Reno Rendezvous. Leslie Ford

had been abandoned there. Behind it was a couple of old carriages, abandoned like the hearse, and a sleigh with rusted runners. The door of the hearse creaked on its rusty hinges in the evening breeze.

      I glanced at Colonel Primrose. He didn’t seem to have noticed the hearse, which was odd, as he always notices everything. I thought for a moment that he might still be thinking of Mary de Courcey—or me. But I was quite wrong. He was looking back the way we’d come, frowning a little. He drew his horse up, abruptly.

      “Let’s go back this way, shall we?” he said.

      He was curiously preoccupied, but I’ve long since learned quite unquestioning obedience when he suggests something. So I pulled Dragonfly around, and we cantered back the way we’d come. At the turn I pulled him down to a walk.

      “These darn bluebottles!” I said.

      Colonel Primrose was not interested in my problems. I doubted at first if he’d even heard me.

      Then he said, “I noticed them,” very absently; and added, “I’d like a look at that car.”

      We walked our horses over to it, Dragonfly protesting mildly, shaking his head, switching his tail.

      And suddenly Colonel Primrose, a little ahead of me, said sharply, “Go back, Mrs. Latham! Here—take my horse. Go back to the fence.”

      I stared at him, caught the reins he tossed me as he dismounted, pulled Dragonfly around and got the two of them back across the track. I got off, tied them both to the fence, and ran back. It was then that I noticed for the first time that the car was a handsome green coupé, custom-built, with New York license plates.

      Colonel Primrose was standing there motionless, staring into the window.

      A bluebottle buzzed back, and away. I crept quietly up beside Colonel Primrose and looked inside. Lying slumped down on the yellow leather seat—with blood dried in solid streaks and still in viscid pools on the white rubber floor—was the body of a man. There was a ragged hole in the right side of his throat.

      I knew who it was even before my horror-stricken eyes escaped to touch, even for an instant, the lean brown face and staring sightless eyes of Dexter Cromwell.

      Even then they didn’t rest there. They were riveted, as Colonel Primrose’s were, on the red-gold hairs caught under the man’s hand clutching the tortoise-shell wheel in the steely grasp of death. . . .