by Anne Austin
“If I get the contract—yes,” Sprague answered with palpably assumed modesty. “My plans, naturally, call for a great deal of research work, a large expenditure of money, a very careful selection of ‘stars’—”
“I see,” Dundee interrupted. Then his tone changed, became slow and menacing in its terrible emphasis: “And you really couldn’t let even a good friend like Nita Selim upset those fine plans of yours, could you, Sprague?”
Even as he put the sinister question, the detective was exulting to himself: “Light at last! Now I know why this Broadway bounder was received into an exclusive crowd like this! Every last female in the bunch hoped to be the star of Sprague’s motion picture!”
“I don’t know what you’re driving at, Dundee!” Sprague was on his feet, his black eyes blazing out of a chalky face. “If you’re accusing me of—of—”
“Of killing Nita Selim?” Dundee asked lazily. “Oh, no! Not—yet, Sprague! I was just remembering a rather puzzling note of yours I happened to read this afternoon…. That note you sent by special messenger to Breakaway Inn this noon, you know.”
He had little interest for the sudden crumpling of Dexter Sprague into the chair from which he had risen. Instead, as Dundee drew the note from his coat pocket, his eyes swept around the room, noted the undisguised relief on every face, the almost ghoulish satisfaction with which that close-knit group of friends seized upon an outsider as the probable murderer of that other outsider whom they had rashly taken into their sacred circle. Even Penny Crain, thorny little stickler for fair play that she was, relaxed with a tremulous sigh.
“You admit that this note, signed by what I take to be your ‘pet name,’ was written by your hand, Sprague?” Dundee asked matter-of-factly, as he extended the sheet of bluish notepaper.
“I—no—yes, I wrote it,” Sprague faltered. “But it doesn’t mean a thing—not a damned thing! Just a little private matter between Nita and myself—”
“Rather queer wording for an unimportant message, Sprague,” Dundee interrupted. “Let me refresh your memory: ‘Nita, my sweet,’” he began to read slowly, “‘Forgive your bad boy for last night’s row, but I must warn you again to watch your step. You’ve already gone too far. Of course I love you and understand, but—Be good, Baby, and you won’t be sorry!—Dexy….’ Well, Sprague?”
Sprague wiped his perspiring hands on his handkerchief. “I know it sounds—odd, under the circumstances,” he admitted desperately, “but listen, Dundee, and I’ll try to make that damned note as clear as possible to a man who doesn’t know his Broadway…. Why, man, it isn’t even a love letter! Everybody on Broadway talks and writes to each other like that, without meaning a thing! … As I told you, Nita Leigh, or Mrs. Selim, remembered some little kindnesses I had done her on the Altamont lot, when they got her to take up that Little Theater work Mrs. Dunlap is interested in, and found that the Chamber of Commerce was interested in putting Hamilton into the movies, in a big booster campaign. She wired me and I thought it looked good enough to drop everything and come…. Of course Nita and I got to be closer friends, but I swear to God we were just friends—”
“And what was the ‘friendly’ row about last night, Sprague?”
“There wasn’t a row, really,” Sprague protested with desperate earnestness. “It was merely that Nita insisted on my casting her for the heroine of the movie—a thing I knew would alienate the whole crowd that’s been so kind to us—”
“Why—since she was a professional actress?” Dundee demanded.
“Because she isn’t a Hamilton girl, of course, and the Chamber of Commerce wants the cast to be all local talent,” Sprague answered, lapsing unconsciously into the present tense.
“And just what were you warning her against?”
“I’d told her before to watch her step,” Sprague went on more easily. “You see, Dundee, Nita Leigh is—was—a first-class little vamp, and I could see she was playing her cards with the men here—” he indicated four of Hamilton’s most prominent Chamber of Commerce members with a wave of his hand—“to get them all so crazy about her that they’d vote for her as the star of the picture. I could see her point, all right. It would have been a big chance for her to show how she could act…. Well, I could see it was dangerous business, and that the girls—” and he smiled jerkily at the tense women in the living room, “—were getting pretty wrought up over the way Nita was behaving…. All except Mrs. Dunlap,” he added. “She didn’t want to act in the picture, and Nita didn’t make any headway at all with Peter Dunlap.”
“Thanks, Mr. Sprague,” Lois Dunlap drawled, with an amused quirk of her broad mouth.
“Get along with the row, Sprague!” Dundee commanded impatiently.
“As I said, it wasn’t really a row. I just pleaded with Nita last night to smooth down the girls’ rumpled feathers, and to make it clear to them that she didn’t want the star part in the picture any more than she wanted any other woman’s husband or sweetheart…. Just a friendly warning—” Sprague drew a deep breath. “And that’s all the note meant—absolutely!”
“I see,” Dundee said quietly, then quoted: “‘Be good, Baby, and you won’t be sorry!’”
“That meant, of course,” Sprague took him up eagerly, “that I’d see she got a real part in a regular movie, after I’d made my hit with the Hamilton picture.”
Very plausible, very plausible indeed, Dundee reflected. And yet—
Finally he lifted his head and let his eyes dart from face to face.
“All of you have stated, separately and collectively, that you heard no shot fired in Nita Selim’s bedroom this afternoon,” he said sharply. “Is that true?”
He was answered by weary nods or sullen affirmations.
“Then,” he continued, “I must conclude that you are all lying or that Nita Selim was killed with a gun equipped with a Maxim silencer.”
Never was a detective more unprepared for the effect of his words upon a group of possible suspects than was Special Investigator Dundee….
CHAPTER TEN
As Dexter Sprague had glibly and plausibly explained away every sinister aspect of the note he had written to Nita Selim that day, Special Investigator Dundee was recalling with verbatim vividness his argument with Captain Strawn of the Homicide Squad immediately after his arrival into the house of violent death.
He had said then: “The person who killed Nita Selim, was so well known to her, and his—or her—presence in this room so natural a thing that she paid no attention to his or her movements and was concentrating on the job of powdering her very pretty face.”
And he had said further, in face of the disappearance of the gun and in explanation of the fact that all twelve of these people had immediately protested to Strawn that they had heard no shot:
“This was a premeditated murder, of course. The Maxim silencer—unless they are all lying about not hearing a shot—proves that. Silencers are damned hard to get hold of, but people with plenty of money can manage most things.”
And as Dexter Sprague had talked on, more and more glibly, Dundee had suddenly found an explanation which fitted his own argument with such perfection that he wondered, naпvely, if he were perhaps gifted with clairvoyance.
Of all these twelve people, whom he had questioned so relentlessly, only Dexter Sprague could easily have come into possession of a Maxim silencer. He had dilated proudly upon the fact that he had been an assistant director at the Altamont Studios on Long Island. And the Altamont company had recently finished making a series of “underworld” motion pictures—crook dramas featuring gunmen with “rods” made eerily noiseless by Maxim silencers.
A bit of information he had picked up in a motion picture magazine had hurtled into the logical chain of Dundee’s reasoning: assistant directors were in charge of “props”; it was their business to see that no article needed for the production of a picture was lost or missing when the director needed it. Dexter Sprague had said that he had “dropped everything” to c
ome when Nita Selim wired him of the Chamber of Commerce project to make a “booster” movie of Hamilton.
Perhaps he had dropped everything. But—had he hesitated long enough to pick up a Maxim silencer and a blunt-nosed automatic? And was the “row” which Sprague had been so glibly explaining away an ancient one—a row so deadly that, when Nita Selim had refused to heed his written warning, her murder had become necessary?
It was with all this in mind that Bonnie Dundee flung his challenge: “I must conclude that you are all lying or that Nita Selim was killed with a gun equipped with a Maxim silencer.”
And his eyes, terrible with their command that the weakling should break and confess, were upon Dexter Sprague. But Sprague did not break. He stared back blankly….
If his eyes and his attention had included the whole group it is possible that what happened would not have taken Dundee so completely by surprise. He had paid little attention to a sort of concerted gasp, a slight movement among the group farthest from him.
But not even his intense concentration upon Sprague could prevent his hearing Karen Marshall’s childish voice, tremulous with fear:
“No, no, Hugo! Don’t—don’t!”
He whirled from Sprague in time to see Judge Marshall disengaging his arm from his young wife’s clinging fingers, to note, with profound astonishment, that Drake was stepping hastily aside, so that not even his coat sleeve might be brushed by the advancing figure of the elderly, retired judge. And before Judge Marshall had time to speak, Dundee saw that a blight had touched, at last, the solid friendship of the women; that they did not look at each other with that air of standing together whatever happened, but that their eyes, not meeting at all, became secret, calculating, afraid….
“Sir!” Judge Marshall began pompously, when he had planted himself squarely before the young detective, “It shall never be said of me that I have tried, even in the slightest way, to hamper the course of justice.”
“I am sure of that, Judge Marshall,” Dundee replied courteously, but his pulses were hammering. What, in God’s name, did this long-winded old fool have to tell him? … “You have some information you believe may be valuable, Judge?”
“I do not believe it will be at all valuable, sir. On the contrary!” the old man retorted indignantly. “But to suppress the fact at this juncture might lead to grave misunderstandings later, when it inevitably comes to light. So, sir, it is my duty to inform you that I myself own a Colt’s .32, as well as a Maxim silencer.”
“What!” Dundee exclaimed incredulously. He was conscious that, behind him, Captain Strawn was getting to his feet.
“There is no need to get out your handcuffs, Captain Strawn!” Judge Marshall warned him majestically. “I assure you that I have not violated the law. Every judge, active and retired, is entitled to a permit to carry a weapon, and I long ago availed myself of the privilege. Nor am I about to make a confession of murder!”
“There ain’t no permit, so far as I know, Judge,” Strawn growled, “for any man, whoever he may be—God A’mighty himself not excepted—to tote a gun with a silencer on it.”
Karen Marshall was crying now, with the abandoned grief of a petted child.
“Granted, Captain!” Judge Marshall snapped. “But it happens that I do not ‘tote’ my gun with the silencer on it. If it interests you, I may as well explain that I came by the silencer several years ago, when I was on the bench. A notorious Chicago gunman, on trial for murder here, and acquitted by a feeble-minded jury, made me a present of the very silencer he had used in killing his victim—an ironic gesture, a gesture of supreme insolence, but an entirely safe gesture, since he well knew that a man once acquitted of a crime cannot again be placed in jeopardy for the same offence.”
“So you kept the silencer as a curiosity, Judge Marshall?” Dundee interrupted the pompous flow of rhetoric.
“For years—yes,” the ex-judge answered, then his face went yellow and very old. “As I told you just now, I will withhold no fact that may be of any relevance whatever…. About two months ago—in March, I believe—our little group here took up target-shooting as a fad. Several of us became quite expert with revolver and rifle. Mr. Drake—” and he nodded toward the banker, who instantly averted his eyes, “—conceived the idea of practising the draw-from-the-hip sort of revolver-shooting—the kind one sees in Wild West movies, you know—”
“I think you might add, Hugo,” Drake cut in angrily, “that I had in mind the hope of being able to protect the bank in case of a holdup!”
“And the silencer, Judge Marshall?” Captain Strawn prodded.
Judge Marshall flushed, and fingered the end of a waxed mustache. “The silencer, sir, was my wife’s idea. You see, sir, we are fortunate enough to be the parents of an infant son. He was just a month old when I painted a bull’s eye upon the brick wall of our back garden and invited our friends to indulge their fad as our guests. The shooting awakened the baby so frequently that Karen—Mrs. Marshall—dug up the silencer, which I had shown her as a memento of my career on the bench. Thereafter we confined our practice almost exclusively to drawing from the hip and shooting without sighting. It is impossible to sight with a gun equipped with a silencer, you know, since the silencer covers the sighter on the barrel.”
“It sure does,” Strawn drawled. “So every last one of you folks had a good deal of this sort of practice, I take it?”
Judge Marshall glanced about the room, as if he could not recall the face of everyone present.
“Yes, all of us—except Mr. Sprague and—Penny, my dear, did you join us at all?”
The girl who had once been in on every sport that this crowd of Hamilton’s socially elect indulged in, flushed a painful red.
“No, Hugo. I—I have to stay with Mother on Sunday mornings, you know.”
“Your target practice was a Sunday morning diversion, then, Judge Marshall?” Dundee asked.
“Yes. We usually have an hour of the sport—between eleven and noon, on Sundays. We’ve been having a sort of tournament—quite sharply competitive—”
“When did you and your friends practise last?” Dundee asked.
“Last Sunday. Tomorrow was to mark the end of the ‘tournament’,” the Judge answered.
“And when did you last see your gun and silencer?” Dundee persisted.
“Last Sunday, of course…. Why, Good Lord!” Marshall ejaculated. “It was Nita herself who put the gun away!”
There was a collective gasp of relief. Eyes could meet eyes—now. But it was Flora Miles who voiced the thought or hope that seemed apparent on every face.
“That’s why I didn’t hear anyone talking when I was in the closet!” she cried, her voice almost hysterical in its vehemence. “There wasn’t anybody but Nita in the room! She committed suicide! She stole poor Hugo’s gun and the silencer and committed suicide!”
“At a distance of from ten to fifteen feet?” Dundee asked with ill-concealed sarcasm. “And when she was powdering her face? And just after entering the room, blithely singing a Broadway hit?”
“Maybe the lady is right, boy,” Captain Strawn interposed mildly. “I’ve heard of people rigging up contrivances—”
“Which make the gun and the silencer disappear by magic?” Dundee demanded. “No, folks, I’m afraid the suicide theory is no good…. Now, Judge Marshall,” and he turned again to the creator of the biggest sensation since the investigation into Nita Selim’s death had got under way, “you say that Mrs. Selim herself put the gun away…. Will you explain the circumstances?”
The elderly man’s face had gone yellowish again. “Certainly! Nita Selim and I were the last to leave the back garden. She was particularly poor at the sport—never made a bull’s eye during the four or five Sunday mornings after Lois—Mrs. Dunlap—drew her into our set. She begged for a few more shots, and I stayed with her, after the others had gone into the house for—er—refreshment. She fired the last bullet in the chamber of the Colt’s, and together we walked to the
house, entering the little room at the rear where all sorts of sports equipment are kept—fishing rods and tackle, golf clubs, bows and arrows, skis, etc. She was carrying the gun, unscrewing the silencer as we walked. It is my habit to keep the pistol and the silencer in a drawer in a little corner cupboard—”
“Locked, up?” Dundee asked sharply.
“Usually locked, but not always, I am afraid,” Judge Marshall answered reluctantly.
“And you saw Mrs. Selim place the gun and the silencer in the drawer?”
“I—thought I did, but I was really not watching closely. As a matter of fact, I stopped to look over a fishing rod, with a view to trying it out the first good fishing weather—”
“Was Mrs. Selim wearing a coat or cloak?” Dundee cut in impatiently.
“Why, I don’t know—”
“Yes, she was, Hugo!” Karen cried out eagerly. “It was quite chilly last Sunday morning. Remember? We all had on coats or sweaters. Nita wore a dark-green leather jacket with big pockets—”
“And she left in a great hurry, without even waiting for a drink,” Flora Miles contributed triumphantly. “I tell you, she took them away in her pockets.”
“Your guess may be correct, Mrs. Miles,” Dundee agreed, “but I think we had better not come to any definite conclusion until we know that Judge Marshall’s automatic and silencer are really missing…. Is there anyone at your house now, Judge, whom you can ask to look for it?”
“Certainly. The butler…. Shall I telephone him?”
Accompanied by Captain Strawn, the ex-judge went to the telephone in the little foyer between Nita Selim’s bedroom and the main hall. And within five minutes he was back, nodding his head gravely.
“Hinson tells me that the Colt’s and the silencer are both missing, sir…. May I express my profound regret that my possession of—”
“Some other time, Judge Marshall!” Dundee interrupted curtly, and hurried from the room, followed by Strawn, who nodded to Sergeant Turner, still lounging wearily in a far corner of the living room, to stand guard vigilantly.