“About this time another factor attracted my attention.  I had the good luck to unearth at Dry Valley the man who had written threatenin’ letters to my uncle an’ to discover that he was stayin’ next door to the Paradox the very night of the murder.  More, my friend Sanborn an’ I guessed he had actually been on the fire escape of the Wyndham an’ seen somethin’ of importance through the window.  Later I forced a statement from Olson.  He told all he had seen that night.”

Kirby turned to the rancher from Dry Valley and had him tell his story.  When he had finished, the cattleman made comment.

“On the face of it Olson’s story leaves in doubt the question of who actually killed my uncle.  If he was tellin’ the whole truth, his evidence points either to the Hulls or my cousin James.  But it was quite possible he had seen my uncle tied up an’ helpless, an’ had himself stepped through the window an’ shot him.  Am I right, Chief?”

The Chief nodded grimly.  “Right, son.”

“You told me you didn’t think I did it,” Olson burst out bitterly.

“An’ I tell you so again,” Kirby answered, smiling.  “I was mentionin’ possibilities.  On your evidence it lies between my cousin James an’ the Hulls.  It was the Hulls that had tied him up after Cass Hull knocked him senseless.  It was Hull who had given him two days more to live.  And that’s not all.  Not an hour an’ a half ago I had a talk with Mrs. Hull.  She admitted, under pressure, that she returned to my uncle’s apartment again to release him from the chair.  She was alone with him, an’ he was wholly in her power.  She is a woman with a passionate sense of injury.  What happened then nobody else saw.”

Mrs. Hull opened her yellow, wrinkled lips to speak, but Kirby checked her.  “Not yet, Mrs. Hull.  I’ll return to the subject.  If you wish you can defend yourself then.”

He stopped a second time to find the logical way of proceeding with his story.  The silence in the room was tense.  The proverbial pin could have been heard.  Only one person in the room except Kirby knew where the lightning was going to strike.  That person sat by the door chewing the end of a cigar impassively.  A woman gave a strangled little sob of pent emotion.

“I’ve been leaving Horikawa out of the story,” the cattleman went on.  “I’ve got to bring him in now.  He’s the hinge on which it all swings. The man or woman that killed my uncle killed Horikawa too.”

James Cunningham, sitting opposite Kirby with his cold eyes steadily fixed on him, for the first time gave visible sign of his anxiety.  It came in the form of a little gulping sound in his throat.

“Cole Sanborn and I found Horikawa in the room where he had been killed.  The doctors thought he must have been dead about a day.  Just a day before this time Miss McLean an’ I met James Cunningham comin’ out of the Paragon.  He was white an’ shaking.  He was sufferin’ from nausea, an’ his arm was badly strained.  He explained it by sayin’ he had fallen downstairs.  Later, I wondered about that fall.  I’m still wonderin’.  Had he just come out of the apartment where Horikawa was hidin’?  Had the tendons of that arm been strained by a jiu-jitsu twist? And had he left Horikawa behind him dead on the bed?”