"Tracey isn't worse than the other men!" Flora flamed up. "He's such a darling that all the girls pet him, and spoil him—"
Dundee could stand no more of Miles' complacent acceptance of his own rakishness. And certainly a girl like Nita Selim would have been able to bear precious little of it.... Conceited ass! But Flora Miles was another matter—and so was Dexter Sprague!
"You can join me in the living room, if you like," Dundee said shortly, as he wheeled and strode toward the door. Was that quick, passionate kiss between husband and wife being staged for his benefit?
"Pretty near through, boy?" Strawn, who had been silent and bewildered for a long time, asked anxiously, as the two detectives passed into the hall.
"Not quite. I've got to know several things yet," Dundee answered absently.
But in the living room his mind was wholly upon the business in hand.
"I'll keep you all no longer than is absolutely necessary," he began, and again the close-knit group—in which only Dexter Sprague was an alien—grew taut with suspense. "From the playing out of the 'death hand' at bridge," he went on, using the objectionable phrase again very deliberately, "I found that no two of you men arrived together.... Mr. Hammond, you were the first to arrive, I believe?"
"It seems that I was!" Clive Hammond answered curtly.
"And yet you did not enter the living room to greet your hostess?"
"I wanted a private word with Polly—Miss Beale—my fiancée," Hammond explained briefly.