"You've made it very plain that
any one of us here, except the Sprague man, could have stolen Hugo's gun
and silencer.... Has the gun been found?"

"It has not, Miss Beale."

"O. K.!" The queer girl snapped her fingers. "I move that you or
Captain Strawn search the men for the weapon, and that I search the
Women.... Wait!" she harshly stopped a flurry of feminine protests. "I'll
ask you, Dundee, to search me first yourself. I believe the technical
term is 'frisking,' isn't it?... Then 'frisk' me.... Here is my handbag.
I wore no coat, except this--" and she pointed to the jacket of her tweed
suit.

As she strode toward the detective Clive Hammond sprang after her with
an oath and a sharp command.

"Shut up, Clive! I'm not married to you yet!" she retorted, but her eyes
were gentler than her voice.

His face burning with embarrassment, Dundee went through the traditional
gestures of police "frisking"--running his hands rapidly down the girl's
tall, sturdy body, slapping her pockets. And his fingers fumbled sadly
as he opened her tooled leather handbag.

"Satisfied?" Polly Beale demanded, and at Dundee's miserable nod, the
girl faced her friends: "Well, come along, girls!"

"Lord! What a girl!" Dundee muttered to Strawn, as the young Amazon
herded Flora Miles, Penny Crain, Karen Marshall, Carolyn Drake, Lois
Dunlap and Janet Raymond into the dining room.

Silently, and almost meekly, as if shamed into submission by Polly
Beale's example, John Drake, Tracey Miles, Clive Hammond, Judge
Marshall, and Dexter Sprague permitted Captain Strawn and Sergeant
Turner to search them.

"How about the guest closet and the cars?" Dundee asked of Strawn in a
low voice, when the fruitless, unpleasant task was finished.

"Gone over with a fine tooth comb long ago," Strawn assured him
gloomily. "And not a hiding place in or outside the house that the boys
haven't poked into--including the meadow as far as anyone could throw
from the bedroom window."

The women were filing back into the room, some pale, some flushed, but
all able to look each other in the eye again.

With surprising jauntiness Polly Beale saluted Dundee. "Nothing more
deadly on any of us than Flora's triple-deck compact."

"I thank you with all my heart, Miss Beale," Dundee said sincerely. "And
now I think you may all go to your homes.... Of course you understand,"
he interrupted a chorus of relieved ejaculations, "that all of you will
be wanted for the inq