Captain Strawn. Tracey
Miles looked as if he would have no immediate craving for his dinner,
and Judge Marshall's fine, thin face no longer looked so
"well-preserved" as he prided himself that it did. As for Dexter
Sprague, he almost folded up against the coral brocade draperies. It was
the women, oddly enough, who kept the better control over their
emotions.

"Of course you all rushed in when Mrs. Marshall screamed?" he asked
casually.

Twelve heads nodded mutely.

"Did any or all of you touch the body, or things in the room?"

"Mr. Sprague touched her hair, and--and lifted one of her hands," Penny
contributed quietly. "But you know how it must have been! We can't any
of us tell _exactly_ every move we made, but there was some rushing
about. The men, mostly, looking for--for whoever did it--"

"Mrs. Marshall, did you see anyone--_anyone at all_--in or near that
room when you entered it?"

The white-faced young wife lifted her head, and looked at him dazedly
with drowned blue eyes. "There wasn't anyone in--in that room, I know,"
she faltered. "It felt horrible--being in there with--with _her_--all
alone--"

"But near the room? In the main hall or in the little foyer where the
telephone is?" Dundee persisted.

"I--don't think so ... I can't--remember--seeing _anyone_.... Oh, Hugo!"
and again she crouched against her husband, who soothed her with
trembling hands that looked incongruously old against her childish fair
hair and face.

"Where were the rest of you--_exactly_ where, I mean?" Dundee demanded,
conscious that Captain Strawn had entered the room and was standing
slightly behind him.

There was such a babel of answers, given and then hastily corrected,
that Dundee broke in suddenly:

"I want a connected story of 'the events leading up to the tragedy.' And
I want someone to tell it who hasn't lost his--or her--head at all." He
looked about the company, as if speculatively, but his mind was already
made up. "Miss Crain, will you tell the story, beginning with the moment
I left you and Mrs. Dunlap and Mrs. Selim today?"

Penny nodded miserably and was about to begin.

"Just a minute, before you begin, Miss Crain," Dundee requested. "I'd
like to make notes on your story," and he drew from a coat pocket a
shorthand book, hastily filched from Penny's own tidy desk. "Yes," he
answered the girl's frank stare of amazement, "I can write shorthand--of
a sort, and pretty fast, at that, though no other human