Crain! I did no such thing!" Flora Miles cried
hysterically. "I came running in--with--with the rest of you, and I
rushed over there just to see if I could see anybody running away across
the meadow--"

"My wife is right, sir," Tracey Miles added his word aggressively. "I
saw what she was doing--the most sensible of all of us--and I ran to
join her. We looked out of the windows, both the side windows and the
rear ones, and out onto the porch. But we didn't see anything."

Surprisingly, Dundee abandoned the point.

"And you were the only one to touch her, Sprague?"

"I--believe so," Dexter Sprague answered in a strained voice. "I--laid
my hand on her--her hair, for an instant, then I picked up her hand to
see if--if there was any pulse left."

"Yes?"

"She--she was dead."

"And her hand--did it feel cold?"

"Neither cold nor warm--just cool," Sprague answered in a voice that was
nearly strangled with emotion. "She--she always had cool hands--"

"What did you do, Judge Marshall?" Dundee asked abruptly.

"I took my poor little wife away from this room, laid her on a couch in
the living room, and then telephoned the police. Miss Crain stood at my
elbow, urging me to hurry, so that she might ring you--as she did. Your
line was busy, and she lost about five minutes before getting you."

"And the rest of you?" Dundee asked.

"Nothing spectacular, I'm afraid, Mr. Dundee," Polly Beale answered in
her brusque, deep voice, now edged with scorn.

Further questioning elicited little more, beyond the fact that Clive
Hammond had dashed out to circle the house and look over the grounds,
and that John Drake had been fully occupied with an hysterical wife.

"Better let this bunch go for the present, hadn't we, boy?" Captain
Strawn whispered uneasily. "Not a thing on any of them--"

"Not quite yet, sir, if you don't mind," Dundee answered in a low voice.
"Will you take them back into the living room and put them under
Sergeant Turner's charge for a while? Then there are one or two things
I'd like to talk over with you."

Mollified by the younger man's deference and persuasiveness, Strawn
obeyed the suggestion, to return within five minutes, his grey brows
drawn into a frown.

"I hope you'll be willing to take full credit for that fool bridge game,
Bonnie," he worried. "_I_ don't want to look a chump in the newspapers!"

"I'll take the blame," Dundee assured him, with a grin. "But that 'fool
bridge game'--and I admit