Dundee shook his head. "Since I don't like Dexter Sprague a little bit, chief, I'd like to think so, but—"
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Bonnie Dundee's first thought upon awakening that Sunday morning was that it might prove to be rather a pity that his new bachelor apartment, as he loved to call his three rooms at the top of a lodging house which had once been a fashionable private home, faced south and west, rather than east. At the Rhodes House, whose boarding-house clamor and lack of privacy he had abandoned upon taking the flattering job and decent salary of "Special Investigator attached to the District Attorney's office," he had grown accustomed to using the hot morning sun upon his reluctant eyelids as an alarm clock.
But—he continued the train of thought, after discovering by his watch that it was not late; only 8:40—it was pretty darned nice having "diggings" like these. Quiet and private. For he was the only tenant now on the top floor. His pleased, lazy eyes roved over the plain severity but solid comfort of his bedroom, and on past the open door to take in appreciatively the equally comfortable and masculine living room.... Pretty nice! That leather-upholstered couch and armchair had been a real bargain, and he liked them all the better for being rather scuffed and shabby. Then his eyes halted upon a covered cage, swung from a pedestal....
"Poor old Cap'n!... Must be wondering when the devil I'm going to get up!" and he swung out of bed, lounged sleepily into the small living room and whisked the square of black silk from the cage.
The parrot, formerly the property of murdered old Mrs. Hogarth of the Rhodes House, but for the past year the young detective's official "Watson," ruffled his feathers, poked his green-and-yellow head between the bars of his cage and croaked hoarsely: "Hullo! Hullo!"
"Hullo, yourself, my dear Watson!" Dundee retorted. "Your vacation is over, old top! It's back on the job for you and me both!... Which reminds me that I ought to be taking a squint at the Sunday papers, to see how much Captain Strawn thought fit to tell the press."
He found The Hamilton Morning News in the hall just outside his living room door.
"Listen, Cap'n.... 'NITA SELIM MURDERED AT BRIDGE'.... Probably the snappiest streamer headline the News has had for many a day.... Now let's see—" He was silent for two minutes, while his eyes leaped down the lesser headlines and the column one, page one story of the murder. Then: "Good old Strawn! Not a word, my dear Watson, about your absurd master's absurd performance in having 'the death hand at bridge' replayed. Not a word about Ralph Hammond, the missing guest! Not a word about Mrs. Tracey Miles' being hidden away in the clothes closet while her hostess was being murdered!... In fact, my dear Watson, not a word about anything except Strawn's own theory that a hired gunman from New York or Chicago—preferably Nita's home town, New York, of course—sneaked up, crouched in her window, and bumped her off. And life-size photographs of the big footprints under the window to prove his theory!... By golly, Cap'n! I clean forgot to tell my former chief that I'd found Nita's will and note to Lydia! He'll think I deliberately held out on him.... Well—I can't sit here all day gossiping with you, 'my dear Watson....' Work—much work—to be done; then—Sunday dinner with poor little Penny."