Indianapolis Times, Volume 42, Number 212, Indianapolis, Marion County, 13 January 1931 — Page 11

JAN. 13, 1931.

Murder At Bridge by AVE*^ ; ZKSTA%° N ■ C

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT As if hypnotized, Lois Dunlap began to grope with the toe of her right pump for the slight bulge under the rug which indicated the Position of the bell used for sumornlng the maid from the kitchen. With a strangled cry Tracey Miles lunged across the few feet which separated the woman and himself, seized her arm and whirled her violently away from the table. "Do you want to kill my wife, too?" he panted, his usually florid face the color of putty. non ‘‘npHAT would be impossible, A Miles! Your wife is already dead!" Then, silencing the hoarse oaths of the men and the screams of the women, came slow, terrible words; "Tracey Arthur Miles, I arrest you for the murder of your wife, known as Juanita Leigh Selim, and for the murder of Dexter Sprague. And it is my duty to warn you that anything you say may be used against you!" Tracey Miles lifted his ashen face and stared at the detective blankly, as though he had gone deaf and blind. "All—over—lsn’t it. May I —have—a drink?" he managed to articulate at last. "Poor devil! He needs it," the too J-oft-hearted young detective told oimself, as Tracey Miles poured a drink irom the almost empty whisky decanter and raised the little glass to his lips. "I have—nothing—to say!" the murderer gasped thickly, then fell heavily to the floor. nun IT was three-quarters of an hour later. District Attorney Sanderson, Captain Strawn and Dundee were alone in the house where Nita "Selim" load been murdered, and where her husband had confessed his crimes by committing suicide. The morgue ambulance had como and gone. . . . “I should have known." Dundee admitted ruefully, as the three men entered Nita’s bedroom, "that so ingenious a criminal as Tracey Miles would not have failed to provide against the possibility of discovery. "Ho must have snatched an opportunity to spill cyanide of potassimp into the decanter when my eyes were off him for a moment—and upon Lois Dunlap.” "I’m glad he did," Sanderson said curtly. "But it was ghastly that poor Lois had to know that it was she, in all innocence, who fired the gun." "It was," Dundee sighed. “But I believed that the only w ; ay I could make Miles confess was to frighten him into thinking Flora would be killed." "Captain Strawn and I still are in the dark as to exactly how r Miles managed his wife’s murder," Sanderson reminded him. "This morning you chose to tell us nothing more than that a Hamilton man had married Nita Leigh in New York in January, 1918, and that eight years ago, when he saw her picture in The Evening Sun, along with the story that ‘Anita Lee’ had committed suicide, he had felt free to marry again. "You said then you knew r who the man was but you would not even tell us how you knew ” "Because I had very little actual proof then," Dundee answered. "As to who he was, the salient clew had been staring me in the face the whole time, but it was not until I was fooling with a set of anagrams last night, idling spelling out the names of all the men who might have married her and then murdered her, that I saw it ” non "nAW what?" Strawn demanded irritably. “That Selim is simply Miles spelled backward." Dundee explained. "Possibly because he contidered It the sophisticated thing to do, Miles used an assumed name at the party at which he met Nita Leigh. “Even the first name, ‘Mat,’ by which she knew him, was only his Initials reversed.” “Simple—but clever” Sanderson commented. “Just as all of Miles’ schemes were after Nita. egged on by Sprague, turned up in Hamilton to demand ‘back alimony' as the price of her silence. . . . But let me show you how he killed his wife.” He strode to the big bronze lamp. "It took me less than an hour today to reconstruct the death machine so that it would be almost exactly as it was when Miles finished his work just before 2:30 last Saturday—and as it remained until he had an opportunity to come back here and dismantle it. Trust him to find out that the guard was removed from the house Thursday.” As he spoke, he was unscrewing the big. jewel-studded bowl of the bronze lamp. Wedged, at a downward slanting angle, inside the bowl, which was 12 inches in diameter, was Judge Marshall’s snub-nosed automatic and silencer, the end of the silencer projecting slightly from a hole whose jewel was missing. •‘There’s a blank cartridge in the gun now, of course, but Miles, in his panic, took my words literally. . . . See the electro-magnet strapped to the gun butt? He got it from the bell Sprague had installed from here to Lydia’s bedroom. "The magnet was connected with the electric wire in one of the two lamp sockets, as you see it now, and the long cord of the lamp was connected with the wire of the bell in the dining room—so connected that when any one stepped on the two little metal plates under the dining room rug, the kitchen bell would rinr and the gun would be fired simultaneously. "But if you will examine the jewel hole.” he suggested, as he removed the gun, "you will see that Miles had to enlarge it considerably, using a reamer, which I found in the tool chest in the basement, along with all the apparatus which Sprague had bought for installing Nita’s alarm bell. “I could see no reason for Sprague’s having needed a reamer, however, and this morning I was lucky 'enough to get proof that Miles himself had purchased it at a hardware store on Tuesday." ”T TOW did he connect the lamp IT cord with the dining room bell?” Strawn puzzled. “These modem houses don’t have exposed wiring ”

•Sticklers’ Wjll Be Found on Page 13 Today

"You forget Sprague’s wiring for the alarm bell from here to Lydia's room!” He threw back the rug. Near Nita's bed there was a hole in the floor, and out of it canje a short length of electric wire, ending in two small metal plates. But attached also to the wire was the cord from the bronze lamp. "The plug of the lamp cord is nearly out of the baseboard outlet behind the bookcase, just as Miles left it, so that there is no contact with electricity there. And the rug hid the joining of the two wires. “An unexplained wrapping of adhesive tape both on the lamp cord and on the wire of Nita’s alarm bell here gave me the clew. In installing the alarm bell, Sprague copied the arrangement under the dining table, of course. And Miles simply had to drop a bit, fastened to the augur Sprague had bought, down the four inches which separate the dining room floor from the basement, and bore a hole through the ceiling. It was that hole I could not understand, and which Ralph Hammond assured me was not there Saturday morning. Miles joined a piece of electric wire to the dining room bell wires, and pushed them down through the hole he had bored into the basement ceiling. Now if you’ll come down to the basement—” When the three stood staring upward at the basement ceiling, Dundee continued: "See this long wire running along the ceiling from the hole beneath the dining room bell? The tacks he used to secure it also were returned to the tool chest, but he could not get rid of either the auger hole or the tiny holes showing the course of the wire. Let’s follow it!” , He led them across the basement to a door leading into a dank, unfinished portion of the cellar. The wire passed under the top frame of the door, and, with a flashlight in his hand, Dundee showed how it continued along a rafter until it reached the place where it was joined, by adhesive tape, to the wire Sprague had dropped from Nita’s bedroom floor. "Miles simply cut the wire here where it enters anothe- hole through Lydia’s bedroom l, and attached the new wire,” Dundee explained. "The connection between the dining room bell and the electro-mag-net in the lamp upstairs then was complete. . . . Sprague had bought yards too much of the wire—fortunately, so lar as Miles’ scheme was concerned.” "But what a chance Miles took on the bullet; not hitting her in a *atal spot!” Sanderson commented in an awed voice. "No. He w.ould fire the gun only If Nita was seated before her dressing table. As an experienced marksman, he could calculate the path of the bullet to a nicety. "Os course the machine had to be used that very day. As you know, Nita herself gave him his chance. Miles, standing at the sideboard, listened until the first faint notes of Juanita told him that Nita was powdering her face, and he could be sure she was sitting down to the task. "Nita saw nothing to alarm her, but the gun kicked, and the big lamp was rocked so that it banged against the window frame, shattering the one bulb Miles had left in it. Os course he moved the lamp a foot or so, in the resulting excitement. "And if she had been wounded only, living to tell not only how the shot was fired, but who had motive to kill her, Miles would have committed suicide then." non “\*7HAT if Nita had not asked VV him to mix the cocktails or had not gone to powder her face?” Strawn asked. * "The whole party was going to dine and dance at the Country Club. Miles would have escorted her home, as he had done en Monday night, and then would have made his opportunity. "But I must tell you that on Saturday morning, according to the telephone operator in Miles’ office, Nita rang him to say she must see him as soon as possible, her unexpressed intention being to tell him that she was not going to bother him again. ‘He told her he would be right out, but Nita said she and Lydia were going into Hamilton and would not be back until 2:3o—the time the bridge game was scheduled to begin. But Miles came on out, having previously stolen the gun and silencer and having studied the house " "How did he get in?” Sanderson wanted to know. "Judge Marshall had lent him a key in February, when Miles wanted to show the house to an engaged young man in his office, and Miles never returned it. "Well, when Miles arrived he found Ralph Hammond here, and had to leave, waiting at a safe distance until the coast was clear about 1 o’clock. But even so he had more 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 fingerprints there that kept me on the right track. Miles had searched the shelf for the marriage certificate which he could not know Nita already had burned.’* "How was Sprague killed?” Sanderson interrupted impatiently. Dundee reached into the tool chest and brought out a narrow, deep drawer. "First I must tell you that Miles got the gun out of the lamp Saturday night, sneaking in while I was talking with Lydia in the basement. 1 A little later he came back noisily enough to offer Lydia a job as nurse in his home. Without question he assured himself that she knew nothing, or she would have gone the way of Nita and Sprague. "Now as to Sprague. Despite my warnings Sprague attempted to carry on the blackmail scheme. Perhaps Miles put him off for a day or two; but on Wednesday afternoon he made an appointment with Sprague, telling him that, if he would come to his home that evening, and manage to leave the bridge game while he ,was dummy, he would find the money in a drawer of the cabinet that stood in the trophy room between the two windows . . . This drawer." "But-* — hem- ?” Sanderson frowned

"TTERY simple! When Sprague ™ pulled open this drawer, which was Just at the height of his stomach, he received a bullet in his heart. "See these four little holes? . . . A vise was screwed into the boHom of the drawer so that it gripped the gun with its at an upward angle. A piece of string was tied to the trigger and fastened somehow to the underside of the drawer, so that when Sprague pulled the drawer open the string was drawn taut and the trigger pulled. "Practically the same mechanism by which he tried to murder me. ... The kick of the gun jerked the drawer shut. All Miles had to do when he was pretending to look for Sprague was to turn off the trophy room light, by a button in the hall.” “Then he had the rest of the night to remove the gun!" "Yes. Some time during the night, after Flora was asleep with a sedative, he removed the gun and the holes the screws had made. "His next concern was to make the murder Jibe completely with Captain Strawn’s theory of a gunman who had trailed his quarry to the Miles home and shot him through the window. "The window already was open, but the screen must be raised, too, and Sprague’s fingerprints had to be on the nicked catches by which the curtain screen is raised or lowered. Os course, Sprague had not touched the screen ’’ "Do you mean to say he lugged the corpse to the window and lifted it up so that he could press the stiff fingers upon the nicked catches?’’ "No,” Dundee answered. "That was not necessary. He simply removed the curtain screen and carried it to where Sprague’s right hand lay, palm upward, on the floor, and pressed the thumb and forefinger against the nickel catches. "But the fingerprints thus made were .reversed—as I discovered when I examined the prints in Carraway’n office today. "Miles could not turn the stiff hand over without bruising the dead flesh; consequently the print of the forefinger was on the catch where the thumb print normally would have been." “Well—” Sanderson drew a deep breath “He was a cleverer man than any of us suspected, and it is a pity that Nita did not fear him as she feared Sprague’s vengeance when she made her will.” nun "T TELLO! What are you doing Al back here?” Dundee exclaimed in surprise when, upon returning to the living room, the three men found Penny Crain. * “Dad wants a private word with you,” Penny explained, her brown eyes glowing with happiness. “He’s on the front porch ... And you ought to see mother! She looks like a 20-year-old bride!” When Dundee joined him on the porch, Roger Crain’s handsome face flushed painfully, but there was happiness in- his brown eyes, too. J< Serena Hart asked me to thank you for giving her Penny’s message to pass on to me. I’m sure you’ve guessed a lot, but what you probably don’t know is that Serena used the securities I had sent to her for safe keeping, to play the market with. “She wouldn’t let me touch a penny of the money until she had turned it into enough to clear up all my debts in Hamilton. "Then,” and he sighed slightly, "she sent me home. . . . Not that I’m sorry. I’m going to try to make Margaret and Penny happy ” "Through?” Penny called from the doorway, and her red lips were so adorably rounded over the word that Bonnie Dundee forgot Tracey Miles and his ingenious schemes. There was room for nothing in his mind but an ingenious scheme of his own—a plan to get her alone so that he could kiss that soft, provocative mouth. (The End) CLASS IN ART OPENS Richmond Schools Hold First Saturday Session of Year. Ry Times Special RICHMOND, Ind., Jan. 13.—An opportunity to study art is offered in a plan of the Richmond schools, which provides for the operation of a Saturday art school. The first session of the year was held last week Under the direction of Miss Nellie Mawhood, supervisor of art in the public schools. The school, which has been in operation as an extra-curricular activity since 1927, has been unusually successful and a number of children attend each year. The course provides for experimenting in oil paints, soft chalks and craft work. At the conclusion of the course an exhibit of the work will be held at the high school.

Cross Word Puzzle on Page 12 Today .

TARZAN AND THE LOST EMPIRE

As the jailer opened the cell door, Tarzan saw that its only occupant was Maximus Praeclarus. “I see our friends have won their freedom,” said Tarzan. “So did you,” said the jailer with a grin, “but are you free? v Your friends are chained la. other cells. Caesar accuses them of sedition.” *

.THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

OUR BOARDING HOUSE

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WASHINGTON TUBBS II

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SALESMAN SAM

oer Your. tAoTneR. didn't "'Vyou said it-op. sothe soap ano WATer*.! YtßaTs //a do shf aun. \ see. you before you sTar-Ted ) she'oa maos toe if Your. Teach er secs y<v like //mat i want huh? 7 Jklpt 't?e. £5? 1 _ FOR. SCHOOL.- J/cotAe ©ACK. AND TRaTsHC'S UftßLeTb SMeARVHEfLToDO-SeE ? /xcTfcr? F DIRTY LOOK

BOOTS AND HER BUDDIES

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The jailer had closed the door and locked it. leaving Tarzan and Praeclarus alone. “The gods are unkind.” said the Roman. “Even my best friend, Appius Applosus, has failed me. If he had fetched the keys, we cculd now escape.” “Perhaps we will in any event,” said TMxan. “Caesar does not yet know Tarzan of the Apes.”

— B" Ahern

Darkness had enveloped the city, blotting out even the dim light of the dungeon, when the two men perceived a wavering light in the corridor. The light increased and they knew that someone was approaching, lighting his way with a flaring torch. At night the silent approach of a singles torch might more surely augur ill than well.

OUT OUR WAY

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—By Edgar Rice Burroughs

As .he visitor fitted the key into the lock, Praeclarus recognized him by the flare of the torch through the bars. It was Appius Applosus. Trembling, he reported that Caesar’s suspicions had been aroused. He had been constantly shadowed and sent on outpost duty. But he had escaped and had now come to" his friend with the prison keys.

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—By Williams

—By Blosser

—By Crane

—By Small

—By Martin