Tangled Trails Part 25

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 j.a.p 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 fiancee, 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 the translation. I'll get in touch with a j.a.panese 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 d.a.m.ned 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 s.e.x 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 b.u.t.toning 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 a.s.sociated 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. n.o.body 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 j.a.panese writing have been lost. This man, by some piece of inexcusable carelessness, took them with a bundle of other doc.u.ments 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. 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.