nd to continue the search for the missing gun and
silencer looked on with unconcealed amusement as Dundee tapped walls,
floors and ceilings in a house that seemed to be exceptionally free of
architectural eccentricities.

Finally Dundee grew tired of their ribald comments and curtly ordered
them to make a new and exhaustive search of the unused portions of the
basement--those dark earth banks, with their overhead networks of water
and drain pipes, heavily insulated cables of electric wires, cobwebby
rafters and rough shelves holding empty fruit jars and liquor
bottles--which contrasted sharply with the neatly ceiled and
cement-floored space devoted to furnace, laundry and maid's room. Dundee
himself had given those regions only a cursory inspection with his
flashlight, for it was highly improbable that Nita Selim would have made
use of a secret hiding place for her jewelry and valuable papers, if
that hiding place was located in such dark, awesome surroundings.

No. The hiding place, if it really existed--and it must exist--had been
within easy reach of Nita dressing and bedecking herself for a party, or
Lydia Carr could not have been kept in complete ignorance of its
location.

With that conviction in mind, Dundee returned to Nita's bedroom, to
which he had already devoted at least half an hour. Nothing in the big
clothes closet, where Flora Miles had been hiding while Nita was being
murdered. No secret drawers in desk or dressing-table or bedside table.
No false bottom in boudoir chair or chaise longue.... He had even taken
every book out of the four-shelf bookcase which stood against the west
wall near the north corner of the room, and had satisfied himself that
no book was a leafless fake.

His minute inspection of the bathroom and back hall, upon which Nita's
bedroom opened, had proved as fruitless, although he had removed every
drawer from the big linen press which stood in the hall, and measured
spaces to a fraction of an inch. As for the walls, they were, except for
the doors, unbroken expanses of tinted plaster.

And yet--

He stepped into the clothes closet again, hammer in hand for a fresh
tapping of the cedar-board walls. Nothing here.... And then he tapped
again, his ear against the end wall of the closet--the wall farthest
from the side porch....

Yes! There was a faintly hollow echo of the hammer strokes!

Excitement blazing high again, he took the tape measure with which he
had provided himself