Dundee tapped the note for a long minute, while Tracey Miles continued
to console his wife. A new avenue, he thought--perhaps a long, long
avenue....
"Mrs. Miles," he began abruptly, and the tear-streaked face turned
toward him. "You say you thought this letter to Mrs. Selim had been
written by your husband?"
"Yes!" She gasped. "I'm jealous-natured. I admit it, and when I saw one
of our own--I mean, one of Tracey's business envelopes--"
"You made up your mind to steal it and read it?"
"Yes, I did! A wife has a right to know what her husband's doing, if
it's anything--like that--" Her haggard black eyes again implored her
husband for forgiveness, before she went on: "I _did_ slip into Nita's
room and go into her closet to see if she had left the letter in her
coat pocket. I closed the door on myself, thinking I could find the
light cord, but it was caught in one of the dresses or something, and it
took me a long time to find it in the dark of the closet, but I did find
it at last, and was just reading the note--"
"You _read_ it, even after you saw that the handwriting on the envelope
wasn't your husband's?" Dundee queried in assumed amazement.
Flora's thin body sagged. "I--I thought maybe Tracey had disguised his
Handwriting.... So I read it, and saw it was from Dexter--"
"Mr. Miles, do you know how some of your business stationery got into
Sprague's hands?"
"He's had plenty of opportunity to filch stationery or almost anything
he wants, hanging around my offices, as he does--an idler--"
But Dundee was in a hurry. He wheeled from the garrulity of the husband
to the tense terror of the wife.
"Mrs. Miles, I want you to tell me exactly what you know, unless you
prefer to consult a lawyer first--"
"Sir, if you are insinuating that _my wife_--"
"Oh, let me tell him, Tracey," Mrs. Miles capitulated suddenly,
completely. "I _was_ in the closet when Nita was killed, I suppose, but
I didn't _know_ she was being killed! _Because I was lying in there on
the closet floor in a dead faint!_"
Dundee stared at the woman incredulously, then suppressed a groan of
almost unbearable disappointment. If Flora Miles was telling the truth,
here went a-flying his only eye-witness, probably, or rather, his only
ear-witness.
"Just when did you faint, Mrs. Miles?" he asked, struggling for
patience. "Before or after Nita came into this room?"
"I was just finishing the note, with the light on in the closet, and the
door shut, when I heard Nita come into the room. I knew it was Nita
because she was singing one of those Broadway songs she is--was--so
crazy about. I jerked off the light, and crouched way back in a corner
of the closet. A velvet evening wrap fell down over my head, and I was
nearly smothering, but I was afraid to try to dislodge it for fear a
hanger would fall to the floor and make an awful clatter. And then--and
then--" She shuddered, and clung to her husband.
"What caused you to faint, Mrs. Miles?"
"Sir, my wife has heart trouble--"
"What did you hear, Mrs. Miles?" Dundee persisted.
"I couldn't hear very well, all tangled up in the coat and 'way back in
the closet, but I did hear a kind of bang or bump--no, no, not a pistol
shot!--and because it came from so near me I thought it was Nita or
Lydia coming to get something out of the closet, and I'd be discovered,
so I--I fainted--" She drew a deep breath and went on: "When I came to I
heard Karen scream, and then people running in--. But all the time that
awful tune was going on and on--"
"Tune?" Dundee gasped. "Do you mean--Nita Selim's--_song_?"
Flora Miles seemed to be dazed by Dundee's vehement question.
"Why, yes--Nita's own tune. That's what she called it--her own tune--"
"But, Mrs. Miles," Dundee protested, ashamed that his scalp was
prickling with horror, "do you mean to tell me that Nita was not dead
_then_--when Karen Marshall screamed?"
"Dead?" Flora repeated, more bewildered. "Of course she was, or at
least, they all said so--. Oh, I know what you mean! And you don't mean
what I mean at all--"
"Steady, honey-girl!" Tracey Miles urged, putting his arm about his
wife. "I'd better tell you, Dundee.... When we all came running into the
room, there was Nita's powder box playing its tune over and over--"
"Oh!" Dundee wiped his forehead. "You mean it's a musical box?"
"Yes, and plays when the lid is off," Tracey answered, obviously
delighted to have the limelight again. "Well, of course, since Nita
couldn't put the lid back on, it was still playing.... What was the
tune, honey?" he asked his wife tenderly. "I haven't much ear for music
at best, but at a time like that--"
"It was playing _Juanita_," Flora answered wearily. "Over and
over--_'Nita, Jua-a-n-ita, be my own fair bride_'," she quavered
obligingly. "Only not the words, of course, just the tune. That's why
Nita bought the box, I suppose, because it played her namesake song--"
"Maybe one of her beaus gave it to her," Tracey suggested lightly,
patting his wife's trembling shoulder. "Anyway, Dundee, the thing ran on
and on, until it ran down, I suppose. I confess I wanted to put the lid
back on, to stop the damned thing, but Hugo said we mustn't touch
anything--"
"And quite right!" Dundee cut in. "Now, Mrs. Miles, about that noise you
heard.... Did you hear anyone enter the room?... No?... Well, then, did
you hear Nita speak to anyone? You said you thought it might be Lydia,
coming to get something out of the closet."
"I didn't hear Nita speak a word to anybody, though she might have and I
wouldn't have heard, all muffled up in that velvet evening wrap and so
far back in the closet--"
"Did you hear the door onto the porch--it's _quite_ near the closet--"
"The door was open when we came in, Dundee," Tracey interposed. "It must
have been open all the time."
"I didn't hear it open," Mrs. Miles confirmed him wearily. "I tell you I
didn't hear _anything_, except Nita's coming in singing, then the powder
box playing its tune, and that bang or bump I told you about."
"And just where was that?" Dundee persisted.
"_I don't know!_" she shrilled, hysteria rising in her voice again. "I
told you it sounded fairly near the closet, as if--as if somebody bumped
into something. That's what it was like! That's exactly what it was
like. And I was so frightened of being found in the closet that I
fainted, and didn't come to until Karen screamed--"
She was babbling on, but Dundee was thinking hard. A very convenient
faint--that! For the murderer, at least! But--why not for Mrs. Miles
herself? Odd that she should _faint_! Why hadn't she trumped up some
excuse immediately and left the closet as Nita was entering the room?
Was it, possibly, because she could think of nothing but the great
relief of finding that it was Sprague, not her husband, who had been
writing love letters to Nita Selim?... A jealous woman--
"Miles," he began abruptly, "I think you'd better tell me how your wife
became so jealous of you and Nita Selim that she could get herself into
such a false position."
Tracey Miles reddened, but a gesture of one of his sunburned hands
restrained his wife's passionate defense of him. "It's the truth that
Flora is jealous-natured. And I suppose--" he faltered a moment, and his
eyes did not meet his wife's, "--that I liked seeing her a little bit
jealous of her old man. Sort of makes a man feel--well, big, you know.
And pretty important to somebody!"
"So you were just having a bit of fun with your wife, so far as Mrs.
Selim was concerned?" Dundee asked coldly.
The blood flowed through the thinning blond hair. "We-el, not exactly,"
he admitted frankly. "You see, I _did_ take a shine to Nita, and if I do
say so myself, she liked me a lot.... Oh, nothing serious! Just a little
flirtation, like most of our crowd have with each other--"
"Mrs. Miles," Dundee interrupted with sudden harshness, "are you _sure_
you did not know that that letter was from Dexter Sprague before you
looked for it?"
"Sir, if you are insinuating that _my wife_ carried on a flirtation
or--an--an _affair_ with that Sprague insect--" Tracey began to bluster.
But Dundee's eyes were on Flora Miles, and he saw that her sallow skin
had tightened like greyish silk over her thin cheek bones, and that her
eyes looked suddenly dead and glassy.
"You _fainted_, you say, Mrs. Miles," Dundee went on inexorably. "Was it
because, by any chance, this note--" and he tapped the sheet which had
caused so much trouble--"revealed the fact that Nita Selim and Dexter
Sprague were sweethearts or--lovers?"
It was a battle between those two now. Both ignored Tracey's red-faced
rage.
Flora licked her dry lips. "No--no," she whispered. "_No!_ It was
because I was jealous of Tracey and Nita--"
"Yes, and I'd given her cause to be jealous, too!" Tracey forced himself
into the conversation. "One night, at the Country Club, Flora saw me and
Nita stroll off the porch and down onto the grounds, and she had a right
to be sore at me when I got back, because I'd cut a dance with her--my
own wife!... And it was only this very morning that I made a point of
driving--out of my way too--by this house to see Nita. Not that I meant
any harm, but I was being a little silly about her--and she was about
me, too! Not that I'd leave my wife and babies for any Broadway beauty
under the sun--"
"Oh, Tracey! And you weren't going to tell me--" Was there _real_
jealousy now, or just pretense on Flora's part?
"You understand, don't you, Dundee?" Tracey demanded, man to man. "I was
just having a little fun on the side--nothing serious, mind you! But of
course I didn't tell Flora every little thing--. No man does! There've
been other girls--other women--"
"Tracey isn't worse than the other men!" Flora flamed up. "He's such a
darling that all the girls pet him, and spoil him--"
Dundee could stand no more of Miles' complacent acceptance of his own
rakishness. And certainly a girl like Nita Selim would have been able to
bear precious little of it.... Conceited ass! But Flora Miles was
another matter--and so was Dexter Sprague!
"You can join me in the living room, if you like," Dundee said shortly,
as he wheeled and strode toward the door. Was that quick, passionate
kiss between husband and wife being staged for his benefit?
"Pretty near through, boy?" Strawn, who had been silent and bewildered
for a long time, asked anxiously, as the two detectives passed into the
hall.
"Not quite. I've got to know several things yet," Dundee answered
absently.
But in the living room his mind was wholly upon the business in hand.
"I'll keep you all no longer than is absolutely necessary," he began,
and again the close-knit group--in which only Dexter Sprague was an
alien--grew taut with suspense. "From the playing out of the 'death
hand' at bridge," he went on, using the objectionable phrase again very
deliberately, "I found that no two of you men arrived together.... Mr.
Hammond, you were the first to arrive, I believe?"
"It seems that I was!" Clive Hammond answered curtly.
"And yet you did not enter the living room to greet your hostess?"
"I wanted a private word with Polly--Miss Beale--my fiancée," Hammond
explained briefly.
"How and when did you arrive?"
"I don't know the exact time. Never thought of looking at my watch,"
Hammond offered. "I came out in my own roadster--that tan Stutz you may
have noticed in the driveway. As for how I entered the house, I leaped
upon the porch and opened a door of the solarium. I walked across the
solarium, saw Polly just finishing with bridge for the afternoon, and
beckoned to her. She joined me in the solarium, and we stayed there
until Karen screamed.... That's all."
"Have you been engaged long, Mr. Hammond--you and Miss Beale?" Dundee
asked, as if quite casually.
"Nearly a year,--if it's any of your business, Dundee!"
"And just when had you seen Miss Beale last, before late this
afternoon?" Dundee asked.
"I refuse to answer!" Hammond flared. "That at least is none of your
damned business!"
"I believe I can answer my own question, Mr. Hammond," Dundee said very
softly.