Chapter 37. On The Grill

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_ CHAPTER XXXVII. ON THE GRILL

In spite of the fact that his mind had at times moved toward his cousin James as the murderer, Kirby experienced a shock at this accusation. He happened to glance at Olson, perhaps to see the effect of it upon him.

The effect was slight, but it startled Kirby. For just an instant the Dry Valley farmer's eyes told the truth--shouted it as plainly as words could have done. He had expected that answer from Hull. He had expected it because he, too, had reason to believe it the truth. Then the lids narrowed, and the man's lip lifted in a sneer of rejection. He was covering up.

"Pretty near up to you to find some one else to pass the buck to, ain't it?" he taunted.

"Suppose you tell us the whole story, Hull," the Wyoming man said.

The fat man had one last flare of resistance. "Olson here says he seen me crack Cunningham with the butt of my gun. How did he see me? Where does he claim he was when he seen it?"

"I was standin' on the fire escape of the Wyndham across the alley--about ten or fifteen feet away. I heard every word that was said by Cunningham an' yore wife. Oh, I've got you good."

Hull threw up the sponge. He was caught and realized it. His only chance now was to make a clean breast of what he knew.

"Where shall I begin?" he asked weakly, his voice quavering.

"At the beginning. We've got plenty of time," Kirby replied.

"Well, you know how yore uncle beat me in that Dry Valley scheme of his. First place, I didn't know he couldn't get water enough. If he give the farmers a crooked deal, I hadn't a thing to do with that. When I talked up the idea to them I was actin' in good faith."

"Lie number one," interrupted Olson bitterly.

"Hadn't we better let him tell his story in his own way?" Kirby suggested. "If we don't start any arguments he ain't so liable to get mixed up in his facts."

"By my way of figurin' he owed me about four to six thousand dollars he wouldn't pay," Hull went on. "I tried to get him to see it right, thinkin' at first he was just bull-headed. But pretty soon I got wise to it that he plain intended to do me. O' course I wasn't goin' to stand for that, an' I told him so."

"What do you mean when you say you weren't goin' to stand for it. My uncle told a witness that you said you'd give him two days, then you'd come at him with a gun."

The fat man mopped a perspiring face with his bandanna. His eyes dodged. "Maybe I told him so. I don't recollect. When he's sore a fellow talks a heap o' foolishness. I wasn't lookin' for trouble, though."

"Not even after he threw you downstairs?"

"No, sir. He didn't exactly throw me down. I kinda slipped. If I'd been expectin' trouble would I have let Mrs. Hull go up to his rooms with me?"

Kirby had his own view on that point, but he did not express it. He rather thought that Mrs. Hull had driven her husband upstairs and had gone along to see that he stood to his guns. Once in the presence of Cunningham, she had taken the bit in her own teeth, driven to it by temper. This was his guess. He knew he might be wrong.

"But I knew how violent he was," the fat man went on. "So I slipped my six-gun into my pocket before we started."

"What kind of a gun?" Kirby asked.

"A sawed-off .38."

"Do you own an automatic?"

"No, sir. Wouldn't know how to work one. Never had one in my hands."

"You'll get a chance to prove that," Olson jeered.

"He doesn't have to prove it. His statement is assumed to be true until it is proved false," Kirby answered.

Hull's eyes signaled gratitude. He was where he needed a friend badly. He would be willing to pay almost any price for Lane's help.

"Cunningham had left the door open, I reckon because it was hot. I started to push the bell, but Mrs. Hull she walked right in an' of course then I followed. He wasn't in the sittin'-room, but we seen him smokin' in the small room off'n the parlor. So we just went in on him.

"He acted mean right from the start--hollered at Mrs. Hull what was we doin' there. She up an' told him, real civil, that we wanted to talk the business over an' see if we couldn't come to some agreement about it. He kep' right on insultin' her, an' one thing led to another. Mrs. Hull she didn't get mad, but she told him where he'd have to head in at. Fact is, we'd about made up our minds to sue him. Well, he went clean off the handle then, an' said he wouldn't do a thing for us, an' how we was to get right out."

Hull paused to wipe the small sweat beads from his forehead. He was not enjoying himself. A cold terror constricted his heart. Was he slipping a noose over his own head? Was he telling more than he should? He wished his wife were here to give him a hint. She had the brains as well as the courage and audacity of the family.

"Well, sir, I claim self-defense," Hull went on presently. "A man's got no call to stand by an' see his wife shot down. Cunningham reached for a drawer an' started to pull out an automatic gun. Knowin' him, I was scared. I beat him to it an' lammed him one over the head with my gun. My idea was to head him off from drawin' on Mrs. Hull, but I reckon I hit him harder than I'd aimed to. It knocked him senseless."

"And then?" Kirby said, when he paused.

"I was struck all of a heap, but Mrs. Hull she didn't lose her presence of mind. She went to the window an' pulled down the curtain. Then we figured, seein' as how we'd got in bad so far, we might as well try a bluff. We tied yore uncle to the chair, intendin' for to make him sign a check before we turned him loose. Right at that time the telephone rang."

"Did you answer the call?"

"Yes, sir. It kept ringing. Finally the wife said to answer it, pretendin' I was Cunningham. We was kinda scared some one might butt in on us. Yore uncle had said he was expectin' some folks."

"What did you do?"

"I took up the receiver an' listened. Then I said, 'Hello!' Fellow at the other end said, 'This you, Uncle James?' Kinda grufflike, I said, 'Yes.' Then, 'James talkin',' he said. 'We're on our way over now.' I was struck all of a heap, not knowin' what to say. So I called back, 'Who?' He came back with, 'Phyllis an' I.' I hung up."

"And then?"

"We talked it over, the wife an' me. We didn't know how close James, as he called himself, was when he was talkin'. He might be at the drug-store on the next corner for all we knew. We were in one hell of a hole, an' it didn't look like there was any way out. We decided to beat it right then. That's what we did."

"You left the apartment?"

"Yes, sir."

"With my uncle still tied up?"

Hull nodded. "We got panicky an' cut our stick."

"Did anybody see you go?"

"The Jap janitor was in the hall fixin' one of the windows that was stuck."

"Did he say anything?"

"Not then."

"Afterward?"

"He come to me after the murder was discovered--next day, I reckon it was, in the afternoon, just before the inquest--and said could I lend him five hundred dollars. Well, I knew right away it was a hold-up, but I couldn't do a thing. I dug up the money an' let him have it."

"Has he bothered you since?"

Hull hesitated. "Well--no."

"Meanin' that he has?"

Hull flew the usual flag of distress, a red bandanna mopping a perspiring, apoplectic face. "He kinda hinted he wanted more money."

"Did you give it to him?"

"I didn't have it right handy. I stalled."

"That's the trouble with a blackmailer. Give way to him once an' he's got you in his power," Kirby said. "The thing to do is to tell him right off the reel to go to Halifax."

"If a fellow can afford to," Olson put in significantly. "When you've just got through a little private murder of yore own, you ain't exactly free to tell one of the witnesses against you to go very far."

"Tell you I didn't kill Cunningham," Hull retorted sullenly. "Some one else must 'a' come in an' did that after I left."

"Sounds reasonable," Olson murmured with heavy sarcasm.

"Was the hall lit when you came out of my uncle's rooms?" Kirby asked suddenly.

"Yes. I told you Shibo was workin' at one of the windows."

"So Shibo saw you and Mrs. Hull plainly?"

"I ain't denyin' he saw us," Hull replied testily.

"No, you don't deny anything we can prove on you," the Dry Valley man jeered.

"And Shibo didn't let up on you. He kept annoyin' you afterward," the cattleman persisted.

"Well, he--I reckon he aims to be reasonable now," Hull said uneasily.

"Why now? What's changed his views?"

The fat man looked again at this brown-faced youngster with the single-track mind who never quit till he got what he wanted. Why was he shaking the bones of Shibo's blackmailing. Did he know more than he had told? It was on the tip of Hull's tongue to tell something more, a damnatory fact against himself. But he stopped in time. He was in deep enough water already. He could not afford to tell the dynamic cattleman anything that would make an enemy of him.

"Well, I reckon he can't get blood from a turnip, as the old sayin' is," the land agent returned.

Kirby knew that Hull was concealing something material, but he saw he could not at the present moment wring it from him. He had not, in point of fact, the faintest idea of what it was. Therefore he could not lay 'hold of any lever with which to pry it loose. He harked back to another point.

"Do you know that my cousin and Miss Harriman came to see my uncle that night? I mean do you know of your own eyesight that they ever reached his apartment?"

"Well, we know they reached the Paradox an' went up in the elevator. Me an' the wife watched at the window. Yore cousin James wasn't with Miss Harriman. The dude one was with her."

"Jack!" exclaimed Kirby, astonished.

"Yep."

"How do you know? How did you recognize them?"

"Saw 'em as they passed under the street light about twenty feet from our window. We couldn't 'a' been mistook as to the dude fellow. O' course we don't know Miss Harriman, but the woman walkin' beside the young fellow surely looked like the one that fainted at the inquest when you was testifyin' how you found yore uncle dead in the chair. I reckon when you said it she got to seein' a picture of one of the young fellows gunnin' their uncle."

"One of them. You just said James wasn't with her."

"No, he come first. Maybe three-four minutes before the others."

"What time did he reach the Paradox?"

"It might 'a' been ten or maybe only five minutes after we left yore uncle's room. The wife an' me was talkin' it over whether I hadn't ought to slip back upstairs and untie yore uncle before they got here. Then he come an' that settled it. I couldn't go."

"Can you give me the exact time he reached the apartment house?"

"Well, I'll say it was a quarter to ten."

"Do you know or are you guessin'?"

"I know. Our clock struck the quarter to whilst we looked at them comin' down the street."

"At them or at him?"

"At him, I mean."

"Can't stick to his own story," Olson grunted.

"A slip of the tongue. I meant him."

"And Jack and the lady were three or four minutes behind him?" Kirby reiterated.

"Yes."

"Was your clock exactly right?"

"May be five minutes fast. It gains."

"You know they turned in at the Paradox?"

"All three of 'em. Mrs. Hull she opened the door a mite an' saw 'em go up in the elevator. It moves kinda slow, you know. The heavy-set young fellow went up first. Then two-three minutes later the elevator went down an' the dude an' the young lady went up."

Kirby put his foot on the cement bench and rested his forearm on his knee. The cattleman's steady eyes were level with those of the unhappy man making the confession.

"Did you at any time hear the sound of a shot?"

"Well, I--I heard somethin'. At the time I thought maybe it was a tire in the street blowin' out. But come to think of it later we figured it was a shot."

"You don't know for sure."

"Well, come to that I--I don't reckon I do. Not to say for certain sure."

A tense litheness had passed into the rough rider's figure. It was as though every sense were alert to catch and register impressions.

"At what time was it you thought you heard this shot?"

"I dunno, to the minute."

"Was it before James Cunningham went up in the elevator? Was it between the time he went up an' the other two went up? Or was it after Jack Cunningham an' Miss Harriman passed on the way up?"

"Seems to me it was--"

"Hold on." Kirby raised a hand in protest. "I don't want any guesses. You know or you don't. Which is it?"

"I reckon it was between the time yore cousin James went up an' the others followed."

"You reckon? I'm askin' for definite information. A man's life may hang on this." The cattleman's eyes were ice-cold.

Hull swallowed a lump in his fat throat before he committed himself. "Well, it was."

"Was between the two trips of the elevator, you mean?"

"Yes."

"Your wife heard this sound, too?"

"Yep. We spoke of it afterward."

"Do you know anything else that could possibly have had any bearing on my uncle's death?"

"No, sir. Honest I don't."

Olson shot a question at the man on the grill. "Did you kill the Jap servant, too, as well as his boss?"

"I didn't kill either the one or the other, so help me."

"Do you know anything at all about the Jap's death? Did you see anything suspicious going on at any time?" Kirby asked.

"No, sir. Nothin' a-tall."

The rough rider signaled the taxicab, which was circling the lake at the foot of the hill. Presently it came up the incline and took on its passengers.

"Drive to the Paradox Apartments," Kirby directed.

He left Hull outside in the cab while he went in to interview his wife. The lean woman with the forbidding countenance opened the door.

Metaphorically speaking, Kirby landed his knockout instantly. "I've come to see you on serious business, Mrs. Hull. Your husband has confessed how he did for my uncle. Unless you tell the whole truth he's likely to go to the death cell."

She gasped, her fear-filled eyes fastened on him. Her hand moved blindly to the side of the door for support. _

Read next: Chapter 38. A Full Morning

Read previous: Chapter 36. A Ride In A Taxi

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