dwiches. Told him he'd find decanters of Scotch and rye,
and to bring out both."

"So Drake left the room, too," Dundee mused. "Oh, Lord. I _knew_ I'd
find that every last one of the six had a chance to kill Sprague, as
well as Nita!... How long was Polly Beale gone on this walk of hers?"

"She came in with a pink water lily--said she'd been down to the lily
ponds, and that Flora had enough to spare her one," Penny answered. "She
couldn't have been away more than ten minutes, because Johnny was just
mixing the highballs, according to our preference for Scotch or rye--or
plain ginger ale, which both Ralph and I chose. After we'd had our
drinks and the sandwiches, we went on with bridge. Polly and Johnny just
wandered about the porch or watched the game at the two tables. And
about five minutes after eleven Clive Hammond arrived, coming up the
path to the porch, just as Janet had. After he came, there was no more
bridge, but we sat around on the porch and talked until midnight. Clive
said he was too tired to play bridge--that he'd been struggling all
evening with a knotty problem."

"I can sympathize with him!" Dundee said grimly, as he rose. "I've got
my own knotty problem awaiting me.... When that call comes through from
Chicago, tell Sanderson the bad news, and say I'll telephone him later."

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Miles home, still known in Hamilton as the Hackett place, since it
had been built more than thirty years before by Flora's father, old
Silas Hackett, dead these seven years, dominated one of the most
beautiful of the wooded hills which encircled Mirror Lake in the
Brentwood section. Of modified Tudor architecture, its deep red,
mellowed bricks had achieved in three decades almost the same aged
dignity and impressiveness as characterized the three-century-old
mansion in England which Silas Hackett's architect had used as an
inspiration.

The big house faced the lake, a long series of landscaped terraces
leading down to the water's edge, but the driveway wound from the state
road up a side of the hill, to the main entrance at the rear of the
house.

Once before--on Sunday, the day after Nita Selim's murder, when he had
come to interview Lydia Carr and had secured the alibi which had
eliminated Dexter Sprague as a suspect--Dundee had driven his car up
this hill between the tall yew hedges. But then he had taken the fork
which led to the hooded doorway over the kitchen; had descended the
kitche