“God!” he exclaimed.

His gaze was riveted to the bloodless, yellow face of the Oriental.  Presently he broke the silence to speak again.

“The same crowd that killed Cunningham must ‘a’ done this, too.”

“Prob’ly.”

“Sure they must.  Same way exactly.”

“Unless tyin’ him up here was an afterthought—­to make it look like the other,” suggested Lane.  He added, after a moment, “Or for revenge, because Horikawa killed my uncle.  If he did, fate couldn’t have sent a retribution more exactly just.”

“Sho, that’s a heap unlikely.  You’d have to figure there were two men that are Apache killers, both connected with this case, both with minds just alike, one of ’em a Jap an’ the other prob’ly a white man.  A hundred to one shot, I’d call it.  No, sir.  Chances are the same man bossed both jobs.”

“Yes,” agreed Kirby.  “The odds are all that way.”

He stepped closer and looked at the greenish-yellow flesh.  “May have been dead a couple o’ days,” he continued.

“What was the sense in killin’ him?  What for?  How did he come into it?” Cole’s boyish face wrinkled in perplexity.  “I don’t make head or tail of this thing.  Cunningham’s enemies couldn’t be his enemies, too, do you reckon?”

“More likely he knew too much an’ had to be got out of the road.”

“Yes, but—­” Sanborn stopped, frowning, while he worked out what he had to say.  “He wasn’t killed right after yore uncle.  Where was he while the police were huntin’ for him everywhere?  If he knew somethin’ why didn’t he come to bat with it?  What was he waitin’ for?  An’ if the folks that finally bumped him off knew he didn’t aim to tell what he knew, whyfor did they figure they had to get rid of him?”

“I can’t answer your questions right off the reel, Cole.  Mebbe I could guess at one or two answers, but they likely wouldn’t be right.  F’r instance, I could guess that he was here in this room from the time my uncle was killed till he met his own death.”

“In this room?”

“In these apartments.  Never left ’em, most likely.  What’s more, some one knew he was here an’ kept him supplied with the daily papers.”

“Who?”

“If I could tell you that I could tell you who killed him,” answered Kirby with a grim, mirthless smile.

“How do you know all that?”

Lane told him of the mute testimony of the newspapers in the living-room.  “Some one brought those papers to him every day,” he added.

“And then killed him.  Does that look reasonable to you?”

“We don’t know the circumstances.  Say, to make a long shot, that the Jap had been hired to kill my uncle by this other man, and say he was beginnin’ to get ugly an’ make threats.  Or say Horikawa knew about the killin’ of my uncle an’ was hired by the other man to keep away.  Then he learns from the papers that he’s suspected, an’ he gets anxious to go to the police with what he knows.  Wouldn’t there be reason enough then to kill him?  The other man would have to do it to save himself.”