E-text prepared by Al Haines
TANGLED TRAILS
A Western Detective Story
by
WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE
Author of
The Big-Town Round-Up, Gunsight Pass, Etc.
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers New York
Made in the United States of America
Copyright, 1921, by William Macleod Raine
All Rights Reserved
Third Impression, March, 1922
CONTENTS
I. NO ALTRUIST II. WILD ROSE TAKES THE DUST III. FOR THE CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE WORLD IV. NOT ALWAYS TWO TO MAKE A QUARREL V. COUSINS MEET VI. LIGHTS OUT VII. FOUL PLAY VIII. BY MEANS OF THE FIRE ESCAPE IX. THE STORY IN THE "NEWS" X. KIRBY ASKS A DIRECT QUESTION XI. THE CORONER'S INQUEST XII. "THAT'S THE MAN" XIII. "ALWAYS, PHYLLIS" XIV. A FRIEND IN NEED XV. A GLOVE AND THE HAND IN IT XVI. THE LADY WITH THE VIOLET PERFUME XVII. IN DRY VALLEY XVIII. "BURNIN' A HOLE IN MY POCKET" XIX. A DISCOVERY XX. THE BRASS BED XXI. JAMES LOSES HIS TEMPER XXII. "ARE YOU WITH ME OR AGAINST ME?" XXIII. COUSINS DISAGREE XXIV. REVEREND NICODEMUS RANKIN FORGETS AND REMEMBERS XXV. A CONFERENCE OF THREE XXVI. CUTTING TRAIL XXVII. THE DETECTIVE GETS TWO SURPRISES XXVIII. THE FINGER OF SUSPICION POINTS XXIX. "COME CLEAN, JACK" XXX. KIRBY MAKES A CALL XXXI. THE MASK OF THE RED BANDANNA XXXII. JACK TAKES OFF HIS COAT XXXIII. OLSON TELLS A STORY XXXIV. FROM THE FIRE ESCAPE XXXV. LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT XXXVI. A RIDE IN A TAXI XXXVII. ON THE GRILL XXXVIII. A FULL MORNING XXXIX. KIRBY INVITES HIMSELF TO A RIDE XL. THE MILLS OF THE GODS XLI. ENTER X XLII. THE NEW WORLD
TANGLED TRAILS
CHAPTER I
NO ALTRUIST
Esther McLean brought the afternoon mail in to Cunningham. She put it on the desk before him and stood waiting, timidly, afraid to voice her demand for justice, yet too desperately anxious to leave with it unspoken.
He leaned back in his swivel chair, his cold eyes challenging her.
"Well," he barked harshly.
She was a young, soft creature, very pretty in a kittenish fashion, both sensuous and helpless. It was an easy guess that unless fortune stood her friend she was a predestined victim to the world's selfish love of pleasure, and fortune, with a cynical smile, had stood aside and let her go her way.
"I . . . I . . ." A wave of color flooded her face. She twisted a rag of a handkerchief into a hard wadded knot.
"Spit it out," he ordered curtly.
"I've got to do something . . . soon. Won't you—won't you—?" There was a wail of despair in the unfinished sentence.
James Cunningham was a grim, gray pirate, as malleable as cast iron and as soft. He was a large, big-boned man, aggressive, dominant, the kind that takes the world by the throat and shakes success from it. The contour of his hook-nosed face had something rapacious written on it.
"No. Not till I get good and ready. I've told you I'd look out for you if you'd keep still. Don't come whining at me. I won't have it."
"But—"
Already he was ripping letters open and glancing over them. Tears brimmed the brown eyes of the girl. She bit her lower lip, choked back a sob, and turned hopelessly away. Her misfortune lay at her own door. She knew that. But— The woe in her heart was that the man she had loved was leaving her to face alone a night as bleak as death.
Cunningham had always led a life of intelligent selfishness. He had usually got what he wanted because he was strong enough to take it. No scrupulous nicety of means had ever deterred him. Nor ever would. He played his own hand with a cynical disregard of the rights of others. It was this that had made him what he was, a man who bulked large in the sight of the city and state. Long ago he had made up his mind that altruism was weakness.
He went through his mail with a swift, trained eye. One of the letters he laid aside and glanced at a second time. It brought a grim, hard smile to his lips. A paragraph read:
There's no water in your ditch and our crops are burning up. Your whole irrigation system in Dry Valley is a fake. You knew it, but we didn't. You've skinned us out of all we had, you damned bloodsucker. If you ever come up here we'll dry-gulch you, sure.
The letter was signed, "One You Have Robbed." Attached to it was a clipping from a small-town paper telling of a meeting of farmers to ask the United States District Attorney for an investigation of the Dry Valley irrigation project promoted by James Cunningham.
The promoter smiled. He was not afraid of the Government. He had kept strictly within the law. It was not his fault there was not enough rainfall in the watershed to irrigate the valley. But the threat to dry-gulch him was another matter. He had no fancy for being shot in the back. Some crazy fool of a settler might do just that. He decided to let an agent attend to his Dry Valley affairs hereafter. He dictated some letters, closed his desk, and went down the street toward the City Club. At a florist's he stopped and ordered a box of American Beauties to be sent to Miss Phyllis Harriman. With these he enclosed his card, a line of greeting scrawled on it.
A poker game was on at the club and Cunningham sat in. He interrupted it to dine, holding his seat by leaving a pile of chips at the place. When he cashed in his winnings and went downstairs it was still early. As a card-player he was not popular. He was too keen on the main chance and he nearly always won. In spite of his loud and frequent laugh, of the effect of bluff geniality, there was no genuine humor in the man, none of the milk of human kindness.
A lawyer in the reading-room rose at sight of Cunningham. "Want to see you a minute," he said.
"Let's go into the Red Room."
He led the way to a small room furnished with a desk, writing supplies, and a telephone. It was for the use of members who wanted to be private. The lawyer shut the door.
"Afraid I've bad news for you, Cunningham," he said.
The other man's steady eyes did not waver. He waited silently.
"I was at Golden to-day on business connected with a divorce case. By chance I ran across a record that astonished me. It may be only a coincidence of names, but—"
"Now you've wrapped up the blackjack so that it won't hurt, suppose you go ahead and hit me over the head with it," suggested Cunningham dryly.
The lawyer told what he knew. The promoter took it with no evidence of feeling other than that which showed in narrowed eyes hard as diamonds and a clenched jaw in which the muscles stood out like ropes.
"Much obliged, Foster," he said, and the lawyer knew he was dismissed.
Cunningham paced the room for a few moments, then rang for a messenger. He wrote a note and gave it to the boy to be delivered. Then he left the club.
From Seventeenth Street he walked across to the Paradox Apartments where he lived. He found a note propped up against a book on the table of his living-room. It had been written by the Japanese servant he shared with two other bachelors who lived in the same building.
Mr. Hull he come see you. He sorry you not here. He say maybe perhaps make honorable call some other time.
It was signed, "S. Horikawa."
Cunningham tossed the note aside. He had no wish to see Hull. The fellow was becoming a nuisance. If he had any complaint he could go to the courts with it. That was what they were for.
The doorbell rang. The promoter opened to a big, barrel-bodied man who pushed past him into the room.
"What you want, Hull?" demanded Cunningham curtly.
The man thrust his bull neck forward. A heavy roll of fat swelled over the collar. "You know damn well what I want. I want what's comin' to me. My share of the Dry Valley clean-up. An' I'm gonna have it. See?"
"You've had every cent you'll get. I told you that before."
Tiny red capillaries seamed the beefy face of the fat man. "An' I told you I was gonna have a divvy. An' I am. You can't throw down Cass Hull an' get away with it. Not none." The shallow protuberant eyes glittered threateningly.
"Thought you knew me better," Cunningham retorted contemptuously. "When I say I won't, I won't. Go to a lawyer if you think you've got a case. Don't come belly-aching to me."
The face of the fat man was apoplectic. "Like sin I'll go to a lawyer. You'd like that fine, you double-crossin' sidewinder. I'll come with a six-gun. That's how I'll come. An' soon. I'll give you two days to come through. Two days. If you don't—hell sure enough will cough."
Whatever else could be said about Cunningham he was no coward. He met the raving man eye to eye.
"I don't scare worth a cent, Hull. Get out. Pronto. And don't come back unless you want me to turn you over to the police for a blackmailing crook."
Cunningham was past fifty-five and his hair was streaked with gray. But he stood straight as an Indian, six feet in his socks. The sap of strength still rang strong in him. In the days when he had ridden the range he had been famous for his stamina and he was even yet a formidable two-fisted fighter.
But Hull was beyond prudence. "I'll go when I get ready, an' I'll come back when I get ready," he boasted.
There came a soft thud of a hard fist on fat flesh, the crash of a heavy bulk against the door. After that things moved fast. Hull's body reacted to the pain of smashing blows falling swift and sure. Before he knew what had taken place he was on the landing outside on his way to the stairs. He hit the treads hard and rolled on down.
A man coming upstairs helped him to his feet.
"What's up?" the man asked.
Hull glared at him, for the moment speechless. His eyes were venomous, his mouth a thin, cruel slit. He pushed the newcomer aside, opened the door of the apartment opposite, went in, and slammed it after him.
The man who had assisted him to rise was dark and immaculately dressed.
"I judge Uncle James has been exercising," he murmured before he took the next flight of stairs.
On the door of apartment 12 was a legend in Old English engraved on a calling card. It said:
James Cunningham
The visitor pushed the electric bell. Cunningham opened to him.
"Good-evening, Uncle," the younger man said. "Your elevator is not running, so I walked up. On the way I met a man going down. He seemed rather in a hurry."
"A cheap blackmailer trying to bold me up. I threw him out."
"Thought he looked put out," answered the younger man, smiling politely. "I see you still believe in applying direct energy to difficulties."
"I do. That's why I sent for you." The promoter's cold eyes were inscrutable. "Come in and shut the door."
The young man sauntered in. He glanced at his uncle curiously from his sparkling black eyes. What the devil did James, Senior, mean by what he had said? Was there any particular significance in it?
He stroked his small black mustache. "Glad to oblige you any way I can, sir."
"Sit down."
The young Beau Brummel hung up his hat and cane, sank into the easiest chair in the room, and selected a cigarette from a gold-initialed case.
"At your service, sir," he said languidly.
CHAPTER II
WILD ROSE TAKES THE DUST
"Wild Rose on Wild Fire," shouted the announcer through a megaphone trained on the grand stand.
Kirby Lane, who was leaning against the fence chatting with a friend, turned round and took notice. Most people did when Wild Rose held the center of the stage.
Through the gateway of the enclosure came a girl hardly out of her teens. She was bareheaded, a cowboy hat in her hand. The sun, already slanting from the west, kissed her crisp, ruddy gold hair and set it sparkling. Her skin was shell pink, amber clear. She walked as might a young Greek goddess in the dawn of the world, with the free movement of one who loves the open sky and the wind-swept plain.
A storm of hand-clapping swept the grand stand. Wild Rose acknowledged it with a happy little laugh. These dear people loved her. She knew it. And not only because she was a champion. They made over her because of her slimness, her beauty, the aura of daintiness that surrounded her, the little touches of shy youth that still clung to her manner. Other riders of her sex might be rough, hoydenish, or masculine. Wild Rose had the charm of her name. Yet the muscles that rippled beneath her velvet skin were hard as nails. No bronco alive could unseat her without the fight of its life.
Meanwhile the outlaw horse Wild Fire was claiming its share of attention. The bronco was a noted bucker. Every year it made the circuit of the rodeos and only twice had a rider stuck to the saddle without pulling leather. Now it had been roped and cornered. Half a dozen wranglers in chaps were trying to get it ready for the saddle. From the red-hot eyes of the brute a devil of fury glared at the men trying to thrust a gunny sack over its head. The four legs were wide apart, the ears cocked, teeth bared. The animal flung itself skyward and came down on the boot of a puncher savagely. The man gave an involuntary howl of pain, but he clung to the rope snubbed round the wicked head.
The gunny sack was pushed and pulled over the eyes. Wild Fire subsided, trembling, while bridle was adjusted and saddle slipped on. The girl attended to the cinching herself. If the saddle turned it might cost her life, and she preferred to take no unnecessary chances.
She was dressed in green satin riding clothes. A beaded bolero jacket fitted over a white silk blouse. Her boots were of buckskin, silver-spurred. With her hat on, at a distance, one might have taken her for a slim, beautiful boy.
Wild Rose swung to the saddle and adjusted her feet in the stirrups. The gunny sack was whipped from the horse's head. There was a wild scuffle of escaping wranglers.
For a moment Wild Fire stood quivering. The girl's hat swept through the air in front of its eyes. The horse woke to galvanized action. The back humped. It shot into the air with a writhing twist of the body. All four feet struck the ground together, straight and stiff as fence posts.
The girl's head jerked forward as though it were on a hinge. The outlaw went sunfishing, its forefeet almost straight up. She was still in the saddle when it came to all fours again. A series of jarring bucks, each ending with the force of a pile-driver as Wild Fire's hoofs struck earth, varied the programme. The rider came down limp, half in the saddle, half out, righting herself as the horse settled for the next leap. But not once did her hands reach for the pommel of the saddle to steady her.
Pitching and bucking, the animal humped forward to the fence.
"Look out!" a judge yelled.
It was too late. The rider could not deflect her mount. Into the fence went Wild Fire blindly and furiously. The girl threw up her leg to keep it from being jammed. Up went the bronco again before Wild Rose could find the stirrup. She knew she was gone, felt herself shooting forward. She struck the ground close to the horse's hoofs. Wild Fire lunged at her. A bolt of pain like a red-hot iron seared through her.
Through the air a rope whined. It settled over the head of the outlaw and instantly was jerked tight. Wild Fire, coming down hard for a second lunge at the green crumpled heap underfoot, was dragged sharply sideways. Another lariat snaked forward and fell true.
"Here, Cole!" The first roper thrust the taut line into the hands of a puncher who had run forward. He himself dived for the still girl beneath the hoofs of the rearing horse. Catching her by the arms, he dragged her out of danger. She was unconscious.
The cowboy picked her up and carried her to the waiting ambulance. The closed eyes flickered open. A puzzled little frown rested in them.
"What's up, Kirby?" asked Wild Rose.
"You had a spill."
"Took the dust, did I?" He sensed the disappointment in her voice.
"You rode fine. He jammed you into the fence," explained the young man.
The doctor examined her. The right arm hung limp.
"Broken, I'm afraid," he said.
"Ever see such luck?" the girl complained to Lane.
"Probably they won't let me ride in the wild-horse race now."
"No chance, young lady," the doctor said promptly. "I'm going to take you right to the hospital."
"I might get back in time," she said hopefully.
"You might, but you won't."
"Oh, well," she sighed. "If you're going to act like that."
The cowboy helped her into the ambulance and found himself a seat.
"Where do you think you're going?" she asked with a smile a bit twisted by pain.
"I reckon I'll go far as the hospital with you."
"I reckon you won't. What do you think I am—a nice little parlor girl who has to be petted when she gets hurt? You're on to ride inside of fifteen minutes—and you know it."
"Oh, well! I'm lookin' for an alibi so as not to be beaten. That Cole
Sanborn is sure a straight-up rider."
"So's that Kirby Lane. You needn't think I'm going to let you beat yourself out of the championship. Not so any one could notice it. Hop out, sir."
He rose, smiling ruefully. "You certainly are one bossy kid."
"I'd say you need bossing when you start to act so foolish," she retorted, flushing.
"See you later," he called to her by way of good-bye.
As the ambulance drove away she waved cheerfully at him a gauntleted hand.
The cowpuncher turned back to the arena. The megaphone man was announcing that the contest for the world's rough-riding championship would now be resumed.
CHAPTER III
FOR THE CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE WORLD
The less expert riders had been weeded out in the past two days. Only the champions of their respective sections were still in the running. One after another these lean, brown men, chap-clad and bow-legged, came forward dragging their saddles and clamped themselves to the backs of hurricane outlaws which pitched, bucked, crashed into fences, and toppled over backward in their frenzied efforts to dislodge the human clothes-pins fastened to them.
The bronco busters endured the usual luck of the day. Two were thrown and picked themselves out of the dust, chagrined and damaged, but still grinning. One drew a tame horse not to be driven into resistance either by fanning or scratching. Most of the riders emerged from the ordeal victorious. Meanwhile the spectators in the big grand stand, packed close as small apples in a box, watched every rider and snatched at its thrills just as such crowds have done from the time of Caligula.
Kirby Lane, from his seat on the fence among a group of cowpunchers, watched each rider no less closely. It chanced that he came last on the programme for the day. When Cole Sanborn was in the saddle he made an audible comment.
"I'm lookin' at the next champion of the world," he announced.
"Not onless you've got a lookin'-glass with you, old alkali," a small berry-brown youth in yellow-wool chaps retorted.
Sanborn was astride a noted outlaw known as Jazz. The horse was a sorrel, and it knew all the tricks of its kind. It went sunfishing, tried weaving and fence-rowing, at last toppled over backward after a frantic leap upward. The rider, long-bodied and lithe, rode like a centaur. Except for the moment when he stepped out of the saddle as the outlaw fell on its back, he stuck to his seat as though he were glued to it.
"He's a right limber young fellow, an' he sure can ride. I'll say that," admitted one old cattleman.
"They don't grow no better busters," another man spoke up. He was a neighbor of Sanborn and had his local pride. "From where I come from we'll put our last nickel on Cole, you betcha. He's top hand with a rope too."
"Hmp! Kirby here can make him look like thirty cents, top of a bronc or with a lariat either one," the yellow-chapped vaquero flung out bluntly.
Lane looked at his champion, a trifle annoyed. "What's the use o' talkin' foolishness, Kent? I never saw the day I had anything on Cole."
"Beat him at Pendleton, didn't you?"
"Luck. I drew the best horses." To Sanborn, who had finished his job and was straddling wide-legged toward the group, Kirby threw up a hand of greeting. "Good work, old-timer. You're sure hellamile on a bronc."
"Kirby Lane on Wild Fire," shouted the announcer.
Lane slid from the fence and reached for his saddle. As he lounged forward, moving with indolent grace, one might have guessed him a Southerner. He was lean-loined and broad-shouldered. The long, flowing muscles rippled under his skin when he moved like those of a panther. From beneath the band of his pinched-in hat crisp, reddish hair escaped.
Wild Fire was off the instant his feet found the stirrups. Again the outlaw went through its bag of tricks and its straight bucking. The man in the saddle gave to its every motion lightly and easily. He rode with such grace that he seemed almost a part of the horse. His reactions appeared to anticipate the impulses of the screaming fiend which he was astride. When Wild Fire jolted him with humpbacked jarring bucks his spine took the shock limply to neutralize the effect. When it leaped heavenward he waved his hat joyously and rode the stirrups. From first to last he was master of the situation, and the outlaw, though still fighting savagely, knew the battle was lost.
The bronco had one trump card left, a trick that had unseated many a stubborn rider. It plunged sideways at the fence of the enclosure and crashed through it. Kirby's nerves shrieked with pain, and for a moment everything went black before him. His leg had been jammed hard against the upper plank. But when the haze cleared he was still in the saddle.
The outlaw gave up. It trotted tamely back to the grand stand through the shredded fragments of pine in the splintered fence, and the grand stand rose to its feet with a shout of applause for the rider.
Kirby slipped from the saddle and limped back to his fellows on the fence. Already the crowd was pouring out from every exit of the stand. A thousand cars of fifty different makes were snorting impatiently to get out of the jam as soon as possible. For Cheyenne was full, full to overflowing. The town roared with a high tide of jocund life. From all over Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and New Mexico hard-bitten, sunburned youths in high-heeled boots and gaudy attire had gathered for the Frontier Day celebration. Hundreds of cars had poured up from Denver. Trains had disgorged thousands of tourists come to see the festival. Many people would sleep out in automobiles and on the prairie. The late comers at restaurants and hotels would wait long and take second best.
A big cattleman beckoned to Lane. "Place in my car, son. Run you back to town."
One of the judges sat in the tonneau beside the rough rider.
"How's the leg? Hurt much?"
"Not much. I'm noticin' it some," Kirby answered with a smile.
"You'll have to ride to-morrow. It's you and Sanborn for the finals.
We haven't quite made up our minds."
The cattleman was an expert driver. He wound in and out among the other cars speeding over the prairie, struck the road before the great majority of the automobiles had reached there, and was in town with the vanguard.
After dinner the rough rider asked the clerk at her hotel if there was any mail for Miss Rose McLean. Three letters were handed him. He put them in his pocket and set out for the hospital.
He found Miss Rose reclining in a hospital chair, in a frame of mind highly indignant. "That doctor talks as though he's going to keep me here a week. Well, he's got another guess coming. I'll not stay," she exploded to her visitor.
"Now, looky here, you better do as the doc says. He knows best.
What's a week in your young life?" Kirby suggested.
"A week's a week, and I don't intend to stay. Why did you limp when you came in? Get hurt?"
"Not really hurt. Jammed my leg against a fence. I drew Wild Fire."
"Did you win the championship?" the girl asked eagerly.
"No. Finals to-morrow. Sanborn an' me. How's the arm? Bone broken?"
"Yes. Oh, it aches some. Be all right soon."
He drew her letters from his pocket. "Stopped to get your mail at the hotel. Thought you'd like to see it."
Wild Rose looked the envelopes over and tore one open.
"From my little sister Esther," she explained. "Mind if I read it?
I'm some worried about her. She's been writing kinda funny lately."
As she read, the color ebbed from her face. When she had finished reading the letter Kirby spoke gently.
"Bad news, pardner?"
She nodded, choking. Her eyes, frank and direct, met those of her friend without evasion. It was a heritage of her life in the open that in her relations with men she showed a boylike unconcern of sex.
"Esther's in trouble. She—she—" Rose caught her breath in a stress of emotion.
"If there's anything I can do—"
The girl flung aside the rug that covered her and rose from the chair. She began to pace up and down the room. Presently her thoughts overflowed in words.
"She doesn't say what it is, but—I know her. She's crazy with fear—or heartache—or something." Wild Rose was always quick-tempered, a passionate defender of children and all weak creatures. Now Lane knew that the hot blood was rushing stormily to her heart. Her little sister was in danger, the only near relative she had. She would fight for her as a cougar would for its young. "By God, if it's a man—if he's done her wrong—I'll shoot him down like a gray wolf. I'll show him how safe it is to—to—"
She broke down again, clamping tight her small strong teeth to bite back a sob.
He spoke very gently. "Does she say—?"
His sentence hung suspended in air, but the young woman understood its significance.
"No. The letter's just a—a wail of despair. She—talks of suicide. Kirby, I've got to get to Denver on the next train. Find out when it leaves. And I'll send a telegram to her to-night telling her I'll fix it. I will too."
"Sure. That's the way to talk. Be reasonable an' everything'll work out fine. Write your wire an' I'll take it right to the office. Soon as I've got the train schedule I'll come back."
"You're a good pal, Kirby. I always knew you were."
For a moment her left hand fell in his. He looked down at the small, firm, sunbrowned fist. That hand was, as Browning has written, a woman in itself, but it was a woman competent, unafraid, trained hard as nails. She would go through with whatever she set out to do.
As his eyes rested on the fingers there came to him a swift, unreasoning prescience of impending tragedy. To what dark destiny was she moving?
CHAPTER IV
NOT ALWAYS TWO TO MAKE A QUARREL
Kirby put Wild Rose on the morning train for Denver. She had escaped from the doctor by sheer force of will. The night had been a wretched one, almost sleepless, and she knew that her fever would rise in the afternoon. But that could not be helped. She had more important business than her health to attend to just now.
Ordinarily Rose bloomed with vitality, but this morning she looked tired and worn. In her eyes there was a hard brilliancy Kirby did not like to see. He knew from of old the fire that could blaze in her heart, the insurgent impulses that could sweep her into recklessness. What would she do if the worst she feared turned out to be true?
"Good luck," she called through the open window as the train pulled out. "Beat Cole, Kirby."
"Good luck to you," he answered. "Write me soon as you find out how things are."
But as he walked from the station his heart misgave him. Why had he let her go alone, knowing as he did how swift she blazed to passion when wrong was done those she loved? It was easy enough to say that she had refused to let him go with her, though he had several times offered. The fact remained that she might need a friend at hand, might need him the worst way.
All through breakfast he was ridden by the fear of trouble on her horizon. Comrades stopped to slap him on the back and wish him good luck in the finals, and though he made the proper answers it was with the surface of a mind almost wholly preoccupied with another matter.
While he was rising from the table he made a decision in the flash of an eye. He would join Rose in Denver at once. Already dozens of cars were taking the road. There would be a vacant place in some one of them.
He found a party just setting out for Denver and easily made arrangements to take the unfilled seat in the tonneau.
By the middle of the afternoon he was at a boarding-house on Cherokee Street inquiring for Miss Rose McLean. She was out, and the landlady did not know when she would be back. Probably after her sister got home from work.
Lane wandered down to Curtis Street, sat through a part of a movie, then restlessly took his way up Seventeenth. He had an uncle and two cousins living in Denver. With the uncle he was on bad terms, and with his cousins on no terms at all. It had been ten years since he had seen either James Cunningham, Jr., or his brother Jack. Why not call on them and renew acquaintance?
He went into a drug-store and looked the name up in a telephone book. His cousin James had an office in the Equitable Building. He hung the book up on the hook and turned to go. As he did so he came face to face with Rose McLean.
"You—here!" she cried.
"Yes, I—I had business in Denver," he explained.
"Like fun you had! You came because—" She stopped abruptly, struck by another phase of the situation. "Did you leave Cheyenne without riding to-day?"
"I didn't want to ride. I'm fed up on ridin'."
"You threw away the championship and a thousand-dollar prize to—to—"
"You're forgettin' Cole Sanborn," he laughed. "No, honest, I came on business. But since I'm here—say, Rose, where can we have a talk? Let's go up to the mezzanine gallery at the Albany. It's right next door."
He took her into the Albany Hotel. They stepped out of the elevator at the second floor and he found a settee in a corner where they might be alone. It struck him that the shadows in her eyes had deepened. She was, he could see plainly, laboring under a tension of repressed excitement. The misery of her soul leaped out at him when she looked his way.
"Have you anything to tell me?" he asked, and his low, gentle voice was a comfort to her raw nerves.
"It's a man, just as I thought—the man she works for."
"Is he married?"
"No. Going to be soon, the papers say. He's a wealthy promoter. His name's Cunningham."
"What Cunningham?" In his astonishment the words seemed to leap from him of their own volition.
"James Cunningham, a big land and mining man. You must have heard of him."
"Yes, I've heard of him. Are you sure?"
She nodded. "Esther won't tell me a thing. She's shielding him. But
I went through her letters and found a note from him. It's signed 'J.
C.' I accused him point-blank to her and she just put her head down on
her arms and sobbed. I know he's the man."
"What do you mean to do?"
"I mean to have a talk with him first off. I'll make him do what's right."
"How?"
"I don't know how, but I will," she cried wildly. "If he don't I'll settle with him. Nothing's too bad for a man like that."
He shook his head. "Not the best way, Rose. Let's be sure of every move we make. Let's check up on this man before we lay down the law to him."
Some arresting quality in him held her eye. He had sloughed the gay devil-may-care boyishness of the range and taken on a look of strong patience new in her experience of him. But she was worn out and nervous. The pain in her arm throbbed feverishly. Her emotions had held her on a rack for many hours. There was in her no reserve power of endurance.
"No, I'm going to see him and have it out," she flung back.
"Then let me go with you when you see him. You're sick. You ought to be in bed right now. You're in no condition to face it alone."
"Oh, don't baby me, Kirby!" she burst out. "I'm all right. What's it matter if I am fagged. Don't you see? I'm crazy about Esther. I've got to get it settled. I can rest afterward."
"Will it do any harm to take a friend along when you go to see this man?"
"Yes. I don't want him to think I'm afraid of him. You're not in this, Kirby. Esther is my little sister, not yours."
"True enough." A sardonic, mirthless smile touched his face. "But
James Cunningham is my uncle, not yours."
"Your uncle?" She rose, staring at him with big, dilated eyes. "He's your uncle, the man who—who—"
"Yes, an' I know him better than you do. We've got to use finesse—"
"I see." Her eyes attacked him scornfully. "You think we'd better not face him with what he's done. You think we'd better go easy on him. Uncle's rich, and he might not like plain words. Oh, I understand now."
Wild Rose flung out a gesture that brushed him from her friendship.
She moved past him blazing with anger.
He was at the elevator cage almost as soon as she.
"Listen, Rose. You know better than that. I told you he was my uncle because you'd find it out if I'm goin' to help you. He's no friend of mine, but I know him. He's strong. You can't drive him by threats."
The elevator slid down and stopped. The door of it opened.
"Will you stand aside, sir?" Rose demanded. "I won't have anything to do with any of that villain's family. Don't ever speak to me again."
She stepped into the car. The door clanged shut. Kirby was left standing alone.
CHAPTER V
COUSINS MEET
With the aid of a tiny looking-glass a young woman was powdering her nose. Lane interrupted her to ask if he might see Mr. Cunningham.
"Name, please?" she parroted pertly, and pressed a button in the switchboard before her.
Presently she reached for the powder-puff again. "Says to come right in. Door 't end o' the hall."
Kirby entered. A man sat at a desk telephoning. He was smooth-shaven and rather heavy-set, a year or two beyond thirty, with thinning hair on the top of his head. His eyes in repose were hard and chill. From the conversation his visitor gathered that he was a captain in the Red Cross drive that was on.
As he hung up the receiver the man rose, brisk and smiling, hand outstretched. "Glad to meet you, Cousin Kirby. When did you reach town? And how long are you going to stay?"
"Got in hour an' a half ago. How are you, James?"
"Busy, but not too busy to meet old friends. Let me see. I haven't seen you since you were ten years old, have I?"
"I was about twelve. It was when my father moved to Wyoming."
"Well, I'm glad to see you. Where you staying? Eat lunch with me to-morrow, can't you? I'll try to get Jack too."
"Suits me fine," agreed Kirby.
"Anything I can do for you in the meantime?"
"Yes. I want to see Uncle James."
There was a film of wariness in the eyes of the oil broker as he looked at the straight, clean-built young cattleman. He knew that the strong face, brown as Wyoming, expressed a pungent personality back of which was dynamic force. What did Lane want with his uncle? They had quarreled. His cousin knew that. Did young Lane expect him to back his side of the quarrel? Or did he want to win back favor with James Cunningham, Senior, millionaire?
Kirby smiled. He guessed what the other was thinking. "I don't want to interfere in your friendship with him. All I need is his address and a little information. I've come to have another row with him, I reckon."
The interest in Cunningham's eyes quickened. He laughed. "Aren't you in bad enough already with Uncle? Why another quarrel?"
"This isn't on my own account. There's a girl in his office—"
A rap on the door interrupted Kirby. A young man walked into the room.
He was a good-looking young exquisite, dark-eyed and black-haired. His
clothes had been made by one of the best tailors in New York.
Moreover, he knew how to wear them.
James Cunningham, Junior, introduced him to Kirby as his cousin Jack. After a few moments of talk the broker reverted to the subject of their previous talk.
"Kirby was just telling me that he has come to Denver to meet Uncle James," he explained to his brother. "Some difficulty with him, I understand."
Jack Cunningham's black eyes fastened on his cousin. He waited for further information. It was plain he was interested.
"I'm not quite sure of my facts," Lane said. "But there's evidence to show that he has ruined a young girl in his office. She practically admits that he's the man. I happen to be a friend of her family, an' I'm goin' to call him to account. He can't get away with it."
Kirby chanced to be looking at his cousin Jack. What he saw in that young man's eyes surprised him. There were astonishment, incredulity, and finally a cunning narrowing of the black pupils.
It was James who spoke. His face was grave. "That's a serious charge,
Kirby," he said. "What is the name of the young woman?"
"I'd rather not give it—except to Uncle James himself."
"Better write it," suggested Jack with a reminiscent laugh. "He's a bit impetuous. I saw him throw a man down the stairs yesterday. Picked the fellow up at the foot of the flight. He certainly looked as though he'd like to murder our dear uncle."
"What I'd like to know is this," said Lane. "What sort of a reputation has Uncle James in this way? Have you ever heard of his bein' in anything of this sort before?"
"No, I haven't," James said promptly.
Jack shrugged. "I wouldn't pick nunky for exactly a moral man," he said flippantly. "His idea of living is to grab all the easy things he can."
"Where can I see him most easily? At his office?" asked Kirby.
"He drove down to Colorado Springs to-day on business. At least he told me he was going. Don't know whether he expects to get back to-night or not. He lives at the Paradox Apartments," Jack said.
"Prob'ly I'd better see him there rather than at his office."
"Hope you have a pleasant time with the old boy," Jack murmured.
"Don't think I'd care to be a champion of dames where he's concerned.
He's a damned cantankerous old brute. I'll say that for him."
James arranged a place of meeting for luncheon next day. The young cattleman left. He knew from the fidgety manner of Jack that he had some important business he was anxious to talk over with his brother.
CHAPTER VI
LIGHTS OUT
It was five minutes to ten by his watch when Kirby entered the Paradox Apartments. The bulletin board told him that his uncle's apartment was 12. He did not take the self-serve elevator, but the stairs. The hall on the second floor was dark. Since he did not know whether the rooms he wanted were on this floor or the next he knocked at a door.
Kirby thought he heard the whisper of voices and he knocked again. He had to rap a third time before the door was opened.
"What is it? What do you want?"
If ever Lane had seen stark, naked fear in a human face, it stared at him out of that of the woman in front of him. She was a tall, angular woman of a harsh, forbidding countenance, flat-breasted and middle-aged. Behind her, farther back in the room, the roughrider caught a glimpse of a fat, gross, ashen-faced man fleeing toward the inner door of a bedroom to escape being seen. He was thrusting into his coat pocket what looked to the man in the hall like a revolver.
"Can you tell me where James Cunningham's apartment is?" asked Kirby.
The woman gasped. The hand on the doorknob was trembling violently. Something clicked in her throat when the dry lips tried to frame an answer.
"Head o' the stairs—right hand," she managed to get out, then shut the door swiftly in the face of the man whose simple question had so shocked her.
Kirby heard the latch released from its catch. The key in the lock below also turned.
"She's takin' no chances," he murmured. "Now I wonder why both her an' my fat friend are so darned worried. Who were they lookin' for when they opened the door an' saw me? An' why did it get her goat when I asked where Uncle James lived?"
As he took the treads that brought him to the next landing the cattleman had an impression of a light being flashed off somewhere. He turned to the right as the woman below had directed.
The first door had on the panel a card with his uncle's name. He knocked, and at the same instant noticed that the door was ajar. No answer came. His finger found the electric push button. He could hear it buzzing inside. Twice he pushed it.
"Nobody at home, looks like," he said to himself. "Well, I reckon I'll step in an' leave a note. Or maybe I'll wait. If the door's open he's liable to be right back."
He stepped into the room. It was dark. His fingers groped along the wall for the button to throw on the light. Before he found it a sound startled him.
It was the soft faint panting of some one breathing.
He was a man whose nerves were under the best of control, but the cold feet of mice pattered up and down his spine. Something was wrong. The sixth sense of danger that comes to some men who live constantly in peril was warning him.
"Who's there?" he asked sharply.
No voice replied, but there was a faint rustle of some one or some thing stirring.
He waited, crouched in the darkness.
There came another vague rustle of movement. And presently another, this time closer. Every sense in him was alert, keyed up to closest attention. He knew that some one, for some sinister purpose, had come into this apartment and been trapped here by him.
The moments flew. He thought he could hear his hammering heart. A stifled gasp, a dozen feet from him, was just audible.
He leaped for the sound. His outflung hand struck an arm and slid down it, caught at a small wrist, and fastened there. In the fraction of a second left him he realized, beyond question, that it was a woman he had assaulted.
The hand was wrenched from him. There came a zigzag flash of lightning searing his brain, a crash that filled the world for him—and he floated into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER VII
FOUL PLAY
Lane came back painfully to a world of darkness. His head throbbed distressingly. Querulously he wondered where he was and what had taken place.
He drew the fingers of his outstretched hand along the nap of a rug and he knew he was on the floor. Then his mind cleared and he remembered that a woman's hand had been imprisoned in his just before his brain stopped functioning.
Who was she? What was she doing here? And what under heaven had hit him hard enough to put the lights out so instantly?
He sat up and held his throbbing head. He had been struck on the point of the chin and gone down like an axed bullock. The woman must have lashed out at him with some weapon.
In his pocket he found a match. It flared up and lit a small space in the pit of blackness. Unsteadily he got to his feet and moved toward the door. His mind was quite clear now and his senses abnormally sensitive. For instance, he was aware of a faint perfume of violet in the room, so faint that he had not noticed it before.
There grew on him a horror, an eagerness to be gone from the rooms. It was based on no reasoning, but on some obscure feeling that there had taken place something evil, something that chilled his blood.
Yet he did not go. He had come for a purpose, and it was characteristic of him that he stayed in spite of the dread that grew on him till it filled his breast. Again he groped along the wall for the light switch. A second match flared in his fingers and showed it to him. Light flooded the room.
His first sensation was of relief. This handsome apartment with its Persian rugs, its padded easy-chairs, its harmonious wall tints, had a note of repose quite alien to tragedy. It was the home of a man who had given a good deal of attention to making himself comfortable. Indefinably, it was a man's room. The presiding genius of it was masculine and not feminine. It lacked the touches of adornment that only a woman can give to make a place homelike.
Yet one adornment caught Kirby's eye at once. It was a large photograph in a handsome frame on the table. The picture showed the head and bust of a beautiful woman in evening dress. She was a brunette, young and very attractive. The line of head, throat, and shoulder was perfect. The delicate, disdainful poise and the gay provocation in the dark, slanting eyes were enough to tell that she was no novice in the game of sex. He judged her an expensive orchid produced in the civilization of our twentieth-century hothouse. Across the bottom of the picture was scrawled an inscription in a fashionably angular hand. Lane moved closer to read it. The words were, "Always, Phyllis." Probably this was the young woman to whom, if rumor were true, James Cunningham, Senior, was engaged.
On the floor, near where Kirby had been lying, lay a heavy piece of agate evidently used for a paperweight. He picked up the smooth stone and guessed instantly that this was the weapon which had established contact with his chin. Very likely the woman's hand had closed on it when she heard him coming. She had switched off the light and waited for him. That the blow had found a vulnerable mark and knocked him out had been sheer luck.
Kirby passed into a luxurious bedroom beyond which was a tiled bathroom. He glanced these over and returned to the outer apartment. There was still another door. It was closed. As the man from Wyoming moved toward it he felt once more a strange sensation of dread. It was strong enough to stop him in his stride. What was he going to find behind that door? When he laid his hand on the knob pinpricks played over his scalp and galloped down his spine.
He opened the door. A sweet sickish odor, pungent but not heavy, greeted his nostrils. It was a familiar smell, one he had met only recently. Where? His memory jumped to a corridor of the Cheyenne hospital. He had been passing the operating-room on his way to see Wild Rose. The door had opened and there had been wafted to him faintly the penetrating whiff of chloroform. It was the same drug he sniffed now.
He stood on the threshold, groped for the switch, and flashed on the lights. Sound though Kirby Lane's nerves were, he could not repress a gasp at what he saw.
Leaning back in an armchair, looking up at him with a horrible sardonic grin, was his uncle James Cunningham. His wrists were tied with ropes to the arms of the chair. A towel, passed round his throat, fastened the body to the back of the chair and propped up the head. A bloody clot of hair hung tangled just above the temple. The man was dead beyond any possibility of doubt. There was a small hole in the center of the forehead through which a bullet had crashed. Beneath this was a thin trickle of blood that had run into the heavy eyebrows.
The dead man was wearing a plaid smoking-jacket and oxblood slippers. On the tabouret close to his hand lay a half-smoked cigar. There was a grewsome suggestion in the tilt of the head and the gargoyle grin that this was a hideous and shocking jest he was playing on the world.
Kirby snatched his eyes from the grim spectacle and looked round the room. It was evidently a private den to which the owner of the apartment retired. There were facilities for smoking and for drinking, a lounge which showed marks of wear, and a writing-desk in one corner.
This desk held the young man's gaze. It was open. Papers lay scattered everywhere and its contents had been rifled and flung on the floor. Some one, in a desperate hurry, had searched every pigeon-hole.
The window of the room was open. Perhaps it had been thrown up to let out the fumes of the chloroform. Kirby stepped to it and looked down. The fire escape ran past it to the stories above and below.
The young cattleman had seen more than once the tragedies of the range. He had heard the bark of guns and had looked down on quiet dead men but a minute before full of lusty life. But these had been victims of warfare in the open, usually of sudden passions that had flared and struck. This was different. It was murder, deliberate, cold-blooded, atrocious. The man had been tied up, made helpless, and done to death without mercy. There was a note of the abnormal, of the unhuman, about the affair. Whoever had killed James Cunningham deserved the extreme penalty of the law.
He was a man who no doubt had made many enemies. Always he had demanded his pound of flesh and got it. Some one had waited patiently for his hour and exacted a fearful vengeance for whatever wrong he had suffered.
Kirby decided that he must call the police at once. No time ought to be lost in starting to run down the murderer. He stepped into the living-room to the telephone, lifted the receiver from the hook, and—stood staring down at a glove lying on the table.
As he looked at it the blood washed out of his face. He had a sensation as though his heart had been plunged into cracked ice. For he recognized the glove on the table, knew who its owner was.
It was a small riding-gauntlet with a device of a rose embroidered on the wrist. He would have known that glove among a thousand.
He had seen it, a few hours since, on the hand of Wild Rose.