“Was that the conduct one would expect of an innocent man?”

“It was the action of an innocent man.”

“You don’t look like a man that would lose his head, Mr. Lane.”

A smile lit the brown face of the witness.  “Perhaps I wouldn’t where I come from, but I’m not used to city ways.  I didn’t know what to do.  So I followed my instinct an’ bolted.  I was unlucky enough to be seen.”

“Carry a gun, Mr. Lane?”

“No.”  He corrected himself.  “Sometimes I do on the range.”

“Own one, I suppose?”

“Two.  A .45 and a .38.”

“Bring either of them to Denver?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you see any gun of any kind in your uncle’s rooms—­either a revolver or an automatic?”

“I did not.”

“That’s all, sir.”

The jury was out something more than an hour.  The news of the verdict was brought to Kirby at the city jail by his cousin James.

“Jury finds that Uncle James came to his death from the effect of either a blow on the head by some heavy instrument, or a bullet fired at close quarters by some unknown person,” James said.

“Good enough.  Might have been worse for me,” replied Kirby.

“Yes.  I’ve talked with the district attorney and think I can arrange for bond.  We’re going to take it up with the court to-morrow.  My opinion is that the Hulls did this.  All through his testimony the fellow sweated fear.  I’ve put it in the hands of a private detective agency to keep tabs on him.”

The cattleman smiled ruefully.  “Trouble is I’m the only witness to their panic right after the murder.  Wish it had been some one else.  I’m a prejudiced party whose evidence won’t count for much.  You’re right.  They’ve somethin’ to do with it.  In their evidence they shifted the time back thirty-five minutes so as to get me into Apartment 12 that much earlier.  Why?  If I could answer that question, I could go a long way toward solvin’ the mystery of who killed Uncle James an’ why he did it.”

“Probably.  As I see it, we have three leads to go on.  One is that the guilty man is Hull.  A second possibility is the unknown man from Dry Valley.  A third is Horikawa.”

“How about Horikawa?  Did you know him well?”

“One never knows an Oriental.  Perhaps I’m prejudiced because I used to live in California, but I never trust a Japanese fully.  His sense of right and wrong is so different from mine.  Horikawa is a quiet little fellow whose thought processes I don’t pretend to understand.”

“Why did he run away if he had nothin’ to conceal?”

“Looks bad.  By the way, a Japanese house-cleaner was convicted recently of killing a woman for whom he was working.  He ran away, too, and was brought back later.”

“Well, I don’t know a thing about Japs except that they’re good workers.  But there’s one thing about this business that puzzles me.  This murder doesn’t look to me like a white man’s job.  An American bad man kills an’ is done with it.  But whoever did this aimed to torture an’ then kill, looks like.  If not, why did they tie him up first?”