"Sure!" But again Captain Strawn looked uncomfortable. "But we haven't been able to locate the Beale girl and Clive Hammond."
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
"I'd give a good deal to know which of those two suggested that it would be a good idea to get married the first thing this morning," Dundee mused aloud, as he put down the second extra which The Hamilton Morning News had had occasion to issue that Thursday.
It was two o'clock, and the district attorney's "special investigator" sat across the desk from Captain Strawn, in his former chief's office at Police Headquarters.
The first extra had screamed in its biggest head type: SECOND BRIDGE DUMMY MURDER! and had carried, in detail, Captain Strawn's comforting theory that Dexter Sprague's erstwhile friends had again been made the victims of a New York gunman's fiendish cleverness in committing his murders under circumstances which would inevitably involve Hamilton's most highly respected and socially prominent citizens in the police investigation.
But the second extra had a more romantic streamer headline: HAMMOND WEDDING DELAYS MURDER QUIZ.
The story beneath a series of smaller headlines began:
"At the very moment—9:05 o'clock this morning—when Celia Hunt, maid in the Tracey Miles home in the Brentwood district of Hamilton, was screaming the news of her discovery of the dead body of Dexter Sprague, New York motion picture director, in what is known as the 'trophy room,' Miss Polly Beale and Mr. Clive Hammond were applying for a marriage license in the Municipal Building.
"At 9:30, when Miss Beale and Mr. Hammond were exchanging their vows in the rectory of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, of which both bride and groom have been members since childhood, Captain John Strawn of the Homicide Squad was listening to Tracey Miles' account of the strange disappearance of Dexter Sprague last night from an impromptu bridge game, after he had announced his intention of taking advantage of the fact that he was 'dummy' to telephone for a taxi.