The Collected Westerns of William MacLeod Raine: 21 Novels in One Volume

by Unknown

  "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," answered Kirby 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 about Japanese habits of mind would fill a great many books.

  CHAPTER XXI

  JAMES LOSES HIS TEMPER

  Cole grinned whimsically at his friend.

  "Do we light out now or wait for the cops?" he asked.

  "We wait. They'd probably find out, anyhow, that we'd been here."

  Five minutes later a patrol wagon clanged up to the Paradox. A sergeant of police and two plainclothes men took the elevator. The sergeant, heading the party, stopped in the doorway of the apartment and let a hard, hostile eye travel up and down Lane's six feet.

  "Oh, it's you," he said suspiciously.

  Kirby smiled. "That's right, officer. We've met before, haven't we?"

  They had. The sergeant was the man who had arrested him at the coroner's inquest. It had annoyed him that the authorities had later released the prisoner on bond.

  "Have you touched the body or moved anything since you came?" the sergeant demanded.

  "No, sir, to both questions, except the telephone when I used it to reach headquarters."

  The officer made no answer. He and the detectives went into the bedroom, examined the dead valet's position and clothes, made a tour of the rooms, and came back to Lane.

  "Who's your friend?" asked the sergeant superciliously.

  "His name is Cole Sanborn."

  "The champion bronco buster?"

  "Yes."

  The sergeant looked at Sanborn with increased respect. His eyes went back to Kirby sullenly.

  "What you doing here?"

  "We were in my uncle's apartment lookin' things over. We stepped out on the fire escape an' happened to notice this window here was open a little. It just came over me that mebbe we might discover some evidence here. So I got in by the window, saw the body of the Jap, an' called my friend."

  "Some one hire you to hunt up evidence?" the officer wanted to know with heavy sarcasm.

  "I hired myself. My good name is involved. I'm goin' to see the murderer is brought to justice."

  "You are, eh?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, I'll say you could find him if anybody could."

  "You're entitled to your opinion, sergeant, just as I am to mine, but before we're through with this case you'll have to admit you've been wrong."

  Lane turned to his friend. "We'll go now, Cole, if you're ready."

  The sergeant glared at this cool customer who refused to be appalled at the position in which he stood. He had half a mind to arrest the man again on the spot, but he was not sure enough of his ground. Not very long since he had missed a promotion by being overzealous. He did not want to make the same mistake twice.

  The Wyoming men walked across to Seventeenth Street and down it to the Equitable Building. James Cunningham was in his office.

  He looked up as they entered, a cold smile on his lips.

  "Ah, my energetic cousin," he said, with his habitual touch of irony. "What's in the wind now?"

  Kirby told him. Instantly James became grave. His irony vanished. In his face was a flicker almost of consternation at this follow-up murder. He might have been asking himself how much more trouble was coming.

  "We'll get the writing translated. You have it with you?" he said.

  His eyes ran over the pages Lane handed him. "I know a Jap we can get to read it for us, a reliable man, one who won't talk if we ask him not to."

  The broker's desk buzzer rang. He talked for a moment over the telephone, then hung up again.

  "Sorry," Cunningham said, "I'm going to be busy for an hour or two. Going to lunch with Miss Phyllis Harriman. She was Uncle James's fiancée, perhaps you know. There are some affairs of the estate to be arranged. I wonder if you could come back later this afternoon. Say about four o'clock. We'll take up then the business of t
he translation. I'll get in touch with a Japanese in the meantime."

  "Suits me. Shall I leave the writing here?"

  "Yes, if you will. Doesn't matter, of course, but since we have it I'll put it in the safe."

  "How's the arm?" Kirby asked, glancing at the sling his cousin wore.

  "Only sprained. The doctor thinks I must have twisted it badly as I fell. I couldn't sleep a wink all night. The damned thing pained so."

  James looked as though he had not slept well. His eyes were shadowed and careworn.

  They walked together as far as the outer office. A slender, dark young woman, beautifully gowned, was waiting there. James introduced her to his cousin and Sanborn as Miss Harriman. She was, Kirby knew at once, the original of the photograph he had seen in his uncle's rooms.

  Miss Harriman was a vision of sheathed loveliness. The dark, long-lashed eyes looked out at Kirby with appealing wistfulness. When she moved, the soft lines of her body took on a sinuous grace. From her personality there seemed to emanate an enticing aura of sex mystery.

  She gave Kirby her little gloved hand. "I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Lane," she said, smiling at him. "I've heard all sorts of good things about you from James--and Jack."

  She did not offer her hand to Sanborn, perhaps because she was busy buttoning one of the long gloves. Instead, she gave him a flash of her eyes and a nod of the carefully coiffured head.

  Kirby said the proper things, but he said them with a mind divided. For his nostrils were inhaling again the violet perfume that associated itself with his first visit to his uncle's apartment. He did not start. His eyes did not betray him. His face could be wooden on occasion, and it told no stories now. But his mind was filled with racing thoughts. Had Phyllis Harriman been the woman Rose had met on the stairs? What had she been doing in Cunningham's room? Who was the man with her? What secret connected with his uncle's death lay hidden back of the limpid innocence of those dark, shadowed eyes? She was one of those women who are forever a tantalizing mystery to men. What was she like behind the inscrutable, charming mask of her face?

  Lane carried this preoccupation with him throughout the afternoon. It was still in the hinterland of his thoughts when he returned to his cousin's office.

  His entrance was upon a scene of agitated storm. His cousin was in the outer office facing a clerk. In his eyes there was a cold fury of anger that surprised Kirby. He had known James always as self-restrained to the point of chilliness. Now his anger seemed to leap out and strike savagely.

  "Gross incompetence and negligence, Hudson. You are discharged, sir. I'll not have you in my employ an hour longer. A man I have trusted and found wholly unworthy."

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Cunningham," the clerk said humbly. "I don't see how I lost the paper, if I did, sir. I was very careful when I took the deeds and leases out of the safe. It seems hardly possible--"

  "But you lost it. Nobody else could have done it. I don't want excuses. You can go, sir." Cunningham turned abruptly to his cousin. "The sheets of paper with the Japanese writing have been lost. This man, by some piece of inexcusable carelessness, took them with a bundle of other documents to my lawyer's office. He must have taken them. They were lying with the others. Now they can't be found anywhere."

  "Have you 'phoned to your lawyer?" asked Kirby.

  "'Phoned and been in person. They are nowhere to be found. They ought to turn up somewhere. This clerk probably dropped them. I've sent an advertisement to the afternoon papers."

  Kirby was taken aback at this unexpected mischance, but there was no use wasting nerve energy in useless fretting. He regretted having left the papers with James, for he felt that in them might be the key to the mystery of the Cunningham case. But he had no doubt that his cousin was more distressed about the loss than he was. He comforted himself with the reflection that a thorough search would probably restore them, anyhow.

  He asked Hudson a few questions and had the man show them exactly where he had picked up the papers he took to the lawyer. James listened, his anger still simmering.

  Kirby took his cousin by the arm and led him into the inner office.

  "Frankly, James, I think you were partly to blame," he said. "You must have laid the writing very close in the safe to the other papers. Hadn't you better give Hudson another chance before you fire him?" His disarming smile robbed both the criticism and the suggestion of any offense they might otherwise have had.

  In the end he persuaded Cunningham to withdraw his discharge of the clerk.

  "He doesn't deserve it," James grumbled. "He's maybe spoiled our chance of laying hands on the man who killed Uncle. I can't get over my disappointment."

  "Don't worry, old man," Lane said quietly. "We're goin' to rope an' hogtie that wolf even if Horikawa can't point him out to us with his dead hand."

  Cunningham looked at him, and again the faint, ironic smile of admiration was in evidence. "You're confident, Kirby."

  "Why wouldn't I be? With you an' Rose McLean an' Cole Sanborn an' I all followin' the fellow's trail, he can't double an' twist enough to make a getaway. We'll ride him down sure."

  "Maybe we will and maybe we won't," the oil broker replied. "I'd give odds that he goes scot free."

  "Then you'd lose," Kirby answered, smiling easily.

  CHAPTER XXII

  "ARE YOU WITH ME OR AGAINST ME?"

  Miss Phyllis Harriman had breakfasted earlier than usual. Her luxuriant, blue-black hair had been dressed and she was debating the important question as to what gown she would wear. The business of her life was to make an effective carnal appeal, and she had a very sure sense of how to accomplish this.

  A maid entered with a card, at which Miss Harriman glanced indolently. A smile twitched at the corners of her mouth, but it was not wholly one of amusement. In the dark eyes a hint of adventure sparked. Her pulses beat with a little glow of triumph. For this young woman was of the born coquettes. She could no more resist alluring an attractive man and playing with him to his subsequent mental discomfort than she could refrain from bridge drives and dinner dances. This Wild Man from Wyoming, so strong of stride, so quietly competent, whose sardonic glance had taken her in so directly and so keenly, was a foeman worthy of her weapons.

  "Good gracious!" she murmured, "does he usually call in the middle of the night, I wonder? And does he really expect me to see him now?"

  The maid waited. She had long ago discovered that Miss Phyllis did not always regulate her actions by her words.

  "Take him into the red room and tell him I'll be down in a minute," Miss Harriman decided.

  After which there was swift action in the lady's boudoir.

  The red room was scarcely more than a cozy alcove set off the main reception-room, but it had a note of warmth, of friendly and seductive intimacy. Its walls whispered of tête-à-têtes, the cushions hinted at interesting secrets they were forever debarred from telling. In short, when Miss Harriman was present, it seemed, no less than the clothes she wore, an expression of her personality.

  After a very few minutes Miss Phyllis sauntered into the room and gave her hand to the man who rose at her entrance. She was simply but expensively gowned. Her smile was warm for Kirby. It told him, with a touch of shy reluctance, that he was the one man in the world she would rather meet just now. He did not know that it would have carried the same message to any one of half a dozen men.

  "I'm so glad you came to see me," she said, just as though she were in the habit of receiving young men at eleven in the morning. "Of course I want to know you better. James thinks so much of you."

  "And Jack," added Lane, smilingly.

  "Oh, yes. Jack, too," she said, and laughed outright when their eyes met.

  "I'm sure Jack's very fond of me. He can't help showing it occasionally."

  "Jack's--impulsive," she explained. "But he's amenable to influence."

  "Of the right sort. I'm sure he would be."

  He found himself the object of a piquant, amused scrutiny under her long lashes
. It came to him that this Paris-gowned, long-limbed young sylph was more than willing to let him become intrigued by her charms. But Kirby Lane had not called so early in the day to fall in love.

  "I came to see you, Miss Harriman, about the case," he said. "My good name is involved. I must clear it. I want you to help me."

  He saw a pulse of excitement flutter in her throat. It seemed to him that her eyes grew darker, as though some shadow of dread had fallen over them. The provocative smile vanished.