by Unknown
As he wandered through the streets Kirby's mind was busy with the problem. Automatically his legs carried him to the Paradox Apartments. He found himself there before he even knew he had been heading in that direction. Mrs. Hull came out and passed him. She was without a hat, and probably was going to the corner grocery on Fifteenth.
"I've been neglecting friend Hull," he murmured to himself. "I reckon I'll just drop in an' ask him how his health is."
He was not sorry that Mrs. Hull was out. She was easily, he judged, the dominant member of the firm. If he could catch the fat man alone he might gather something of importance.
Hull opened the door of the apartment to his knock. He stood glaring at the young man, his prominent eyes projecting, the red capillaries in his beefy face filling.
"Whadjawant?" he demanded.
"A few words with you, Mr. Hull." Kirby pushed past him into the room, much as an impudent agent does.
"Well, I don't aim to have no truck with you at all," blustered the fat man. "You've just naturally wore out yore welcome with me before ever you set down. I'll ask you to go right now."
"Here's your hat. What's your hurry?" murmured Kirby, by way of quotation. "Sure I'll go. But don't get on the prod, Hull. I came to make some remarks an' to ask a question. I'll not hurt you any. Haven't got smallpox or anything."
"I don't want you here. If the police knew you was here, they'd be liable to think we was talkin' about--about what happened upstairs."
"Then they would be right. That's exactly what we're gonna talk about."
"No, sir! I ain't got a word to say--not a word!" The big man showed signs of panic.
"Then I'll say it." The dancing light died out of Kirby's eyes. They became hard and steady as agates. "Who killed Cunningham, Hull?"
The fishy eyes of the man dodged. A startled oath escaped him. "How do I know?"
"Didn't you kill him?"
"Goddlemighty, no!" Hull dragged out the red bandanna and gave his apoplectic face first aid. He mopped perspiration from the overlapping roll of fat above his collar. "I dunno a thing about it. Honest, I don't. You got no right to talk to me thataway."
"You're a tub of iniquity, Hull. Also, you're a right poor liar. You know a lot about it. You were in my uncle's rooms just before I saw you on the night of his death. You were seen there."
"W-w-who says so?" quavered the wretched man.
"You'll know who at the proper time. I'll tell you one thing. It won't look good for you that you held out all you know till it was a showdown."
"I ain't holdin' out, I tell you. What business you got to come here devilin' me, I'd like for to know?"
"I'm not devilin' you. I'm tellin' you to come through with what you know, or you'll sure get in trouble. There's a witness against you. When he tells what he saw--"
"Shibo?" The word burst from the man's lips in spite of him.
Kirby did not bat a surprised eye. He went on quietly. "I'll not say who. Except this. Shibo is not the only one who can tell enough to put you on trial for your life. If you didn't kill my uncle you'd better take my tip, Hull. Tell what you know. It'll be better for you."
Mrs. Hull stood in the doorway, thin and sinister. The eyes in her yellow face took in the cattleman and passed to her husband. "What's he doing here?" she asked, biting off her words sharply.
"I was askin' Mr. Hull if he knew who killed my uncle," explained Kirby.
Her eyes narrowed. "Maybe you know," she retorted.
"Not yet. I'm tryin' to find out. Can you give me any help, Mrs. Hull?"
Their eyes crossed and fought it out.
"What do you want to know?" she demanded.
"I'd like to know what happened in my uncle's rooms when Mr. Hull was up there--say about half-past nine, mebbe a little before or a little after."
"He claims to have a witness," Hull managed to get out from a dry throat.
"A witness of what?" snapped the woman.
"That--that I--was in Cunningham's rooms."
For an instant the woman quailed. A spasm of fear flashed over her face and was gone.
"He'll claim anything to get outa the hole he's in," she said dryly. Then, swiftly, her anger pounced on the Wyoming man. "You get outa my house. We don't have to stand yore impudence--an' what's more, we won't. Do you hear? Get out, or I'll send for the police. I ain't scared any of you."
The amateur detective got out. He had had the worst of the bout. But he had discovered one or two things. If he could get Olson to talk, and could separate the fat, flabby man from his flinty wife, it would not be hard to frighten a confession from Hull of all he knew. Moreover, in his fear Hull had let slip one admission. Shibo, the little janitor, had some evidence against him. Hull knew it. Why was Shibo holding it back? The fat man had practically said that Shibo had seen him come out of Cunningham's rooms, or at least that he was a witness he had been in the apartment. Yet he had withheld the fact when he had been questioned by the police. Had Hull bribed him to keep quiet?
The cattleman found Shibo watering the lawn of the parking in front of the Paradox. According to his custom, he plunged abruptly into what he wanted to say. He had discovered that if a man is not given time to frame a defense, he is likely to give away something he had intended to conceal.
"Shibo, why did you hide from the police that Mr. Hull was in my uncle's rooms the night he was killed?"
The janitor shot one slant, startled glance at Kirby before the mask of impassivity wiped out expression from his eyes.
"You know heap lot about everything. You busy busy all like honey-bee. Me, I just janitor--mind own business."
"I wonder, now." Kirby's level gaze took the man in carefully. Was he as simple as he wanted to appear?
"No talk when not have anything to tell." Shibo moved the sprinkler to another part of the lawn.
Kirby followed him. He had a capacity for patience.
"Did Mr. Hull ask you not to tell about him?"
Shibo said nothing, but he said it with indignant eloquence.
"Did he give you money not to tell? I don't want to go to the police with this if I can help it, Shibo. Better come through to me."
"You go police an' say I know who make Mr. Cunningham dead?"
"If I have to."
The janitor had no more remarks to make. He lapsed into an angry, stubborn silence. For nearly half an hour Kirby stayed by his side. The cattleman asked questions. He suggested that, of course, the police would soon find out the facts after he went to them. He even went beyond his brief and implied that shortly Shibo would be occupying a barred cell.
But the man from the Orient contributed no more to the talk.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE MASK OF THE RED BANDANNA
It had come by special delivery, an ill-written little note scrawled on cheap ruled paper torn from a tablet.
If you want to know who killed Cuningham i can tell you. Meet me at the Denmark Bilding, room 419, at eleven tonight. Come alone.
One who knows.
Kirby studied the invitation carefully. Was it genuine? Or was it a plant? He was no handwriting expert, but he had a feeling that it was a disguised script. There is an inimitable looseness of design in the chirography of an illiterate person. He did not find here the awkwardness of the inexpert; rather the elaborate imitation of an amateur ignoramus. Yet he was not sure. He could give no definite reason for this fancy.
And in the end he tossed it overboard. He would keep the appointment and see what came of it. Moreover, he would keep it alone--except for a friend hanging under the left arm at his side. Kirby had brought no revolver with him to Denver. Occasionally he carried one on the range to frighten coyotes and to kill rattlers. But he knew where he could borrow one, and he proceeded to do so.
Not that there was any danger in meeting the unknown correspondent. Kirby did not admit that for a moment. There are people so constituted that they revel in the mysterious. They wrap their most common actions in hints of reserve and weig
hty silence. Perhaps this man was one of them. There was no danger whatever. Nobody had any reason to wish him serious ill. Yet Kirby took a .45 with him when he set out for the Denmark Building. He did it because that strange sixth sense of his had warned him to do so.
During the day he had examined the setting for the night's adventure. He had been to the Denmark Building and scanned it inside and out. He had gone up to the fourth floor and looked at the exterior of Room 419. The office door had printed on it this design:
THE GOLD HILL MILLING & MINING COMPANY
But when Kirby tried the door he found it locked.
The Denmark Building is a little out of the heart of the Denver business district. It was built far uptown at a time when real estate was booming. Adjoining it is the Rockford Building. The two dominate a neighborhood of squat two-story stores and rooming-houses. In dull seasons the offices in the two big landmarks are not always filled with tenants.
The elevators in the Denmark had ceased running hours since. Kirby took the narrow stairs which wound round the elevator shaft. He trod the iron treads very slowly, very softly. He had no wish to advertise his presence. If there was to be any explosive surprise, he did not want to be at the receiving end of it.
He reached the second story, crossed the landing, and began the next flight. The place was dark as a midnight pit. At the third floor its blackness was relieved slightly by a ray of light from a transom far down the corridor.
Kirby waited to listen. He heard no faintest sound to break the stillness. Again his foot found the lowest tread and he crept upward. In the daytime he had laughed at the caution which had led him to borrow a weapon from an acquaintance at the stockyards. But now every sense shouted danger. He would not go back, but each forward step was taken with infinite care.
And his care availed him nothing. A lifted foot struck an empty soap box with a clatter to wake the seven sleepers. Instantly he knew it had been put there for him to stumble over. A strong searchlight flooded the stairs and focused on him. He caught a momentary glimpse of a featureless face standing out above the light--a face that was nothing but a red bandanna handkerchief with slits in it for eyes--and of a pair of feet below at the top of the stairway.
The searchlight winked out. There was a flash of lightning and a crash of thunder. A second time the pocket flash found Kirby. It found him crouched low and reaching for the .45 under his arm. The booming of the revolver above reverberated down the pit of the stairway.
Arrow-swift, with the lithe ease of a wild thing from the forest, Kirby ducked round the corner for safety. He did not wait there, but took the stairs down three at a stride. Not till he had reached the ground floor did he stop to listen for the pursuit.
No sound of following footsteps came to him. By some miracle of good luck he had escaped the ambush. It was characteristic of him that he did not fly wildly into the night. His brain functioned normally, coolly. Whoever it was had led him into the trap had lost his chance. Kirby reasoned that the assassin's mind would be bent on making his own safe escape before the police arrived.
The cattleman waited, crouched behind an out-jutting pillar in the wall of the entrance. Every minute he expected to see a furtive figure sneak past him into the street. His hopes were disappointed. It was nearly midnight when two men, talking cheerfully of the last gusher in, the Buckburnett field, emerged from the stairway and passed into the street. They were tenants who had stayed late to do some unfinished business.
There was a drug-store in the building, cornering on two streets. Kirby stepped into it and asked a question of the clerk at the prescription desk.
"Is there more than one entrance to the Denmark Building?"
"No, sir." The clerk corrected himself. "Well, there's another way out. The Producers & Developers Shale and Oil Company have a suite of offices that run into the Rockford Building. They've built an alley to connect between the two buildings. It's on the fifth floor."
"Is it open? Could a man get out of the Denmark Building now by way of the Rockford entrance?"
"Easiest in the world. All he'd have to do would be to cross the alley bridge, go down the Rockford stairs, and walk into the street."
Kirby wasted no more time. He knew that the man who had tried to murder him had long since made good his getaway by means of the fifth-story bridge between the buildings.
As he walked back to the hotel where he was stopping his eyes and ears were busy. He took no dark-alley chances, but headed for the bright lights of the main streets where he would be safe from any possibility of a second ambush.
His brain was as busy as his eyes. Who had planned this attempt on his life and so nearly carried it to success? Of one thing he was sure. The assassin who had flung the shots at him down the narrow stairway of the Denmark was the one who had murdered his uncle. The motive for the ambuscade was fear. Kirby was too hot on the trail that might send him to the gallows. The man had decided to play safe by following the old theory that dead men tell no tales.
CHAPTER XXXII
JACK TAKES OFF HIS COAT
Afterward, when Kirby Lane looked back upon the weeks spent in Denver trying to clear up the mysteries which surrounded the whole affair of his uncle's death, it seemed to him that he had been at times incredibly stupid. Nowhere did this accent itself so much as in that part of the tangle which related to Esther McLean.
From time to time Kirby saw Cole. He was in and out of town. Most of his time was spent running down faint trails which spun themselves out and became lost in the hills. The champion rough rider was indomitably resolute in his intention of finding her. There were times when Rose began to fear that her little sister was lost to her for always. But Sanborn never shared this feeling.
"You wait. I'll find her," he promised. "An' if I can lay my hands on the man that's done her a meanness, I'll certainly give them hospital sharks a job patchin' him up." His gentle eyes had frozen, and the cold, hard light in them was almost deadly.
Kirby could not get it out of his head that James was responsible for the disappearance of the girl. Yet he could not find a motive that would justify so much trouble on his cousin's part.
He was at a moving-picture house on Curtis Street with Rose when the explanation popped into his mind. They were watching an old-fashioned melodrama in which the villain's letter is laid at the door of the unfortunate hero.
Kirby leaned toward Rose in the darkness and whispered, "Let's go."
"Go where?" she wanted to know in surprise. They had seated themselves not five minutes before.
"I've got a hunch. Come."
She rose, and on the way to the aisle brushed past several irritated ladies. Not till they were standing on the sidewalk outside did he tell her what was on his mind.
"I want to see that note from my uncle you found in your sister's desk," he said.
She looked at him and laughed a little. "You certainly want what you want when you want it! Do your hunches often take you like that--right out of a perfectly good show you've paid your money to see?"
"We've made a mistake. It was seein' that fellow in the play that put me wise. Have you got the note with you?"
"No. It's at home. If you like we'll go and get it."
They walked up to the Pioneers' Monument and from there over to her boarding-place.
Kirby looked the little note over carefully. "What a chump I was not to look at this before," he said. "My uncle never wrote it."
"Never wrote it?"
"Not his writin' a-tall."
"Then whose is it?"
"I can make a darn good guess. Can't you?"
She looked at him, eyes dilated, on the verge of a discovery. "You mean--?"
"I mean that J. C. might stand for at least two other men we know."
"Your cousin James?"
"More likely Jack."
His mind beat back to fugitive memories of Jack's embarrassment when Esther's name had been mentioned in connection with his uncle. Swiftly his brain began to piece th
e bits of evidence he had not understood the meaning of before.
"Jack's the man. You may depend on it. My uncle hadn't anything to do with it. We jumped at that conclusion too quick," he went on.
"You think that she's . . . with him?"
"No. She's likely out in the country or in some small town. He's havin' her looked after. Probably an attack of conscience. Even if he's selfish as the devil, he isn't heartless."
"If we could be sure she's all right. But we can't." Rose turned on him a wistful face, twisted by emotion. "I want to find her, Kirby. I'm her sister. She's all I've got. Can't you do something?"