Murder At Bridge
by ANNE AUSTIN author of "THE BLACK DIGEON!
CHAPTER XLVIH
"margosa BACKRTALOS"
w
THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 1931.
until 2:50-the time the bridge game was scheduled to begin. But Miles caras on out, having
pro viously stolen the gun and silencer and having studied the house-
"How did he got in?" Sanderson wanted to know.
to an
"Then, he had the rest of the night to remove the gun!!
"Yes. Sometime during the night after Flora was asleep with n seda- tive, ho removed the gun and the vise, but he could not remove the hales the screws had made, Illa "Judge Marshall bad lent hira a next concern was to make the mur- key in February, when Miles der jibe complete with Captain wanted to show the house
Strawn's theory of a gunman who engaged young man in his offices, had trailed his quarry to the Miler.
home and shot him through the would ring und the gun would be and Miles never returned it.
"window. The window was already red almultaneously. But if youWell, when Miles arrived he found will examine the jewel hole," he Ralph Ifammend here, and had to open, but the screen must be raised, too, and Sprague's fingerprints had "you will see that Miles had to until the coast was clear about on which the curtain screen is raised suggested, as he removed the gun, leave, waiting at a safe distance
to
be on
the nickel catches l enlarge li considerably. using #
o'clock. But even so he had mora, "Tracey Arthur Miles, i arrest you reamer, which I found in the tool for the murder of your wife, lown all the apparatus which Sprague chest in the basement, along with as Juanita Leigh Selim, and for the had bought for. Installing Nita's murder of Dexter Sprague. And alarm ell. I could see no reason is my duty to warn you that any for Sprague's having needed thing,
you say may be used quulast.
T would be impossible. Miles! Your wife is already dead Then, silencing the hoarse oaths of the men and the screams of the women, came slow, terrible words:
you!"
Tracey Miles lifted his ashen Ince and stared at the detective blankly, A though he had gone deaf and Blind "All-over-isn't it?
May 1-have-a drink?" he manured to articulate at last
"Poor devil! He needs it," the too soft-hearted young detective lold himself, as Tracey Miles pour- ed a drink from the almost empty whisky decanter and raised tho; little glass to his lips.
"I have-nothing-to " murderer gaaped thickly, then fell heavily to the floor.
the
than an hour to do his carefully planned job.”.
"But you were wrong about the secret shelf!" Strawn gloated.
"No. It was the absence of A fingerprints there that kept me on reumar, however, and this morning the right track. Miles had-search- Miles himself had purchased it at Beate which he could not know Nita was lucky enough to get proof thated the shelf for the marriage certi-
hardware store on Tuesday " | had already burned"".
I
"How did he connect the lamp cord with the dining room bell7" Strawn puzzled "The nodern houses don't have exposed wir ing
rosani"
"How was Sprague killed?" San- derson interrupted Impatienly.
or lowered. Of course Sprague had not touched the screen-”
the corpse to the window and lifted 'Do you mean to say he lugged
jft up so that he could press the stim
fingers upon the nickel catches?"
"No," Dundee answered.
"That
men
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moved the curtain screen and car- was not necessary. Ho simply re- ried it to where Sprague's right hand lay, palm upward, on the floor, and pressed the thumb and fore- finger against the nickel catches. Dundee reached into the toni But the fingerprints thus made cheat and brought out a narrow, were reversed-ns discovered deep drawer. "First I must tell when I examined the prints in Car- you that Milles got the gun out of raway's offer to-day. Miles could "You forget Sprague'a wiring for the lamp Saturday night, sneaking not turn the stiff hand over with the alarm bell from here to Ladia's in while I was talking with Lydia in out bruising the dead flesh; conse
the basement. A little inter
hequently the print of the forefinger He threw back the rug. Near came buck noisily enough to it's bed there was a hole in the Lydia a job as nurse in his home. print would normally have been."
offer was on the catch where the thumb BISQUIT DUBOUCHE floor, and out of it came a short Without question he assured him-
ngth of electric wire, ending self that she knew nothing, or she breath. "He was a cleverer man "Well Sanderson drew a deep It was three-juarters of an hour two amall metal plates.
But at would have gone the way of Nita than any of us suspected, and it in later. District Attorney Sander-tached also to the wire
was the and Sprague.
Now as tola pity that Nita did not fear him as Sprague. son, Captain Strawn and Dundee cord from the bronze Ismap.
Despite my warnings she feared Sprague's vongeance "The plus of the lamp cord le Sprague attempted to carry on the when she made her will." were alone in the house where Nita nearly out of the baseboard atlet blackmail scheme. "Selim" had been murdered and
Perhapa Miles where her husband hat confessed left it, so that there is no contact on Wednesday afternoon he made behind the keuse, just as Miles put him off for a day or two, but his crimes by committing suicide.with electricity here. And the rug an appointment with Sprague, tell-back here?" Dundee exclaimed in "Hello! What are you doing The morgue ambulance had and gone.
come hid the joining of the two wires.ing him that, if he would come to surprise when, upon returning to "I should have known," Dunder An unexplained wrapping of adhe-his home that evening, and manage the living room. The three
Įsive tape both on the lamp cord and admitted ruefully, as the three menon the wire of Nita's alarm bell was dummy, he would
to leave the bridge game while he found Penny Crain. entered Nita's bedroom, "lat
And the "Dad wants a private word with THE CENTRAL TRADING Co. ingenious a criminal as
Tracey here gave me the clue. In installing money in a drawer of the cabinet you," Penny explained, her brown Miles would not have failed to pro-
the alarm bell, Sprague copied the that stood in the trophy room be- yes glowing with happiness. "He's vide against the possibility of disarrangement under the dining th-tween the two windows.... This on the front porch.
ble, of course.
. And you And Miles simply drawer."
Mother! She looks fought to "But---how-- 7 Sanderson frown-Uke a 20-year-old bride!"
When Dundee joined him on the porch, Roger Crain's handsome face tushed painfully, but there happiness in his brown eyes, too.
"Serena Hart asked me to thank you for giving her Penny's mes she, in all innocence, who fired the Saturday morning. Miles joined a See these four little holes? A you've gussed a lot, but what you sage to pass on to me. I'm sure "It was," Danden sighed, "But t|piece of electric wire to the dining vise was screwed into the bottom of probably don't know is that Serena believed that the only way I could room bell wires, and pushed them the drawer so that it gripped the used the securities I had sent to make Miles to confess WAS
own through the hole he had bored gun with Its silencer at an upward her for safe keeping, to play the frighten him into thinking Flora into the basement celling. Now it angle.
A piece of string was tied market with. She wouldn't let me you'll come would bo killed."
down to the base to the trigger and fastened some touch a penny of the money until how to the underside of the drawer, she had turned it into enough to In the dark us to exactly how Miles ward at the basement celling. Dun-drawer open the string was drawn
When the three stood staring up-so that when Sprague pulled the clear up all my debts in Hamilton. managed his wife's murder," Sundee continued:
Then," and he sighed slightly. taut and the trigger pulled. Prac-she sent me home. derson reminded him. "This morn "See this long wire.
Not that running tically the same mechaniam by I'm sorry. I'm going to try to make) along the ceiling from the hole be which he tried to murder me. Margaret and Penny happy"
There was room for nothing in his neath the dining room bell? The The kick of the Kun Jerked the "Through ?" Penny called from mind but an ingenious scheme of York in January. 1918, and that tacks he used to secure it were also drawer shut. All Miles had to do the doorway, and her red lips were his own-a plan to get her alone returned to the tool chest, but he when he was pretending to look for so adorably rounded over the word so that he could klas that soft, pro- eight years ago, when he saw her could not get rist of either the Sprague was to turn off the trophy that Bonnie Dundee forgot Tracey vocative mouth. picture in The Evening Sun, along with the story that 'Anita Lee had augur hole or the tiny holes show-room light, by a button in the hall." Miles and his ingenious schemes,
Jing the course of the wire.
The End.
covery.
He must have snatched an had to drop a bit, fastened to the uppertunity to spill cyanide of pugar Spragae had bought, downed. tagsium into the decanter when my the four inches which separate the eyes were of him for a moment-dining room door from the base. and upon Lois Dunlap."
"I'm glad he did." Sanderson aaidment, and bore a hole through the curtly. "But it was ghnatly that ceiling. It was that hole could not pulled open this drawer, which was poor Labs had to know that it was understand, and which Ralph Harjust at the height of his stomach,
mond assured me was not there he received a bullet in his heart..
gun."
to
"Captain Strawn and I are still ment--"
ing you chose to tell us nothing more than that a Hamilton
had married Nit Leigh in
J
New
committed suicide, he had felt free follow it!"
to marry again... You said then you knew who the man was but you would not even tell us how knew
you
"Because i had very little getual proof then," Dundee answered. "A to who he was, the salient clue had been staring me in the face the
Let's
He led them across the basement to a door leading into a dank, un- finished portion of the cellar. The the door, and, with a shlight in wire passed under the top frame of his hand, Dundee showed how it continued along a rafter until it reached the place where it was
wire bedroom floor.
whole time, but it was not until joined, by adhesive tape, to the was fooling with a set of anagrams last night, idling spelling out the names of all the men who might have married hor and then dered her, that I saw it"
mur.
Miles simply cut the wire here where it enters another hole through Lydia's bedroom wall, and attached the new wire," Dundee "The connexion be tween the dining room bell and the
"Say what?" Strawn demanded explained. irritably.
"That Selim is simply Miles electr
tro-nungeni in the lamp 1}]} spelled backward," Dundee explain stairs was then complete..
■
ed. "Possibly because he consider-prague had bought yards too much of the wire-fortunately, so far as
el it the sophisticated thing to do, Miles scheme was concerned." Miles used an sumed name at the
party at which he met Nita Leigh. Even the first name, Mat, by which
a fatal
she knew him, was only his initial reversed."
by
"But what a chance Miles Lagk the bullet's not hitting her in
spot!" Sanderson mented in an awed voice.
com-
"No. He would only fire the gua
the Of
“Simple—but clever." Sanderson if Nita was seated before her commented.
"Just ng all of Miles' schemes dressing table. As an experienced were after Nita, egged on
marksman he could calculate Sprague, turned up in Hamilton to path of the bullet to a nicety. demand back alimony as the price that very day. As you know, Nits Course the machine had to be used of her silence.. show you how he killed his wife." standing at the sideboard, stencil But let me herself gave him his chance. Miles. He strode to the big bronze lamp until the frat faint notes of Juanita "It took me loan than an hour to-day told him that Nita was powdering to reconstruct the death machine so her face; and he could be sure she that it would be almost exactly aswas sitting down to the task. Nita it was when Miles Anished his work just before 2330 last Saturday and saw nothing to alarm her, but the gun kicked, and the big lamp was
as it remained until he had an op-rocked so that it banged nainst portunity to come back here and the window frame, shattering the dismantle It. Trust him to find out that the guard was removed from one bulb Miles had left in it. Or the house Thursday!"
course he moved the lamp a foot
or so, in the resulting excitement.
As he spoke, he was unscrewing And if she had been wounded only, the big, jewel-studded bowl of the living to tell not only how the shot bronza lamp. Wedged, at a down-was fired but who had motive to ward-slanting angle, inside the kill her, Miles would have committed
bowl, which was 12 Inches in diam suicide then." eter, was "Judge Marshall's snub-
nosed automatic and silencer, the
and of the silencer projecting "What if Nita had not asked hini slightly from a hole, whose jewel to mix the cocktails or had not gone was missing.
to powder her face?" Strawn naked, "There's a blank cartridge in the "The whole party was going to gun now, of course, but Miles, Inding and dance at the Country Club. Miles would have escorted
his panic, took my words literally: her home, as he had done on Mon-
Boo the electro-magnet striped to the gun butt? He got it day night, and would then have From the bell Sprague had installed made his opportunity, But I must from here to Lydin's bedroom. The tell you that on Saturday morning, magnet was connected with the according to the telephone operator electric wire in one of the two fn: Miles offico, Nita ang him to lamp sockets, as you see it now, possible, her undprosed intention say she must see him as soon an the long cord of the lamp was connected with the wire of the bell being to tell him that she was not in the dining room-so connected going to bother him again. He told that when anyone stepped on the her he would be right out, but Nita
two little metal plates under the Hamilton and would not be back said she and Lydia were going into dining room rug, the kitchen bell
"Very simple!
When Sprague
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