"Of course I
might have known that Captain Strawn's theory about a gunman was just
dust in our eyes, and that only a miracle could keep you from fastening
on poor Ralph, since he and the gun are both missing.... Naturally it
wouldn't occur to you that it might be an outsider, someone who had
followed Nita and her lover, Sprague, from New York, to kill her for
having left him for Sprague.... Oh, no! Certainly not!" she gibed, to
keep from bursting into tears.
"An outsider would hardly have had access to Judge Marshall's pistol and
Maxim silencer," he reminded her. "And Captain Strawn received a wire
from a ballistics expert in Chicago this morning, confirming our
conviction that the same gun which fired the bullets against Judge
Marshall's target fired the bullet which killed Nita Selim.... You've
washed that plate long enough. Let me dry it now.... And there are other
things, Penny--"
"Such as--" she challenged in her angry, husky contralto.
"Sprague admitted to me this morning, after I had confronted him with
proofs, that he sometimes slept in the upstairs bedroom--"
"I told you they were lovers!" Penny interrupted.
"--and that he slept there Friday night, after he and Nita had
quarreled. He still contends that the row was over that
movie-of-Hamilton business," Dundee went on, as if she had not spoken.
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