"Just a minute, before you begin, Miss Crain," Dundee requested. "I'd
like to make notes on your story," and he drew from a coat pocket a
shorthand book, hastily filched from Penny's own tidy desk. "Yes," he
answered the girl's frank stare of amazement, "I can write shorthand--of
a sort, and pretty fast, at that, though no other human 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.
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