Tangled Trails

by Raine, William MacLeod

  He put the sheets in his pocket after he had folded them. "You never can tell. I might as well know what this Horikawa was thinkin' about first off as the police. There's just an off chance he might 'a' seen Rose that night an' tells about it here."

  A moment later he was telephoning to the City Hall for the police.

  There was the sound of a key in the outer door. It opened, and the janitor of the Paradox stood in the doorway.

  "What you do here?" asked the little Japanese quickly.

  "We came in through the window," explained Kirby. "Thought mebbe the man that killed my uncle slipped in here."

  "I hear you talk. I come in. You no business here."

  "True enough, Shibo. But we're not burglars an' we're here. Lucky we are too. We've found somethin'."

  "Mr. Jennings he in Chicago. He no like you here."

  "I want to show you somethin', Shibo. Come."

  Kirby led the way into the bedroom. Shibo looked at his countryman without a muscle of his impassive face twitching.

  "Some one killum plenty dead," he said evenly.

  "Quite plenty," Kirby agreed, watching his imperturbable Oriental face.

  The cattleman admitted to himself that what he did not know about

  Japanese habits of mind would fill a great many books.

  CHAPTER XXI

  JAMES LOSES HIS TEMPER

  Cole grinned whimsically at his friend.

  "Do we light out now or wait for the cops?" he asked.

  "We wait. They'd probably find out, anyhow, that we'd been here."

  Five minutes later a patrol wagon clanged up to the Paradox. A sergeant of police and two plainclothes men took the elevator. The sergeant, heading the party, stopped in the doorway of the apartment and let a hard, hostile eye travel up and down Lane's six feet.

  "Oh, it's you," he said suspiciously.

  Kirby smiled. "That's right, officer. We've met before, haven't we?"

  They had. The sergeant was the man who had arrested him at the coroner's inquest. It had annoyed him that the authorities had later released the prisoner on bond.

  "Have you touched the body or moved anything since you came?" the sergeant demanded.

  "No, sir, to both questions, except the telephone when I used it to reach headquarters."

  The officer made no answer. He and the detectives went into the bedroom, examined the dead valet's position and clothes, made a tour of the rooms, and came back to Lane.

  "Who's your friend?" asked the sergeant superciliously.

  "His name is Cole Sanborn."

  "The champion bronco buster?"

  "Yes."

  The sergeant looked at Sanborn with increased respect. His eyes went back to Kirby sullenly.

  "What you doing here?"

  "We were in my uncle's apartment lookin' things over. We stepped out on the fire escape an' happened to notice this window here was open a little. It just came over me that mebbe we might discover some evidence here. So I got in by the window, saw the body of the Jap, an' called my friend."

  "Some one hire you to hunt up evidence?" the officer wanted to know with heavy sarcasm.

  "I hired myself. My good name is involved. I'm goin' to see the murderer is brought to justice."

  "You are, eh?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, I'll say you could find him if anybody could."

  "You're entitled to your opinion, sergeant, just as I am to mine, but before we're through with this case you'll have to admit you've been wrong."

  Lane turned to his friend. "We'll go now, Cole, if you're ready."

  The sergeant glared at this cool customer who refused to be appalled at the position in which he stood. He had half a mind to arrest the man again on the spot, but he was not sure enough of his ground. Not very long since he had missed a promotion by being overzealous. He did not want to make the same mistake twice.

  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 Jap 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 fiancée, 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 Japanese 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 damned 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 sex 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 buttoning 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 associated 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. Nobody else could have done i
t. I don't want excuses. You can go, sir." Cunningham turned abruptly to his cousin. "The sheets of paper with the Japanese writing have been lost. This man, by some piece of inexcusable carelessness, took them with a bundle of other documents 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 advertisement 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 amusement. 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.

  After which there was swift action in the lady's boudoir.

  The red room was scarcely more than a cozy alcove set off the main reception-room, but it had a note of warmth, of friendly and seductive intimacy. Its walls whispered of tête-à-têtes, the cushions hinted at interesting secrets they were forever debarred from telling. In short, when Miss Harriman was present, it seemed, no less than the clothes she wore, an expression of her personality.

  After a very few minutes Miss Phyllis sauntered into the room and gave her hand to the man who rose at her entrance. She was simply but expensively gowned. Her smile was warm for Kirby. It told him, with a touch of shy reluctance, that he was the one man in the world she would rather meet just now. He did not know that it would have carried the same message to any one of half a dozen men.

  "I'm so glad you came to see me," she said, just as though she were in the habit of receiving young men at eleven in the morning. "Of course I want to know you better. James thinks so much of you."

  "And Jack," added Lane, smilingly.

  "Oh, yes. Jack, too," she said, and laughed outright when their eyes met.

  "I'm sure Jack's very fond of me. He can't help showing it occasionally."

  "Jack's—impulsive," she explained. "But he's amenable to influence."

  "Of the right sort. I'm sure he would be."

  He found himself the object of a piquant, amused scrutiny under her long lashes. It came to him that this Paris-gowned, long-limbed young sylph was more than willing to let him become intrigued by her charms. But Kirby Lane had not called so early in the day to fall in love.

  "I came to see you, Miss Harriman, about the case," he said. "My good name is involved. I must clear it. I want you to help me."

  He saw a pulse of excitement flutter in her throat. It seemed to him that her eyes grew darker, as though some shadow of dread had fallen over them. The provocative smile vanished.

  "How can I help you?" she asked.

  "If you would answer a few questions—"

  "What questions?" All the softness had gone from her voice. It had become tense and sharp.

  "Personal ones. About you and my uncle. You were engaged to him, were you not?"

  "Yes."

  "There wasn't any quarrel between you recently, was there?"

  A flash of apprehension filled her eyes. Then, resolutely, she banished fear and called to her aid hauteur.

  "There was not, though I quite fail to see how this can concern you,

  Mr. Lane."

  "I don't want to distress you," he said gently, "Just now that question must seem to you a brutal one. Believe me, I don't want to hurt you."

  Her eyes softened, grew wistful and appealing. "I'm sure you don't. You couldn't. It's all so—so dreadful to think about." There was a little catch in her throat as the voice broke. "Let's talk of something more cheerful. I want to forget it all."

  "I'm sure you do. We all want to do that. The surest way to get it out of our minds is to solve the mystery and find out who is guilty. That's why I want you to tell me a few things to clear up my mind."

  "But I don't know anything about it—nothing at all. Why should you come to me?"

  "When did you last see my uncle alive?"

  "What a dreadful question! It was—let me think—in the afternoon—the day before—"

  "And you parted from him on the best of terms?"

  "Of course."

  He leaned toward her ever so little, his eyes level with hers and steadily fastened upon her. "That's the last time you saw him—until you went to his rooms at the Paradox the night he was killed?"

  She had lifted her hand to pat into place an escaping tendril of hair. The hand remained lifted. The dark eyes froze with horror. They stared at him, as though held by some dreadful fascination. From her cheeks the color ebbed. Kirby thought she was going to faint.

  But she did not. A low moan of despair escaped from the ashen lips.

  The lifted arm fell heavily to her lap.

  Then Kirby discovered that the two in the red room had become three.

  Jack Cunningham was standing in the doorway.

  His glance flashed to Lane accusingly. "What's up? What are you doing here?" he demanded abruptly.

  The Wyoming man rose. "I've been asking Miss Harriman a question."

  "A quest
ion. What business have you to ask her questions?" demanded

  Jack hotly.

  His cousin tried a shot in the dark. "I was asking her," he said, his voice low and even, "about that visit you and she paid to Uncle James's rooms the night he was killed."

  Kirby knew instantly he had scored a hit. The insolence, the jaunty confidence, were stricken from him as by a buffet in the face. For a moment body and mind alike were lax and stunned. Then courage flowed back into his veins. He came forward, blustering.

  "What do you mean? What visit? It's a damned lie."

  "Is it? Then why is the question such a knockout to you and Miss Harriman? She almost fainted, and it certainly crumpled you up till you got second breath."

  Jack flushed angrily. "O' course it shocked her for you to make such a charge against her. It would frighten any woman. By God, it's an outrage. You come here and try to browbeat Miss Harriman when she's alone. You ask her impudent questions, as good as tell her she—she—"

  Kirby's eyes were like a glittering rapier probing for the weakness of his opponent's defense. "I say that she and you were in the rooms of Uncle James at 9.50 the evening he was killed. I say that you concealed the fact at the inquest. Why?" He shot his question at the other man with the velocity of a bullet.

  Cunningham's lip twitched, his eye wavered. How much did his cousin know? How much was he merely guessing?

  "Who told you we were there? How do you know it? I don't propose to answer every wild accusation nor to let Miss Harriman be insulted by you. Who are you, anyhow? A man accused of killing my uncle, the man who found his valet dead and is suspected of that crime, too, a fellow who would be lying behind the bars now if my brother hadn't put up the money to save the family from disgrace. If we tell all we know, the police will grab you again double-quick. Yet you have the nerve to come here and make insinuations against the lady who is mourning my uncle's death. I've a good mind to 'phone for the police right now."