loth, and fitted with oilcloth bags for the
cards, score pads, and pencils--"

"Yes, I know," Dundee interrupted. "Miss Crain has already told me all
about that, and a good many details of the party itself.... By the way,
where is Mrs. Miles now?"

"In bed. The doctor is with her. She is prostrated from the shock."

"Where is this room you call the trophy room?" Dundee asked. "No, don't
bother to come with me. Just point it out. It's on this floor, I
understand."

Miles pointed past the great circular staircase that wound upward from
the main hall. "You can't see the door from here, but it's behind the
staircase. Celia found the door closed this morning, and no light on, as
I said--"

Dundee cut him short by marching toward the door which was again closed.
He entered so noiselessly that Captain Strawn, Dr. Price and the
fingerprint expert, Carraway, did not hear him. For a moment he stood
just inside the door and let his eyes wander about the room which Penny
Crain had already described. It was not a large room--twelve by fourteen
feet, possibly--but it looked even smaller, crowded as it was with the
long ping-pong table, bags of golf clubs, fishing tackle, tennis
racquets, skis and sleds. There were two windows in the north wall of
the room, looking out upon the yew-hedged driveway, and between them
stood a cabinet of numerous big and little drawers.

Not until he had taken in the general aspect of the room did Dundee look
at the thing over which Captain Strawn and the coroner were bending--the
body of Dexter Sprague.

The alien from New York had fallen about four feet from the window
nearer the east wall of the trophy room. He lay on his side, his left
cheek against the floor, the fingers of his left hand still clutching
the powder-burned bosom of his soft shirt, now stiff with dried blood, a
pool of which had formed and then half congealed upon the rug. The right
hand, the fingers curled but not touching each other, lay palm-upward on
the floor at the end of the rigid, outstretched arm. The one visible eye
was half open, but on the sallow, thin face, which had been strikingly
handsome in an obvious sort of way, was a peace and dignity which Dundee
had never seen upon Sprague's face when the man was alive. The left leg
was drawn upward so that the knee almost touched the bullet-pierced
stomach.

"How long has he been dead, doctor?" Dundee asked quietly.

"Hello, boy!" Dr. Price greeted him placidly. "Always