On the first sheet of the new shorthand notebook Dundee scribbled: "Suggest you try to locate Ralph Hammond immediately. Very much in love with Mrs. Selim. Invited to cocktail party; did not show up." Tearing the sheet from the notebook, he passed it to Captain Strawn, who read it, frowning, and then nodded.

"Doc Price has done all he can here," Strawn whispered huskily. "Wants to know if you'd like to speak to him before he takes the body to the morgue."

"Certainly," Dundee answered as he grinned apologetically to the girl who was waiting, white-faced but patiently, to tell the story of the afternoon.

Quickly suppressed shudders and low exclamations of horror followed him and the chief of the Homicide Squad from the room.

"Well, Bonnie boy, we meet again, for the usual reason," old Dr. Price greeted the district attorney's new special investigator. "Another shocking affair—that.... A nice clean wound, one of the neatest jobs I ever saw. Shot entered the back, and penetrated the heart.... Very nicely calculated. If the bullet had struck a quarter of an inch higher, it would have been deflected by the—"

"But the path of the bullet, doctor!" Dundee broke in. "Have you made any calculations as to the place and distance at which the shot was fired?"

"Roughly speaking—yes," the coroner answered. "The gun was fired at a distance, probably, of ten or fifteen feet—perhaps closer, but I don't think so," he amended meticulously. "As for the path of the bullet, I have fixed it, judging from the position of the body, which I am assured had not been moved before my arrival, as coming from a point somewhere along a straight line drawn from the wound, with the body upright, of course, to—here!"

Dundee and Strawn followed the brisk little white-haired old doctor across the bedroom to a window opening upon the drive—the one nearest the door leading out upon the porch.

"I've marked the end of the line here," Dr. Price went on, pointing to a faint pencil mark made upon the window frame—the pale-green strip of woodwork near the chaise longue, which was set between the two windows.

"I told you she was shot from the window!" Strawn reminded Dundee triumphantly. "You see, doc, it's my theory that the murderer climbed up to the sill of this window, which was open as it is now, crouched in it, and shot her while she sat there powdering her 

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