Indianapolis Times, Volume 42, Number 202, Indianapolis, Marion County, 1 January 1931 — Page 9

In. i, 1931

Murder At Bridge .. ANJNfc AUSTIN Autnoy the BLACK PIGEON* ■ } 'V ’TME Vtoer

BEGIN HTR.E TODAY ftfANTTA SELIM la at fmdte; four days later DEXTER rtPRAOUE. her lover, la aUo murdered when he disappears mysteriously from an impromptu bridge party at tne DUNDEE, working on the theo y t£, at . Nlta an *J Hprague were partners in blackmail, and that Nlta haa rome down to Hamilton after recognizing someone In a group nteture. finds that the six original suspects In Nlta's death had opportunity to kill Bpragu also. .... .. All st- could have hidden the gun after tha murder. In a secret hiding place In the guests closet In Nlta g house. Nlta's will and the fact that tha had Sprague contrive a bell near her bed to summon LYDIA, her maid nd heir, show she feared death. The police theory is that Nlta and Sprague were killed by a New York gurnnan. Sprague, fearing lie is being followed, attempts to escape through the window of the trophy room, where he is found, and is shot through the stomach by the ussassln crouching outside. Dundee points out the fact that all fingerprints were wiped off the hiding place, showing the murderer had been there. STRAwN has asked every one present at, the bridge party to come to the Miles' house lor questioning, but Clive and Polly are missing. NOW GO ON WITH THE STORY CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT •r’D give a good deal to know ■I which of those two suggested that It would be a good idea to get married the first thing this morning,” Dundee mused aloud, as he put down the second ‘extra’ which the Hamilton Morning News had ihad occasion to issue that Thurs|day. | It was 2 o’clock, and Dundee sat across the desk from Captain Strawn, in his former chief’s office in police headquarters. The first extra had screamed in its biggest head type: Second Bridge Dummy Murder! and had carried, in detail, Captain Strawn’s 'comforting theory tliat Dexter Sprague’s erstwhile friends again had been made the victims of a New York gunman’s fiendish cleverness in committing his murders unfcr circumstances which inevitably Mould involve Hamilton’s most ■ighly respected and socially prominent citizens in the police investi*gation. But the second extra had a more romantic streamer headline: Hammond Wedding Delays Murder Quiz. The .story beneath a series of smaller headlines began: “At the very moment—9:os o’clock this morning—when Celia Hunt, maid in the Tracey Miles home in the Brentwood district of Hamilton, was screaming the news of her discovery of the dead body of Dexter Sprague, New York motion picture director, in what, is known as the ‘trophy room,’ Miss Polly Beale and Mr. Clive Hammond were applying for a maariage license in the municipal building. “At 9;30, when Miss Beale and Mr. Hammond were exchanging their vows in the rectory of St. Paul’s Episcopal church, of which .both bride and bridegroom have fceen members since childhood, Capt. Strawn of the homicide squad Ins listening to Tracey Miles’ acHmt' of the strange disappearance H Dexter Sprague from the imAmptu bridge game, after he had B|nounccd his intention of taking Mvantage of the fact that he was Bimmy’ to telephone for a taxi. !■ “And at 10 o’clock, when the new Wes. Hammond called her home to Heak the news of her marriage to Hr aunt, Mrs. Amelia Beale, the ■ride in turn was acquainted with |me news of Sprague’s murder and the fact that both she and her husband were wanted at the Miles home for questioning by the police, since both had been guests of Mr. and Mrs. Miles last night, although Mr. Hammond did not arrive until about 11 o’clock.” tt n THERE followed a revision of the murder story as it appeared in the first extra, with additional details supplied by Strawn, and with a line drawing of the scene of the crime—-the trophy room itself and the forked driveway with its tall yew hedges. A dotted line illustrated Strawn’s theory of Sprague’s plan to elude the murderer who had followed him to the Miles home. Because of the curved sweep of the driveway toward the main entrance of the house, the tall hedge was less than two feet from the window with the partly opened screen. “Captain Strawn’s theory,” read the extra below the large drawing, “is that Sprague had good cause to fear that he was being followed on his way to the Miles home; that he telephoned for a taxi to wait for him at the foot of the hill, and that he planned to leave the Miles house by way of the trophy room window, so that his lurking pursuer might have no knowledge of his departure. The drawing shows that his

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proposed flight would have been j protected by hedges until he reached the wooded slope of the hill, provided his Nemesis was lurking in the opposite hedge across the driveway, where he could observe every departure from the Miles home.” “You’ve sure got a single-track mind, boy,” Strawn chuckled. “So you think those two got married in such a hurry this morning because the law says a husband or a wife can’t be made to testify against the other?” “Possibly,” Dundee grinned, unruffled. “But there is another possibility—which is why I should like to know who suggested this sudden wedding. “I mean that we can’t overlook the possibility that these two murders made either the bride or the bridegroom feel perfectly safe In going on with the marriage, Polly Beale and Clive Hammond had been engaged for more than a year, you know, with no apparent reason for a long engagement. “As for my having a single-track mind, Captain, what about you? I have eix possible suspects, all of whose know, and you have only one—whose name you do not know, and whose motive you only can guess at, while I have a perfectly good motive that might fit any one of my six—blackmail!” “Is that so?” Strawn growled. “I’m not forgetting that Nita Selim banked $10,600 cash after she got to Hamilton. My real theory now that Sprague has been killed ‘is that Nita and Sprague had cooked up some sort of racket between them, and that when Nita got the chance to come to Hamilton with Mrs. Dunlap, she jumped at it, and she and Sprague sprung their racket, whatever it was, either just before or just after Nita left New York “Probably it was Nita’s tip-off and Sprague did the actual dirty work himself, which explains that telegram that Nita sent him April 24, just three days after she got to Hamilton. Let’s see again just what it says,” and Strawn reached for a copy of the night letter which Dundee himself had unearthed the day before. “See: ‘Everything Jake so far, but would feel safer you here’.” tt st tt “"VTES, I remember the wording X quite well,” Dundee interrupted. “But you did not take it so seriously when 1 showed it to you yesterday. If you had ” “All right! Rub it in!” Strawn snapped, flushing darkly. “If I had assigned a man to ‘tail’ Sprague, as you suggested, he wouldn’t have been murdered ” “He probably would have been murdered just the same,” Dundee comforted the old man, “but we might have been lucky enough to have an eyewitness,” “Oh, you and your theory!” Strawn growled. “But let me go on. ... Nita meant she would feel safer about Sprague if he was here in Hamilton, too. But the guy they double-crossed in New York got on their trail, “It took him weeks to do it, and Sprague followed Nita’s advice. He got here Sunday, April 27, and on Monday, April 28, Nita banked the first $5,000! Don’t you see it, boy? Sprague brought with him the dough they’d got for the stunt, and thought it was safer for Nita to bank it in her name, since it wasn’t the name she was known by in New York anyway. “We’ve checked up on Sprague pretty thoroughly. He didn’t have a bank book, either on his body or in his room, and every bank in town denies he had an account with them.” “If that theory is correct, it makes Nita Selim a pretty low character,” Dundee mused aloud. “Not only did she kick him out as a lover, but she double-crossed him as her partner in crime, by willing the whole wad to Lydia Carr. Sprague must have received quite a shock when he heard Nita’s will read at the inquest.” “Yeah,” Strawn agreed. “It looks like Mrs. Dunlap picked a sweet specimen to make a friend out of. . . . Well, that’s my theory, and I think it explains everything. “Their victim in New York simply hired a gunman, or came down here himself, when he got on their tracks. Os course it was a good stunt to make it look like a local crime—figured he’d fool me just as he fooled you! “So the murderer simply trailed Nita around, and saw the whole bunch of society people shooting at a target at Judge Marshall’s place,

with a gun equipped with a Maxim silencer* Too good an opportunity to be missed, so he bides his chance to swipe the gun and silencer. “To make sure it will look like a local crime, he pops off Nita when that same bunch is at her house; but it takes a few days longer before he has the same opportunity toget Sprague. But it came last night and he took advantage of it.” tt tt m “ \ VERY plausible theory, and one which, in general, the whole city of Hamilton has been familiar with since the night Nita was murdered,” Dundee remarked significantly. “What do you mean?” Strawn demanded. “It’s waterproof, ain’t it? Doc Price says the bullet —and a .32-caliber one at that—entered Sprague’s body just below the breastbone and traveled an upward course till it struck the extreme •ight side of the heart. “The bullet entered exactly where it would have to,, if the murderer was crouching under that window while Sprague was raising the screen. And we have Carraway’s report that it was Sprague’s fingerprints/ on those nickel-plated things you have to press together to make the screen roll up or down. Furthermore, I haven’t a doubt in the world that the ballistics expert in Chicago will report that the bullet was fired from the same gun that killed Nita Selim.’” “Neither have I,” Dundee agreed. “But what I meant was that you obligingly had furnished the murderer who fits my theory with a theory he—or she—would not have upset for the world! “Listen!” and he bent forward very earnestly: “I’m willing to grant that Sprague was shot from the outside, through the window, when Sprague raise? the screen. Rut there our theories part company. I believe that the murderer was a guest in the Selim home last night, that he or she had made an appointment to meet Sprague there, on the promise of paying the hush money he had demanded. “Naturally he or she—and Til say Tie’ from now on, lor the sake of convenience—had no intention of being seen entering that room. The bridge game was suggested by Judge Marshall at noon. There was plenty of time for the rendezvous to be made with Sprague. ' “As I see it, the murderer told Sprague to excuse himself from the game when he became dummy, and to go to the trophy room and wait there until the murderer had a chance to slip away and appear beneath the window. “Sprague had been promised that, when he raised the screen at a whispered request, a roll of bills would be handed to him, but—he received a bullet instead.” “And which one of your six suspects have you picked on?” Strawn asked sarcastically. “That’s just the trouble. There still are six,” Dundee acknowledged with a wry grin. “After Sprague’s disappearance, every one of the six was absent from the porch at one time or another. ‘No, by George! There are seven suspects now! I was about to forget Pe.er Dunlap, who admits he was alone on a fishing trip when Nita was murdered and who left the porch last night to go to the library as soon as Sprague arrived! “As for the original six: Polly Beale took a walk about the grounds; Flora Miles went upstairs to hunt for Karen Marshall, and was gone more than ten minutes; Drake went to the dining room to get the refreshments, and no one can say exactly how long he was gone; Judge Marshall went up to get his wife, and f.ad time to make a little trip on the side; Janet Raymond walked over from her home, and passed that very window, arriving after Sprague had disappeared; and, finally, Clive Hammond arirved alone in his car, which he parked within a few feet of that window. This morning he gets married—” “A telegram, sir!’* Interrupted a plainclothesman, who had entered; without knocking. Strawn snatched at it, read it, then exulted: “Read this, boy!” (To Be Continued) RADIO EDITOR APPOINTED United Press Writer Is Hired by Columbia System. I By United Press NEW YORK, Jan. I.—Paul W. : White, for more than six years a ' staff correspondent of the United 1 °ress in the New York bureau, has i resigned to become news editor of I the Columbia broadcasting system. White, before joining the United Press in 1924, had a varied newspaper experience in the middlewest. He has served as book critic of the United Press and covered such celebrated news stories as the HallMills, Snyder-Gray, Browning, Remus and Carroll trials, trans-At-lantic flights and coal and textile strikes.

TARZAN AND THE LOST EMPIRE

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Down the two went across the body of Hasta, but instantly the ape-man was upon his feet and in his hands was his antagonist. He shook him as he had shaken the other, choking him, cast the body from him. As the crowd shrieked in fiendish glee, Tarzan tenderly lifted Hasta to his feet and %aw that consciousness was returning.

.THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

OUR BOARDING HOUSE

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FRECKLES AND HIS FRIENDS

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WASHINGTON TUBBS II

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SALESMAN SAM

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BOOTS AND HER BUDDIES

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Now there were fifteen of the red side surviving and but t?n whites. This was a battle for survival, not for sport, and Tarzan gathered with him the five surplus reds and set upon the strongest white, who surrounded by six swordsmen, went down to death in an instant, shouth# defiance with his last breath.

—By Ahem

At Tarzan’s command, the six attacked the remaining whites in quick succession, with the result that the battle was brought to a sudden close, fifteen reds surviving and the last white slain. The crowd was crying Tarzan’s name, but the emperor Sublatus was enraged. Tarzan had achieved, a jwpularity greater than his own.

OUT OUR WAY

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H-iyie PROFESSOR lies TREMBUNG ONOER ->S 9LD ALL MuMT, ** SOT CLASH AND EAST STAND uOaRO, LIGHTS OUT, TO THE TEETH, W’ATCHFUL AND WAITING.

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—By Edgar Rice Burroughs

This creature, he determined, must be destroyed. He turned to the master of the games and whispered a command. The crowd was loudly demanding that the laurel wreath.* be accorded the victors and that they be given their freedom, but instead they wer? herded back to the inclasure, all but Tarzan, who waa left standing alone in the arena.

PAGE 9

—By Williams

—By Blosser

—By Crane

—By Small

—By Martin