ted reluctantly. "But I
thought she was just afraid to live out there in that lonesome house
away off at the end of nowhere."

"Was she afraid of Dexter Sprague?" Sanderson shot at her.

"Would she have asked him to stay all night if she'd been afraid of
_him_?" Lydia demanded scornfully. "And would she have asked _him_ to
rig up a bell from her bedroom to mine, if it was _him_ she was afraid
of?"

"A bell?" Dundee echoed.

"Yes, sir. It has a contraption under the rug, right beside her bed,
so's she could step on it and it would ring in my room, which was
underneath hers.... Mr. Sprague bought the wire and stuff, bored a hole
through her bedroom floor, and fixed it all hisself."

"Did anyone know Nita had taken this precaution to protect herself?"
Dundee asked.

"Mis' Lois did, because one day not long ago she stepped on it
accidentally, when she was in Nita's room. The bell buzzed in my room
and I come up to answer it, and Nita explained it to Mis' Lois."

So that was why no attempt had been made to murder Nita while she
slept!--Dundee told himself triumphantly. For of course it was more than
probable that Lois Dunlap had innocently spread the news of Nita's
nervousness and her ingenious method of summoning help instantly....

There was a knock at the door.

"Come in!... All finished, Carraway?... Fine! I'd like to see the prints
as soon as possible, and now I'd like you to go over to the morgue with
Lydia, and wait there until she has the body dressed in these clothes,
and the hair done according to the instructions Mrs. Selim left.... I'll
leave the posing to you, but I want a full-length picture as well as a
head portrait."

As Lydia's work-roughened, knuckly hands were returning the funeral
clothes to the suitcase, another question occurred to Dundee:

"Lydia, did you know, before I questioned you at the Miles home
yesterday, that Sprague had returned for that bag he had left in the
bedroom upstairs?"

Her scarred cheek flushed livid, but the maid answered with defiant
honesty: "Yes, I did! He spoke to me through my basement window just
before you come running down to talk to me. He'd sneaked back, but he
could tell from seeing your car outside that you was there, and he asked
me to go up and get the bag and set it outside the kitchen door for him.
I said I wouldn't do it; it was too risky."

"Then you were pretending to be asleep when I entered your room?"

"Yes, I was! But I _had_ been asleep b