tepped down he was
holding, between the very tips of his fingers, a safety razor blade.

"No dust on it, you see," Dundee pointed out. "Now if you don't find
Dexter Sprague's fingerprints on it, my whole theory topples."

"How am I going to know whose fingerprints they are till we get hold of
Sprague?" Carraway asked reasonably.

"We don't need him--for that purpose, at least," Dundee assured him.
"Downstairs in the living room, on a little table in the southeast
corner of the room, you'll find a red glass ashtray which no one but
Dexter Sprague used all evening. It was clean and empty when I saw him
use it first. I think you'll find on it all the prints you need."

"So you think Sprague killed her because she was through with him?"
Strawn asked.

Dundee shook his head. "Since I don't like Dexter Sprague a little bit,
chief, I'd like to think so, but--"

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Bonnie Dundee's first thought upon awakening that Sunday morning was
that it might prove to be rather a pity that his new bachelor apartment,
as he loved to call his three rooms at the top of a lodging house which
had once been a fashionable private home, faced south and west, rather
than east. At the Rhodes House, whose boarding-house clamor and lack of
privacy he had abandoned upon taking the flattering job and decent
salary of "Special Investigator attached to the District Attorney's
office," he had grown accustomed to using the hot morning sun upon his
reluctant eyelids as an alarm clock.

But--he continued the train of thought, after discovering by his watch
that it was not late; only 8:40--it was pretty darned nice having
"diggings" like these. Quiet and private. For he was the only tenant
now on the top floor. His pleased, lazy eyes roved over the plain
severity but solid comfort of his bedroom, and on past the open door to
take in appreciatively the equally comfortable and masculine living
room.... Pretty nice! That leather-upholstered couch and armchair had
been a real bargain, and he liked them all the better for being rather
scuffed and shabby. Then his eyes halted upon a covered cage, swung from
a pedestal....

"Poor old Cap'n!... Must be wondering when the devil I'm going to get
up!" and he swung out of bed, lounged sleepily into the small living
room and whisked the square of black silk from the cage.

The parrot, formerly the property of murdered old Mrs. Hogarth of the
Rhodes House, but for the past year the young det