ain!"

"Yeah?" Strawn snarled.

"Yeah!... I refer, of course, to the complete absence of fingerprints on
the door and on the shelf itself! Carraway didn't even find Nita Selim's
fingerprints. Since Nita would have had no earthly reason for carefully
wiping off her fingerprints after she removed the papers she burned on
Friday night, it's a dead sure fact that someone else who had no
legitimate business to do so, touched that pivoting panel and the shelf,
and carefully removed all traces that he had done so!... And--" he
continued grimly, "until I find out who that someone is, I, for one,
won't consider the case solved!"

Fifteen minutes later Dundee was sitting at Penny Crain's desk in her
office of the district attorney's suite, replacing the receiver upon the
telephone hook, after having put in a call for Sanderson, who was still
in Chicago, keeping vigil at the bedside of his dying mother.

"Did you find out anything new when you questioned the crowd this
morning?" Penny asked. "Besides the fact that Polly and Clive got
married this morning, I mean.... I wasn't surprised when I read about
the wedding in the extra. It was exactly like Polly to make up her mind
suddenly, after putting Clive off for a year----"

"So it was Polly who held back," Dundee said to himself. Aloud: "No, I
didn't learn much new, Penny. You're a most excellent and accurate
reporter.... But there were one or two things that came out. For
instance, I got Drake to admit to me, in private, that Nita did give him
an explanation as to where she got the $10,000."

"Yes?" Penny prompted eagerly.

"Drake says," Dundee answered dryly, "that Nita told him it was 'back
alimony' which she had succeeded in collecting from her former husband.
Unfortunately, she did not say who or where the mysterious husband is."

"Pooh!" scoffed Penny. "Don't you see? She just said that to satisfy
Johnny's curiosity. After all, it was the most plausible explanation of
how a divorcee got hold of a lot of money."

"So plausible that Drake may have thought of it himself," Dundee
reflected silently. Aloud, he continued his report to the girl who had
been of so much help to him: "Among other minor things that came out
this morning, and which the papers did not report, was the fact that
Janet Raymond tried to commit suicide this morning by drinking shoe
polish. Fortunately her father discovered what she had done almost as
soon as she had swallowed the stuff, and made her