"I'll admit I never had anything
stump me the way this case has. I'm bringing up against a blank wall at
every turn."

"Haven't you found out anything new about Sargent?"

"Not a thing worth while. He lived alone--had lots of money that he made
by inventing mining machinery."

"Any relatives?"

"None that we can find out about."

"Have you learned anything through his bank?"

"He had plenty of money on deposit; that's all."

"Did he have any lawyers?"

"Not that we've heard from."

"Does any one know why he came on this trip?"

"No; but he was in the habit of making long jaunts alone through the
West."

"What sort of a home did he have?"

"A big house in the suburbs. Lived there alone with two servants. They
haven't been able to tell a thing about him that's worth a cuss."

"Would anything about his home indicate what sort of a man he was?"

"The detectives wrote something about his having a lot of Indian
things--Navajo blankets and such."

"Indians may have been his hobby. Perhaps he intended to visit this
reservation."

"If that was so, why should he drive through the agency at night and be
killed going away from the reservation? No, he was going somewhere in a
hurry or he wouldn't have traveled at night."

"But automobile tourists sometimes travel that way."

"Not in this part of the country. In the Southwest, perhaps, to avoid
the heat of the day."

"Well, what do you think about it all, Tom?"

"That this feller was a pilgrim, going somewhere in a hurry. He was held
up by some of your young bucks who were off the reservation and feeling
a little too full of life for their own good. A touch of bootleg whiskey
might have set them going. Mebbe that's where Jim McFann came in. They
might have killed the man when he resisted. The staking-out was probably
an afterthought--a piece of Injun or half-breed devilment."

"How about the sawed-off shotgun? I doubt if there's one on the
reservation."

"Probably that was Sargent's own weapon. He had traveled in the West a
good many years. Mebbe he had used sawed-off shotguns as an express
messenger or something of the sort in early days. It's a fact that there
ain't any handier weapon of _dee_fense than a sawed-off shotgun, no
matter what kind of a wheeled outfit you're traveling in."

"It's all reasonable enough, Tom," said Lowell reflectively. "It may
work out just as you have figured, but frankly I don't believe the
Indians and McFann are in it qu