Dundee grinned wryly. "I've been pretty down in the mouth all morning because there's a little too much mystery, chief."
"Fairly open-and-shut, isn't it?" Sanderson asked, obviously surprised. "New York gets too hot for this Selim baby—probably mixed up with some racketeer, racketeers being the favorite boy-friends of 'Broadway belles', if one can believe the tabloids. Lois Dunlap offers her a job to organize a Little Theater in Hamilton—which the fair Nita would certainly have described as a hick town and which she wouldn't have been found dead in if she could have helped it—" and the district attorney grinned at his own witticism, "—but Broadway Nita jumps at it. Her racketeer sweetie has a long arm, however, and Nita gets hers. Justly enough, probably, but I wish to the Lord she had chosen some other town to hide in. Lois Dunlap is the finest woman in Hamilton, but she's too damned promiscuous in her friendships. As it is now, some of the best friends I have in the world are mixed up in this mess, even if it is only as innocent victims of circumstance—"
Until then Dundee had let his chief express his pent-up convictions without interruption, and indeed Sanderson's courtroom training had fitted him admirably for long speeches. But he could keep silent no longer.
"That is what has been worrying me, chief," he interrupted. "Captain Strawn has given the papers very little real information, but the truth is I am afraid one of your friends was not an innocent victim of circumstance."
District Attorney Sanderson sat down abruptly in the swivel chair at his desk. "Just what do you mean, Dundee?"
"I mean I am convinced that one of Mrs. Selim's guests was her murderer, but I'd like to tell you the whole story, and let you judge for yourself."
"My God!" Sanderson ejaculated. Slowly he drew out a handkerchief and mopped his freckled brow. "If I hadn't had a good many years of experience with criminals, Dundee, I'd say it is obvious on the face of it that none of those four men—Judge Marshall, Tracey Miles, Johnny Drake, Clive Hammond—could have committed such a cheap, sensational crime as murdering a hostess during a bridge game.... Not that I haven't wanted to commit murder myself over many a game of bridge," he added, with the irrepressible humor for which he was famous. Then he groaned, the rueful twinkle still in his eye: "I'm afraid we're in for a lot of gruesome kidding. Why, last night, in the club car of my train, three tables of bridge players could scarcely play a hand for wisecracking about the dangers of being dummy!... Well, boy, now that I've talked myself past the worst shock, suppose you give me the low-down. But I warn you I'm going to take a powerful lot of convincing."
Painstakingly, and in the greatest detail, Dundee told the whole story, beginning with his arrival Saturday evening at the Selim house, including the ghastly replaying of the "death hand at bridge"—a phrase, by the way, which the prosecutor instantly adopted—and ending with Ralph Hammond's establishing of an alibi, to the entire satisfaction of Captain Strawn, as well as of Dundee himself. He was interrupted frequently of course, scoffingly at first, then with deepening solemnity and respect on the part of the district attorney.
"Let me see the plan of the house again," he said, when Dundee had finished. "Also that table you've worked up showing the approximate time and order of arrival of the four men.... Thanks!... Hmm!... Hmm!"
"You see, sir," Dundee repeated at last, "the list of possible suspects includes Lydia Carr, Dexter Sprague, John C. Drake, Judge Marshall, Polly Beale, Flora Miles, Janet Raymond, Clive Hammond—"