absolutely splendiferous—and lovable as a she-adder.” Stan stood up. “What time did you leave, Mr. Farraday?”

“It was nearly one. Glen Neal suggested we all go to the Alligator Inn on the Tamiami Trail. Lydia approved—so I went along, although I was feeling tired by then.”

“Fowler had left some time before?”

“Nearly two hours. Does that agree with what you have learned, Captain LeRoy?”

“Very close. Toby Munroe says it was quarter past eleven when Fowler’s car went down the drive toward Flagler Street. We haven’t had statements from all the others yet.”

“How many of you went to the Alligator Inn?”

“Four of us in my car—Lydia and I, Commander Dawson, and Tolliver. Eve and Glen Neal rode with the Bessingers.”

“Neal’s car is in the garage, Stan,” LeRoy said. “He took a taxi to the club last night.”

“What about the Commander? Did you check on him?”

“He has a car, but he lives not ten minutes walk from the Sunset. He often walks back and forth, according to Toby.”

“We dropped him at his apartment on the way home last night, Mr. Rice. We left the Alligator Inn about three. The others were still there.”

Stan was about to apply a match to a fresh cigarette. He let it burn close to his fingers before he asked: “What others?”

“The blonde and the two men who were playing at the third table. They must have followed us from the Sunset to the Alligator Inn. They came in the Inn not five minutes after we did. They were there when we left, as I said.”

Stan turned to the Captain. “Did you know that, Vince?”

“Sure,” said LeRoy. “A ten person alibi for everyone who was at the club—except Toby and his spick servant, Juan. It makes it just ducky. I’ll eat my shirt—”

“You better soak it in orange juice,” Stan advised. “You’re going to say that none of that crowd could have given the works to the big-hearted gambler, who tore up ten grand checks. I’m not so sure, Vince, not so sure—and damn it all, you’re not so sure yourself!”

Chapter V

A bridge club, in the morning, is a place shrouded in dead hopes. The air carries pungent oily odors, lingering heavily from consumed cigars and cigarettes, mixing offensively with the fumy dregs of alcohol and coffee left from the night before. Added to the odors is the strange feeling that absent players are still present. A spectral tenantry occupies the vacant tables, softly sloughing invisible cards from invisible decks, holding ghostly postmortems on long dead hands. The casual visitor is apt to find himself listening for a whispered opening bid.

There were equally dead hopes in Satsuma Park. The white stucco house, quartering the Sunset Bridge Club, occupied four of the thirty-six, fifty by a hundred and fifty foot, lots. It had been built for a show place ten years before, when Toby Munroe was sure that Satsuma Park would make him a millionaire. In 1936 the millions, to come from his sub-divided orange grove, looked far away. The lots, with the exception of those immediately surrounding the house, had gone native.

The police car, carrying Miles Standish Rice and Captain Vincent LeRoy from their interview with Bruce Farraday, nearly missed the left turn from West Flagler Street into the subdivision.

“It looks like jungle,” Stan remarked. “Jungle with ornate electric light posts bordering a trail. Do these street lights light?”

“Sure.” The Captain smiled. “When they have bulbs in them. This isn’t far out. Some of the boys subdivided so far west during the boom they didn’t know whether their lots were in Miami or Tampa.”

An officer on the front porch recognized LeRoy’s car and snapped to attention. A press car was parked in the driveway. To the left a man was packing away a Graflex camera. He waved to LeRoy as Stan and the Captain went inside.

The door from the front porch opened directly into a combined hall and living-room. It was furnished with a settee, a small table containing magazines, two easy chairs, and four bridge tables reserved for small stake players. The former dining-room, through an arch toward the rear of the house, had been converted into an office. Beyond the office, to the right, was a room originally built for a kitchen. It was used, now, as a storeroom for cards and stationery.

From the office came the soft click of a portable noiseless typewriter. Otherwise, the house was quiet. Only the smells, and the presence of the officer on the porch, served as reminders of the grim game which had taken place the night before. Stan and LeRoy went on into the office.

Toby Munroe was seated at a small mahogany desk, laboriously copying figures from a book to a piece of paper inserted in the machine. He shoved the typewriter to one side, and leaned back wearily in his chair when the two men entered.

“Hello, Rice. You in this, too? I’ve had every cop in the country here now except J. Edgar Hoover. Make yourself at home. You’ll find my fingerprints on the typewriter keys. I forgot my gloves.”

There was a note of desperation underlying Toby’s greeting. Stan Rice, habitually sensitive to another’s troubles, had real sympathy in his short: “Tough break, Toby!”

“Tough?” Toby squinted from one to the other through his fashionable rimless glasses. “It’s going to close me up—that’s all. I’ve spent five years, and every damn nickel I have trying to build up a decent club. I’m just beginning to get some of the social register to coming here when somebody picks the place for a slaughter house.”

“It’ll be forgotten by next season, Toby,” said LeRoy.

There’s a month of this season still left. With no business I can’t take it. The papers won’t let them forget next year, either. If there’s one thing this club doesn’t need it’s a reputation as a hangout for hatchetmen.”

He pushed back his chair, and came around from behind the desk with the quick fluid alacrity of a ferret. Stan had met him only twice before. He remembered that

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