--was--a first-class little vamp, and I
could see she was playing her cards with the men here--" he indicated
four of Hamilton's most prominent Chamber of Commerce members with a
wave of his hand--"to get them all so crazy about her that they'd vote
for her as the star of the picture. I could see her point, all right. It
would 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 he
smiled jerkily at the tense women in the living room, "--were getting
pretty wrought up over the way Nita was behaving.... All except Mrs.
Dunlap," he added. "_She_ didn't want to act in the picture, and Nita
didn't make any headway at all with Peter Dunlap."

"Thanks, Mr. Sprague," Lois Dunlap drawled, with an amused quirk of her
broad 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 night
to smooth down the girls' rumpled feathers, and to make it clear to them
that she didn't want the star part in the picture any more than she
wanted any other woman's husband or sweetheart.... Just a friendly
warning--" Sprague drew a deep breath. "And that's all the note
meant--absolutely!"

"I see," Dundee said quietly, then quoted: _"'Be good, Baby, and you
won't be sorry!'"_

"That meant, of course," Sprague took him up eagerly, "that I'd see she
got a real part in a regular movie, after I'd made my hit with the
Hamilton 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 no
shot fired in Nita Selim's bedroom this afternoon," he said sharply. "Is
that true?"

He was answered by weary nods or sullen affirmations.

"Then," he continued, "I must conclude that you are all lying or that
Nita Selim was killed with a gun equipped with a Maxim silencer."

Never was a detective more unprepared for the effect of his words upon a
group of possible suspects than was Special Investigator Dundee....

CHAPTER TEN

As Dexter Sprague had glibly and plausibly explained away every sinister
aspect of the note he had written to Nita Selim that day, Special
Investigator Dundee was recalling with verbatim vividness his argument
with Captain Strawn of the Homicide Squad immediately after his arrival
into the house of violent