nborn an'
I guessed he had actually been on the fire escape of the Wyndham an'
seen somethin' of importance through the window. Later I forced a
statement from Olson. He told all he had seen that night."

Kirby turned to the rancher from Dry Valley and had him tell his story.
When he had finished, the cattleman made comment.

"On the face of it Olson's story leaves in doubt the question of who
actually killed my uncle. If he was tellin' the whole truth, his
evidence points either to the Hulls or my cousin James. But it was
quite possible he had seen my uncle tied up an' helpless, an' had
himself stepped through the window an' shot him. Am I right, Chief?"

The Chief nodded grimly. "Right, son."

"You told me you didn't think I did it," Olson burst out bitterly.

"An' I tell you so again," Kirby answered, smiling. "I was mentionin'
possibilities. On your evidence it lies between my cousin James an'
the Hulls. It was the Hulls that had tied him up after Cass Hull
knocked him senseless. It was Hull who had given him two days more to
live. And that's not all. Not an hour an' a half ago I had a talk
with Mrs. Hull. She admitted, under pressure, _that she returned to my
uncle's apartment again to release him from the chair_. She was alone
with him, an' he was wholly in her power. She is a woman with a
passionate sense of injury. What happened then nobody else saw."

Mrs. Hull opened her yellow, wrinkled lips to speak, but Kirby checked
her. "Not yet, Mrs. Hull. I'll return to the subject. If you wish
you can defend yourself then."

He stopped a second time to find the logical way of proceeding with his
story. The silence in the room was tense. The proverbial pin could
have been heard. Only one person in the room except Kirby knew where
the lightning was going to strike. That person sat by the door chewing
the end of a cigar impassively. A woman gave a strangled little sob of
pent emotion.

"I've been leaving Horikawa out of the story," the cattleman went on.
"I've got to bring him in now. He's the hinge on which it all swings.
_The man or woman that killed my uncle killed Horikawa too_."

James Cunningham, sitting opposite Kirby with his cold eyes steadily
fixed on him, for the first time gave visible sign of his anxiety. It
came in the form of a little gulping sound in his throat.

"Cole Sanborn and I found Horikawa in the room where he had been
killed. The doctors thought he must have b