CHAPTER NINE
For the first time during the difficult interview Dundee was sure thatLydia Carr was lying. For a fraction of a second her single eye wavered,the lid flickered, then came her harsh, flat denial:
"I didn't see nobody."
"I presume your basement room has a window looking out upon the backgarden?" Dundee persisted.
"Yes, it has, but I didn't waste no time looking out of it," Lydiaanswered grimly. "I was laying down, with an ice cap against my jaw."
She _had_ seen someone, Dundee told himself. But the truth would beharder to extract from that stern, scar-twisted mouth, than theabscessed tooth had been.
Finally, when her lone eye did not again waver under his steady gaze, hedismissed her, or rather, returned her to Captain Strawn's custody.
"Well, Janet, I hope you're satisfied!" Penny Crain said bitingly, asshe dashed unashamed tears from her brown eyes. "If ever a maid wasabsolutely crazy about her mistress--"
"I'm _not_ satisfied!" Janet Raymond retorted furiously. "She's just thesort that would harbor a grudge for _years_, and then, all hopped upwith dope--"
"Stop it, Janet!" Lois Dunlap commanded with a curtness that set oddlyupon her kind, pleasant face.
"Listen here, Dundee," Tracey Miles broke in, almost humbly. "My wife isgetting pretty anxious about the kiddies. The nurse quit on usyesterday, and--"
"And _my_ little wife is worrying herself sick over our boy--just threemonths old," Judge Marshall joined the protest. "I'm all for assistingjustice, sir, having served on the bench myself, as you doubtless know,but--"
"I'm all right, really, Hugo," Karen Marshall faltered.
"Please be patient a little longer," Dundee urged apologetically. Afterall, only one of these people could be guilty of Nita Selim's murder,and it _was_ beastly to have to hold them like this.... _But one wasguilty!_
"You knew Mrs. Selim in New York, Sprague?" he asked, whirling suddenlyupon the man with the Broadway stamp.
"I met Nita Leigh, as I always heard her called, when I was assistantdirector in the Altamont Studios, out on Long Island," Sprague answered,his black eyes trying to meet Dundee's with an air of completefrankness. "Wonderful little girl, and a great dancer ... Screeneddamned well, too. I had hoped to give her a break some day, at somethingbetter than doubling for stars who can't dance. But it happened thatNita, who never forgot even a casual friend, had a chance to give me aleg up herself--a chance to show what I can really do with a camera."
"I knew I'd seen your name somewhere!" Dundee exclaimed. "So you're theman the Chamber of Commerce is dickering with.... Going to make a movieof the founding, growth and beauties of the city of Hamilton, aren'tyou?"
"If I get the contract--yes," Sprague answered with palpably assumedmodesty. "My plans, naturally, call for a great deal of research work, alarge expenditure of money, a very careful selection of 'stars'--"
"I see," Dundee interrupted. Then his tone changed, became slow andmenacing in its terrible emphasis: "_And you really couldn't let even agood friend like Nita Selim upset those fine plans of yours, could you,Sprague?_"
Even as he put the sinister question, the detective was exulting tohimself: "Light at last! Now I know why this Broadway bounder wasreceived into an exclusive crowd like this! Every last female in thebunch hoped to be the star of Sprague's motion picture!"
"I don't know what you're driving at, Dundee!" Sprague was on his feet,his black eyes blazing out of a chalky face. "If you're accusing meof--of--"
"Of killing Nita Selim?" Dundee asked lazily. "Oh, no! Not--yet,Sprague! I was just remembering a rather puzzling note of yours Ihappened to read this afternoon.... That note you sent by specialmessenger to Breakaway Inn this noon, you know."
He had little interest for the sudden crumpling of Dexter Sprague intothe chair from which he had risen. Instead, as Dundee drew the note fromhis coat pocket, his eyes swept around the room, noted the undisguisedrelief on every face, the almost ghoulish satisfaction with which thatclose-knit group of friends seized upon an outsider as the probablemurderer of that other outsider whom they had rashly taken into theirsacred circle. Even Penny Crain, thorny little stickler for fair playthat she was, relaxed with a tremulous sigh.
"You admit that this note, signed by what I take to be your 'pet name,'was written by your hand, Sprague?" Dundee asked matter-of-factly, as heextended the sheet of bluish notepaper.
"I--no--yes, I wrote it," Sprague faltered. "But it doesn't mean athing--not a damned thing! Just a little private matter between Nita andmyself--"
"Rather queer wording for an unimportant message, Sprague," Dundeeinterrupted. "Let me refresh your memory: 'Nita, my sweet,'" he began toread slowly, "'Forgive your bad boy for last night's row, but I _must_warn you again to watch your step. You've already gone too far. Ofcourse I love you and understand, _but_--Be good, Baby, _and you won'tbe sorry_!--Dexy....' Well, Sprague?"
Sprague wiped his perspiring hands on his handkerchief. "I know itsounds--odd, under the circumstances," he admitted desperately, "butlisten, Dundee, and I'll try to make that damned note as clear aspossible to a man who doesn't know his Broadway.... Why, man, it isn'teven a love letter! Everybody on Broadway talks and writes to each otherlike that, without meaning a thing!... As I told you, Nita Leigh, orMrs. Selim, remembered some little kindnesses I had done her on theAltamont lot, when they got her to take up that Little Theater work Mrs.Dunlap is interested in, and found that the Chamber of Commerce wasinterested in putting Hamilton into the movies, in a big boostercampaign. She wired me and I thought it looked good enough to dropeverything and come.... Of course Nita and I got to be closer friends,but I swear to God we were just friends--"
"And what was the 'friendly' row about last night, Sprague?"
"There wasn't a row, really," Sprague protested with desperateearnestness. "It was merely that Nita insisted on my casting her for theheroine of the movie--a thing I knew would alienate the whole crowdthat's been so kind to us--"
"Why--since she was a professional actress?" Dundee demanded.
"Because she isn't a Hamilton girl, of course, and the Chamber ofCommerce wants the cast to be all local talent," Sprague answered,lapsing unconsciously into the present tense.
"And just what were you warning her against?"
"I'd told her before to watch her step," Sprague went on more easily."You see, Dundee, Nita Leigh is--was--a first-class little vamp, and Icould see she was playing her cards with the men here--" he indicatedfour of Hamilton's most prominent Chamber of Commerce members with awave of his hand--"to get them all so crazy about her that they'd votefor her as the star of the picture. I could see her point, all right. Itwould have been a big chance for her to show how she could act.... Well,I could see it was dangerous business, and that the girls--" and hesmiled jerkily at the tense women in the living room, "--were gettingpretty wrought up over the way Nita was behaving.... All except Mrs.Dunlap," he added. "_She_ didn't want to act in the picture, and Nitadidn't make any headway at all with Peter Dunlap."
"Thanks, Mr. Sprague," Lois Dunlap drawled, with an amused quirk of herbroad mouth.
"Get along with the row, Sprague!" Dundee commanded impatiently.
"As I said, it wasn't really a row. I just pleaded with Nita last nightto smooth down the girls' rumpled feathers, and to make it clear to themthat she didn't want the star part in the picture any more than shewanted any other woman's husband or sweetheart.... Just a friendlywarning--" Sprague drew a deep breath. "And that's all the notemeant--absolutely!"
"I see," Dundee said quietly, then quoted: _"'Be good, Baby, and youwon't be sorry!'"_
"That meant, of course," Sprague took him up eagerly, "that I'd see shegot a real part in a regular movie, after I'd made my hit with theHamilton picture."
Very plausible, very plausible indeed, Dundee reflected. And yet--
Finally he lifted his head and let his eyes dart from face to face.
"All of you have stated, separately and collectively, that you
heard noshot fired in Nita Selim's bedroom this afternoon," he said sharply. "Isthat true?"
He was answered by weary nods or sullen affirmations.
"Then," he continued, "I must conclude that you are all lying or thatNita Selim was killed with a gun equipped with a Maxim silencer."
Never was a detective more unprepared for the effect of his words upon agroup of possible suspects than was Special Investigator Dundee....