“Swen Brodie then.  And Andy Parker.”

Gaynor frowned, impressed as King had been before him.

“But,” he objected as he pondered, “he might have been there for some other reason.  Brodie, I mean.  Remember that the ancient and time-honoured pastimes of the Kentucky mountains have come into vogue in the West.  Everybody knows, and that includes even the government agents in San Francisco, that there is a lot of moonshine being made in out-of-the-way places of the California mountains.  There’s a job for Swen Brodie and his crowd.  There’s talk of it, Mark.”

“Maybe,” King admitted.  “But Brodie was looking for something, and not revenue men, at that.  He and Parker were up on the cliffs not a quarter-mile from the old cabin.  They stood close together, right at the edge.  Parker fell.  Brodie looked down, turned on his heel and went off, smoking his stinking pipe, most likely.  I buried Parker the next morning.”

“Poor devil,” said Gaynor.  Then his brows shot up and he demanded: 

“You mean Brodie did for him?  Shoved him over?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.  But I can’t tie it to Brodie, not so that he couldn’t shake himself free of it.  Parker didn’t say so in so many words; I saw the whole thing from the mountain across the lake, too far to swear to anything like that.  But this I can swear to:  Brodie was in there for the same thing we’ve been after for ten years.  And what is more, it’s open and shut that he was of a mind to play whole-hog and pushed Andy Parker over to simplify matters.  In my mind, even though I can’t hope to ram that down a jury.”

“How do you know what Brodie and Parker were after?”

“Andy Parker.  He was sullen and tight-mouthed for the most part until delirium got him.  Then he babbled by the hour.  And all his talk was of Gus Ingle and the devil’s luck of the unlucky Seven, with every now and then a word for Loony Honeycutt and Swen Brodie.”

“If there is such a thing as devil’s luck,” said Gaynor with a sober look to his face, “this thing seems plastered thick with it.”

King grunted his derision.

“We’ll take a chance, Ben,” he said.  “And, after all, one man’s bane is another man’s bread, you know.  Now I’ve told you my tale, let’s have yours.  You saw Honeycutt; could you get anything out of him?”

“Only this, that you are dead right about his knowing or thinking that he knows.  He is feebler than he was last fall, a great deal feebler both in body and mind.  All day he sits on his steps in the sun and peers through his bleary eyes across the mountains, and chuckles to himself like an old hen.  ‘Oh, I know what you’re after,’ he cackles at me, shrewd enough to hit the nail square, too, Mark.  ‘And,’ he rambles on, ‘you’ve come to the right man.  But am I goin’ to blab now, havin’ kept a shut mouth all these years?’ And then he goes on, his rheumy-red eyes blinking, to proclaim that