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Tangled Trails: A Western Detective Story, a novel by William MacLeod Raine |
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Chapter 21. James Loses His Temper |
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_ CHAPTER XXI. JAMES LOSES HIS TEMPER Cole grinned whimsically at his friend. "Do we light out now or wait for the cops?" he asked. "We wait. They'd probably find out, anyhow, that we'd been here." Five minutes later a patrol wagon clanged up to the Paradox. A sergeant of police and two plainclothes men took the elevator. The sergeant, heading the party, stopped in the doorway of the apartment and let a hard, hostile eye travel up and down Lane's six feet. "Oh, it's you," he said suspiciously. Kirby smiled. "That's right, officer. We've met before, haven't we?" They had. The sergeant was the man who had arrested him at the coroner's inquest. It had annoyed him that the authorities had later released the prisoner on bond. "Have you touched the body or moved anything since you came?" the sergeant demanded. "No, sir, to both questions, except the telephone when I used it to reach headquarters." The officer made no answer. He and the detectives went into the bedroom, examined the dead valet's position and clothes, made a tour of the rooms, and came back to Lane. "Who's your friend?" asked the sergeant superciliously. "His name is Cole Sanborn." "The champion bronco buster?" "Yes." The sergeant looked at Sanborn with increased respect. His eyes went back to Kirby sullenly. "What you doing here?" "We were in my uncle's apartment lookin' things over. We stepped out on the fire escape an' happened to notice this window here was open a little. It just came over me that mebbe we might discover some evidence here. So I got in by the window, saw the body of the Jap, an' called my friend." "Some one hire you to hunt up evidence?" the officer wanted to know with heavy sarcasm. "I hired myself. My good name is involved. I'm goin' to see the murderer is brought to justice." "You are, eh?" "Yes." "Well, I'll say you could find him if anybody could." "You're entitled to your opinion, sergeant, just as I am to mine, but before we're through with this case you'll have to admit you've been wrong." Lane turned to his friend. "We'll go now, Cole, if you're ready." The sergeant glared at this cool customer who refused to be appalled at the position in which he stood. He had half a mind to arrest the man again on the spot, but he was not sure enough of his ground. Not very long since he had missed a promotion by being overzealous. He did not want to make the same mistake twice. The Wyoming men walked across to Seventeenth Street and down it to the Equitable Building. James Cunningham was in his office. He looked up as they entered, a cold smile on his lips. "Ah, my energetic cousin," he said, with his habitual touch of irony. "What's in the wind now?" Kirby told him. Instantly James became grave. His irony vanished. In his face was a flicker almost of consternation at this follow-up murder. He might have been asking himself how much more trouble was coming. "We'll get the writing translated. You have it with you?" he said. His eyes ran over the pages Lane handed him. "I know a Jap we can get to read it for us, a reliable man, one who won't talk if we ask him not to." The broker's desk buzzer rang. He talked for a moment over the telephone, then hung up again. "Sorry," Cunningham said, "I'm going to be busy for an hour or two. Going to lunch with Miss Phyllis Harriman. She was Uncle James's fiancee, perhaps you know. There are some affairs of the estate to be arranged. I wonder if you could come back later this afternoon. Say about four o'clock. We'll take up then the business of the translation. I'll get in touch with a Japanese in the meantime." "Suits me. Shall I leave the writing here?" "Yes, if you will. Doesn't matter, of course, but since we have it I'll put it in the safe." "How's the arm?" Kirby asked, glancing at the sling his cousin wore. "Only sprained. The doctor thinks I must have twisted it badly as I fell. I couldn't sleep a wink all night. The damned thing pained so." James looked as though he had not slept well. His eyes were shadowed and careworn. They walked together as far as the outer office. A slender, dark young woman, beautifully gowned, was waiting there. James introduced her to his cousin and Sanborn as Miss Harriman. She was, Kirby knew at once, the original of the photograph he had seen in his uncle's rooms. Miss Harriman was a vision of sheathed loveliness. The dark, long-lashed eyes looked out at Kirby with appealing wistfulness. When she moved, the soft lines of her body took on a sinuous grace. From her personality there seemed to emanate an enticing aura of sex mystery. She gave Kirby her little gloved hand. "I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Lane," she said, smiling at him. "I've heard all sorts of good things about you from James--and Jack." She did not offer her hand to Sanborn, perhaps because she was busy buttoning one of the long gloves. Instead, she gave him a flash of her eyes and a nod of the carefully coiffured head. Kirby said the proper things, but he said them with a mind divided. For his nostrils were inhaling again the violet perfume that associated itself with his first visit to his uncle's apartment. He did not start. His eyes did not betray him. His face could be wooden on occasion, and it told no stories now. But his mind was filled with racing thoughts. Had Phyllis Harriman been the woman Rose had met on the stairs? What had she been doing in Cunningham's room? Who was the man with her? What secret connected with his uncle's death lay hidden back of the limpid innocence of those dark, shadowed eyes? She was one of those women who are forever a tantalizing mystery to men. What was she like behind the inscrutable, charming mask of her face? Lane carried this preoccupation with him throughout the afternoon. It was still in the hinterland of his thoughts when he returned to his cousin's office. His entrance was upon a scene of agitated storm. His cousin was in the outer office facing a clerk. In his eyes there was a cold fury of anger that surprised Kirby. He had known James always as self-restrained to the point of chilliness. Now his anger seemed to leap out and strike savagely. "Gross incompetence and negligence, Hudson. You are discharged, sir. I'll not have you in my employ an hour longer. A man I have trusted and found wholly unworthy." "I'm sorry, Mr. Cunningham," the clerk said humbly. "I don't see how I lost the paper, if I did, sir. I was very careful when I took the deeds and leases out of the safe. It seems hardly possible--" "But you lost it. Nobody else could have done it. I don't want excuses. You can go, sir." Cunningham turned abruptly to his cousin. "The sheets of paper with the Japanese writing have been lost. This man, by some piece of inexcusable carelessness, took them with a bundle of other documents to my lawyer's office. He must have taken them. They were lying with the others. Now they can't be found anywhere." "Have you 'phoned to your lawyer?" asked Kirby. "'Phoned and been in person. They are nowhere to be found. They ought to turn up somewhere. This clerk probably dropped them. I've sent an advertisement to the afternoon papers." Kirby was taken aback at this unexpected mischance, but there was no use wasting nerve energy in useless fretting. He regretted having left the papers with James, for he felt that in them might be the key to the mystery of the Cunningham case. But he had no doubt that his cousin was more distressed about the loss than he was. He comforted himself with the reflection that a thorough search would probably restore them, anyhow. He asked Hudson a few questions and had the man show them exactly where he had picked up the papers he took to the lawyer. James listened, his anger still simmering. Kirby took his cousin by the arm and led him into the inner office. "Frankly, James, I think you were partly to blame," he said. "You must have laid the writing very close in the safe to the other papers. Hadn't you better give Hudson another chance before you fire him?" His disarming smile robbed both the criticism and the suggestion of any offense they might otherwise have had. In the end he persuaded Cunningham to withdraw his discharge of the clerk. "He doesn't deserve it," James grumbled. "He's maybe spoiled our chance of laying hands on the man who killed Uncle. I can't get over my disappointment." "Don't worry, old man," Lane said quietly. "We're goin' to rope an' hogtie that wolf even if Horikawa can't point him out to us with his dead hand." Cunningham looked at him, and again the faint, ironic smile of admiration was in evidence. "You're confident, Kirby." "Why wouldn't I be? With you an' Rose McLean an' Cole Sanborn an' I all followin' the fellow's trail, he can't double an' twist enough to make a getaway. We'll ride him down sure." "Maybe we will and maybe we won't," the oil broker replied. "I'd give odds that he goes scot free." "Then you'd lose," Kirby answered, smiling easily. _ |
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