Mrs. Juanita Leigh Selim, who was murdered Saturday afternoon
in Hamilton, ----, was known along Broadway as Nita Leigh, chorus
girl and specialty dancer. Her last known address in New York was
No. -- West 54th St., where she had a three-room apartment.
According to the superintendent, E. J. Black, Miss Leigh, as he
knew her, lived there alone except for her maid, Lydia Carr, and
entertained few visitors.
Irving Wein, publicity director for Altamont Pictures, when
interviewed by a reporter in his rooms at the Cadillac Hotel late
today, said that Nita Leigh had been used for "bits" and as a
dancing "double" for stars in a number of recent pictures,
including "Night Life" and "Boy, Howdy!", both of which have
dancing sequences. Musical comedy programs for the last year carry
her name only once, in the list of "Ladies of the Ensemble" of the
revue, "What of it?"
Miss Eloise Pendleton, head-mistress of Forsyte-on-the-Hudson,
mentioned in the dispatches from Hamilton, confirms the report that
Mrs. Selim, as she was known there, twice directed the annual
Easter musical comedy presented by that fashionable school for
young ladies, but could add nothing of interest to the facts given
above, beyond asserting that Mrs. Selim had proved to be an
unusually competent and popular director of their amateur
theatricals.
"Yes, that's correct, as far as it goes," Lydia commented, resentment
strong in her harsh voice as she returned the paper to Dundee.
"Have you anything to add?" Dundee caught her up quickly.
"No, sir!" Lydia shook her head, her lips in a grim line. Then
resentment burst through: "They don't have to talk like she was a back
number on Broadway, just because she was tired of the stage and going in
for movies!"
District Attorney Sanderson took her in hand then, pelting her with
questions about Nita's New York "gentlemen friends," but he made no more
headway than Dundee.
"We _know_ that Nita Selim was afraid of _someone_!" Sanderson began
again, angrily. "Who was it--someone she'd known in New York, or
somebody in Hamilton?"
"I don't know!" Lydia told him flatly.
"But you do know she was living in fear of her life, don't you?" Dundee
interposed.
"I--well, yes, I suppose she was," Lydia admitted reluctantly. "But I
thought she was just afraid to live out there in that lonesome house
away off at the end of nowhere."
"Was she afraid of Dexter Sprague?" Sanderson shot at her.
"Would she have asked him to stay all night if she'd been afraid of
_him_?" Lydia demanded scornfully. "And would she have asked _him_ to
rig up a bell from her bedroom to mine, if it was _him_ she was afraid
of?"
"A bell?" Dundee echoed.
"Yes, sir. It has a contraption under the rug, right beside her bed,
so's she could step on it and it would ring in my room, which was
underneath hers.... Mr. Sprague bought the wire and stuff, bored a hole
through her bedroom floor, and fixed it all hisself."
"Did anyone know Nita had taken this precaution to protect herself?"
Dundee asked.
"Mis' Lois did, because one day not long ago she stepped on it
accidentally, when she was in Nita's room. The bell buzzed in my room
and I come up to answer it, and Nita explained it to Mis' Lois."
So that was why no attempt had been made to murder Nita while she
slept!--Dundee told himself triumphantly. For of course it was more than
probable that Lois Dunlap had innocently spread the news of Nita's
nervousness and her ingenious method of summoning help instantly....
There was a knock at the door.
"Come in!... All finished, Carraway?... Fine! I'd like to see the prints
as soon as possible, and now I'd like you to go over to the morgue with
Lydia, and wait there until she has the body dressed in these clothes,
and the hair done according to the instructions Mrs. Selim left.... I'll
leave the posing to you, but I want a full-length picture as well as a
head portrait."
As Lydia's work-roughened, knuckly hands were returning the funeral
clothes to the suitcase, another question occurred to Dundee:
"Lydia, did you know, before I questioned you at the Miles home
yesterday, that Sprague had returned for that bag he had left in the
bedroom upstairs?"
Her scarred cheek flushed livid, but the maid answered with defiant
honesty: "Yes, I did! He spoke to me through my basement window just
before you come running down to talk to me. He'd sneaked back, but he
could tell from seeing your car outside that you was there, and he asked
me to go up and get the bag and set it outside the kitchen door for him.
I said I wouldn't do it; it was too risky."
"Then you were pretending to be asleep when I entered your room?"
"Yes, I was! But I _had_ been asleep before Mr. Sprague called me. While
you was ding-donging at me about Nita burning my face I heard Mr.
Sprague open the kitchen door. He had a key Nita had give him, so's he
could slip in unnoticed if he happened to come when Nita had other
company. He didn't hardly make any noise at all, but I heard it, because
I was listening for it.... You'd left the door to the basement stairs
open, and my door, too, so I heard him."
"Did you hear him come down?"
"Yes, I did! There's a board on the backstairs that squeaks, and I heard
it plain, while you was still at me, hammer and tongs," Lydia answered.
"He was in the house not more'n two minutes, all told, and when I
figured he was safely out, I went upstairs with you to show you the
presents I'd give Nita after she burnt me, to prove I'd forgive her."
"Why didn't you tell me, Lydia? Why did you protect Sprague? I know you
don't like him," Dundee puzzled.
"I wasn't thinking about him," Lydia told him flatly. "I was thinking
about Nita. I didn't want any scandal on her, and I knew what the police
and the newspapers would say if they found out Mr. Sprague had been
staying all night sometimes."
"Are you prepared to swear Sprague had time to do nothing but go up to
the bedroom and get his bag?"
"I am!"
When Lydia and Carraway had left together, Dundee rose and addressed the
district attorney:
"I'm going out to the Selim house now, to look for that secret hiding
place where Roger Crain kept his securities, and which Judge Marshall
evidently displayed to Nita, as one of the charms of the house when she
'rented' it."
"Why not simply telephone Judge Marshall and ask him where and what it
is?" Sanderson asked reasonably.
"Do you think he'd tell?" Dundee retorted. "The old boy's no fool. Even
if he didn't kill Nita himself and hide the gun there, my question would
throw him into a panic of fear lest one of his best friends had done
just that.... No, I'll find it myself, if it's all right with you!"
But after a solid hour of hard and fruitless work, Bonnie Dundee was
forced to admit ruefully to himself that his parting words to the
district attorney might have been the youthful and empty boast that
Sanderson had evidently considered them.
For nowhere in the house Roger Crain had built and in which Nita Selim
had been murdered could the detective find anything remotely resembling
a concealed safe. The two plainclothesmen whom Strawn had detailed to
guard the house and to continue the search for the missing gun and
silencer looked on with unconcealed amusement as Dundee tapped walls,
floors and ceilings in a house that seemed to be exceptionally free of
architectural eccentricities.
Finally Dundee grew tired of their ribald comments and curtly ordered
them to make a new and exhaustive search of the unused portions of the
basement--those dark earth banks, with their overhead networks of water
and drain pipes, heavily insulated cables of electric wires, cobwebby
rafters and rough shelves holding empty fruit jars and liquor
bottles--which contrasted sharply with the neatly ceiled and
cement-floored space devoted to furnace, laundry and maid's room. Dundee
himself had given those regions only a cursory inspection with his
flashlight, for it was highly improbable that Nita Selim would have made
use of a secret hiding place for her jewelry and valuable papers, if
that hiding place was located in such dark, awesome surroundings.
No. The hiding place, if it really existed--and it must exist--had been
within easy reach of Nita dressing and bedecking herself for a party, or
Lydia Carr could not have been kept in complete ignorance of its
location.
With that conviction in mind, Dundee returned to Nita's bedroom, to
which he had already devoted at least half an hour. Nothing in the big
clothes closet, where Flora Miles had been hiding while Nita was being
murdered. No secret drawers in desk or dressing-table or bedside table.
No false bottom in boudoir chair or chaise longue.... He had even taken
every book out of the four-shelf bookcase which stood against the west
wall near the north corner of the room, and had satisfied himself that
no book was a leafless fake.
His minute inspection of the bathroom and back hall, upon which Nita's
bedroom opened, had proved as fruitless, although he had removed every
drawer from the big linen press which stood in the hall, and measured
spaces to a fraction of an inch. As for the walls, they were, except for
the doors, unbroken expanses of tinted plaster.