dee saw Polly Scale's hand tighten
convulsively on Clive Hammond's, saw Janet Raymond flush scarlet,
watched a muscle jerk in Flora Miles' otherwise rigid face.

Suddenly he sprang to his feet. "I am going to make what will seem an
absurd request," he said tensely. "I am going to ask you all--the women,
I mean--to take your places at the bridge tables. And then--" he paused
for an instant, his blue eyes hard: "I want to see the death hand played
exactly as it was played while Nita Selim was being murdered!"

CHAPTER FIVE

"Shame on you, Bonnie Dundee!" cried Penny Crain, her small fists
clenched belligerently. "'Death hand', indeed! You talk like a New York
tabloid! And if you don't realize that all of us have stood pretty
nearly as much as we can without having to play the hand at bridge--the
_very_ hand we played while Nita Selim was being murdered!--then you
haven't the decency and human feelings I've credited you with!"

A murmur of indignant approval accompanied her tirade and buzzed on for
a moment after she had finished, but it ceased abruptly as Dundee spoke:

"Who's conducting this investigation, Penny Crain--you or I? You will
kindly let me do it in my own fashion, and try to be content when I tell
you that, in my humble opinion, what I propose is absolutely necessary
to the solution of this case!"

Bickering--Dundee grinned to himself--exactly as if they had known each
other always, had quarreled and made up with fierce intensity for years.

"Really, Mr. Dundee," Judge Hugo Marshall began pompously, embracing his
young wife protectingly, "I must say that I agree with Miss Crain. This
is an outrage, sir--an outrage to all of us, and particularly to this
frail little wife of mine, already half-hysterical over the ordeal she
has endured."

"Take your places!" Dundee ordered curtly. After all, there was a limit
to the careful courtesy one must show to Hamilton's "inmost circle of
society."

Penny led the way to the bridge tables, the very waves of her brown bob
seeming to bristle with futile anger. But she obeyed, Dundee exulted.
The way to tame this blessed little shrew had been solved by old Bill
Shakespeare centuries ago....

As the women took their places at the two tables, arguing a bit among
themselves, with semi-hysterical edges to their voices, Dundee watched
the men, but all of them, with the exception of Dexter Sprague--that
typical son of Broadway, so out of place in this company--ha