Indianapolis Times, Volume 42, Number 201, Indianapolis, Marion County, 31 December 1930 — Page 7

DEC. 31, 1930.

Murder AI Bridge xteh hu ANNE AIISIIN slack pigeon" i) / ’THEA^WaN6PM^ <(i *

BEGIN HER! TODAY • A r.Lr-prc- People could have killed JUANITA Pr ;M at her bride* p. r*y: .JUDGE ' lAFctUALL. her landlord, to hom r e paid no rent, and owner of •he s u * r ' •Hencer with which ahe war shut. w one. JOHN DRAKJE 7it inotl.er El -aA MILES. In Nite's clyMt t the tlm the murder, rcadUig a note '.. e th as is from her husband. hut •* ch 15 ‘tom DEXTER SPRAGUE. Is another CLIVE HAMMOND and POLLY BE A Lit. who were in the •olarlum tosether. and JANET HAYMOND lh with Spracue. also are suapected , DUNDEE, believes that Nita, recogr.litne one of these si* in a fronn pho•neripn, came down from New York for blackmail, receiving *IO,OOO and a bullet, and h© ■a'arns Spraßu© not to carry on t.he *chem©. Nita ; wl and the fact that she had Sorairu* cor ‘*> hell near her bed ro nimmon ia/DIA shpw ah© feared death. Po.ire think Nita was killed by a Nrw York gunman Nita had burned paper*, intending •O iuarrv RALPH HAMMOND. and Dundee thinks the murderer will re-tn-n looking for them. At the office Thu "*av rooming PENNY CRAIN Is teilr g hh: cf an Impromptu bridge party Wednesday at the Miles’ home, to which Spriii. re r ame uninvited, when the tel- ' ohc: e r:r.gs. with the news of Sprague s murder His bodv I* found tn the trophv room t the Miles house. Penny says that :-pr:>rje and '.appeared mysteriously from the p.'i that Miles quarreled with riora over him. and Dundee learns that, ell six ol the original suspects had opportunity to kill him. NOW GO ON WtTfl THY, STORY THIRTY-SEVEN '■"p'HF, Miles home, still known in 1 Hamilton as the Hackett place, .'.inch it had been built more than thirty years before by Flora’s faiher. old Silas Hackett, dead these seven years, dominated one of the most beautiful of the wooded hills which encircled Mirror lake in the Brentwood section. Os modified Tudor architecture, its deep red, mellowed bricks had achieved in three decades almost the same aged dignity and impressiveness that characterized the three-century mansion in England which Silas Hackett’s architect had used as an inspiration. The big house faced the lake, a long series of landscaped terraces leading down to the water's edge, but the driveway wound from the state road up a side hill, to the main entrance at the rear of the house. * Once before—on Sunday, the day after Nita Selim’s murder, when he had come to interview Lydia Carr and had secured the alibi which had eliminated Dexter Sprague as a suspect—Dundee had driven his car up this hill between the tall yew hedges. But then he had taken the fork w’hich led to the hooded doorway over the kitchen; had descended the kitchen stairs with Lydia, to the servants’ sitting room in the basement. Now he continued along the main driveway to the more impressive entrance, whose flanking, slim turrets frowned down upon a line of police cars and motorcycles. His approach must have been expected and observed, for it was the master of the house who opened the great, iron-studded doors and invited him into the broad main hall, at the end of which, down threje steps, lay the immense living room. The detective's first glance took in stately arm chairs of the Cromwell) period, thick, mellow’-toned rug?, and, in the living room beyonid, splendid examples cf Jacobcah furniture. Im all this dignified but simple grandeur only Tracey Miles—short, stomty blonde, the typical business Battbitt—struck a false note. jfA. horrible thing to happen in a Aian's home, Dundee," Miles was sayjing, his plump, rosy face blighted/ with horror. "I can t realize yes, that we actually slept as usual with a corpse lying down here all night! And I have only myself to blfc me—” 4"What do you mean?” Dundee amed. ■'Why, that the—body wasn’t discovered sooner," Miles explained, “■f it had occurred to me that \Jhitson hadn't closed the trophy rMom windows. I should have gone to close and lock them when I ■Bade the rounds of living room, ■nd library, after our guests were ■one last night.” nun K PALE-FACED, balclheadcd buti ( • Jcr had materialized while his ndster was speaking. ‘ Beg pardon, ir, but I did not close the trophy ocm windows because I thought you might be using the room again. “You see, sir," and Whitson 1 urned to Dundee, “Mr. Miles and Mr. Dunlap played ping-pong in the trophy room after dinner until the other guests began to arrive, and I did not want them to find the room stuffy—it was a warm night—if any cf the guests " *'l see," Dundee interrupted.

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"Who, to your knowledge, was the last person to enter the trophy room list night, Mr. Miles?" “I was. except Sprague, of course, and I had no idea he'd gone there. Drake wanted to play anagrams, and before the bridge game started, I went to the trophy room to get the box." Miles explained. “I turned off the light when I'd got the box. and there was no light burning in there this morning when Calia, the parlor maid, went in there to put the anagram box back in the cabinet, and—and found the body.” Flora—Mrs. Miles—had brought the anagrams in from the porch and left them on a table in the living room, as our guests were getting ready to leave. There was nothing else to bring in, in case of rain. The bridge tables are of iron, covered with oilcloth bags for the cards, score pad3, and pencils " “Yes, I know," Dundee interrupted. “Miss Crain already has told me all about that, and a good many details of the party itself. . . . By the way, where is Mrs. Miles now?” “In bed. The doctor is with her. She is prostrated from the shock.” “Where is this room you call the trophy room?” Dundee asked. "No, don’t bother bo come with me. Just point it out. It’s on this floor, I understand.” Miles pointed past the great circular staircase that wound upward from the main hall. "You can’t see the door from here, but it’s behind the staircase. Celia found the door closed this morning, and no light on, as I said—” Dundee cut him short by marching toward the door which was again closed. He entered so noiselessly that Captain Strawn, Dr. Price and the fingerprint expert, CarraWay, did not hear him. For a moment he stood just inside the door and let his eyes wander about the room which Penny already had described. It was not a large room—l2xl4 feet, possibly—but it looked smaller, crowded as it was with the long ping-pong table, bags of golf clubs, fishing tackle, tennis racquets, skis and sleds. There were two windows in the north wall of the room, looking out upon the yew-hedged driveway, and between them stool a cabinet of numerous big and little drawers. b b b IVTOT until he had taken in the n general aspect of the room did Dundee look at the thing over which Captain Strawn and the coroner were bending—the body of Dexter Sprague. The alien from New York had fallen about four feet from the window nearer the cast wall of the trophy room. He lay on his side, his left cheek against the floor, the fingers of his left hand still clutching the powder-burned bosom of his soft shirt, now stiff with dried blood, a pool of which bad formed and then half congealed upon the rug. The right hand, the fingers half curled, but not touching each other, lay palm-upward on the floor at the end of the rigid, outstretched arm. The one visible eye was half open, but on the sallow, thin face, which had been strikingly handsome in an obvious sort of way, was a peace and dignity which Dundee never had seen upon Sprague's face when the man was alive. The left leg was drawn upward so that the knee almost touched the bullet-pierced stomach. “How long has he been dead, doctor?" Dundee asked quietly. “Hello, boy!” Dr. Price greeted him placidly. “Always the same question! I've been here only a few minutes, and already I’ve told Strawn that I probably shall be unable to fix the hour of death with any degree of accuracy.” “Took your time, didn't yflu, Bonnie?" Captain Strawn greeted his former subordinate on the homicide squad. “Doc sayo he’s been dead between ten and twelve hours. Since it's nearly 10 now, that means Sprague was killed sometime between 9 and 11 o'clock last ngiht." “Better say between 9 o'clock and midnight last night,” Dr. Price suggested. “He may have lived an hour or more unconscious, of course. For the indications arc that he did not die instantly, but staggered a few steps, clutching at the wound. But of course I shall have to perform an autopsy first—" Dundee crossed the room, stepping over the dead man's stick —a swank affair of dark, polished wood,

with a heavy knob of carved onyx, which lay about a foot beyond the reach of the curled fingers of the stiff right hand. “Sprague’s hat?" he asked, pointing to a brightly-banded straw hat which lay upon the top of the cabinet. “Yes," Strawn answered “And did you notice the window screen?" He pointed to the window in front of which the body lay. The sash of leaded panes was raised is high as it would go and beneath it was a screen of the roller-curtain type, raised about six inches from the window sill. A pair of curved, nickel-plated catches in the center of the inchwide metal band on the bottom of the coppernet curtain showed how the screen was raised or lowered. BBS DUNDEE nodded, frowning, and Strawn began eagerly. “You'll have to admit I was right now, boy. You’ve sneered at my gunman theory and tried to pin Nita's murder on one of Hamilton’s finest bunch of people, but you'll have to admit now that every detail of this setup bears me out.” “Yes?” “Bure. This is the way I figure it out: Sprague has good reason to be afraid he's next on the program. He's nervous. He hops a taxi at his hotel and comes here—can't stick to his room any longer. Wants a little human companionship. “This crowd here—and I have Miles’ word for it—ain't any .too glad to see him, and shows it. He phones for a taxi to go back to his hotel—about 9:15, that was, Miles says—but decides to walk down the hill to meet it. “Doesn't want to go back out on the porch and lie about having had a good time, when he hasn’t. . . . Well, he opens the front door, or what would be the front door if this was any ordinary house, but before he steps out he sees or hears something—probably a rustling in the hedge across the driveway, or maybe he even sees a face, in the light from the lanterns on each side of the door. “He feels sure Nita’s murderer has trailed him. In a panic he darts into tins room, and don't turn on the light for fear he’ll be seen from the windows, but he can sec well enough to make out how the screens work. “I’ll bet you anything you like Sprague stayed in this room for an hour or two, till he thought the coast was clear, then eased up this screen, intending to climb out of the window and drop to the ground. , . . Not much of a drop at that. You can see that the tall hedge on this side of the driveway comes pretty near up to these windows. “Well, I figure he laid his hat on this cabinet, intending to reach in for it when he was outside, but that he made some little noise which the gunman was listening for, and that when he got the screen up this high, the gunman, crouching under the window, let go with the same gun and silencer that he used to bump off Nita. “I’ve got Miles’ word for it that neither her nor nobody else heard a shot. ... Os course, nobody knew Sprague was in here, and since his hat and stick was both missing from the hall closet, they took it for granted he’d beat it. . . . Any objections to that theory, boy?” "Just a few—one in particular," Dundee said. “But I grant it's a good one, provided Dr. Price’s autopsy bears you out as to the course of the bullet, and that Carraway finds Spragqe’s fingerprints on that contrivahcc for raising the screen. Even then ” But Dundee was not allowed to finish his sentence, for Strawn was summoned to the telephone by Whitson. When he returned there was a slightly bewildered look on his heavy old face. "That’s funny. ... Collins—the lad I sent to check up on the taxi companies—says he's located the driver that answered Sprague’s call last night. "The driver says he was told to wait for Sprague at the foot of the hill, on the main road; says he waited there until 10:30. then went on back to town, sore'n a boiled owl.” “It doesn’t look exactly as if Sprague were afraid of any one outside of this house last night, does it?” Dundee asked. "By the way. I suppose you’ve sent for every one who was here?” “Sure!” But again Captain Strawn looked uhoomfortablc. “But we haven’t been able to locate the Beale girl and Clive Hammond.” (To Be Continued) 9.100 FED BY FIREMEN Voshell Reports Relief Group Has Distributed 44 Tons of Coal. More than 9.1,00 persons have been fed at fire headquarters since the opening of the free lunch room several weeks ago, Harry E. Voshell chief, reported today to city officials. In addition firemen have clothed 1,462 persons and supplied 1,143 baskets to feed 6.339 persons. Fortyfour tons of coal have been distributed and $3,270.24 have been contributed, Voshell’s report stated.

TARZAN AND THE LOST EMPIRE

_ , __ -AVI*.

An instant later, Tarzan cast the lifeless form aside, picked up the sword and shield that he had been forced to abandon, and sought for new foes. Thus the battle raged around the arena, each side seeking to gain the advantage in numbers so they might set upon the remnant of their opponents and destroy them. i

THE INDIANAPOLIS TTMES

OUR BOARDING HOUSE

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FRECKLES AND HIS FRIENDS

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WASHINGTON TUBBS II

■ (rwZ UE SANS COSTA GCANDCSt GOING TO START A 'B>o> WAR. V.' . , ...

SALESMAN SAM

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BOOTS AND HER BUDDIES

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I■■ ■ -

Cassius Hasta had disposed of the gladiator whom he had drawn away from Tarzan. But now two swordsmen were upon him, and he was fighting for his life against unequal odds. He saw an opening and his sword found the throat of one of Iris opponents, but his guard was dowj| for an instant and a glancing blow struck tm Uclmet. Mm

—By Ahern

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f ••’cAO£l HL HADN'T \<\OMAPtO HE •- | [ \ v \ ‘'j / f MlbTtl? V. M'tUE'R COULD HAUfc RESCUED ' ME— AM’ ID MEUEW HANE KNOWN "WAT HE WAG A YRANCE --30T,E iA a g A ' \_W4E X’THNNX OE A\M Ab VWSTEW. K nl BL* B \ WOMOETE NE HE'b TH\MV\n’ THING*, * W T'n\6HX, Too •• GEEEEEE ’.V SAV .HOW’d > '> r G v \ eue. get stavcteo ot# why , \ //7/t T 7fTV v f—- ' , ... jj I

Hasta stumbled and fell to the sand halfstunned. “Habet! Habet!” roared the crowd. Standing over him, his antagonist raised his forefinger to the audience and every thumb agnt down. With a smile, the victor raised his ■prd to drive it through Hasta's throat, b;>t ► Staed an a little play to the '

OUT OUR WAY

;WrSS9FUNNy s TVIAT OWE IS A LiTTIC I VHUYVWACTE BCEATH Wi • °°*l 1 \ T °° SOU ...YOU I TELUU' THEM AUYIAOCE ..1 3 IUIT-mAT COPE PKOM ) HIT A cope at IWXT I ffiß.TUKnnaM J S I

—By Edgar Rice Burroughs

CU**. b* Z&cu fct BirrwjfW. lac AH rwr nl Mkxa*l

In the instant Tarzan leaped across the soft sand, casting aside his sword and shield, reverting to the primitive ... the beast... to swe his friend. It was like the charge of a lion. The crowd saw and was frozen to silence. They watched him spring in his stride several yards befcie he reached the gladiator and fall upon tun; like $ panther.

PAGE 7

—By Williams

—By Blosser

x—By Crane

—By Small

—By Martin