"You admit that this note, signed by what I take to be your 'pet name,' was written by your hand, Sprague?" Dundee asked matter-of-factly, as he extended the sheet of bluish notepaper.
"I—no—yes, I wrote it," Sprague faltered. "But it doesn't mean a thing—not a damned thing! Just a little private matter between Nita and myself—"
"Rather queer wording for an unimportant message, Sprague," Dundee interrupted. "Let me refresh your memory: 'Nita, my sweet,'" he began to read slowly, "'Forgive your bad boy for last night's row, but I must warn you again to watch your step. You've already gone too far. Of course I love you and understand, but—Be good, Baby, and you won't be sorry!—Dexy....' Well, Sprague?"
Sprague wiped his perspiring hands on his handkerchief. "I know it sounds—odd, under the circumstances," he admitted desperately, "but listen, Dundee, and I'll try to make that damned note as clear as possible to a man who doesn't know his Broadway.... Why, man, it isn't even a love letter! Everybody on Broadway talks and writes to each other like that, without meaning a thing!... As I told you, Nita Leigh, or Mrs. Selim, remembered some little kindnesses I had done her on the Altamont lot, when they got her to take up that Little Theater work Mrs. Dunlap is interested in, and found that the Chamber of Commerce was interested in putting Hamilton into the movies, in a big booster campaign. She wired me and I thought it looked good enough to drop everything and come.... Of course Nita and I got to be closer friends, but I swear to God we were just friends—"
"And what was the 'friendly' row about last night, Sprague?"
"There wasn't a row, really," Sprague protested with desperate earnestness. "It was merely that Nita insisted on my casting her for the heroine of the movie—a thing I knew would alienate the whole crowd that's been so kind to us—"
"Why—since she was a professional actress?" Dundee demanded.
"Because she isn't a Hamilton girl, of course, and the Chamber of Commerce wants the cast to be all local talent," Sprague answered, lapsing unconsciously into the present tense.
"And just what were you warning her against?"
"I'd told her before to watch her step," Sprague went on more easily. "You see, Dundee, Nita Leigh is—was—a first-class little vamp, and I could see she was playing her cards with the men here—" he indicated four of Hamilton's most prominent Chamber of Commerce members with a wave of his hand—"to get them all so crazy about her that they'd vote for her as the star of the picture. I could see her point, all right. It would have been a big chance for her to show how she could act.... Well, I could see it was dangerous business, and that the girls—" and he smiled jerkily at the tense women in the living room, "—were getting pretty wrought up over the way Nita was behaving.... All except Mrs. Dunlap," he added. "She didn't want to act in the picture, and Nita didn't make any headway at all with Peter Dunlap."