being, I am
afraid, could read it but myself.... As for you folks," he addressed the
uneasy, silent group of men and women in dead Nita's living room, "I
shall ask you not to interrupt Miss Crain unless you are very sure that
her memory is at fault."

Penelope Crain was about to begin for the second time, when again Dundee
interrupted. "Another half second, please."

On the first sheet of the new shorthand notebook Dundee scribbled:
"Suggest you try to locate Ralph Hammond immediately. Very much in love
with Mrs. Selim. Invited to cocktail party; did not show up." Tearing
the sheet from the notebook, he passed it to Captain Strawn, who read
it, frowning, and then nodded.

"Doc Price has done all he can here," Strawn whispered huskily. "Wants
to know if you'd like to speak to him before he takes the body to the
morgue."

"Certainly," Dundee answered as he grinned apologetically to the girl
who was waiting, white-faced but patiently, to tell the story of the
afternoon.

Quickly suppressed shudders and low exclamations of horror followed him
and the chief of the Homicide Squad from the room.

"Well, Bonnie boy, we meet again, for the usual reason," old Dr. Price
greeted the district attorney's new special investigator. "Another
shocking affair--that.... A nice clean wound, one of the neatest jobs I
ever saw. Shot entered the back, and penetrated the heart.... _Very_
nicely calculated. If the bullet had struck a quarter of an inch higher,
it would have been deflected by the--"

"But the _path_ of the bullet, doctor!" Dundee broke in. "Have you made
any calculations as to the place and distance at which the shot was
fired?"

"Roughly speaking--yes," the coroner answered. "The gun was fired at a
distance, probably, of ten or fifteen feet--perhaps closer, but I don't
think so," he amended meticulously. "As for the path of the bullet, I
have fixed it, judging from the position of the body, which I am assured
had not been moved before my arrival, as coming from a point somewhere
along a straight line drawn from the wound, with the body upright, of
course, to--here!"

Dundee and Strawn followed the brisk little white-haired old doctor
across the bedroom to a window opening upon the drive--the one nearest
the door leading out upon the porch.

"I've marked the end of the line here," Dr. Price went on, pointing to a
faint pencil mark made upon the window frame--the pale-green strip of
woodwork near the chaise longue, w