s absolutely necessary,"
Dundee told her gently, "but I am afraid I must warn you that I can't
let you go home very soon--unless one or more of you has something of
vital importance to tell--something which will clear up or materially
help to clear up this bad business."

He paused a long half-minute, then asked curtly: "I am to conclude that
no one has anything at all to volunteer?"

There was no answer, other than a barely perceptible drawing together in
self-defence of the minds and hearts of those who had been friends for
so long.

"Very well," Dundee conceded abruptly. "Then I must put all of you
through a routine examination, since every one of you is, of course, a
possible suspect."

CHAPTER THREE

"Good-by, dinner!" groaned the plump, blond little man who had been
introduced as Tracey Miles, as he sorrowfully patted his rather
prominent stomach.

"Don't worry, darling," begged the dark, neurotic-looking woman who was
Flora Miles, his wife. "I'm sure Mr. Dundee will ask Lydia--poor Nita's
maid, you know--" she explained in an aside to Dundee, "--to prepare a
light supper for us if he really needs to detain us long--which I am
sure he won't."

"How can you think of food now?" Polly Beale, the tall, sturdy girl with
an almost masculine bob and a quite masculine tweed suit, demanded
brusquely. Her voice had an unfeminine lack of modulation, but when
Dundee saw her glance toward Clive Hammond he realized that she was
wholly feminine where he was concerned, at least.

"Of course, we are all _dreadfully_ cut up over poor Nita's--death,"
gasped a rather pretty girl, whose most distinguishing feature was her
crop of crinkly, light-red hair.

"I assume that to be true, Miss Raymond," Dundee answered. "But we must
lose no more time getting at the facts. Just when was Mrs. Selim
murdered?"

At the brutal use of the word a shudder rippled over the small crowd.
Dexter Sprague, "of New York," dropped his lighted cigarette where it
would have burned a hole in a fine Persian rug, if Sergeant Turner, on
guard over the room for Captain Strawn, had not slouched from his corner
to plant a big foot upon it.

"We don't know exactly when it happened," Penny volunteered. "We were
playing bridge, the last hand of the last rubber, because the men were
arriving for cocktails, when Nita became dummy and went to her bedroom
to--"

"To make herself 'pretty-pretty' for the men," Mrs. Drake mimicked;
then, realizing th