"I gave her this—saved up for it out of my own money!" she was assuring him with savage triumph in proving her point. "And she loved it so she brought it with us when we came from New York—It won't light! It was working all right last night, because my poor little girl was lying there, looking so pretty under the colored lights—"
With strong twists of her big hands Lydia began to unscrew the filigreed bronze bowl. As she lifted it off she exclaimed blankly:
"Why, look! The light bulb's—broke!"
But Dundee had already seen—not only the broken light bulb but the explanation of the queer noise that Flora Miles had described hysterically over and over, as "a bang or a bump." The chaise lounge stood between the two windows that opened upon the drive. And at the head of it stood the big lamp, just a few inches from the wall and only a foot from the window frame upon which Dr. Price had pencilled the point to indicate the end of the imaginary line along which the shot which killed Nita Leigh Selim had traveled.
The "bang or bump" which Flora Miles had heard had been made by the knocking of the big lamp against the wall. Undoubtedly the one who had bumped into the lamp was Nita's murderer—or murderess—in frantic haste to make an escape.
And that meant that the murderer had fled toward the back hall, not through the window in front of which he had stood, not through the door leading onto the front porch.... A little progress, at least!
But Lydia was not through proving that she had forgiven her mistress. She was snatching things from Nita's clothes closet—
"See these mules with ostrich feathers?—I give 'em to my girl!... And this bed jacket? I embroidered the flowers on it with my own hands—"
Through her flood of proof Dundee heard the whir of a car's engine, then the loud banging of a car's door.... Running footsteps on the flagstone path.... Dundee reached the front door just as the bell pealed shrilly.
"Hello, Dundee! Awfully glad I caught you before you left.... Is poor Lydia still here?"