Murder at Bridge Part 43

Mute before Penny's excited questions, the detective idly selected letters from the ma.s.s of face-up blocks on the table, and spelled out, in a long row, the names of all the guests at Nita's fatal bridge party.

Suddenly, and with a cry that startled Penny, Dundee made a new name with the little wooden letters....

Now he knew the answers to both "_How?_" and "_Who?_"

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

"I fail to see any necessity for all this secrecy and hocus-pocus,"

District Attorney Sanderson protested irritably. "Why the devil don't you come clean and give us the low-down--if you have it!--on this miserable business, instead, of high-handedly summoning Captain Strawn to my office, so that you can give orders to us both?"

Before Dundee could answer, Captain Strawn came to his a.s.sistance.

"I worked with this boy for pretty near a year, Bill, and never yet did he fail to make good when he said he had a pot on to boil. If he says it will boil over this evening, provided we help him, boil over it will, or I don't know Bonnie Dundee!"

Sanderson scowled but capitulated. "All right! What do you want?"

"Thanks, chief! And thanks, Captain!" Dundee cried, with heartfelt grat.i.tude. "First, I want to be excused from attending the adjourned inquests into the two murders, scheduled for three o'clock today."

"O.K." Sanderson agreed shortly.

"Second, after about an hour of routine stuff, I wish you'd ask for another adjournment until tomorrow, on the plea that important developments are expected today."

"O.K. again!"

"Third, I'd like you personally to request the appearance of every person connected in any way with each of the murders, in your office this afternoon at four o'clock--so the whole bunch will be kept together and have no chance to go to their homes or anywhere else until I am ready for them. You can say that, owing to the illness of your mother during the investigations, you want to question everyone personally."

"Do you want all the servants brought here, too?" Sanderson asked.

"None but Lydia Carr," Dundee answered. "After about an hour's innocuous questioning, please invite them to accompany you to the Selim house. For that--" and he grinned, "--is where the pot is scheduled to boil over.

I'd like everybody to be there by 5:15."

"Where do I come in?" Captain Strawn demanded, almost jealously.

"Now that you are no longer looking for a New York gunman, I suppose you have plenty of plainclothesmen at your disposal?" Dundee asked, and was instantly sorry he had reminded his former chief of the collapse of his cherished and satisfying theory.

"Plenty," Strawn answered gruffly. "How many will you need?"

"Enough to keep every person on Mr. Sanderson's invitation list under strictest observation until--the pot boils over," Dundee replied.

"When do you want them to get on the job?"

"As soon as they can do so, after you get back to your office."

"Are they to follow the whole gang clear out to the Selim house?"

"Most decidedly! After the unwilling guests are safely within the house, your boys must guard the premises so that _no one_ leaves without permission."

"That's all as good as done," Strawn a.s.sured him. "Now--about them inquiries you asked me to make yesterday of the secretary of the American Legion." He drew a sc.r.a.p of paper from his breast pocket. "I find that John Drake, Peter Dunlap and Clive Hammond were all in service, in the ----th Division, which was held up late in January, 1918, for nearly two weeks, in Hoboken, before the War Department could get transports to send 'em to France. Miles, who enlisted the day war was declared, was wounded and s.h.i.+pped home late in 1917. He was discharged as unfit for further service--spinal operation--from a New Jersey base hospital on January 12, 1918. Furthermore, Judge Marshall was in New York the whole winter of 1917-'18, attached to the Red Cross in some legal capacity. He donated his services and--"

"All that doesn't matter now, Captain, but thanks just the same," Dundee interrupted. "Now if you will both excuse me, I've got a lot of work to do before five o'clock today!"

Dundee had not exaggerated. That Monday was one of the busiest days he had ever spent in all the twenty-seven years of his life. He began, rather strangely, by visiting half a dozen of Hamilton's hardware stores, exhibiting a peculiar instrument and making annoying inquiries as to when and to whom it had been sold. But at his sixth port of call success so completely rewarded his efforts that he was jubilant when he bade the mystified proprietor good day, a signed statement reposing in his wallet.

Two other calls--both in office buildings--took up only an hour of his time, and a taxicab delivered him at Police Headquarters just as the factory whistles were sirening the news that it was twelve o'clock.

He was lucky enough to find the fingerprint expert, Carraway, in his cubbyhole of an office, his desk almost crowded out by immense filing cabinets.

Five minutes later Dundee sat at that desk, photographs of Dexter Sprague's dead body, just as it had been discovered on the floor of the trophy room in the Miles home, and a labelled set of fingerprints spread out before him.

"You're sure there can have been no mistake?" he asked. "No chance that these fingerprint photographs were _reversed_ when the prints were made?"

"Not a chance--with my system!" Carraway retorted positively.

"Fine!" Dundee cried. "May I take these photographs?... You have copies, I presume?"

It was half past two o'clock when Dundee, after a much needed lunch, parked his car in the driveway of one of the most splendid houses overlooking Mirror Lake--a home whose master and mistress were now attending an inquest into two murders....

Half an hour later he climbed into his roadster again, his head spinning. "Did I say _ingenious_?" he marvelled....

He drove directly to the Selim house, for he had much to do before the arrival of Sanderson's compulsory guests at 5:15.

His first visit there was to a small room in the bas.e.m.e.nt--a dark cubbyhole next to the coal room. He had locked it carefully after exploring it the day before, for he had taken no chance on leaving unguarded--as he had found it--treasure worth more to him than its weight in gold.

And queer treasure it was that he extracted now--a coiled length of electric wire, which he and Ralph Hammond had measured the day before, with triumphant excitement; a box of thumb tacks, many of them surprisingly bent at the point; an augur with a set of bits of varying sizes, a step-ladder, and a hammer. If Dexter Sprague had not overestimated the amount of electric wire needed for the job of installing an alarm bell between Nita's bedroom and Lydia's.... Dundee was about to close the tool chest when his eyes fell upon a piece of hardware he had not expected ever to find, although he had known of its existence for more than an hour.

At 5:15 he was entirely ready for D. A. Sanderson, Captain Strawn and their party of indignant and unwilling guests....

"Oh, Mr. Dundee!" Carolyn Drake squealed. "You're not going to make us play that awful 'death hand' again, are you?"

They were all crowding about him--the men and women who had been Nita Selim's guests at her last bridge and c.o.c.ktail party....

"Not only are the bridge tables exactly where they were at this time on the evening of May 24," Dundee answered _so_ significantly that all stopped chattering to listen, "_but everything else in the house is precisely as it was then_. Fortunately, not even the _electricity_ has been cut off! But to make sure I have forgotten nothing, I wish you would all follow me into Mrs. Selim's bedroom and look for yourselves."

Like sheep, they crowded into the little foyer and on into the bedroom.

There stood the big bronze lamp, set squarely in front of the window frame and in a direct line with the musical powder box on dead Nita's dressing table.

At 5:25, Penny Crain, Karen Marshall, Carolyn Drake, and Flora Miles, who had been requisitioned by Dundee to play the part of the murdered woman, were seated at table No. 2, and behind Karen's chair stood Lois Dunlap. Clive Hammond and his new wife were again together in the solarium. But there Dundee's restaging of the original scene in the tragic drama ended. Everyone else, including Lydia Carr and Peter Dunlap, were huddled together in a far corner of the living room.

"Now, Mr. Miles!" Dundee called. "Your cue! Never mind the comedy about 'How's tricks?' Simply go into the dining room, with Mrs. Dunlap, to mix c.o.c.ktails. You'll find all the ingredients still on the sideboard, exactly as there were when Mrs. Selim sent you to mix drinks on May 24.... And Mrs. Miles, will you, pretending that you are Nita Selim, go to powder your face at Mrs. Selim's dressing-table?"

Her face white and drawn, Flora Miles stumbled from the room, just as her husband, dumb for once with rage, entered the dining room with Lois Dunlap.

Dundee was about to follow the latter two when an interruption occurred.

Followed by a plainclothesman, a middle-aged man entered the living room. Tall, broad-shouldered, determined, he strode to the bridge table, his handsome head upflung, his brown eyes fixed upon the widened brown eyes of Penny Crain.