Suddenly Dundee flung back the moss-green Wilton rug which almost entirely covered the bedroom floor and revealed the bell which Dexter Sprague had rigged up so that Nita might summon Lydia from her basement room, in case of dire need—a precaution with which the murderer was probably familiar, since Lois Dunlap might innocently have spread the news of its existence.
There was a half-inch hole in the hardwood floor, and out of it issued a length of green electric cord, connected with two small, flat metal plates, one upon the other, so that when stepped upon a bell would ring in Lydia's basement room.
But there was something odd about the wire. Although it was obviously new, a section of it near the two metal plates was wrapped with black adhesive tape. Another memory knocked for attention upon Dundee's mind. The long cord of the bronze lamp had been mended with exactly the same sort of tape—about a foot from where it ended in the contact plug.
Within another two minutes, Dundee, with a flashlight he had found in the kitchen, was exploring the dark, earthy portion of the basement which lay directly to the east of Lydia Carr's basement room. And he found what he was looking for—adhesive tape wrapped about the wire which had been dropped through the floor of Nita's room before it had been carried, by means of another hole, into Lydia's room.
He was too late—thanks to Captain Strawn. The bell which Sprague had rigged up was in working order again. But as he was passing out of the basement he glanced at the ceiling of the large room devoted to furnace, hot-water heater and laundry tubs. And in the ceiling he saw a hole....
The murderer had left a trace he could not obliterate!
At three o'clock that Sunday afternoon Bonnie Dundee, fatigued after a strenuous day, and suffering, to his own somewhat disgusted amusement, from reaction—even a detective feels some shock at having narrowly escaped death—permitted himself the luxury of a call upon Penny Crain.
He found the girl and her mother playing anagrams. After greeting him, Mrs. Crain rose, to surrender her place to the visitor.
"You play with this girl of mine, Mr. Dundee. She's too clever for me! She's beaten me every game so far, and when I plead for two-handed bridge as a chance to get even, she shudders at the very word."