“Quien sabe?  Nobody seen or heard the shooting.  He’d been croaked a long while when we found him.”

For a moment the two eyed each other silently.  “Do you think—?” Rouletta turned her white face toward the cashier’s cage.

“More ’n likely.  He was bitter—­he made a lot of cracks around the Barracks.  The first thing the Police said when we notified ’em was, ‘Where’s Phillips?’ We didn’t know the boy was out until that very minute or—­we’d ‘a’ done different.  We’d ‘a’ left the Count in the drift and run Phillips down and framed an alibi.  Think of us, his pals, turnin’ up the evidence!” Lucky breathed an oath.

“Oh, why—?” moaned the girl.  “He—­It was so useless.  Everything was all right.  Perhaps—­after all, he didn’t do it.”

“You know him as well as I do.  I’m hoping he had better sense, but—­he’s got a temper.  He was always talking about the disgrace.”

“Has he gone?  Can’t you help him?  He might make the Boundary—­”

Broad shook his head.  “No use.  It’s too late for that.  If he’s still here me ‘n’ the Kid will do our best to swear him out of it.”

Rouletta swayed, she groped blindly at the bar rail for support, whereupon her companion cried in a low voice: 

“Here!  Brace up, or you’ll tip it all off!  If he stands pat, how they going to prove anything?  The Count’s been dead for hours.  He was all drifted—­”

Broad was interrupted by the Mocha Kid, who entered out of the night at that instant with the announcement:  “Well, they got him!  Rock found him, and he denies it, but they’ve got him at the Barracks, puttin’ him through the third degree.  I don’t mind sayin’ that Frenchman needed croakin’, bad, and they’d ought to give Phillips a vote of thanks and a bronx tablet.”

Mocha’s words added to Rouletta’s terror, for it showed that other minds ran as did hers.  Already, it seemed to her, Pierce Phillips had been adjudged guilty.  Through the murk of fright, of apprehension in which her thoughts were racing there came a name—­ ’Poleon Doret.  Here was deep trouble, grave peril, a threat to her newfound happiness.  ’Poleon, her brother, would know what to do, for his head was clear, his judgment was unerring.  He never failed her.  Blindly she ran for her wraps, hurriedly she flung them on, then plunged out into the night.  As she scurried through the street, panic-stricken, beset, one man’s name was in her thoughts, but another’s was upon her lips.  Over and over she kept repeating: 

“’Poleon!  Oh,’Poleon!”

CHAPTER XXVII

The news of Count Courteau’s death traveled fast.  ’Poleon Doret was not long in hearing of it, and of course he went at once in search of Rouletta.  By the time he found her the girl’s momentary panic had been succeeded by a quite unnatural self-possession; her perturbation had changed to an intense but governable agitation, and her mind was working with a clarity and a rapidity more than normal.  This power of rising to an emergency she had doubtless inherited from her father.  “One-armed” Kirby had been a man of resource, and, so long as he remained sober, he had never lost his head.  Swiftly the girl told of the instant suspicion that had attached to Phillips and of his prompt apprehension.