Lydia Carr, still clothed in the black cotton dress and white apron of
her maid's uniform, struggled to a sitting position on the edge of her
basement room bed.
"No, no! That's a lie! It was an accident, I tell you--my own
fault!... Who dared to say Nita--Miss Nita--did it?"
"Better lie down, Lydia," Dundee suggested gently. "I won't want you
fainting. You've had a hard day with the abscessed tooth, the dope the
dentist gave you, and--other things. I don't wonder that you lost your
head, went a little crazy, perhaps--"
The detective's sinister implication seemed to make no impression at all
upon the woman with the scarred face.
"I asked you--" she gasped, her single eye glaring at him, "who dared
say Nita burned me?"
"It was Nita herself who told me," Dundee answered softly. "Just a few
minutes ago."
"Holy Mother!" the maid gasped, and crossed herself dazedly.
Let her think the dead woman had appeared to him in a vision, Dundee
told himself. Perhaps her confession would come the quicker--
The maid began to rock her gaunt body, her arms crossed over her flat
chest. "My poor little girl! Even in death she thinks of me, she's
sorry--. She sent me a message, didn't she? Tell me! She was always
trying to comfort me, sir! The poor little thing couldn't believe I'd
forgiven her as soon as she done it--. Tell me!"
"Yes," Dundee agreed, his eyes watching her keenly. "She sent you a
message--of a sort.... But I can't give it to you until you have told me
all about the--accident in which you were burned."
"I'll tell," Lydia promised eagerly. Gone were the harshness and
secretiveness with which she had met his earlier questioning.... "You
see, sir, I loved Miss Nita--I called her Nita, if you don't mind, sir.
I loved her like she was my own child. And she was fond of me, too,
fonder of me than of anybody in the world, she used to tell me, when
some man had hurt her bad.... And there was always some man or other,
she was so sweet and so pretty.... Well, I found her in the bathroom one
day, just ready to drink carbolic acid, to kill her poor little self--"
"When was that, Lydia?" Dundee interrupted.
"It was in February--Sunday, the ninth of February," Lydia went on,
still rocking in an agony of grief. "I tried to take the glass out of
her hands. She'd poured a lot of the stuff out of the bottle.... You
see, she was already in a fit of hysterics, or she'd never have tried to
kill herself.... It was my own fault, trying to take the glass away from
her, like I did--"
"She flung the acid into your face?" Dundee asked, shuddering.
"She didn't know what she was doing!" the woman cried, glaring at him.
"Nearly went out of her mind, they told me at the hospital, because
she'd hurt me.... A private room in the best hospital in New York she
got for me, trained nurses night and day, and so many doctors fussing
around me I wanted to fire the whole outfit and save some of my poor
girl's money--which I don't know till this day how she got hold of--"
Dundee let her sob and rock her arms for a while unmolested. In February
Nita Selim had had to borrow money to pay doctor and hospital bills. Had
borrowed it or "gold-dug" it.... And in May she had been rich enough to
have $9,000 to invest!
"Lydia, you never forgave Nita Selim for ruining your life as well as
your face!" Dundee charged her suddenly.
"You're a liar!" she cried passionately. "I know what I felt. It's _my_
face and _my_ life, ain't it? I tell you I didn't even bear a grudge
against her--the poor little thing! Eating her heart out with sorrow for
what she'd done--till the very day of her death! Always trying to make
it up to me--paying me too much money for the handful of work I had to
do, what with her eating out nearly all the time and throwing away
stockings the minute they got a run in 'em--. Forgive her? I'd have
crawled from here to New York on my hands and knees for Nita Leigh!"
Dundee studied her horribly scarred face, made more horrible now by what
looked like genuine grief.
"Lydia, who was the man over whom your mistress wanted to commit
suicide?"
The single, tear-reddened eye glared at him suspiciously, then became
wary. "I don't know."
"Was it Dexter Sprague, Lydia?"
"Sprague?" She spat the name out contemptuously. "No! She didn't know
him then, except to speak to at the moving picture studio."
"When did he become her--lover, Lydia?" Dundee asked casually.
The woman stiffened, became menacingly hostile. "Who says he was her
lover? You can't trick me, Mr. Detective! I'd cut my tongue out before
I'd let you make me say one word against my poor girl!"
Dundee shrugged. He knew a stone wall when he ran up against one.
"Lydia," he began again, after a thoughtful pause, "I have proof that
Nita Selim was sure you had never forgiven her for the injury she did
you." His fingers touched the letter in his pocket--that incredible
"Last Will and Testament" which Nita had written the day before she was
murdered....
"And that's another lie!" the woman cried, shaking with anger. She
struggled to her feet, stood swaying dizzily a moment. "Come upstairs
with me to her room, and I'll show _you_ some proof that I had forgiven
her!... Come along, I tell you!... Trying to make me say _I_ killed my
poor girl, when I'd have died for her--Come on, I tell you!"
And Dundee, wondering, beginning to doubt his own conviction a
little--that conviction which had sprung full-grown out of Nita's
strange, informal will, and which had seemed to explain
everything--followed Lydia Carr from her basement room to the bedroom in
which Nita had been murdered....
"See this!" and Lydia Carr snatched up the powder box from the
dressing-table. Her long, bony fingers busied themselves with frantic
haste, and suddenly, into the silence of the room came the tinkle of
music. "_I_ bought her this--for a present, out of my own money, soon as
I got out of the hospital!" the maid's voice shrilled, over the slow,
sweet, tinkly notes. "It's playing her name song--_Juanita_. It was
playing that song when she died. I stood there in the doorway and heard
it--" and she pointed toward the door leading from Nita's room into the
back hall. "She loved it and used it all the time, because I gave it to
her.... And _this_!"
She set the musical powder box upon the dressing-table and rushed across
the room to one of the several lamps that Dundee had noticed on his
first survey of the room. It was the largest and gaudiest of the
collection--a huge bowl of filigreed bronze, set with innumerable
stones, as large as marbles, or larger. Red, yellow and green stones
that must have cast a strange radiance over the pretty head that had
been wont to lie just beneath it, on the heaped lace pillows of the
chaise lounge, Dundee reflected.
As if Lydia had read his thoughts, she jerked at the little chain which
hung from the bottom of the big bronze bowl against the heavy metal
standard.
"I gave her this--saved up for it out of my own money!" she was assuring
him with savage triumph in proving her point. "And she loved it so she
brought it with us when we came from New York--It won't light! It was
working all right last night, because my poor little girl was lying
there, looking so pretty under the colored lights--"
With strong twists of her big hands Lydia began to unscrew the filigreed
bronze bowl. As she lifted it off she exclaimed blankly:
"Why, look! The light bulb's--_broke_!"
But Dundee had already seen--not only the broken light bulb but the
explanation of the queer noise that Flora Miles had described
hysterically over and over, as "a bang or a bump." The chaise lounge
stood between the two windows that opened upon the drive. And at the
head of it stood the big lamp, just a few inches from the wall and only
a foot from the window frame upon which Dr. Price had pencilled the
point to indicate the end of the imaginary line along which the shot
which killed Nita Leigh Selim had traveled.
The "bang or bump" which Flora Miles had heard had been made by the
knocking of the big lamp against the wall. Undoubtedly the one who had
bumped into the lamp was Nita's murderer--or murderess--in frantic haste
to make an escape.
_And that meant that the murderer had fled toward the back hall, not
through the window in front of which he had stood, not through the door
leading onto the front porch...._ A little progress, at least!
But Lydia was not through proving that she had forgiven her mistress.
She was snatching things from Nita's clothes closet--
"See these mules with ostrich feathers?--I give 'em to my girl!... And
this bed jacket? I embroidered the flowers on it with my own hands--"
Through her flood of proof Dundee heard the whir of a car's engine, then
the loud banging of a car's door.... Running footsteps on the flagstone
path.... Dundee reached the front door just as the bell pealed shrilly.
"Hello, Dundee! Awfully glad I caught you before you left.... Is poor
Lydia still here?"
"Come in, Mr. Miles," Dundee invited, searching with a puzzled frown the
round, blond face of Tracey Miles. "Yes, Lydia is still here.... Why?"
"Then I'm in luck, and I think Lydia is, too--poor old girl!... You see,
Dundee," Miles began to explain, as he took off his new straw hat to mop
his perspiring forehead, "the crowd all ganged up when our various cars
reached Sheridan Road, and by unanimous vote we elected to drive over to
the Country Club for a meal in one of the small private dining rooms--to
escape the questions of the morbidly curious, you know--"
"Yes.... What about it?" Dundee interrupted impatiently.
"Well, I admit we were all pretty hungry, in spite of--well, of course
we were all fond of Nita, but--"
"What about Lydia?" Dundee cut him short.
"I'm getting to it, old boy," Miles protested, with the injured air of
an unappreciated small boy. "While we were waiting for our food,
somebody said, 'Poor Lydia! What's going to become of _her_?' And
somebody else said that it was harder on her--Nita's death, I mean--than
on anybody else, because Nita was all she had in the world, and then
Lois--Lois is always practical, you know--ran to telephone Police
Headquarters, to see what had been done with Lydia, and to see if it
would be all right for Flora and me to take her home with us--"
"Just a minute, Miles! Whom did Mrs. Dunlap talk to at Headquarters?"
"Why, Captain Strawn, of course," Miles answered. "He told Lois that you
were still out here, questioning Lydia again, and that it was all right
with him, whatever you decided. So as soon as I had finished eating, I
drove over--"
"Is Mrs. Miles with you?" Dundee interrupted again.
"Well, no," Miles admitted uncomfortably. "You see, the girls felt a
little squeamish about coming back, even on an errand of mercy--"
Dundee grinned. He had no doubt that Flora Miles had emphatically
refused the possibility of another gruelling interview.
"Why do you and Mrs. Miles want to take Lydia home with you?" he asked.
"To give her a home and a job," Miles answered promptly. "She knows us,
we're used to her poor old scarred face, and the youngsters, Tam and
Betty, are not a bit afraid of her. In fact, Betty pats that scarred
cheek and says, over and over, 'Poo Lyddy! Poo Lyddy! Betty 'oves
Lyddy!' and Tam--he's T. A. Miles, junior, you know, and we call him
Tam, from the initials, because he hates being called Junior and two
Tracey's are a nuisance--"
"I gather that you want to hire Lydia as a nurse for the children,"
Dundee interrupted the fond father's verbose explanations.
"Right, old man! You see, our nurse left us yesterday--"
"Wait here, Miles. I'll speak to Lydia. She's in Mrs. Selim's
bedroom.... By the way, Miles, since you and your wife are kind enough
to want to take Lydia in and give her a home and a job, I think it only
fair to tell you that it is highly improbable that Lydia Carr will take
any job at all."
"You mean--?" Miles gasped, his ruddy face turning pale. "I say, Dundee,
it's absurd to think for a minute that good old faithful Lydia had a
thing to do with Nita's murder--"
"I rather think you're right about that, Miles," Dundee interrupted.
"Now will you excuse me?"
He found Lydia where he had left her--in her dead mistress' bedroom. The
tall, gaunt woman was crouching beside the chaise longue, her arms
outstretched to encircle a little pile of the gifts she claimed to have
given Nita Selim to prove that she bore no grudge for the terrible
injury her mistress had done her. At Dundee's entrance she flung up her
head, and the detective saw that tears were streaming from both the
sightless eye and the unharmed one.
Taking his seat on the chaise longue, Dundee explained gently but
briefly the offer which Tracey Miles had just made.
"They want--_me_?" she gasped brokenly, incredulously, and her fingers
faltered to her horrible cheek. "I didn't think anybody but my poor girl
would have me around--"
"It is true they want you," Dundee assured her. "But you don't have to
take a job now unless you wish, Lydia."
"What do you mean?" the maid demanded harshly, her good eye hardening
with suspicion.
"Lydia," the young detective began slowly, and almost praying that he
was doing the right thing, "when I woke you up tonight to question you,
I said that Nita herself had just told me that it was she who had burned
your face.... And you asked me if she had also given you a message--"
"Yes, sir!" the maid interrupted with pitiful eagerness. "And you'll
tell me now? You don't still think _I_ killed her, do you?"
"No, I don't think you killed your mistress, Lydia, but I think, if you
would, you could help me find out who did," Dundee assured her gravely.
"No, wait!" and he drew from his pocket the envelope inscribed: "To Be
Opened In Case of My Death--Juanita Leigh Selim."
"Do you recognize this handwriting, Lydia?"
"It was wrote by her own hand," the maid answered, her voice husky with
tears. "Is that the message, sir?"
"You never saw it before?" Dundee asked sharply.
"No, no! I didn't know my poor girl was thinking about death," Lydia
moaned. "I thought she was happy here. She was tickled to pieces over
being taken up by all them society people, and on the go day and
night----"
"Lydia, this is Mrs. Selim's last will and testament," Dundee
interrupted, withdrawing the sheets slowly and unfolding them. "It was
written yesterday, and it begins:
"'Knowing that any of us may die any time, and that I, Juanita Leigh
Selim, have good cause to fear that my own life hangs by a thread that
may break any minute--'"
"What did my poor girl mean?" Lydia Carr cried out vehemently. "She
wasn't sick, ever--"
"I think, Lydia, that she feared exactly what happened today--murder!
And I want you to tell me who it was she feared. _For I believe you
know!_"
The woman shrank from him, until she was sitting on her lean haunches,
her hands flattening against her cheeks. For a long minute she did not
attempt to answer. Her right eye widened enormously, then slowly grew as
expressionless as the milky left ball.
"I--don't--know," she said dully. Then, with vehement emphasis: "_I
don't know!_ If I did, I'd kill him with my own hands!"
Dundee had no choice but to take her word.
"You said there was a message for me," Lydia reminded him.
"I'll read you her will first," Dundee said quietly, lifting the sheets
again: "I am herewith setting down my last will and testament, in my own
handwriting. I do here and now solemnly will and bequeath to my faithful
and beloved maid, Lydia Carr, all property, including all moneys, stocks
and personal belongings of which I die possessed--"
"To--_me_?" Lydia whispered. "To me?"
"To you, Lydia," Dundee assured her gravely.
"Then I can have all her pretty clothes to keep always?"
"And her money, to do as you like with, if the court accepts this will
for probate--as I think it will, regardless of the fact that it is very
informal and was not witnessed."
"But--she didn't have any money," Lydia protested. "Nothing but what
Mrs. Dunlap paid her in advance for the work she was going to do--"
"Lydia, your mistress died possessed of nearly ten thousand dollars!"
Dundee fixed her bewildered grey eye with his blue ones. "_Ten thousand
dollars!_ All of which she got right here in Hamilton! And I want you to
tell me how she got it!"
"But--I don't know! I don't believe she had it!"
Dundee shrugged. Either this woman would perjure her soul to protect her
mistress' name from scandal, or she really knew nothing.
"That is all of the will itself, Lydia," he went on finally, "except her
command that her body be cremated without funeral services of any kind,
and that nobody be allowed to accompany the remains to the crematory
except yourself and Mrs. Peter Dunlap, in case her death takes place in
Hamilton--"
"She _did_ love Mrs. Dunlap," Lydia sobbed. "Oh, my poor little girl--"
"And there is also a note for you, which I took the liberty of reading,
in which Mrs. Selim minutely describes the clothes in which she wishes
to be cremated, as well as the fashion in which her hair is to be
dressed--"
"Let me see it!" Lydia plunged forward on her knees and snatched at the
papers he held. "For God's sake, let me see!"