe in +going on with the marriage. Polly Beale and Clive Hammond had been +engaged for more than a year, you know, with no apparent reason for a +long engagement.... As for my having a single-track mind, Captain, what +about you? I have six possible suspects, all of whose names I know, and +you have only one--whose name you do not know, and whose motive you can +only guess at, while _I_ have a perfectly good motive that might fit any +one of my six--blackmail!" + +"Is that so?" Strawn growled. "I'm not telling the papers everything, +and if they are satisfied to call these murders '_crimes passionnels_,' +it's all right with me. But I'm not forgetting that Nita Selim banked +ten thousand dollars cash after she got to Hamilton. My real theory now +that Sprague has been killed is that Nita and Sprague had cooked up some +sort of racket between them, and that when Nita got the chance to come +to Hamilton with Mrs. Dunlap, she jumped at it, and she and Sprague +sprung their racket, whatever it was, either just before or just after +Nita left New York. Probably it was Nita's tip-off and Sprague did the +actual dirty work himself, which explains that telegram that Nita sent +him April 24, just three days after she got to Hamilton. Let's see again +just what it says," and Strawn reached for a copy of the night letter +which Dundee himself had unearthed the day before. "See: '_Everything +Jake so far, but would feel safer you here_--'" + +"Yes, I remember the wording quite well," Dundee interrupted. "But you +did not take it so seriously when I showed it to you yesterday. If you +had--" + +"All right! Rub it in!" Strawn snapped, flushing darkly. "If I had +assigned a man to 'tail' Sprague, as you suggested, he wouldn't have +been murdered--" + +"He probably would have been murdered just the same," Dundee comforted +the older man, "but we might have been lucky enough to have had an +eye-witness." + +"Oh, you and your theory!" Strawn growled. "But let me go on.... Nita +meant she would feel safer about Sprague if he was here in Hamilton, +too. But the guy they double-crossed in New York, or worked the badger +game on, or something like that, got on their trail. But it took him +weeks to do it, and Sprague followed Nita's advice. He got here on +Sunday April 27, and on Monday the 28th Nita banked the first $5,000! +Don't you see it, boy? Sprague brought with him the dough they'd got for +their stunt, and thought it was safer for Nita to bank it in her name, +since it wasn't the name she was known by in New York anyway. We've +checked up on Sprague pretty thoroughly. He didn't have a bank book, +either on his body or in his room, and every bank in town denies he had +an account with them." + +"If that theory is correct, it makes Nita Selim a pretty low character," +Dundee mused aloud. "Not only did she kick him out as a lover, but she +double-crossed him as her partner in crime, by willing the whole wad to +Lydia Carr. Sprague must have received quite a shock when he heard +Nita's will read at the inquest." + +"Yeah," Strawn agreed. "It looks like Mrs. Dunlap picked a sweet +specimen to make a friend out of.... Well, that's my theory, and I think +it explains everything. Their victim in New York simply hired a gunman, +or come down here himself, when he got on their tracks. Of course it was +a good stunt to make it look like a local crime--figured he'd fool _me_ +just as he fooled _you_! So the murderer simply trailed Nita around, and +saw that whole bunch of society people shooting at a target at Judge +Marshall's place, with a gun equipped with a Maxim silencer. Too good an +opportunity to be missed, so he bides his chance to swipe the gun and +silencer. To make sure it will look like a local crime, he pops off Nita +when that same bunch is at her house, but it takes a few days longer +before he has the same opportunity to get Sprague. But it come last +night and he grabbed it." + +"A very plausible theory, and one which, in general, the whole city of +Hamilton has been familiar with since the night Nita was murdered," +Dundee remarked significantly. + +"What do you mean?" Strawn demanded. "It's waterproof, ain't it? Doc +Price says the bullet--and a .32 caliber one at that--entered Sprague's +body just below the breastbone and traveled an upward course till it +struck the extreme right side of the heart. The bullet entered exactly +where it would have to, if the murderer was crouching under that window +while Sprague was raising the screen. And we have Carraway's report that +it was Sprague's fingerprints on those nickleplated things you have to +press together to make the screen roll up or down. Furthermore, I +haven't a doubt in the world that the ballistics expert in Chicago will +report that the bullet was fired from the same gun that killed Nita +Selim." + +"Neither have I," Dundee agreed. "But what I meant was that you had +obligingly furnished the murderer who fits _my_ theory with a theory +he--or she--would not have upset for the world!... Listen!" and he bent +forward very earnestly: "I'm willing to grant that Sprague was shot from +the outside, through the window, when Sprague raised the screen. But +there our theories part company. I believe that the murderer was a guest +in the Selim home last night, that he or she had made an appointment to +meet Sprague there, on the promise of paying the hush money he had +demanded, in spite of my warning to him not to carry on with the +blackmail scheme. Naturally he or she--and I'll say 'he' from now on, +for the sake of convenience--had no intention of being seen entering +that room. The bridge game was suggested by Judge Marshall at noon. +There was plenty of time for the rendezvous to be made with Sprague. As +I see it, the murderer told Sprague to excuse himself from the game when +he became dummy, and to go to the trophy room and wait there until the +murderer had a chance to slip away and appear beneath the window. +Sprague had been promised that, when he raised the screen at a tap or a +whispered request, a roll of bills would be handed to him, but--he +received a bullet instead." + +"And which one of your six suspects have you picked on?" Strawn asked +sarcastically. + +"That's just the trouble. There are still six," Dundee acknowledged with +a wry grin. "After Sprague's disappearance, every one of the six was +absent from the porch at one time or another.... No, by George! There +are _seven_ suspects now! I was about to forget Peter Dunlap, who admits +he was alone on a fishing trip when Nita was murdered and who left the +porch last night to go to the library, as soon as Sprague arrived!... As +for the movements of the original six after Sprague disappeared: Polly +Beale took a walk about the grounds; Flora Miles went upstairs to hunt +for Karen Marshall, and was gone more than ten minutes; Drake went to +the dining room to get the refreshments, and no one can say exactly how +long he was gone; Judge Marshall went up to get his wife, and had time +to make a little trip on the side; Janet Raymond walked over from her +home, and passed that very window, arriving after Sprague had +disappeared; and, finally, Clive Hammond arrived alone in his car, which +he parked within a few feet of that window. This morning he gets +married----" + +"A telegram, sir!" interrupted a plainclothesman, who had entered +without knocking. + +Strawn snatched at it, read it, then exulted: "Read this, boy! I guess +_this_ settles the business!" + +The telegram had been filed half an hour before and was from the city +editor of _The New York Evening Press_: + + "WORKING ON YOUR THEORY OF NEW YORK GUNMAN RESPONSIBLE MURDERS OF + JUANITA LEIGH SELIM AND DEXTER SPRAGUE THIS PAPER HAS DISCOVERED + THAT SELIM WOMAN WAS SEEN AT NIGHT CLUBS SEVERAL TIMES DURING + JANUARY FEBRUARY WITH QUOTE SWALLOW TAIL SAMMY END QUOTE UNDERWORLD + NAME FOR SAM SAVELLI STOP SAVELLI TAKEN FOR RIDE TUESDAY APRIL + TWENTY SECOND TWO DAYS AFTER SELIM WOMAN LEFT NEW YORK STOP POLICE + HERE WORKING ON THEORY SAVELLI SLAIN BY OWN GANG AFTER THEY WERE + TIPPED OFF SAVELLI WAS DOUBLE CROSSING THEM STOP IN EXCHANGE FOR + THIS TIP CAN YOU GIVE US ANY SUPPRESSED INFORMATION YOUR POSSESSION + STOP SAVELLI HAD BROTHER WHO IS KNOWN TO US TO HAVE PROMISED + REVENGE SWALLOW TAIL SAMMYS MURDER STOP BE A SPORT CAPTAIN." + +"Well, that puts the lid on it, don't it?" Strawn crowed. "I'll send +Sergeant Turner to New York on the five o'clock train.... Pretty decent +of that city editor to wire me this tip, I'll say!" + +"And are you going to reciprocate by wiring him about the $10,000 Nita +banked here?" Dundee asked. + +"Sure! Why not? There's no use that I can see to keep it back any +longer, now that no one can have any excuse to think as you've been +doing--that it was blackmail paid by a Hamiltonian." + +"Then," Dundee began very slowly, "if you really think your case is +solved, I'll make one suggestion: take charge of Lydia Carr and put her +in a very safe place." + +"Why?" Strawn looked puzzled. + +"Because, when you publish the fact that Nita and Sprague got $10,000 +for tipping off Savelli's gang that he was double-crossing them, and +that Nita willed the money to Lydia, the avenger's next and last job +would be to 'get' Lydia, since his natural conclusion would be that +Lydia had been in on the scheme from the beginning," Dundee explained. + +"God, boy! You're right!" Strawn exclaimed, and his heavy old face was +very pale as he reached for the telephone, and called the number of the +Miles residence. "I'm going to put it up to her that it will be best for +her to be locked up as a material witness, for her own protection." + +Five minutes later Strawn restored the receiver to the hook with a bang. +"Says she won't budge!" he explained unnecessarily. "Says she ain't +afraid and the Miles kids need her.... Well, it's her own funeral! But I +guess _you_ are convinced at last?" + +Dundee slowly shook his head. "Almost--but not quite, chief!" + +"Lord, but you're stubborn! Here's a water-tight case----" + +"A very pretty and a very satisfactory case, but not exactly +water-tight," Dundee interrupted. "There's just one little thing----" + +"What do you mean?" Strawn demanded irritably. + +"Have you forgotten the secret shelf behind the guest closet in the +Selim house?" Dundee asked. + +"I can afford to forget it, since it hasn't got a thing to do with the +case!" Strawn retorted angrily. "There's not a scrap of evidence----" + +"Of course it does not fit into _your_ theory," Dundee agreed, "for +'Swallow-tail Sammy's' avenging brother could not have known of its +existence, but there is one thing about that secret shelf and its pivot +door which I don't believe you can afford to forget, Captain!" + +"Yeah?" Strawn snarled. + +"Yeah!... I refer, of course, to the complete absence of fingerprints on +the door and on the shelf itself! Carraway didn't even find Nita Selim's +fingerprints. Since Nita would have had no earthly reason for carefully +wiping off her fingerprints after she removed the papers she burned on +Friday night, it's a dead sure fact that someone else who had no +legitimate business to do so, touched that pivoting panel and the shelf, +and carefully removed all traces that he had done so!... And--" he +continued grimly, "until I find out who that someone is, I, for one, +won't consider the case solved!" + +Fifteen minutes later Dundee was sitting at Penny Crain's desk in her +office of the district attorney's suite, replacing the receiver upon the +telephone hook, after having put in a call for Sanderson, who was still +in Chicago, keeping vigil at the bedside of his dying mother. + +"Did you find out anything new when you questioned the crowd this +morning?" Penny asked. "Besides the fact that Polly and Clive got +married this morning, I mean.... I wasn't surprised when I read about +the wedding in the extra. It was exactly like Polly to make up her mind +suddenly, after putting Clive off for a year----" + +"So it was Polly who held back," Dundee said to himself. Aloud: "No, I +didn't learn much new, Penny. You're a most excellent and accurate +reporter.... But there were one or two things that came out. For +instance, I got Drake to admit to me, in private, that Nita did give him +an explanation as to where she got the $10,000." + +"Yes?" Penny prompted eagerly. + +"Drake says," Dundee answered dryly, "that Nita told him it was 'back +alimony' which she had succeeded in collecting from her former husband. +Unfortunately, she did not say who or where the mysterious husband is." + +"Pooh!" scoffed Penny. "Don't you see? She just said that to satisfy +Johnny's curiosity. After all, it was the most plausible explanation of +how a divorcee got hold of a lot of money." + +"So plausible that Drake may have thought of it himself," Dundee +reflected silently. Aloud, he continued his report to the girl who had +been of so much help to him: "Among other minor things that came out +this morning, and which the papers did not report, was the fact that +Janet Raymond tried to commit suicide this morning by drinking shoe +polish. Fortunately her father discovered what she had done almost as +soon as she had swallowed the stuff, and made her take ipecac and then +sent for the doctor." + +"Oh, poor Janet!" Penny groaned. "She must have been terribly in love +with Dexter Sprague, though what she saw in him----" + +Dundee made no comment, but continued with his information: "Another +minor development was that Tracey Miles admitted that he and Flora had +quarreled over Sprague after all of you left, and that Flora took two +sleeping tablets to make sure of a night's rest." + +"She's been awfully unstrung ever since Nita's murder," Penny defended +her friend. "She told us all Monday night at Peter's that the doctor had +prescribed sleeping medicine.... Now, you look here, Bonnie Dundee!" she +cried out sharply, answering an enigmatic smile on the detective's face, +"if you think Flora Miles killed Nita Selim and Dexter Sprague, because +she was in love with Dexter and learned he was Nita's lover from that +silly note----" + +"Whoa, Penny!" Dundee checked her. "I'm not linking exactly that. But +I've just remembered something that had seemed of no importance to me +before." + +"And what's that, Mr. Smart Aleck?" Penny demanded furiously. + +"Before I answer that question, will you let me do a little theorizing?" +Dundee suggested gently. "Let us suppose that Flora Miles was _not_ in +love with Sprague, but that she was being blackmailed by Nita for some +scandal Nita had heard gossiped about at the Forsyte School.... No, +wait!... Let us suppose further that Nita recognized Flora's picture in +the group Lois Dunlap showed her, as the portrait of the girl whose +story she had heard; that she was able, somehow, to secure incriminating +evidence of some sort--letters, let us say. Nita tells Sprague about it, +and Sprague advises her to blackmail Flora, who, Lois has told Nita, is +very rich. So Nita comes to Hamilton and bleeds Flora of $10,000. Not +satisfied, Nita makes another demand, the money to be paid to her the +day of the bridge luncheon----" + +"Silly!" Penny scoffed furiously. "The only evidence you have against +poor Flora is that she stole the note Dexter had written to Nita!" + +"That's the crux of the matter, Penny darling!" Dundee assured her in a +maddeningly soothing voice, at which Penny clinched her hands in +impotent rage. "Flora, seeing Nita receive a letter written on her +husband's business stationery, jumps to the conclusion that Nita had +carried out her threat to tell Tracey, or that Nita has at least given +Tracey a hint of the truth and that Tracey's special-messenger note is, +let us say, a confirmation of an appointment suggested by Nita.... Very +well! Flora goes to Nita's bedroom at the first opportunity, knowing +that Nita will come there to make up for the men's arrival. Let's +suppose Flora had brought the gun and silencer with her, intending to +frighten Nita, rather than kill her. But having had proof, as she +believes, that Nita means business, Flora waits in the closet until Nita +comes in and sits down at her dressing-table, then steps out and shoots +her. Then she recoils step by step, until her foot catches in the slack +cord of the bronze lamp, causing the very 'bang or bump' which Flora +herself describes later, for fear someone else has heard it. Her first +concern, of course, is to hide the gun and silencer. She remembers Judge +Marshall's tale of the secret shelf in the guest closet, and not only +hides the gun there but seeks in vain for the incriminating evidence +Nita has against her. But she also remembers the note she believes +Tracey has written to Nita, and which, if found after Nita's death, may +give her away. So she goes to the closet in Nita's bedroom, finds the +note, and faints with horror at her perhaps needless crime when she +realizes that the note was written by Sprague, and not Tracey. Of course +she is too ill and panic-stricken to leave the closet until the murder +is discovered----" + +"But you think she was not too panic-stricken to have the presence of +mind to retrieve the gun and silencer and walk out with them, under the +very eyes of the police," Penny scoffed. + +"_No! I think she was!_" Dundee amazed her by admitting. "And that is +where my sudden recollection of something I had considered unimportant +comes in! Let us suppose that Flora, half-suspected by Tracey, confesses +to him in their car as they are going to the Country Club for their +long-delayed dinner, as were the rest of you. Tracey, loyal to her, +decides to help her. He tells her to suggest, at dinner, that Lydia come +to them as nurse, so that he can go back to the house and get the gun +and silencer from the guest-closet hiding place, if an opportunity +presents itself--as it did, since I left Tracey Miles alone in the hall +while I went into Nita's bedroom to talk with Lydia before I permitted +her to go with Tracey." + +"You're crazy!" Penny told him fiercely, when he had finished. "I +suppose you are going to ask me to believe that Tracey was a big enough +fool to leave the gun and silencer where Flora could get hold of it and +kill Sprague last night." + +"Why not let us suppose that Tracey himself killed Sprague to protect +his wife, not only from scandal, but from a charge of murder?" Dundee +countered. "Tell me honestly: do you think Tracey Miles loves Flora +enough to do that for her?" + +Suddenly, inexplicably, Penny began to laugh--not hysterically, but with +genuine mirth. + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR + + +"What are you laughing at?" Dundee demanded indignantly, but the +sustained ringing of the telephone bell checked Penny Crain's mirthful +laughter. "My Chicago call!... Hello!... Yes, this is Dundee.... All +right, but make it snappy, won't you?... Hello, Mr. Sanderson! How is +your mother?... That's fine! I certainly hope--Yes, the inquest is +slated for tomorrow morning, but there's no use your leaving your mother +to come back for it.... Yes, sir, one important new development. Can you +hear me plainly?... Then hold the line a moment, please!" + +With the receiver still at his ear, Dundee fumbled in his pocket for a +folded sheet of paper. "No, operator! We're not through! Please keep off +the line.... Listen, chief!" he addressed the district attorney at the +other end of the long distance wire. "This is a telegram Captain Strawn +received this afternoon from the city editor of The New York Evening +Press.... Can you hear me?... All right!" and he read slowly, repeating +when necessary. + +When he had finished reading the telegram, he listened for a long +minute, but not with so much concentration that he could not grin at +Penny's wide-eyed amazement and joy. "That's what I think, sir!" he +cried jubilantly. "I'd like to take the five o'clock train for New York +and work on the case from that end till we actually get our teeth into +something.... Thanks a lot, and my best wishes for your mother!" + +"Why didn't you tell me about this 'Swallow-tail Sammy'?" Penny demanded +indignantly. "Tormenting me with your silly theory about poor Flora and +Tracey, when all the time you knew the case was practically solved--" + +"I'm afraid I gave the district attorney a slightly false impression," +Dundee interrupted, but there was no remorse in his shining blue eyes. +"But just so I get to New York--By the way, young woman, what _were_ you +laughing at so heartily? I didn't know I had made an amusing remark when +I asked you if you thought Tracey Miles loved his wife well enough to +commit murder for her." + +Penny laughed again, white teeth and brown eyes gleaming. "I was +laughing at something else. It suddenly occurred to me, while you were +spinning your foolish theory, how _flattered_ Tracey would have been if +Flora had confessed to him Saturday night that she had killed Nita +because she was jealous!" + +"Which was _not_ my theory, if you remember!" Dundee retorted. "But why +is the idea so amusing? Deep in his heart, I suppose any man would +really be a bit flattered if his wife loved him enough to be that +jealous." + +"You don't know Tracey Miles as well as I do," Penny assured him, her +eyes still mirthful. "He's really a dear, in spite of being a dreadful +bore most of the time, but the truth is, Tracey hasn't an atom of sex +appeal, and he _must_ realize it.... Of course we girls have all +pampered his poor little ego by pretending to be crazy about him and +terribly envious that it was Flora who got him--" + +"But Flora Hackett _did_ marry him," Dundee interrupted. "She must have +been a beautiful girl, and she was certainly rich enough to get any man +she wanted--" + +"You would think so, wouldn't you?" Penny agreed, her tongue loosened by +relief. "I was only twelve years old when Flora Hackett made her debut, +but a twelve-year-old has big ears and keen eyes. It is true that Flora +was beautiful and rich, but--well, there was something queer about her. +She was simply crazy to get married, and if a man danced with her as +many as three times in an evening she literally seized upon him and +tried to drag him to the altar.... Her eagerness and her intensity +repelled every man who was in the least attracted to her, and I think +she was beginning to be frightened to death that she wouldn't get +married at all, when she happened to meet Tracey, who had just got a job +as salesman in her father's business. She began to rush him--there's no +other word for it--and none of the other girls minded a bit, because, +without Flora, Tracey would have been the perfect male wallflower. They +became engaged almost right away, and were married six months or so +later. All the girls freely prophesied that even Tracey, flattered by +her passion for him as he so evidently was, would get tired of it, but +he didn't, and there were three marriages in 'the crowd' that June." + +"Three?" Dundee repeated absently, for his interest was waning. + +"Yes.... Lois Morrow and Peter Dunlap; Johnny Drake and Carolyn Swann; +and Tracey and Flora," Penny answered. "Although I was thirteen then and +really too old for the role, I had the fun of being flower girl for Lois +and Flora both." + +"Do you think Flora was really in love with Tracey?" Dundee asked +curiously. + +"Oh, yes! But she'd have been in love with anyone who wanted to +marry her, and the funny thing is that, with the exception of Peter +and Lois, they are the happiest married couple I have ever known.... You +see, Tracey has never got over being flattered that so pretty and +passionate a girl as Flora Hackett wanted _him_!... And that's why I +laughed!... Tracey, with that deep-rooted sexual inferiority complex of +his, would have been so flattered if Flora had told him she killed Nita +out of jealousy that he would have forgiven her on the spot. On the other +hand," she went on, "if Flora had told him that Nita had documentary +proofs of some frightful scandal against her, can't you see how +violently Tracey would have reacted against her?... Oh, no! Tracey would +not have taken the trouble to murder Sprague, when Sprague popped up for +more blackmail!" + +"Perhaps he might have, if the scandal dated back to before the +marriage," Dundee argued. "Let's suppose Sprague did pop up, and Flora +turned him over to Tracey. When Sprague appeared apparently uninvited +last night, Flora must have been on pins and needles, trying to make +Tracey treat him decently and hoping against hope that Tracey would +simply pay the scoundrel all the blackmail he was demanding----" + +"Which is exactly what Tracey would have done, instead of taking the +awful risk of murdering him in his own home," Penny cut in spiritedly. +"Besides, Tracey wasn't gone from the porch long enough to go outside, +signal to Sprague in the trophy room, shoot him when Sprague raised the +screen, and then hide the gun. I told you Tracey was gone only about a +minute when he went to see if Sprague's hat and stick were gone from the +closet." + +"Did Tracey and Flora both step outside to see their guests into their +cars?" Dundee asked suddenly. + +"Tracey did," Penny answered. "Flora told us all good night in the +living room, then ran upstairs to see if Betty was still asleep.... But +remember we didn't leave until midnight, and Dr. Price says Sprague was +killed between nine and eleven last night." + +"Dr. Price would be the first to grant a leeway of an hour, one way or +another," Dundee told her. "Of course, if Tracey did kill him, he let +Flora believe that he had given Sprague the blackmail money he was +demanding. For it is inconceivable that a woman of Flora Miles' +hysterical temperament could have slept--even with two sleeping +tablets--knowing that a corpse was in the house." + +"Oh, I'm sick of your silly theorizing!" Penny told him with vehement +scorn. "Listen here, Bonnie Dundee! You probably laugh at 'woman's +intuition', but take it from me--_you're on the wrong track_!" + +"Oh, I'm not so wedded to that particular theory!" Dundee laughed. "I +can spin you exactly six more just as convincing--" + +"And I shan't listen! You'd better dash home and pack your bag if you +want to catch the five o'clock train for New York." + +"It's already packed and in my office," Dundee assured her lazily. "Got +lots of time.... Hullo! Here's the home edition of _The Evening Sun_," +he interrupted himself, as a small boy, making his rounds of the +courthouse, flung the paper into the office. He reached for it, and +read the streamer headline aloud: "ITALIAN GANGSTER SOUGHT IN BRIDGE +MURDERS ... I wager a good many heads will lie easier on their pillows +tonight." + +"Let me see!" Penny commanded, and snatched the paper unceremoniously. +"Oh! Did you see this?" and she pointed to a boxed story in the middle +of the front page. "'Bridge Parties Cancelled'," she read aloud. "'The +society editor of _The Evening Sun_ was kept busy at her telephone +today, receiving notices of cancellations of bridge parties scheduled +for the remainder of the week. Eight frantic hostesses, terrified by +Hamilton's second murder at bridge----' Oh, that's simply a _crime_! The +newspapers deliberately work up mob hysteria and then----" + +"I'd rather not play bridge for a while myself!" Dundee laughed, as he +rose and started for his own office. "And don't _you_ dare leave the +room when you become dummy, if you have the nerve to play again! +Remember, that gun and silencer are still missing!" + +"What do you mean?.... You don't think there'll be more----?" + +Dundee became instantly contrite before her terror. "I didn't mean it, +honey," he said gently. "I think it is more than likely that the gun is +at the bottom of Mirror Lake. But do take care of yourself, and by that +I mean don't work yourself to death.... Any messages for anyone in New +York?" + +Penny's pale face quivered. "If you--happen to run across my father, +which of course you won't, tell him that--Mother would like him to come +home." + +At intervals during the sixteen-hour run to New York, Penny's faltering +words returned to haunt the district attorney's special investigator, +although he would have preferred to devote his entire attention to +mapping out the program he intended to follow when he reached the city +which, he fully believed, had been the scene of the first act of the +tragic drama he was bent upon bringing to an equally tragic conclusion. + +As soon as he had registered at a hotel near the Pennsylvania Station, +and had shaved and breakfasted, he took from his bag a large envelope +containing the photographs Carraway had made of Penny alive and of Nita +dead, both clad in the royal blue velvet dress. In the envelope also was +the white satin, gold-lettered label which the dress had so proudly +borne: "Pierre Model. Copied by Simonson's. New York City." + +Half an hour later he was showing the photographs and the label to a +woman buyer, in the French Salon of Simonson's, one of New York's most +"exclusive" department stores. + +"Can you tell me when the original Pierre model was bought, and when +this copy was made and sold?" he asked. + +The white-haired, smartly dressed buyer accepted the sheaf of +photographs Bonnie Dundee was offering. "I'll do my best, of course," +she began briskly, then paled and uttered a sharp exclamation as her +eyes took in the topmost picture. "This is Juanita Leigh, isn't +it?... But--" she shuddered, "how odd she looks--as if--" + +"Yes," Dundee agreed gravely. "She was dead when that picture was taken. +Did you know Mrs. Selim?" + +"No," the woman breathed, her eyes still bulging with horror. "But I've +seen so many pictures of her in the papers.... To think that it was one +of _our_ dresses she chose for her shroud! But you want to know when the +dress was sold to her, don't you?" she asked, brisk again. "I can find +out. We keep a record of all our French originals and of the number of +copies made of each.... Let me think! I've been going to Paris myself +for the firm for the last fifteen years, but I can't remember buying +this Pierre model.... Oh, of course! I didn't go over during 1917 and +1918, on account of the war, you know, but the big Paris designers +managed to send us a limited number of very good models, and this must +have been one of them. Otherwise, I'd remember buying it.... If you'll +excuse me a moment----" + +When she returned about ten minutes later, Miss Thomas brought him a +pencilled memorandum. "This Pierre model was imported in the summer of +1917, several months in advance of the winter season, of course. Only +five copies were made--in different colors and materials, naturally, +since we make a point of exclusiveness. The royal blue velvet copy was +sold to Juanita Leigh in January, 1918. I am sorry I cannot give you the +exact day of the month, but our records show the month only. I took the +liberty of showing a picture of the dress to the only saleswoman in the +department who has been with us that long, but she cannot remember the +sale. Twelve years is a long time, you know." + +"Indeed it is," Dundee agreed regretfully. "You have been immensely +helpful, however, Miss Thomas, and I thank you with all my heart." + +"If you could just tell _me_--confidentially, of course," Miss Thomas +whispered, "what sort of clue this dress is--" + +"I don't know, myself!" the detective admitted. "But," he added to +himself, after he had escaped the buyer's natural curiosity, "I intend +to find out!" + +Before he could take any further steps along that particular path, +however, Dundee had an appointment to keep. Upon arriving at his hotel +that morning he had made two telephone calls. He smiled now as he +recalled the surprise and glee of one of his former Yale classmates, now +a discouraged young bond salesman, with whom he had kept in touch. + +"You want to borrow my name and my kid sister?" Jimmy Randolph had +chortled. "Hop to it, old sport! But you might tell me what you want +with such intimate belongings of mine." + +"You may not know it," Dundee had retorted, "but young Mr. James +Wadley Randolph, Jr., scion of the famous old Boston family, is going +to visit that equally famous school, Forsyte-on-the-Hudson, to see +whether it is the ideal finishing school for his beloved young sister, +Barbara.... She's about fifteen now, isn't she, Jimmy?" + +"Going on sixteen, and one of Satan's prize hellions," Jimmy Randolph +had answered. "The family would be eternally grateful if you could get +Forsyte to take her, but make them promise not to have any more chorus +girls who plan to get murdered, as directors of their amateur +theatricals. Bab would be sure to be mixed up in the mess.... I suppose +that's the job you're on, you flat-footed dick, you!" + +The second telephone call had secured an appointment at the Forsyte +School for "Mr. James Wadley Randolph, Jr., of Boston," and Dundee, +rather relishing his first need for such professional tactics, relaxed +to enjoy the ten-mile drive along the Hudson. + +It was a quarter to twelve when his taxi swept up the drive toward the +big grey-stone, turreted building, sedately lonely in the midst of its +valuable acres. + +"Miss Earle says to come to the office," a colored maid told him, when +he had given his borrowed name, and led him from the vast hall to a +fairly large room, whose windows looked upon a tennis court, and whose +walls were almost covered with group pictures of graduating classes, +photographs of amateur theatrical performances, and portrait studies of +alumnae. + +A very thin, sharp-faced woman of about forty, with red-rimmed eyes +which peered nearsightedly, rose from an old-fashioned roll-top desk and +came forward to greet him. + +"I am Miss Earle, Miss Pendleton's private secretary," she told him, as +he shook her bony, clammy hand. "I should have told you when you +telephoned this morning that both Miss Pendleton and Miss Macon sailed +for Europe yesterday. We always have our commencement the last Tuesday +in May, you know.... But if there is anything I can do for you----" + +"I should like to know something at first hand of the history of the +school, its--well, prestige, special advantages, curriculum, and so on," +Dundee began deprecatingly. + +"I should certainly be able to answer any question you may wish to ask, +Mr. Randolph, since I have been with the school for fifteen years," Miss +Earle interrupted tartly. + +"Then Forsyte must take younger pupils than I had been led to believe, +Miss Earle," Dundee said, with his most winning smile. + +"I was never a pupil here," the secretary corrected him, but she thawed +visibly. "Of course, I was a mere child when I finished business school, +but I _have_ been here fifteen years--fifteen years of watching rich +society girls dawdle away four or five years, just because they've got +to be _somewhere_ before they make their debut.... But I mustn't talk +like that, or I'll give you a wrong impression, Mr. Randolph. Of its +kind, it is really a very fine school--very exclusive; riding masters, +dancing masters, a golf 'pro' and our own golf course, native teachers +for French, Italian, German and Spanish.... Oh, the _school_ is all +right, and will probably not suffer any loss of prestige on account of +that dreadful murder out in the Middle West----" + +"Murder?" Dundee echoed, as if he had no idea what she was talking +about. + +"Haven't you been reading the papers?" Miss Earle rallied him, with a +coquettish smile. "But I don't suppose Boston bothers with such sordid +things," she added, her thin-lipped mouth tightening. "Miss Pendleton +was all cut up about it, because Mrs. Selim, or Juanita Leigh, as she +was known on Broadway, had directed our Easter play the last two years, +and the reporters simply hounded us the first two days after she was +murdered out in Hamilton, where a number of our richest girls have come +from----" + +"By Jove!" Dundee exclaimed. "Was the Selim woman connected with this +school, really?... I only read the headlines--never pay much attention +to murders in the papers--" + +"I wish," Miss Earle interrupted tartly, fresh tears reddening her eyes, +"that people wouldn't persist in referring to her as 'that Selim +woman'.... When I think how sweet and friendly she was, how--how +_kind_!" and to Dundee's surprise she choked on tears before she could +go on: "Of course I know it's dreadful for the school, and I ought not +to talk about it, when you've come to see about putting your sister into +the school, but Nita was _my friend_, and it simply makes me _wild_----" + +"You admired and liked her very much?" Dundee asked, forgetting his role +for the moment. + +"Yes, I did! And Miss Pendleton liked her, too. And you can imagine how +clever and popular she was, when a wonderful woman like Mrs. Peter +Dunlap, who was Lois Morrow when she was in school here, admired her so +much she took her to Hamilton with her to direct plays for a Little +Theater.... Why, I never met anyone I was so congenial with!" the +secretary went on passionately. "The girls here snub me and make silly +jokes about me behind my back and call me nicknames, but Nita was just +as sweet to me as she was to anyone--even Miss Pendleton herself!" + +"Were you with her much?" Dundee dared ask. + +"_With her much?..._ I should say I was!" she asserted proudly. "I have +a room here, live here the year 'round, and both years Nita shared my +room, so she would not have to make the long trip back to New York every +night during the last week of rehearsals. We used to talk until two or +three o'clock in the morning--Say!" she broke off, in sudden terror. +"You aren't a reporter, are you?" + +"A reporter? Good Lord, no!" Dundee denied, in all sincerity. Then he +made up his mind swiftly. This woman hated the school and all connected +with it, had grown more and more sour and envy-bitten every year of the +fifteen she had served here--and she liked Nita Leigh Selim better than +anyone she had ever met. The opportunity for direct questioning was too +miraculous to be ignored. So he changed his tone suddenly and said very +earnestly: "No, I am not a reporter, Miss Earle. But I am _not_ James +Wadley Randolph, Jr. I am James F. Dundee, special investigator attached +to the office of the district attorney of Hamilton, and I want you to +help me solve the mystery of Mrs. Selim's murder." + +It took nearly ten precious minutes for Dundee to nurse the terrified +but obviously thrilled woman over the shock, and to get her into the +mood to answer him freely. + +"But I shan't and _can't_ tell you anything bad about Nita!" she +protested vehemently, wiping her red-rimmed eyes. "The papers are all +saying now that she got $10,000 for double-crossing some awful racketeer +named 'Swallow-tail Sammy', but I _know_ she didn't get the money that +way! She was too good----" + +"From Nita's confidences to you, do you have any idea how she did get +the money?" Dundee asked. + +Miss Earle shook her head. "I don't know, but she got it honorably. I +know that!... Maybe she found her husband and made him pay alimony----" + +Dundee controlled his excitement with difficulty. "Did she tell you all +about her marriage and divorce?" + +Again Miss Earle shook her head. "The only time she ever spoke of it was +last year--the first year she directed our play, you know. I asked her +why she didn't get married again, and she said she couldn't--she wasn't +divorced, because she didn't know where her husband was, and it was too +expensive to go to Reno.... Of course she may have found him or +something--and got a divorce some time this last year, and this money +she got was a settlement----" + +"She must have got a divorce, since she was planning to be married again +to a young man in Hamilton," Dundee assured her soothingly. + +"The way everybody puts the very worst interpretation on everything, +when a person gets murdered!" Miss Earle stormed. "If poor Nita had +belonged to a rich family, like the girls here, they would have spent a +million if necessary to hush up any scandal on her!... I've seen it +done!" she added, darkly and venomously. + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE + + +Bonnie Dundee's heart leaped, but he forced himself to go softly. "I +suppose," he said casually, "a fashionable school like this has plenty +of carefully hushed-up scandals----" + +"I'll say it has!" Miss Earle retorted inelegantly, and with ghoulish +satisfaction. "_Money_ can do anything! It makes my blood simply boil +when I think of how those Forsyte girls in Hamilton--so smug and +snobbish in their hick town 'society'--must be running poor Nita down, +now that she's dead and can't defend herself!... If the truth were only +known about some of _them_----" + +Dundee could almost have embraced the homely, life-soured spinster--she +was making his task so easy for him. + +"I've met them all, of course, since Mrs. Selim was murdered," he said +deprecatingly, "and I must say they seem to be remarkably fine women and +girls----" + +"Oh _are_ they?" Miss Earle snorted. "Flora Hackett--Mrs. Tracey Miles +she is now--didn't happen to tell you the nice little fuss _she_ kicked +up when she was here, did she? Oh, no! I guess not!" + +"She looks," Dundee agreed, "like a girl who would have made things +lively." + +"I'll say so! Miss Pendleton nearly had nervous prostration!" Miss Earle +plunged on, then fear blanched her face for a moment. "You know you've +promised you'll never tell Miss Pendleton or Miss Macon that you talked +to me!" + +"You can depend on it that I will protect you," Dundee assured her. +"When did Flora Hackett kick up her little fuss?" + +"Let's see.... Flora graduated in June, 1920," Miss Earle obliged +willingly. "So it must have been in 1919--yes, because she had one more +year here. Of course they let her come back!... _Money!_... She took the +lead in our annual Easter play in 1919, and just because Serena Hart +complimented her and told her she was almost as good as a +professional--" + +"_Serena Hart!_" Dundee wonderingly repeated the name of one of +America's most popular and beloved stage stars. + +"Yes--Serena Hart," Miss Earle repeated proudly. "She was a Forsyte +girl, too, and of course she _did_ go into the chorus herself, after she +graduated in--let's see--1917, because it was the second year after I'd +come to work here--and Miss Pendleton nearly died, because she was +afraid Forsyte's precious prestige would be lowered, but when Serena +became a star everything was grand, of course, and Forsyte was proud to +claim her.... Anyway, Serena comes to the Easter play every year she +can, if she isn't in a Broadway play herself, of course, and so she saw +Flora acting in the Easter play in 1919, and told her she was awfully +good. She was, too, but not half the actress that little Penny Crain +was, when she had the lead in the play four or five years ago." + +Dundee's heart begged him to ask for more details of Penny's triumph, +but his job demanded that he keep the now too-voluble Miss Earle to the +business in hand. + +"And Flora Hackett----?" he prompted. + +"Well, the next day after the play the Easter vacation began, you know, +and Flora _forged_ a letter from her father, giving her permission to +spend the ten-days' Easter holiday with one of the girls who lived in +Atlanta," Miss Earle continued, with great relish. "Well, sir, right in +the middle of the holidays, here came her father and mother--they were +both alive then--and asked for Flora! They wired the girl in Atlanta, +and Flora wasn't there, and the Hacketts were nearly crazy. But as luck +would have it, Mr. Hackett ran into a friend of theirs on Broadway, and +this friend began to tease Mr. Hackett about his daughter's being a +chorus girl!" + +"A chorus girl!" Dundee echoed, taking care not to show his +disappointment. + +"Of course they nabbed her right out of the show, but that wasn't the +worst of it!" Miss Earle went on dramatically and mysteriously. "They +tried to hush it up, of course, but the word went through the school +like wildfire that Flora wasn't only in the chorus, but that she was +_living with an actor_ she'd been writing fan letters to long before the +Easter play went on!" + +"Did you hear his name?" Dundee asked. + +"No," Miss Earle acknowledged regretfully. "But I'll bet anything it was +the truth!... Why, Flora Hackett was so man-crazy she flirted +scandalously with every male teacher in the school. The golf 'pro' we +had then got so scared of her he quit his job!" + +"I suppose," Dundee prompted craftily, "she wasn't any worse than some +of the other Hamilton girls." + +"We-ell," Miss Earle admitted reluctantly, "nothing ever _came out_ on +any of the others, but it looked mighty funny to me when Janet Raymond's +mother took her out of school right in the middle of a term and hauled +her off to Europe _for a whole year_!... I guess,"--she suggested, with +raised eyebrows, "you know what it _usually_ means when a girl has to +spend a whole year abroad, and her mother says she's taking her away for +her health--and Janet looking as healthy as any other girl in the +school, except that she was crying half the time, and smuggling special +delivery letters in and out by one of the maids--" + +"Did you tell Nita these stories and point out the pictures of the +girls?" Dundee had to risk asking. + +Miss Earle froze instantly. "Naturally she was interested in the school, +and once when she said it always made her mad the way chorus girls were +run down, I told her that in my opinion society girls were worse than +actresses, and--well, of course I gave her some examples, a lot of them +worse than anything I've told you about Flora Hackett and Janet +Raymond.... I hope," she added viciously, "that Nita dropped a hint or +two if Flora or Janet had the nerve to high-hat her when she was in +Hamilton!" + +"Perhaps she did," Dundee agreed softly. "By the way, how did Nita +happen to get the job here of directing the Easter plays?" + +"That's what the reporters wanted to know," Miss Earle smiled. "But Miss +Pendleton wouldn't tell them, for fear Serena wouldn't like it, and +maybe be drawn into the scandal, when everybody knows she's as straight +as a string----" + +"Did Serena Hart get her the job?" Dundee was amazed. + +"Yes.... Wait, I'll show you the letter of recommendation she wrote for +Nita to Miss Pendleton," Miss Earle offered eagerly. "Remember, now, +you're not to tell on me!" + +She went to a tall walnut filing cabinet, and quickly returned with a +note, which she thrust into Dundee's willing hands. He read: + + _"Dear Miss Pendleton: The bearer, Juanita Leigh, is rather badly + in need of a job, and I have suggested that she apply to you for a + chance to direct the Easter play. I have known Miss Leigh + personally for ten years, and have the highest regard, both + for her character and for her ability. Since you usually stage + musical comedies, I think Miss Leigh, who has been a specialty + dancer as well as an actress in musical comedy for about twelve + years, would be admirably suited for the work. Knowing my love + for Forsyte as you do, I do not have to assure you that I would + suggest nothing which would be detrimental to the school's best + interests.... Fondly yours, Serena Hart."_ + +"She was wrong there, but I know it wasn't Nita's fault," Miss Earle, +who had been looking over his shoulder, commented upon the last sentence +of the letter. + +"Is Miss Hart appearing in a play now?" Dundee asked. + +"No, but she's rehearsing in one--'Temptation'--which will open at the +Warburton Theater next Monday night," the secretary answered. "At +commencement Tuesday night, Serena told Miss Pendleton how awfully sorry +she was about Nita, and gave me tickets for the opening.... You go to +see her, but don't tell her _I_ told you anything.... I know she's +rehearsing at the theater this afternoon, because she said she would be +all week, and couldn't go to the boat to see Miss Pendleton and Miss +Macon off for Europe." + +"I will!" Dundee accepted the suggestion gratefully, as if it had not +occurred to him. "But first I want you to come out to lunch with me. I'm +sure you know of some nice tearoom or roadhouse in the neighborhood." + +During the luncheon, which Miss Earle devoured avidly, without its +interfering with her flow of reminiscences concerning the girls she +hated, Dundee was able to learn nothing more to the detriment of +Forsyte's Hamilton alumnae, but he did add considerably to his knowledge +and pity of female human nature. + +It was nearly three o'clock when he presented his card, with a message +pencilled upon its back, to the aged doorkeeper who drowsed in the alley +which led to the stage entrance of the Warburton Theater, just off +Broadway near Times Square, and fifteen minutes later he was being +received in the star's dressing-room by Serena Hart herself. + +"You're working on poor Nita's murder?" she began without preamble, as +she seated herself at her dressing-table and indicated a decrepit chair +for the detective. "I was wondering how much longer I could keep out of +it.... Of course you've been pumping that poor, foolish virgin--Gladys +Earle.... Why girls who look like that are always called _Gladys_--God! +I'm tired! We've been at it since ten this morning, but thank the Lord +we're through now for the day." + +Dundee studied her with keen interest, and decided that, almost plain +though she was, she was even more magnetic than when seen from the +footlights.... Rather carelessly dressed, long brown hair rather +tousled, her face very pale and haggard without the make-up which would +give it radiance on Monday night, Serena Hart was nevertheless one of +the most attractive women Dundee had ever met--and one of the kindest, +he felt suddenly sure.... + +"When did I first meet Nita Leigh?" she repeated his question. "Let me +think--Oh, yes! The first year after I went on the stage--1917. We were +in the chorus together in 'Teasing Tilly'--a rotten show, by the way. +The other girls of the chorus were awfully snooty to me, because I was +that anathema, a 'society girl', but Nita was a darling. She showed me +the ropes, and we became quite intimate--around the theater only, +however, since my parents kept an awfully strict eye on me. The show was +a great hit--ran on into 1918, till February or March, I believe." + +"Then do you know, Miss Hart, whether Nita got married during the +winter?" Dundee asked. + +"Why, yes, she did!" Serena Hart answered, her brow clearing after a +frown of concentration. "I can't remember exactly when, but it was +before the show closed--certainly a few weeks before, because the poor +child was a deserted bride days before the closing notice was posted." + +"Deserted!" Dundee exclaimed. "Did you meet her husband, Miss Hart?" + +"No," Serena Hart replied. "As a matter of fact, she told me +extraordinarily little about him, and did not discuss her marriage with +the other girls of the chorus at all. I got the impression that Mr. +Selim--Mat, she called him--wanted it kept secret for a while, but I +don't know why.... This was early in 1918, as I've told you, though I +have no way of fixing even the approximate date, and New York was full +of soldiers. I remember I jumped to the conclusion that Nita had +succumbed to a war romance, but I don't think she said anything to +confirm my suspicion." + +"When did she tell you of her marriage--that is, when--in relation to +the date of the wedding itself?" Dundee asked. + +"The very day she was married," Serena Hart answered. "She was late for +the matinee. Our dressing-tables were side by side, and as she slipped +out of her dress----" + +"This dress?" Dundee asked, and handed her the photograph of dead Nita +in the royal blue velvet dress she had kept for twelve years. + +"Yes," and Serena Hart shuddered. "And her hair was dressed like that, +too, although she had been wearing it in long curls, and had to take it +down before she would go on for the opening number. She whispered to me +that she had been married that day, that she was terribly happy, very +much in love, and that her husband had asked her to dress her hair in +the French roll, a favorite hair-dress with him. Between numbers she +whispered to me again, telling me that her husband was 'so different', +'such a lamb'--totally unlike any man she had met on Broadway, poor +child.... For she was a child still--only twenty, but she had been in +the 'show business' since she was a motherless, fatherless little +drifter of sixteen.... No, she did not tell me how old he was, where he +came from, his business, or what he looked like, and I did not inquire. +As the days passed--weeks, probably, she became more and more silent and +reserved, though once or twice she protested she was still 'terribly +happy.' Then came a day when she did not show up for the performance at +all. The next night she told me--in just a few words, that her husband +had left her, after a quarrel, and had not returned. It seems that she +had innocently told him how she had 'vamped' Benny Steinfeld, the big +revue producer, you know, into giving her a 'spot' in his summer show, +and that her 'Mat' had flown into a rage, accusing her of having been +untrue to him. She never mentioned his desertion to me again, but----" + +"Yes?" Dundee prompted. + +"Well," Serena Hart went on, uncomfortably, "I'm afraid I rather forgot +poor Nita after 'Teasing Tilly' closed, for my next work was in stock in +Des Moines. After a year of stock I got my chance in a legitimate show +on Broadway, and one day I met her on the street. Not having much to +talk with her about, I asked her if she and her husband were reconciled. +She said no, that she had never seen him again. Then, in a burst of +confidence, she told me that she had hired a private detective out of +her meager earnings to investigate him in his home town, or rather the +city he had told her he came from. The detective had reported that no +such person as Mat or Matthew Selim had ever lived there, so far as he +could find out. I asked her if she was going to get a divorce and she +said she was not--that being already married was a protection against +getting married in haste again. After that, I rather lost sight of Nita, +and practically forgot her, our paths being so very divergent." + +"And you never saw her again?" Dundee asked, very much disappointed. + +"Oh, yes, two or three times--at openings, or on the street, but we +never held any significant conversation," Serena Hart answered, reaching +for her plain, rather dowdy little hat. "Wait! I was about to forget! I +had quite a shock in connection with Nita. One afternoon--let's see, +that was when I opened in 'Hullabaloo,' in which I made my first real +success, you know--I bought _The New York Evening Star_, which devotes +considerable space to theatrical doings, to see what sort of review the +show had got, and on the first page I saw a picture of Nita, beneath a +headline which said, 'Famous Model Commits Suicide'----" + +"What!" Dundee exclaimed, astounded. + +"Oh, it wasn't Nita Leigh," Serena Hart reassured him. "There was a +correction the next day. You see, an artists' model named Anita +Lee--spelled L-e-e, instead of Le-i-g-h--had committed suicide, and, as +the _Star_ explained it the next day, the similarity of both the first +name and the last had caused the error in getting a photograph from the +'morgue' to accompany the story. There was a picture of Nita Leigh, with +Nita's statement that 'the report of my death has been exaggerated,' and +a picture of the real Anita Lee." + +"When did the mistake occur?" Dundee asked, in great excitement. + +"Let me think!" Serena Hart frowned. "'Hullabaloo' opened in--yes, about +the first of May, 1922.... Just a little more than eight years ago." + +Dundee reached for his own hat, in a fever to be gone, but to his +surprise the actress stopped him, a faint color in her pale cheeks. + +"Since you're from Hamilton, and are investigating the murder, you have +undoubtedly met little Penelope Crain?" + +"I know her very well. It happens that she is private secretary to the +district attorney, under whom I work.... Why?" + +"I saw her play the lead in the Easter show at Forsyte four or five +years ago," Miss Hart explained, her face turned from the detective as +she dusted it with powder, "and I was impressed with her talent. In +fact, I advised her father, who had come from Hamilton to witness the +performance, as proud parents are likely to do, to let her go on the +stage." + +"So you met Roger Crain?" Dundee paused to ask. + +"Oh, yes.... A charming man, with even more personality than his +daughter," the actress answered carelessly, so carelessly that Dundee +had a sudden hunch. + +"Have you seen Mr. Crain recently?... He deserted his family and fled +Hamilton, under rather unsavory circumstances." + +"What do you mean?" Miss Hart asked sharply. + +"Oh, there was nothing actually criminal, I suppose, but he is believed +to have withheld some securities which would have helped satisfy his +creditors, when bankruptcy was imminent," Dundee explained. "Have you +seen him since then--January it was, I believe?" + +"January?" Miss Hart appeared to need time for reflection. "Oh, yes! He +sent in his card on the 'first night' of my show that opened in +January.... It was a flop--lasted only five weeks.... We chatted of the +Forsyte girls who are now in Hamilton, most of whom I went to school +with or have met at the Easter plays." + +"Do you know where Mr. Crain is now?" Dundee asked. "I have a message +for him from Penny--if you should happen to see him again----" + +"Why _should_ I see him again?" Miss Hart shrugged. "And I haven't the +least idea where he is living or what he is doing now.... Of course, if +he should come to see me backstage after 'Temptation' opens--What is the +message from Penny?" + +"That her mother wants him to come home," Dundee answered. "And I am +very sure Penny wants him back, too.... The mother is one of the +sweetest, gentlest, most tragic women I have ever met--and you have seen +Penny for yourself.... The disgrace has been very hard on them. It would +be splendid if Roger Crain would come back and redeem himself." + +Half an hour later Bonnie Dundee, in the file room of _The New York +Evening Star_, was in possession of the bound volume of that newspaper +for the month of May, 1922. On the front page of the issue of May 3, +under the caption which Serena Hart had quoted so accurately, was a +picture of a young, laughing Nita Leigh, her curls bobbed short, a rose +between her gleaming teeth. And in the issue of May 4 appeared two +pictures side by side--exotic, straight-haired, slant-eyed Anita Lee, +who had found life so insupportable that she had ended it, and the same +photograph of living, vital Nita Leigh. + +When he returned the files he asked the girl in charge: + +"Does this copyright line beneath this picture--" and he pointed to the +photograph of Nita which had appeared erroneously, "--mean that the +picture was syndicated?" + +The girl bent her head to see. "'Copyright by Metropolitan Picture +Service'," she read aloud. "Yes, that's what it means. When _The Evening +Star_ was owned by Mr. Magnus, he formed a separate company called the +Metropolitan Picture Service, which supplied papers all over the country +with a daily picture service, in mat form. But the picture syndicate was +discontinued about five years ago when the paper was sold to its present +owners." + +"Are their files available?" Dundee asked. + +"If they are, I don't know anything about it," the girl told him, and +turned to another seeker after bound volumes of the paper. + +"It doesn't matter," Dundee assured her, and asked for a sheet of blank +paper, on which he quickly composed the following telegram, addressed to +Penny Crain: + + "PLEASE SEARCH FILES ALL THREE HAMILTON PAPERS WEEK OF MAY FOURTH + TO ELEVENTH YEAR OF NINETEEN TWENTY TWO FOR STORY AND PICTURES ON + SUICIDE ANITA LEE ARTISTS MODEL STOP SAY NOTHING TO ANYONE NOT EVEN + SANDERSON IF HE IS THERE STOP WIRE RESULT" + +In his hotel, while impatiently awaiting an answer from Penny, Dundee +passed the time by scanning all the New York papers of Thursday and +Friday, on the chance of meeting with significant revelations concerning +the private life of Dexter Sprague or Juanita Leigh Selim united by +death--in the press, at least. There was much space devoted to the +theory involving the two New Yorkers with the murder of the racketeer +and gambler, "Swallow-tail Sammy" Savelli, but only two pieces of +information held Dundee's interest. + +The first was a reminder to the public that certain theatrical columns +of Sunday, February 9, had carried the rumor of Dexter Sprague's +engagement to Dolly Martin, popular "baby" star of Altamont Pictures, +and that the same columns of Tuesday, February 11, had carried Sprague's +own denial of the engagement--Dolly having "nothing to say." + +"So that is why Nita tried to commit suicide on February 9--and her +attempted suicide, with its tragic consequences for Lydia Carr, is +probably the reason Sprague gave up his movie star," Dundee mused. "Did +Nita let him persuade her to go into the blackmail business, in order to +hold his wandering, mercenary affections?... Lord! The men some women +love!" + +The second bit of information which the papers supplied him was winnowed +by Dundee himself, from a news summary of Nita Leigh's last year of life +as chorus girl, specialty dancer, "double" in pictures, and director of +the Easter play at Forsyte-on-the-Hudson. + +"If Nita got a divorce or even a legal separation from her husband after +her talk with Gladys Earle a year ago, she got it in New York and so +secretly that no New York paper has been able to dig it up," Dundee +concluded. "_And yet she had promised to marry Ralph Hammond!_" + +A bellboy with a telegram interrupted the startling new train of thought +which that conclusion had started. + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX + + +With a sharp exclamation of excitement and triumph, Dundee read Penny's +telegram: + + "HAMILTON EVENING SUN DATE OF MAY FIFTH NINETEEN TWENTY TWO + PUBLISHED STORY OF SUICIDE ANITA LEE ARTISTS MODEL BUT PICTURE + ACCOMPANYING WAS UNDOUBTEDLY NITA LEIGH SELIM'S STOP NO CORRECTION + FOLLOWED STOP WHAT DOES IT MEAN" + +"What does it mean?" Dundee repeated exultantly to himself. "It means, +my darling little Penny, that _anyone in Hamilton who had any interest +in the matter believed Nita Leigh Selim was dead, and thought the +spelling of her name was wrong, not the picture itself_!... The question +is _who_ read that story and gazed on that picture with exquisite +relief?" + +Two hours before he had dismissed as impossible or highly impractical +his impulse to investigate the eleven-year-old scandal on Flora Hackett, +who was now Flora Miles, as told him by Gladys Earle of the Forsyte +School. Even more difficult would it be to find out why Janet Raymond's +mother had taken her abroad for a year. Of course--he had ruefully told +himself--Nita Leigh might have been lucky--or unlucky enough to run +across documentary proof of one of the scandals of which Gladys Earle +had told her, or had dared to blackmail her victim by dark hints, as +Miss Earle had unconsciously suggested to her. + +But this new development could not be ignored. A picture of Nita Leigh +as a suicide had appeared eight years ago in a Hamilton paper, and the +paper had either remained unaware of the error or had thought it not +worth the space for a correction.... _Eight years ago!..._ + +Eight years ago in June three weddings had occurred in Hamilton! The +Dunlap, the Miles, the Drake wedding. And within the last year and a +half Judge Marshall, after proposing season after season to the most +popular debutante, had married lovely little Karen Plummer. Suddenly a +sentence from Ralph Hammond's story of his engagement to Nita Leigh +Selim popped up in Dundee's memory: "And once I got cold-sick because I +thought she might still be married, but she said her husband had married +again, and I wasn't to ask questions or worry about him." + +If Ralph Hammond had reported Nita accurately she had not said she was +_divorced_. She had merely said her husband was _married again_! Why was +Ralph to ask no questions? Divorced wives were not usually so +reticent.... + +Had Nita planned to commit the crime of bigamy? If not, when and where +and how had she secured a divorce? + +To Serena Hart, years before, she had denied any intention of getting a +divorce, for two reasons--_because she did not know where her husband +was_, and because, being married although husbandless, was a protection +against matrimonial temptations. + +To Gladys Earle, a year ago in April, she had confided that she could +not marry again, because she was not divorced and because she did not +know the whereabouts of her husband. + +And so far as New York reporters had been able to find out, Nita Leigh +had done nothing to alter her status as a married woman during the past +year. Moreover, if Nita had secured either a divorce or a legal +separation, her "faithful and beloved maid," Lydia Carr, would certainly +have known of it. And Lydia had vehemently protested more than once to +Bonnie Dundee that she knew nothing of Nita's husband, although she had +worked for the musical comedy dancer for five years. Surely if Nita, +loving and trusting Lydia as she did, had entered into negotiations of +any kind with or concerning her husband during the last year, her maid +would have been the first to know of them. And yet---- + +Suddenly Dundee jumped to his feet and began to pace the floor of his +hotel bedroom. He was remembering the belated confidence that John C. +Drake, banker, had made to him the morning before--after the discovery +of Dexter Sprague's murder. He recalled Drake's reluctant statement +almost word for word: + +"About that $10,000 which Nita deposited with our bank, Dundee.... When +she made the first deposit of $5,000 on April 28, she explained it with +an embarrassed laugh as 'back alimony', an instalment of which she had +succeeded in collecting from her former husband. And, naturally, when +she made the second deposit on May 5, I presumed the same explanation +covered that sum, too, though I confess I was puzzled by the fact that +both big deposits had been made in cash." + +_In cash!_ + +Had Nita, by any chance, been telling a near-truth? Had she been +blackmailing her own husband--a husband who had dared marry again, +believing his deserted wife to be dead--and justifying herself by +calling it "back alimony?" + +But--wasn't it, in reality, no matter what coercion Nita had used in +getting the money, exactly that?... _Back alimony! And the price of her +silence before the world and the wife who was not really a wife...._ + +In a new light, Bonnie Dundee studied the character of the woman who had +been murdered--possibly to make her silence eternal. + +Lois Dunlap had liked, even loved her. The other women and girls of "the +crowd"--that exclusive, self-centered clique of Hamilton's most socially +prominent women--must have liked her fairly well and found her +congenial, in spite of their jealousy of her popularity with the men of +the crowd, or they would not have tolerated her, regardless of Lois +Dunlap's championship of her protegee. + +Gladys Earle had found her "the sweetest, kindest, most generous person +I ever met"--Gladys Earle, who envied and hated all girls who were more +fortunate than she. + +Serena Hart, former member of New York's Junior League and still listed +in the Social Register, had found her the only congenial member of the +chorus she had invaded as the first step toward stardom. And Serena Hart +had the reputation of being a woman of character and judgment, a kind +and wise and great woman.... + +Finally, Ralph Hammond had loved Nita and wanted to marry her. + +Was it possible that Nita Selim's only crime, into which she had been +led by her infatuation for Dexter Sprague, had been to demand, secretly, +financial compensation from a husband who had married and deserted her, +a husband who, believing her dead, had married again? + +But who was the man whose picture--to spin a new theory--Nita had +recognized as that of her husband among the male members of the cast of +"The Beggar's Opera," when Lois Dunlap had proudly exhibited the +"stills" of that amateur performance? + +With excitement hammering at his pulses, Dundee took the bunch of +photographs which Lois Dunlap had willingly given him, and studied the +picture that contained the entire cast--the picture which had first +attracted Nita's attention. And again despair overwhelmed him, for every +one of his possible male suspects was in that group.... + +But he could not keep his thoughts from racing on.... Men who stepped +out of their class and went on parties with chorus girls frequently did +so under assumed names, he reflected. Serena Hart was authority for the +information that Nita's had been a sudden marriage. Was it not entirely +possible that the man who married Nita in 1918 had done so half-drunk, +both on liquor and infatuation, and that he had not troubled to explain +to Nita his motives for having used an assumed name or to write in his +real name on the application for a marriage license? Had Nita's private +detective journeyed out to _Hamilton_ years ago in a fruitless attempt +to locate "Matthew Selim?" + +Bonnie Dundee lay awake for hours Friday night turning these and a +hundred other questions over and over in his too-active mind, and slept +at last, only to awake Saturday with a plan of procedure which he was +sensible enough to realize promised small chance of success. + +And he was right. Not in Manhattan, or in any of the other boroughs of +New York City, did he find any record of a marriage license issued to +Juanita Leigh and Matthew Selim. Not only was it entirely probable that +Juanita Leigh was a stage name and that Nita had married conscientiously +under her real name, but it was equally possible that the license had +been secured in New Jersey or Connecticut. + +When he gave up his quest at noon Saturday and returned to his hotel, +Dundee bought at the newsstand a paper whose headline convinced him that +Sergeant Turner was, at that moment, even more discouraged than himself. +For the big type told the world: + + JOE SAVELLI "GETS" BROTHER'S SLAYER + +And smaller headlines informed the sensation-loving public: + + "SWALLOW-TAIL SAMMY" SAVELLI'S DEATH AVENGED BY BROTHER WHO + SURRENDERS TO POLICE; "SLICK" THOMPSON, ALLEGED MEMBER OF SAMMY'S + GANG, SHOT TO DEATH ON SIXTH AVENUE. + +Still smaller head-type acknowledged that Joe Savelli, after giving +himself up, with a revolver in his hand, had disclaimed any knowledge of +or connection with the murders of Juanita Leigh Selim and Dexter +Sprague. + +Two hours later, Dundee received a long telegram from District Attorney +Sanderson: + + "INFORMED BY EVENING SUN SAVELLI ANGLE COMPLETE WASHOUT STOP HAVE + YOU MADE ANY PROGRESS ALONG OTHER LINES STOP HAVE INFORMED + REPORTERS YOU WORKING INDEPENDENTLY WITH STRONG CHANCE OF SOLVING + BOTH CASES STOP WOULD LIKE YOU HERE FOR ADJOURNED INQUESTS ON BOTH + MURDERS MONDAY STOP MOTHER IMPROVED AM ON JOB AGAIN" + +Since Dundee felt that there was little chance of following through +either on the scandals which Gladys Earle had hinted at, or on Nita's +strangely secret marriage of twelve years before, he immediately +dispatched a wire to Sanderson, assuring him that vital progress had +been made and that he would leave New York on the four o'clock train +west, arriving in Hamilton Sunday morning at 8:50. The concluding +sentence of the wire was: + + "SUGGEST YOU PACIFY PRESS WITH ONLY VAGUEST OF HINTS." + +Sanderson's wire, with its confession of an interview on Dundee's trip +to New York, had upset him and left him with a cold, sick feeling of +fear that, stumbling half in darkness, the district attorney had +unwittingly warned the murderer of Nita Selim and Dexter Sprague that +his special investigator was on the right track. But he consoled himself +with the hope that the final sentence of his answering telegram would +prevent any further damage. + +But he was wrong. An hour before he reached his destination on Sunday +morning he went into the dining car and found a copy of _The Hamilton +Morning News_ beside his plate. And on the front page was a photograph +of dead Nita, her black hair in a French roll, her slim, recumbent body +clad in the royal blue velvet dress. Beneath the picture was the +caption: + +"What part does the outmoded royal blue velvet dress which Nita Selim +chose as a shroud play in the solution of her murder?... That is the +question which Special Investigator Dundee, attached to the district +attorney's office, who is due home this morning from fruitful detective +work in New York, is undoubtedly prepared to answer." + +Dundee was still seething with futile rage when he climbed the stairs to +his apartment. On the floor just inside his living room door he found an +envelope--unstamped and bearing his name in typing. + +The note inside, on paper as plain as the envelope, was typed and +unsigned. + +"If Detective Dundee will consult page 410 of the latest WHO'S WHO IN +AMERICA, he will find a tip which should aid him materially in solving +the two murder cases which seem to be proving too difficult for his +inexperience." + +A wry grin at his anonymous correspondent's unfriendly gibe was just +twisting his lips when a double knock sounded on the living room door, +which he had not completely closed. + +"Come in, Belle!" + +A morose, slack-mouthed mulatto girl in ancient felt slippers sidled +into the room. + +"Howdy, Mistah Dundee," Belle greeted him listlessly. "You got back, lak +de papers said you would, didn' yuh? An' I ain't sayin' I ain't glad! +Dat parrot o' yoahs sho is Gawd's own nuisance--nippin' at mah fingahs +an' screechin' his fool head off.... 'Cose I ain't sayin' it's +_his_ fault--keepin' dat young gemman on de secon' flo' awake las' +night.... But lak I say to Mistah Wilson, when he lights into me dis +mawnin', runnin' off at de mouf 'cause I fo'got to put Cap'n's covah on +his cage las' night, I ain't de onliest one what fo'gits in dis hyar +house.... Comin' home Gawd knows when, leavin' de front do' unlocked de +res' o' de night, so's bugglers and murderers and Gawd knows who could +walk right in hyar----" + +Dundee, itching to consult his own copy of "Who's Who", flung a glance +at the parrot's cage, intending to pacify the mournful mulatto by +scolding his "Watson" roundly. But he changed his mind and consoled the +chambermaid instead: + +"Just tell Mr. Wilson that for once he's wrong. You did _not_ forget to +cover Cap'n's cage, Belle. Look!" + +The girl's dull eyes bulged as they took in the cage, completely swathed +in a square of black silk. + +"Gawd's sake, Mistah Dundee!" she ejaculated. "_I_ didn't put dat covah +on dat bird's cage! An' neithah did Mis' Bowen, 'cause she been laid up +with rheumatiz eveh since you lef, an' eveh las' endurin' thing in dis +ol' house has been lef fo' me to do!" + +"Then I suppose the indignant Mr. Wilson came up and covered Cap'n +himself," Dundee suggested, crossing the room to the bookcase which +stood within reaching distance of his big leather-covered armchair. + +"Him?" Belle snorted. "How he gonna get in hyer widout no key? 'Sides, +he'd a-tol' me if'n----" + +"Belle, how many times must I ask you not to misplace my things?" Dundee +cut in irritably, for he was tired of the discussion, and angry that his +copy of "Who's Who" was missing from its customary place in the +bookcase. + +"Me?... I ain't teched none o' yoah things, 'cep'n to dus' 'em and lay +'em down whar I foun' 'em," Belle retorted, mournfulness submerged in +anger. + +Dundee looked about the room, then his eyes alighted upon the missing +book, lying upon a shelf that extended across the top of an +old-fashioned hot-air register, set high in the wall between the two +windows. The thick red volume lay close against the wall, its +gold-lettered "rib" facing the room. + +"Belle, tell me the truth, and I shall not be angry: did you put that +red book on that shelf?" Dundee asked, his voice steady and kindly in +spite of his excitement. + +"Nossuh! I ain't teched it!" + +"And you did not put the cover over my parrot's cage, although I had +tipped you well to feed Cap'n and cover him at night," Dundee said +severely. + +"I gotta heap o' wuk to do----" + +"And you say that Mr. Wilson, one of the two young men on the second +floor, left the front door unlocked when he came in last night?" Dundee +asked. "Does he admit it?" + +"Yassuh," Belle told him sulkily. "He say he was tiahed when he got home +'long 'bout midnight, an' he clean fo'got to turn de key in de do' an' +shoot de bolt." + +"Thanks, Belle. That will be all now," and Dundee did a great deal to +dispel the chambermaid's gloom by presenting her with a dollar bill. + +When she had gone, the detective read the note again, then looked +at it and its envelope more closely. They had a strangely familiar +look.... Suddenly he jerked open a drawer of his desk, on which his new +noiseless typewriter stood, selected a sheet of plain white bond, and +rolled it into the machine. Quickly he tapped out a copy of the strange, +taunting message. + +Yes! The left-hand margin was identical, the typing and its degree of +blackness were identical, and the paper on which he had made the copy +was exactly the same as that on which the original had been written. + +The truth flashed into his mind. It was no coincidence that he had a +copy of the very book to which his unknown correspondent referred him. +For the note had been written in this very room, on stationery +conveniently at hand, on the noiseless typewriter which had been far +more considerate about not betraying the intruder than had the parrot +whose slumbers had been disturbed. + +"But why did my unknown friend risk arrest as a burglar if he wanted to +give me an honest tip?" Dundee remarked aloud to the parrot, who croaked +an irrelevant answer: + +"Bad Penny! Bad Penny!" + +"I'm afraid, 'my dear Watson,' that those words will not be so helpful +in this case as they were when your mistress was murdered," Dundee +assured his parrot absently, for he was studying the peculiar situation +from every angle. "Another question, Cap'n--why did the unknown bother +to take my 'Who's Who' out of the bookcase, where I should normally have +looked for it, and put it on that particular shelf?" + +Warily, for his scalp was prickling with a premonition of danger, Dundee +crossed the room to the shelf, but his hand did not reach out for the +red book, which might have been expected to solve one problem, at least. +"_Why the shelf?_" he asked himself again. Why not the desk top, or the +mantelpiece, or the smoking table beside the big armchair? + +The shelf, with its drapery of rather fine old silk tapestry, offered no +answer in itself, for it held nothing except the red book, a Chinese +bowl, and a humidor of tobacco. And beneath the shelf was nothing but +the old-fashioned register, the opening covered with a screwed-on metal +screen which was a mass of big holes to permit the escape of hot air +when the furnace was going in the winter.... + +Suddenly Dundee stooped and stared with eyes that were widened with +excitement and a certain amount of horror. Then he rose, and, standing +far to one side, picked up the fat volume which lay on the shelf. As he +had expected, a bullet whizzed noiselessly across the room and buried +itself in the plaster of the wall opposite--a bullet which would have +ploughed through his own heart if he had obeyed his first impulse and +gone directly to the shelf to obey the instructions in the note. + +But more had happened than the whizzing flight of a bullet through one +of the holes of the hot-air register. The "Who's Who" had been jerked +almost out of Dundee's hand before he had lifted the heavy volume many +inches from the shelf. Coincidental with the disappearance of a bit of +white string which had been pinned to a thin page of the book was a +metallic clatter, followed swiftly by the faint sound of a bump far +below. + +Dropping "Who's Who" to the floor, Dundee flung open his living room +door and raced down three flights of stairs. He brought up, panting, at +the door of the basement. It was not locked and in another minute he was +standing before the big hot-air furnace. Above the fire box was a big +metal compartment--the reservoir for the heated air. And set into the +reservoir, to conduct the heat to the regions above, were three huge +pipes. + +With strength augmented by excitement, Dundee tugged and tore at one of +the pipes until he had dislodged it. Then thrusting his hand into the +heat reservoir, he groped until he had found what he had known must be +there--_Judge Marshall's automatic, with the Maxim silencer screwed upon +the end of its short nose_. + +At last he held in his hands the weapon with which Nita Leigh Selim and +Dexter Sprague had been murdered. + +The ingeniousness of his own attempted murder moved him to such profound +admiration that he could scarcely feel resentment. If, in the excitement +of hunting for a promised clue, he had gone directly to the shelf, +standing in front of the hole in the register into which the end of the +silencer had been jammed, so that it showed scarcely at all, even to +eyes looking for it, he would now have been dead. And the gun and +silencer, after hurtling down the big hot-air pipe behind the register, +could have lain hidden for months, even years, in the heat reservoir of +the furnace. + +With the weapon carefully wrapped in his handkerchief, Dundee went up +the stairs almost as swiftly as he had gone down them, meeting no one on +the way to his rooms on the top floor. + +"My most heartfelt thanks to you, Cap'n!" he greeted his parrot. "If you +had not squawked last night and so frightened the murderer that he made +the vital error of covering your cage, I should never have annoyed you +again with my Sherlock ruminations on cases which do not interest you in +the slightest." + +The parrot cackled hoarsely, but Dundee paid him scant attention. He +picked up the now harmless "Who's Who" and turned to page 410, a corner +of which had disappeared with the string that was still fastened to the +hair-trigger hammer of the Colt's .32. Very clever and very simple! The +murderer of two people and the would-be murderer of a third had had only +to unscrew the metal covering of the register, wedge the end of the +silencer into one of the many holes, replace the screws, and paste the +end of the string, drawn through another hole hidden by the tapestry, to +a page of the book he had selected as the one most likely to appeal to a +detective as a clue source.... + +No, wait! He had had to do more! Dundee bent and examined the metal +cover of the register. The circumference of the hole the murderer had +chosen as the one which would be directly in front of Dundee's heart +gleamed brightly. It had been necessary to enlarge it considerably. _The +murderer had left a trace after all!_ + +But the book was open in Dundee's hands and his eyes rapidly scanned +page 410. And he found what the murderer had not expected him to live to +read, but which he had counted on as an explanation of the note which +the police would have puzzled over, if all had gone well with his +scheme.... + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN + + +Dundee laughed, the parrot which had saved his life echoing his mirth +raucously, as his eyes hit upon the following lines of fine print +halfway down the third column of page 410 of "Who's Who in America": + + BURNS, William John, detective; b. Baltimore, Oct. 19, 1861-- + +"A taunt and a joke which turned sour, 'my dear Watson'!" he exulted to +the parrot. "A joke I was not intended to live to laugh over!" + +He closed the book and replaced it in the bookcase, careless of +fingerprints, for he was sure the murderer had been too clever to leave +any behind him in that room--or upon the gun and silencer either, for +that matter. + +Interestedly, Dundee surveyed the scene of his attempted murder. If he +had unsuspectingly gone up to the high shelf to reach for the book he +would have stood so close to the register that there would have been +powder burns on his shirt front--just as there had been on Dexter +Sprague's. And he would have been shot so near an open window--no chance +for fingerprints there, either, since he had not closed the windows on +his departure for New York, not wishing to return to a stuffy +apartment--that the police would have been justified in thinking he had +been shot from outside. It was an old-fashioned house in more ways than +in the manner of its heating. Outside of one of his two unscreened +windows there was an iron grating--the topmost landing of a fire escape. +Dundee could imagine Captain Strawn's positiveness in placing the +murderer there--crouching in wait for his victim.... + +Yes, damned ingenious, this attempted murder! Undoubtedly Strawn would +have dismissed the note as the work of a crank, not hitting upon the +fact that it had been written in that very room, on Dundee's own +typewriter and stationery. Strawn might even have got a mournful sort of +amusement out of the fact that Dundee had been advised to call upon a +greater detective than himself for assistance!... Yes, ingenious indeed! +And so amazingly simple---- + +Suddenly the young detective snatched for his hat. If the murderer was +so ingenious in this case, might he not have been equally clever in +planning and executing the murder of Nita Leigh Selim? + +Twenty minutes later he parked his car in the rutty road before the +Selim house in Primrose Meadows, and honked his horn loudly to attract +the attention of the plainclothesmen Captain Strawn had detailed +immediately after the murder to guard the premises during the day. There +was no answer. And a violent ringing of the doorbell also brought no +response. The guard had been withdrawn, probably to join the small army +of plainclothesmen and patrolmen who had been foolishly and futilely +searching for the New York gunman--the keystone of Captain Strawn's +exploded theory. + +With an oath, Dundee used his skeleton key to release the Yale lock with +which the front door was equipped. Straight down the main hall he went +and into the little foyer between the hall and Nita's bedroom. He +snatched up the telephone and to his relief it was not dead. He gave the +number of Captain Strawn's home, and had the pleasure of learning that +he had interrupted his former chief at a late Sunday breakfast. + +"When did you withdraw the guard from the Selim house?" he asked +abruptly, cutting short Strawn's cordial welcome-home. + +"Late Thursday afternoon," the Chief of the Homicide Squad answered +belligerently. "I needed all my men, and the Selim house had been gone +over with a fine tooth comb half a dozen times.... Why?" + +"Oh, nothing!" Dundee retorted wearily, and hung up the receiver after +assuring his old friend that he would call on him later in the day. + +No use to explain now to Strawn that the murderer had been given every +chance to remove any betraying traces of his crime. Besides, his first +excited hunch, after his own attempted murder, might very well be a +wild, groundless one. In his--Dundee's case--the impossibility of the +murder's being delayed or arranged so that the detective might be slain +when the whole "crowd" was assembled was obvious. The murderer had read +in a late Saturday afternoon extra--a copy of which was now in Dundee's +pocket--District Attorney Sanderson's boast to the press that his office +had been working on an entirely different theory than that which +connected the two murders with "Swallow-tail Sammy," that Special +Investigator Dundee, _expected back in Hamilton early Sunday morning_, +had been investigating Nita Leigh's past life in New York. And despite +Dundee's telegraphed warning, he had hinted sensational revelations +connected with the twelve-year-old royal blue velvet dress which Nita +had chosen to be her shroud. And in his desire to reassure the public +through the press, Sanderson had mysteriously promised even more +specific revelations than Dundee had actually brought home with him. +Prodded by reporters, Sanderson had admitted that he did not himself +know the nature of those revelations. + +The exasperated young detective could picture the murderer reading those +sensational hints and promises, could imagine his panic, the need for +immediate action, so that Special Investigator Dundee should not live to +tell the tale of his New York discoveries to the district attorney or +anyone else. + +But whether he was right or wrong, Dundee determined to give his hunch a +chance. He went into the over-ornate bedroom in which Nita Leigh Selim +had been murdered--shot through the back as she sat at her +dressing-table powdering her face. If her murder had been accomplished +by mechanical means, how had it been done? There was no hot-air register +here.... + +From the dressing-table Dundee walked to the window, upon whose +pale-green frame there was still the tiny pencil mark which Dr. Price +had drawn, to indicate the end of the path along which the bullet had +traveled, provided it had traveled so far. Nothing _here_ to aid in a +mechanical murder-- + +But in a flash Dundee changed his mind. For just slightly above the +pencil mark there was a small dent in the soft painted pine of the +window frame. + +And before his mind could frame words and sentences he thought he saw +how Nita Leigh had been murdered. + +Nothing here?... _Not now, because he himself had taken the lamp to the +courthouse for safe-keeping._ + +He saw it clearly in imagination--that bronze floor-lamp which Lydia +Carr had given to Nita Leigh, its big round bowl studded with great +jewels of colored glass. And in recalling every detail of the lamp he +saw what he had dismissed as of no importance at the time, in the +excitement of finding that the lamp's bulb had been shattered by the +"bang or bump" which Flora Miles had described. _One of the big glass +jewels had been missing, leaving an unsightly hole._ + +No wonder there had been a "bang or bump" hard enough to dent the frame +of the window! For if his hunch was correct, the gun, wedged into the +big bowl, with the silencer slightly protruding from the jewel-hole, had +"kicked," just as it had kicked an hour before, when it had dislodged +itself from the hole in the hot-air register and clattered down the big +pipe to the heat reservoir of the furnace. + +That the big lamp, when he, following Strawn, had first examined the +scene of Nita's murder, had not stood in front of the window frame, did +not dampen Dundee's excitement in the least. After Karen Marshall's +scream that room had been filled with excited people, who had rushed +about, looking out of the window for the murderer and doing all the +other things which terror-stricken people do in such a crisis. No, the +murderer--or murderess--had found no difficulty in shifting the big lamp +one foot nearer the chaise longue, to the place it had always occupied +before. + +But--_how_ had the gun been fired from the lamp? Electrically? Another +picture flashed into Dundee's mind. He saw himself stooping, on Monday +afternoon, to see if the plug of the lamp's cord had been pulled from +the socket, saw it again as it was then--nearly out, so that no current +could pass from the baseboard outlet under the bookcase into the bronze +lamp. How far from the truth his conclusion that Monday had been! + +But what was the _real_ truth? + +Suddenly Dundee flung back the moss-green Wilton rug which almost +entirely covered the bedroom floor and revealed the bell which Dexter +Sprague had rigged up so that Nita might summon Lydia from her basement +room, in case of dire need--a precaution with which the murderer was +probably familiar, since Lois Dunlap might innocently have spread the +news of its existence. + +There was a half-inch hole in the hardwood floor, and out of it issued a +length of green electric cord, connected with two small, flat metal +plates, one upon the other, so that when stepped upon a bell would ring +in Lydia's basement room. + +But there was something odd about the wire. Although it was obviously +new, a section of it near the two metal plates was wrapped with black +adhesive tape. Another memory knocked for attention upon Dundee's mind. +_The long cord of the bronze lamp had been mended with exactly the same +sort of tape--about a foot from where it ended in the contact plug._ + +Within another two minutes, Dundee, with a flashlight he had found in +the kitchen, was exploring the dark, earthy portion of the basement +which lay directly to the east of Lydia Carr's basement room. And he +found what he was looking for--adhesive tape wrapped about the wire +which had been dropped through the floor of Nita's room before it had +been carried, by means of another hole, into Lydia's room. + +He was too late--thanks to Captain Strawn. The bell which Sprague had +rigged up was in working order again. But as he was passing out of the +basement he glanced at the ceiling of the large room devoted to furnace, +hot-water heater and laundry tubs. And in the ceiling he saw a hole.... + +The murderer had left a trace he could not obliterate! + + * * * * * + +At three o'clock that Sunday afternoon Bonnie Dundee, fatigued after a +strenuous day, and suffering, to his own somewhat disgusted amusement, +from reaction--even a detective feels some shock at having narrowly +escaped death--permitted himself the luxury of a call upon Penny Crain. + +He found the girl and her mother playing anagrams. After greeting him, +Mrs. Crain rose, to surrender her place to the visitor. + +"_You_ play with this girl of mine, Mr. Dundee. She's too clever for me! +She's beaten me every game so far, and when I plead for two-handed +bridge as a chance to get even, she shudders at the very word." + +"Why did you drag poor Ralph away from his dinner here today?" Penny +demanded, scrambling the little wooden blocks until they made a weird +pattern of letters. + +"Because I wanted to find out exactly _how_ Nita Selim was killed--and I +did," Dundee answered. "I wish I knew as well _who_ murdered her!" + +Mute before Penny's excited questions, the detective idly selected +letters from the mass of face-up blocks on the table, and spelled out, +in a long row, the names of all the guests at Nita's fatal bridge party. +Suddenly, and with a cry that startled Penny, Dundee made a new name +with the little wooden letters.... + +Now he knew the answers to both "_How?_" and "_Who?_" + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT + + +"I fail to see any necessity for all this secrecy and hocus-pocus," +District Attorney Sanderson protested irritably. "Why the devil don't +you come clean and give us the low-down--if you have it!--on this +miserable business, instead, of high-handedly summoning Captain Strawn +to my office, so that you can give orders to us both?" + +Before Dundee could answer, Captain Strawn came to his assistance. + +"I worked with this boy for pretty near a year, Bill, and never yet did +he fail to make good when he said he had a pot on to boil. If he says it +will boil over this evening, provided we help him, boil over it will, or +I don't know Bonnie Dundee!" + +Sanderson scowled but capitulated. "All right! What do you want?" + +"Thanks, chief! And thanks, Captain!" Dundee cried, with heartfelt +gratitude. "First, I want to be excused from attending the adjourned +inquests into the two murders, scheduled for three o'clock today." + +"O.K." Sanderson agreed shortly. + +"Second, after about an hour of routine stuff, I wish you'd ask for +another adjournment until tomorrow, on the plea that important +developments are expected today." + +"O.K. again!" + +"Third, I'd like you personally to request the appearance of every +person connected in any way with each of the murders, in your office +this afternoon at four o'clock--so the whole bunch will be kept together +and have no chance to go to their homes or anywhere else until I am +ready for them. You can say that, owing to the illness of your mother +during the investigations, you want to question everyone personally." + +"Do you want all the servants brought here, too?" Sanderson asked. + +"None but Lydia Carr," Dundee answered. "After about an hour's innocuous +questioning, please invite them to accompany you to the Selim house. For +that--" and he grinned, "--is where the pot is scheduled to boil over. +I'd like everybody to be there by 5:15." + +"Where do I come in?" Captain Strawn demanded, almost jealously. + +"Now that you are no longer looking for a New York gunman, I suppose you +have plenty of plainclothesmen at your disposal?" Dundee asked, and was +instantly sorry he had reminded his former chief of the collapse of his +cherished and satisfying theory. + +"Plenty," Strawn answered gruffly. "How many will you need?" + +"Enough to keep every person on Mr. Sanderson's invitation list under +strictest observation until--the pot boils over," Dundee replied. + +"When do you want them to get on the job?" + +"As soon as they can do so, after you get back to your office." + +"Are they to follow the whole gang clear out to the Selim house?" + +"Most decidedly! After the unwilling guests are safely within the house, +your boys must guard the premises so that _no one_ leaves without +permission." + +"That's all as good as done," Strawn assured him. "Now--about them +inquiries you asked me to make yesterday of the secretary of the +American Legion." He drew a scrap of paper from his breast pocket. "I +find that John Drake, Peter Dunlap and Clive Hammond were all in +service, in the ----th Division, which was held up late in January, +1918, for nearly two weeks, in Hoboken, before the War Department could +get transports to send 'em to France. Miles, who enlisted the day war +was declared, was wounded and shipped home late in 1917. He was +discharged as unfit for further service--spinal operation--from a New +Jersey base hospital on January 12, 1918. Furthermore, Judge Marshall +was in New York the whole winter of 1917-'18, attached to the Red Cross +in some legal capacity. He donated his services and--" + +"All that doesn't matter now, Captain, but thanks just the same," Dundee +interrupted. "Now if you will both excuse me, I've got a lot of work to +do before five o'clock today!" + +Dundee had not exaggerated. That Monday was one of the busiest days he +had ever spent in all the twenty-seven years of his life. He began, +rather strangely, by visiting half a dozen of Hamilton's hardware +stores, exhibiting a peculiar instrument and making annoying inquiries +as to when and to whom it had been sold. But at his sixth port of call +success so completely rewarded his efforts that he was jubilant when he +bade the mystified proprietor good day, a signed statement reposing in +his wallet. + +Two other calls--both in office buildings--took up only an hour of his +time, and a taxicab delivered him at Police Headquarters just as the +factory whistles were sirening the news that it was twelve o'clock. + +He was lucky enough to find the fingerprint expert, Carraway, in his +cubbyhole of an office, his desk almost crowded out by immense filing +cabinets. + +Five minutes later Dundee sat at that desk, photographs of Dexter +Sprague's dead body, just as it had been discovered on the floor of the +trophy room in the Miles home, and a labelled set of fingerprints spread +out before him. + +"You're sure there can have been no mistake?" he asked. "No chance that +these fingerprint photographs were _reversed_ when the prints were +made?" + +"Not a chance--with my system!" Carraway retorted positively. + +"Fine!" Dundee cried. "May I take these photographs?... You have copies, +I presume?" + +It was half past two o'clock when Dundee, after a much needed lunch, +parked his car in the driveway of one of the most splendid houses +overlooking Mirror Lake--a home whose master and mistress were now +attending an inquest into two murders.... + +Half an hour later he climbed into his roadster again, his head +spinning. "Did I say _ingenious_?" he marvelled.... + +He drove directly to the Selim house, for he had much to do before the +arrival of Sanderson's compulsory guests at 5:15. + +His first visit there was to a small room in the basement--a dark +cubbyhole next to the coal room. He had locked it carefully after +exploring it the day before, for he had taken no chance on leaving +unguarded--as he had found it--treasure worth more to him than its +weight in gold. + +And queer treasure it was that he extracted now--a coiled length of +electric wire, which he and Ralph Hammond had measured the day before, +with triumphant excitement; a box of thumb tacks, many of them +surprisingly bent at the point; an augur with a set of bits of varying +sizes, a step-ladder, and a hammer. If Dexter Sprague had not +overestimated the amount of electric wire needed for the job of +installing an alarm bell between Nita's bedroom and Lydia's.... Dundee +was about to close the tool chest when his eyes fell upon a piece of +hardware he had not expected ever to find, although he had known of its +existence for more than an hour. + +At 5:15 he was entirely ready for D. A. Sanderson, Captain Strawn and +their party of indignant and unwilling guests.... + +"Oh, Mr. Dundee!" Carolyn Drake squealed. "You're not going to make us +play that awful 'death hand' again, are you?" + +They were all crowding about him--the men and women who had been Nita +Selim's guests at her last bridge and cocktail party.... + +"Not only are the bridge tables exactly where they were at this time on +the evening of May 24," Dundee answered _so_ significantly that all +stopped chattering to listen, "_but everything else in the house is +precisely as it was then_. Fortunately, not even the _electricity_ has +been cut off! But to make sure I have forgotten nothing, I wish you +would all follow me into Mrs. Selim's bedroom and look for yourselves." + +Like sheep, they crowded into the little foyer and on into the bedroom. +There stood the big bronze lamp, set squarely in front of the window +frame and in a direct line with the musical powder box on dead Nita's +dressing table. + +At 5:25, Penny Crain, Karen Marshall, Carolyn Drake, and Flora Miles, +who had been requisitioned by Dundee to play the part of the murdered +woman, were seated at table No. 2, and behind Karen's chair stood Lois +Dunlap. Clive Hammond and his new wife were again together in the +solarium. But there Dundee's restaging of the original scene in the +tragic drama ended. Everyone else, including Lydia Carr and Peter +Dunlap, were huddled together in a far corner of the living room. + +"Now, Mr. Miles!" Dundee called. "Your cue! Never mind the comedy about +'How's tricks?' Simply go into the dining room, with Mrs. Dunlap, to mix +cocktails. You'll find all the ingredients still on the sideboard, +exactly as there were when Mrs. Selim sent you to mix drinks on May +24.... And Mrs. Miles, will you, pretending that you are Nita Selim, go +to powder your face at Mrs. Selim's dressing-table?" + +Her face white and drawn, Flora Miles stumbled from the room, just as +her husband, dumb for once with rage, entered the dining room with Lois +Dunlap. + +Dundee was about to follow the latter two when an interruption occurred. +Followed by a plainclothesman, a middle-aged man entered the living +room. Tall, broad-shouldered, determined, he strode to the bridge table, +his handsome head upflung, his brown eyes fixed upon the widened brown +eyes of Penny Crain. + + * * * * * + +"Dad!" the girl breathed; then, joyously: "Oh, Dad! You've come home!" + +But Dundee halted the reconciliation with a stern word of command. +"Please join the group in the corner, Mr. Crain!" + +Regardless of the ensuing hubbub Dundee strode into the dining room, +where Tracey Miles stood at the sideboard, pouring whiskey from an +almost empty decanter into a small glass. + +"May I drink the Scotch Tracey has poured for me, Mr. Dundee?" Mrs. +Dunlap asked shakily, leaning against the big round table. + +"Yes, but--Silence, please!" he cried, as there came the first faint, +tinkling notes of _Juanita_, from Nita's musical powder box, penetrating +the thin wall between the bedroom and dining room. + +"As I have said," the detective spoke loudly and clearly above the +tinkle of music, "_everything is now exactly as it was when Nita Selim +was murdered_! Permit me to show you all how that murder was +accomplished!" + +A chair at the bridge table was overturned. Lois Dunlap almost choked on +her drink of Scotch. Women screamed. In a few seconds every person in +the living room, including the district attorney and Strawn, was huddled +in the wide opening into the dining room, their eyes fixed in horror +upon Bonnie Dundee. + +He spoke again, his voice very clear, but slow and weighted with a +dreadful significance: + +_"Mrs. Dunlap, step on the bell beneath the dining table!"_ + +Lois Dunlap dropped the empty whiskey glass, her face suddenly wiped of +all expression. + +"Step on that bell, Mrs. Dunlap--_just as you did before_!" + +As if hypnotized, Lois Dunlap began to grope with the toe of her right +pump for the slight bulge under the rug which indicated the position of +the bell used for summoning the maid from the kitchen. + +With a strangled cry Tracey Miles lunged across the few feet which +separated the woman and himself, seized her arm and whirled her +violently away from the table. + +"_Do you want to kill my wife, too?_" he panted, his usually florid face +the color of putty. "You--_you_--!" + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE + + +"That would be impossible, Miles," Dundee said deliberately. "_For your +wife is already dead!_" Then his clear words rang out like the knell of +doom: + +"Tracey Arthur Miles, I arrest you for the murder of your wife, known as +Juanita Leigh Selim, and for the murder of Dexter Sprague. And it is my +duty to warn you that anything you say may be used against you." + +Tracey Miles lifted his ashen face and stared at the detective blankly, +as though he had gone deaf and blind. "All--over--isn't it? May I--have +a--drink?" he managed to articulate at last. + +"Poor devil! He needs it," the too-soft-hearted young detective told +himself, as Miles poured a drink from the almost empty whiskey decanter +and raised the little glass to his lips. + +"I have--nothing--to say!" the murderer gasped thickly, then fell +heavily to the floor. + + * * * * * + +It was three-quarters of an hour later. District Attorney Sanderson, +Captain Strawn and Dundee were alone in the house where Nita "Selim" had +been murdered and where her husband had confessed his crimes by +committing suicide. The morgue ambulance had come and gone.... + +"I should have known," Dundee admitted ruefully, as the three men +entered Nita's bedroom, "that so ingenious a criminal as Tracey Miles +would not have failed to provide against the possibility of discovery. +He must have seized an opportunity to spill cyanide of potassium into +the decanter when my eyes were off him for a moment--and upon Lois +Dunlap." + +"I'm glad he did," Sanderson said curtly. "But it was ghastly that poor +Lois had to know that it was she, in all innocence, who fired the shot +that killed her friend." + +"It was," Dundee sighed. "But I believed that the only way I could make +Miles confess was to frighten him into thinking Flora would be killed in +the same manner.... Well, it worked!" + +"Captain Strawn and I are still in the dark as to exactly how Miles +managed his wife's murder," Sanderson reminded him. "This morning you +chose to tell us nothing more than that a Hamilton man had married Nita +Leigh in New York in January, 1918, and that eight years ago, when he +saw her picture in _The Hamilton Evening Sun_, along with the story that +'Anita Lee' had committed suicide, he felt free to marry again.... You +said then you knew who the man was but you would not even tell us how +you knew--" + +"Because I had very little actual proof then," Dundee answered. "As to +who he was, the salient clue had been staring me in the face the whole +time, but it was not until I was fooling with a set of anagrams last +night, idly spelling out the names of all the men who _might_ have +married her and then murdered her, that I saw it--" + +"Saw _what_?" Strawn demanded irritably. + +"That Selim is simply Miles spelled backwards," Dundee explained. +"Possibly because he considered it the sophisticated thing to do, Miles +used an assumed name at the party at which he met Nita Leigh--and +married her under that name shortly afterward. Even the first name, +'Mat', by which she knew him, was only his initials reversed." + +"Simple--but clever," Sanderson commented. + +"Just as were all of Miles' schemes after Nita, egged on by Sprague, +turned up in Hamilton to demand 'back alimony' as the price of her +silence.... But let me show you how he killed his wife." + +He strode to the big bronze lamp. "It took me less than an hour today to +reconstruct the death machine so that it would be almost exactly as it +was when Miles finished his work just before 2:30 on Saturday, May +24--and as it remained until he had an opportunity to come back here and +dismantle it. Trust him to find out that the guard was removed from the +house Thursday!" + +As he spoke, he was unscrewing the big, jewel-studded bowl of the bronze +lamp. Wedged, at a down-slanting angle inside the bowl, which was twelve +inches in diameter, was Judge Marshall's snub-nosed automatic, the +attached Maxim silencer projecting slightly from the hole whose jewel +was missing. + +"Lydia told me last night over the telephone--and very much surprised +she was, too, when I swore her to secrecy--that the jewel had been lost +when the lamp was shipped from New York," Dundee explained. "There's a +blank cartridge in the gun now, of course, but Miles, in his panic, took +my words literally.... See the electro-magnet strapped to the gun butt? +He got it from the bell Sprague had installed in Lydia's bedroom, and he +returned it when he was 'cleaning up', so that the bell would ring +again. The magnet he connected with the electric wire in one of the two +lamp sockets, as you see it now, and the long cord of the lamp was +connected with the wire of the bell in the dining room--so connected +that when anyone stepped on the two little metal plates under the dining +room rug, the kitchen bell would ring and the gun would be fired +simultaneously. But if you will examine the jewel hole," he suggested, +"you will see that Miles had to enlarge it considerably, using a reamer, +which I found in the tool chest in the basement, along with all the +apparatus Sprague had bought for installing Nita's alarm bell. I could +see no reason for Sprague's having needed a reamer for his little job, +however, and this morning I was lucky enough to get proof that Miles +himself had purchased it at a hardware store on the Tuesday before +Nita's murder." + +"How did he connect the lamp cord with the dining room bell?" Strawn +puzzled. "These modern houses don't have exposed wiring--" + +"You forget Sprague's wiring for the alarm bell from here to Lydia's +room!" and Dundee threw back the rug, showing them the hole in the +floor, out of which came a short length of electric wire, ending in two +small metal plates. But attached now to the wire was the cord from the +bronze lamp. + +"The plug of the lamp cord is nearly out of the baseboard outlet behind +the bookcase, just as Miles left it, so that there is no contact with +electricity there. And the rug, which almost entirely covers the floor, +hides, as you have seen, the joining of the two wires. An inexplicable +wrapping of adhesive tape both on the lamp cord and on the wire of +Nita's alarm bell here gave me the clue.... In installing the alarm +bell, Sprague copied the arrangement under the dining table, of course. +And Miles simply had to drop a bit, fastened to the augur Sprague had +bought and used for his own job, down the four inches which separate the +dining room floor from the basement ceiling, boring a hole through the +ceiling. It was that fresh-bored hole in the ceiling that I could not +understand, and which Ralph Hammond assured me was not there Saturday +morning before Nita was killed.... Miles joined a piece of electric wire +to the dining room bell wires, and pushed it down through the hole he +had bored into the basement ceiling. Now if you'll come down with me--" + +When the three men stood staring upward at the basement ceiling, Dundee +continued: + +"See this long wire running along the ceiling from the hole beneath the +dining room bell? The tacks Miles used to secure it were also returned +to the tool chest, but he could not get rid of either the augur hole or +the tiny holes showing the course of the wire.... Let's follow it." + +He led them across the basement to a door leading into a dank, +unfinished portion of the cellar, directly east of Lydia's bedroom and +beneath Nita's. The wire whose course they were following led under the +top frame of the door, and, with a flashlight in his hand, Dundee showed +how it continued along a rafter until it reached the place where it was +joined, by adhesive tape, to the wire Sprague had dropped from Nita's +bedroom floor above. + +"Miles simply cut the wire here where it enters another hole through +Lydia's bedroom wall, and attached the new wire," Dundee explained. "The +connection between the dining room bell and the electro-magnet in the +lamp upstairs was then complete.... Sprague had bought yards too much of +the wire--fortunately for Miles' scheme." + +"But what a chance Miles took on the bullet's not hitting her in a fatal +spot!" Sanderson commented in an awed voice. + +"Not much of a chance!" Dundee denied. "He would fire the gun only when +he knew Nita was seated before her dressing-table. Experienced marksman +that he was, he could calculate the path of the bullet to a nicety. Of +course the machine had to be used that very day. As you know Nita +herself gave him his chance. Miles, standing at the sideboard, which was +separated from Nita's dressing table only by a thin wall, listened until +the first faint notes of _Juanita_ told him that Nita was powdering her +face. He could be almost positive that Nita was sitting down to her +task.... The poor girl saw nothing to alarm her, but the gun kicked when +the shot was fired by Lois' innocent stepping upon the dining room bell, +and the big lamp was rocked so that it banged against the window frame, +shattering the one bulb Miles had left in it. Of course he moved the +lamp a foot or so, in the resulting excitement. And if Nita had been +wounded only, living to tell how the shot was fired, Miles would have +committed suicide then and there." + +"What if Nita had not asked him to mix cocktails or had not gone to +powder her face?" Strawn asked. + +"The whole party was going to dine and dance at the Country Club. +Miles would have escorted her home, as he had done on Monday night, when +Nita had probably made her last demand. He could have counted on Nita's +going into her bedroom to powder her face, even if he had had to tell +her that her nose was shiny, and would himself then have gone to the +dining room, on the excuse that he needed a drink before discussing +'business'.... But I must tell you that on Saturday morning, according +to the telephone operator in Miles' office, into whom I put the fear of +the Lord and the law when I interviewed her this morning, Nita rang Miles +to say she must see him as soon as possible, her unexpressed intention +being to tell him that she was not going to make him come across again. +Miles--the telephone operator confessed to having listened-in on the +Whole conversation--told her he would be right out, but Nita said she and +Lydia were going into Hamilton and would not be back until 2:30--the +time the bridge game was scheduled to begin. That was the opportunity +Miles had been praying for, and he came on out, having previously stolen +the gun and silencer and having studied this house--" + +"How had he got in?" Sanderson wanted to know. + +"Judge Marshall had lent him a key in February, when Miles wanted to +show the house to an engaged young man in his offices, and Miles had +neglected to return it.... Well, when he arrived, he found Ralph Hammond +here, and had to leave, waiting at a safe distance, probably, until the +coast was clear about one o'clock. Even so, he had more than an hour to +do his carefully planned job.... _Nita had to die!_ Miles could not +continue to pay her large sums of money, since he was really only an +employe of Flora's. Everything he held dear in the world was threatened. +He loved Flora, he adored his children, and he could not give up the +luxury and social position which his bigamous marriage with Flora----" + +"Why didn't he make a clean breast of the whole mess to Flora, since he +had not married her until he believed Nita Leigh was dead?" Sanderson +interrupted. + +"You must remember that Flora was carrying on a violent flirtation with +Sprague--'vamping' him to get the lead in the Hamilton movie, if Sprague +got the job of directing it," Dundee reminded him. "Miles, victim of a +deep-rooted sexual inferiority complex, must have felt sure that Flora, +on discovering she was not legally married, would snatch at the chance +to marry Sprague--which was of course what Sprague had planned in case +Nita published the truth." + +"But you were wrong about the secret shelf! The gun was never there!" +Strawn gloated. + +"No. But it was the absence of fingerprints on the pivoting panel and +shelf which kept me on the right track. Miles had searched the shelf for +the marriage certificate which he could not know Nita had already +burned. Probably, too, he had written her a few letters during their +short courtship----" + +"How was Sprague killed?" Sanderson interrupted impatiently. + +Dundee led the way across the basement to a cubbyhole next to the coal +room, entered and came out with a narrow, deep drawer of ebony inlaid +with mother-of-pearl.... + +"First I must tell you that Miles got the gun out of the lamp that +Saturday night, parking his car at a distance and sneaking into the +house while I was talking with Lydia in the basement. We can guess that +he stowed gun, silencer and electro-magnet in a pocket of his car. At +any rate, he came back noisily enough a little later, to offer Lydia a +job as nurse in his home. Doubtless he assured himself that she knew +nothing, or poor Lydia would have gone the way of her mistress and +Sprague." + +"Was Sprague----?" Strawn began. + +"Despite my warning," Dundee went on, refusing to be hurried, "Sprague +made a demand for blackmail money upon Miles. It is possible that +Sprague, also sneaking into the house that Saturday night to get his +bag, saw Miles retrieve the gun. At any rate, Sprague knew that Miles +was the only person among all the company who had a real motive for +killing Nita Selim, and he undoubtedly blackmailed Miles as a murderer +as well as a bigamist. Perhaps Miles put him off for a day or two, but +on Wednesday Judge Marshall begged for a bridge game, and Miles seized +the opportunity of again having the original crowd present--a sort of +wall of integrity surrounding and including him. For I don't think he +really wanted to involve his best friends as suspects. I believe he +merely wanted to hide among them--apparently as above suspicion as they +were. And there is safety in numbers, you know.... At any rate, Miles +made an appointment Wednesday afternoon with Sprague, telling him that, +if he would come to his home that evening, and manage to leave the +bridge game while he was dummy, he would find the money he was +demanding--_in a drawer of the cabinet that stood between the two +windows in the trophy room_!" + +Dundee exhibited the drawer he had taken from the basement tool room. +"This drawer! I took it away from the Miles home this afternoon while +everyone but a chambermaid was at the inquest. Miles did not have time +to go home before going to your office, Mr. Sanderson, with the rest of +the crowd you had summoned for questioning. If he had, he would have +killed himself as soon as he found the incriminating drawer was missing +from the cabinet." + +"But--_how_----?" Sanderson began, frowning with bewilderment. + +"Very simple!" Dundee answered. "When Sprague pulled open this drawer, +which was set in the cabinet at just the height of his stomach, he +received a bullet in his heart.... See these four little holes?... A +vise was screwed into the bottom of the drawer so that it gripped the +gun with its silencer, at an upward angle. A piece of string was tied to +the trigger and fastened somehow to the underside of the drawer, so that +when Sprague pulled the drawer open the string was drawn taut and the +trigger pulled. Practically the same mechanism by which he tried to +murder me.... The kick of the gun jerked the drawer shut. All Miles had +to do when he was pretending to look for Sprague was to turn off the +trophy room light by a button--one of a series on the outside wall of +the hall closet. Probably it had been agreed between them that Sprague +would not return to the bridge game, hence Sprague's telephoning for a +taxi to wait for him at the foot of the hill, and his taking his hat and +stick into the trophy room with him." + +"Then Miles had from midnight till dawn to remove the gun!" + +"Yes. Some time during the night, after Flora was asleep with a +sedative, which she badly needed because of the quarrel--a genuine +one--which she and Tracey had had over Sprague--Miles slipped down to +the trophy room and removed the gun and vise. But he could not remove +the holes the screws had made, although he did cover the bottom of the +usually empty drawer with old pamphlets on the care and feeding of +dogs.... By the way, the chambermaid told me that her master spent about +half an hour before dinner that Thursday night in the trophy room, +'going over his fishing tackle'.... His next concern was to make the +murder jibe completely with Captain Strawn's theory of a gunman who had +trailed his quarry to the Miles home and shot him through the window. +The window was already open, but the screen had to be raised, too, and +Sprague's fingerprints had to be on the nickel catches by which the +screen curtain is raised or lowered. Of course Sprague had not touched +the screen----" + +"Do you mean to say he lugged the corpse to the window and lifted it up +so that he could press the stiff fingers upon the nickel catches?" +Sanderson asked with a shudder. "What a fiend----" + +"No," Dundee assured him. "That was unnecessary. He simply removed the +curtain screen, which is so designed that it can be taken down and put +up as easily as a window shade. He carried the screen--his own hands +protected by gloves, I suppose--to where Sprague's right hand lay _palm +upward_, on the floor, and pressed the thumb and forefinger against the +catches, making fingerprints all right, but they were reversed--as I +discovered when it occurred to me to examine the photographs of +Sprague's fingerprints in Carraway's office today. Miles could not turn +the stiff hand over without bruising the dead flesh; consequently the +print of the forefinger was on the catch where the thumb would normally +have left its mark--and vice versa.... Before I forget it, I should also +tell you that I found a master key hanging on the keyboard in the +butler's pantry. Big houses, with their many locks, are usually provided +with a master key, and Miles undoubtedly used that one to gain entrance +into my room after midnight Saturday morning." + +"Where did you find the vise?" Strawn asked. + +"In the tool chest right here, where he had also placed the reamer he +had bought. The vise probably belonged to Miles originally, but he was +taking no chances on anything's being found in his possession, provided +we tumbled to _how_ the two crimes were committed.... The reamer he must +have brought out here after he used it to enlarge the hole in my hot-air +register after midnight Sunday morning. It is possible he did his +cleaning up job here at the same time. It was safe enough to have lights +on, since the house is so isolated and there had been no guard here +since Thursday." + +"Well--" Sanderson drew a deep breath. "He was a far cleverer man than +any of us suspected. The mechanical arrangements were absurdly easy to +rig up, in all three cases, but the _thinking_ of them----. It is a pity +Nita did not fear him as she feared Sprague's vengeance----" + +"You're right," Dundee answered. "Nita did not fear Miles, not even when +she was making him pay and pay.... No woman could look at Miles and +believe him capable of murder. But a conviction of sexual inferiority +leads to strange things, as psychologists can tell you.... I believe +Miles married the only two women who ever fell in love with him, and +there can be no doubt that Nita really loved him, for she kept her +wedding dress for more than twelve years and chose it to be her shroud. +It is possible she was still fond of him, although she was infatuated +with Sprague when she came down here and was later sincerely in love +with Ralph Hammond. Another reason she did not fear Miles when she made +her will was that she counted on being able to tell him Saturday night +at the latest that she would never ask him for money again, if he would +trade silence for silence. How she hoped to secure Sprague's silence we +can only guess at. Probably she meant to buy it with the remainder of +the $10,000 she had already got from Miles--provided Sprague did not +kill her for ditching him as a lover. We know she foresaw that +possibility, since she willed the money to Lydia. Of course if Sprague +had proved tractable, Nita as Ralph's wife would have been able to +compensate Lydia handsomely for the injury she had done her." + +"Poor Nita--and poor Flora!" Sanderson sighed, as he led the way up the +basement stairs. "Hello! Someone's calling you, Bonnie----" + +Dundee ran through the kitchen and dining room and into the living room, +for he had recognized Penny Crain's sweet, husky contralto. + +"What are _you_ doing back here, young woman?" he demanded. "You were +told to go home and forget all this ugly business----" + +"Dad wants a private word with you," Penny explained, her brown eyes +luminous with happiness. "He's on the front porch.... And you ought to +see Mother! She looks like a twenty-year-old bride!" + +When Dundee joined him on the porch, Roger Crain flushed painfully but +there was happiness in his eyes, too.... + +"Serena asked me to thank you for giving her Penny's message to pass +on to me," Crain began in a low voice. "I'm sure you've guessed a lot, +but what you probably don't know is that Serena used the securities +I had sent her for safe keeping, to play the market with. When she +knew what I had done here, she wouldn't let me touch a penny of the +money until she had turned it into enough to clear up all my debts in +Hamilton.... Then," and he sighed slightly, "she sent me home.... Not +that I'm sorry. I'm going to try to make Margaret and Penny happy, make +them and the town forget that I disgraced them----" + +"Through?" Penny called from the doorway, and Bonnie Dundee forgot +Tracey Miles and all his ingenious schemes. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MURDER AT BRIDGE*** + + +******* This file should be named 19403.txt or 19403.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/4/0/19403 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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