Murder at Bridge Part 41

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 Sat.u.r.day 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 Sat.u.r.day 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:

JOE SAVELLI "GETS" BROTHER'S SLAYER

And smaller headlines informed the sensation-loving public:

"SWALLOW-TAIL SAMMY" SAVELLI'S DEATH AVENGED BY BROTHER WHO SURRENDERS TO POLICE; "SLICK" THOMPSON, ALLEGED MEMBER OF SAMMY'S GANG, SHOT TO DEATH ON SIXTH AVENUE.

Still smaller head-type acknowledged that Joe Savelli, after giving himself up, with a revolver in his hand, had disclaimed any knowledge of or connection with the murders of Juanita Leigh Selim and Dexter Sprague.

Two hours later, Dundee received a long telegram from District Attorney Sanderson:

"INFORMED BY EVENING SUN SAVELLI ANGLE COMPLETE WASHOUT STOP HAVE YOU MADE ANY PROGRESS ALONG OTHER LINES STOP HAVE INFORMED REPORTERS YOU WORKING INDEPENDENTLY WITH STRONG CHANCE OF SOLVING BOTH CASES STOP WOULD LIKE YOU HERE FOR ADJOURNED INQUESTS ON BOTH MURDERS MONDAY STOP MOTHER IMPROVED AM ON JOB AGAIN"

Since Dundee felt that there was little chance of following through either on the scandals which Gladys Earle had hinted at, or on Nita's strangely secret marriage of twelve years before, he immediately dispatched a wire to Sanderson, a.s.suring him that vital progress had been made and that he would leave New York on the four o'clock train west, arriving in Hamilton Sunday morning at 8:50. The concluding sentence of the wire was:

"SUGGEST YOU PACIFY PRESS WITH ONLY VAGUEST OF HINTS."

Sanderson's wire, with its confession of an interview on Dundee's trip to New York, had upset him and left him with a cold, sick feeling of fear that, stumbling half in darkness, the district attorney had unwittingly warned the murderer of Nita Selim and Dexter Sprague that his special investigator was on the right track. But he consoled himself with the hope that the final sentence of his answering telegram would prevent any further damage.

But he was wrong. An hour before he reached his destination on Sunday morning he went into the dining car and found a copy of _The Hamilton Morning News_ beside his plate. And on the front page was a photograph of dead Nita, her black hair in a French roll, her slim, rec.u.mbent body clad in the royal blue velvet dress. Beneath the picture was the caption:

"What part does the outmoded royal blue velvet dress which Nita Selim chose as a shroud play in the solution of her murder?... That is the question which Special Investigator Dundee, attached to the district attorney's office, who is due home this morning from fruitful detective work in New York, is undoubtedly prepared to answer."

Dundee was still seething with futile rage when he climbed the stairs to his apartment. On the floor just inside his living room door he found an envelope--unstamped and bearing his name in typing.

The note inside, on paper as plain as the envelope, was typed and unsigned.

"If Detective Dundee will consult page 410 of the latest WHO'S WHO IN AMERICA, he will find a tip which should aid him materially in solving the two murder cases which seem to be proving too difficult for his inexperience."

A wry grin at his anonymous correspondent's unfriendly gibe was just twisting his lips when a double knock sounded on the living room door, which he had not completely closed.

"Come in, Belle!"

A morose, slack-mouthed mulatto girl in ancient felt slippers sidled into the room.

"Howdy, Mistah Dundee," Belle greeted him listlessly. "You got back, lak de papers said you would, didn' yuh? An' I ain't sayin' I ain't glad!

Dat parrot o' yoahs sho is Gawd's own nuisance--nippin' at mah fingahs an' screechin' his fool head off.... 'Cose I ain't sayin' it's _his_ fault--keepin' dat young gemman on de secon' flo' awake las'

night.... But lak I say to Mistah Wilson, when he lights into me dis mawnin', runnin' off at de mouf 'cause I fo'got to put Cap'n's covah on his cage las' night, I ain't de onliest one what fo'gits in dis hyar house.... Comin' home Gawd knows when, leavin' de front do' unlocked de res' o' de night, so's bugglers and murderers and Gawd knows who could walk right in hyar----"

Dundee, itching to consult his own copy of "Who's Who", flung a glance at the parrot's cage, intending to pacify the mournful mulatto by scolding his "Watson" roundly. But he changed his mind and consoled the chambermaid instead:

"Just tell Mr. Wilson that for once he's wrong. You did _not_ forget to cover Cap'n's cage, Belle. Look!"

The girl's dull eyes bulged as they took in the cage, completely swathed in a square of black silk.

"Gawd's sake, Mistah Dundee!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "_I_ didn't put dat covah on dat bird's cage! An' neithah did Mis' Bowen, 'cause she been laid up with rheumatiz eveh since you lef, an' eveh las' endurin' thing in dis ol' house has been lef fo' me to do!"

"Then I suppose the indignant Mr. Wilson came up and covered Cap'n himself," Dundee suggested, crossing the room to the bookcase which stood within reaching distance of his big leather-covered armchair.

"Him?" Belle snorted. "How he gonna get in hyer widout no key? 'Sides, he'd a-tol' me if'n----"

"Belle, how many times must I ask you not to misplace my things?" Dundee cut in irritably, for he was tired of the discussion, and angry that his copy of "Who's Who" was missing from its customary place in the bookcase.

"Me?... I ain't teched none o' yoah things, 'cep'n to dus' 'em and lay 'em down whar I foun' 'em," Belle retorted, mournfulness submerged in anger.

Dundee looked about the room, then his eyes alighted upon the missing book, lying upon a shelf that extended across the top of an old-fas.h.i.+oned hot-air register, set high in the wall between the two windows. The thick red volume lay close against the wall, its gold-lettered "rib" facing the room.

"Belle, tell me the truth, and I shall not be angry: did you put that red book on that shelf?" Dundee asked, his voice steady and kindly in spite of his excitement.

"Nossuh! I ain't teched it!"

"And you did not put the cover over my parrot's cage, although I had tipped you well to feed Cap'n and cover him at night," Dundee said severely.

"I gotta heap o' wuk to do----"

"And you say that Mr. Wilson, one of the two young men on the second floor, left the front door unlocked when he came in last night?" Dundee asked. "Does he admit it?"

"Ya.s.suh," Belle told him sulkily. "He say he was tiahed when he got home 'long 'bout midnight, an' he clean fo'got to turn de key in de do' an'

shoot de bolt."

"Thanks, Belle. That will be all now," and Dundee did a great deal to dispel the chambermaid's gloom by presenting her with a dollar bill.

When she had gone, the detective read the note again, then looked at it and its envelope more closely. They had a strangely familiar look.... Suddenly he jerked open a drawer of his desk, on which his new noiseless typewriter stood, selected a sheet of plain white bond, and rolled it into the machine. Quickly he tapped out a copy of the strange, taunting message.

Yes! The left-hand margin was identical, the typing and its degree of blackness were identical, and the paper on which he had made the copy was exactly the same as that on which the original had been written.

The truth flashed into his mind. It was no coincidence that he had a copy of the very book to which his unknown correspondent referred him.

For the note had been written in this very room, on stationery conveniently at hand, on the noiseless typewriter which had been far more considerate about not betraying the intruder than had the parrot whose slumbers had been disturbed.

"But why did my unknown friend risk arrest as a burglar if he wanted to give me an honest tip?" Dundee remarked aloud to the parrot, who croaked an irrelevant answer:

"Bad Penny! Bad Penny!"

"I'm afraid, 'my dear Watson,' that those words will not be so helpful in this case as they were when your mistress was murdered," Dundee a.s.sured his parrot absently, for he was studying the peculiar situation from every angle. "Another question, Cap'n--why did the unknown bother to take my 'Who's Who' out of the bookcase, where I should normally have looked for it, and put it on that particular shelf?"

Warily, for his scalp was p.r.i.c.kling with a premonition of danger, Dundee crossed the room to the shelf, but his hand did not reach out for the red book, which might have been expected to solve one problem, at least.

"_Why the shelf?_" he asked himself again. Why not the desk top, or the mantelpiece, or the smoking table beside the big armchair?

The shelf, with its drapery of rather fine old silk tapestry, offered no answer in itself, for it held nothing except the red book, a Chinese bowl, and a humidor of tobacco. And beneath the shelf was nothing but the old-fas.h.i.+oned register, the opening covered with a screwed-on metal screen which was a ma.s.s of big holes to permit the escape of hot air when the furnace was going in the winter....

Suddenly Dundee stooped and stared with eyes that were widened with excitement and a certain amount of horror. Then he rose, and, standing far to one side, picked up the fat volume which lay on the shelf. As he had expected, a bullet whizzed noiselessly across the room and buried itself in the plaster of the wall opposite--a bullet which would have ploughed through his own heart if he had obeyed his first impulse and gone directly to the shelf to obey the instructions in the note.

But more had happened than the whizzing flight of a bullet through one of the holes of the hot-air register. The "Who's Who" had been jerked almost out of Dundee's hand before he had lifted the heavy volume many inches from the shelf. Coincidental with the disappearance of a bit of white string which had been pinned to a thin page of the book was a metallic clatter, followed swiftly by the faint sound of a b.u.mp far below.