"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 hermanyadmirers 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 senthersuch 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! Heisn'there!" 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 whatIdid. 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!"
"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—theveryhand 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 rememberallmy 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,howhad 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. ShewasNita 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 ofthat, 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 itwashorrible—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'sthis, Karen darling?" as she laid down the Ace and deuce of Spades, Karen's trumps.
"I hope you rememberyouare 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'sthis, 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; "andthis!" 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:
"Itcan'tbe 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.
"Sothatsettlesus, 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 inbothClubs 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. "Idowish 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 thinkyouwould 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!"
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 thatyou have something to concealby 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 yoursuperior, 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:
"Youwalked, 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—ormy 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 towalk? 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 itwasa 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 Drakewastrying 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 anintelligentbridge 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,whatpossessed 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 isnotbridge 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 youdowant 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 knowwhereit 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. Pennysecond! 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. "Idon'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 inthisparty 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.
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 forMrs.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 werein this roomwhen 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, itmustbe mine, but I wasnotin this room when Nita was—was shot!"
"But you will admit that youwerein 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 camehere—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. "Ididtelephone 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!"
"Butafteryou 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'smystationery—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 thoughtyouwere 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 Imustwarn 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: "Ididslip 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—"
"Youreadit, 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 thatmy wife—"
"Oh, let me tell him, Tracey," Mrs. Miles capitulated suddenly, completely. "Iwasin the closet when Nita was killed, I suppose, but I didn'tknowshe 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 deadthen—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 playingJuanita," 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'squitenear 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 hearanything, 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 shouldfaint! 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, Ididtake 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 yousureyou did not know that that letter was from Dexter Sprague before you looked for it?"
"Sir, if you are insinuating thatmy wifecarried on a flirtation or—an—anaffairwith 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.
"Youfainted, 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 thererealjealousy 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.