Murder at Bridge Part 18

"I don't have to go with the rest, do I?" she begged in a husky whisper.

"And why not?" Dundee grinned at her, but he was glad there was no hatred in _her_ eyes.

"I'm 'attached' to the district attorney's office, too, aren't I?"

"Right! And you've been a brick this evening. I don't know what I should have done without you--"

"Well, I can't see that you've done much _with_ me," she gibed. "But I'd like to stick around, if you're going to do some real Sherlocking--"

"Can't be done, Penny. I want to stay here alone for a while and mull things over. But I'd like to have a long talk with you tomorrow."

"Come to Sunday dinner. Mother loves murder mysteries," she suggested.

Then realization swept over her. Her brown eyes widened, filled with terror. "Stop thinking one of us did it! _Stop_, I tell you!"

"Can _you_ stop, Penny?" he asked gently.

But she fled from him, sobbing wildly for the first time that long, horrible evening. Dundee, watching from the doorway of the lighted hall, saw the chauffeur open the rear door of the Dunlap limousine, saw Penny catapult herself into Lois Dunlap's outstretched arms....

"When did the Dunlap chauffeur call for his mistress?" he asked Strawn, who stood beside him.

"About ten minutes after you arrived," Strawn answered wearily. "Said he'd dropped Mrs. Dunlap and the Selim woman at about 2:30 and had been ordered to return around 6:30.... Knows nothing, of course." The chief of the Homicide Squad drew a deep breath. "Well, Bonnie, he has nothing on me. In spite of all the palaver I don't know nothing either."

"You need some dinner, chief," Dundee suggested. "And the boys must be getting hungry, too."

"Somebody's got to guard the house, I suppose," Strawn gloomed. "Not that it will do any good.... And what about that maid--that Carr woman?

Shall I lock her up on general principles?"

"No. I want to have another talk with her, and if she bucks at spending the night here, I'll take her to the Rhodes House, and turn her over to my old friend, Mother Rhodes. We haven't anything on her, you know."

"No, nor on anybody else, except that old fool, Marshall, and we can't clap him into jail--yet," Strawn agreed, his grey eyes twinkling.

"Take your crew on in, chief," Dundee urged. "I'll stick till midnight or longer, if you don't mind. You can arrange to have a couple of the boys to relieve me about twelve.... And by the way, will you telephone me the minute you get hold of Ralph Hammond?"

"Well, maybe not so quick as all that," Strawn drawled. "I'll take the first crack at _that_ baby, my lad!... Not so dumb, am I, Bonnie-boy?

Not so dumb! I can put two and two together as well as the next one--pretty near as well as the district attorney's new 'special investigator!'"

Although Bonnie Dundee had taken Captain Strawn's none-too-gentle parting gibe with good grace, it was a very thoughtful young detective who set about locking himself into the house in which Nita Selim had been murdered.

Captain Strawn had beaten him to the job that evening by at least twenty minutes. Had the old detective stumbled upon something which Dundee, for all his spectacular thoroughness, had overlooked or had been unable to turn up because Strawn had suppressed it?

What if Strawn's parting boast was not an idle one, and he really had "the goods" on Ralph Hammond? Had the old chief been laughing up his sleeve during the farce of playing out the "death hand at bridge," and during the merciless quizzing of old Judge Marshall?

But Dundee's native common sense quickly routed his gloom. Captain Strawn was too direct in his methods, too afraid of antagonizing the rich and influential, to have permitted even a "special investigator"

from the district attorney's office to torment those twelve people needlessly. Probably Strawn, feeling a little hurt at having played second fiddle all evening, had simply wanted to get him fussed, was even now chuckling over the effect of his parting boast....

Much cheered, Dundee lingered in the dining room whose windows he had made fast against any intrusion, so that his task of guarding the house alone might be minimized. As he glanced at the table, with its silver plates heaped with tiny sandwiches of caviar and anchovy paste, its little silver boats of olives and sweet pickles, he discovered that he was very hungry indeed....

As he munched the drying sandwiches and sipped charged water--the various liquors for c.o.c.ktails on the sideboard offered a temptation which he sternly resisted--Dundee's thought boiled and churned, throwing up picture after picture of Nita Selim, alive and then dead; of Penny Crain--bless her!--helping him at the expense of her loyalty to life-long friends; of Flora Miles, lying desperately and then confessing to a shameful theft; of Karen Marshall gallantly playing out the "death hand"; of Karen's stricken, childish face when she learned that her elderly husband had met and at least flirted with Nita Selim at a chorus girls' party....

At that last picture Dundee flushed so that his skin p.r.i.c.kled. Had he made a fool of himself, or was he right in his suspicion that Hugo Marshall had given Nita Selim this cottage rent free? That point should be easily settled, at any rate....

Ruefully reflecting that appetizers do not make a satisfactory meal he betook himself to the dead woman's bedroom.... Yes, his memory had served him well. Here was her desk--a small feminine affair of rosewood, set in the corner of the room nearest the porch door.

The desk was not locked. As Dundee let down the slanting lid, whose polish was marred with many fingerprints, he saw that its contents were in a hopeless jumble. So Strawn had beaten him to this, too! Had he found an all-important clue in one of the many little pigeon-holes and drawers, stuffing it into his pocket just before a b.u.mptious young "special investigator" had arrived?

But Dundee's returning gloom was instantly dispelled. Here was Nita's checkbook, a flutter of filled-in stubs attached to only one remaining blank check. So Nita had banked with the Hamilton National Bank, of which John C. Drake--who apparently hated his fattish, fussy wife--was a vice president! Another tiny fact to be tucked away.... She had opened her account, apparently, on April 21, the day of her arrival in Hamilton--the guest and employe of Mrs. Peter Dunlap. Probably Lois Dunlap had advanced her the two hundred dollars as first payment for her prospective work in organizing a Little Theater movement in Hamilton.

Turning rapidly through stubs, Dundee stopped twice, whistling softly with amazement each time. For on April 28th, and again on May 5th, Nita Selim had deposited $5,000! Where had she got the money? Were the sums transfers from accounts in New York banks? But it was hardly likely that a little Broadway hanger-on had had so much hard cash on deposit. Then where had she got it--$5,000 at a time, here in Hamilton?

_Blackmail!_

Hastily but thoroughly Dundee ran through the remaining check stubs.... _No record at all of a check for rent made out to Judge Hugo Marshall!_

But there was a stub that interested him. Check No. 17--Nita had spent her money lavishly--was filled in as follows, in Nita's pretty backhand:

No. 17 $9,000 _May 9, 1930_ To _Trust Dept._ For _Investment_

Had John C. Drake, who as vice president in charge of trusts and investments had doubtless handled the check, wondered at all where the $9,000 had come from?

One other revelation came out of the twenty-three filled-in stubs. On every Monday Nita Selim had drawn a check for $40 to her maid, Lydia Carr.

Again Dundee whistled. Forty dollars a week was, he wagered to himself, more money than any other maid in Hamilton was lucky enough to receive!

Nita in a new light--an over-generous Nita! Or--_was Nita herself paying blackmail on a small scale_?

He reached into a pigeon-hole whose contents--a thick packet of unused envelopes--had not been disturbed by Strawn, and was about to remove an envelope in which to place the all-important checkbook, when he noticed something slightly peculiar. An envelope in the middle of the packet looked rather thicker than an empty case should....

_But it was not empty._ And across the face of the expensive, cream-colored linen paper was written, in that same pretty, very legible backhand:

TO BE OPENED IN CASE OF MY DEATH --JAUNITA LEIGH SELIM

His heart hammering painfully, and his fingers trembling, Dundee drew out the two close-written sheets of creamy notepaper. After all, who had better right than he to open it? Was he not the representative of the district attorney?... And he hadn't damaged the envelope. It had opened very easily indeed--its flap had yielded instantly to his thumb-nail....

Wait! It had been _too easy_! Before unfolding the letter or whatever it was, Dundee examined the flap of the envelope.... Yes! He was not the first to open it since its original sealing. G.o.d 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, pus.h.i.+ng open the swinging door that led into the butler's pantry. Where the devil were the steps that led down into the bas.e.m.e.nt? 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 bas.e.m.e.nt, laundry equipment in another. He plunged on.... That must be the maid's room, behind that closed door.... G.o.d!

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 k.n.o.b 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.