police._

Dundee tried to recapture the picture of the stampede which had followed
upon his permission for all guests to go to their homes. But it was
useless. He had stayed in the living room with Strawn, had taken not the
slightest interest in the scramble for hats, coats and sticks. For
Strawn had previously assured him that the guest closet had been
thoroughly searched.

So quickly that he felt slightly dizzy, Dundee's thoughts raced around
the new discovery. This changed everything, of course. Any one of half a
dozen persons could have arrived with the gun and silencer--not screwed
together, of course, because of the ungainly length--and seized the
opportunity presented by Nita's being alone in her bedroom to shoot her.
What easier, then, than to hide the weapon on this secret shelf, the
"door" of which yielded to the slightest pressure? And what easier than
to retrieve the weapon after permission had been granted to all to
return to their homes? Easy enough to manage to go alone to the closet
for a hat, the extra minute of time unnoticed in the general excitement.
It had been vitally necessary, too, to retrieve the weapon, since any
innocent member of that party might have remembered later to mention the
secret hiding place to the police--secret no longer since Judge Marshall
had gossiped about it....

Then another thought boiled up and demanded attention. In the new
theory, what place did the "bang or bump" have--that noise which Flora
Miles, concealed in Nita's closet, had dimly heard? Dundee had been
positive, when Lydia had discovered the shattered electric bulb in the
big bronze lamp that its position in Nita's room indicated the progress
of the flight of the murderer--flight diagonally across the room toward
the back hall. But now--

A little dashed, Dundee returned to the bedroom. The big lamp was where
he had first seen it--about a foot beyond the window nearest the porch,
and at the head of the chaise longue which was set between the two west
windows, where, according to Lydia, the lamp always stood. The too-long
cord lay slackly along the floor near the west wall, and extended to the
double outlet on the baseboard behind the bookcase.... _A slack cord!_

Down on his hands and knees Dundee went, to peer under the low bottom
shelf of the bookcase.... Yes! The pronged plug of the lamp cord had
been jerked almost out of the baseboard outlet! It was easy to visualize
what had happened: The murderer, afte