Murder at Bridge | Page 4

last twenty years, and Hugo
must have been the most nonplussed 'perennial bachelor' who ever led a
grand march when Karen snapped him up.... Loved him--actually! And
it seems to have worked out marvelously.... A baby boy three months
old," she concluded in her laconic style. Then, ashamed; "I don't know
why I'm gossiping like this!"
"Because you can't find another blessed scrap of work to do, you little
efficiency fiend," Dundee laughed, "Come on! Gossip some more. My
Maginty case will wait till afternoon, to be mulled over while you're
losing your hard-earned salary at bridge with rich women."
"We don't play for high stakes," she corrected him. "Just a twentieth of
a cent a point, though contract can run into money even at that. The

winnings all go to the Forsyte Scholarship Fund. On Wednesday
evenings the crowd plays for higher stakes--a tenth--and winners
keepers. Therefore I can't afford to go, unless I sink so low as to let my
escort pay my losses--which I sometimes do," she confessed, her brown
head low for a moment.
"Is this Mrs. Peter Dunlap a deep-bosomed club woman, who starts
Movements?" he asked, more to bring her out of her depression than
anything else. "Bigger and Better Babies Movements, and Homes for
Fallen Girls, and Little Theater Movements?"
The brown head flung itself up sharply, and the brown eyes hardened
into bright pennies again. "Lois Dunlap is the sweetest, finest, most
comfortable woman in Hamilton, and I adore her--as does everyone
else, Peter Dunlap hardly more than the rest of us. She is interested in a
Little Theater for Hamilton, but she won't manage it. That's why she
got hold of Nita Selim. Lois will simply put up barrels of money,
without missing them, and give a grand job to a little Broadway
gold-digger. Funny thing is, she really delights in Nita. Thinks she's
sweet and has never had a real chance."
"And what do you think?" Dundee asked softly.
"Oh--I suppose I'm a cat, but I can see through her so clearly. Not that
she's bad; she's simply an opportunist. She's awfully sweet and
deferential and 'frank' with women, but with men--well, she simply
tucks her head so that her shoulder-length black curls fall forward
enchantingly, gives them one wistful smile out of her big eyes that are
like black pansies and--the clink of slave chains!... Now go on and
think I'm catty, which I suppose I am!"
Bonnie Dundee grinned at her reassuringly. Not for him to explain that
practically all women and many men found themselves "gossiping"
when he led them on adroitly, for reasons of his own. Which of course
helped make him the excellent detective he was.
"So all the men in your crowd have fallen for Nita Selim, have they?"

"Practically all, in varying degrees, except Peter Dunlap, who has never
looked at another woman since he was lucky enough to get Lois, and
Clive Hammond, who's engaged to Polly Beale," Penny answered
reluctantly, her color high.
"Including your young man?"
"I haven't a 'young man,' in the sense of being engaged," Penny retorted,
then added honestly: "I have been letting Ralph Hammond--that's
Clive's brother, you know--take me about a good deal.... Ralph and
Clive have plenty of money," she defended herself hastily. "They are
architects, Clive being the head of the firm and Ralph, who hasn't been
out of college so very long, a junior partner. It was the Hammond firm
that drew up the plans for Dad's--I mean, my father's--Primrose
Meadows Addition houses. He had our house built as a sort of
show-place, you know, so that prospective builders out there could see
how artistic a home could be put up for a moderate sum of money. But
he didn't quite finish even that--left half the gabled top story unfinished,
and Nita has been teasing Hugo to finish it up for her. It looks," she
added with a shrug, "as if Nita will get what she wants--as usual."
"And Ralph has acquired a set of slave chains?" Dundee suggested,
with just the slightest note of sympathy.
"And how!" Penny assured him, grimly. "A simile as out-of-date as my
clothes are going to be if I don't get some new ones soon. Not that the
crowd minds what I wear," she added loyally. "I could dress up in a
window drape--"
"And be just as charming as you are in that grand new party dress you
have on now," Dundee finished for her gallantly.
"New!" Penny snorted and turned back to her desk in a futile effort to
find something left undone.
Dundee ignored the rebuff. "How many suckers--I mean, how many
gentlemen with moderate incomes actually built in Primrose
Meadows?"

"You are inquisitive, aren't you?... None! Our house, or rather the one
Nita Selim is living