The supposed assassin of James Cunningham is described by Mrs. Cass Hull as dressed in a pepper-and-salt suit and a white, pinched-in cattleman's hat. He is about six feet tall, between 25 and 30 years old, weighing about 200 or perhaps 210 pounds. His hair is a light brown and his face tanned from the sun.
His age and his weight were overstated, and his clothes were almost a khaki brown. Otherwise Mrs. Hull had given a very close description of him, considering her state of mind at the moment when she had seen him.
There was one sentence of the story he read over two or three times. Hull and his wife agreed that it was about 9.20 when he had knocked on their door, unless it was a printer's error or the reporter had made a mistake. Kirby knew this was wrong. He had looked at his watch just before he had entered the Paradox Apartment. He had stopped directly under a street globe, and the time was 9.55.
Had the Hulls deliberately shifted the time back thirty-five minutes? If so, why? He remembered how stark terror had stared out of both their faces. Did they know more about the murder than they pretended? When he had mentioned his uncle's name the woman had been close to collapse, though, of course, he could not be sure that had been the reason. To his mind there flashed the memory of the note he had seen on the table. The man had called on Cunningham and left word he might call again. Was it possible the Hulls had just come down from the apartment above when he had knocked on their door? If so, how did the presence of Rose fit into the schedule?
Lane pounced on the fear and the evasion of the Hulls as an out for Wild Rose. It was only a morsel of hope, but he made the most of it.
The newspaper was inclined to bring up stage the mysterious man who had called up the police at 10.25 to tell them that Cunningham had been murdered in his rooms. Who was this man? Could he be the murderer? If so, why should he telephone the police and start immediately the hunt after him? If not the killer, how did he know that a crime had been committed less than an hour before?
As soon as he had eaten breakfast, Kirby walked round to the boarding-house on Cherokee Street where Wild Rose was staying with her sister. Rose was out, he learned from the landlady. He asked if he might see her sister. His anxiety was so great he could not leave without a word of her.
Presently Esther came down to the parlor where the young man waited for her. Lane introduced himself as a friend of Rose. He was worried about her, he said. She seemed to him in a highly wrought-up, nervous state. He wondered if it would not be well to get her out of Denver.
Esther swallowed a lump in her throat. She had never seen Rose so jumpy, she agreed. Last night she had gone out for an hour alone. The look in her eyes when she had come back had frightened Esther. She had gone at once to her bedroom and locked the door, but her sister had heard her moving about for hours.
Then, suddenly, Esther's throat swelled and she began to sob. She knew well enough that she was at the bottom of Wild Rose's worries.
"Where is she now?" asked Kirby gently.
"I don't know. She didn't tell me where she was going. There's—there's something queer about her. I—I'm afraid."
"What are you afraid of?"
"She's so—so kinda fierce," Esther wailed.
It was impossible to explain, even to this big brown friend of Rose who looked as though his quiet strength could move mountains. He was a man. Besides, every instinct in her drove to keep hidden the secret that some day would tell itself.
Her eyes fell. They rested on the "News" some boarder had tossed on the table beside which she stood. Her thoughts were of herself and the plight in which she had become involved. She looked at the big headlines of the paper and for the moment did not see them. What she did see was disgrace, the shipwreck of the young life she loved so much.
Her pupils dilated. The words of the headline penetrated to the brain. A hand clutched at her heart. She read again hazily—
JAMES CUNNINGHAM MURDERED
—then collapsed fainting into a chair.
Chapter X
Kirby Asks a Direct Question
The story of the Cunningham mystery, as it was already being called, filled the early editions of the afternoon papers. The "Times" had the scoop of the day. It was a story signed by Chuck Ellis, who had seen the alleged murderer climb down by a fire escape from the window of Cunningham's bedroom and had actually talked with the man as he emerged from the alley. His description of the suspect tallied fairly closely with that of Mrs. Hull, but it corrected errors in regard to weight, age, and color of clothes.
As Kirby walked to the Equitable Building to keep his appointment with his cousins, it would not have surprised him if at any moment an officer had touched him on the shoulder and told him he was under arrest.
Entering the office of the oil broker, where the two brothers were waiting for him, Kirby had a sense of an interrupted conversation. They had been talking about him, he guessed. The atmosphere was electric.
James spoke quickly, to bridge any embarrassment. "This is a dreadful thing about Uncle James. I've never been so shocked before in my life. The crime was absolutely fiendish."
Kirby nodded. "Or else the deed of some insane person. Men in their right senses don't do such things."
"No," agreed James. "Murder's one thing. Such coldblooded deviltry is quite another. There may be insanity connected with it. But one thing is sure. I'll not rest till the villain's run to earth and punished."
His eyes met those of his cousin. They were cold and bleak.
"Do you think I did it?" asked Kirby quietly.
The directness of the question took James aback. After the fraction of a second's hesitation he spoke. "If I did I wouldn't be going to lunch with you."
Jack cut in. Excitement had banished his usual almost insolent indolence. His dark eyes burned with a consuming fire. "Let's put our cards on the table. We think you're the man the police are looking for—the one described in the papers."
"What makes you think that?"
"You told us you were going to see him as soon as he got back from the Springs. The description fits you to a T. You can't get away with an alibi so far as I'm concerned."
"All right," said the rough rider, his low, even voice unruffled by excitement. "If I can't, I can't. We'll say I'm the man who came down the fire escape. What then?"
James was watching his cousin steadily. The pupils of his eyes narrowed. He took the answer out of his brother's mouth. "Then we think you probably know something about this mystery that you'll want to tell us. You must have been on the spot very soon after the murderer escaped. Perhaps you saw him."
Kirby told the story of his night's adventure, omitting any reference whatever to Wild Rose or to anybody else in the apartment when he entered.
After he had finished, James made his comment. "You've been very frank, Kirby. I accept your story. A guilty man would have denied being in the apartment, or he would have left town and disappeared."
The range rider smiled sardonically. "I'm not so sure of that. You've got the goods on me. I can't deny I'm the man the police are lookin' for. Mrs. Hull would identify me. So would this reporter Ellis. All you would have to do would be to hand my name to the nearest officer. An' I can't run away without confessin' guilt. Even if I had killed Uncle James, I couldn't do much else except tell some story like the one I've told you."
"It wouldn't go far in a court-room," Jack said.
"Not far," admitted Kirby. "By the way, you haven't expressed an opinion, Jack. Do you think I shot Uncle James?"
Jack looked at him, almost sullenly, and looked away. He poked at the corner of the desk with the ferrule