ery much surprised
she was, too, when I swore her to secrecy--that the jewel had been lost
when the lamp was shipped from New York," Dundee explained. "There's a
blank cartridge in the gun now, of course, but Miles, in his panic, took
my words literally.... See the electro-magnet strapped to the gun butt?
He got it from the bell Sprague had installed in Lydia's bedroom, and he
returned it when he was 'cleaning up', so that the bell would ring
again. The magnet he connected with the electric wire in one of the two
lamp sockets, as you see it now, and the long cord of the lamp was
connected with the wire of the bell in the dining room--so connected
that when anyone stepped on the two little metal plates under the dining
room rug, the kitchen bell would ring and the gun would be fired
simultaneously. But if you will examine the jewel hole," he suggested,
"you will see that Miles had to enlarge it considerably, using a reamer,
which I found in the tool chest in the basement, along with all the
apparatus Sprague had bought for installing Nita's alarm bell. I could
see no reason for Sprague's having needed a reamer for his little job,
however, and this morning I was lucky enough to get proof that Miles
himself had purchased it at a hardware store on the Tuesday before
Nita's murder."

"How did he connect the lamp cord with the dining room bell?" Strawn
puzzled. "These modern houses don't have exposed wiring--"

"You forget Sprague's wiring for the alarm bell from here to Lydia's
room!" and Dundee threw back the rug, showing them the hole in the
floor, out of which came a short length of electric wire, ending in two
small metal plates. But attached now to the wire was the cord from the
bronze lamp.

"The plug of the lamp cord is nearly out of the baseboard outlet behind
the bookcase, just as Miles left it, so that there is no contact with
electricity there. And the rug, which almost entirely covers the floor,
hides, as you have seen, the joining of the two wires. An inexplicable
wrapping of adhesive tape both on the lamp cord and on the wire of
Nita's alarm bell here gave me the clue.... In installing the alarm
bell, Sprague copied the arrangement under the dining table, of course.
And Miles simply had to drop a bit, fastened to the augur Sprague had
bought and used for his own job, down the four inches which separate the
dining room floor from the basement ceiling, boring a hole through the
ceiling. It was that fresh-bored