d him by Gladys Earle of the Forsyte
School. Even more difficult would it be to find out why Janet Raymond's
mother had taken her abroad for a year. Of course--he had ruefully told
himself--Nita Leigh might have been lucky--or unlucky enough to run
across documentary proof of one of the scandals of which Gladys Earle
had told her, or had dared to blackmail her victim by dark hints, as
Miss Earle had unconsciously suggested to her.

But this new development could not be ignored. A picture of Nita Leigh
as a suicide had appeared eight years ago in a Hamilton paper, and the
paper had either remained unaware of the error or had thought it not
worth the space for a correction.... _Eight years ago!..._

Eight years ago in June three weddings had occurred in Hamilton! The
Dunlap, the Miles, the Drake wedding. And within the last year and a
half Judge Marshall, after proposing season after season to the most
popular debutante, had married lovely little Karen Plummer. Suddenly a
sentence from Ralph Hammond's story of his engagement to Nita Leigh
Selim popped up in Dundee's memory: "And once I got cold-sick because I
thought she might still be married, but she said her husband had married
again, and I wasn't to ask questions or worry about him."

If Ralph Hammond had reported Nita accurately she had not said she was
_divorced_. She had merely said her husband was _married again_! Why was
Ralph to ask no questions? Divorced wives were not usually so
reticent....

Had Nita planned to commit the crime of bigamy? If not, when and where
and how had she secured a divorce?

To Serena Hart, years before, she had denied any intention of getting a
divorce, for two reasons--_because she did not know where her husband
was_, and because, being married although husbandless, was a protection
against matrimonial temptations.

To Gladys Earle, a year ago in April, she had confided that she could
not marry again, because she was not divorced and because she did not
know the whereabouts of her husband.

And so far as New York reporters had been able to find out, Nita Leigh
had done nothing to alter her status as a married woman during the past
year. Moreover, if Nita had secured either a divorce or a legal
separation, her "faithful and beloved maid," Lydia Carr, would certainly
have known of it. And Lydia had vehemently protested more than once to
Bonnie Dundee that she knew nothing of Nita's husband, although she had
worked for the musical