f which was now in Dundee's
pocket--District Attorney Sanderson's boast to the press that his office
had been working on an entirely different theory than that which
connected the two murders with "Swallow-tail Sammy," that Special
Investigator Dundee, _expected back in Hamilton early Sunday morning_,
had been investigating Nita Leigh's past life in New York. And despite
Dundee's telegraphed warning, he had hinted sensational revelations
connected with the twelve-year-old royal blue velvet dress which Nita
had chosen to be her shroud. And in his desire to reassure the public
through the press, Sanderson had mysteriously promised even more
specific revelations than Dundee had actually brought home with him.
Prodded by reporters, Sanderson had admitted that he did not himself
know the nature of those revelations.

The exasperated young detective could picture the murderer reading those
sensational hints and promises, could imagine his panic, the need for
immediate action, so that Special Investigator Dundee should not live to
tell the tale of his New York discoveries to the district attorney or
anyone else.

But whether he was right or wrong, Dundee determined to give his hunch a
chance. He went into the over-ornate bedroom in which Nita Leigh Selim
had been murdered--shot through the back as she sat at her
dressing-table powdering her face. If her murder had been accomplished
by mechanical means, how had it been done? There was no hot-air register
here....

From the dressing-table Dundee walked to the window, upon whose
pale-green frame there was still the tiny pencil mark which Dr. Price
had drawn, to indicate the end of the path along which the bullet had
traveled, provided it had traveled so far. Nothing _here_ to aid in a
mechanical murder--

But in a flash Dundee changed his mind. For just slightly above the
pencil mark there was a small dent in the soft painted pine of the
window frame.

And before his mind could frame words and sentences he thought he saw
how Nita Leigh had been murdered.

Nothing here?... _Not now, because he himself had taken the lamp to the
courthouse for safe-keeping._

He saw it clearly in imagination--that bronze floor-lamp which Lydia
Carr had given to Nita Leigh, its big round bowl studded with great
jewels of colored glass. And in recalling every detail of the lamp he
saw what he had dismissed as of no importance at the time, in the
excitement of finding that the lamp's bulb had