as he tried to light a
cigarette. Leaning--not nonchalantly, but actually for support--against
the brocaded coral silk drapes of a pair of wide, long windows set in
the east wall. Suddenly Dundee had it.... Broadway! This was no
Hamiltonian, no comfortably rich and socially secure Middle-westerner.
Broadway in every line of his too-well-tailored clothes, in the polished
smoothness of his dark hair....

"Why, it's Mr. Dundee at last!" Penny cried, turning in the S-shaped
seat before he had time to finish his mental inventory of the room's
occupants.

She jumped to her feet and threaded a swift way over Oriental rugs and
between the two bridge tables, still occupying the center of the big
room, still cluttered with score pads, tally cards, and playing cards.

"I've been wondering if you had stopped to have dinner first," she
taunted him. Then, laying a hand on his arm, she faced the living room
eagerly. "This is Mr. Dundee, folks--special investigator attached to
the district attorney's office, and a grand detective. He solved the
Hogarth murder case, you know, and the Hillcrest murder. And he's _my_
friend, so I want you all to trust him--and tell him things without
being afraid of him."

Then, rather ceremoniously but swiftly, she presented her friends--Judge
and Mrs. Hugo Marshall, Mr. and Mrs. Tracey Miles, Mr. and Mrs. John C.
Drake, Mrs. Dunlap, Janet Raymond, Polly Beale, Clive Hammond, and--

At that point Penny hesitated, then rather stiffly included the
"Broadway" man, as "Mr. Dexter Sprague--of New York."

"Thank you, Miss Crain," Dundee said. "Now will you please tell me, if
you know, whether all those invited to both the bridge party and the
cocktail party are here?"

Penny's face flamed. "Ralph Hammond, Clive's brother, hasn't come
yet.... I--I rather imagine I've been 'stood up,'" she confessed, with a
faint attempt at gayety.

And Ralph Hammond was the man who had once belonged rather exclusively
to Penny, and who, according to her own confession, had succumbed most
completely to Nita Selim's charms!--Dundee noted, filing the reflection
for further reference.

"Please, Mr. Dundee, won't you detain us as short a time as possible?"
Lois Dunlap asked, as she advanced toward him. "Mr. Dunlap is away on a
fishing trip, and I don't like to leave my three youngsters too long.
They are really too much of a handful for the governess, over a period
of hours."

"I shall detain all of you no longer than i