Five minutes later Dundee sat at that desk, photographs of Dexter Sprague's dead body, just as it had been discovered on the floor of the trophy room in the Miles home, and a labelled set of fingerprints spread out before him.
"You're sure there can have been no mistake?" he asked. "No chance that these fingerprint photographs were reversed when the prints were made?"
"Not a chance—with my system!" Carraway retorted positively.
"Fine!" Dundee cried. "May I take these photographs?... You have copies, I presume?"
It was half past two o'clock when Dundee, after a much needed lunch, parked his car in the driveway of one of the most splendid houses overlooking Mirror Lake—a home whose master and mistress were now attending an inquest into two murders....
Half an hour later he climbed into his roadster again, his head spinning. "Did I say ingenious?" he marvelled....
He drove directly to the Selim house, for he had much to do before the arrival of Sanderson's compulsory guests at 5:15.
His first visit there was to a small room in the basement—a dark cubbyhole next to the coal room. He had locked it carefully after exploring it the day before, for he had taken no chance on leaving unguarded—as he had found it—treasure worth more to him than its weight in gold.
And queer treasure it was that he extracted now—a coiled length of electric wire, which he and Ralph Hammond had measured the day before, with triumphant excitement; a box of thumb tacks, many of them surprisingly bent at the point; an augur with a set of bits of varying sizes, a step-ladder, and a hammer. If Dexter Sprague had not overestimated the amount of electric wire needed for the job of installing an alarm bell between Nita's bedroom and Lydia's.... Dundee was about to close the tool chest when his eyes fell upon a piece of hardware he had not expected ever to find, although he had known of its existence for more than an hour.
At 5:15 he was entirely ready for D. A. Sanderson, Captain Strawn and their party of indignant and unwilling guests....