For nowhere in the house Roger Crain had built and in which Nita Selim
had been murdered could the detective find anything remotely resembling
a concealed safe. The two plainclothesmen whom Strawn had detailed to
guard the house and to continue the search for the missing gun and
silencer looked on with unconcealed amusement as Dundee tapped walls,
floors and ceilings in a house that seemed to be exceptionally free of
architectural eccentricities.
Finally Dundee grew tired of their ribald comments and curtly ordered
them to make a new and exhaustive search of the unused portions of the
basement--those dark earth banks, with their overhead networks of water
and drain pipes, heavily insulated cables of electric wires, cobwebby
rafters and rough shelves holding empty fruit jars and liquor
bottles--which contrasted sharply with the neatly ceiled and
cement-floored space devoted to furnace, laundry and maid's room. Dundee
himself had given those regions only a cursory inspection with his
flashlight, for it was highly improbable that Nita Selim would have made
use of a secret hiding place for her jewelry and valuable papers, if
that hiding place was located in such dark, awesome surroundings.
No. The hiding place, if it really existed--and it must exist--had been
within easy reach of Nita dressing and bedecking herself for a party, or
Lydia Carr could not have been kept in complete ignorance of its
location.
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