“Suspicion fell first on me an’ on Hull,” Kirby went on.  “You’ve seen it all thrashed out in the papers.  I had been unfriendly to my uncle for years, an’ I was seen goin’ to his rooms an’ leavin’ them that evening.  My own suspicion was directed to Hull, especially when he an’ Mrs. Hull at the coroner’s inquest changed the time so as to get me into my uncle’s apartment half an hour earlier than I had been there.  I’d caught them in a panic of terror when I knocked on their door.  They’d lied to get me into trouble.  Hull had quarreled with Uncle James an’ had threatened to go after him with a gun in two days after that time—­and it was just forty-eight hours later he was killed.  It looked a lot like Hull to me.

“I had one big advantage, Chief, a lot of inside facts not open to you,” the cattleman explained.  “I knew, for instance, that Miss McLean here had been in the rooms just before me.  She was the young woman my uncle had the appointment to meet there before ten o’clock.  You will remember Mr. Blanton’s testimony.  Miss McLean an’ I compared notes, so we were able to shave down the time during which the murder must have taken place.  We worked together.  She gave me other important data.  Perhaps she had better tell in her own words about the clue she found that we followed.”

Rose turned to the Chief.  Her young face flew a charming flag of color.  Her hair, in crisp tendrils beneath the edge of the small hat she wore, was the ripe gold of wheat-tips in the shock.  The tender blue of violets was in her eyes.

“I told you about how I found Mr. Cunningham tied to his chair, Chief.  I forgot to say that in the living-room there was a faint odor of perfume.  On my way upstairs I passed in the dark a man and a woman.  I had got a whiff of the same perfume then.  It was violet.  So I knew they had been in the apartment just before me.  Mr. Lane discovered later that Miss Harriman used that scent.”

“Which opened up a new field of speculation,” Kirby went on.  “We began to run down facts an’ learned that my cousin James had secretly married Miss Harriman at Golden a month before.  My uncle had just learned the news.  He had a new will made by his lawyer, one that cut James off without a cent an’ left his property to Jack Cunningham.”

“That will was never signed,” Jack broke in quickly.

Kirby looked at Jack and smiled cynically.  “No, it was never signed.  Your brother discovered that when he looked the will over at Uncle’s desk a few minutes after his death.”

James did not wink an eye in distress.  The hand of the woman sitting beside him went out instantly to his in a warm, swift pressure.  She was white to the lips, but her thought was for the man she loved and not for herself.  Kirby scored another mark to her credit.

“Cumulative evidence pointed to James Cunningham,” continued Kirby.  “He tried to destroy the proof of his marriage to Miss Harriman.  He later pretended to lose an important paper that might have cleared up the case.  He tried to get me to drop the matter an’ go back to Wyoming.  The coil wound closer round him.