“You know it, Rose,” he said, smiling.

“Yes, I do know it,” she cried quickly.  “That makes it worse for me to impose on you.  Now you’re in trouble because of me.  I should think you’d pretty near hate me.”

“We’re in trouble together,” he corrected.  “I thought that was supposed to bring friends closer an’ not to drive them apart.”

She flashed a quick look at him and changed the subject of conversation.  Just now she could not afford to be emotional.

“Are you going back to Twin Buttes?”

“No.  I’m goin’ to find out who killed James Cunningham an’ bring the man to justice.  That’s the only way to clear us both before the world.”

“Yes!” she cried eagerly.  “Let me help you.  Let’s be partners in it, Kirby.”

He already had one partner, but he threw him overboard instantly.  James Cunningham was retired to the position of an adviser.

“Bully!  We’ll start this very minute.  Tell me all you know about what happened the evenin’ of the murder.”

She told again the story she had confessed to his cousins.  He asked questions, pushed home inquiries.  When she mentioned the woman who had passed her on the stairs he showed a keen interest.

“You say you knew it was a woman with the man by the perfume.  What kind of perfume was it?”

“Violet.”

“Did you notice a violet perfume any other place that night?”

“In your uncle’s living-room.”

“Sure?”

“Yes.”

“So did I.”

“The woman I met on the stairs, then, had just come from your uncle’s rooms.”

“Looks like it,” he nodded in agreement.

“Then we’ve got to find her.  She must have been in his apartment when he was killed.”  The thought came to Rose as a revelation.

“Or right after.”

“All we’ve got to do is to find her and the man with her, and we’ve solved the mystery,” the girl cried eagerly.

“That’s not quite all,” said Kirby, smiling at the way her mind leaped gaps.  “We’ve got to induce them to talk, an’ it’s not certain they know any more than we do.”

“Her skirts rustled like silk and the perfume wasn’t cheap.  I couldn’t really see her, but I knew she was well dressed,” Rose told him.

“Well, that’s somethin’,” he said with the whimsical quirk to his mouth she knew of old.  “We’ll advertise for a well-dressed lady who uses violet perfume.  Supposed to be connected with the murder at the Paradox Apartments.  Generous reward an’ many questions asked.”

His badinage was of the surface only.  The subconscious mind of the rough rider was preoccupied with a sense of a vague groping.  The thought of violet perfume associated itself with something else in addition to the darkness of his uncle’s living-room, but he did not find himself able to localize the nebulous memory.  Where was it his nostrils had whiffed the scent more recently?