ere's a little too much mystery, chief."

"Fairly open-and-shut, isn't it?" Sanderson asked, obviously surprised.
"New York gets too hot for this Selim baby--probably mixed up with some
racketeer, racketeers being the favorite boy-friends of 'Broadway
belles', if one can believe the tabloids. Lois Dunlap offers her a job
to organize a Little Theater in Hamilton--which the fair Nita would
certainly have described as a hick town and which she wouldn't have been
found dead in if she could have helped it--" and the district attorney
grinned at his own witticism, "--but Broadway Nita jumps at it. Her
racketeer sweetie has a long arm, however, and Nita gets hers. Justly
enough, probably, but I wish to the Lord she had chosen some other town
to hide in. Lois Dunlap is the finest woman in Hamilton, but she's too
damned promiscuous in her friendships. As it is now, some of the best
friends I have in the world are mixed up in this mess, even if it is
only as innocent victims of circumstance--"

Until then Dundee had let his chief express his pent-up convictions
without interruption, and indeed Sanderson's courtroom training had
fitted him admirably for long speeches. But he could keep silent no
longer.

"That is what has been worrying me, chief," he interrupted. "Captain
Strawn has given the papers very little real information, but the truth
is I am afraid _one_ of your friends was not an innocent victim of
circumstance."

District Attorney Sanderson sat down abruptly in the swivel chair at his
desk. "Just what do you mean, Dundee?"

"I mean I am convinced that one of Mrs. Selim's _guests_ was her
murderer, but I'd like to tell you the whole story, and let you judge
for yourself."

"My God!" Sanderson ejaculated. Slowly he drew out a handkerchief and
mopped his freckled brow. "If I hadn't had a good many years of
experience with criminals, Dundee, I'd say it is obvious on the face of
it that none of those four men--Judge Marshall, Tracey Miles, Johnny
Drake, Clive Hammond--could have committed such a cheap, sensational
crime as murdering a hostess during a bridge game.... Not that I haven't
wanted to commit murder myself over many a game of bridge," he added,
with the irrepressible humor for which he was famous. Then he groaned,
the rueful twinkle still in his eye: "I'm afraid we're in for a lot of
gruesome kidding. Why, last night, in the club car of my train, three
tables of bridge players could scarcely play a hand for