by Unknown
Her plainness embarrassed the officer.
"Let's took at the facts, Miss Cullison," he began amiably. "Then you tell me what you would think in my place. Your father needed money mighty bad. There's no doubt at all about that. Here's an envelope on which he had written a list of his debts. You'll notice they run to just a little more than twenty thousand. I found this in his bedroom the day he disappeared."
She took the paper, glanced at it mechanically, and looked at the sheriff again. "Well? Everybody wants money. Do they all steal it?"
"Turn that envelope over, Miss Cullison. Notice how he has written there half a dozen times in a row, '$20,000,' and just below it twice, 'W. & S. Ex. Co.' Finally, the one word, 'To-night.'"
She read it all, read it with a heart heavy as lead, and knew that there he had left in his own strong, bold handwriting convincing evidence against himself. Still, she did not doubt him in the least, but there could be no question now that he knew of the intended shipment, that absent-mindedly he had jotted down this data while he was thinking about it in connection with his own debts.
The sheriff went on tightening the chain of evidence in a voice that for all its kindness seemed to her remorseless as fate. "It turns out that Mr. Jordan of the Cattleman's National Bank mentioned this shipment to your father that morning. Mr. Cullison was trying to raise money from him, but he couldn't let him have it. Every bank in the city refused him a loan. Yet next morning he paid off two thousand dollars he owed from a poker game."
"He must have borrowed the money from some one," she said weakly.
"That money he paid in twenty-dollar bills. The stolen express package was in twenties. You know yourself that this is a gold country. Bills ain't so plentiful."
The girl's hand went to her heart. Faith in her father was a rock not to be washed away by any amount of evidence. What made her wince was the amount of circumstantial testimony falling into place so inexorably against him.
"Is that all?" she asked despairingly.
"I wish it were, Miss Cullison. But it's not. A man came round the corner and shot at the robber as he was escaping. His hat fell off. Here it is."
As Kate took the hat something seemed to tighten around her heart. It belonged to her father. His personality was stamped all over it. She even recognized a coffee stain on the under side of the brim. There was no need of the initials L. C. to tell her whose it had been. A wave of despair swept over her. Again she was on the verge of breaking down, but controlled herself as with a tight curb.
Bolt's voice went on. "Next day your father disappeared, Miss Cullison. He was here in town all morning. His friends knew that suspicion was fastening on him. The inference is that he daren't wait to have the truth come out. Mind, I don't say he's guilty. But it looks that way. Now, that's my case. If you were sheriff in my place, what would you do?"
Her answer flashed back instantly. "If I knew Luck Cullison, I would be sure there was a mistake somewhere, and I would look for foul play. I would believe anything except that he was guilty--anything in the world. You know he has enemies."
The sheriff liked her spirited defense no less because he could not agree with her. "Yes, I know that. The trouble is that these incriminating facts don't come in the main from his enemies."
"You say the robber had on his hat, and that somebody shot at him. Whoever it was must know the man wasn't father."
Gently Bolt took this last prop from her hope. "He is almost sure the man was your father."
A spark of steel came into her dark eyes. "Who is the man?"
"His name is Fendrick."
"Cass Fendrick?" She whipped the word at him, leaning forward in her chair rigidly with her hands clenched on the arms of it. One could have guessed that the sound of the name had unleashed a dormant ferocity in her.
"Yes. I know he and your father aren't friends. They have had some trouble. For that reason he was very reluctant to give your father's name."
The girl flamed. "Reluctant! Don't you believe it? He hates Father like poison." A flash of inspiration came to her. She rose, slim and tall and purposeful. "Cass Fendrick is the man you want, and he is the man I want. He robbed the express company, and he has killed my father or abducted him. I know now. Arrest him to-night."
"I have to have evidence," Bolt said quietly.
"I can give you a motive. Listen. Father expected to prove up yesterday on his Del Oro claim. If he had done so Cass Fendrick's sheep would have been cut off from the water. Father had to be got out of the way not later than Wednesday, or that man would have been put out of business. He was very bitter about it. He had made threats."
"It would take more than threats to get rid of the best fighting man in Arizona, right in the middle of the day, in the heart of the town, without a soul knowing about it." The officer added with a smile: "I'd hate to undertake the contract, give me all the help I wanted."
"He was trapped somehow, of course," Curly cut in. For he was sure that in no other way could Luck Cullison have been overcome.
"If you'll only tell me how, Flandrau," Bolt returned.
"I don't know how, but we'll find out."
"I hope so."
Kate felt his doubt, and it was like a spark to powder.
"Fendrick is your friend. You were elected by his influence. Perhaps you want to prove that Father did this."
"The people elected me, Miss Cullison," answered Bolt, with grave reproach. "I haven't any friends or any enemies when it comes to doing what I've sworn to do."
"Then you ought to know Father couldn't have done this. There is such a thing as character. Luck Cullison simply couldn't be a thief."
Mackenzie's faith had been strengthened by the insistent loyalty of the girl. "That's right, Nick. Let me tell you something else. Fendrick knew Luck was going to prove up on Thursday. He heard him tell us at the Round-Up Club Tuesday morning."
The sheriff summed up. "You've proved Cass had interests that would be helped if Mr. Cullison were removed. But you haven't shaken the evidence against Luck."
"We've proved Cass Fendrick had to get Father out of the way on the very day he disappeared. One day later would have been too late. We've shown his enmity. Any evidence that rests on his word is no good. The truth isn't in the man."
"Maybe not, but he didn't make this evidence."
Kate had another inspirational flash. "He did--some of it. Somehow he got hold of father's hat, and he manufactured a story about shooting it from the robber's head. But to make his story stick he must admit he was on the ground at the time of the hold-up. So he must have known the robbery was going to take place. It's as plain as old Run-A-Mile's wart that he knew of it because he planned it himself."
Bolt's shrewd eyes narrowed to a smile. "You prove to me that Cass had your father's hat before the hold-up, and I'll take some stock in the story."
"And in the meantime," suggested Curly.
"I'll keep right on looking for Luck Cullison, but I'll keep an eye on Cass Fendrick, too."
Kate took up the challenge confidently. "I'll prove he had the hat--at least I'll try to pretty hard. It's the truth, and it must come out somehow."
After he had left her at the hotel, Curly walked the streets with a sharp excitement tingling his blood. He had lived his life among men, and he knew little about women and their ways. But his imagination seized avidly upon this slim, dark girl with the fine eyes that could be both tender and ferocious, with the look of combined delicacy and strength in every line of her.
"Ain't she the gamest little thoroughbred ever?" he chuckled to himself. "Stands the acid every crack. Think of her standing pat so game--just like she did for me that night out at the ranch. She's the best argument Luck has got."
CHAPTER VI
TWO HATS ON A RACK
One casual remark of Mackenzie had given Kate a clew. Even before she had explained it, Curly caught the point and began to dig for the truth. For though he was almost a boy, the others leaned on him with the expectation that
in the absence of Maloney he would take the lead. Before they separated for the night he made Mackenzie go over every detail he could remember of the meeting between Cullison and Fendrick at the Round-Up Club. This was the last time the two men had been seen together in public, and he felt it important that he should know just what had taken place.
In the morning he and Kate had a talk with his uncle on the same subject. Not content with this, he made the whole party adjourn to the club rooms so that he might see exactly where Luck had sat and the different places the sheepman had stood from the time he entered until the poker players left.
Together Billie Mackenzie and Alec Flandrau dramatized the scene for the young people. Mac personated the sheepman, came into the room, hung up his hat, lounged over to the poker table, said his little piece as well as he could remember it, and passed into the next room. Flandrau, Senior, taking the role of Cullison, presently got up, lifted his hat from the rack, and went to the door.
With excitement trembling in her voice, the girl asked an eager question. "Were their hats side by side like that on adjoining pegs?"
Billie turned a puzzled face to his friend. "How about that, Alec?"
"That's how I remember it."
"Same here, my notion is."
"Both gray hats?" Curly cut in.
His uncle looked helplessly at the other man. "Can't be sure of that. Luck's was gray all right."
"Cass wore a gray hat too, seems to me," Mackenzie contributed, scratching his gray hair.
"Did Father hesitate at all about which one to take?"
"No-o. I don't reckon he did. He had turned to ask me if I was coming--wasn't looking at the hats at all."
Curly looked at Kate and nodded. "I reckon we know how Cass got Mr. Cullison's hat. It was left on the rack."
"How do you mean?" his uncle asked.
"Don't you see?" the girl explained, her eyes shining with excitement. "Father took the wrong hat. You know how absent-minded he is sometimes."
Mackenzie slapped his knee. "I'll bet a stack of blues you've guessed it."
"There's a way to make sure," Curly said.
"I don't get you."
"Fendrick couldn't wear Mr. Cullison's hat around without the risk of someone remembering it later. What would he do then?"
Kate beamed. "Buy another at the nearest store."
"That would be my guess. And the nearest store is the New York Emporium. We've got to find out whether he did buy one there on Tuesday some time after nine o'clock in the morning."
The girl's eyes were sparkling. She bustled with businesslike energy. "I'll go and ask right away."
"Don't you think we'd better let Uncle Alec find out? He's not so likely to stir up curiosity," Curly suggested.
"That's right. Let me earn my board and keep," the owner of the Map of Texas volunteered.
Within a quarter of an hour Alec Flandrau joined the others at the hotel. He was beaming like a schoolboy who has been given an unexpected holiday.
"You kids are right at the head of the class in the detective game. Cass bought a brown hat, about 9:30 in the mo'ning. Paid five dollars for it. Wouldn't let them deliver the old one but took it with him in a paper sack."
With her lieutenants flanking her Kate went straight to the office of the sheriff. Bolt heard the story out and considered it thoughtfully.
"You win, Miss Cullison. You haven't proved Fendrick caused your father's disappearance by foul play, and you haven't proved he committed the robbery. Point of fact I don't think he did either one. But it certainly looks like he may possibly have manufactured evidence."
Curly snorted scornfully. "You're letting your friend down easy, Mr. Bolt. By his own story he was on the ground a minute after the robbery took place. How do we know he wasn't there a minute before? For if he didn't know the hold-up was going to occur why did he bring Mr. Cullison's hat with him punctured so neatly with bullet holes?"
"I'll bet a thousand dollars he is at the bottom of this whole thing," Mackenzie added angrily.
The sheriff flushed. "You gentlemen are entitled to your opinions just as I'm entitled to mine. You haven't even proved he took Mr. Cullison's hat; you've merely showed he may have done it."
"We've given you a motive and some evidence. How much more do you want?" Curly demanded.
"Hold your hawses a while, Flandrau, and look at this thing reasonable. You're all prejudiced for Cullison and against Fendrick. Talk about evidence! There's ten times as much against your friend as there is against Cass."
"Then you'll not arrest Fendrick?"
"When you give me good reason to do it," Bolt returned doggedly.
"That's all right, Mr. Sheriff. Now we know where you stand," Flandrau, Senior, said stiffly.
The harassed official mopped his face with a bandanna. "Sho! You all make me tired. I'm not Fendrick's friend while I'm in this office any more than I'm Luck's, But I've got to use my judgment, ain't I?"
The four adjourned to meet at the Del Mar for a discussion of ways and means.
"We'll keep a watch on Fendrick--see where he goes, who he talks to, what he does. Maybe he'll make a break and give himself away," Curly said hopefully.
"But my father--we must rescue him first."
"As soon as we find where he is. Me, I'm right hopeful all's well with him. Killing him wouldn't help Cass any, because you and Sam would prove up on the claim. But if he could hold your father a prisoner and get him to sign a relinquishment to him he would be in a fine position."
"But Father wouldn't sign. He ought to know that."
"Not through fear your father wouldn't. But if Fendrick could get at him some way he might put down his John Hancock. With this trouble of Sam still unsettled and the Tin Cup hold-up to be pulled off he might sign."
"If we could only have Fendrick arrested--"
"What good would that do? If he's guilty he wouldn't talk. And if he is holding your father somewhere in the hills it would only be serving notice that we were getting warm. No, I'm for a still hunt. Let Cass ride around and meet his partners in this deal. We'll keep an eye on him all right."
"Maybe you're right," Kate admitted with a sigh.
CHAPTER VII
ANONYMOUS LETTERS
Sheriff Bolt, though a politician, was an honest man. It troubled him that Cullison's friends believed him to be a partisan in a matter of this sort. For which reason he met more than half way Curly's overtures. Young Flandrau was in the office of the sheriff a good deal, because he wanted to be kept informed of any new developments in the W. & S. robbery case.
It was on one of those occasions that Bolt tossed across to him a letter he had just opened.
"I've been getting letters from the village cut-up or from some crank, I don't know which. Here's a sample."
The envelope, addressed evidently in a disguised hand, contained one sheet of paper. Upon this was lettered roughly,
"Play the Jack of Hearts."
Flandrau looked up with a suggestion of eagerness in his eyes.
"What do you reckon it means?" he asked.
"Search me. Like as not it don't mean a thing. The others had just as much sense as that one."
"Let's see the others."
"I chucked them into the waste paper basket. One came by the morning mail yesterday and one by the afternoon. I'm no mind reader, and I've got no time to guess fool puzzles."
Curly observed that the waste paper basket was full. Evidently it had not been emptied for two or three days.
"Mind if I look for the others?" he asked.
Bolt waved permission. "Go to it."
The young man emptied the basket on the floor and went over its contents carefully. He found three communications from the unknown writer. Each of them was printed by hand on a sheet of cheap lined paper torn from a scratch pad. He smoothed them out and put them side by side on the table. This was what he read:
HEARTS ARE TRUMPS WHEN IN DOUBT PLAY TRUMPS PLAY TRUMPS NOW
There was only th
e one line to each message, and all of them were plainly in the same hand. He could make out only one thing, that someone was trying to give the sheriff information in a guarded way.
He was still puzzling over the thing when a boy came with a special delivery letter for the sheriff. Bolt glanced at it and handed the note to Curly.
"Another billy doo from my anxious friend."
This time the sender had been in too much of a hurry to print the words. They were written in a stiff hand by some uneducated person.
The Jack of Trumps, to-day