"I mean she was an actress, and used her stage name--Juanita Leigh--p.r.o.nounced like it was spelled plain 'Lee'; but she was mostly called 'Nita Leigh'."

"An actress, you say?" Dundee repeated thoughtfully. "I had heard of her only as director of the Forsyte School plays.... What shows was she in?"

"She was what they call a specialty dancer in musical comedy," Lydia answered. "Sometimes she had a real part and sometimes she only danced.

She was a good hoofer and a good trouper," she added, the Broadway terms falling strangely from those austere lips. "And when she wasn't in a show she sometimes got a job in the pictures. She never had a real chance in the movies, though, because they mostly wanted her to double for the star in long shots, where dancing comes into the picture, or in close-ups where they just show the legs, you know."

"I see," Dundee agreed gravely. "Where were you during the fifteen minutes or so before your mistress was shot, Lydia?"

"I was down in my room in the bas.e.m.e.nt," the woman answered. "Nita--I mean Miss Nita was going to get Judge Marshall to build me a room on the top floor. She hated for me to have to sleep in the bas.e.m.e.nt, but I didn't mind."

"You were not required to be on duty for the party?"

"No," she answered in her harsh, flat voice. "I'd fixed the sandwiches and put out the liquors for the c.o.c.ktails--set them all out on the dining table and sideboard, and Miss Nita had told me to go and lie down as soon as I was through. So I did. I had an abscessed tooth pulled this morning, and I was feeling sick."

"Did you hear the kitchen bell at all?" Dundee went on.

"I dropped off to sleep--that fool dentist had shot me full of dope--but I did hear the bell and I come up to answer it. Mrs. Dunlap said she'd rung twice, and I said I was sorry--"

"Lydia, did you go into your mistress' bedroom before or after you answered that bell?" Dundee asked with sudden sharpness.

"I did not! I didn't even know she was in her bedroom, until I saw her sitting at her dressing-table--dead." The harsh voice hesitated over the last word, but it did not break.

"And just when did you first see her--after she was dead?"

"I went into the kitchen, thinking something else might be needed. Then I heard a scream. It sounded like it come from Nita's--Miss Nita's bedroom, and I run along the back hall that leads from the kitchen to her bedroom. I heard a lot of people running and yelling. n.o.body paid any attention to me."

"You came into the room?"

"No, sir, I did not. I stopped in the doorway. I heard Mr. Sprague say she was dead. I was sick and dizzy anyway, and I couldn't move for a minute. I sort of slipped down to the floor, and I guess I must have pa.s.sed out. And then I was sick to my stomach, and--I didn't seem to care if I never moved again."

"Why, Lydia?" Dundee asked gently.

"Because she was the only friend I had in the world, and I couldn't have loved her better if she'd been my own child," Lydia answered. And the stern voice had broken at last. "I was still there in the back hall when a cop come and asked me a lot of questions, and then that man--" she pointed to Captain Strawn, "--said I could go and lay down. He helped me down the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs."

Dundee tapped his teeth with the long pencil he had kept so busy that evening--tapped them long and thoughtfully. Then:

"Lydia, did you see anyone--_anyone at all!_--from your bas.e.m.e.nt room window before you answered Mrs. Dunlap's ring?"

CHAPTER NINE

For the first time during the difficult interview Dundee was sure that Lydia Carr was lying. For a fraction of a second her single eye wavered, the lid flickered, then came her harsh, flat denial:

"I didn't see n.o.body."

"I presume your bas.e.m.e.nt room has a window looking out upon the back garden?" Dundee persisted.

"Yes, it has, but I didn't waste no time looking out of it," Lydia answered grimly. "I was laying down, with an ice cap against my jaw."

She _had_ seen someone, Dundee told himself. But the truth would be harder to extract from that stern, scar-twisted mouth, than the abscessed tooth had been.

Finally, when her lone eye did not again waver under his steady gaze, he dismissed her, or rather, returned her to Captain Strawn's custody.

"Well, Janet, I hope you're satisfied!" Penny Crain said bitingly, as she dashed unashamed tears from her brown eyes. "If ever a maid was absolutely crazy about her mistress--"

"I'm _not_ satisfied!" Janet Raymond retorted furiously. "She's just the sort that would harbor a grudge for _years_, and then, all hopped up with dope--"

"Stop it, Janet!" Lois Dunlap commanded with a curtness that set oddly upon her kind, pleasant face.

"Listen here, Dundee," Tracey Miles broke in, almost humbly. "My wife is getting pretty anxious about the kiddies. The nurse quit on us yesterday, and--"

"And _my_ little wife is worrying herself sick over our boy--just three months old," Judge Marshall joined the protest. "I'm all for a.s.sisting justice, sir, having served on the bench myself, as you doubtless know, but--"

"I'm all right, really, Hugo," Karen Marshall faltered.

"Please be patient a little longer," Dundee urged apologetically. After all, only one of these people could be guilty of Nita Selim's murder, and it _was_ beastly to have to hold them like this.... _But one was guilty!_

"You knew Mrs. Selim in New York, Sprague?" he asked, whirling suddenly upon the man with the Broadway stamp.

"I met Nita Leigh, as I always heard her called, when I was a.s.sistant director in the Altamont Studios, out on Long Island," Sprague answered, his black eyes trying to meet Dundee's with an air of complete frankness. "Wonderful little girl, and a great dancer ... Screened d.a.m.ned well, too. I had hoped to give her a break some day, at something better than doubling for stars who can't dance. But it happened that Nita, who never forgot even a casual friend, had a chance to give me a leg up herself--a chance to show what I can really do with a camera."

"I knew I'd seen your name somewhere!" Dundee exclaimed. "So you're the man the Chamber of Commerce is d.i.c.kering with.... Going to make a movie of the founding, growth and beauties of the city of Hamilton, aren't you?"

"If I get the contract--yes," Sprague answered with palpably a.s.sumed modesty. "My plans, naturally, call for a great deal of research work, a large expenditure of money, a very careful selection of 'stars'--"

"I see," Dundee interrupted. Then his tone changed, became slow and menacing in its terrible emphasis: "_And you really couldn't let even a good friend like Nita Selim upset those fine plans of yours, could you, Sprague?_"

Even as he put the sinister question, the detective was exulting to himself: "Light at last! Now I know why this Broadway bounder was received into an exclusive crowd like this! Every last female in the bunch hoped to be the star of Sprague's motion picture!"

"I don't know what you're driving at, Dundee!" Sprague was on his feet, his black eyes blazing out of a chalky face. "If you're accusing me of--of--"

"Of killing Nita Selim?" Dundee asked lazily. "Oh, no! Not--yet, Sprague! I was just remembering a rather puzzling note of yours I happened to read this afternoon.... That note you sent by special messenger to Breakaway Inn this noon, you know."

He had little interest for the sudden crumpling of Dexter Sprague into the chair from which he had risen. Instead, as Dundee drew the note from his coat pocket, his eyes swept around the room, noted the undisguised relief on every face, the almost ghoulish satisfaction with which that close-knit group of friends seized upon an outsider as the probable murderer of that other outsider whom they had rashly taken into their sacred circle. Even Penny Crain, th.o.r.n.y little stickler for fair play that she was, relaxed with a tremulous sigh.

"You admit that this note, signed by what I take to be your 'pet name,'

was written by your hand, Sprague?" Dundee asked matter-of-factly, as he extended the sheet of bluish notepaper.

"I--no--yes, I wrote it," Sprague faltered. "But it doesn't mean a thing--not a d.a.m.ned thing! Just a little private matter between Nita and myself--"

"Rather queer wording for an unimportant message, Sprague," Dundee interrupted. "Let me refresh your memory: 'Nita, my sweet,'" he began to read slowly, "'Forgive your bad boy for last night's row, but I _must_ warn you again to watch your step. You've already gone too far. Of course I love you and understand, _but_--Be good, Baby, _and you won't be sorry_!--Dexy....' Well, Sprague?"

Sprague wiped his perspiring hands on his handkerchief. "I know it sounds--odd, under the circ.u.mstances," he admitted desperately, "but listen, Dundee, and I'll try to make that d.a.m.ned note as clear as possible to a man who doesn't know his Broadway.... Why, man, it isn't even a love letter! Everybody on Broadway talks and writes to each other like that, without meaning a thing!... As I told you, Nita Leigh, or Mrs. Selim, remembered some little kindnesses I had done her on the Altamont lot, when they got her to take up that Little Theater work Mrs.

Dunlap is interested in, and found that the Chamber of Commerce was interested in putting Hamilton into the movies, in a big booster campaign. She wired me and I thought it looked good enough to drop everything and come.... Of course Nita and I got to be closer friends, but I swear to G.o.d we were just friends--"