He stepped into the clothes closet again, hammer in hand for a fresh
tapping of the cedar-board walls. Nothing here.... And then he tapped
again, his ear against the end wall of the closet--the wall farthest
from the side porch....
Yes! There was a faintly hollow echo of the hammer strokes!
Excitement blazing high again, he took the tape measure with which he
had provided himself on his way out, and calculated the length of the
closet from end to end. Six feet....
Emerging from the closet he closed his eyes in an effort to recall in
exact detail the architect's blueprint of the lower floor, which Coroner
Price had submitted to his jury at the inquest that morning. Yes, that
was right! The inner end wall of Nita's clothes closet was also the back
of the guest closet in the little foyer that lay between Nita's bedroom
and the main hall.
Within ten minutes, much laying-on of the tape measure had produced a
startling result. Instead of having a wall in common, the guest closet
and Nita's clothes closet were separated by exactly eleven inches! Why
the waste space? The blueprint, bearing the imprint of the architects,
Hammond & Hammond, showed no such walled-up cubbyhole!
Exultantly, Dundee again entered Nita's closet and went over every inch
of the narrow, horizontal cedar boards, which formed the end wall. But
he met with no reward. Not through this workmanlike, solidly constructed
wall had an opening been made....
But in the foyer closet he read a different story. Its back wall had an
amateurish look. This closet was not cedar-lined, as was Nita's, but was
painted throughout in soft ivory. But it was the back wall of the closet
in which Dundee was interested. Unlike the other walls, which were of
plaster, the back was constructed of six-inch-wide boards--the cheapness
of the lumber not concealed by its coat of ivory paint. No
self-respecting builder had put in that wall of broad, horizontal
boards....
And then, directly beneath the shelf which was set regulation height,
just above the pole on which swung a dozen coat hangers, Dundee found
what he was looking for.
A short length of the cheap board, a queer scrap to have been used even
in so shoddy a job as that wall was.... Eight inches long. And set
square in the center of the wall, just below the shelf and pole. If he
had not been looking for something odd, however, Dundee acknowledged to
himself, he would not have noticed it. Did anyone ever notice the back
walls of closets?
Sure of the result, he pressed with his finger tips upon the lower end
of that short piece of board. And slowly it swung inward, the top
slanting outward.
_He had found the secret hiding place._ And Dundee silently agreed with
Judge Marshall that it was "the simplest and most ingenious arrangement
you ever saw," for it was nothing more nor less than a shelf set between
the two closets, in those eleven inches of unaccounted for space!
"I take off my hat to Roger Crain!" Dundee reflected. "No burglar in the
world would ever have thought of pressing upon a short piece of board in
a foyer closet, in search of a safe.... But how did Judge Marshall know
of its existence?"
The only answer Dundee could think of was that Crain, overseeing the
building of his house, had suddenly conceived this brilliant and simple
plan, and had tipped one of the carpenters to carry it out for him.
Possibly, or probably, he had bragged to Clive or Ralph Hammond, his
architects, of his clever invention. And the Hammond boys had passed on
the information to Judge Marshall, when, after Crain's failure and
flight, the house had become the property of the ex-judge.
These thoughts rushed through his mind as his flashlight explored the
shelf through the tilted opening. The gun and silencer _must_ be here,
since they could be no place else!... But the shelf was bare except for
a small brass box, fastened only by a clasp. In his acute disappointment
Dundee took little interest in the collection of pretty but inexpensive
jewelry--Nita's trinkets, undoubtedly--which the brass box
contained.... No wedding ring among them....
In spite of his chagrin at not finding the gun, Dundee studied the
simple mechanism which Roger Crain's ingenuity had conceived. From the
outside, the eight-inch length of board fitted smoothly, giving no
indication whatever that it was otherwise than what it seemed--part of a
cheaply built wall. But Dundee's flashlight played upon the beveled
edges of both the short board and the two neighboring planks between
which it was fitted. The pivoting arrangement was of the simplest, the
small nickel-plated pieces being set into the short board and the other
two planks with small screws which did not pierce the painted outside
surface.
His curiosity satisfied, Dundee stepped out of the closet into the tiny
foyer. He was about to leave when a terrific truth crashed through his
mind and froze his feet to the floor.
_Of course the gun and silencer were not there!_
This was the _guest closet_! In it had hung the hat of every person who
had been Nita's guest, either for bridge or cocktails, that fatal
Saturday afternoon!
_And to this closet, to retrieve hat, stick or--in the case of the
women, summer coat and hat--had come every person who had been
questioned and then searched by the police._
Dundee tried to recapture the picture of the stampede which had followed
upon his permission for all guests to go to their homes. But it was
useless. He had stayed in the living room with Strawn, had taken not the
slightest interest in the scramble for hats, coats and sticks. For
Strawn had previously assured him that the guest closet had been
thoroughly searched.
So quickly that he felt slightly dizzy, Dundee's thoughts raced around
the new discovery. This changed everything, of course. Any one of half a
dozen persons could have arrived with the gun and silencer--not screwed
together, of course, because of the ungainly length--and seized the
opportunity presented by Nita's being alone in her bedroom to shoot her.
What easier, then, than to hide the weapon on this secret shelf, the
"door" of which yielded to the slightest pressure? And what easier than
to retrieve the weapon after permission had been granted to all to
return to their homes? Easy enough to manage to go alone to the closet
for a hat, the extra minute of time unnoticed in the general excitement.
It had been vitally necessary, too, to retrieve the weapon, since any
innocent member of that party might have remembered later to mention the
secret hiding place to the police--secret no longer since Judge Marshall
had gossiped about it....
Then another thought boiled up and demanded attention. In the new
theory, what place did the "bang or bump" have--that noise which Flora
Miles, concealed in Nita's closet, had dimly heard? Dundee had been
positive, when Lydia had discovered the shattered electric bulb in the
big bronze lamp that its position in Nita's room indicated the progress
of the flight of the murderer--flight diagonally across the room toward
the back hall. But now--
A little dashed, Dundee returned to the bedroom. The big lamp was where
he had first seen it--about a foot beyond the window nearest the porch,
and at the head of the chaise longue which was set between the two west
windows, where, according to Lydia, the lamp always stood. The too-long
cord lay slackly along the floor near the west wall, and extended to the
double outlet on the baseboard behind the bookcase.... _A slack cord!_
Down on his hands and knees Dundee went, to peer under the low bottom
shelf of the bookcase.... Yes! The pronged plug of the lamp cord had
been jerked almost out of the baseboard outlet! It was easy to visualize
what had happened: The murderer, after firing the shot, had
involuntarily taken a step or even several steps backward, until his
foot had caught in the loop of electric cord, causing the big lamp to be
thrown violently against the wall near which it stood.... But who?
_Any one of half a dozen people!_ But--_who_?