Before Drake had reached his side, his purpose plain upon his stern,
rather ascetic features, Dundee had taken a hasty glance at the watch
cupped in his palm and noted the exact minute and second of the
interruption. Time out!
"One moment, Mr. Drake," he said calmly. "I quite agree with you--from
your viewpoint. What mine is, you can't be expected to know. But believe
me when I say that I consider it of vital importance to the
investigation of the murder of Mrs. Selim that this particular bridge
hand, with all its attending remarks, the usual bickering, and its
interruptions of arriving guests for cocktails, be played out, exactly
as it was this afternoon. I thought I had made myself clear before. If
you don't wish me to believe that _you have something to conceal_ by
refusing to take part in a rather grisly game--"
"Certainly I have nothing to conceal!" John C. Drake snorted angrily.
"Then please bow as gracefully as possible to necessity," Dundee urged
without rancor. "And may I ask, before we go on, if you made your
entrance at this time, and the facts of your arrival?"
Drake considered a moment, gnawing a thin upper lip. Beads of sweat
stood on his high, narrow forehead.
"I walked over from the Country Club, after eighteen holes of golf with
your _superior_, the district attorney," Drake answered, with nasty
emphasis. "I left the clubhouse at 5:10, calculating that it would take
me about twenty minutes for the walk of--of about a mile."
Dundee made a mental note to find out exactly how far from this lonely
house in Primrose Meadows the Country Club actually was, but his next
question was along another line:
"You _walked_, Mr. Drake?--after eighteen holes of golf on a warm day?"
Drake flushed. "My wife had the car. I had driven out with Mr.
Sanderson, but he was called away by a long distance message. I lingered
at the club for a while, chatting and--er--having a cool drink or two,
then I set out afoot."
"No one offered you a lift?" Dundee inquired suavely.
"No. I presume my fellow-members thought I had my car with me, and I
asked no one for a lift, for I rather fancied the idea of a walk across
the meadows."
"I see," said Dundee thoughtfully. "Now as to your arrival here--"
"I walked in. The door had been left on the latch, as it usually is,
when a party is on," Drake explained coldly. "And I was just entering
the room when I heard my wife make the remark about covering an honor
with an honor, and then her question of Penny as to whether she should
have played second hand low."
"So you entered this time at the correct moment," said Dundee. "Now, Mr.
Drake, I am going to ask you to re-enter the room and do exactly as you
did upon your arrival at approximately 5:33. I am sure you would not
willingly hamper me--or _my superior_--in this investigation."
Drake wheeled, ungraciously, and returned to the doorway, while Dundee
again consulted his watch, mentally subtracting the minutes which had
been wasted upon this interruption, from the time he had marked upon his
memory as the moment at which Drake had interfered. But an undercurrent
of skepticism nagged at his mind. Why had Drake chosen to _walk_? And
why had it taken him from 5:10 to approximately 5:33 to walk a mile or
less? The average walker, and especially one accustomed to playing golf,
could easily have covered a mile in fifteen minutes, instead of the
twenty-three minutes Drake had admitted to.... If it _was_ a
mile!... Was it possible that the banker loved wildflowers?
With head up aggressively, Drake was undoubtedly making an effort to
throw himself into the role--or perhaps into a role chosen on the spot!
"Where's everybody?" he called from the doorway. "Am I early?"
"Don't interrupt, please, dear," Carolyn Drake answered, her voice
trembling now, where before it must have been sharp and querulous.
Silently Drake took his place behind his wife's chair, laying a hand
affectionately upon her shoulder. Dundee, watching closely, saw Penny's
eyes widen with something like shocked surprise. So Drake _was_ trying
to deceive him, counting on the oneness of this group, his closest
friends!
Karen, obviously flustered, too, reached to the dummy for the Ace of
Diamonds, to which Penny played the three, Karen herself discarding the
ten of Clubs, and Mrs. Drake the five of Diamonds.
"You asked no questions, Mr. Drake?" Dundee interpolated.
The banker flushed again. "I--yes, I believe I did. Carolyn--Mrs.
Drake--explained that Karen was playing for a little slam in Spades, and
that she had doubled--'on principle'," he added acidly--a voice which
Mrs. Drake must be very well accustomed to, Dundee surmised.
"And when I told you that Nita had redoubled and it looked as if she was
going to make it," Carolyn Drake whimpered and shifted her short, stout
body in the little bridge chair, "you said--why not tell the truth?--you
said it was just like me and I might as well take to tatting at bridge
parties."
"That was said jokingly, my dear," Drake retorted, with a coldness that
tried to be affectionate warmth.
"Play bridge!" Dundee commanded, sure that the approximate length of the
previous dispute had now been taken up, whatever retort Carolyn Drake
had made. Then he checked himself, again looking at his watch: "And just
what did you answer to your husband's little joke, Mrs. Drake?"
"I--I--" The woman looked helplessly around the table, her slate-colored
eyes reddened with tears, then she plunged recklessly, after a fearful
glance at Dundee's implacable face. "I said that if it was Nita he was
talking to, he wouldn't speak in that tone; that she could make all the
foolish mistakes of over-bidding or revoking or doubling that she wanted
to, and he wouldn't say a word except to praise her--"
"Then I may as well confess," Drake said acidly, "that I answered
substantially as follows: 'Nita is an _intelligent_ bridge player as
well as a charming woman, my dear!...' Now make the most of that little
family tiff, sir--and be damned to you!"
"Did that end the scene, Mrs. Drake?" Dundee asked gently.
"I--I said something about all the men thinking Nita was perfect," Mrs.
Drake confessed, "and I cried a little, but we went on with the hand.
And Johnny--Mr. Drake went away, walking up and down the room, waiting
for Nita to come back, I suppose!"
"Then go on with the game," Dundee ordered.
Silently now, as silently as the real game must have been played,
because of the embarrassing scene between husband and wife, the sinister
game was carried to its conclusion. Karen led the Jack of Hearts from
the dummy, Penny played her seven, Karen contributed her own deuce, and
Mrs. Drake followed suit with the five.
Again Karen led from the dummy, with the four of Hearts, followed by
Penny's nine, taking it with her own Ace, Mrs. Drake throwing off the
five of Clubs. Karen then led the six of Hearts, Carolyn Drake discarded
the six of Clubs, dummy took the trick with the eight of Hearts, and
Penny sloughed the three of Clubs.
With a faint imitation of the triumph with which she had played the hand
the first time, Karen threw down her remaining three trumps.
"I've made it--a little slam!" she tried to sound very triumphant.
"Doubled and redoubled!... How much did I--did Nita and I make, Penny?"
"Plenty!" But before putting pencil to score pad, Penny cupped her chin
in her hands and stared at Carolyn Drake. "I'd like to know, Carolyn, if
it isn't one of your most cherished secrets, _what_ possessed you to
double in the first place?"
Carolyn Drake flushed scarlet as she protested feebly: "I thought of
course I could take two Club tricks with my Ace and King.... That's why
I doubled the little slam, of course. And my first double simply meant
that I had one good suit.... I thought if you could bid at all that my
two doubletons--"
"Oh, what's the use?" Penny groaned. "But may I remind you that it is
_not_ bridge to lead from a Queen?... You led the deuce of Diamonds,
when of course the play, since you had seen the Ace in the dummy, was to
lead your Queen, forcing the Ace and leaving my King guarded to take a
trick later."
"But Karen didn't have any Diamonds at all," Carolyn defended herself.
"A secret you weren't in on when you led from your Queen," Penny
reminded her. "Oh, well! We'll pay up and shut up!" and she made a
pretense of totting up the score, while Karen, who had risen, stood over
her like a bird poised for flight.
At that instant Dexter Sprague began to advance into the room, Janet
Raymond at his side, her face flaming.
"Behave exactly as you did before!" Dundee commanded in a harsh whisper.
No time for coddling these people now!
Dexter Sprague's face took on a yellower tinge, but he obeyed.
"Greetings!" he called in the jaunty, over-cordial tones of a man who
knows himself not too welcome. "Where's Nita--and everybody? Isn't that
the cocktail shaker I hear?"
Having received no answer from anyone present, Sprague strolled through
the living room and on into the dining room, Janet following. Judge
Marshall had nodded stiffly, and John C. Drake had muttered the
semblance of a greeting.... Were they all overdoing it a bit--this
reacting of their hostility to the sole remaining outsider of their
compact little group?... Dundee stroked his chin thoughtfully.
But Penny was saying in her abrupt, husky voice: "Above the line, 1250;
below the line 720, making a total of 1970 on this hand, Karen."
"Won't Nita be glad?" Karen gasped, then began to run totteringly,
calling: "Nita! Nita!" But in the hall she collapsed, shuddering, crying
in a child's whimper: "No, no! I--can't--go in there--again!"
It was Dundee who reached her first--Dundee and not her outraged and
excited old husband.
"Mrs. Marshall--listen, please," he begged in a low voice, as he lifted
her so that her head rested against his arm. "You have been
splendid--wonderful! Please believe that I am truly sorry to distress
you so, and that very soon, I hope, you may go home and rest."
"I--can't bear any--more," Karen whimpered.
Ignoring Judge Marshall's blustering, Dundee continued softly: "You
don't want the wrong person to be accused of this terrible crime, do
you, Mrs. Marshall?... Of course not! And you _do_ want to help us all
you can to discover who really killed Mrs. Selim?"
"I--I suppose so," Karen conceded, on a sob.
"Then I'll help you. I'll go to the bedroom with you," Dundee promised
her with a sigh of relief. To the others he spoke sharply:
"Go back to the exact positions in living room and dining room and
solarium, that you occupied when Mrs. Marshall ran from the room."
"I think you're overdoing it, Bonnie," Captain Strawn protested.
"But--sure I'll see that they mind you."
With Karen Marshall clinging to his arm, Dundee walked down the hall,
beyond the staircase to an open door on his left--a door guarded by a
lounging plainclothesman. Seated at the dressing-table of the guests'
lavatory was Flora Miles, her sallow dark face so ravaged that she
looked ten years older than when he had first seen her an hour before.
"So you were in here when you heard Mrs. Marshall scream, Mrs. Miles?"
Dundee paused to ask.
"Yes--yes!" she gasped, rising. "And that horrible man has made me stay
in here--. Of course, the door was closed--before. I telephoned home to
ask about my children, and then I came in here to--to do my face over--"
"You didn't hear your husband arrive?"
"No,--I didn't hear him arrive," Flora Miles faltered, her handkerchief
dabbing at her trembling, over-rouged lips.
"I--see," Dundee said slowly.
He stepped into the little room, leaving Karen to stand weakly against
the door frame. Without a word to Mrs. Miles he looked closely at the
top of the dressing-table and into the small wastebasket that stood
beside it.
"You--you can see that I cold-creamed my face before I put on fresh
powder and--and rouged," Flora Miles pointed out, with an obvious effort
at offended dignity. "After I came back, while you were making those
poor girls play the hand over again, I went through the same
motions--because you told all of us to behave exactly as we had done
before--"
"I--see," Dundee agreed.
Pretty clever, in spite of being almost frightened to death, Dundee said
to himself. But he had been just a shade cleverer than she, for he had
been in this room ahead of her, and there had been no balls of greasy
face tissue in the wastebasket then!
He was passing out of the room, offering his arm to Karen, when one of
his underlined notes thrust itself upon his memory:
"May I see your bridge tally, please, Mrs. Miles?"
"My--bridge tally!" she echoed blankly. "Why--it must be on the table
where I was playing--"
"It is not," Dundee assured her quietly. "Perhaps it is in your
handbag?" and he glanced at the rather large raffia bag that lay on the
table.
She snatched it up, slightly averting her body as she looked hastily
through its contents.
"It--isn't here.... Oh, I don't know _where_ it is! What does it
matter?"
Without replying, Dundee escorted the trembling little discoverer of
Nita Selim's body into the large ornate bedroom, murmuring as he did so:
"Don't be frightened, Mrs. Marshall. The bod--I mean Mrs. Selim isn't
here now.... And you shan't have to scream. I'll give the signal myself.
I just want you to go through the same motions you did before." On jerky
feet the girl advanced to Nita's now deserted vanity dresser.
"I--I was calling to her all the time," she whispered. "I didn't even
wait to knock, and I--I began to tell her how much we'd made off that
hand, when I--when she didn't answer.... I didn't touch her, but I
saw--I saw--" Again she gripped her face with her hands and was about to
scream.
"I know," Dundee assured her gently. Then he shouted: "Ready!"
Herded by Strawn, the small crowd of men and women came running into the
room, Judge Marshall leading the way, Penny being second in line. Penny
_second_! Why not Flora Miles, who had been nearer to that room than any
of the others, if her story was true--Dundee asked himself. But all had
crowded into the room, including Polly Beale and Clive Hammond, before
Mrs. Miles crept in.
"Is this the order of your arrival?" Dundee asked them all.
Penny, who was standing against the wall, just inside the doorway, spoke
up, staring at Flora with frowning intentness.
"You're sort of mixed up, aren't you, Flora? I was standing right here
until the worst of it was over--I didn't even go near Nita, and I know
you didn't pass me. I remember that Tracey stepped away from the--body,
and called you, and you weren't here. And then almost the next minute I
saw you coming toward him from--from--_over there_!"
And Penny pointed toward that corner of the room which held, on one
angle, the door leading to the porch, and on its other angle the window
from which, or from near which Nita Selim had been shot.
"You're lying, Penny Crain! I did no such thing!" Flora Miles cried
hysterically. "I came running in--with--with the rest of you, and I
rushed over there just to see if I could see anybody running away across
the meadow--"
"My wife is right, sir," Tracey Miles added his word aggressively. "I
saw what she was doing--the most sensible of all of us--and I ran to
join her. We looked out of the windows, both the side windows and the
rear ones, and out onto the porch. But we didn't see anything."
Surprisingly, Dundee abandoned the point.
"And you were the only one to touch her, Sprague?"
"I--believe so," Dexter Sprague answered in a strained voice. "I--laid
my hand on her--her hair, for an instant, then I picked up her hand to
see if--if there was any pulse left."
"Yes?"
"She--she was dead."
"And her hand--did it feel cold?"
"Neither cold nor warm--just cool," Sprague answered in a voice that was
nearly strangled with emotion. "She--she always had cool hands--"
"What did you do, Judge Marshall?" Dundee asked abruptly.
"I took my poor little wife away from this room, laid her on a couch in
the living room, and then telephoned the police. Miss Crain stood at my
elbow, urging me to hurry, so that she might ring you--as she did. Your
line was busy, and she lost about five minutes before getting you."
"And the rest of you?" Dundee asked.
"Nothing spectacular, I'm afraid, Mr. Dundee," Polly Beale answered in
her brusque, deep voice, now edged with scorn.
Further questioning elicited little more, beyond the fact that Clive
Hammond had dashed out to circle the house and look over the grounds,
and that John Drake had been fully occupied with an hysterical wife.
"Better let this bunch go for the present, hadn't we, boy?" Captain
Strawn whispered uneasily. "Not a thing on any of them--"
"Not quite yet, sir, if you don't mind," Dundee answered in a low voice.
"Will you take them back into the living room and put them under
Sergeant Turner's charge for a while? Then there are one or two things
I'd like to talk over with you."
Mollified by the younger man's deference and persuasiveness, Strawn
obeyed the suggestion, to return within five minutes, his grey brows
drawn into a frown.
"I hope you'll be willing to take full credit for that fool bridge game,
Bonnie," he worried. "_I_ don't want to look a chump in the newspapers!"
"I'll take the blame," Dundee assured him, with a grin. "But that 'fool
bridge game'--and I admit it was a horrible thing to have to do--told me
a whole bunch of facts that ought to be very, very useful."
"For instance?" Strawn growled.
"For instance," Dundee answered, "it told me that it took approximately
eight minutes to play out a little slam bid, when ordinarily it would
have taken not more than two or three minutes. Not only that, but it
told me the names of everyone in _this_ party who could have killed Nita
Selim, and--. Good Lord! Of course!"
And to Captain Strawn's amazement Dundee threw open the door of Nita's
big clothes closet, jerked on the light, and stooped to the floor.