tly the same
sort of tape--about a foot from where it ended in the contact plug._

Within another two minutes, Dundee, with a flashlight he had found in
the kitchen, was exploring the dark, earthy portion of the basement
which lay directly to the east of Lydia Carr's basement room. And he
found what he was looking for--adhesive tape wrapped about the wire
which had been dropped through the floor of Nita's room before it had
been carried, by means of another hole, into Lydia's room.

He was too late--thanks to Captain Strawn. The bell which Sprague had
rigged up was in working order again. But as he was passing out of the
basement he glanced at the ceiling of the large room devoted to furnace,
hot-water heater and laundry tubs. And in the ceiling he saw a hole....

The murderer had left a trace he could not obliterate!

* * * * *

At three o'clock that Sunday afternoon Bonnie Dundee, fatigued after a
strenuous day, and suffering, to his own somewhat disgusted amusement,
from reaction--even a detective feels some shock at having narrowly
escaped death--permitted himself the luxury of a call upon Penny Crain.

He found the girl and her mother playing anagrams. After greeting him,
Mrs. Crain rose, to surrender her place to the visitor.

"_You_ play with this girl of mine, Mr. Dundee. She's too clever for me!
She's beaten me every game so far, and when I plead for two-handed
bridge as a chance to get even, she shudders at the very word."

"Why did you drag poor Ralph away from his dinner here today?" Penny
demanded, scrambling the little wooden blocks until they made a weird
pattern of letters.

"Because I wanted to find out exactly _how_ Nita Selim was killed--and I
did," Dundee answered. "I wish I knew as well _who_ murdered her!"

Mute before Penny's excited questions, the detective idly selected
letters from the mass of face-up blocks on the table, and spelled out,
in a long row, the names of all the guests at Nita's fatal bridge party.
Suddenly, and with a cry that startled Penny, Dundee made a new name
with the little wooden letters....

Now he knew the answers to both "_How?_" and "_Who?_"

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

"I fail to see any necessity for all this secrecy and hocus-pocus,"
District Attorney Sanderson protested irritably. "Why the devil don't
you come clean and give us the low-down--if you have it!--on this
miserable business, instead, of high-handedly summonin