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.
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.
"Weknowthat Nita Selim was afraid ofsomeone!" 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 ofhim?" Lydia demanded scornfully. "And would she have askedhimto rig up a bell from her bedroom to mine, if it washimshe 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 Ihadbeen 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 silencermustbe 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 theguest 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?
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 butus—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 wentaloneto 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 tellingme?... 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'mveryrich: 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 proposalaftershe 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 ajudge?' 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 seeyouamong 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 untilafterthat 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. Wouldhehave 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'mconvinced, 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!"
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"
"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: