everything was ready on the sideboard. That's the
dining room right behind this room," he explained unnecessarily, since
the French doors were open. "Well, Nita blew me a kiss from her
fingertips, and ran out of the room.... Now, let's see," he ruminated,
creasing his sunburned forehead beneath his carefully combed blond hair,
"that must have been at exactly 5:30 that she left the room. I went on
into the dining room, and Lois--I mean, Mrs. Dunlap came with me,
because she said she was simply dying for a caviar sandwich and a nip
of--of--"

"Of Scotch, Tracey," Lois Dunlap cut in, grinning. "I'm sure Mr. Dundee
won't think I'm a confirmed tippler, so you might as well tell the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.... Poor Tracey has a
deadly fear that we are all going to lose the last shred of our
reputations in this deplorable affair, Mr. Dundee," she added in a
rather shaky version of the comfortable, rich voice he had heard earlier
in the day.

"I'm not going to pry into cellars," Dundee assured her in the same
spirit. "What else, Mr. Miles?"

"Nothing much," Tracey Miles confessed, with apparent regret. "I was
still mixing--no, I'd begun to shake the cocktails--when I heard a
scream--"

"Whose scream?" Dundee demanded, looking about the room, and dismissing
Miles thankfully.

"It was--I," Judge Marshall's fair-haired, blue-eyed little bride
volunteered in a voice that threatened to rise to hysteria.

"Tell me all about it," Dundee urged gently.

"Yes, sir," she quavered, while her husband's arm encircled her
shoulders in courtly fashion. "As Tracey told you, Nita was dummy, and I
was declarer--that is, I got the bid, and played the hand. It--it was
quite an exciting end for me to the afternoon of bridge, for I'm not
usually awfully lucky, so when Penny had figured up the score, because
I'm not good at arithmetic, and I knew Nita and I had rolled up an
awfully big score, I jumped up and ran into her room to tell her the
good news, because she hadn't come back. And--and--there she was--all
bowed over her dressing-table, and she--she was--was--"

"She was dead when you reached her?" Dundee assisted her.

"Yes," Karen Marshall answered faintly, and turned to hide her face
against her elderly husband's breast.

Dundee's swift eyes took in the varying degrees of whiteness and sick
horror that claimed every face in the room as surely as if all present
had not already heard Karen tell her story to