Sheriff on the Spot
Page 15
“I guess I went crazy for just a minute. I picked up your knife and stabbed him. It was easy. He hardly moved at all. And—I couldn’t pull the knife out.” Her voice rose hysterically. “It was as though his corpse was still fighting me in death. It wouldn’t come loose. I had to go off and leave it there. I don’t know what became of it.”
Pat cleared his throat. He said, “It was stuck tight. I found it in him just like you said when I first came up here. I saw ’twas Sam’s knife an’ I pulled it out an’ hid it until I could find out more about what happened.”
“Don’t look at me like that,” Kitty called out wretchedly to Sam. “I did it because I loved you. Do you hear me? Because I loved you. With him dead, I thought—”
Sam cleared his throat loudly. He stared down at her bowed head, then sat on the bed beside her. He put his arm about her bare, shaking shoulders and said, “I don’t blame you, Kitty. I don’t blame you none a-tall.”
“But I’m afraid a jury will,” said Joe Deems harshly. “It’s not going to make a very pretty story in court.”
“That’s right,” Pat agreed mildly. “Your part isn’t goin’ to sound very pretty.”
Deems snorted, “My part?”
“Sure. You were in it with ’em. They needed you to help pretend to get rid of the body an’ keep Sam an’ Ezra fooled. Ralston told me all about that,” he added.
Deems looked confused, but he shrugged and said, “You’ll have a hard time proving I had any part in it. They’ll hang Kitty,” he ended venomously.
“Why, no. I don’t reckon they will, Deems.”
Sam and Kitty both looked up at him with a start. Pat disregarded them. “You know she didn’t do nothin’ but stick a knife in a dead man,” he told Deems quietly. “That’s not a hangin’ offense.”
“Into a dead man?” gasped Deems.
“Sure. That’s why the knife came out so hard. Knives always stick tight in a corpse. Seems like there’s a suction or somethin’ that holds ’em. Just like Miss Kitty noticed when she tried to pull it out.”
“You mean I did it, then?” Sam leaped to his feet gladly.
“Not you, Sam. Joe Deems. He killed Fred Ralston.”
Deems laughed out loud. “Just how do you figure that?”
“It’s the only way it does figure,” Pat told him earnestly. He turned to Kitty. “Didn’t you leave your husband lyin’ on his back that first time when he was playin’ dead?”
“Yes.”
“That’s what Ezra said,” Pat grunted. “But he was lyin’ on his face when you came back to the room. An’ he didn’t move when you stuck him. He was already dead. Morgan, here, told us he was stabbed twice. Once in front an’ once in the back. Deems had slipped in before you with the same idea you had, Kitty. You’re not any more a murderer than I am.”
Deems laughed again. “Why do you think I’d do that?”
“Because you loved Kitty,” Pat told him harshly. “You were crazy about her. You saw a good chance to get rid of her husband an’ lay the blame on Sam. Hell, ’twas a perfect set-up. You couldn’t pass it by.”
“You’d better have your head examined,” Joe Deems laughed.
“I admit it took me a long time to see how ’twas. But that’s not all. You killed Jeth too. When you found out I had him locked up, you got scared. You knew he’d break down an’ tell everything if I questioned him. So you slipped out an’ shot him through the jail window with a mate to that forty-five derringer I took off you while the shootin’ was goin’ on back of the bank.”
Deems snorted, “Try an’ prove it.”
“But you made a mistake when you killed Ralston,” Pat went on gravely. “You found out afterward that Kitty was really sweet on Sam. It hadn’t done any good to kill her husband. You’d just fixed it so she an’ Sam could get married. That pretty near drove you crazy. So, when you heard Sam was comin’ back to ride the mail, you decided to finish what you’d started. You hired Mex Joe an’ Ben Larkin to dry-gulch him on his ride.”
“Who says so?”
“Ben Larkin says so. I got him locked up in jail right now. Where you missed was by not killin’ him too, Joe.”
Deems took a backward step and showed them a stubby .45 derringer in his hand, a mate to the one in Pat’s pocket.
“I’m going out that side door,” he announced without a tremor in his voice. “Anybody wants to eat lead—try to stop me.”
He took another backward step, and another toward the side door.
Sam’s body left the bed beside Kitty as though it were driven by a catapult. His shoulder struck the hotel proprietor’s knees and they tumbled to the floor together.
There was a muffled explosion as they fell. Deems’ body went limp on top of Sam.
Sam shoved the body off him and looked at it wonderingly. “Right through the heart,” he said in an awed voice. “With his own derringer.”
Pat said, “That’ll save Powder Valley a trial.” He looked at Harold Morgan. “I’d call it suicide—on account of him having already committed two murders an’ us catchin’ up with him.”
Morgan said, “Looks like suicide to me.”
Pat said quietly, “That leaves only us four that knows anything about all this. I don’t reckon anybody needs to know anything more than that Joe Deems killed Ralston an’ Jeth Purdue for reasons unknown an’ then committed suicide. That the way you see it, Morgan?”
The rancher glanced behind him at Sam and Kitty who were locked in a tight embrace. He said soberly, “That’s the way it looks to me, Pat. And I don’t believe we’re needed here any longer.”
Pat looked behind him and chuckled. “It sure don’t look like it,” he agreed. “In fact, I better be ridin’ to tell Sally the news. Never did see a woman like her for likin’ to fix up for a weddin’.”
About the Author
Brett Halliday (1904–1977) was the primary pseudonym of American author Davis Dresser. Halliday is best known for creating the Mike Shayne Mysteries. The novels, which follow the exploits of fictional PI Mike Shayne, have inspired several feature films, a radio series, and a television series.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1943 by William Morrow and Company, Inc.
Cover design by Andy Ross
ISBN: 978-1-4976-4380-2
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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