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Home My WebLink AboutZurich Herald, 1933-04-20, Page 2Murder at fridge By ANNE AUSTIN. SYNOPSIS. °'Bonnie" Dundee, in New York inves- tigating the murders of Juanita Selitn and Dexter Sprague, learns from Serena Bart, stage star, that Nita married in 1918, was soon deserted, but not divorc- ed. In 1922, a picture of Nita appeared with Oh! story about the suicide of Anita Lee, which was printed in Hamil- ton. Nita comes to Hamilton after showing strange excitement over pic- tures of Hamilton people, and deposits ;10,000 in cash. Dundee wonders if this Iyas "back alimony" .-om a husband who had married after he thJught she was dead. Four of Dundee's possible suspects married between 1922 and the time of :�tta's death—Judge Marshall, owner of the death weapon; John Drake, Tracey Miles and Peter Dunlap: After failing to find a record of Nita's marriage in New York, Dundee is summoned home by a wire from the district attorney At home, Dundee finds a note under his door, radvising him to look in "Who's Who" for a tip, but he notices that the note was written on his own typewriter and becomes suspicious. Standing away from the shelf where the book is, he takes the book, and immediately a silent bullet whizzes by. CHAPTER XLVI. Dundee laughed, the paries: which had saved his life echoing his mirth raucously, as his eyes hit upon the following lines of fine print halfway down the third column of page 410 of "Who's Who in America": BURNS, William John, detective; b. Baltimore, Oct. 19, 1861— "A taunt and a joke which turned sour, my dear Watson!" he exulted to the parrot. "A joke I was not intend- ed to live to laugh over!" zIe closed the book and replaced it i.. the bookcase, careless of finger- prints, for he was sure the murderer had been too clever to leave any be - bind him. Interestedly Dundee surveyed the acne of his attempted murder. If he had unsuspectingly gone up to the high shelf to reach for the book he would have stood so close to the regis- ter that there would have been powder burns on his shirt front—just as there had been on Dexter Sprague's. And he would have been shot so near an open window—no chance for finger- prints there, either, since he had not closed the windows on his departure for New York, not wishing to return tt a stuffy apartment—that the police would have been justified in thinking le had been shot from outside. It was an old-fashioned house in more ways than in the manner of its heating. Outside of one of his two unscreened windows there was an iron grating the topmost landing of a fire escape. Dundee could imagine Capt. Strawn's positiveness in placing the murderer there—crouching in wait for his vic- tim..... Undoubtedly Strawn would have dismissed the note as the work of a crank, not bitting upon the fact that it had been written in. that very room, e Dundee's :wn typewriter and sta- tianery.... Yc :, ingenious' indeed! And so amazingly simple— Suddenly the young detective snatched for his hat If the murderer were so ingenious in this case, might he not have been equally clever in planning and executing the murder of Nita Leigh Selim? Twenty minutes later he parked his car in the rutty road before the Selim house and honked his horn loudly to attract the attention of the plain- clothesman Capt. Strawn had detailed to guard the premises. There was no answer. A violent ringing of the doorbell also brougat no response. The guard had been withdrawn, prob- L1y to join the small army of plain- clothesmen and patrolmen who had been foclisIlly and futilely searching far the New York gunman—the key- stone of Captain Strawn's exploded theory. Dundee used his skeleton key to re- lease the front dcor lock. Straight down the main hall and into the little foyer between the hall and Nita's bed- room. He phoned Captain Strewn's home. "When did you withdraw the guard from the Selim house?" he asked. "Late Thursday afternoon," the chief of the homicide squad answered belligerently. . "Why?" "Oh, nothing!" Dundee retorted wearily, and hung up the receiver a-rter assuring his old friend that he would call on him later in the day. No use to explain now to Strawn that he had given the murderer every chance to remove any betraying traces of his crime. Besides, his first excited hunch after his own attempted murder might very well be a wild, grcundless one. In his case the impossibility of the murder being delayed or arranged so that the detective might be slain when the whole "crowd" was assem- bled was obvious. Thti murderer had read in a late Saturday afternoon ex- tra—a copy of which was now in Dun- dee's pocket—District Attorney San- derson's boast to the press that his office had been working on an entirely different theory than that which con- nected the two murders with "Swal- low -tail Sammy," that Special Investi- g .tor Dundee, expected back in Ham- ilton early Sunday morning, had been investigating Nita Leigh's past life in New York. And he had hinted sensational reve- ls tions connected with the 12 -year-old roe al blue velvet dress which Nita had chosen to be her shroud. And in. his ck sire to reassure the public through the press, Sanderson had vaguely promised even mere specific revela- tions than Dundee had actually brought home with him. The exasperated young detective could picture the murderer reading those sensational halts and promises, could imagine his p•anic, the need for immediate action, so that Dundee should: not live to tell the tale of his New York discoveries to the district attorney or anyone else. But whether he was right or wrong, Dundee determined to give his hunch a chance. He went into thebedroom in which Nita Leight Selim had been murdered—shot through the back as she sat at the dressing table. If her murder had been accomplished by me- chanical means, how had it been done? From the dressing table Dundee walked to the window, upon whose £rarne there was still the tiny pencil nark which Dr. Price had drawn, -to indicate the end of the path along which the bullet had traveled, provid- ed it had traveled so far. Nothing here to aid in a mechanical murder— But in a flash Dundee changed his mind. For just slightly above the pencil mark there was a small dent in the soft painted pine of the window frame. Nothing here? ... Not new, be- cause he had taken the 34vieip to the courthouse for ..afckeeping, He saw it clearly in, itagination— that bronze floor lamp which Lydia Carr had given to Nita, its big round bo --1 studded with great jewels of col- ored glass. 'And in" recalling every detail of the Tamp he saw what he had dismissed as of no importance at the time and in the excitement of find- ing that the lamp's bfllb had been shattered by the "bang or bump" •which Flora Miles had described. One of the big glass jewels had 'been miss- ir g, heaving an unsightly hole. No wonder there had been a "bang or bump" hard enough to dent the frame of the window! For the gun, wedged into the big bowl and slightly "Did you say FRESH? Just try one" Such crispness, flakiness and freshness are found only in Christie's Premitun Soda Crackers. They furnish just the salty tang for soup or salad .... . just the crisp base for cheese or jam. ChrMies PREMIUM SODA CRACKERS Have you noticed that Christie's Premiunt $oda Crackers are served in the best Restaurants? Football or footlights, Carl Hagerman stars. Hagerman, captain of the Harvard grid squad, is one of six students of the "Floradora Sextette" in "Penthouse Preferred." . protruding from the jewel -hole, had "kicked," just as it had kicked an hour before, when it had dislodged itself from the hole in the hot-air register and clattered down the big pipe to the heat reservoir of the furnace. That the big lamp had not stood in front of the window frame did not dampen Dundee's excitement in the least. The murderer had found no difficulty in shifting it nearer to the place it had always occupied before. But—how had the gun been fired from the lamp? Electrically, of course. Another picture flashed into Dundee' mind. He saw himself stoop- ing, on Monday afternoon, to see if the plug of the lamp's cord had been pulled from the socket, saw it again as it was then—nearly out, so that no current could pass from the base- board outlet under the bookcase into the lamp. How far from the truth his conclusion that Munday had been! But what was the real -truth? Suddenly Dundee flung back the rug which almost entirely covered the bed- room floor, and revealed the bell which Deader Sprague had rigged up so that Nita might summon Lydia. There was a half-inch ;hole in the hardwood floor, and out of 'it issued a. length of green electric wire, con- nected with two small, fiat metal plates, one upon the other, so that when stepped upon a bell would ring in Lydia's basement room. But there was something odd about the wire. Although it was obviously new, a section of it near the two metal plates was wrapped with black adhesive tape. Another memory knocked for attention upon Dundee's mind. The long cord of the bronze lamp had been mended with exactly the same sort of tape—about a foot. from where it ended in the contact plug. Within another two lninutes Dun- dee was exploring the dark, earthy pertioh of the basement which lay directly to the east of Lydia Carr's basement room. And he found what he wars looking for—adhesive tape wrapped about the wire which had been dropped through the floor of Nita's room before it had been carried, by means of a bored hole, into Lydia's room. He was too late thanks to Captain Strawn. The bell which Sprague had rigged up was in working order ".gain.. But as he was passing out of the basement he glanced at the ceiling of tlie' large room devoted to furnace, IA water heater and laundry tubs. And in the ceiling he saw a hole. , . . The murderer had left a trace ne. could not obliterate. At three o'clock that Sunday after- noon Dundee permitted himself the luxury of a call upon Penny Grain. He found the girl and her mother playing anagrams, "Why did you drag poor Ralph away from 1:':, din-, ter here today?" Penny demanded, scrambling the little wooden blocks until they made a weird pattern of letters. "Because I wanted to find out ex- actly how Nita Selim_ was killed-- and illed—and I slid," Dundee answered. "I wish I knew as well who m lrclered her!" Mute before Penny's excited ques- ti^.ns, the detective idly selected let- t- zs ett-zs from the mass of face -up blocks on the table, and spelled out, in a kw row, the names of all the guests at Nita's fatal bridge party. Sudden ly, aiid with a cry that startled Penny, Dundee made a new name with the little wooden letters... . Now he knew the answers to both "How?" and Who?" (To be continued.; "If you want a thing to be popular, you must first invent a word for it that is a yard and a half long." -C. N. Chesterton. "Th ; best way to make an English. - than do what you want him to do ,')s to ask him to do it for somebody else, He'll kill you if you order hila to do it for his own good." ---Lady Astor. Hunting Through The C entries Of the World Swedish Sportsman Recounts Adventures in Many • Lands Wild boar are dangerous. at any time, but to be attacked by an intoxi- cated troop of them must be an ex- perience no' hunter wishes to have twice. Count C. A. C. de Lewen- haupt, a Swedish sportsman, tells us in "Sport Across the World" that when he was hunting,. in Florida a rich harvest of acorns had recently fallen from the oak trees and, "in- toxicated by the quantity they had eaten, these black creatures were in a state of frenzy." Quickly he climb- ed a tree, dragging his dog up with him. He awaited developments: At first I found it .amusing, there being about thirty of them, including sows and young ones, all behaving in a manner infinitely grotesque and laughable. The males bad most for- midable tusks, and all were ,clearly fuddled; even the smallest of the young pigs seemed affected. Evident- ly our successful retreat had annoyed them; they snorted and grunted, then the big ones started to dig up the earth with their snouts and feet... . The situation began to grow serious when the chief of the troop started' digging a trench round the roots of our tree.... The Count Trilled one with his rifle, but this only spurred the others on to . greater efforts. The tree was nearly down before he had time to wound five or six of then, frighten- ing the troop away. Crocodile Shooting In Florida, too, he indulged in a sport that for sheer excitement must be hard to beat—crocodile shooting by night. In intense darkness he tied his small boat to a tree, lit an electric lantern, and fastened it to his forehead with a handkerchief. He sat motionless for some time, and after about a quarter of an hour I saw two faint little points of light coming towards nie. Looking to the side I saw others. I knew they were crocodiles' eyes, and that their own- ers were quietly but irresistibly at- tracted towards the light... . When the nearest of them was only three yards from the boat, I fired. An eddy of foam assured me that I had not missed. All the others dis- appeared as though by magic -- though only for a few moments. Soon further glow-worm eyes began to show here and there. My next shot missed, for a black hand with long claw's caught hold of the side of the boat, making it see -saw. I placed the muzzle of my Winchester against the temple of the uninvited guest, fired, and saw him sink. In all, he says, he bagged eight crocodiles, finding them in daylight floating . stomach upwards in ,the water. No Wonder She Screamed. Count Lewenbaupt once took twelve baby crocodiles with him. from Ameri- ca to Europe, In his hotel just be- fore the voyage one of them disap- peared, and during his midnight search for it, the Count tells us, he blundered into a bedroom containing an old lady; It is hard to say which of us was the more surprised, and I only man- aged to stammer hastily: "I. most htinbly beg your part"on; I have lost the way find am trying to find niy biggest crocodile!"' I was tut short by a frantic scream from the more than middle -1 aged lady, that it was clearly advis- able for me to ithandon my search and leave ICssilnce to his fate. I got out as fast as possible through the corridor and !pelted the door after A Quality WILiCIi Is Incomparable "Fresh From the Gardens" me, but for the next half-hour heard the lady dragging up tables, ward- robes, and chairs to barricade her- self .r„ainst any further visits... . Next morning he found the cause of the disturbance happily warming itself behind the radiator—and the old lady did not appear at breakfast! One of the Count's most adventur- ous hunting trips was a three months' star with his wife --she nearly always travels with him—at Moon -Lake near the Mississippi. He bought some land on which to build a hut from a cer- tain Mr. B--=-, who apologized for shaking hands with his left hand, ex- plaining that he had got a bullet in his shoulder recently: "Poor you," I remarked, sympa- thetically. "One of these devils of niggers did it, I suppose?" "No, this one was a white pian; the blacks don't know. how to shoot." "And what became of the white man?" I went on, sympathetically. "He's dead," Mr. B— answered, imperturbably. Visiting one of his few white neigh- bors, the Count asked the owner of the house why the place was surrounded by a strong palisade, This was the comforting reply he received: "I can see that you are new ar- rivals. It is absolutely essential to have some sort of enclosure round your house. Not that it exactly pre- vents those devils of blacks from breaking in, if they want to, but cus- tom allows you to fire from your rooms and yard. It is always dan- gerous to wait until the niggers have climbed up to your windows: when necessary, I polish them off from in- side the palisade. It is easier and cleaner...." Useful Fish Once a company of Negroes arrived, saying that they wished to catch spoon-fish—a large "ish, often six feet in length, 'with a spoon -shaped growth something like that of a. swordfish. The Count asked them why they both- ered to catch this fish: "You know they are uneatable on account of their coarse, oily flesh." "That doesn't matter," the leader in- formed me, showing his thirty-two magnificent teeth. "We cu's the fish open and take out the eggs—the roe, you know—and sell it in New York as Russian caviare. Then we slice up the fish ourselves, smoke them, and sell them in Chicago for a good price as Swedish smoked salmon." Count Lewenhaupt has made Eur- ope, Asia, Africa and America his happy hunting ground. He seems to have shot everything from. elephants downwards, and to have fished for everything from sardines upwards. April Comes When Iovers part, And blackbirds in the Spring Sing to the heart As blackbirds ever sing, How .can we See their song? How shall we bear? Since birds return, but hearts Stray otherwhere. Spring, Spring again! they cry, And Time will mend! New love is passing by; Love will befriend. Snowdrop and aconite, And every bloom Of April come'to light Old Winter's tomb! The song they sing Is not the song they've sung For love that's taken wing Was love to keep us young, Arid love that we shall. gain Will be a tale oft told, And in that love—the pain Of hearts grown old. —Trevor Allen, 4 "I k.uw now wh,' there are so many pretty gals in New York—all the ugly ones are in colleges." — James Montgomery Flagg. "THESE HARD TIMES" "The hard times and scarcity of money makes it more important than ever to economize, One way I save on clothes is by renewing the color of faded or out -of -style dresses,.coats, stockings, and underwear, For dyeing, ing, or tinting, I always use Diamond' Dyes. They are the most economical ones by far because they never fail to produce results that make you proud. Why; things .look better than new when redyecl with Diamond Dyes. They spot, streak, or run. They go on smoothly and evenly, when its the hands of even a ten year old child. An- other thing, Diamond Dyes never take the life, out of cloth or leave itlinip as some dyes do. They deserve la be called "the world's finest styes!" S. B. G., 'Quebec. • Cod -Liver Oil Now Included In Welfare Ration of Infants Buffalo, — The diet list for child' ren under 6 years old who are re ceiving support from the city's well fare department :am includes cod^ liver oil. This addition to the infants' bill of fare has been ordered by the But) falo Board of Health on argent rel commendation from the State Hoaltht Department, which intimated that 1 refusal might deprivu the city of its share of reimbursement by the Statd for relief expenditures. Buffalo au) thorities are informed that cod -live,/ oil similarly has been prescribed 2011 the children of every city in the/ State. Naturally, the taste of the infant„ E this matter has not been consulted/ A florist can afford to give away tha earth with every plant. ealeaca Nero Send for « FREE , r book "Baby's Welfare" New ntothere! 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The new re- duced price, has removed the last reason for trying any 'Substitute for Aspirin. Trttde•mark Reg, ISSUE No. 15--!3