Murder at Bridge | Page 3

"Although not an alumna of that famous and select school for girls,
Forsyte-on-the-Hudson, graduation from which places any Hamilton
girl in the very inner circle of Hamilton society, Mrs. Selim has been
closely identified with the school, having for the past two years
directed and staged Forsyte's annual play which ushers in the Easter
vacation.
"Indeed it was Mrs. Selim's remarkable success with this year's play
which caused Mrs. Peter Dunlap, long interested in a Little Theater for
Hamilton, to induce the beautiful and charming young directress to
come to Hamilton with her. Plans for the Little Theater are growing
apace, and it is safe to conjecture that not all the conversation flying
thick and fast about 'Nita's' bridge tables this afternoon will be
concerned with contract 'conventions,' scores, and finesses which
failed.
"Lovely 'Nita' was elected to membership a fortnight ago, when a
vacancy occurred, due to the resignation of Miss Alice Humphrey, who
has gone abroad for a year's study in the Sorbonne. The two-table club
now includes: Mesdames Hugo Marshall, Tracey A. Miles, Peter
Dunlap, John C. Drake, Juanita Selim, and Misses Polly Beale, Janet
Raymond, and Penelope Crain."
Dundee lowered the paper and stared at the profile of District Attorney
Sanderson's private secretary. So she was a "society girl," a "Forsyte"
girl! Was that the reason, perhaps, why she had been so thorny with
him, a mere "dick"? Well, he wasn't just a dick any longer. He was a
Special Investigator ... A society girl, playing at work....
But there was more, and he read on: "As is well known, the 'girls' have
their 'hen-fight' bridge-luncheon every Saturday afternoon from the first

of October to the first of June, and a bridge-dinner, in which mere men
are graciously included, every other Wednesday evening during the
season. Mr. and Mrs. Tracey A. Miles are scheduled as next
Wednesday's host and hostess."
"I take off my hat to your 'society editress'," Dundee commented with
false cheerfulness, when he had laid the paper back upon Penny's desk.
"She makes half a column of this one item in what must be a meager
Saturday bunch of 'Society Notes,' then writes it all over again, in the
past tense, for an equally meager Monday column.... Like bridge, Miss
Crain?"
Penny snatched up the paper and crushed it into her wastebasket. "I do!
And I like my old friends, even if I am not able, financially, to keep up
with them.... If that's why you've suddenly decided to stop
being--comrades--"
"Please forgive me again, Penny," he begged gently.
"I was born into that crowd, and I still belong to it, because all of them
are my real friends, but get this into your thick Scotch-Irish head, Mr.
Dundee--I'm working because I have to, and--and because I love it, too,
and because I want to earn enough before I'm many years older to give
Mother some of the things she's missing so dreadfully since--since my
father failed and--and ran away."
"Ran away?" Dundee echoed incredulously. How could any man desert
a daughter like this!
"Yes! Ran away!" she repeated fiercely. "I might as well tell you
myself. Plenty of others will be willing to, as soon as they know you
are--my friend.... As I told you, my father"--her voice broke--"my
father went bankrupt, but before the courts knew it he had sent some
securities to a--to a woman in New York, and when he--left us, he went
to her, because he left Mother a note saying so. His defrauded creditors
here have tried to--to catch him, but they haven't--yet--"
Very gently Bonnie Dundee took the small hand that was distractedly

rumpling the brown waves which swept back from the widow's-peak. It
lay fluttering in his bigger palm for a moment, then snatched itself
away.
"I won't have you feeling sorry for me!" she cried angrily.
"Who owns your--the Primrose Meadows house now?--Mrs. Selim?"
he asked.
"The 'lovely Nita'?" Her voice was scornful. "No. She rents it from
Judge Hugo Marshall--or is supposed to pay him rent," she added with
a trace of malice. "Hugo is an old darling, but he is fearfully weak
where pretty women are concerned. Nita Selim had known Hugo in
New York--somehow--and as soon as Lois--Mrs. Dunlap, I mean--had
got Nita off the train, the stranger in our midst hied herself to Hugo's
office and he's been tagging after her ever since.... Though most of the
men in our crowd are as bad as or worse than poor old Hugo. How
Karen keeps on looking so blissfully happy--"
"Karen?" Dundee interrupted.
"Mrs. Hugo Marshall," she explained impatiently. "Karen Plummer
made her debut a year ago this last winter--a darling of a girl. Judge
Marshall--retired judge, you know--had been proposing to the prettiest
girl in each season's crop of debs for the