Lois Dunlap had liked, even loved her. The other women and girls of "the crowd"—that exclusive, self-centered clique of Hamilton's most socially prominent women—must have liked her fairly well and found her congenial, in spite of their jealousy of her popularity with the men of the crowd, or they would not have tolerated her, regardless of Lois Dunlap's championship of her protegée.
Gladys Earle had found her "the sweetest, kindest, most generous person I ever met"—Gladys Earle, who envied and hated all girls who were more fortunate than she.
Serena Hart, former member of New York's Junior League and still listed in the Social Register, had found her the only congenial member of the chorus she had invaded as the first step toward stardom. And Serena Hart had the reputation of being a woman of character and judgment, a kind and wise and great woman....
Finally, Ralph Hammond had loved Nita and wanted to marry her.
Was it possible that Nita Selim's only crime, into which she had been led by her infatuation for Dexter Sprague, had been to demand, secretly, financial compensation from a husband who had married and deserted her, a husband who, believing her dead, had married again?
But who was the man whose picture—to spin a new theory—Nita had recognized as that of her husband among the male members of the cast of "The Beggar's Opera," when Lois Dunlap had proudly exhibited the "stills" of that amateur performance?
With excitement hammering at his pulses, Dundee took the bunch of photographs which Lois Dunlap had willingly given him, and studied the picture that contained the entire cast—the picture which had first attracted Nita's attention. And again despair overwhelmed him, for every one of his possible male suspects was in that group....
But he could not keep his thoughts from racing on.... Men who stepped out of their class and went on parties with chorus girls frequently did so under assumed names, he reflected. Serena Hart was authority for the information that Nita's had been a sudden marriage. Was it not entirely possible that the man who married Nita in 1918 had done so half-drunk, both on liquor and infatuation, and that he had not troubled to explain to Nita his motives for having used an assumed name or to write in his real name on the application for a marriage license? Had Nita's private detective journeyed out to Hamilton years ago in a fruitless attempt to locate "Matthew Selim?"
Bonnie Dundee lay awake for hours Friday night turning these and a hundred other questions over and over in his too-active mind, and slept at last, only to awake Saturday with a plan of procedure which he was sensible enough to realize promised small chance of success.
And he was right. Not in Manhattan, or in any of the other boroughs of New York City, did he find any record of a marriage license issued to Juanita Leigh and Matthew Selim. Not only was it entirely probable that Juanita Leigh was a stage name and that Nita had married conscientiously under her real name, but it was equally possible that the license had been secured in New Jersey or Connecticut.