"Ralph has already volunteered.... Thanks awfully!"

As Dundee backed out of the driveway his last glance was for a very small figure in a brown silk summer coat and palest yellow chiffon frock, slowly rejoining Penelope Crain and Lois Dunlap. What the devil had frightened her so? For she had been almost terrified.... Of course she might be one of those silly women who shudder at the sight of a detective, because they've smuggled in a diamond from Paris or a bottle of Bacardi from Havana....

But long before his car made the distance back to the city Dundee had shrugged off the riddle and was concentrating on all the facts he knew regarding the Maginty case. It was his first real a.s.signment from Sanderson, and he was determined to make good.

Four hours later he was interrupted in his careful reading of the trial of Rufus Maginty by the ringing of the telephone bell. That made four times he had had to snap out the fact that District Attorney Sanderson was playing some well-earned golf on the Country Club links, Dundee reflected angrily, as he picked up the receiver.

But the call was for Dundee himself, and the voice on the other end of the wire was Penny Crain's, although almost unrecognizable.

"Speak more slowly, Penny!" Dundee urged. "What's that again.... Good Lord! You say that Nita Selim...."

After a minute of listening, and a promise of instant obedience, Dundee hung up the receiver.

"My G.o.d!" he said slowly, blankly. "Of all things--_murder at bridge_!"

CHAPTER TWO

As Special Investigator Dundee drove through the city of Hamilton at a speed of sixty miles an hour, his way being cleared by traffic policemen warned by the shrill official siren which served him as a horn, he had little time to think connectedly of the fact that Nita Selim had been murdered during a bridge game in her rented home in Primrose Meadows.

Even after the broad sleekness of Sheridan Road stretched before him he could do little more than try to realize the shock which had numbed him.... "Lovely Nita," as the society editor of _The Morning News_ had called her, was--_dead_! How, why, he did not know. He had asked no details of Penny Crain.... Funny, th.o.r.n.y little Penny! Loyal little Penny!

"Judge Marshall has telephoned Police Headquarters," she had told him breathlessly over the telephone, "but I made him let me call you as soon as he had hung up. I wanted _our_ office to be in on this right from the first."

Beautiful, seductive Nita Selim, almost cuddling under his arm within three minutes of meeting him--_dead_! A vision of her black-pansy eyes, so wide and luminous and wistful as they had looked sideways and upward to his, pleading for him to join her after-bridge c.o.c.ktail party, nearly made him crash into a lumbering furniture van. Those eyes were luminous no longer, could never again snap the padlocks of slave chains upon any man--as Penny had expressed it.... Dead! And she had been so warmly alive, even as she had retreated from him at his mention of the fact that he was attached to the office of the district attorney as a special investigator. What had she feared then? Was her death a payment for some recent or long-standing crime? Or had she simply been withdrawing from contamination with a "flat-foot"?... No! She had been _afraid_--horribly afraid of some ulterior purpose behind his innocent courtesy in driving Penelope Crain to Breakaway Inn.

Well, speculation now was idle, he told himself, as he noted that his speedometer had dropped from sixty to thirty in his preoccupation. He speeded again, but was soon forced to stop and ask his way into Primrose Meadows. The vague directions of a farmer's son lost him nearly eight precious minutes, during which his friend, Captain Strawn of the Homicide Squad, might be bungling things rather badly. But at last he found the ornate pair of pillars spanned by the painted legend, "Primrose Meadows," and drove through them into what soon became a rutted lane. Almost a quarter of a mile from the entrance he found the isolated house, unmistakable because of the line-up of private cars parked before the short stretch of paved sidewalk, and the added presence of police cars and motorcycles.

Dundee turned his own car into the driveway leading from the street along the right side of the house toward the two-car garage in the rear.

Ahead of his roadster were two other cars, and a glance toward the open garage showed that a Ford coupe was housed there.

As he was descending Captain Strawn's voice hailed him from an open window of the room nearest the garage.

"h.e.l.lo, Bonnie! Been expecting you.... d.a.m.nedest business you ever saw.... There's a door from this room onto the porch. Hop up and come on in."

Dundee obeyed. Driving in he had noted that a wide porch, upheld by round white pillars, stretched across the front of the gabled brick house and extended halfway along its right side, past a room which was obviously a solarium, with its continuous windows, gay awnings, and--visible through the glittering panes--orange-and-black wicker furniture.

It was easy to swing himself up to the floor of the porch. Strawn flung open the door which led into the back room, remarking with a grin:

"Don't be afraid I'm gumming up any fingerprints. Carraway has already been over the room.... The Selim woman's bedroom," he explained. "The room she was killed in."

"You _have_ been on the job," Dundee complimented his former chief.

"Sure!" Strawn acknowledged proudly. "Can't be too quick on our stumps when it's one of these 'high sa.s.siety' murders. Dr. Price will be here any minute now, and my men have been all over the premises, bas.e.m.e.nt to attic. Of course it was an outside job--plain as the nose on your face--and we haven't found a trace of the murderer."

Although Mrs. Selim had taken the house furnished, it was obvious that this big bedroom of hers was not exactly as the Crain family had left it. A little too pretty, a little too aggressively feminine, with its chaise longue heaped with silk and lace pillows, its superfluity of big and little lamps, its bed draped with golden-yellow taffeta, its dressing table--

But he could not let critical eyes linger on the triple-mirrored vanity dresser. For on the bench before it sat a tiny figure, the head bowed so low that some of the black curls had fallen into a large open bowl of powder. She was no longer wearing the brown silk summer coat whose open front had given him a glimpse of pale yellow chiffon.

He saw the dress now, a low-cut, sleeveless, fluffy affair, but he really had eyes only for the brownish-red hole on the left side of the back of the bodice, about halfway between shoulder and waist--a waist so small he could have spanned it with his two hands, including its band of fuchsia velvet ribbon. There also had been a bow of fuchsia velvet ribbon on the lace and straw hat she had swung so charmingly less than five hours ago.

"Shot through the heart, I guess," Strawn commented. "Took a good marksman to find her heart, shooting her through the back.... Funny thing, too. n.o.body heard the shot--leastways none of that crowd penned up in the living room will admit they did. They'll all hang together, and lie like sixty to keep us from finding out anything that might point to one of _their_ precious bunch! But if a gun with a Maxim silencer _was_ used, as it must have been if that whole crew ain't lying, the gunman musta been _good_, because you can't sight with a Maxim screwed onto a rod, you know."

"Have your men found the gun?" Dundee asked.

"Of course not, or I'd know whether it had a Maxim on it or not," Strawn retorted. "My theory is," he added impressively, "that somebody with a grudge against this dame hired a gunman to hang around till he got her dead to rights, then--plop!" and he imitated the soft, thudding sound made by the discharge of a bullet from a gun equipped with a silencer.

"Doesn't it seem rather strange that a professional gunman should have chosen such a time--with men arriving in cars, and the house full of women who might wander into this room at any minute--to b.u.mp off his victim?" Dundee asked.

"Well, there ain't no other explanation," Captain Strawn contended.

"Outside of the fact that my men have gone over the whole house and grounds without finding the gun, I've got other evidence it was an outside job.... Look!"

Dundee followed the Chief of the Homicide Squad to one of the two windows that looked out upon the driveway. Both were open, since the May day was exceptionally warm, even for the Middle West. The unscreened window from which he obediently leaned was almost directly in line with the vanity dressing-table across the room.

"Look! See how them vines have been torn," Strawn directed, pointing to a rambler rose which hugged the outside frame of the window. "And look hard enough at the flower bed down below and you'll see his footprints.... Of course we've measured them and Cain, as you see, is guarding them till my man comes to make plaster casts of them.... Yes, sir, he hoisted himself up to the window ledge, aimed as best he could, then slipped down and beat it across the meadow."

"Then," Dundee began slowly, "I wonder why Mrs. Selim didn't see that figure crouched in the window, since she must have been powdering her face and looking into the middle of the three mirrors--the one which reflects this very window?"

"How do you know she was powdering her face, not looking for something in a drawer?" Strawn demanded truculently.

"For three reasons," Dundee answered almost apologetically. "First: her powder puff, as I'm sure you noticed, is still clutched in her right hand; second: there is no drawer open, and no drawer _was_ open, unless someone has closed it since the murder, whereas on the other hand her powder box _is_ open; third: the left side of her face is unevenly coated with powder, while the other is heavily but _evenly_ powdered.

Therefore I can't see why she didn't scream, or turn around when she heard your gunman clambering up to her window, or even when he had crouched in it. I don't see how she could _help_ seeing him!"

"Well--what do _you_ think?" Strawn asked sourly, after he had tested the visibility of the window from the dressing-table mirror.

"I'm afraid, Captain Strawn, that there are only two explanations possible. The first, of course, is that Nita Selim was quite deaf or very nearsighted. I happen to know from having met her today--"

"_You_ met her today?" Strawn interrupted incredulously.

Dundee explained briefly, then went on: "As I was saying I have good reason to know she was not deaf, but I can't say as to her being nearsighted, except that it is my observation that people who are extremely nearsighted do not have very wide eyes and no creases between the brows. I am fairly sure she did not wear gla.s.ses at all, because gla.s.ses worn even a few hours a day leave a mark across the nose or show pinched red spots on each side of the bridge of the nose."

"You must have had a good hard look at her," Strawn gibed, his grey eyes twinkling, and his harsh, thin-lipped mouth pulling down at one corner in what he thought was a genial smile.

"I did," Dundee retorted. "Well, conceding that she was neither deaf nor half-blind, she would necessarily have heard and seen her a.s.sailant before he shot her."

"What's the other explanation?" Strawn was becoming impatient.

"That the person who killed her was so well known to her, and his--or her--presence in this room so natural a thing that she paid no attention to his or her movements and was concentrating on the job of powdering her very pretty face."

"You mean--one of that gang of society folks in there?" and Strawn jerked a thumb toward the left side of the house.

"Very probably," Dundee agreed.

"But where's the gun?" Strawn argued. "I tell you my men--"

"This was a premeditated murder, of course," Dundee interrupted. "The Maxim silencer--unless they are all lying about not hearing a shot--proves that. Silencers are d.a.m.ned hard to get hold of, but people with plenty of money can manage most things. And since the murder was premeditated, it is better to count on the fact that the murderer--or murderess--had planned a pretty safe hiding place for the gun and the silencer.... Oh, not necessarily in the house or even near the house,"