With a sharp exclamation of excitement and triumph, Dundee read Penny's
telegram:
"HAMILTON EVENING SUN DATE OF MAY FIFTH NINETEEN TWENTY TWO
PUBLISHED STORY OF SUICIDE ANITA LEE ARTISTS MODEL BUT PICTURE
ACCOMPANYING WAS UNDOUBTEDLY NITA LEIGH SELIM'S STOP NO CORRECTION
FOLLOWED STOP WHAT DOES IT MEAN"
"What does it mean?" Dundee repeated exultantly to himself. "It means,
my darling little Penny, that _anyone in Hamilton who had any interest
in the matter believed Nita Leigh Selim was dead, and thought the
spelling of her name was wrong, not the picture itself_!... The question
is _who_ read that story and gazed on that picture with exquisite
relief?"
Two hours before he had dismissed as impossible or highly impractical
his impulse to investigate the eleven-year-old scandal on Flora Hackett,
who was now Flora Miles, as told him by Gladys Earle of the Forsyte
School. Even more difficult would it be to find out why Janet Raymond's
mother had taken her abroad for a year. Of course--he had ruefully told
himself--Nita Leigh might have been lucky--or unlucky enough to run
across documentary proof of one of the scandals of which Gladys Earle
had told her, or had dared to blackmail her victim by dark hints, as
Miss Earle had unconsciously suggested to her.
But this new development could not be ignored. A picture of Nita Leigh
as a suicide had appeared eight years ago in a Hamilton paper, and the
paper had either remained unaware of the error or had thought it not
worth the space for a correction.... _Eight years ago!..._
Eight years ago in June three weddings had occurred in Hamilton! The
Dunlap, the Miles, the Drake wedding. And within the last year and a
half Judge Marshall, after proposing season after season to the most
popular debutante, had married lovely little Karen Plummer. Suddenly a
sentence from Ralph Hammond's story of his engagement to Nita Leigh
Selim popped up in Dundee's memory: "And once I got cold-sick because I
thought she might still be married, but she said her husband had married
again, and I wasn't to ask questions or worry about him."
If Ralph Hammond had reported Nita accurately she had not said she was
_divorced_. She had merely said her husband was _married again_! Why was
Ralph to ask no questions? Divorced wives were not usually so
reticent....
Had Nita planned to commit the crime of bigamy? If not, when and where
and how had she secured a divorce?
To Serena Hart, years before, she had denied any intention of getting a
divorce, for two reasons--_because she did not know where her husband
was_, and because, being married although husbandless, was a protection
against matrimonial temptations.
To Gladys Earle, a year ago in April, she had confided that she could
not marry again, because she was not divorced and because she did not
know the whereabouts of her husband.
And so far as New York reporters had been able to find out, Nita Leigh
had done nothing to alter her status as a married woman during the past
year. Moreover, if Nita had secured either a divorce or a legal
separation, her "faithful and beloved maid," Lydia Carr, would certainly
have known of it. And Lydia had vehemently protested more than once to
Bonnie Dundee that she knew nothing of Nita's husband, although she had
worked for the musical comedy dancer for five years. Surely if Nita,
loving and trusting Lydia as she did, had entered into negotiations of
any kind with or concerning her husband during the last year, her maid
would have been the first to know of them. And yet----
Suddenly Dundee jumped to his feet and began to pace the floor of his
hotel bedroom. He was remembering the belated confidence that John C.
Drake, banker, had made to him the morning before--after the discovery
of Dexter Sprague's murder. He recalled Drake's reluctant statement
almost word for word:
"About that $10,000 which Nita deposited with our bank, Dundee.... When
she made the first deposit of $5,000 on April 28, she explained it with
an embarrassed laugh as 'back alimony', an instalment of which she had
succeeded in collecting from her former husband. And, naturally, when
she made the second deposit on May 5, I presumed the same explanation
covered that sum, too, though I confess I was puzzled by the fact that
both big deposits had been made in cash."
_In cash!_
Had Nita, by any chance, been telling a near-truth? Had she been
blackmailing her own husband--a husband who had dared marry again,
believing his deserted wife to be dead--and justifying herself by
calling it "back alimony?"
But--wasn't it, in reality, no matter what coercion Nita had used in
getting the money, exactly that?... _Back alimony! And the price of her
silence before the world and the wife who was not really a wife...._
In a new light, Bonnie Dundee studied the character of the woman who had
been murdered--possibly to make her silence eternal.
Lois Dunlap had liked, even loved her. The other women and girls of "the
crowd"--that exclusive, self-centered clique of Hamilton's most socially
prominent women--must have liked her fairly well and found her
congenial, in spite of their jealousy of her popularity with the men of
the crowd, or they would not have tolerated her, regardless of Lois
Dunlap's championship of her protegée.
Gladys Earle had found her "the sweetest, kindest, most generous person
I ever met"--Gladys Earle, who envied and hated all girls who were more
fortunate than she.
Serena Hart, former member of New York's Junior League and still listed
in the Social Register, had found her the only congenial member of the
chorus she had invaded as the first step toward stardom. And Serena Hart
had the reputation of being a woman of character and judgment, a kind
and wise and great woman....
Finally, Ralph Hammond had loved Nita and wanted to marry her.
Was it possible that Nita Selim's only crime, into which she had been
led by her infatuation for Dexter Sprague, had been to demand, secretly,
financial compensation from a husband who had married and deserted her,
a husband who, believing her dead, had married again?
But who was the man whose picture--to spin a new theory--Nita had
recognized as that of her husband among the male members of the cast of
"The Beggar's Opera," when Lois Dunlap had proudly exhibited the
"stills" of that amateur performance?
With excitement hammering at his pulses, Dundee took the bunch of
photographs which Lois Dunlap had willingly given him, and studied the
picture that contained the entire cast--the picture which had first
attracted Nita's attention. And again despair overwhelmed him, for every
one of his possible male suspects was in that group....
But he could not keep his thoughts from racing on.... Men who stepped
out of their class and went on parties with chorus girls frequently did
so under assumed names, he reflected. Serena Hart was authority for the
information that Nita's had been a sudden marriage. Was it not entirely
possible that the man who married Nita in 1918 had done so half-drunk,
both on liquor and infatuation, and that he had not troubled to explain
to Nita his motives for having used an assumed name or to write in his
real name on the application for a marriage license? Had Nita's private
detective journeyed out to _Hamilton_ years ago in a fruitless attempt
to locate "Matthew Selim?"
Bonnie Dundee lay awake for hours Friday night turning these and a
hundred other questions over and over in his too-active mind, and slept
at last, only to awake Saturday with a plan of procedure which he was
sensible enough to realize promised small chance of success.
And he was right. Not in Manhattan, or in any of the other boroughs of
New York City, did he find any record of a marriage license issued to
Juanita Leigh and Matthew Selim. Not only was it entirely probable that
Juanita Leigh was a stage name and that Nita had married conscientiously
under her real name, but it was equally possible that the license had
been secured in New Jersey or Connecticut.
When he gave up his quest at noon Saturday and returned to his hotel,
Dundee bought at the newsstand a paper whose headline convinced him that
Sergeant Turner was, at that moment, even more discouraged than himself.
For the big type told the world: