y and said very
earnestly: "No, I am not a reporter, Miss Earle. But I am _not_ James
Wadley Randolph, Jr. I am James F. Dundee, special investigator attached
to the office of the district attorney of Hamilton, and I want you to
help me solve the mystery of Mrs. Selim's murder."

It took nearly ten precious minutes for Dundee to nurse the terrified
but obviously thrilled woman over the shock, and to get her into the
mood to answer him freely.

"But I shan't and _can't_ tell you anything bad about Nita!" she
protested vehemently, wiping her red-rimmed eyes. "The papers are all
saying now that she got $10,000 for double-crossing some awful racketeer
named 'Swallow-tail Sammy', but I _know_ she didn't get the money that
way! She was too good----"

"From Nita's confidences to you, do you have any idea how she did get
the money?" Dundee asked.

Miss Earle shook her head. "I don't know, but she got it honorably. I
know that!... Maybe she found her husband and made him pay alimony----"

Dundee controlled his excitement with difficulty. "Did she tell you all
about her marriage and divorce?"

Again Miss Earle shook her head. "The only time she ever spoke of it was
last year--the first year she directed our play, you know. I asked her
why she didn't get married again, and she said she couldn't--she wasn't
divorced, because she didn't know where her husband was, and it was too
expensive to go to Reno.... Of course she may have found him or
something--and got a divorce some time this last year, and this money
she got was a settlement----"

"She must have got a divorce, since she was planning to be married again
to a young man in Hamilton," Dundee assured her soothingly.

"The way everybody puts the very worst interpretation on everything,
when a person gets murdered!" Miss Earle stormed. "If poor Nita had
belonged to a rich family, like the girls here, they would have spent a
million if necessary to hush up any scandal on her!... I've seen it
done!" she added, darkly and venomously.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Bonnie Dundee's heart leaped, but he forced himself to go softly. "I
suppose," he said casually, "a fashionable school like this has plenty
of carefully hushed-up scandals----"

"I'll say it has!" Miss Earle retorted inelegantly, and with ghoulish
satisfaction. "_Money_ can do anything! It makes my blood simply boil
when I think of how those Forsyte girls in Hamilton--so smug and
snobbish in their hick town 's