"That would be impossible, Miles," Dundee said deliberately. "_For your
wife is already dead!_" Then his clear words rang out like the knell of
doom:
"Tracey Arthur Miles, I arrest you for the murder of your wife, known as
Juanita Leigh Selim, and for the murder of Dexter Sprague. And it is my
duty to warn you that anything you say may be used against you."
Tracey Miles lifted his ashen face and stared at the detective blankly,
as though he had gone deaf and blind. "All--over--isn't it? May I--have
a--drink?" he managed to articulate at last.
"Poor devil! He needs it," the too-soft-hearted young detective told
himself, as Miles poured a drink from the almost empty whiskey decanter
and raised the little glass to his lips.
"I have--nothing--to say!" the murderer gasped thickly, then fell
heavily to the floor.
* * * * *
It was three-quarters of an hour later. District Attorney Sanderson,
Captain Strawn and Dundee were alone in the house where Nita "Selim" had
been murdered and where her husband had confessed his crimes by
committing suicide. The morgue ambulance had come and gone....
"I should have known," Dundee admitted ruefully, as the three men
entered Nita's bedroom, "that so ingenious a criminal as Tracey Miles
would not have failed to provide against the possibility of discovery.
He must have seized an opportunity to spill cyanide of potassium into
the decanter when my eyes were off him for a moment--and upon Lois
Dunlap."
"I'm glad he did," Sanderson said curtly. "But it was ghastly that poor
Lois had to know that it was she, in all innocence, who fired the shot
that killed her friend."
"It was," Dundee sighed. "But I believed that the only way I could make
Miles confess was to frighten him into thinking Flora would be killed in
the same manner.... Well, it worked!"
"Captain Strawn and I are still in the dark as to exactly how Miles
managed his wife's murder," Sanderson reminded him. "This morning you
chose to tell us nothing more than that a Hamilton man had married Nita
Leigh in New York in January, 1918, and that eight years ago, when he
saw her picture in _The Hamilton Evening Sun_, along with the story that
'Anita Lee' had committed suicide, he felt free to marry again.... You
said then you knew who the man was but you would not even tell us how
you knew--"
"Because I had very little actual proof then," Dundee answered. "As to
who he was, the salient clue had been staring me in the face the whole
time, but it was not until I was fooling with a set of anagrams last
night, idly spelling out the names of all the men who _might_ have
married her and then murdered her, that I saw it--"
"Saw _what_?" Strawn demanded irritably.
"That Selim is simply Miles spelled backwards," Dundee explained.
"Possibly because he considered it the sophisticated thing to do, Miles
used an assumed name at the party at which he met Nita Leigh--and
married her under that name shortly afterward. Even the first name,
'Mat', by which she knew him, was only his initials reversed."
"Simple--but clever," Sanderson commented.
"Just as were all of Miles' schemes after Nita, egged on by Sprague,
turned up in Hamilton to demand 'back alimony' as the price of her
silence.... But let me show you how he killed his wife."
He strode to the big bronze lamp. "It took me less than an hour today to
reconstruct the death machine so that it would be almost exactly as it
was when Miles finished his work just before 2:30 on Saturday, May
24--and as it remained until he had an opportunity to come back here and
dismantle it. Trust him to find out that the guard was removed from the
house Thursday!"
As he spoke, he was unscrewing the big, jewel-studded bowl of the bronze
lamp. Wedged, at a down-slanting angle inside the bowl, which was twelve
inches in diameter, was Judge Marshall's snub-nosed automatic, the
attached Maxim silencer projecting slightly from the hole whose jewel
was missing.
"Lydia told me last night over the telephone--and very much surprised
she was, too, when I swore her to secrecy--that the jewel had been lost
when the lamp was shipped from New York," Dundee explained. "There's a
blank cartridge in the gun now, of course, but Miles, in his panic, took
my words literally.... See the electro-magnet strapped to the gun butt?
He got it from the bell Sprague had installed in Lydia's bedroom, and he
returned it when he was 'cleaning up', so that the bell would ring
again. The magnet he connected with the electric wire in one of the two
lamp sockets, as you see it now, and the long cord of the lamp was
connected with the wire of the bell in the dining room--so connected
that when anyone stepped on the two little metal plates under the dining
room rug, the kitchen bell would ring and the gun would be fired
simultaneously. But if you will examine the jewel hole," he suggested,
"you will see that Miles had to enlarge it considerably, using a reamer,
which I found in the tool chest in the basement, along with all the
apparatus Sprague had bought for installing Nita's alarm bell. I could
see no reason for Sprague's having needed a reamer for his little job,
however, and this morning I was lucky enough to get proof that Miles
himself had purchased it at a hardware store on the Tuesday before
Nita's murder."
"How did he connect the lamp cord with the dining room bell?" Strawn
puzzled. "These modern houses don't have exposed wiring--"
"You forget Sprague's wiring for the alarm bell from here to Lydia's
room!" and Dundee threw back the rug, showing them the hole in the
floor, out of which came a short length of electric wire, ending in two
small metal plates. But attached now to the wire was the cord from the
bronze lamp.
"The plug of the lamp cord is nearly out of the baseboard outlet behind
the bookcase, just as Miles left it, so that there is no contact with
electricity there. And the rug, which almost entirely covers the floor,
hides, as you have seen, the joining of the two wires. An inexplicable
wrapping of adhesive tape both on the lamp cord and on the wire of
Nita's alarm bell here gave me the clue.... In installing the alarm
bell, Sprague copied the arrangement under the dining table, of course.
And Miles simply had to drop a bit, fastened to the augur Sprague had
bought and used for his own job, down the four inches which separate the
dining room floor from the basement ceiling, boring a hole through the
ceiling. It was that fresh-bored hole in the ceiling that I could not
understand, and which Ralph Hammond assured me was not there Saturday
morning before Nita was killed.... Miles joined a piece of electric wire
to the dining room bell wires, and pushed it down through the hole he
had bored into the basement ceiling. Now if you'll come down with me--"
When the three men stood staring upward at the basement ceiling, Dundee
continued:
"See this long wire running along the ceiling from the hole beneath the
dining room bell? The tacks Miles used to secure it were also returned
to the tool chest, but he could not get rid of either the augur hole or
the tiny holes showing the course of the wire.... Let's follow it."
He led them across the basement to a door leading into a dank,
unfinished portion of the cellar, directly east of Lydia's bedroom and
beneath Nita's. The wire whose course they were following led under the
top frame of the door, and, with a flashlight in his hand, Dundee showed
how it continued along a rafter until it reached the place where it was
joined, by adhesive tape, to the wire Sprague had dropped from Nita's
bedroom floor above.
"Miles simply cut the wire here where it enters another hole through
Lydia's bedroom wall, and attached the new wire," Dundee explained. "The
connection between the dining room bell and the electro-magnet in the
lamp upstairs was then complete.... Sprague had bought yards too much of
the wire--fortunately for Miles' scheme."
"But what a chance Miles took on the bullet's not hitting her in a fatal
spot!" Sanderson commented in an awed voice.
"Not much of a chance!" Dundee denied. "He would fire the gun only when
he knew Nita was seated before her dressing-table. Experienced marksman
that he was, he could calculate the path of the bullet to a nicety. Of
course the machine had to be used that very day. As you know Nita
herself gave him his chance. Miles, standing at the sideboard, which was
separated from Nita's dressing table only by a thin wall, listened until
the first faint notes of _Juanita_ told him that Nita was powdering her
face. He could be almost positive that Nita was sitting down to her
task.... The poor girl saw nothing to alarm her, but the gun kicked when
the shot was fired by Lois' innocent stepping upon the dining room bell,
and the big lamp was rocked so that it banged against the window frame,
shattering the one bulb Miles had left in it. Of course he moved the
lamp a foot or so, in the resulting excitement. And if Nita had been
wounded only, living to tell how the shot was fired, Miles would have
committed suicide then and there."
"What if Nita had not asked him to mix cocktails or had not gone to
powder her face?" Strawn asked.
"The whole party was going to dine and dance at the Country Club.
Miles would have escorted her home, as he had done on Monday night, when
Nita had probably made her last demand. He could have counted on Nita's
going into her bedroom to powder her face, even if he had had to tell
her that her nose was shiny, and would himself then have gone to the
dining room, on the excuse that he needed a drink before discussing
'business'.... But I must tell you that on Saturday morning, according
to the telephone operator in Miles' office, into whom I put the fear of
the Lord and the law when I interviewed her this morning, Nita rang Miles
to say she must see him as soon as possible, her unexpressed intention
being to tell him that she was not going to make him come across again.
Miles--the telephone operator confessed to having listened-in on the
Whole conversation--told her he would be right out, but Nita said she and
Lydia were going into Hamilton and would not be back until 2:30--the
time the bridge game was scheduled to begin. That was the opportunity
Miles had been praying for, and he came on out, having previously stolen
the gun and silencer and having studied this house--"
"How had he got in?" Sanderson wanted to know.
"Judge Marshall had lent him a key in February, when Miles wanted to
show the house to an engaged young man in his offices, and Miles had
neglected to return it.... Well, when he arrived, he found Ralph Hammond
here, and had to leave, waiting at a safe distance, probably, until the
coast was clear about one o'clock. Even so, he had more than an hour to
do his carefully planned job.... _Nita had to die!_ Miles could not
continue to pay her large sums of money, since he was really only an
employe of Flora's. Everything he held dear in the world was threatened.
He loved Flora, he adored his children, and he could not give up the
luxury and social position which his bigamous marriage with Flora----"
"Why didn't he make a clean breast of the whole mess to Flora, since he
had not married her until he believed Nita Leigh was dead?" Sanderson
interrupted.
"You must remember that Flora was carrying on a violent flirtation with
Sprague--'vamping' him to get the lead in the Hamilton movie, if Sprague
got the job of directing it," Dundee reminded him. "Miles, victim of a
deep-rooted sexual inferiority complex, must have felt sure that Flora,
on discovering she was not legally married, would snatch at the chance
to marry Sprague--which was of course what Sprague had planned in case
Nita published the truth."
"But you were wrong about the secret shelf! The gun was never there!"
Strawn gloated.
"No. But it was the absence of fingerprints on the pivoting panel and
shelf which kept me on the right track. Miles had searched the shelf for
the marriage certificate which he could not know Nita had already
burned. Probably, too, he had written her a few letters during their
short courtship----"
"How was Sprague killed?" Sanderson interrupted impatiently.
Dundee led the way across the basement to a cubbyhole next to the coal
room, entered and came out with a narrow, deep drawer of ebony inlaid
with mother-of-pearl....
"First I must tell you that Miles got the gun out of the lamp that
Saturday night, parking his car at a distance and sneaking into the
house while I was talking with Lydia in the basement. We can guess that
he stowed gun, silencer and electro-magnet in a pocket of his car. At
any rate, he came back noisily enough a little later, to offer Lydia a
job as nurse in his home. Doubtless he assured himself that she knew
nothing, or poor Lydia would have gone the way of her mistress and
Sprague."
"Was Sprague----?" Strawn began.
"Despite my warning," Dundee went on, refusing to be hurried, "Sprague
made a demand for blackmail money upon Miles. It is possible that
Sprague, also sneaking into the house that Saturday night to get his
bag, saw Miles retrieve the gun. At any rate, Sprague knew that Miles
was the only person among all the company who had a real motive for
killing Nita Selim, and he undoubtedly blackmailed Miles as a murderer
as well as a bigamist. Perhaps Miles put him off for a day or two, but
on Wednesday Judge Marshall begged for a bridge game, and Miles seized
the opportunity of again having the original crowd present--a sort of
wall of integrity surrounding and including him. For I don't think he
really wanted to involve his best friends as suspects. I believe he
merely wanted to hide among them--apparently as above suspicion as they
were. And there is safety in numbers, you know.... At any rate, Miles
made an appointment Wednesday afternoon with Sprague, telling him that,
if he would come to his home that evening, and manage to leave the
bridge game while he was dummy, he would find the money he was
demanding--_in a drawer of the cabinet that stood between the two
windows in the trophy room_!"
Dundee exhibited the drawer he had taken from the basement tool room.
"This drawer! I took it away from the Miles home this afternoon while
everyone but a chambermaid was at the inquest. Miles did not have time
to go home before going to your office, Mr. Sanderson, with the rest of
the crowd you had summoned for questioning. If he had, he would have
killed himself as soon as he found the incriminating drawer was missing
from the cabinet."
"But--_how_----?" Sanderson began, frowning with bewilderment.
"Very simple!" Dundee answered. "When Sprague pulled open this drawer,
which was set in the cabinet at just the height of his stomach, he
received a bullet in his heart.... See these four little holes?... A
vise was screwed into the bottom of the drawer so that it gripped the
gun with its silencer, at an upward angle. A piece of string was tied to
the trigger and fastened somehow to the underside of the drawer, so that
when Sprague pulled the drawer open the string was drawn taut and the
trigger pulled. Practically the same mechanism by which he tried to
murder me.... The kick of the gun jerked the drawer shut. All Miles had
to do when he was pretending to look for Sprague was to turn off the
trophy room light by a button--one of a series on the outside wall of
the hall closet. Probably it had been agreed between them that Sprague
would not return to the bridge game, hence Sprague's telephoning for a
taxi to wait for him at the foot of the hill, and his taking his hat and
stick into the trophy room with him."
"Then Miles had from midnight till dawn to remove the gun!"
"Yes. Some time during the night, after Flora was asleep with a
sedative, which she badly needed because of the quarrel--a genuine
one--which she and Tracey had had over Sprague--Miles slipped down to
the trophy room and removed the gun and vise. But he could not remove
the holes the screws had made, although he did cover the bottom of the
usually empty drawer with old pamphlets on the care and feeding of
dogs.... By the way, the chambermaid told me that her master spent about
half an hour before dinner that Thursday night in the trophy room,
'going over his fishing tackle'.... His next concern was to make the
murder jibe completely with Captain Strawn's theory of a gunman who had
trailed his quarry to the Miles home and shot him through the window.
The window was already open, but the screen had to be raised, too, and
Sprague's fingerprints had to be on the nickel catches by which the
screen curtain is raised or lowered. Of course Sprague had not touched
the screen----"
"Do you mean to say he lugged the corpse to the window and lifted it up
so that he could press the stiff fingers upon the nickel catches?"
Sanderson asked with a shudder. "What a fiend----"
"No," Dundee assured him. "That was unnecessary. He simply removed the
curtain screen, which is so designed that it can be taken down and put
up as easily as a window shade. He carried the screen--his own hands
protected by gloves, I suppose--to where Sprague's right hand lay _palm
upward_, on the floor, and pressed the thumb and forefinger against the
catches, making fingerprints all right, but they were reversed--as I
discovered when it occurred to me to examine the photographs of
Sprague's fingerprints in Carraway's office today. Miles could not turn
the stiff hand over without bruising the dead flesh; consequently the
print of the forefinger was on the catch where the thumb would normally
have left its mark--and vice versa.... Before I forget it, I should also
tell you that I found a master key hanging on the keyboard in the
butler's pantry. Big houses, with their many locks, are usually provided
with a master key, and Miles undoubtedly used that one to gain entrance
into my room after midnight Saturday morning."
"Where did you find the vise?" Strawn asked.
"In the tool chest right here, where he had also placed the reamer he
had bought. The vise probably belonged to Miles originally, but he was
taking no chances on anything's being found in his possession, provided
we tumbled to _how_ the two crimes were committed.... The reamer he must
have brought out here after he used it to enlarge the hole in my hot-air
register after midnight Sunday morning. It is possible he did his
cleaning up job here at the same time. It was safe enough to have lights
on, since the house is so isolated and there had been no guard here
since Thursday."
"Well--" Sanderson drew a deep breath. "He was a far cleverer man than
any of us suspected. The mechanical arrangements were absurdly easy to
rig up, in all three cases, but the _thinking_ of them----. It is a pity
Nita did not fear him as she feared Sprague's vengeance----"
"You're right," Dundee answered. "Nita did not fear Miles, not even when
she was making him pay and pay.... No woman could look at Miles and
believe him capable of murder. But a conviction of sexual inferiority
leads to strange things, as psychologists can tell you.... I believe
Miles married the only two women who ever fell in love with him, and
there can be no doubt that Nita really loved him, for she kept her
wedding dress for more than twelve years and chose it to be her shroud.
It is possible she was still fond of him, although she was infatuated
with Sprague when she came down here and was later sincerely in love
with Ralph Hammond. Another reason she did not fear Miles when she made
her will was that she counted on being able to tell him Saturday night
at the latest that she would never ask him for money again, if he would
trade silence for silence. How she hoped to secure Sprague's silence we
can only guess at. Probably she meant to buy it with the remainder of
the $10,000 she had already got from Miles--provided Sprague did not
kill her for ditching him as a lover. We know she foresaw that
possibility, since she willed the money to Lydia. Of course if Sprague
had proved tractable, Nita as Ralph's wife would have been able to
compensate Lydia handsomely for the injury she had done her."
"Poor Nita--and poor Flora!" Sanderson sighed, as he led the way up the
basement stairs. "Hello! Someone's calling you, Bonnie----"
Dundee ran through the kitchen and dining room and into the living room,
for he had recognized Penny Crain's sweet, husky contralto.
"What are _you_ doing back here, young woman?" he demanded. "You were
told to go home and forget all this ugly business----"
"Dad wants a private word with you," Penny explained, her brown eyes
luminous with happiness. "He's on the front porch.... And you ought to
see Mother! She looks like a twenty-year-old bride!"
When Dundee joined him on the porch, Roger Crain flushed painfully but
there was happiness in his eyes, too....
"Serena asked me to thank you for giving her Penny's message to pass
on to me," Crain began in a low voice. "I'm sure you've guessed a lot,
but what you probably don't know is that Serena used the securities
I had sent her for safe keeping, to play the market with. When she
knew what I had done here, she wouldn't let me touch a penny of the
money until she had turned it into enough to clear up all my debts in
Hamilton.... Then," and he sighed slightly, "she sent me home.... Not
that I'm sorry. I'm going to try to make Margaret and Penny happy, make
them and the town forget that I disgraced them----"
"Through?" Penny called from the doorway, and Bonnie Dundee forgot
Tracey Miles and all his ingenious schemes.