Tangled Trails Part 45

Hull flew the usual flag of distress, a red bandanna mopping a perspiring, apoplectic face. "He kinda hinted he wanted more money."

"Did you give it to him?"

"I didn't have it right handy. I stalled."

"That's the trouble with a blackmailer. Give way to him once an' he's got you in his power," Kirby said. "The thing to do is to tell him right off the reel to go to Halifax."

"If a fellow can afford to," Olson put in significantly. "When you've just got through a little private murder of yore own, you ain't exactly free to tell one of the witnesses against you to go very far."

"Tell you I didn't kill Cunningham," Hull retorted sullenly. "Some one else must 'a' come in an' did that after I left."

"Sounds reasonable," Olson murmured with heavy sarcasm.

"Was the hall lit when you came out of my uncle's rooms?" Kirby asked suddenly.

"Yes. I told you s.h.i.+bo was workin' at one of the windows."

"So s.h.i.+bo saw you and Mrs. Hull plainly?"

"I ain't denyin' he saw us," Hull replied testily.

"No, you don't deny anything we can prove on you," the Dry Valley man jeered.

"And s.h.i.+bo didn't let up on you. He kept annoyin' you afterward," the cattleman persisted.

"Well, he--I reckon he aims to be reasonable now," Hull said uneasily.

"Why now? What's changed his views?"

The fat man looked again at this brown-faced youngster with the single-track mind who never quit till he got what he wanted. Why was he shaking the bones of s.h.i.+bo's blackmailing. Did he know more than he had told? It was on the tip of Hull's tongue to tell something more, a d.a.m.natory fact against himself. But he stopped in time. He was in deep enough water already. He could not afford to tell the dynamic cattleman anything that would make an enemy of him.

"Well, I reckon he can't get blood from a turnip, as the old sayin'

is," the land agent returned.

Kirby knew that Hull was concealing something material, but he saw he could not at the present moment wring it from him. He had not, in point of fact, the faintest idea of what it was. Therefore he could not lay 'hold of any lever with which to pry it loose. He harked back to another point.

"Do you know that my cousin and Miss Harriman came to see my uncle that night? I mean do you know of your own eyesight that they ever reached his apartment?"

"Well, we know they reached the Paradox an' went up in the elevator.

Me an' the wife watched at the window. Yore cousin James wasn't with Miss Harriman. The dude one was with her."

"Jack!" exclaimed Kirby, astonished.

"Yep."

"How do you know? How did you recognize them?"

"Saw 'em as they pa.s.sed under the street light about twenty feet from our window. We couldn't 'a' been mistook as to the dude fellow. O'

course we don't know Miss Harriman, but the woman walkin' beside the young fellow surely looked like the one that fainted at the inquest when you was testifyin' how you found yore uncle dead in the chair. I reckon when you said it she got to seein' a picture of one of the young fellows gunnin' their uncle."

"One of them. You just said James wasn't with her."

"No, he come first. Maybe three-four minutes before the others."

"What time did he reach the Paradox?"

"It might 'a' been ten or maybe only five minutes after we left yore uncle's room. The wife an' me was talkin' it over whether I hadn't ought to slip back upstairs and untie yore uncle before they got here.

Then he come an' that settled it. I couldn't go."

"Can you give me the exact time he reached the apartment house?"

"Well, I'll say it was a quarter to ten."

"Do you know or are you guessin'?"

"I know. Our clock struck the quarter to whilst we looked at them comin' down the street."

"At them or at him?"

"At him, I mean."

"Can't stick to his own story," Olson grunted.

"A slip of the tongue. I meant him."

"And Jack and the lady were three or four minutes behind him?" Kirby reiterated.

"Yes."

"Was your clock exactly right?"

"May be five minutes fast. It gains."

"You know they turned in at the Paradox?"

"All three of 'em. Mrs. Hull she opened the door a mite an' saw 'em go up in the elevator. It moves kinda slow, you know. The heavy-set young fellow went up first. Then two-three minutes later the elevator went down an' the dude an' the young lady went up."

Kirby put his foot on the cement bench and rested his forearm on his knee. The cattleman's steady eyes were level with those of the unhappy man making the confession.

"Did you at any time hear the sound of a shot?"

"Well, I--I heard somethin'. At the time I thought maybe it was a tire in the street blowin' out. But come to think of it later we figured it was a shot."

"You don't know for sure."

"Well, come to that I--I don't reckon I do. Not to say for certain sure."

A tense litheness had pa.s.sed into the rough rider's figure. It was as though every sense were alert to catch and register impressions.