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Tangled Trails: A Western Detective Story, a novel by William MacLeod Raine |
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Chapter 41. Enter X |
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_ CHAPTER XLI. ENTER X Shibo stood on the threshold and sent a swift glance around the room. He had expected to meet James alone. That first slant look of the long eyes forewarned him that Nemesis was at hand. But he faced without a flicker of the lids the destiny he had prepared for himself. "You write me note come see you now," he said to Cunningham. James showed surprise. "No, I think not." "You no want me?" The Chief's hand fell on the shoulder of the janitor. "_I_ want you, Shibo." "You write me note come here now?" "No, I reckon Mr. Lane wrote that." "I plenty busy. What you want me for?" "For the murders of James Cunningham and Horikawa." Before the words were out of his mouth the Chief had his prisoner handcuffed. Shibo turned to Kirby. "You tellum police I killum Mr. Cunnin'lam and Horikawa?" "Yes." "I plenty sorry I no kill you." "You did your best, Shibo. Took three shots at ten feet. Rotten shooting." "Do you mean that he actually tried to kill you?" James asked in surprise. "In the Denmark Building, the other night, at eleven o'clock. And I'll say he made a bad mistake when he tried an' didn't get away with it. For I knew that the man who was aimin' to gun me was the same one that had killed Uncle James. He'd got to worryin' for fear I was followin' too hot a trail." "Did you recognize him?" Jack said. "Not right then. I was too busy duckin' for cover. Safety first was my motto right then. No, when I first had time to figure on who could be the gentleman that was so eager to make me among those absent, I rather laid it to Cousin James, with Mr. Cass Hull second on my list of suspects. The fellow had a searchlight an' he flashed it on me. I could see above it a bandanna handkerchief over the face. I'd seen a bandanna like it in Hull's hands. But I had to eliminate Hull. The gunman on the stairs had small, neat feet, no larger than a woman's. Hull's feet are--well, sizable." They were. Huge was not too much to call them. As a dozen eyes focused on his boots the fat man drew them back of the rungs of his chair. This attention to personal details of his conformation was embarrassing. "Those small feet stuck in my mind," Kirby went on. "Couldn't seem to get rid of the idea. They put James out of consideration, unless, of course, he had hired a killer, an' that didn't look reasonable to me. I'll tell the truth. I thought of Mrs. Hull dressed as a man--an' then I thought of Shibo." "Had you suspected him before?" This from Olson. "Not of the murders. I had learned that he had seen the Hulls come from my uncle's rooms an' had kept quiet. Hull admitted that he had been forced to bribe him. I tackled Shibo with it an' threatened to tell the police. Evidently he became frightened an' tried to murder me. I got a note makin' an appointment at the Denmark Building at eleven in the night. The writer promised to tell me who killed my uncle. I took a chance an' went." The cattleman turned to Mrs. Hull. "Will you explain about the note, please?" The gaunt, tight-lipped woman rose, as though she had been called on at school to recite. "I wrote the note," she said. "Shibo made me. I didn't know he meant to kill Mr. Lane. He said he'd tell everything if I didn't." She sat down. She had finished her little piece. "So I began to focus on Shibo. He might be playin' a lone hand, or he might be a tool of my cousin James. A detective hired by me saw him leave James's office. That didn't absolutely settle the point. He might have seen somethin' an' be blackmailin' him too. That was the way of it, wasn't it?" He turned point-blank to Cunningham. "Yes," the broker said. "He had us right--not only me, but Jack and Phyllis, too. I couldn't let him drag her into it. The day you saw me with the strained tendon I had been with him and Horikawa in the apartment next to the one Uncle James rented. We quarreled. I got furious and caught Shibo by the throat to shake the little scoundrel. He gave my arm some kind of a jiu-jitsu twist. He was at me every day. He never let up. He meant to bleed me heavily. We couldn't come to terms. I hated to yield to him." "And did you?" "I promised him an answer soon." "No doubt he came to-day thinkin' he was goin' to get it." Kirby went back to the previous question. "Next time I saw Shibo I took a look at his feet. He was wearin' a pair o' shoes that looked to me mighty like those worn by the man that ambushed me. They didn't have any cap pieces across the toes. I'd noticed that even while he was shootin' at me. It struck me that it would be a good idea to look over his quarters in the basement. Shibo has one human weakness. He's a devotee of the moving pictures. Nearly every night he takes in a show on Curtis Street. The Chief lent me a man, an' last night we went through his room at the Paradox. We found there a flashlight, a bandanna handkerchief with holes cut in it for the eyes, an' in the mattress two thousand dollars in big bills. We left them where we found them, for we didn't want to alarm Shibo." The janitor looked at him without emotion. "You plenty devil man," he said. "We hadn't proved yet that Shibo was goin' it alone," Kirby went on, paying no attention to the interruption. "Some one might be usin' him as a tool. Horikawa's confession clears that up." Kirby handed to the Chief of Police the sheets of paper found in the apartment where the valet was killed. Attached to these by a clip was the translation. The Chief read this last aloud. Horikawa, according to the confession, had been in Cunningham's rooms sponging and pressing a suit of clothes when the promoter came home on the afternoon of the day of his death. Through a half-open door he had seen his master open his pocket-book and count a big roll of bills. The figures on the outside one showed that it was a treasury note for fifty dollars. The valet had told Shibo later and they had talked it over, but with no thought in Horikawa's mind of robbery. He was helping Shibo fix a window screen at the end of the hall that evening when they saw the Hulls come out of Cunningham's apartment. Something furtive in their manner struck the valet's attention. It was in the line of his duties to drop in and ask whether the promoter's clothes needed any attention for the next day. He discovered after he was in the living-room that Shibo was at his heels. They found Cunningham trussed up to a chair in the smaller room. He was unconscious, evidently from a blow in the head. The first impulse of Horikawa had been to free him and carry him to the bedroom. But Shibo interfered. He pushed his hand into the pocket of the smoking-jacket and drew out a pocket-book. It bulged with bills. In two sentences Shibo sketched a plan of operations. They would steal the money and lay the blame for it on the Hulls. Cunningham's own testimony would convict the fat man and his wife. The evidence of the two Japanese would corroborate his. Cunningham's eyelids flickered. There was a bottle of chloroform on the desk. The promoter had recently suffered pleurisy pains and had been advised by his doctor to hold a little of the drug against the place where they caught him most sharply. Shibo snatched up the bottle, drenched a handkerchief with some of its contents, and dropped the handkerchief over the wounded man's face. A drawer was open within reach of Cunningham's hand. In it lay an automatic pistol The two men were about to hurry away. Shibo turned at the door. To his dismay he saw that the handkerchief had slipped from Cunningham's face and the man was looking at him. He had recovered consciousness. Cunningham's eyes condemned him to death. In their steely depths there was a gleam of triumph. He was about to call for help. Shibo knew what that meant. He and Horikawa were in a strange land. They would be sent to prison, an example made of them because they were foreigners. Automatically, without an instant of delay, he acted to protect himself. Two strides took him back to Cunningham. He reached across his body for the automatic and sent a bullet into the brain of the man bound to the chair. Horikawa, to judge by his confession, was thunderstruck. He was an amiable little fellow who never had stepped outside the law. Now he was caught in the horrible meshes of a murder. He went to pieces and began to sob. Shibo stopped him sharply. Then they heard some one coming. It was too late to get away by the door. They slipped through the window to the fire escape and from it to the window of the adjoining apartment. Horikawa, still sick with fear, stumbled against the rail as he clambered over it and cut his face badly. Shibo volunteered to go downstairs and get him some sticking plaster. On the way down Shibo had met the younger James Cunningham as he came out of the elevator. Returning with first-aid supplies a few minutes later, he saw Jack and Phyllis. It was easy to read between the lines that Shibo's will had dominated Horikawa. He had been afraid that his companion's wounded face would lead to his arrest. If so, he knew it would be followed by a confession. He forced Horikawa to hide in the vacant apartment till the wound should heal. Meanwhile he fed him and brought him newspapers. There were battles of will between the two. Horikawa was terribly frightened when he read that his flight had brought suspicion on him. He wanted to give himself up at once to the police. They quarreled. Shibo always gained the temporary advantage, but he saw that under a grilling third degree his countryman would break down. He killed Horikawa because he knew he could not trust him. This last fact was not, of course, in Horikawa's confession. But the dread of it was there. The valet had come to fear Shibo. He was convinced in his shrinking heart that the man meant to get rid of him. It was under some impulse of self-protection that he had written the statement. Shibo heard the confession read without the twitching of a facial muscle. He shrugged his shoulders, accepting the inevitable with the fatalism of his race. "He weak. He no good. He got yellow streak. I bossum," was his comment. "Did you kill him?" asked the Chief. "I killum both--Cunnin'lam and Horikawa. You kill me now maybe yes." Officers led him away. Phyllis Cunningham came up to Kirby and offered him her hand. "You're hard on James. I don't know why you're so hard. But you've cleared us all. I say thanks awf'ly for that. I've been horribly frightened. That's the truth. It seemed as though there wasn't any way out for us. Come and see us and let's all make up, Cousin Kirby." Kirby did not say he would. But he gave her his strong grip and friendly smile. Just then his face did not look hard. He could not tell her why he had held his cousin on the grill so long, that it had been in punishment for what he had done to a defenseless friend of his in the name of love. What he did say suited her perhaps as well. "I like you better right now than I ever did before, Cousin Phyllis. You're a good little sport an' you'll do to ride the river with." Jack could not quite let matters stand as they did. He called on Kirby that evening at his hotel. "It's about James I want to see you," he said, then stuck for lack of words with which to clothe his idea. He prodded at the rug with the point of his cane. "Yes, about James," Kirby presently reminded him, smiling. "He's not so bad as you think he is," Jack blurted out. "He's as selfish as the devil, isn't he?" "Well, he is, and he isn't. He's got a generous streak in him. You may not believe it, but he went on your bond because he liked you." "Come, Jack, you're tryin' to seduce my judgment by the personal appeal," Kirby answered, laughing. "I know I am. What I want to say is this. I believe he would have married Esther McLean if it hadn't been for one thing. He fell desperately in love with Phyllis afterward. The odd thing is that she loves him, too. They didn't dare to be above-board about it on account of Uncle James. They treated him shabbily, of course. I don't deny that." "You can hardly deny that," Kirby agreed. "But, damn it, one swallow doesn't make a summer. You've seen the worst side of him all the way through." "I dare say I have." Kirby let his hand fall on the well-tailored shoulder of his cousin. "But I haven't seen the worst side of his brother Jack. He's a good scout. Come up to Wyoming this fall an' we'll go huntin' up in the Jackson Hole country. What say?" "Nothing I'd like better," answered Jack promptly. "We'll arrange a date later. Just now I've got to beat it. Goin' drivin' with a lady." Jack scored for once. "_She's_ a good scout, too." "If she isn't, I'll say there never was one," his cousin assented. _ |
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