"I never realized before you had so much curiosity, honey," the boy grinned at her. "After I shook Clive—Polly went on to Nita's bridge party, because she couldn't throw her down at the last minute—I wandered around till I came to the Railroad Men's Hotel, down on State Street, you know, the other side of the tracks. It's a miserable dump, but I sort of hankered for a place to hide in that was as miserable and cheap as I felt—"
"Did you register under your own name?"
"Ashamed of me, Penny?... No, I registered under my first two names—Ralph Edwards. And the rat-faced, filthy little hotel clerk turned out to be a bootlegger.... Well, when I woke up about eleven this morning I give you my word I wasn't sick and headachy, though God knows I'd drunk enough to put me out for a week.... Penny, I woke up feeling—well, I can't explain it but to say I felt light and new and—and clean.... All washed-up! At first I thought my heart was empty—it felt so free of pain. But as I lay there thanking God that that was that, I found my heart wasn't empty at all. It was brimming full of love—Gosh, honey! I sound like a Laura Jean Libbey hero, don't I?... But before I rang you from the lunch room where I ate breakfast I wrote Nita a special delivery note, telling her it was all off. I had to be free actually, before I could ask you.... You will marry me, won't you, Penny honey?... I knew this morning I had never really loved anyone else—"
Penelope Crain remained rigid for a moment, then very slowly she laid both her hands on his head, for he had knelt and buried his face against her skirt. But as she spoke, her brown eyes, enormous in her white face, were upon Dundee, who had stepped silently from behind the portieres.
"Yes. I'll marry you, Ralph!... You may come in now, Mr. Dundee!"
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It was nearly nine o'clock Monday morning, and Special Investigator Dundee sat alone in the district attorney's office, impatiently awaiting Sanderson's arrival. Coroner Price, with the approval of Captain Strawn of the Homicide Squad, had set the inquest into the murder of Juanita Leigh Selim for ten o'clock, and there was much that Dundee wished to say to the district attorney before that hour arrived.
When the thoroughly tired and dispirited young detective had returned to his apartment late Sunday afternoon, after having seen Ralph Hammond completely exonerated of any possible complicity in the murder of Nita Selim, he had found a telegram from the district attorney, filed in Chicago:
"CALLED CHICAGO SERIOUS ILLNESS OF MOTHER STOP RETURNING HAMILTON EIGHT TEN MONDAY MORNING STOP SEE BY PAPERS YOU ARE ON SELIM JOB STOP GOOD BUT WATCH YOUR STEP—SANDERSON"