"No. It was entirely dark. The woman was on the other side of the man. I wouldn't have been sure she was a woman except for the rustle of her skirts and the perfume."
"Sure it wasn't the perfume you use yourself that you smelled?"
"I don't use any."
"You stick to it that you met a man and a woman, but couldn't possibly recognize either of them," James Cunningham said, still looking straight at her.
She hesitated an instant. Somehow she did not quite like the way he put this. "Yes," she said steadily.
"You didn't take the elevator up, then?"
"No. I'm not used to automatic elevators. I rang when I got to the door. Nobody answered, but the door was wide open. I rang again, then went in and switched on the light. There didn't seem to be anybody in. I didn't feel right about it. I wanted to go. But I wouldn't because I thought maybe he—your uncle—was trying to dodge me. I looked into the bedroom. He wasn't there. So after a little I went to a door into another room that was shut and knocked on it. I don't know why I opened it when no answer came. Something seemed to move my hand to the knob. I switched the light on there."
"Yes?" James asked, gently.
The girl gulped. She made a weak, small gesture with her hand, as though to push from her mind the horrible sight her eyes had looked upon. "He was dead, in the chair, tied to it. I think I screamed. I'm not sure. But I switched off the light and shut the door. My knees were weak, and I felt awf'lly queer in the head. I was crazy to get away from the place, but I couldn't seem to have the power to move. I leaned against the door, weak and limp as a small puppy. Then I heard some one comin' up the stairs, and I knew I mustn't be caught there. I switched off the lights just as some one came to the landing outside."
"Who was it? Did he come in?" asked Jack.
"He rang and knocked two or three times. Then he came in. I was standing by the table with my hand on some kind of heavy metal paperweight. His hand was groping for the light switch. I could tell that. He must have heard me, for he called out, 'Who's there?' In the darkness there I was horribly frightened. He might be the murderer come back. If not, of course he'd think I had done it. So I tried to slip by him. He jumped at me and caught me by the hand. I pulled away from him and hit hard at his face. The paper-weight was still in my hand and he went down just as though a hammer had hit him. I ran out of the room, downstairs, and out into the street."
"Without meeting anybody?"
"Yes."
"You don't know who it was you struck?"
"Unless it was Kirby."
"Jove! That explains the bruise on his chin," Jack cried out. "Why didn't he tell us that?"
The color flushed the young woman's cheeks. "We're friends, he and I.If he guessed I was the one that struck him he wouldn't tell."
"How would he guess it?" asked James.
"He knew I meant to see your uncle—meant to make him do justice to Esther. I suppose I'd made wild threats. Besides, I left my glove there—on the table, I think. I'd taken it off with some notion of writing a note telling your uncle I had been there and that he had to see me next day."
"The police didn't find a woman's glove in the room, did they?" James asked his brother.
"Didn't hear of it if they did," Jack replied.
"That's it, you see," explained Rose. "Kirby would know my glove. It was a small riding-gauntlet with a rose embroidered on it. He probably took it with him when he left. He kept still about the whole thing because I was the woman and he was afraid of gettin' me into trouble."
"Sounds reasonable," agreed James.
"That's how it was. Kirby's a good friend. He'd never tell on me if they hanged him for it."
"They won't do that, Miss McLean," the older brother assured her. "We're going to find who did this thing. Kirby and I have shaken hands on that. But about your story. I don't quite see how we're going to use it. We must protect your sister, too, as well as my cousin. If we go to the police with your evidence and ask them to release Kirby, they'll want to arrest you."
"I know," she nodded wisely, "and of course they'd find out about Esther then and the papers would get it and scatter the story everywhere."
"Exactly. We must protect her first. Kirby wouldn't want anything done that would hurt her. Suppose we put it up to him and see what he wants to do."
"But we can't have him kept in jail," she protested.
"I'll get him out on bond; if not to-day, tomorrow."
"Well," she agreed reluctantly. "If that's the best we can do."
Rose would have liked to have paid back Kirby's generosity in kind. If her sister had not been a factor of the equation she would have gone straight to the police with her story and suffered arrest gladly to help her friend. But the circumstances did not permit a heroic gesture. She had to take and not give.
"I won't have it," Kirby said flatly. "If Miss McLean tells her story to the district attorney he'll probably arrest her. It'll come out about her sister an' the papers will run scare-heads. No need of it a-tall. Won't hurt me to stay here a few days if I have to."
Jack, dapper and trim, leaned on his cane and watched his cousin. He felt a reluctant admiration for this virile cousin so picturesquely competent, so clean-cut and four-square of mind. Was he in love with the Wild Rose from Wyoming, whose spirit also was like a breath from the sweet hill pines? Or was his decision only the expression of a native chivalry that went out to all his friends and perhaps to all women?
"They'd certainly arrest her," Jack commented. "From a lawyer's point of view there's every reason why they should. Motive for the crime, sufficient; intention to force the victim to make reparation or punish him, declared openly; opportunity to commit it, confessed; presence on scene and eagerness to escape being seen there, admitted. The case against her is stronger than the one against you." He offered this last with a smile decorously but not wholly concealed.
"Yet she couldn't possibly have done it!" the cattleman replied.
"Couldn't she? I wonder." The Beau Brummel stroked his bit of mustache, with the hint of insolence his manner often suggested.
"Not possible," said Lane forcefully. "Uncle James was a big, two-fisted fighter. No slip of a girl could have overpowered him an' tied him. It's not within reason." He spoke urgently, though still in the low murmur both the cousins were using in order not to be overheard.
Jack put a neat, highly polished boot on the desk of the sergeant of police. "Ever hear of a lady called Delilah?" he asked lightly.
"What about her?" In Kirby's quiet eye there was a warning.
The man-about-town shrugged his well-tailored shoulders. "They have a way, the ladies. Guile, my son, is more potent than force."
"Meaning?"
"Delilah chloroformed Samson's suspicions before she sheared his locks."
Kirby repressed an anger that he knew was worse than futile. "It you knew Miss McLean you couldn't misjudge her so. She thinks an' acts as straight as a man."
"I don't say she did it, old top. I'm merely pointing out that it's possible she did. Point of fact your friend made a hit with me. I'd say she's a game little thoroughbred."
"You an' James will regard what she told you as confidential, of course."
"Of course. We're of your mind, too, though I put her proposition to you. Can't see anything to be gained by airing her story unless it's absolutely necessary on your account. By the way, James wants me to tell you that he thinks you won't have to spend another night at this delightful hotel the city keeps for its guests. Bond has been practically agreed on."
"Fine. Your brother's a brick. We're goin' to run down this business, he an' I, an' drag the truth to light."
A glitter of sardonic mockery shone out of the dark eyes of Cunningham. "You'll work together fine and Sherlock-Holmes this thing till it's as clear as mud," he predicted.
By the middle of the afternoon Kirby was free. After he had talked over with James a plan of campaign, he called Rose up on the telephone and told her he would be right out to Cherokee Street.
She came to meet him in the stuffy parlor of the boarding-house with hand outstretched.
"Oh, Kirby, I'm so glad to see you and so sorry I was such a horrid little beast last time we met. I'm ashamed of myself. My temper explodes so—and after you came to Denver to help me and gave up so much for me. You'll forgive me, won't you?"
"You know it, Rose," he said, smiling.
"Yes, I do know it," she cried quickly. "That makes it worse for me to impose on you. Now you're in trouble because of me. I should think you'd pretty near hate me."
"We're in trouble together," he corrected. "I thought that was supposed to bring friends closer an' not to drive them apart."
She flashed a quick look at him and changed the subject of conversation. Just now she could not afford to be emotional.
"Are you going back to Twin Buttes?"
"No. I'm goin' to find out who killed James Cunningham an' bring the man to justice. That's the only way to clear us both before the world."
"Yes!" she cried eagerly. "Let me help you. Let's be partners in it,Kirby."
He already had one partner, but he threw him overboard instantly.James Cunningham was retired to the position of an adviser.
"Bully! We'll start this very minute. Tell me all you know about what happened the evenin' of the murder."
She told again the story she had confessed to his cousins. He asked questions, pushed home inquiries. When she mentioned the woman who had passed her on the stairs he showed a keen interest.
"You say you knew it was a woman with the man by the perfume. What kind of perfume was it?"
"Violet."
"Did you notice a violet perfume any other place that night?"
"In your uncle's living-room."
"Sure?"
"Yes."
"So did I."
"The woman I met on the stairs, then, had just come from your uncle's rooms."
"Looks like it," he nodded in agreement.
"Then we've got to find her. She must have been in his apartment when he was killed." The thought came to Rose as a revelation.
"Or right after."
"All we've got to do is to find her and the man with her, and we've solved the mystery," the girl cried eagerly.
"That's not quite all," said Kirby, smiling at the way her mind leaped gaps. "We've got to induce them to talk, an' it's not certain they know any more than we do."
"Her skirts rustled like silk and the perfume wasn't cheap. I couldn't really see her, but I knew she was well dressed," Rose told him.
"Well, that's somethin'," he said with the whimsical quirk to his mouth she knew of old. "We'll advertise for a well-dressed lady who uses violet perfume. Supposed to be connected with the murder at the Paradox Apartments. Generous reward an' many questions asked."
His badinage was of the surface only. The subconscious mind of the rough rider was preoccupied with a sense of a vague groping. The thought of violet perfume associated itself with something else in addition to the darkness of his uncle's living-room, but he did not find himself able to localize the nebulous memory. Where was it his nostrils had whiffed the scent more recently?
"Don't you think we ought to see all the tenants at the Paradox and talk with them? Some of them may have seen people going in or out. Or they may have heard voices," she said.
"That's a good idea. We'll make a canvass of the house."
Her eyes sparkled. "We'll find who did it! When two people look for the truth intelligently they're bound to find it. Don't you think so?"
"I think we'll sure round up the wolf that did this killin'," he drawled. "Anyhow, we'll sleep on his trail for a moon or two."
They shook hands on it.
If Kirby had been a properly authenticated detective of fiction he would have gone to his uncle's apartment, locked the door, measured the rooms with a tape-line, found imprints of fingers on a door panel, and carefully gathered into an envelope the ashes from the cigar his uncle had been smoking. The data obtained would have proved conclusively that Cunningham had come to his death at the hands of a Brahmin of high caste on account of priceless gems stolen from a temple in India. An analysis of the cigar ashes would have shown that a subtle poison, unknown to the Western world, had caused the victim's heart to stop beating exactly two minutes and twelve seconds after taking the first puff at the cigar. Thus the fictional ethics of the situation would have been correctly met.
But Kirby was only a plain, outdoors Westerner. He did not know the conventional method of procedure. It did not even occur to him at first that Apartment 12 might still have secrets to tell him after the police and the reporters had pawed over it for several days. But his steps turned back several times to the Paradox as the center from which all clues must emanate. He found himself wandering around in that vicinity trying to pick up some of the pieces of the Chinese puzzle that made up the mystery of his uncle's death.
It was on one of these occasions that he and Rose met his cousin James coming out of the apartment house. Cunningham was a man of admirable self-control, but he looked shaken this morning. His hand trembled as it met that of his cousin. In his eyes was the look of a man who has suffered a shock.
"I've been sitting alone for an hour in the room where Uncle James met his death—been arranging his papers," he explained. "It began to get my nerve. I couldn't stand it any longer. The horrible thing kept jumping to my mind." He drew his right hand heavily across his eyes, as though to shut out and brush away the sight his imagination conjured.
His left arm hung limp. Kirby's quick eyes noticed it.
"You've hurt yourself," Lane said.
"Yes," admitted James. "My heel caught on the top step as I started to walk down. I've wrenched my arm badly. Maybe I've broken it."
"Oh, I hope not," Rose said quickly, a warm sympathy in her vibrant young voice. "A broken arm's no fun. I find it an awful nuisance."
The janitor of the Paradox came out and joined them. He was a little Japanese well on toward middle life, a small-featured man with small, neat feet.
"You feelum all right yes now?" he asked, directing his slant, oval eyes toward Cunningham.
"Yes, I've got over the nausea, thanks, Shibo." James turned to the others. "Shibo was at the foot of the stairs when I caught my heel. He gathered up the pieces. I guess I was all in, wasn't I, Shibo?"
The Japanese nodded agreement. "You heap sick for minute."
"I've been worrying a good deal about this business of Uncle James, I suppose. Anyhow, I've had two or three dizzy spells lately. Nothing serious, though."
"I don't wonder. You sit at a desk too much, James. What you need is exercise. If you'd get in the saddle a couple o' hours a day an' do some stiff ridin' you'd quit havin' dizzy spells. Sorry you're hurt, old man. I'll trail along with you to a doctor's."
"Not necessary. I'll be all right. It's only a few blocks to his office. Fact is, I'm feeling quite myself again."
"Well, if you're sure. Prob'ly you've only sprained your arm. By the way, I'd kinda like to go over Uncle's apartment again. Mind if I do? I don't reckon the police missed anything, but you can never tell."
James hesitated. "I promised the Chief of Police not to let anybody else in. Tell you what I'll do. I'll see him about it and get a permit for you. Say, Kirby, I've been thinking one of us ought to go up to Dry Valley and check things up there. We might find out who wrote that note to Uncle. Maybe some one has been making threats in public. We could see who was in town from there last week. Could you go? To-day? Train leaves in half an hour."
Kirby could and would. He left Rose to talk with the tenants of the Paradox Apartments, entrained for Dry Valley at once, and by noon was winding over the hilltops far up in the Rockies.
He left the train at Summit, a small town which was the center of activities for Dry Valley. Here the farmers bought their supplies and here they marketed their butter and eggs. In the fall they drove in their cattle and loaded them for Denver at the chutes in the railroad yard.
There had been times in the past when Summit ebbed and flowed with a rip-roaring tide of turbulent life. This had been after the round-ups in the golden yesterday when every other store building had been occupied by a saloon and the rattle of chips lasted far into the small hours of night. Now Colorado was dry and the roulette wheel had gone to join memories of the past. Summit was quiet as a Sunday afternoon on a farm. Its busiest inhabitant was a dog which lay in the sun and lazily poked over its own anatomy for fleas.
Kirby registered at the office of the frame building which carried on its false front the word HOTEL. This done, he wandered down to the shack which bore the inscription, "Dry Valley Enterprise." The owner of the paper, who was also editor, reporter, pressman, business manager, and circulator, chanced to be in printing some dodgers announcing a dance at Odd Fellows' Hall. He desisted from his labors to chat with the stranger.
The editor was a fat, talkative little man. Kirby found it no trouble at all to set him going on the subject of James Cunningham, Senior. In fact, during his stay in the valley the Wyoming man could always use that name as an "Open Sesame." It unlocked all tongues. Cunningham and his mysterious death were absorbing topics. The man was hated by scores who had been brought close to ruin by his chicanery. Dry Valley rejoiced openly in the retribution that had fallen upon him.
"Who killed him?" the editor asked rhetorically.
"Well, sir, I'll be dawged if I know. But if I was guessin' I'd say it was this fellow Hull, the slicker that helped him put through the Dry Valley steal. 'Course it might 'a' been the Jap, or it might 'a' been the nephew from Wyoming, but I'll say it was Hull. We know that cuss Hull up here. He's one bad package, that fat man is, believe me. Cunningham held out on him, an' he laid for the old crook an' got him. Don't that look reasonable to you? It sure does to me. Put a rope round Hull's neck an' you'll hang the man that killed old J. C."
Lane put in an hour making himselfpersona grata, then read the latest issue of the "Enterprise" while the editor pulled off the rest of the dodgers. In the local news column he found several items that interested him. These were:
Jim Harkins is down in Denver on business and won't be home tillMonday. Have a good time, Jim.
T. J. Lupton is enjoying a few days vacation in the Queen City. He expects to buy some fancy stock at the yards for breeding purposes. Dry Valley is right in the van of progress.
Art Jelks and Brad Mosely returned from Denver today after a three days' visit in the capital. A good time was had by both. You want to watch them, girls. The boys are both live ones.
Oscar Olson spent a few days in Denver this week. Oscar owns a place three miles out of town on the Spring Creek road.
Casually Kirby gathered information. He learned that Jim Harkins was the town constable and not interested in land; that Lupton was a very prosperous cattleman whose ranch was nowhere near the district promoted by Cunningham; and that Jelks and Mosely were young fellows more or less connected with the garage. The editor knew Olson only slightly.
"He's a Swede—big, fair fellow—got caught in that irrigation fake of Hull and Cunningham. Don't know what he was doin' in Denver," the newspaperman said.
Lane decided that he would see Olson and have a talk with him. Incidentally, he meant to see all the Dry Valley men who had been in Denver at the time Cunningham was killed. But the others he saw only to eliminate them from suspicion. One glance at each of them was enough to give them a clean bill so far as the mystery went. They knew nothing whatever about it.
Lane rode out to Olson's place and found him burning brush. The cattleman explained that he was from Wyoming and wanted to sell some registered Herefords.
Olson looked over his dry, parched crops with sardonic bitterness. "DoI look like I could buy registered stock?" he asked sourly.
Kirby made a remark that set the ranchman off. He said that the crops looked as though they needed water. Inside of five minutes he had heard the story of the Dry Valley irrigation swindle. Olson was not a foreigner. He had been born in Minnesota and attended the public schools. He spoke English idiomatically and without an accent. The man was a tall, gaunt, broad-shouldered Scandinavian of more than average intelligence.
The death of Cunningham had not apparently assuaged his intense hatred of the man or the bitterness which welled out of him toward Hull.
"Cunningham got his! Suits me fine! Now all I ask is that they hangHull for it!" he cried vindictively.
"Seems to be some doubt whether Hull did it," suggested Kirby, to draw him on.
"That so? Mebbe there's evidence you don't know about." The words had come out in the heat of impulse, shot at Kirby tensely and breathlessly. Olson looked at the man on the horse and Lane could see caution grow on him. A film of suspicion spread over the pupils beneath the heavy, ragged eyebrows. "I ain't sayin' so. All I'm dead sure of is that Hull did it."
Kirby fired a shot point-blank at him. "Nobody can be dead sure of that unless he saw him do it."
"Mebbe some one saw him do it. Folks don't tell all they know." Olson looked across the desert beyond the palpitating heat waves to the mountains in the distance.
"No. That's tough sometimes on innocent people, too."
"Meanin' this nephew of old Cunningham. He'll get out all right."
"Will he? There's a girl under suspicion, too. She had no more to do with it than I had, but she's likely to get into mighty serious trouble just the same."
"I ain't read anything in the papers about any girl," Olson answered sullenly.
"No, it hasn't got to the papers yet. But it will. It's up to every man who knows anything about this to come clean."
"Is it?" The farmer looked bleakly at his visitor. "Seems to me you take a lot of interest in this. Who are you, anyhow?"
"My name is Kirby Lane."
"Nephew of the old man?"
"Yes."
Olson gave a snort of dry, splenetic laughter. "And you're out here sellin' registered Herefords."
"I have some for sale. But that's not why I came to see you."
"Why did you come, then?" asked the Scandinavian, his blue eyes hard and defiant.
"I wanted to have a look at the man who wrote the note to James Cunningham threatenin' to dry-gulch him if he ever came to Dry Valley again."
It was a center shot. Kirby was sure of it. He read it in the man's face before anger began to gather in it.
"I'm the man who wrote that letter, am I?" The lips of Olson were drawn back in a vicious snarl.
"You're the man."
"You can prove that, o' course."
"Yes."
"How?"
"By your handwritin'. I've seen three specimens of it to-day."
"Where?"
"One at the court-house, one at the bank that holds your note, an' the third at the office of the 'Enterprise.' You wrote an article urgin' the Dry Valley people to fight Cunningham. That article, in your own handwritin', is in my pocket right now."
"I didn't tell them to gun him, did I?"
"That's not the point. What I'm gettin' at is that the same man wrote the article that wrote the letter to Cunningham."
"Prove it! Prove it!"
"The paper used in both cases was torn from the same tablet. The writin' is the same."
"You've got a nerve to come out here an' tell me I'm the man that killed Cunningham," Olson flung out, his face flushing darkly.
"I'm not sayin' that."
"What are you sayin', then? Shoot it at me straight."
"If I thought you had killed Cunningham I wouldn't be here now. What I thought when I came was that you might know somethin' about it. I didn't come out here to trap you. My idea is that Hull did it. But I've made up my mind you're hidin' somethin'. I'm sure of it. You as good as told me so. What is it?" Kirby, resting easy in the saddle with his weight on one stirrup, looked straight into the rancher's eyes as he asked the question.
"I'd be likely to tell you if I was, wouldn't I?" jeered Olson.
"Why not? Better tell me than wait for the police to third-degree you. If you're not in this killin' why not tell what you know? I've told my story."
"After they spotted you in the court-room," the farmer retorted. "An' how do I know you told all you know? Mebbe you're keepin' secrets, too."
Kirby took this without batting an eye. "An innocent man hasn't anything to fear," he said.
"Hasn't he?" Olson picked up a stone and flung it at a pile of rocks he had gathered fifty yards away. He was left-handed. "How do you know he hasn't? Say, just for argument, I do know somethin'. Say I practically saw Cunningham killed an' hadn't a thing to do with it. Could I get away with a story like that? You know darned well I couldn't. Wouldn't the lawyers want to know howcome I to be so handy to the place where the killin' was, right at the very time it took place, me who is supposed to have threatened to bump him off myself? Sure they would. I'd be tyin' a noose round my own neck."
"Do you know who killed my uncle?" demanded Lane point-blank. "Did you see it done?"
Olson's eyes narrowed. A crafty light shone through the slitted lids. "Hold yore hawsses. I ain't said I knew a thing. Not a thing. I was stringin' you."
Kirby knew he had overshot the mark. He had been too eager and had alarmed the man. He was annoyed at himself. It would take time and patience and finesse to recover lost ground. Shrewdly he guessed at the rancher's state of mind. The man wanted to tell something, was divided in mind whether to come forward as a witness or keep silent. His evidence, it was clear enough, would implicate Hull; but, perhaps indirectly, it would involve himself, too.
"Well, whatever it is you know, I hope you'll tell it," the cattleman said. "But that's up to you, not me. If Hull is the murderer, I want the crime fastened on him. I don't want him to get off scot free. An' that's about what's goin' to happen. The fellow's guilty, I believe, but we can't prove it."
"Can't we? I ain't sure o' that." Again, through the narrowed lids, wary guile glittered. "Mebbe we can when the right time comes."
"I doubt it." Lane spoke casually and carelessly. "Any testimony against him loses force if it's held out too long. The question comes up, why didn't the witness come right forward at once. No, I reckon Hull will get away with it—if he really did it."
"Don't you think it," Olson snapped out. "They've pretty nearly got enough now to convict him."
The rough rider laughed cynically. "Convict him! They haven't enough against him even to make an arrest. They've got a dozen times as much against me an' they turned me loose. He's quite safe if he keeps his mouth shut—an' he will."
Olson flung a greasewood shrub on a pile of brush. His mind, Kirby could see, was busy with the problem before it. The man's caution and his vindictive desire for vengeance were at war. He knew something, evidence that would tend to incriminate Hull, and he was afraid to bring it to the light of day. He worked automatically, and the man on horseback watched him. On that sullen face Kirby could read fury, hatred, circumspection, suspicion, the lust for revenge.
The man's anger barked at Lane. "Well, what you waitin' for?" he asked harshly.
"Nothin'. I'm goin' now." He wrote his Denver address on a card. "If you find there is any evidence against Hull an' want to talk it over, perhaps you'd rather come to me than the police. I'm like you. If Hull did it I want him found guilty. So long."
He handed Olson his card. The man tossed it away. Kirby turned his horse toward town. Five minutes later he looked back. The settler had walked across to the place where he had thrown the card and was apparently picking it up.
The man from Wyoming smiled. He had a very strong hunch that Olson would call on him within a week or ten days. Of course he was disappointed, but he knew the game had to be played with patience. At least he had learned something. The man had in his possession evidence vitally important. Kirby meant to get that evidence from him somehow by hook or crook.
What was it the man knew? Was it possible he could have killed Cunningham himself and be trying to throw the blame of it on Hull? Was that why he was afraid to come out in the open with what testimony he had? Kirby could not forget the bitter hatred of Cunningham the farmer cherished. That hatred extended to Hull. What a sweet revenge to kill one enemy and let the other one hang for the crime!
A detail jumped to his mind. Olson had picked up a stone and thrown it to the rock pile—with his left hand.
Cole Sanborn passed through the Welcome Arch at the station carrying an imitation-leather suitcase. He did not take a car, but walked up Seventeenth Avenue as far as the Markham Hotel. Here he registered, left his luggage, and made some inquiries over the telephone.
Thirty minutes later he was shaking hands with Kirby Lane.
"You dawg-goned old hellamile, what you mean comin' down here an' gettin' throwed in the calaboose?" he demanded, thumping his friend on the shoulder with a heavy brown fist.
"I'm sure enough glad to see you, Mr. Champeen-of-the-World," Kirby answered, falling into the easy vernacular of the outdoor country. "Come to the big town to spend that thousand dollars you won the other day?"
"Y'betcha; it's burnin' a hole in my pocket. Say, you blamed ol' horntoad, howcome you not to stay for the finals? Folks was plumb disappointed we didn't ride it off."
"Tell you about that later. How long you figurin' to stay in Denver,Cole?"
"I dunno. A week, mebbe. Fellow at the Empress wants me to go on that circuit an' do stunts, but I don't reckon I will. Claims he's got a trained bronc I can show on."
"Me, I'm gonna be busy as a dog with fleas," said Kirby. "I got to find out who killed my uncle. Suspicion rests on me, on a man named Hull, on the Jap servant, an' on Wild Rose."
"On Wild Rose!" exclaimed Cole, in surprise. "Have they gone crazy?"
"The police haven't got to her yet, old-timer. But their suspicions will be headed that way right soon if I don't get busy. She thinks her evidence will clear me. It won't. It'll add a motive for me to have killed him. The detectives will figure out we did it together, Rose an' me."
"Hell's bells! Ain't they got no sense a-tall?"
Kirby looked at his watch. "I'm headed right now for the apartment where my uncle was killed. Gonna look the ground over. Wanta come along?"
"Surest thing you know. I'm in this to a fare-you-well. Go ahead.I'll take yore dust."
The lithe, long-bodied man from Basin, Wyoming, clumped along in his high-heeled boots beside his friend. Both of them were splendid examples of physical manhood. The sun tan was on their faces, the ripple of health in their blood. But there was this difference between them, that while it was written on every inch of Sanborn that he lived astride a cow-pony, Kirby might have been an irrigation engineer or a mining man from the hills. He had neither the bow legs nor the ungraceful roll of the man who rides most of his waking hours. His clothes were well made and he knew how to carry them.
As they walked across to Fourteenth Street, Kirby told as much of the story as he could without betraying Esther McLean's part in it. He trusted Sanborn implicitly, but the girl's secret was not his to tell.
From James Cunningham Kirby had got the key of his uncle's apartment.His cousin had given it to him a little reluctantly.
"The police don't want things moved about," he had explained. "They would probably call me down if they knew I'd let you in."
"All I want to do is to look the ground over a bit. What the police don't know won't worry 'em any," the cattleman had suggested.
"All right." James had shrugged his shoulders and turned over the key. "If you think you can find out anything I don't see any objection to your going in."
Sanborn applied his shrewd common sense to the problem as he listened to Kirby.
"Looks to me like you're overlookin' a bet, son," he said. "What about this Jap fellow? Why did he light out soprontoif he ain't in this thing?"
"He might 'a' gone because he's a foreigner an' guessed they'd throw it on him. They would, too, if they could."
"Shucks! He had a better reason than that for cuttin' his stick. Sure had. He's in this somehow."
"Well, the police are after him. They'll likely run him down one o' these days. Far as I'm concerned I've got to let his trail go for the present. There are possibilities right here on the ground that haven't been run down yet. For instance, Rose met a man an' a woman comin' down the stairs while she was goin' up. Who were they?"
"Might 'a' been any o' the tenants here."
"Yes, but she smelt a violet perfume that both she an' I noticed in the apartment. My hunch is that the man an' the woman were comin' from my uncle's rooms."
"Would she recognize them? Rose, I mean?" asked Sanborn.
"No: it was on the dark stairs."
"Hmp! Queer they didn't come forward an' tell they had met a woman goin' up. That is, if they hadn't anything to do with the crime."
"Yes. Of course there might be other reasons why they must keep quiet.Some love affair, for instance."
"Sure. That might be, an' that would explain why they went down the dark stairs an' didn't take the elevator."
"Just the same I'd like to find out who that man an' woman are," Kirby said. He lifted his hand in a small gesture. "This is the Paradox Apartments."
A fat man rolled out of the building just as they reached the steps.He pulled up and stared down at Kirby.
"What—what—?" His question hung poised.
"What am I doin' out o' jail, Mr. Hull? I'm lookin' for the man that killed my uncle," Kirby answered quietly, looking straight at him.
"But—"
"Why did you lie about the time when you saw me that night?"
Hull got excited at once. His eyes began to dodge. "I ain't got a word to say to you—not a word—not a word!" He came puffing down the steps and went waddling on his way.
"What do you think of that prize package, Cole?" asked Lane, his eyes following the man.
"Guilty as hell," said the bronco buster crisply.
"I'd say so too," agreed Kirby. "I don't know as we need to look much farther. My vote is for Mr. Cass Hull—with reservations."
The men from Wyoming stepped into the elevator and Kirby pressed the button numbered 3. At the third floor they got out and turned to the right. With the Yale key his cousin had given him Kirby opened the door of Apartment 12.
He knew that there was not an inch of space in the rooms that the police and the newspaper reporters had not raked as with a fine-tooth comb for clues. The desk had been ransacked, the books and magazines shaken, the rugs taken up. There was no chance that he would discover anything new unless it might be by deduction.
Wild Rose had reported to him the result of her canvass of the tenants. One or two of them she had missed, but she had managed to see all the rest. Nothing of importance had developed from these talks. Some did not care to say anything. Others wanted to gossip a whole afternoon away, but knew no more than what the newspapers had told them. The single fact that stood out from her inquiries was that those who lived in the three apartments nearest to Number 12 had all been out of the house on the evening of the twenty-third. The man who rented the rooms next those of Cunningham had left for Chicago on the twenty-second and had not yet returned to Denver.
Cole took in the easy-chairs, the draperies, and the soft rugs with an appreciative eye. "The old boy believed in solid comfort. You wouldn't think to look at this that he'd spent years on a bronc's back buckin' blizzards. Some luxury, I'll say! Looks like one o' them palaces of the vamp ladies the movies show."
Kirby wasted no time in searching the apartment for evidence. What interested him was its entrances and its exits, its relation to adjoining rooms and buildings. He had reason to believe that, between nine o'clock and half-past ten on the night of the twenty-third, not less than eight persons in addition to Cunningham had been in the apartment. How had they all managed to get in and out without being seen by each other?
Lane talked aloud, partly to clear his own thought and partly to put the situation before his friend.
"O' course I don'tknowevery one of the eight was here. I'm guessin' from facts I do know, makin' inferences, as you might say. To begin with, I was among those present. So was Rose. We don't need to guess any about that."
Cole, still almost incredulous at the mention of Rose as a suspect, opened his lips to speak and closed them again with no word uttered. He was one of those loyal souls who can trust without asking for explanations.
"The lady of the violet perfume an' her escort were here," Kirby went on. "At least she was—most prob'ly he was, too. It's a cinch the Hulls were in the rooms. They were scared stiff when I saw 'em a little later. They lied on the witness stand so as to clear themselves an' get me into trouble in their place. Olson backs up the evidence. He good as told me he'd seen Hull in my uncle's rooms. If he did he must 'a' been present himself. Then there's the Jap Horikawa. He'd beat it before the police went to his room to arrest him at daybreak the mornin' after the murder. How did he know my uncle had been killed? It's not likely any one told him between half-past ten an' half-past five the next mo'nin'. No, sir. He knew it because his eyes had told him so."
"I'll say he did," agreed Sanborn.
"Good enough. That makes eight of us that came an' went. We don't need to figure on Rose an' me. I came by the door an' went by the fire escape. She walked upstairs an' down, too. The violet lady an' the man with her took the stairs down. We know that. But how about Hull an' Olson an' the Jap? Here's another point. Say it was 9.50 when Rose got here. My uncle didn't reach his rooms before nine o'clock. He changed his shoes, put on a smokin'-jacket, an' lit a cigar. He had it half smoked before he was tied to the chair. That cuts down to less than three quarters of an hour the time in which he was chloroformed, tied up to the chair, an' shot, an' in which at least six people paid a visit here, one of the six stayin' long enough to go through his desk an' look over a whole lot o' papers. Some o' these people were sure enough treadin' close on each other's heels an' I reckon some were makin' quick getaways."
"Looks reasonable," Cole admitted.
"I'll bet I wasn't the only man in a hurry that night an' not the only one trapped here. The window of the den was open when I came. Don't you reckon some one else beat it by the fire escape?"'
"Might've."
They passed into the small room where James Cunningham had met his death. Broad daylight though it was, Kirby felt for an instant a tightening at his heart. In imagination he saw again the gargoyle grin on the dead face upturned to his. With an effort he pushed from him the grewsome memory.
The chair in which the murdered man had been found was gone. The district attorney had taken it for an exhibit at the trial of the man upon whom evidence should fasten. The littered papers had been sorted and most of them removed, probably by James Cunningham, Junior. Otherwise the room remained the same.
The air was close. Kirby stepped to the window and threw it up. He looked out at the fire escape and at the wall of the rooming-house across the alley. Denver is still young. It offers the incongruities of the West. The Paradox Apartments had been remodeled and were modern and up to date. Adjoining it was the Wyndham Hotel, a survival of earlier days which could not long escape the march of progress.
Lane and his friend stepped out to the platform of the fire escape. Below them was the narrow alleyway, directly in front the iron frame of the Wyndham fire escape.
A discovery flashed across Kirby's brain and startled him. "See here, Cole. If a man was standin' on that platform over there, an' if my uncle had been facin' him in a chair, sittin' in front of the window, he could 'a' rested his hand on that railin' to take aim an' made a dead-center shot."
Cole thought it out. "Yes, he could, if yore uncle had been facin' the window. But the chair wasn't turned that way, you told me."
"Not when I saw it. But some one might 'a' moved the chair afterward."
The champion of the world grinned. "Seems to me, old man, you're travelin' a wide trail this trip. If some one tied up the old man an' chloroformed him an' left him here convenient, then moved him back to the wall after he'd been shot, then some one on the fire escape could 'a' done it. What's the need of all themifs? Since some one in the room had to be in the thing, we can figure he fired the shot, too, whilst he was doin' the rest. Besides, yore uncle's face was powder-marked, showin' he was shot from right close."
"Yes, that's so," agreed Lane, surrendering his brilliant idea reluctantly. A moment, and his face brightened. "Look, Cole! The corridor of that hotel runs back from the fire escape. If a fellow had been standin' there he could 'a' seen into the room if the blind wasn't down."
"Sure enough," agreed Sanborn. "If the murderer had give him an invite to a grand-stand seat. But prob'ly he didn't."
"No, but it was hot that night. A man roomin' at the Wyndham might come out to get a breath of air, say, an' if he had he might 'a' seen somethin'."
"Some more of themifs, son. What are you drivin' at, anyhow?"
"Olson. Maybe it was from there he saw what he did."
Sanborn's face lost its whimsical derision. His blue eyes narrowed in concentration of thought. "That's good guessin', Kirby. It may be 'way off; then again it may be absolutely correct. Let's find out if Olson stayed at the Wyndham whilst he was in Denver. He'd be more apt to hang out nearer the depot."
"Unless he chose the Wyndham to be near my uncle."
"Mebbeso. But if he did it wasn't because he meant the old man any good. Prove to me that the Swede stayed there an' I'll say he's as liable as Hull to be guilty. He could 'a' throwed a rope round that stone curlycue stickin' out up there above us, swung acrost to the fire escape here, an' walked right in on Cunningham."
Lane's quick glance swept the abutment above and the distance between the buildings.
"You're shoutin', Cole. He could 'a' done just that. Or he might have been waitin' in the room for my uncle when he came home."
"Yes. More likely that was the way of it'—if we're on a hot trail a-tall."
"We'll check up on that first. Chances are ten to one we're barkin' up the wrong tree. Right away we'll have a look at the Wyndham register."
They did. The Wyndham was a rooming-house rather than a hotel, but the landlady kept a register for her guests. She brought it out into the hall from her room for the Wyoming men to look at.
There, under date of the twenty-first, they found the name they were looking for. Oscar Olson had put up at the Wyndham. He had stayed three nights, checking out on the twenty-fourth.
The friends walked into the street and back toward the Paradox without a word. As they stepped into the elevator again. Lane looked at his friend and smiled.
"I've a notion Mr. Olson had a right interestin' trip to Denver," he said quietly.
"I'll say he had," answered Sanborn. "An' that ain't but half of it either. He's mighty apt to have another interestin' one here one o' these days."
The rough riders gravitated back to the fire escape. Kirby had studied the relation of his uncle's apartment to the building opposite. He had not yet examined it with reference to the adjoining rooms.
"While we're cuttin' trail might as well be thorough," he said to his friend. "The miscreant that did this killin' might 'a' walked out the door or he might 'a' come through the window here. If he did that last, which fork of the road did he take? He could go down the ladder or swing across to the Wyndham an' slip into the corridor. Let's make sure we've got all the prospects figured out at that."
Before he had finished the sentence, Lane saw another way of flight. The apartment in front of Cunningham's was out of reach of the fire escape. But the nearest window of the one to the rear was closer. Beneath it ran a stone ledge. An active man could swing himself from the railing of the platform to the coping and force an entrance into that apartment through the window.
Kirby glanced up and down the alley. A department store delivery auto was moving out of sight. Nobody was in the line of vision except an occasional pedestrian passing on the sidewalk at the entrances to the alley.
"I'm gonna take a whirl at it," Lane said, nodding toward the window.
"How much do they give for burglary in this state?" asked Sanborn, his eyes dancing. "I'd kinda hate to see you do twenty years."
"They have to catch the rabbit before they cook it, old-timer. Here goes. Keep an eye peeled an' gimme the office if any cop shows up."
"Mebbe the lady's at home. I don't allow to rescue you none if she massacrees you," the world's champion announced, grinning.
"Wrong guess, Cole. The boss of this hacienda is a man, an' he's inChicago right now."
"You're the dawg-gonedest go-getter I ever threw in with," Sanborn admitted. "All right. Go to it. If I gotta go to the calaboose I gotta go, that's all."
Kirby stepped lightly to the railing, edged far out with his weight on the ledge, and swung to the window-sill. The sash yielded to the pressure of his hands and moved up. A moment later he disappeared from Sanborn's view into the room.
It was the living-room of the apartment into which Lane had stepped. The walls were papered with blue and the rug was a figured yellow and blue. The furniture was of fumed oak, the chairs leather-padded.
The self-invited guest met his first surprise on the table. It was littered with two or three newspapers. The date of the uppermost caught his eye. It was a copy of the "Post" of the twenty-fifth. He looked at the other papers. One was the "Times" and another the "News," dated respectively the twenty-fourth and the twenty-sixth. There was an "Express" of the twenty-eighth. Each contained long accounts of the developments in the Cunningham murder mystery.
How did these papers come here? The apartment was closed, its tenant in Chicago. The only other persons who had a key and the right of entry were Horikawa and the Paradox janitor, and the house servant had fled to parts unknown. Who, then, had brought these papers here? And why? Some one, Lane guessed, who was vitally interested in the murder. He based his presumption on one circumstance. The sections of the newspapers which made no reference to the Cunningham affair had been jammed into the waste-paper basket close to an adjoining desk.
The apartment held two rooms, a buffet kitchen and a bathroom. Kirby opened the door into the bedroom.
He stood paralyzed on the threshold. On the bed, fully dressed, his legs stretched in front of him and his feet crossed, was the missing man Horikawa. His torso was propped up against the brass posts of the bedstead. A handkerchief encircled each arm and bound it to the brass upright behind.
In the forehead, just above the slant, oval eyes, was a bullet hole. The man had probably been dead for a day, at least for a good many hours.
The cattleman had no doubt that it was Horikawa. His picture, a good snapshot taken by a former employer at a picnic where the Japanese had served the luncheon, had appeared in all the papers and on handbills sent out by James Cunningham, Junior. There was a scar, Y-shaped and ragged, just above the left eye, that made identification easy.
Kirby stepped to the window of the living-room and called to his friend.
"Want me to help you gather the loot?" chaffed Cole.
"Serious business, old man," Kirby told him, and the look on his face backed the words.
Sanborn swung across to the window and came through.
"What is it?" he asked quickly.
"I've found Horikawa."
"Found him—where?"
The eyes of the men met and Cole guessed that grim tragedy was in the air. He followed Kirby to the bedroom.
"God!" he exclaimed.
His gaze was riveted to the bloodless, yellow face of the Oriental.Presently he broke the silence to speak again.
"The same crowd that killed Cunningham must 'a' done this, too."
"Prob'ly."
"Sure they must. Same way exactly."
"Unless tyin' him up here was an afterthought—to make it look like the other," suggested Lane. He added, after a moment, "Or for revenge, because Horikawa killed my uncle. If he did, fate couldn't have sent a retribution more exactly just."
"Sho, that's a heap unlikely. You'd have to figure there weretwomen that are Apache killers, both connected with this case, both with minds just alike, one of 'em a Jap an' the other prob'ly a white man. A hundred to one shot, I'd call it. No, sir. Chances are the same man bossed both jobs."
"Yes," agreed Kirby. "The odds are all that way."
He stepped closer and looked at the greenish-yellow flesh. "May have been dead a couple o' days," he continued.
"What was the sense in killin' him? What for? How did he come into it?" Cole's boyish face wrinkled in perplexity. "I don't make head or tail of this thing. Cunningham's enemies couldn't be his enemies, too, do you reckon?"
"More likely he knew too much an' had to be got out of the road."
"Yes, but—" Sanborn stopped, frowning, while he worked out what he had to say. "He wasn't killed right after yore uncle. Where was he while the police were huntin' for him everywhere? If he knew somethin' why didn't he come to bat with it? What was he waitin' for? An' if the folks that finally bumped him off knew he didn't aim to tell what he knew, whyfor did they figure they had to get rid of him?"
"I can't answer your questions right off the reel, Cole. Mebbe I could guess at one or two answers, but they likely wouldn't be right. F'r instance, I could guess that he was here in this room from the time my uncle was killed till he met his own death."
"In this room?"
"In these apartments. Never left 'em, most likely. What's more, some one knew he was here an' kept him supplied with the daily papers."
"Who?"
"If I could tell you that I could tell you who killed him," answeredKirby with a grim, mirthless smile.
"How do you know all that?"
Lane told him of the mute testimony of the newspapers in the living-room. "Some one brought those papers to him every day," he added.
"And then killed him. Does that look reasonable to you?"
"We don't know the circumstances. Say, to make a long shot, that the Jap had been hired to kill my uncle by this other man, and say he was beginnin' to get ugly an' make threats. Or say Horikawa knew about the killin' of my uncle an' was hired by the other man to keep away. Then he learns from the papers that he's suspected, an' he gets anxious to go to the police with what he knows. Wouldn't there be reason enough then to kill him? The other man would have to do it to save himself."
"I reckon." Cole harked back to a preceding suggestion. "The revenge theory won't hold water. If some friend of yore uncle knew the Jap had killed him he'd sick the law on him. He wouldn't pull off any private execution like this."
Kirby accepted this. "That's true. There's another possibility. We've been forgettin' the two thousand dollars my uncle drew from the bank the day he was killed. If Horikawa an' some one else are guilty of the murder an' the theft, they might have quarreled later over the money. Perhaps the accomplice saw a chance to get away with the whole of it by gettin' rid of Horikawa."
"Mebbeso. By what you tell me yore uncle was a big, two-fisted scrapper. It was a two-man job to handle him. This li'l' Jap never in the world did it alone. What it gets back to is that he was prob'ly in on it an' later for some reason his pardner gunned him."
"Well, we'd better telephone for the police an' let them do some of the worryin'."
Kirby stepped into the living-room, followed by his friend. He was about to reach for the receiver when an exclamation stopped him. Sanborn was standing before a small writing-desk, of which he had just let down the top. He had lifted idly a piece of blotting-paper and was gazing down at a sheet of paper with writing on it.
"Looky here, Kirby," he called.
In three strides Lane was beside him. His eyes, too, fastened on the sheet and found there the pot-hooks we have learned to associate with Chinese and Japanese chirography.
"Shows he'd been makin' himself at home," the champion rough rider said.
Lane picked up the paper. There were two or three sheets of the writing. "Might be a letter to his folks—or it might be—" His sentence flickered out. He was thinking. "I reckon I'll take this along with me an' have it translated, Cole."
He put the sheets in his pocket after he had folded them. "You never can tell. I might as well know what this Horikawa was thinkin' about first off as the police. There's just an off chance he might 'a' seen Rose that night an' tells about it here."
A moment later he was telephoning to the City Hall for the police.
There was the sound of a key in the outer door. It opened, and the janitor of the Paradox stood in the doorway.
"What you do here?" asked the little Japanese quickly.
"We came in through the window," explained Kirby. "Thought mebbe the man that killed my uncle slipped in here."
"I hear you talk. I come in. You no business here."
"True enough, Shibo. But we're not burglars an' we're here. Lucky we are too. We've found somethin'."
"Mr. Jennings he in Chicago. He no like you here."
"I want to show you somethin', Shibo. Come."
Kirby led the way into the bedroom. Shibo looked at his countryman without a muscle of his impassive face twitching.
"Some one killum plenty dead," he said evenly.
"Quite plenty," Kirby agreed, watching his imperturbable Oriental face.
The cattleman admitted to himself that what he did not know aboutJapanese habits of mind would fill a great many books.