“Afraid you’ll have to talk, Olson.  Either to me or to the Chief at headquarters.  You’ve become a live suspect.  Figure it out yourself.  You threaten Cunningham by mail.  You make threats before people orally.  You come to Denver an’ take a room in the next house to where he lives.  On the night he’s killed, by your own admission, you stand on the platform a few feet away an’ raise no alarm while you see him slugged.  Later, you hear the shot that kills him an’ still you don’t call the officers.  Yet you’re so interested in the crime that you run upstairs, cut down the clothes-line, an’ at some danger swing over to the Paradox.  The question the police will want to know is whether the man who does this an’ then keeps it secret may not have the best reason in the world for not wanting it known.”

“What you mean—­the best reason in the world?”

“They’ll ask what’s to have prevented you from openin’ the window an’ steppin’ in while my uncle was tied up, from shootin’ him an’ slippin’ down the fire escape, an’ from walkin’ back upstairs to your own room at the Wyndham.”

“Are you claimin’ that I killed him?” Olson wanted to know.

“I’m tellin’ you that the police will surely raise the question.”

“If they do I’ll tell ’em who did,” the rancher blurted out wildly.

“I’d tell ’em first, it I were in your place.  It’ll have a lot more weight than if you keep still until your back’s against the wall.”

“When I do you’ll sit up an’ take notice.  The man who shot Cunningham is yore own cousin,” the Dry Valley man flung out vindictively.

“Which one?”

“The smug one—­James.”

“You saw him do it?”

“I heard the shot while I was on the roof.  When I looked round the edge of the blind five minutes later, he was goin’ over the papers in the desk—­and an automatic pistol was there right by his hand.”

“He was alone?”

“At first he was.  In about a minute his brother an’ Miss Harriman came into the room.  She screamed when she saw yore uncle an’ most fainted.  The other brother, the young one, kinda caught her an’ steadied her.  He was struck all of a heap himself.  You could see that.  He looked at James, an’ he said, ‘My God, you didn’t—­’ That was all.  No need to finish.  O’ course James denied it.  He’d jumped up to help support Miss Harriman outa the room.  Maybe a coupla minutes later he came back alone.  He went right straight back to the desk, found inside of three seconds the legal document I told you I’d seen his uncle reading glanced it over, turned to the back page, jammed the paper back in the cubby-hole, an’ then switched off the light.  A minute later the light was switched off in the big room, too.  Then I reckoned it was time to beat it down the fire escape.  I did.  I went back into the Wyndham carryin’ the clothes-line under my coat, walked upstairs without meetin’ anybody, left the rope on the roof, an’ got outa the house without being seen.”