No. 17 $9,000May 9, 1930ToTrust Dept.ForInvestment
No. 17 $9,000May 9, 1930ToTrust Dept.ForInvestment
Had John C. Drake, who as vice president in charge of trusts and investments had doubtless handled the check, wondered at all where the $9,000 had come from?
One other revelation came out of the twenty-three filled-in stubs. On every Monday Nita Selim had drawn a check for $40 to her maid, Lydia Carr.
Again Dundee whistled. Forty dollars a week was, he wagered to himself, more money than any other maid in Hamilton was lucky enough to receive! Nita in a new light—an over-generous Nita! Or—was Nita herself paying blackmail on a small scale?
He reached into a pigeon-hole whose contents—a thick packet of unused envelopes—had not been disturbed by Strawn, and was about to remove an envelope in which to place the all-important checkbook, when he noticed something slightly peculiar. An envelope in the middle of the packet looked rather thicker than an empty case should....
But it was not empty.And across the face of the expensive, cream-colored linen paper was written, in that same pretty, very legible backhand:
TO BE OPENED IN CASE OF MY DEATH—Juanita Leigh Selim
TO BE OPENED IN CASE OF MY DEATH
—Juanita Leigh Selim
His heart hammering painfully, and his fingers trembling, Dundee drew out the two close-written sheets of creamy notepaper. After all, who had better right than he to open it? Was he not the representative of the district attorney?... And he hadn't damaged the envelope. It had opened very easily indeed—its flap had yielded instantly to his thumb-nail....
Wait! It had beentoo easy! Before unfolding the letter or whatever it was, Dundee examined the flap of the envelope.... Yes! He was not the first to open it since its original sealing. God grant he hadn't destroyed any tell-tale fingerprints in his criminal haste to learn any secret that Nita Selim had recorded here!... Perhaps Nita herself had unsealed the letter to make an addition or a correction?
Well, whatever damage had been done was done now, and he might as well read....
Five minutes later Bonnie Dundee was racing through the dining room, pushing open the swinging door that led into the butler's pantry. Where the devil were the steps that led down into the basement? A precious minute was lost before he discovered that a door in the dark back hall opened upon the steep stairs....
An unshaded light, dangling from the ceiling, revealed the furnace in one corner of the big basement, laundry equipment in another. He plunged on.... That must be the maid's room, behind that closed door.... God! What if she had escaped, while he had been munching caviar and anchovy sandwiches? A fine guard he'd been!... And it wasn't as if he hadn't had a dim suspicion of the truth....
The knob turned easily. He flung open the door. And then his knees nearly gave way, so tremendous was his relief. For there, on the thin mattress of a white-enameled iron bed, lay the woman he so ardently desired to see.
She had apparently been asleep, and the noise he had made had startled her into panicky wakefulness. Instinctively her hand flew to the ruined left side of her face—that hideous expanse of livid flesh, scarred and ridged so that it did not look human....
"What—? Who—?" Lydia Carr gasped, struggling to a sitting position, only to fall back as nausea swept over her.
"You remember me?" Dundee panted. "Dundee of the district attorney's office. I questioned you this afternoon—"
The woman closed the single eye that had escaped the accident which had marred her face so hideously. "I—remember.... I'm sick.... I told you all I know—"
"Lydia, why didn't you tell me that it was your mistress, Mrs. Selim who did—that?" Dundee demanded sternly, pointing to the woman's sightless left eye and ruined cheek.
Lydia Carr, still clothed in the black cotton dress and white apron of her maid's uniform, struggled to a sitting position on the edge of her basement room bed.
"No, no! That's a lie! It was an accident, I tell you—my own fault!... Who dared to say Nita—Miss Nita—did it?"
"Better lie down, Lydia," Dundee suggested gently. "I won't want you fainting. You've had a hard day with the abscessed tooth, the dope the dentist gave you, and—other things. I don't wonder that you lost your head, went a little crazy, perhaps—"
The detective's sinister implication seemed to make no impression at all upon the woman with the scarred face.
"I asked you—" she gasped, her single eye glaring at him, "who dared say Nita burned me?"
"It was Nita herself who told me," Dundee answered softly. "Just a few minutes ago."
"Holy Mother!" the maid gasped, and crossed herself dazedly.
Let her think the dead woman had appeared to him in a vision, Dundee told himself. Perhaps her confession would come the quicker—
The maid began to rock her gaunt body, her arms crossed over her flat chest. "My poor little girl! Even in death she thinks of me, she's sorry—. She sent me a message, didn't she? Tell me! She was always trying to comfort me, sir! The poor little thing couldn't believe I'd forgiven her as soon as she done it—. Tell me!"
"Yes," Dundee agreed, his eyes watching her keenly. "She sent you a message—of a sort.... But I can't give it to you until you have told me all about the—accident in which you were burned."
"I'll tell," Lydia promised eagerly. Gone were the harshness and secretiveness with which she had met his earlier questioning.... "You see, sir, I loved Miss Nita—I called her Nita, if you don't mind, sir. I loved her like she was my own child. And she was fond of me, too, fonder of me than of anybody in the world, she used to tell me, when some man had hurt her bad.... And there was always some man or other, she was so sweet and so pretty.... Well, I found her in the bathroom one day, just ready to drink carbolic acid, to kill her poor little self—"
"When was that, Lydia?" Dundee interrupted.
"It was in February—Sunday, the ninth of February," Lydia went on, still rocking in an agony of grief. "I tried to take the glass out of her hands. She'd poured a lot of the stuff out of the bottle.... You see, she was already in a fit of hysterics, or she'd never have tried to kill herself.... It was my own fault, trying to take the glass away from her, like I did—"
"She flung the acid into your face?" Dundee asked, shuddering.
"She didn't know what she was doing!" the woman cried, glaring at him. "Nearly went out of her mind, they told me at the hospital, because she'd hurt me.... A private room in the best hospital in New York she got for me, trained nurses night and day, and so many doctors fussing around me I wanted to fire the whole outfit and save some of my poor girl's money—which I don't know till this day how she got hold of—"
Dundee let her sob and rock her arms for a while unmolested. In February Nita Selim had had to borrow money to pay doctor and hospital bills. Had borrowed it or "gold-dug" it.... And in May she had been rich enough to have $9,000 to invest!
"Lydia, you never forgave Nita Selim for ruining your life as well as your face!" Dundee charged her suddenly.
"You're a liar!" she cried passionately. "I know what I felt. It'smyface andmylife, ain't it? I tell you I didn't even bear a grudge against her—the poor little thing! Eating her heart out with sorrow for what she'd done—till the very day of her death! Always trying to make it up to me—paying me too much money for the handful of work I had to do, what with her eating out nearly all the time and throwing away stockings the minute they got a run in 'em—. Forgive her? I'd have crawled from here to New York on my hands and knees for Nita Leigh!"
Dundee studied her horribly scarred face, made more horrible now by what looked like genuine grief.
"Lydia, who was the man over whom your mistress wanted to commit suicide?"
The single, tear-reddened eye glared at him suspiciously, then became wary. "I don't know."
"Was it Dexter Sprague, Lydia?"
"Sprague?" She spat the name out contemptuously. "No! She didn't know him then, except to speak to at the moving picture studio."
"When did he become her—lover, Lydia?" Dundee asked casually.
The woman stiffened, became menacingly hostile. "Who says he was her lover? You can't trick me, Mr. Detective! I'd cut my tongue out before I'd let you make me say one word against my poor girl!"
Dundee shrugged. He knew a stone wall when he ran up against one.
"Lydia," he began again, after a thoughtful pause, "I have proof that Nita Selim was sure you had never forgiven her for the injury she did you." His fingers touched the letter in his pocket—that incredible "Last Will and Testament" which Nita had written the day before she was murdered....
"And that's another lie!" the woman cried, shaking with anger. She struggled to her feet, stood swaying dizzily a moment. "Come upstairs with me to her room, and I'll showyousome proof that I had forgiven her!... Come along, I tell you!... Trying to make me sayIkilled my poor girl, when I'd have died for her—Come on, I tell you!"
And Dundee, wondering, beginning to doubt his own conviction a little—that conviction which had sprung full-grown out of Nita's strange, informal will, and which had seemed to explain everything—followed Lydia Carr from her basement room to the bedroom in which Nita had been murdered....
"See this!" and Lydia Carr snatched up the powder box from the dressing-table. Her long, bony fingers busied themselves with frantic haste, and suddenly, into the silence of the room came the tinkle of music. "Ibought her this—for a present, out of my own money, soon as I got out of the hospital!" the maid's voice shrilled, over the slow, sweet, tinkly notes. "It's playing her name song—Juanita. It was playing that song when she died. I stood there in the doorway and heard it—" and she pointed toward the door leading from Nita's room into the back hall. "She loved it and used it all the time, because I gave it to her.... Andthis!"
She set the musical powder box upon the dressing-table and rushed across the room to one of the several lamps that Dundee had noticed on his first survey of the room. It was the largest and gaudiest of the collection—a huge bowl of filigreed bronze, set with innumerable stones, as large as marbles, or larger. Red, yellow and green stones that must have cast a strange radiance over the pretty head that had been wont to lie just beneath it, on the heaped lace pillows of the chaise lounge, Dundee reflected.
As if Lydia had read his thoughts, she jerked at the little chain which hung from the bottom of the big bronze bowl against the heavy metal standard.
"I gave her this—saved up for it out of my own money!" she was assuring him with savage triumph in proving her point. "And she loved it so she brought it with us when we came from New York—It won't light! It was working all right last night, because my poor little girl was lying there, looking so pretty under the colored lights—"
With strong twists of her big hands Lydia began to unscrew the filigreed bronze bowl. As she lifted it off she exclaimed blankly:
"Why, look! The light bulb's—broke!"
But Dundee had already seen—not only the broken light bulb but the explanation of the queer noise that Flora Miles had described hysterically over and over, as "a bang or a bump." The chaise lounge stood between the two windows that opened upon the drive. And at the head of it stood the big lamp, just a few inches from the wall and only a foot from the window frame upon which Dr. Price had pencilled the point to indicate the end of the imaginary line along which the shot which killed Nita Leigh Selim had traveled.
The "bang or bump" which Flora Miles had heard had been made by the knocking of the big lamp against the wall. Undoubtedly the one who had bumped into the lamp was Nita's murderer—or murderess—in frantic haste to make an escape.
And that meant that the murderer had fled toward the back hall, not through the window in front of which he had stood, not through the door leading onto the front porch....A little progress, at least!
But Lydia was not through proving that she had forgiven her mistress. She was snatching things from Nita's clothes closet—
"See these mules with ostrich feathers?—I give 'em to my girl!... And this bed jacket? I embroidered the flowers on it with my own hands—"
Through her flood of proof Dundee heard the whir of a car's engine, then the loud banging of a car's door.... Running footsteps on the flagstone path.... Dundee reached the front door just as the bell pealed shrilly.
"Hello, Dundee! Awfully glad I caught you before you left.... Is poor Lydia still here?"
"Come in, Mr. Miles," Dundee invited, searching with a puzzled frown the round, blond face of Tracey Miles. "Yes, Lydia is still here.... Why?"
"Then I'm in luck, and I think Lydia is, too—poor old girl!... You see, Dundee," Miles began to explain, as he took off his new straw hat to mop his perspiring forehead, "the crowd all ganged up when our various cars reached Sheridan Road, and by unanimous vote we elected to drive over to the Country Club for a meal in one of the small private dining rooms—to escape the questions of the morbidly curious, you know—"
"Yes.... What about it?" Dundee interrupted impatiently.
"Well, I admit we were all pretty hungry, in spite of—well, of course we were all fond of Nita, but—"
"What about Lydia?" Dundee cut him short.
"I'm getting to it, old boy," Miles protested, with the injured air of an unappreciated small boy. "While we were waiting for our food, somebody said, 'Poor Lydia! What's going to become ofher?' And somebody else said that it was harder on her—Nita's death, I mean—than on anybody else, because Nita was all she had in the world, and then Lois—Lois is always practical, you know—ran to telephone Police Headquarters, to see what had been done with Lydia, and to see if it would be all right for Flora and me to take her home with us—"
"Just a minute, Miles! Whom did Mrs. Dunlap talk to at Headquarters?"
"Why, Captain Strawn, of course," Miles answered. "He told Lois that you were still out here, questioning Lydia again, and that it was all right with him, whatever you decided. So as soon as I had finished eating, I drove over—"
"Is Mrs. Miles with you?" Dundee interrupted again.
"Well, no," Miles admitted uncomfortably. "You see, the girls felt a little squeamish about coming back, even on an errand of mercy—"
Dundee grinned. He had no doubt that Flora Miles had emphatically refused the possibility of another gruelling interview.
"Why do you and Mrs. Miles want to take Lydia home with you?" he asked.
"To give her a home and a job," Miles answered promptly. "She knows us, we're used to her poor old scarred face, and the youngsters, Tam and Betty, are not a bit afraid of her. In fact, Betty pats that scarred cheek and says, over and over, 'Poo Lyddy! Poo Lyddy! Betty 'oves Lyddy!' and Tam—he's T. A. Miles, junior, you know, and we call him Tam, from the initials, because he hates being called Junior and two Tracey's are a nuisance—"
"I gather that you want to hire Lydia as a nurse for the children," Dundee interrupted the fond father's verbose explanations.
"Right, old man! You see, our nurse left us yesterday—"
"Wait here, Miles. I'll speak to Lydia. She's in Mrs. Selim's bedroom.... By the way, Miles, since you and your wife are kind enough to want to take Lydia in and give her a home and a job, I think it only fair to tell you that it is highly improbable that Lydia Carr will take any job at all."
"You mean—?" Miles gasped, his ruddy face turning pale. "I say, Dundee, it's absurd to think for a minute that good old faithful Lydia had a thing to do with Nita's murder—"
"I rather think you're right about that, Miles," Dundee interrupted. "Now will you excuse me?"
He found Lydia where he had left her—in her dead mistress' bedroom. The tall, gaunt woman was crouching beside the chaise longue, her arms outstretched to encircle a little pile of the gifts she claimed to have given Nita Selim to prove that she bore no grudge for the terrible injury her mistress had done her. At Dundee's entrance she flung up her head, and the detective saw that tears were streaming from both the sightless eye and the unharmed one.
Taking his seat on the chaise longue, Dundee explained gently but briefly the offer which Tracey Miles had just made.
"They want—me?" she gasped brokenly, incredulously, and her fingers faltered to her horrible cheek. "I didn't think anybody but my poor girl would have me around—"
"It is true they want you," Dundee assured her. "But you don't have to take a job now unless you wish, Lydia."
"What do you mean?" the maid demanded harshly, her good eye hardening with suspicion.
"Lydia," the young detective began slowly, and almost praying that he was doing the right thing, "when I woke you up tonight to question you, I said that Nita herself had just told me that it was she who had burned your face.... And you asked me if she had also given you a message—"
"Yes, sir!" the maid interrupted with pitiful eagerness. "And you'll tell me now? You don't still thinkIkilled her, do you?"
"No, I don't think you killed your mistress, Lydia, but I think, if you would, you could help me find out who did," Dundee assured her gravely. "No, wait!" and he drew from his pocket the envelope inscribed: "To Be Opened In Case of My Death—Juanita Leigh Selim."
"Do you recognize this handwriting, Lydia?"
"It was wrote by her own hand," the maid answered, her voice husky with tears. "Is that the message, sir?"
"You never saw it before?" Dundee asked sharply.
"No, no! I didn't know my poor girl was thinking about death," Lydia moaned. "I thought she was happy here. She was tickled to pieces over being taken up by all them society people, and on the go day and night——"
"Lydia, this is Mrs. Selim's last will and testament," Dundee interrupted, withdrawing the sheets slowly and unfolding them. "It was written yesterday, and it begins:
"'Knowing that any of us may die any time, and that I, Juanita Leigh Selim, have good cause to fear that my own life hangs by a thread that may break any minute—'"
"What did my poor girl mean?" Lydia Carr cried out vehemently. "She wasn't sick, ever—"
"I think, Lydia, that she feared exactly what happened today—murder! And I want you to tell me who it was she feared.For I believe you know!"
The woman shrank from him, until she was sitting on her lean haunches, her hands flattening against her cheeks. For a long minute she did not attempt to answer. Her right eye widened enormously, then slowly grew as expressionless as the milky left ball.
"I—don't—know," she said dully. Then, with vehement emphasis: "I don't know!If I did, I'd kill him with my own hands!"
Dundee had no choice but to take her word.
"You said there was a message for me," Lydia reminded him.
"I'll read you her will first," Dundee said quietly, lifting the sheets again: "I am herewith setting down my last will and testament, in my own handwriting. I do here and now solemnly will and bequeath to my faithful and beloved maid, Lydia Carr, all property, including all moneys, stocks and personal belongings of which I die possessed—"
"To—me?" Lydia whispered. "To me?"
"To you, Lydia," Dundee assured her gravely.
"Then I can have all her pretty clothes to keep always?"
"And her money, to do as you like with, if the court accepts this will for probate—as I think it will, regardless of the fact that it is very informal and was not witnessed."
"But—she didn't have any money," Lydia protested. "Nothing but what Mrs. Dunlap paid her in advance for the work she was going to do—"
"Lydia, your mistress died possessed of nearly ten thousand dollars!" Dundee fixed her bewildered grey eye with his blue ones. "Ten thousand dollars!All of which she got right here in Hamilton! And I want you to tell me how she got it!"
"But—I don't know! I don't believe she had it!"
Dundee shrugged. Either this woman would perjure her soul to protect her mistress' name from scandal, or she really knew nothing.
"That is all of the will itself, Lydia," he went on finally, "except her command that her body be cremated without funeral services of any kind, and that nobody be allowed to accompany the remains to the crematory except yourself and Mrs. Peter Dunlap, in case her death takes place in Hamilton—"
"Shedidlove Mrs. Dunlap," Lydia sobbed. "Oh, my poor little girl—"
"And there is also a note for you, which I took the liberty of reading, in which Mrs. Selim minutely describes the clothes in which she wishes to be cremated, as well as the fashion in which her hair is to be dressed—"
"Let me see it!" Lydia plunged forward on her knees and snatched at the papers he held. "For God's sake, let me see!"
"I'll read you the note, Lydia, but I can't let you touch it," Dundee said sternly, taking good care that she should not touch either the paper on which the note to herself had been written or the sheet which contained that strange, informal will. Informal, in spite of the dead woman's obvious effort to couch it in legal phraseology....
Was Lydia's frenzy assumed? Did she hope to leave fingerprints now which would account for fingerprints she had already left upon it? Was it not possible that Lydia's had been the prying fingers which had opened the envelope after Nita Selim had sealed it with God only knew what fears in her heart? If so, Lydia Carr had found that she was her mistress' sole legatee....Revenge, coupled with greed....What better motive for murder could a detective ask? And who had had so good an opportunity as Lydia Carr to dispose of the weapon?
The woman crouched back on her haunches, an agony of pleading in her single eye.
"Lydia, I think you know already what this note tells you," Dundee said slowly.
To his astonishment the maid nodded, the tears starting again. "I asked her once what she wanted to keep that old dress for, and she—she said I'd find out some day, but I never dreamed she'd want it for a—oh, my God!—for ashroud!"
For the second time that evening Lydia Carr completely routed Dundee's carefully worked-up case against her. It was inconceivable, he told himself, that a mind cunning enough to have executed this murder would give itself away in such a fashion. If she had indeed pried among her mistress' papers and found the will and note, would she not, from the most primitive instinct of self-preservation, have pretended total ignorance of the note's contents?
"I'll read the note, Lydia," he said gently. "It is addressed: 'My precious old Lydia'—"
"She was always calling me that!" the maid sobbed.
"And she writes: 'If you ever read this it will be because I'm dead, and you'll know that I've tried to make it up to you the only way I knew. I never could believe you really forgave me, but maybe you will now. And there is one last thing I want you to do for me, Lydia darling. You remember that old royal blue velvet dress of mine that you were always sniffing at and either trying to make me give away or have made over? And remember that I told you that you'd know some time why I kept it? Well, I want you to lay me out in it, Lydia. Such a funny old-fashioned shroud, isn't it?... But with dresses long again, maybe it won't look so funny, and there'll be nobody but you and Lois to see me in it, because I've said so in my will. And I want my hair dressed as it was the only time I ever wore the royal blue velvet. A French roll, Lydia, with little curls coming out the left side of it and hanging down to the left ear. You brush the hair straight up the back of the head, gather it together and tie a little bit of black shoestring around it, then you twist the hair into a roll and spread it high, pinning it down on each side of the head.And don't forget the little curls on the left side!I hope I have enough hair, but if it hasn't grown long enough, you know where those switches are that I had made when I first bobbed my hair.... You won't mind touching me when I'm dead, will you, Lydia? I do love you.... Nita.'"
Dundee was silent for a minute after he had finished reading the strange note and had returned it to the envelope, along with the will. At last, speaking against a lump in his throat, he broke in on the desolate sobbing of Nita's maid:
"Lydia, how old was your mistress?"
"You won't put it in the papers, will you?" Lydia pleaded. "She—she was—thirty-three. But not a soul knew it except me—"
"And will you tell me how old the royal blue velvet dress is?" he continued. "Also, how long since girls dressed their hair in a French roll?"
"The dress is twelve or thirteen years old," Lydia said, her voice dull now with grief. "I know, because I used to do dressmaking during the war. And it was during the war that girls wore their hair that way—I did mine in a Psyche knot, but the French roll was more stylish."
"Did your mistress ever tell you about the one time she wore the dress?"
Lydia shook her head. "No. She wouldn't talk about it—just said I'd know sometime why she kept it.... Royal blue velvet, it is, the skirt halfway to the ankles, and sleeves with long pointed ends, lined with gold taffeta, and finished off with gold tassels. It's in a dress bag, hanging in her closet."
"Do you think it was her wedding dress, Lydia?" Dundee suggested, the idea suddenly flashing into his mind.
"I don't know. I didn't ask her that," Lydia denied dully. "Can I take it with me—and the switches she had made out of her curls?"
"I'll have to get authority to remove anything from the house, Lydia," Dundee told her. "But I am sure you will be permitted to follow Mrs. Selim's instructions.... So you're going to accept the Miles' offer of a job as nurse?"
"Yes. I'd rather work. Mr. and Mrs. Miles have always been specially nice to me, and I—I could love their children. They're not—afraid of me—"
"Perhaps you're wise," Dundee agreed. "By the way, Lydia, did Mrs. Selim have a pistol in her possession at any time during the past week?"
The maid shook her head. "Not that I seen. And if she'd got one because she was afraid, she'd a-kept it handy and I'd a-been bound to see it."
Convinced of her sincerity, he was about to let her go to pack her bag when another belated question occurred to him. "Lydia, will you tell me what engagements Mrs. Selim had this last week?"
The woman scowled, fanatically jealous, Dundee guessed, of her mistress' reputation, but at last she answered defiantly: "Let me see.... Mr. Sprague had Sunday dinner here, and spent the afternoon, but Sunday night it was young Mr. Ralph Hammond. He come whenever she'd let him.... Monday night?... Oh, yes! She had dinner at the Country Club with the Mileses and the Drakes and the Dunlaps. Mr. Miles brought her home, because Mr. Sprague wasn't invited.... Tuesday night—let me think!... Yes, that's the night Judge Marshall was here. Nita had sent for him to talk about finishing up the attic—"
So that was the "business engagement" which Judge Marshall had hemmed and hawed over, Dundee reflected triumphantly.
"—and Wednesday night," Lydia was continuing, with a certain pride in her mistress' popularity, "she was at a dinner party at the Dunlaps'."
"Did Mr. Peter Dunlap ever call on Mrs. Selim—alone?"
"Him?" Lydia was curiously resentful. "He wasn't ever here. Nita said to me she wished Mr. Peter liked her as well as Mis' Lois did."
"Thursday night?"
"Mr. Ralph Hammond took her somewhere to dinner, to some other town, I think, but I wasn't awake when they got home. Nita never would let me set up for her—said I needed my rest. So I always went to bed early."
"And yesterday—Friday?" Dundee demanded tensely. For Friday she had been driven to making her last will and testament....
"She was home all day, but about half past four Mr. Drake came," Lydia said slowly, as if she too were wondering. "She was awfully restless, couldn't set still or eat. I ought to have suspicioned something, but she was often like that—lately. Mr. Drake stayed about an hour. I didn't see him leave, because I was cooking Nita's dinner.... But little good it did, because she didn't eat it, so there was plenty for Mr. Sprague when he dropped in about seven."
"Did Sprague spend the evening?"
"I guess so, but I don't know. Nita made me take the Ford and drive into town for a picture show. She was in bed when I got back, and—" but she checked herself hastily.
"Did Nita seem strange—troubled, excited? Did she look as if she'd been crying?" Dundee prodded.
"I didn't see her," the maid acknowledged. "I knocked on her door, but she told me to go on to bed, that she wouldn't need me. But now I think back, her voice sounded queer.... Maybe shewascrying, but I don't know—"
"And this morning?"
"She seemed all right—just excited about the party and worried about my tooth. Mr. Ralph Hammond come to make the estimates on finishing up the top floor, and we left him here—"
"What was her attitude toward Mr. Miles when he dropped in on her this morning?" Dundee interrupted.
"Mr. Miles?" Lydia echoed, frowning. "He wasn't here this morning, or if he was, it was after Nita and I left for town."
While the maid was packing a bag, which Dundee would examine before she was allowed to take it away with her, the detective rejoined Tracey Miles, who had made himself as comfortable as possible in the living room.
"Lydia's going with you, and is grateful for your wife's kindness," Dundee informed him, and felt his heart warm to the boresome, egotistical little cherub of a man when he saw how Miles' face lit up with real pleasure. "By the way, Miles, you saw Ralph Hammond when you called here this morning, didn't you?"
"Yes," Miles answered with some reluctance. "He answered the door when I rang and told me Lydia and Nita had gone into town."
"Mr. Miles," Dundee began slowly, throwing friendliness and persuasion into his voice, "I know how all you folks stick together, but I'd appreciate it a lot if you'd tell me frankly whether you noticed anything unusual in Hammond's manner this morning."
"Unusual?" Miles repeated, frowning. "He was a little short with me because he was busy, and, I suspect, a little jealous because I'd come calling on Nita—" He broke off abruptly, in obvious distress. "Look here, Dundee! I didn't mean to say that, but I suppose you'll find out sooner or later.... Well, the fact is, the whole crowd knows Ralph Hammond was absolutely mad about Nita Selim. Wanted to marry her, and made no secret of it, though we all thought or hoped it would be little Penny Crain. He's been devoted to Penny for years, and since Roger Crain made a mess of things and skipped out, leaving Penny and her poor mother high and dry, we've all done our best to throw Penny and Ralph together. But since Nita came to town—"
"Was Nita in love with Ralph?" Dundee cut in, rather curtly, for he had a curious distaste for hearing Penny Crain discussed in this manner.
"Sometimes we were sure she was," Miles answered. "She flirted with all of us men—had a way with her of making every man she talked to think he was the only pebble on the beach. But there was something special in the way she looked at Ralph.... Yes, I think shewasin love with him! But then again," he frowned, "she would treat him like a dog. Seemed to want to drive him away from her—but she always called him back—Oh, Lord!" he interrupted himself with a groan. "Now I suppose Ihaveput my foot in it! You've got the damnedest way of making a chap tell everything he would cut his tongue out rather than spill, Dundee! But just because a young man's in love, and happens not to show up at a party, is no reason to think he sneaked up to the house and killed the woman he loved and wanted to marry. For I'm not so dumb that I haven't seen the drift of your damnable questions, Dundee!... Do you know Ralph Hammond, by any chance?" he concluded, his round face red with anger.
"No—but I should like to meet him," Dundee retorted. "He seems quite hard to locate this evening."
"Well, when you do meet him," Tracey Miles began violently, his blue eyes blazing with anger, "you'll soon find you've been barking up the wrong tree! There's not a cleaner, finer, straighter—"
"In fact, he is a friend of yours, Miles," Dundee answered soothingly, "and I respect you for every word you've said.... By the way, did all of you go to the Country Club for dinner after you left here?"
Somewhat mollified, Miles answered: "All of us but Clive Hammond. He said he was going to have a look around for Ralph himself. Seemed to have an idea where he might find him.... And, oh, yes, Sprague disappeared in the scramble. He hasn't a car and nobody thought of offering him a lift. Guess he took a bus into Hamilton.... Ah! Here's Lydia!... Hello, Lydia!" he called heartily to the woman who was standing, tall and gaunt, in the doorway. "Mighty glad you're coming to look after the kids!"
From behind the black veil which draped her ugly black hat and hid her scarred face, Lydia answered in the dull, harsh voice that was characteristic of her:
"Thank you, sir. I'll do my best."
She made no protest when Dundee, with a word of embarrassed apology, went rapidly through the heavy suitcase she had brought up from the basement with her. And when he had finished his fruitless search, she knelt and silently smoothed the coarse, utilitarian garments he had disarranged.
Five minutes later Dundee was alone in the house where murder had been committed under such strange and baffling circumstances that afternoon. He was not nervous, but again he made a tour of inspection of the first floor and basement, looking into closets, and testing windows to make sure they were all locked. Everywhere there were evidences of the thoroughness of the police detectives who had searched for the weapon with which Nita Selim had been murdered. In the basement, as he had subconsciously noted on his headlong dash to question Lydia Carr, the furnace doors swung open, and the lids of the laundry tubs had been left propped up, after the unavailing search....
He plodded wearily up the basement stairs and on into the kitchen. Perhaps the ice-box had something fit to eat in it—the fruit intended for Nita's and Lydia's Sunday breakfast. Those caviar and anchovy sandwiches had certainly not stuck with him long....
He was making his way toward the electric refrigerator when he stopped as suddenly as if he had been shot.
The kitchen door, which he had taken especial pains to assure himself was locked, when he had made the rounds immediately after the departure of Captain Strawn and his men, was standing slightly ajar!
Someone had entered this house!
Dundee stared blankly at the door, which was equipped with a Yale lock. Someone with a key.... But why had the door been left ajar?To make escape more noiseless?
With the toe of his shoe Dundee pushed the door to and heard the click of the lock, then, all thought of food routed from his mind, made a quick but almost silent dash into the dining room to secure one of the pair of tall wax tapers, which, in their silver candlesticks, served as ornaments for the sideboard.
If the intruder was still in the house he could be nowhere but in that unfinished half of the gabled top story. The nearer stairs were those in the back hall, and Dundee took them two at a time, regardless of the noise. Who had preceded him stealthily?... By the aid of his lighted candle he discovered an electric switch at the head of the stairs, flicked it on, and found himself in a wide hall, one wall of which was finished with buff-tinted plaster and with three doors, the other of rough boards with but a single door.
With his candle held high, so that its light should not blind him, and well aware that it made him a perfect target, Dundee opened the unpainted door and found himself in the dark, musty-smelling room that had served Nita Selim and the Crains before her as a storeroom. From the ceiling dangled a green cord ending in a cheap, clear-glass bulb, but its light was sufficient to penetrate even the farthest low nooks made by the three gables. He blew out his candle and dropped it, as useless now.
A quick tour convinced him that nothing human was concealed behind one of Nita Selim's empty wardrobe trunks, or behind one of the several pieces of heavy old furniture, undoubtedly left behind by the dispossessed Crain family.
Big footprints on the thick dust which coated the floor showed him that he was being no more thorough than Captain Strawn's brace of plainclothes detectives had been much earlier that evening. Two pairs of giant footprints....
With an exclamation he discovered a smaller, narrow pair of prints, and followed their winding trail all around and across the attic. And then he remembered.... Ralph Hammond's footprints, of course, made that morning as he went about his legitimate business of measuring and estimating for the job of turning the storeroom into bedrooms and bathrooms.
Dundee had not realized that he was frightened until he was in the hall again, facing one of the three doors in the plastered wall. With surprise, and some amusement, he became aware that his hands were trembling, and that his knees had a curious tendency to buckle.
The fact that the door directly in front of him was open about two inches served, for some odd reason, to steady his nerves. Pushing the door wide open with his foot—for he never forgot the possibility of incriminating fingerprints which might easily be obliterated, he discovered a light switch near the door frame.
The instant illumination from a ceiling cluster revealed a large bedroom, and less clearly, another and smaller room beyond it, facing as the house faced—toward the south. Knees and hands steady again, he investigated the finished portion of the gabled story swiftly. A charming layout, he told himself. Had Penny Crain once enjoyed this delightful little sitting-room, with its tiny balcony built out upon the sloping roof?... And it gave him pleasure to think that this big, well-furnished but not fussily feminine bedroom had once been hers, as well as the small but perfect bathroom whose high narrow window overlooked the back garden. The closets, dresser drawers and highboy drawers were completely empty, however, of any traces of her occupancy or that of any other....
With these rooms going to waste, why—he suddenly asked himself—had Nita Selim coaxed Judge Marshall to have the unfinished half of the gabled attic turned into bedrooms and baths? Why couldn't Lydia have slept up here, if Nita thought so much of her "faithful and beloved maid"?
But even as he asked himself the question Dundee realized that the answer to it had been struggling to attract his attention.
These rooms had not been wasted!Someone had been occupying them as late as last night! Weaving swiftly through the three rooms, like a bloodhound on the scent, Dundee collected the few but sufficient proofs to back up his intuitive conviction. A copy ofThe Hamilton Evening Sun, dated Friday, May 23, left in an armchair in the sitting-room. All windows raised about six inches from the bottom, so that the night breeze stirred the hand-blocked linen drapes. And, clinging to these drapes, the faint but unmistakable odor of cigarette smoke. Finally, with a low cry of triumph, Bonnie Dundee flung back the colored linen spread which covered the three-quarter bed and discovered that the sheets and pillow cases, though clean, had, beyond the shadow of a doubt, been slept upon.
Bending so that his nose almost touched a pillow case he sniffed.Pomade!...Who was the man who had slept in this bed last night?
With the thrill of his discovery singing blithely along his nerves, Bonnie Dundee, Special Investigator for the District Attorney, had at first hugged the intention of following the new trail alone. Hadn't Captain Strawn taunted him not too good-naturedly about his ability to get along without the younger man's help?
But he was glad, both selfishly and unselfishly, when, half an hour later, he threw open the front door of dead Nita's house to the chief of the Homicide Squad, Carraway, the fingerprint expert, and the two plainclothesmen who had searched the top floor for the missing weapon or the murderer himself soon after the murder had been committed. For if Strawn needed his help, Dundee needed the expert machinery which Strawn captained. And it was good to feel the grip of gratitude in the old chief's handclasp and to see the almost shy twinkle of apology in his hard old grey eyes....
Dundee led the way up the front stairs to the upper floor, glad to hear the heavy tread of official feet behind him.
"I guess you've got it all doped out who the Selim woman's gentleman friend was," Strawn commented genially, as he followed Dundee into the pleasant, big bedroom.
"I believe I have, but I need Carraway to prove my hunch," Dundee acknowledged.
Eagerly, swiftly, he displayed his first tangible finds—the open windows, the drapes smelling of cigarette smoke, the evening paper of the day before, the faint odor and greasiness of barber's pomade upon the pillow case of the bed which had clearly been slept in since the linen was changed.
"Now, Collins—Harmon—" Dundee whirled upon the two silent plainclothesmen, "I want to know what you saw in these rooms when you searched them early this evening that you don't see now. You looked into the closets and drawers, of course?"
"Yes, sir," Collins answered. "And they was all empty, Dundee. Me and Harmon didn't waste time smelling pillow cases, and I admit we didn't pay no attention to that there newspaper—"
"Empty!" Dundee echoed. "Are you sure?... You, too, Harmon?"
"What are you driving at, boy?" Captain Strawn asked indulgently.
Briefly, with disappointment flattening his voice, Dundee told of his finding the kitchen door ajar, after he had made sure it was locked on his first rounds of the house.
"I worked it out this way," he continued, despite Strawn's grin. "Dexter Sprague was Nita's lover, as I had thought all along. He was in the habit of spending the night here whenever Nita would give him an evening of her company. He was here last night, according to the maid, Lydia Carr. Nita sent her into Hamilton to a picture show. Nita and Sprague quarreled last night, but I am positive he spent the night here anyway. Certainly there was no actual rupture, since Sprague worded his note to her as he did. I have another strong reason for thinking his belongings were here at least until noon today, but that can wait for the moment. Furthermore, I am positive that Sprague descended by the backstairs and went around the house to join the cocktail party which was to follow the hen bridge party."
"How do you make that out, Bonnie?" Strawn asked, his grin wiped away.
"Try to remember how Sprague looked when you first got here," Dundee suggested. "I saw him twenty minutes after you did, but—he was wearing an immaculate stiff collar, and there were still traces of talcum powder over a close shave! And you will remember that he said he had made a half hour's trip by bus, and had walked the quarter of a mile from the bus stop on Sheridan Road to this house. It was a mighty hot afternoon, chief!"
"Not conclusive," Strawn growled.
"Then here's another straw to add to the weight of my conclusion," Dundee went on unshaken. "You remember that Janet Raymond was on the front porchwatching for Sprague, while the 'death hand of bridge' was being played?... Oh, she tried to protect him.... Wait, I'll read you the notes I made when I was questioning her. I looked them up while I was waiting for you.... Here! I had said to Miss Raymond: 'You observed Mr. Sprague toiling down the rutty road, hot and weary, but romantic in the sunset?' And she answered, stammering: 'I—I wasn't looking that way....' And I knew she was lying, knew that she had been taken completely by surprise when Sprague suddenly appearedfrom the rear of the house! What's more, she betrayed herself and him by admitting that she was surprised. Then—because the girl is undoubtedly in love with Sprague and was mortally afraid he had killed Nita Selim, she tried frantically to throw suspicion on Lydia Carr, by telling how Lydia had failed to answer Mrs. Dunlap's first ring—Good Lord! Wait a minute! I want to think!" he interrupted himself to exclaim.
After a full minute, while he had stood very still, with his fingers pressed against his closed eyes, Dundee began slowly:
"I believe that's it.... Listen, boys!" He turned to the two plainclothesmen, urgent pleading in his voice. "Would you both take your oath that there was no bag—say a small Gladstone overnight bag—anywhere in these rooms when you searched them this evening?"
The two detectives glanced at each other, their faces reddening. It was Harmon, the older of the pair, who swallowed hard before answering:
"We'd been told to look for a man hiding, and for a gun—" Then he squared his shoulders as if to receive the blame like a man. "Yes, sir! There was a little black grip on the closet shelf. I went through it myself, but there wasn't no gun in it. Just a pair of pajamas and a couple of shirts, one of 'em dirty, some socks and collars and a shaving-kit—"
Dundee drew a deep breath, and clapped the red-faced detective on the back in high good humor.
"There simplyhadto be a bag somewhere!" he laughed.
"This is the way of it, Strawn.... Nita and Sprague rowed last night. Sprague tried to make it up, but Nita must have been through with him. Probably told him last night to clear his things out and not come back. She thought he had done so; probably he did leave before she got up. At any rate she was so sure he was gone and his things with him that she and Lydia went to town this morning and left Ralph Hammond here to go through the place as freely as he liked, making his estimates on the job of finishing up the other half of this floor. And Ralph—but let that wait for the moment."
"Got any real proof that it was Sprague who stayed here and not the Hammond boy?" Strawn interrupted shrewdly.
"I'm coming to the proof," Dundee assured him, "or rather, the rest of the proof that I haven't already given you. You're damned hard to convince, chief! But let me go on with my theory, which I think covers the facts.... At luncheon, when Nita received that note from Sprague, I imagine she got a hunch that he hadn't taken her seriously, that he had not removed his belongings. You remember Penny Crain said Nita had Lydia follow her into her bedroom, as soon as Nita got home from the luncheon?... Well, it's my hunch that Nita asked Lydia if Sprague's things were gone when she cleaned these rooms this morning, and that Lydia said no. Nita then probably told Lydia to pack them herself, and I feel positive that Lydia did so, for she must have felt safe when she protested to me that Sprague was not Nita's lover. I also feel sure that Sprague arrived at least half an hour before he said he did, by some back path across the meadow; that he came up to these rooms that he considered his, found his things packed, but went about shaving and changing his shirt and collar, regardless. I also feel sure that Lydia followed him upstairs to explain and impress upon him that Nita had meant what she said. And it is quite likely that she was not through picking up after him when he descended by the back stairs and surprised Janet Raymond on the front porch. That accounts, of course, for Lydia's not hearing the kitchen bell the first time Mrs. Dunlap rang."
"Umm," Strawn grunted. "What about the proofs you're holding back?"
"Come along, chief—you, too, Carraway!" Dundee answered, and led the way into the bathroom. "I felt sure these rooms would yield a very definite clue, even though Sprague, when he sneaked back tonight to get his tell-tale bag, apparently made every effort to wipe his fingerprints off the furniture and bathroom fixtures.... Now, Carraway, if you'll step upon this little stool and look along the top of this medicine cabinet, you'll find what I found—and didn't touch."
The fingerprint expert did as he was told. When he stepped down he was holding, between the very tips of his fingers, a safety razor blade.
"No dust on it, you see," Dundee pointed out. "Now if you don't find Dexter Sprague's fingerprints on it, my whole theory topples."
"How am I going to know whose fingerprints they are till we get hold of Sprague?" Carraway asked reasonably.
"We don't need him—for that purpose, at least," Dundee assured him. "Downstairs in the living room, on a little table in the southeast corner of the room, you'll find a red glass ashtray which no one but Dexter Sprague used all evening. It was clean and empty when I saw him use it first. I think you'll find on it all the prints you need."
"So you think Sprague killed her because she was through with him?" Strawn asked.
Dundee shook his head. "Since I don't like Dexter Sprague a little bit, chief, I'd like to think so, but—"
Bonnie Dundee's first thought upon awakening that Sunday morning was that it might prove to be rather a pity that his new bachelor apartment, as he loved to call his three rooms at the top of a lodging house which had once been a fashionable private home, faced south and west, rather than east. At the Rhodes House, whose boarding-house clamor and lack of privacy he had abandoned upon taking the flattering job and decent salary of "Special Investigator attached to the District Attorney's office," he had grown accustomed to using the hot morning sun upon his reluctant eyelids as an alarm clock.
But—he continued the train of thought, after discovering by his watch that it was not late; only 8:40—it was pretty darned nice having "diggings" like these. Quiet and private. For he was the only tenant now on the top floor. His pleased, lazy eyes roved over the plain severity but solid comfort of his bedroom, and on past the open door to take in appreciatively the equally comfortable and masculine living room.... Pretty nice! That leather-upholstered couch and armchair had been a real bargain, and he liked them all the better for being rather scuffed and shabby. Then his eyes halted upon a covered cage, swung from a pedestal....
"Poor old Cap'n!... Must be wondering when the devil I'm going to get up!" and he swung out of bed, lounged sleepily into the small living room and whisked the square of black silk from the cage.
The parrot, formerly the property of murdered old Mrs. Hogarth of the Rhodes House, but for the past year the young detective's official "Watson," ruffled his feathers, poked his green-and-yellow head between the bars of his cage and croaked hoarsely: "Hullo! Hullo!"
"Hullo, yourself, my dear Watson!" Dundee retorted. "Your vacation is over, old top! It's back on the job for you and me both!... Which reminds me that I ought to be taking a squint at the Sunday papers, to see how much Captain Strawn thought fit to tell the press."
He foundThe Hamilton Morning Newsin the hall just outside his living room door.
"Listen, Cap'n.... 'NITA SELIM MURDERED AT BRIDGE'.... Probably the snappiest streamer headline the News has had for many a day.... Now let's see—" He was silent for two minutes, while his eyes leaped down the lesser headlines and the column one, page one story of the murder. Then: "Good old Strawn! Not a word, my dear Watson, about your absurd master's absurd performance in having 'the death hand at bridge' replayed. Not a word about Ralph Hammond, the missing guest! Not a word about Mrs. Tracey Miles' being hidden away in the clothes closet while her hostess was being murdered!... In fact, my dear Watson, not a word about anything except Strawn's own theory that a hired gunman from New York or Chicago—preferably Nita's home town, New York, of course—sneaked up, crouched in her window, and bumped her off.Andlife-size photographs of the big footprints under the window to prove his theory!... By golly, Cap'n! I clean forgot to tell my former chief that I'd found Nita's will and note to Lydia! He'll think I deliberately held out on him.... Well—I can't sit here all day gossiping with you, 'my dear Watson....' Work—much work—to be done; then—Sunday dinner with poor little Penny."
Four hours later a tired and dispirited young detective was climbing the stairs of an ugly, five-story "walk-up" apartment house in which Penny Crain and her mother had been living since the financial failure and flight of the husband and father, Roger Crain.
"Hello, there!" It was Penny's friendly voice, hailing him from the topmost landing of the steep stairs. "All winded, poor thing?"
His tired, unhappy eyes drank her in—the freshness and sweetness of a domestic Penny, so different from the thorny little office Penny who prided herself on her efficiency as secretary to the district attorney.... Penny in flowered voile, with a saucy, ruffled white apron.... But there were purplish shadows under her brown eyes, and her gayety lasted only until he had reached her side.
"Sh-h-h!—Have they found Ralph?" she whispered anxiously.
He could only answer "No," and he almost choked on the word.
"Mother's all of a twitter at my having a detective to dinner," she whispered, trying to be gay again. "She fancies you'll be wearing size 11 shoes and a 'six-shooter' at your belt—Yes, Mother! It's Mr. Dundee!"
She did not look "all of a twitter," this pretty but rather faded middle-aged little mother of Penny's. A gentle dignity and patient sadness, which Dundee was sure were habitual to her, lay in the faded blue eyes and upon the soft, sweet mouth....
But Mrs. Crain was ushering him into the living room, and its charm made him forget for the moment that the Crains were to be pitied, because of their "come-down" in life. For every piece of furniture seemed to be authentic early American, and the hooked rugs and fine, brocaded damasks allied themselves with the fine old furniture to defeat the ugliness with which the Maple Court Apartments' architect had been fiercely determined to punish its tenants.
"'Scuse me! Gotta dish up!" Penny flung over her shoulder as she ran away and left him alone with her mother.
Dundee liked Mrs. Crain for making no excuses about a maid they could not afford, liked the way she settled into a lovely, ancient rocking-chair and set herself to entertain him while her daughter made ready the dinner.
Not a word was said about the horrible tragedy which had occurred the day before in the house which had once been her home. They talked of Penny's work, and the little gentlewoman listened eagerly, with only the faintest of sighs, as Dundee humorously described Penny's fierce efficiency and District Attorney Sanderson's keen delight in her work.
"Bill Sanderson is a nice boy," the woman of perhaps 48 said of Hamilton's 35-year-old district attorney. "It is nice for Penny to work with an old friend of the family, or was—until—"
And that was the nearest she came to mentioning the murder before Penny summoned them to the little dining room.
Because Penny was watching him and was obviously proud of her skill as a cook—skill recently acquired, he was sure—Dundee ate as heartily as his carefully concealed depression would permit. There was a beautifully browned two-rib roast of beef, pan-browned potatoes, new peas, escalloped tomatoes, and, for dessert, a gelatine pudding which Penny proudly announced was "Spanish cream," the secret of which she had mastered only that morning.
"I was up almost at dawn to make it, so that it would 'set' in time," she told him, and by the quiver of her lip Dundee knew that it was not Spanish cream which had got her up....
"I'm going to help wash dishes," he announced firmly, and Penny, with a quick intake of breath, agreed.
"Hadn't you better take a nap, Mother?" she added a minute later, as Mrs. Crain, with a slight flush on her faded cheeks, began to stack the dessert dishes. "You mustn't lay a hand on these dishes, or Bonnie and I will have our dishwashing picnic spoiled.... Run along now. You need sleep, dear."
"Not any more than you do, poor baby!" Mrs. Crain quavered, and then hurried out of the room, since gentlewomen do not weep before strangers.
"I called you 'Bonnie' so Mother would know we are really friends," Penny explained, her cheeks red, as she preceded him through the swinging door into the miniature kitchen.
"You'll stick to that—being friends, I mean, no matter what happens, won't you, Penny?" Dundee said in a low voice, setting the fragile crystal dishes he carried upon the porcelain drainboard of the sink.
"I knew you had something bad to tell me.... It's about—Ralph, I suppose?" Her husky voice was scarcely audible above the rush of hot water into the dishpan. "You'd better tell me straight off, Bonnie. I'm not a very patient person.... Are they going to arrest Ralph when they find him? There wasn't a word in the paper about him this morning—"
"I'm afraid they are, Penny," Dundee told her miserably. "Captain Strawn has a warrant ready, but of course—"
"Oh, you don't have to tell me you hope Ralph isn't guilty!" she cut in with sudden passionate vehemence. "Don'tIknow he couldn't have done it? They always arrest the wrong person first, the blundering idiots—"
It was the thorny Penny again, the Penny with glittering eyes which matched her nickname. But Dundee felt better able to cope with this Penny....
"I'm afraid I'm the chief idiot, but you must believe that I'm sorry it should be a friend of yours," he told her, and reached for the plate she had rinsed of its suds under the hot water tap.
"Shoot the works!" she commanded, with hard flippancy. "Of course I might have known that Captain Strawn's theory about a gunman was just dust in our eyes, and that only a miracle could keep you from fastening on poor Ralph, since he and the gun are both missing.... Naturally it wouldn't occur to you that it might be an outsider, someone who had followed Nita and her lover, Sprague, from New York, to kill her for having left him for Sprague.... Oh, no! Certainly not!" she gibed, to keep from bursting into tears.
"An outsider would hardly have had access to Judge Marshall's pistol and Maxim silencer," he reminded her. "And Captain Strawn received a wire from a ballistics expert in Chicago this morning, confirming our conviction that the same gun which fired the bullets against Judge Marshall's target fired the bullet which killed Nita Selim.... You've washed that plate long enough. Let me dry it now.... And there are other things, Penny—"
"Such as—" she challenged in her angry, husky contralto.
"Sprague admitted to me this morning, after I had confronted him with proofs, that he sometimes slept in the upstairs bedroom—"
"I told you they were lovers!" Penny interrupted.
"—and that he slept there Friday night, after he and Nita had quarreled. He still contends that the row was over that movie-of-Hamilton business," Dundee went on, as if she had not spoken. "He admitted also that Nita had told him to take his things away when he left Saturday morning, but he says it was only because she didn't want Ralph Hammond to find a man's belongings there if he had occasion to go into the upstairs rooms in making his estimates for the finishing-up of the other side. But he contends, and Lydia Carr, whom I also saw again this morning, supports him in it, that he stayed in the house occasionally when Nita was particularly nervous about being alone, and that they werenotlovers."
"Pooh!... Don't wipe the flowers off that plate. Here's another."
"I'm inclined to say 'Pooh!', too, Penny," Dundee assured her, "but Tracey Miles told me last night when he came to get Lydia that Nita really seemed to be in love with Ralph—part of the time, at least."
"Nita thought enough of Dexter Sprague to send for him to come down here, and to root her head off for him to get the job of making the movie," Penny reminded him fiercely, making a great splashing in the dishpan.
"Then—youdon't think she was in love with Ralph?" Dundee asked.
"Oh,I don't know!" the girl cried. "I thought so sometimes—had the grace to hope so, anyway, since Ralph was so crazy about her."
"That's the point, Penny," Dundee told her gently. "Everyone I've talked to this morning, including Sprague, seems sure that Ralph Hammond was mad about Nita Selim."
"So of course he would kill her!" Penny scoffed bitterly.
"Yes, Penny—when he discovered Sprague's easily-recognized cravats draped over the mirror frame in a bedroom in Nita's house.... For they were there to be seen when Ralph went into that bedroom yesterday morning."
"How do you know he saw them?"
"Because he left this behind him," Dundee admitted reluctantly, and wiped his hands before drawing an initialed silver pencil from his breast pocket. "I found it under the edge of the bed. The initials are R. H."
"Yes, I recognize it," Penny admitted, turning sharply away. "I gave it to him myself, for a Christmas present. I thought I could afford to give silver pencils away then. Dad hadn't bolted yet—" She crooked an elbow and leaned her face against it for a moment. Then she flung up her brown bobbed head defiantly. "Well?"
"Ralph must have been—well, in a pretty bad way, since he loved Nita and wanted to—marry her," Dundee persisted painfully. "Remember that Polly Beale found him still there when she stopped to offer Nita a lift to Breakaway Inn. It is not hard to imagine what took place. Weknowthat Polly curtly cancelled her luncheon engagement with Nita and the rest of you, and went into town with Ralph, after making sure that Clive would join them. I saw young Hammond myself for an instant, without knowing who he was, and I remember now thinking that he looked far too ill to eat. I was lunching at the Stuart House myself when they came into the dining room, you know."
"Plenty to hang him on, I see!" Penny cried furiously.
"There's a little more, Penny," Dundee went on. "Polly Beale and Clive Hammond were mortally afraid that Ralphwouldcome to the cocktail party! I'm sure Clive made Ralph promise to stay away, and that both Clive and Polly did not trust him to keep his promise. That is why, I am sure, Clive beckoned Polly to join him in the solarium, without entering the living room to speak to Nita. You remember they said they stayed there all during the playing of—"
"If you call it the 'death hand' again, I'll scream!"
"All right.... They stayed there until Karen discovered the murder. I am sure they chose that place because of its many windows—they could watch for Ralph's car, dash out and head him off. Take him away by force, if necessary, to keep him from making a scene. I believe they knew he had murder in his heart, and that he would find a way to get a gun—"
"Have you also found out that he stole Hugo's gun yesterday?"
"I have found that it was possible for him to do so," Dundee said slowly. "The butler was off for the afternoon until six o'clock. There was no one in the house but the nursemaid and the-three-months-old baby."
"Well? And I suppose you think Clive and Polly didn't have a chance to head Ralph off, as you say, but that they did see him running away after he killed her?" Her voice was still brittle with anger, but there were indecision and fear in it, too.
"No," Dundee replied. "I don't think they saw him. I feel pretty sure he came into the house by the back way, and through the back hall into Nita's room. He must have known Clive and Polly would be on the lookout for him.... At any rate, I have proof that whoever shot Nita from in front of that window near the porch door fled toward the back hall."
And he told her of the big bronze lamp, whose bulb had been broken, reminding her of its place at the head of the chaise longue which was set between the two west windows.
"That was the 'bang or bump' Flora Miles heard while she was hiding in the closet," he explained. "I suppose Flora has told all of you about it?... I thought so. Muffled as she was in the closet, it is unlikely that she could have heard Nita's frantic whisperings to Ralph.... I doubt if he spoke at all. Nita must have been sure he was about to leave by the porch door—"
Dimly there came the ring of the telephone. With a curt word, Penny excused herself to answer it. Dundee went on polishing glasses with a fresh towel....
"Bonnie!" Penny was coming back, walking like a somnambulist, her brown eyes wide and fixed. "That was—Ralph!...And he doesn't even know Nita is dead!"