The Miles home, still known in Hamilton as the Hackett place, since it
had been built more than thirty years before by Flora's father, old
Silas Hackett, dead these seven years, dominated one of the most
beautiful of the wooded hills which encircled Mirror Lake in the
Brentwood section. Of modified Tudor architecture, its deep red,
mellowed bricks had achieved in three decades almost the same aged
dignity and impressiveness as characterized the three-century-old
mansion in England which Silas Hackett's architect had used as an
inspiration.
The big house faced the lake, a long series of landscaped terraces
leading down to the water's edge, but the driveway wound from the state
road up a side of the hill, to the main entrance at the rear of the
house.
Once before--on Sunday, the day after Nita Selim's murder, when he had
come to interview Lydia Carr and had secured the alibi which had
eliminated Dexter Sprague as a suspect--Dundee had driven his car up
this hill between the tall yew hedges. But then he had taken the fork
which led to the hooded doorway over the kitchen; had descended the
kitchen stairs with Lydia, to the servants' sitting room in the
basement. Now he continued along the main driveway to the more
impressive entrance, whose flanking, slim turrets frowned down upon a
line of police cars and motorcycles.
His approach must have been expected and observed, for it was the master
of the house who opened the great, iron-studded doors and invited the
detective into the broad main hall, at the end of which, down three
steps, lay the immense living room. The detective's first glance took in
stately armchairs of the Cromwell period, thick, mellow-toned rugs, and,
in the living room beyond, splendid examples of Jacobean furniture.
"A horrible thing to happen in a man's home, Dundee," Miles was saying,
his plump, rosy face blighted with horror. "I can't realize yet that we
actually slept as usual with a corpse lying down here all night! And I
have only myself to blame--"
"What do you mean?" Dundee asked.
"Why, that the--the body wasn't discovered sooner," Miles explained. "If
it had occurred to me that Whitson hadn't closed the trophy room
windows, I should have gone in to close and lock them when I made the
rounds of living room, dining room and library, after our guests were
gone last night."
A pale-faced, bald-headed butler had materialized while his master was
speaking. "Beg pardon, sir, but I did not close the trophy room windows
because I thought you might be using the room again.... You see, sir,"
and Whitson turned to Dundee, "Mr. Miles and Mr. Dunlap played ping-pong
in the trophy room after dinner until the other guests began to arrive,
and I did not want them to find the room stuffy--it was a warm night--if
any of the guests--"
"I see," Dundee interrupted. "Who, to your knowledge, was the last
person to enter the trophy room last night, Mr. Miles?"
"I was, except Sprague, of course, and I had no idea he'd gone there.
Drake wanted to play anagrams, and before the bridge game started, I
went to the trophy room to get the box," Miles explained. "I turned off
the light when I left, and there was no light burning in there this
morning when Celia, the parlor maid, went there to put the anagram box
back in the cabinet, and found the body.... Flora--Mrs. Miles--had
brought the anagrams in from the porch and left them on a table in the
living room, as our guests were getting ready to leave. There was
nothing else to bring in, in case of rain. The bridge tables are of
iron, covered with oilcloth, and fitted with oilcloth bags for the
cards, score pads, and pencils--"
"Yes, I know," Dundee interrupted. "Miss Crain has already told me all
about that, and a good many details of the party itself.... By the way,
where is Mrs. Miles now?"
"In bed. The doctor is with her. She is prostrated from the shock."
"Where is this room you call the trophy room?" Dundee asked. "No, don't
bother to come with me. Just point it out. It's on this floor, I
understand."
Miles pointed past the great circular staircase that wound upward from
the main hall. "You can't see the door from here, but it's behind the
staircase. Celia found the door closed this morning, and no light on, as
I said--"
Dundee cut him short by marching toward the door which was again closed.
He entered so noiselessly that Captain Strawn, Dr. Price and the
fingerprint expert, Carraway, did not hear him. For a moment he stood
just inside the door and let his eyes wander about the room which Penny
Crain had already described. It was not a large room--twelve by fourteen
feet, possibly--but it looked even smaller, crowded as it was with the
long ping-pong table, bags of golf clubs, fishing tackle, tennis
racquets, skis and sleds. There were two windows in the north wall of
the room, looking out upon the yew-hedged driveway, and between them
stood a cabinet of numerous big and little drawers.
Not until he had taken in the general aspect of the room did Dundee look
at the thing over which Captain Strawn and the coroner were bending--the
body of Dexter Sprague.
The alien from New York had fallen about four feet from the window
nearer the east wall of the trophy room. He lay on his side, his left
cheek against the floor, the fingers of his left hand still clutching
the powder-burned bosom of his soft shirt, now stiff with dried blood, a
pool of which had formed and then half congealed upon the rug. The right
hand, the fingers curled but not touching each other, lay palm-upward on
the floor at the end of the rigid, outstretched arm. The one visible eye
was half open, but on the sallow, thin face, which had been strikingly
handsome in an obvious sort of way, was a peace and dignity which Dundee
had never seen upon Sprague's face when the man was alive. The left leg
was drawn upward so that the knee almost touched the bullet-pierced
stomach.
"How long has he been dead, doctor?" Dundee asked quietly.
"Hello, boy!" Dr. Price greeted him placidly. "Always the same question!
I've been here only a few minutes, and I've already told Strawn that I
shall probably be unable to fix the hour of death with any degree of
accuracy."
"Took your time, didn't you, Bonnie?" Captain Strawn greeted his former
subordinate on the Homicide Squad. "Doc says he's been dead between ten
and twelve hours. Since it's nearly ten now, that means Sprague was
killed some time between nine and eleven o'clock last night."
"Better say between nine o'clock and midnight last night," Dr. Price
suggested. "He may have lived an hour or more--unconscious, of course.
For the indications are that he did not die instantly, but staggered a
few steps, clutching at the wound. But of course I shall have to perform
an autopsy first----"
Dundee crossed the room, stepping over the dead man's stick--a swank
affair of dark, polished wood, with a heavy knob of carved onyx, which
lay about a foot beyond the reach of the curled fingers of the stiff
right hand.
"Sprague's hat?" he asked, pointing to a brightly banded straw which lay
upon the top of the cabinet.
"Yes," Strawn answered. "And did you notice the window screen?"
He pointed to the window in front of which the body lay. The sash of
leaded panes was raised as high as it would go, and beneath it was a
screen of the roller-curtain type, raised about six inches from the
window sill. A pair of curved, nickel-plated catches in the center of
the inch-wide metal band on the bottom of the coppernet curtain showed
how the screen was raised or lowered.
Dundee nodded, frowning, and Strawn began eagerly:
"You'll have to admit I was right now, boy. You've sneered at my gunman
theory and tried to pin Nita's murder on one of Hamilton's finest bunch
of people, but you'll have to admit now that every detail of this set-up
bears me out."
"Yes?"
"Sure. This is the way I figure it out: Sprague has good reason to be
afraid he's next on the program. He's nervous. He hops a taxi at his
hotel and comes here--can't stick to his room any longer. Wants a little
human companionship. This crowd here--and I have Miles' word for
it--ain't any too glad to see him, and shows it. He phones for a taxi to
go back to his hotel--about 9:15, that was, Miles says--but decides to
walk down the hill to meet it. Don't want to go back out on the porch
and lie about having had a good time, when he hasn't.... Well, he opens
the front door, or what would be the front door if this was any ordinary
house, but before he steps out he sees or hears something--probably a
rustling in the hedge across the driveway, or maybe he even sees a face,
in the light from the lanterns on each side of the door. He feels sure
Nita's murderer has trailed him and is lying in wait for him. In a panic
he darts into this room, and don't turn on the light for fear he'll be
seen from the windows, but he can see well enough to make out how the
screens work, and he was familiar with the house anyway. I'll bet you
anything you like Sprague stayed in this room for an hour or two, till
he thought the coast was clear, then eased up this screen, intending to
climb out of the window and drop to the ground.... Not much of a drop at
that. You can see that the tall hedge on this side of the driveway comes
pretty near up to these windows.... Well, I figure he laid his hat on
this cabinet, intending to reach in for it when he was outside, but that
he had already made some little noise which the gunman was listening
for, and that when he got the screen up this high, the gunman, crouching
under the window, let go with the same gun and silencer that he used to
bump off Nita.... I've got Miles' word for it that neither he nor
anybody else heard a shot.... Of course, nobody knew Sprague was in
here, and since his hat and stick was both missing from the hall closet,
they took it for granted he'd beat it.... Any objections to that theory,
boy?"
"Just a few--one in particular," Dundee said. "But I grant it's a good
one, provided Dr. Price's autopsy bears you out as to the course of the
bullet, and that Carraway finds Sprague's fingerprints on that
contrivance for raising the screen. Even then----"
But Dundee was not allowed to finish his sentence, for Strawn was
summoned to the telephone, by Whitson. When he returned there was a
slightly bewildered look on his heavy old face.
"That's funny.... Collins--the lad I sent to check up on the taxi
companies--says he's located the driver that answered Sprague's call
last night. The driver says he was called about 9:15, told to come
immediately, and to wait for Sprague at the foot of the hill, on the
main road. He says he waited there until half past ten, then went on
back to town, sore'n a boiled owl."
"It doesn't look exactly as if Sprague were afraid of anyone _outside of
this house_ last night, does it?" Dundee asked. "By the way, I suppose
you've sent for everyone who was here?"
"Sure!" But again Captain Strawn looked uncomfortable. "But we haven't
been able to locate the Beale girl and Clive Hammond."