been requisitioned by Dundee to play the part of the murdered
woman, were seated at table No. 2, and behind Karen's chair stood Lois
Dunlap. Clive Hammond and his new wife were again together in the
solarium. But there Dundee's restaging of the original scene in the
tragic drama ended. Everyone else, including Lydia Carr and Peter
Dunlap, were huddled together in a far corner of the living room.

"Now, Mr. Miles!" Dundee called. "Your cue! Never mind the comedy about
'How's tricks?' Simply go into the dining room, with Mrs. Dunlap, to mix
cocktails. You'll find all the ingredients still on the sideboard,
exactly as there were when Mrs. Selim sent you to mix drinks on May
24.... And Mrs. Miles, will you, pretending that you are Nita Selim, go
to powder your face at Mrs. Selim's dressing-table?"

Her face white and drawn, Flora Miles stumbled from the room, just as
her husband, dumb for once with rage, entered the dining room with Lois
Dunlap.

Dundee was about to follow the latter two when an interruption occurred.
Followed by a plainclothesman, a middle-aged man entered the living
room. Tall, broad-shouldered, determined, he strode to the bridge table,
his handsome head upflung, his brown eyes fixed upon the widened brown
eyes of Penny Crain.

* * * * *

"Dad!" the girl breathed; then, joyously: "Oh, Dad! You've come home!"

But Dundee halted the reconciliation with a stern word of command.
"Please join the group in the corner, Mr. Crain!"

Regardless of the ensuing hubbub Dundee strode into the dining room,
where Tracey Miles stood at the sideboard, pouring whiskey from an
almost empty decanter into a small glass.

"May I drink the Scotch Tracey has poured for me, Mr. Dundee?" Mrs.
Dunlap asked shakily, leaning against the big round table.

"Yes, but--Silence, please!" he cried, as there came the first faint,
tinkling notes of _Juanita_, from Nita's musical powder box, penetrating
the thin wall between the bedroom and dining room.

"As I have said," the detective spoke loudly and clearly above the
tinkle of music, "_everything is now exactly as it was when Nita Selim
was murdered_! Permit me to show you all how that murder was
accomplished!"

A chair at the bridge table was overturned. Lois Dunlap almost choked on
her drink of Scotch. Women screamed. In a few seconds every person in
the living room, including the district attorney and Strawn, was huddled
in the wide opening i