Indianapolis Times, Volume 42, Number 191, Indianapolis, Marion County, 19 December 1930 — Page 20

PAGE 20

Murder AT Bridge sg| *y teavenge Bac^ STAIBS ‘ '

BEGIN HEBE TODAY SPECIAL INVESTIGATOR DUNDEE, hmvjn* dinner with PENNY CRAIN the Sunday after JUANITA SELIM la murdered a* bridge, tells hr the latest findings; Suspaaon centers heaviest on RALPH HAMMOND. In love with Nlta. who has disappeared. Dundee suspects that Ralph came to Nlta's house from the rear, unseen by POLLY BEALE and hit brother CLIVE, who were watching for him. shot Nlta In her bedroom with a gun and Maxim ellencer stolen from tUDGE MARSHALL. Nita's landlord, to whom she paid no rent, and fled. Suspicion also rests on FLORA MILES, In Nita’s closet at the time of the murder reading a note which she thinks is from her husband, but which Is really f rom DEXTER. SPRAGUE, Who came from New York to Join Nlta. and whom Penny accuses of the murtfer. LYDIA Nlta s maid, whose face Nlta had horribly burned and to whom Nlta left all her money In an attempt to compensate. Is practically cleared. Ralph, however, appears and tells Penny that be la cured of his infatuation for Nlta. The morning of Nita’s death. Ralph. In estimating the cost of remodeling Nita's attic, finds In the attic bedroom evidence that Snrayie was hr lover. Polly, calling for Nlta, who has already gone, finds Ralph and forces him To come with her. NOW GO ON WITH THE STORY CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (Continued! “T)UT she did accept you ThursD day night?" Penny persisted. “Yes,” the boy admitted, his face darkly flushed again. "This is awfully hard, honey, but I’ll tell you once and for all and get it over with. ... I took her to dinner. We drove to Burnsville because she said she was sick of Hamilton. “When we were driving back she suddenly became very queer—reckless, defiant. . . And she asked me if I still wanted to marry her,'and I said I did. I asked her right then to say when, and she said she’d marry me June 1, but she added—” and the boy, to Dundee’s watching eyes, seemed to be genuinely puzzled again by what must have sounded so odd at the time—‘‘that she’d marry me June 1 if she lived to see the day.” “Oh!" Penny gasped, then controlling her horror, she asked Mth iwhat sounded like real curiosity, • Then what—happened, Ralph? ’<Vhy do you propose to her on Tfnursday afid to me on—on Sunday?” “A gorgeous actress sacrificed to the typewriter," Dundee told himself, as he waited for Ralph Hammond's reluctant reply. "Can’t we forget it, honey? , . . You do love me a little, don’t you? Can’t you take my word for it that I’m cured now—forever?” Penny’s hands went up to cover her face and Dundee had the grace to feel very sorry indeed for her—sorry even if she intended to give her promise to Ralph Hammond, as a sick feeling in his stomach prophesied that she was about to do. "How can I know you’re really—cured, if I don’t know what cured you? he heard Penny’s faltering voice ask huskily from behind the screen of her hands. “I suppose you’re right,” the boy admitted miserably. “There’s no need to ask you not to tell anyone else. Although I don’t want to see her again ever—. Why, Penny, I wouldn’t even tell Polly and Clive yesterday, after it happened, though Polly guessed and went upstairs. ... I tried to keep her back—” "I don’t quite understand, Ralph,” Penny interrupted. "You mean something happened when you were at Nita’s house yesterday morning?” "Yes. Judge Marshall had promised Nita to have the unfinished half of the top story turned into a maid’s bedroom and bath and a guest bedroom and bath. Clive let me go to make the estimates. "Os course I was glad of the chance to see Nita again—I hadn’t been with her since Thursday night. But she had to take Lydia in for a dentist’s appointment, and they left me alone in the house. I had to go into the finished half to make some measurements, and in the bedroom I found—oh, God!” he groaned, and pressed a fist against his trembling mouth. a a a "'VT'OU found that Dexter Sprague X was staying there, was using the bedroom that used to be mine —didn’t you?” Penny helped him at last, in desperation. "How did you know?” The boy stared at the girl blankly for a moment, then seemed to crumple as if from anew blow. "I suppose it was common gossip that Nita and Sprague were lovers, and I was the only one she fooled! "My God! To think all of you would stand by and let me marry her—a cheap little gold digger from Broadway, living with a cheap fourflusher she couldn’t get along without and had to send for ” "Did you —want to kill her, Ralph?" Penny whispered hoarsely,

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touching one of his knotted fists with a trembling hand. "Kill her? . . . Good Lord, no!" the boy flung at her violently. “I’m not such an ass as that! You girls are all alike! Polly had so little sense as to think I’d want to kill Nita and Sprague both! "She couldn’t see, and neither could Clive, that all I wanted was to get away from everybody and get so drunk I could forget what a fool I'd been ” “What did you do, Ralph?” Penny asked urgently. "Why, I got drunk, of course,” the boy answered, as if surprised at her persistence. "Darling, sou wouldn’t believe me if I told you how much rot-gut Scotch it took to put me under, but that filthy bootlegging hotel clerk would have charged me double if he had known how much good it would do me.” "Hotel?” Penny snatched at the vital word. "Where did you go to get drunk, Ralph?” “I never realized before you had so much curiosity, hor.ey,” the boy grinned at her. “After I shook Clive—Polly went on to Nita’s bridge party, because she couldn’t throw her down at the last minute —I wandered around till I came to the Railroad Men’s hotel, down on State street, you know, the other side of the tracks. It’s a miserable dump, but I sort of hankered for a place to hide in that was as miserable and cheap as I felt—” "Did you register under your owfc name?” "Ashamed of me, Penny? ... No, I registered under my first two names—Ralph Edwards. And the clerk turned out to be a bootlegger. "Well, when I woke up about II this morning I give you my word I wasn’t sick and headach.7. though God knows I’d drank enougn to put me out for a week. . . . Penny, I woke up feeling—well, I can’t explain it but to say I felt light and new and—and clean. ... All washed-up! "At first I thought my heart was empty—it felt so free of pain. But as I lay there I found my heart wasn’t empty at all. It was brimming full of love— Gosh, honey! I sound like a Laura Jean Libby hero, don’t I? "But before I rang you from the lunchroom where I ate breakfast, I wrote Nita a special delivery note, telling her it was all off. I had to be free actually, before I could ask you. . i . You will marry me, won’t you, Penny honey? ... I knew this morning I had never really loved any one else— ■’ Penelope Crain remained rigid for a moment, then very slowly she laid both her hands on his head, for he had knelt and buried his face against her skirt. But as she spoke, her brown eyes, enormous in her white face, were upon Dundee, who had stepped silently from behind the portieres. “Yes. I’ll marry you, Ralph! . . . You may come in now, Mr. Dundee!” CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN IT was nearly 9 o’clock Monday morning, and Dundee sat alone in the district attorney’s office, impatiently awaiting the arrival of his chief. Coroner Price, with the approval of Captain Strawn of the homicide squad, had set the inquest into the murder of Juanita Leigh Selim for 10 o’clock, and there was much that Dundee wished to say to the district attorney before that hour arrived. When the thoroughly tired and dispirited young detective had returned to his apartment late Sunday afternoon, after having seen Ralp Hammond completley exonerated of any possible complicity in the murder of Nita Selim, he had found a telegram from, the district attorney, filed in Chicago: “CALLED CHICAGO SERIOUS ILLINESS OF MOTHER STOP RETURNING HAMILTON EIGHT TEN MONDAY MORNING STOP SEE BY PAPERS YOU ARE ON SELIM JOB STOP GOOD, BUT WATCH YOUR STEP—SANDERSON.” Well—and Dundee grinned ruefully—he had been on the job, all right, but would Sanderson consider that he had "watched his step"? At any rate, he had been thorough, he congratulated himself as he weighed the big manila envelope containing his own transcription of the copious shorthand notes he had taken during the first hours of the investigation. A smaller envelope held Nita’s telltale checkbook, her amazing last will and testament, and the still

i more startling note she had written to Lydia Carr. The last two Dundee had retrieved from Carraway only this | morning, after having submitted them to the fingerprint expert on . Sunday. | Carraway’s report rather had | dashed him at first, so? It proved | that no other hands than Nita’s—i and his own, of course—had touched I °ither envelope or its contents. But he was content now to belie vo that Nital herself had unsealed *' - ’.nvelope she had inscribed, “To b- o. ...ed In case of my death” . . Why? . . . Had she been moved oy an impulse to give a clew to the identity of the person of whom she stood in fear, but had stifled the impulse? STRAWN had said, too, that the little rosewood desk had been in a fairly orderly condition, before his big, official hands had clawed through it in search of a clew or the gun itself. Well, Strawn had been properly chagrined when Dundee had produced the will and note. "Why did she stick it away in a pack of new envelopes, if she wanted it to be found?” Strawn had demanded irritably, and had not been appeased by Dundee’s suggestion: “Because she did not want Lydia, in dusting the desk, to see it and be alarmed.” Yes, he had been busy enough, but what, actually, had he to show for his industry? He had worked up three good cases—the first against Lydia Carr, the second against Dexter Sprague, and the third against Ralph Hammond — only to have them knocked to pieces almost as fast as he had conceived them. Os course Lydia Carr might be lying to give Sprague an alibi, but Dundee was convinced that she was telling the truth and that she hated Sprague too much to fake an alibi for him.... Os course, there always was Judge Marshall, but Through the closed door came sounds which Dundee presently identified as connected with Penny Crain’s arrival—the emphatic click of her heels; the quick opening an.-i shutting of desk drawers. The down-hearted young detective debated the question of taking his perplexities out to her, but' decided against it. She probably wanted to hear no more of his theories, was undoubtedly burning with righteous indignation against him because of Ralph Hammond. Did she still consider herself engaged to Ralph, in spite of the fact that young Hammond had gallantly insisted upon releasing her from her promise as soon as he suspected that it had been given merely to prove her faith in his innocence? It was a decidedly unhappy young detective whom Sanderson greeted upon his arrival at 9 o’clock. The new district attorney, who had held office since November, was a big, good-natured, tolerant man, who looked younger than his 35 years because of his freckles and his always rumpled mop of sandy hair. (To Be Continued)

STICKERS zpCrriio; It is possible to mark nine of the squares in the above diagram in sucb a way that no two marked squares shall be in the same line, vertically, horizontally or diagonally. Can you do it? (The squares in the broken lines at the top and bottom are to be considered in the same line, despite the gaps.) !v

Answer for Yesterday

0~1~ lli©!_ D i; ii T 10l The above sketch showi how the checker board can be divided into four parts of the same size and shape, so that each part contains a checker. Two parts are shaded to make it dear to the eye. (6

TARZAN AND THE LOST EMPIRE

Dilecta, watching the precession from the roof of her father’s house, was filled with anxiety when she noticed her fiance. Maximus Pracclarus, was not among the prisoners in the procession. for she knew that sometimes men who entered the dungeons of Caesar were never heard of again. < w....

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

OUR BOARDING HOUSE

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FRECKLES AND HIS FRIENDS

r TELL WJe, glLgy_. ) IAARE A U>H<S ETORy C OUT VIU6BC ) HARD TBU-UT.-X BOOM) HIM ALL OP [4OM DID YOG j SHORT, I COEUEHED FAROAR IS FARBAR ) AFTER MAUlrf UIW, T6U. lAS ABOUT fikid yom a horse all cohered J secret tohnel—ihe*J i FRECKLES?/ NMnW A PHOSPWUS SOBSTaNcS - F=^ f lAwsug.wren*

WASHINGTON TUBBS II

r ( NEFFER, SENOR, V-'AF ) ( SHOO'. XT'S A SUIELL VUIVff \

SALESMAN SAM

( Ci-OSH,CHRISTMAS HAS OOT Me OUSTED ALRePOY > \ AMO KrtfV VJAMTs TOOOTO TRe. ORAMO OPERA Me**r vjf.sk—t’ll hafTa hit ouzo. for. a ‘"t” . I

BOOTS AND HER BUDDIES

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Custom and heredity had made her indifferent to the brutalities of the arena, but today, when she went to her father’s loge, which was close to that of Caesar, she was trembling for the life of one she loved. Outwardly,’Hiowever, she appeared calm, serene and beautiful as she awaited the opening of the .games.

—By Ahern

/VJHfCT’ef t HERS FOR?TO ASK FOr\ CAM'T"? THSAI *TH'sTeeNT ft toe fora rais&l < Tou'Rs. a ogrm ( can't uve on toY P(?.es£nt /Poor mawaoer.!

With the arrival of the emperor, there emerged from one of the barred gates at the far end of the arena the head of the procession. There were wild lions and leapards, some of which were drawn in wheeled cages, while others were led by slaves. The beast* strained ferociously at their leashes. u • .■ •

OUT OUR WAY

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Hf naihat does rr JM up_a humored ArtoS I SAY, BRCMIU_ gl? THREE AMD FOUR. I| I OP OO 7EHTHS... W.rr TlU.l.|[

fir} O WfVS>VS FICKLE, ROMANTIC HEART, THE CHARVUMCj SENORYTA FATHER, THE WWR. LJ IE THE MOST PERFECT CREATURE IN ALL CREATION. uU MINISTER, IS WlORL't REST ARE LDNfa EXCITED AMP HAPPY. _

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—By Edgar Rice Burroughs •

There were also two bull buffaloes and several cages in which were confined man-like apes Captives and beasts were formed in solid phalanx in front of Sublatus, who addressed the prisoners, promising freedom and reward to the victors. Then, sullen and lowering, the prisoners and beasts were herded back to their dungeons and cages.

DEC. 19, 1930,

—By William^

—By Blosser r

—By Crane,

—By Small's.

—By Martin