Tangled Trails Part 11

"Had you ever had any trouble with your uncle?" Johns asked him.

"You may decline to answer if you wish," the coroner told the witness.

Young Cunningham hesitated. "No-o. What do you mean by trouble?"

"Had he ever threatened to cut you out of his will?"

"Yes," came the answer, a bit sulkily.

"Why--if you care to tell?"

"He thought I was extravagant and wild--wanted me to buckle down to business more."

"What is your business?"

"I'm with a bond house--McCabe, Foster & Clinton."

"During the past few months have you had any difference of opinion with your uncle?"

"That's my business," flared the witness. Then, just as swiftly as his irritation had come it vanished. He remembered that his uncle's pa.s.sionate voice had risen high. No doubt people in the next apartments had heard him. It would be better to make a frank admission. "But I don't mind answering. I have."

"When?"

"The last time I went to his rooms--two days before his death."

Significant looks pa.s.sed from one to another of the spectators.

"What was the subject of the quarrel?"

"I didn't say we had quarreled," was the sullen answer.

"Differed, then. My question was, what about?"

"I decline to say."

"I think that is all, Mr. Cunningham."

The wrinkled little juryman leaned forward and piped his question again. "Was your uncle engaged to be married at the time of his death?"

The startled eyes of Jack Cunningham leaped to the little man. There was in them dismay, almost panic. Then, swiftly, he recovered and drawled insolently, "I try to mind my own business. Do you?"

The coroner a.s.serted himself. "Here, here, none of that! Order in this court, _if_ you please, gentlemen." He bustled in his manner, turning to the attorney. "Through with Mr. Cunningham, Johns? If so, we'll push on."

"Quite." The prosecuting attorney consulted a list in front of him.

"Ca.s.s Hull next."

Hull came puffing to the stand. He was a porpoise of a man. His eyes dodged about the room in dread. It was as though he were looking for a way of escape.

CHAPTER XII

"THAT'S THE MAN"

"Your name?"

"Ca.s.s Hull."

"Business?"

"Real estate, mostly farm lands."

"Did you know James Cunningham, the deceased?" asked Johns.

"Yes. Worked with him on the Dry Valley proposition, an irrigation project."

"Ever have any trouble with him?"

"No, sir--not to say trouble." Hull was already perspiring profusely.

He dragged a red bandanna from his pocket and mopped the roll of fat that swelled over his collar. "I--we had a--an argument about a settlement--nothin' serious."

"Did he throw you out of his room and down the stairs?"

"No, sir, nothin' like that a-tall. We might 'a' scuffled some, kinda in fun like. Prob'ly it looked like we was fightin', but we wasn't.

My heel caught on a tread o' the stairs an' I fell down." Hull made his explanation eagerly and anxiously, dabbing at his beefy face with the handkerchief.

"When did you last see Mr. Cunningham alive?"

"Well, sir, that was the last time, though I reckon we heard him pa.s.s our door."

In answer to questions the witness explained that Cunningham had owed him, in his opinion, four thousand dollars more than he had paid. It was about this sum they had differed.

"Were you at home on the evening of the twenty-third--that is, last night?"

The witness flung out more signals of distress. "Yes, sir," he said at last in a voice dry as a whisper.

"Will you tell what, if anything, occurred?"

"Well, sir, a man knocked at our door. The woman she opened it, an' he asked which flat was Cunningham's. She told him, an' the man he started up the stairs."

"Have you seen the man since?"

"No, sir."

"Didn't hear him come downstairs later?"

"No, sir."