"Have you anything to add?" Dundee caught her up quickly.
"No, sir!" Lydia shook her head, her lips in a grim line. Then
resentment burst through: "They don't have to talk like she was a back
number on Broadway, just because she was tired of the stage and going in
for movies!"
District Attorney Sanderson took her in hand then, pelting her with
questions about Nita's New York "gentlemen friends," but he made no more
headway than Dundee.
"We _know_ that Nita Selim was afraid of _someone_!" Sanderson began
again, angrily. "Who was it--someone she'd known in New York, or
somebody in Hamilton?"
"I don't know!" Lydia told him flatly.
"But you do know she was living in fear of her life, don't you?" Dundee
interposed.
"I--well, yes, I suppose she was," Lydia admitted reluctantly. "But I
thought she was just afraid to live out there in that lonesome house
away off at the end of nowhere."
"Was she afraid of Dexter Sprague?" Sanderson shot at her.
"Would she have asked him to stay all night if she'd been afraid of
_him_?" Lydia demanded scornfully. "And would she have asked _him_ to
rig up a bell from her bedroom to mine, if it was _him_ she was afraid
of?"
"A bell?" Dundee echoed.
"Yes, sir. It has a contraption under the rug, right beside her bed,
so's she could step on it and it would ring in my room, which was
underneath hers.
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