'll take her to the Rhodes House, and turn her over to
my old friend, Mother Rhodes. We haven't anything on her, you know."

"No, nor on anybody else, except that old fool, Marshall, and we can't
clap him into jail--yet," Strawn agreed, his grey eyes twinkling.

"Take your crew on in, chief," Dundee urged. "I'll stick till midnight
or longer, if you don't mind. You can arrange to have a couple of the
boys to relieve me about twelve.... And by the way, will you telephone
me the minute you get hold of Ralph Hammond?"

"Well, maybe not so quick as all that," Strawn drawled. "I'll take the
first crack at _that_ baby, my lad!... Not so dumb, am I, Bonnie-boy?
Not so dumb! I can put two and two together as well as the next
one--pretty near as well as the district attorney's new 'special
investigator!'"

* * * * *

Although Bonnie Dundee had taken Captain Strawn's none-too-gentle
parting gibe with good grace, it was a very thoughtful young detective
who set about locking himself into the house in which Nita Selim had
been murdered.

Captain Strawn had beaten him to the job that evening by at least twenty
minutes. Had the old detective stumbled upon something which Dundee, for
all his spectacular thoroughness, had overlooked or had been unable to
turn up because Strawn had suppressed it?

What if Strawn's parting boast was not an idle one, and he really had
"the goods" on Ralph Hammond? Had the old chief been laughing up his
sleeve during the farce of playing out the "death hand at bridge," and
during the merciless quizzing of old Judge Marshall?

But Dundee's native common sense quickly routed his gloom. Captain
Strawn was too direct in his methods, too afraid of antagonizing the
rich and influential, to have permitted even a "special investigator"
from the district attorney's office to torment those twelve people
needlessly. Probably Strawn, feeling a little hurt at having played
second fiddle all evening, had simply wanted to get him fussed, was even
now chuckling over the effect of his parting boast....

Much cheered, Dundee lingered in the dining room whose windows he had
made fast against any intrusion, so that his task of guarding the house
alone might be minimized. As he glanced at the table, with its silver
plates heaped with tiny sandwiches of caviar and anchovy paste, its
little silver boats of olives and sweet pickles, he discovered that he
was very hungry indeed....

A