d in her laconic style. Then, ashamed; "I don't know why I'm
gossiping like this!"

"Because you can't find another blessed scrap of work to do, you little
efficiency fiend," Dundee laughed, "Come on! Gossip some more. My
Maginty case will wait till afternoon, to be mulled over while you're
losing your hard-earned salary at bridge with rich women."

"We don't play for high stakes," she corrected him. "Just a twentieth of
a cent a point, though contract can run into money even at that. The
winnings all go to the Forsyte Scholarship Fund. On Wednesday evenings
the crowd plays for higher stakes--a tenth--and winners keepers.
Therefore I can't afford to go, unless I sink so low as to let my escort
pay my losses--which I sometimes do," she confessed, her brown head low
for a moment.

"Is this Mrs. Peter Dunlap a deep-bosomed club woman, who starts
Movements?" he asked, more to bring her out of her depression than
anything else. "Bigger and Better Babies Movements, and Homes for Fallen
Girls, and Little Theater Movements?"

The brown head flung itself up sharply, and the brown eyes hardened into
bright pennies again. "Lois Dunlap is the sweetest, finest, most
_comfortable_ woman in Hamilton, and I adore her--as does everyone else,
Peter Dunlap hardly more than the rest of us. She _is_ interested in a
Little Theater for Hamilton, but she won't manage it. That's why she got
hold of Nita Selim. Lois will simply put up barrels of money, without
missing them, and give a grand job to a little Broadway gold-digger.
Funny thing is, she really delights in Nita. Thinks she's sweet and has
never had a real chance."

"And what do you think?" Dundee asked softly.

"Oh--I suppose I'm a cat, but I can see through her so clearly. Not that
she's bad; she's simply an opportunist. She's awfully sweet and
deferential and 'frank' with women, but with men--well, she simply tucks
her head so that her shoulder-length black curls fall forward
enchantingly, gives them one wistful smile out of her big eyes that are
like black pansies and--the clink of slave chains!... Now go on and
think I'm catty, which I suppose I am!"

Bonnie Dundee grinned at her reassuringly. Not for him to explain that
practically all women and many men found themselves "gossiping" when he
led them on adroitly, for reasons of his own. Which of course helped
make him the excellent detective he was.

"So all the men in your crowd have fallen for Nita Selim, have they?"