gave Billy a fair show; there were witnesses to that part of it. Manuel
told Sanderson to take his gun, which the woman was trying to hide, get
on his horse, and ride to the north corner of the corral, where he was
to wheel and begin shooting--or be shot in the back. The programme was
carried out to the letter. Manuel walked his own horse to the south
corner, and the two men wheeled and began to shoot. Three or four shots
were fired by each before Billy was hit."
"Um!" said the playwright thoughtfully. "There were witnesses, you say?
Some of the Craigmiles cow-boys, I suppose. You took their word for
these little details?"
Bromley made a sorrowful face. "No; it was Billy's own story. The poor
fellow lived long enough to tell me what I've been passing on to you. He
tried to tell me something else, something about Manuel and the woman,
but there wasn't time enough."
Wingfield had found the long-stemmed pipe and was filling it from the
jar of tobacco on the table. "Was that all?" he inquired.
"All but the finish--which was rather heart-breaking. When he could no
longer speak he kept pointing to me and to his rifle, which had been
brought in with him. I understood he was trying to tell me that I should
keep the gun."
"You did keep it?"
"Yes; I have it yet."
"Let me have a look at it, will you?"
The weapon was found, and Wingfield examined it curiously. "Is it
loaded?" he asked.
Bromley nodded. "I guess it is. It hasn't been out of its case or that
cupboard since the day of the killing."
The playwright worked the lever cautiously, and an empty cartridge shell
flipped out and fell to the floor. "William Sanderson's last shot," he
remarked reflectively, and went on slowly pumping the lever until eleven
loaded cartridges lay in an orderly row on the table. "You were wrong in
your count of the number of shots fired, or else the magazine was not
full when Sanderson began," he commented. Then, as Blacklock was about
to pick up one of the cartridges: "Hold on, Jerry; don't disturb them,
if you please."
Blacklock laughed nervously. "Mr. Wingfield's got a notion," he said.
"He's always getting 'em."
"I have," was the quiet reply. "But first let me ask you, Bromley: What
sort of a rifle marksman was Sanderson?"
"One of the best I ever knew. I have seen him drill a silver dollar
three times out of five at a hundred yards when he was feeling well.
There is your element of mystery again: I could never understand how he
missed the Mexican three or four times in succession at less than
seventy-five yards--unless Manuel's first shot was the one that hit him.
That might have been it. Billy was all sand; the kind of man to go on
shooting after he was killed."
"My notion is that he didn't have the slightest chance in the wide
world," was Wingfield's comment. "Let us prove or disprove it if we
can," and he opened a blade of his penknife and dug the point of it into
the bullet of the cartridge first extracted from the dead man's gun.
"There is my notion--and a striking example of Mexican fair play," he
added, when the bullet, a harmless pellet of white clay, carefully
moulded and neatly coated with lead foil, fell apart under the
knife-blade.
[Illustration: "There is my notion--and a striking example of Mexican
fair play."]
The playwright's audience was interested now, beyond all question of
doubt. If Wingfield had suddenly hypnotised the three who saw this
unexpected confirmation of his theory of treachery in the Sanderson
tragedy, the awed silence that fell upon the little group around the
table could not have been more profound. It was Bromley who broke the
spell, prefacing his exclamation with a mirthless laugh.
"Your gifts of deduction are almost uncanny, Wingfield," he asserted.
"How could you reason your way around to that?"--pointing at the clay
bullet.
"I didn't," was the calm reply. "Imagination can double discount pure
logic in the investigative field, nine times out of ten. And in this
instance it wasn't my imagination: it was another man's. I once read a
story in which the author made his villain kill a man with this same
little trick of sham bullets. I merely remembered the story. Now let us
see how many more there are to go with this."
There were four of the cartridges capped with the dummy bullets; the
remaining seven being genuine. Wingfield did the sum arithmetical aloud.
"Four and five are nine, and nine and seven are sixteen. Sanderson
started out that day with a full magazine, we'll assume. He fired five
of these dummies--with perfect immunity for Manuel--and here are the
other four. If the woman had had a little more time, when she was
pretending to hide the gun, she would have pumped out all of the good
cartridges. Being somewhat hurried, she exchanged only nine, which, in
an even game and shot for shot, gave Manuel ten chances to Sanderson's
one. It was a cinch."
Ballard sat back in his chair handling the empty rifle. Bromley's pallid
face turned gray. The tragedy had touched him very sharply at the time;
and this new and unexpected evidence of gross treachery revived all the
horror of the day when Sanderson had been carried in and laid upon the
office couch to die.
"Poor Billy!" he said. "It was a cold-blooded murder, and he knew it.
That was what he was trying to tell me--and couldn't."
"That was my hypothesis from the first," Wingfield asserted promptly.
"But the motive seemed to be lacking; it still seems to be lacking. Have
either of you two imagination enough to help me out?"
"The motive?" queried Bromley. "Why, that remains the same, doesn't
it?--more's the pity."
The playwright had lighted the long-stemmed pipe, and was thoughtfully
blowing smoke rings toward the new patch in the bungalow ceiling.
"Not if my theory is to stand, Mr. Bromley. You see, I am proceeding
confidently upon the supposition that Sanderson wasn't messing in
Manuel's domestic affairs. I can't believe for a moment that it was a
quarrel over the woman, with Manuel's jealousy to account for the
killing. It's too absurdly preposterous. Settling that fact to my own
complete satisfaction, I began to search for the real motive, and it is
for you to say whether I am right or wrong. Tell me: was Sanderson more
than casually interested in the details of Braithwaite's drowning? That
story must have been pretty fresh and raw in everybody's recollection at
that time."
Bromley's rejoinder was promptly affirmative. "It was; and Sanderson
_was_ interested. As Braithwaite's successor, and with the fight between
the company and the colonel transferred to him, he couldn't shirk his
responsibility. Now that you recall it, I remember very well that he had
notions of his own about Braithwaite's taking off. He was a quiet sort;
didn't talk much; but what little he did say gave me to understand that
he suspected foul play of some kind. And here's your theory again, Mr.
Wingfield: if a hint of what he suspected ever got wind in the camp, it
would account for the superstitious twist given to the drowning by
Hoskins and the others, wouldn't it?"
Wingfield smote the table with his fist.
"There is your connecting link!" he exclaimed. "We have just proved
beyond doubt that Sanderson wasn't killed in a fair fight: he was
murdered, and the murder was carefully planned beforehand. By the same
token, Braithwaite was murdered, too! Recall the circumstances as they
have been related by the eye-witnesses: when they found the Government
man and took him out of the river, his skull was crushed and both arms
were broken ... see here!" he threw himself quickly into the attitude of
one fishing from a riverbank. "Suppose somebody creeps up behind me with
a club raised to brain me: I get a glimpse of him or his shadow, dodge,
fling up my arms, so--and one good, smashing blow does the business.
That's all; or all but one little item. Manuel's woman knows who struck
that blow, and Sanderson was trying to bribe her to tell."
If the announcement had been an explosion to rock the bungalow on its
foundations, the effect could scarcely have been more striking. Ballard
flung the empty gun aside and sprang to his feet. The collegian sat down
weakly and stared. Bromley's jaw dropped, and he glared across at
Wingfield as if the clever deduction were a mortal affront to be crammed
down the throat of its originator.
The playwright's smile was the eye-wrinkling of one who prides himself
upon the ability to keep his head when others are panic-stricken.
"Seems to knock you fellows all in a heap," he remarked, calmly. "What
have you been doing all these months that you haven't dug it out for
yourselves?"
Bromley was moistening his lips.
"Go on, Mr. Wingfield, if you please. Tell us all you know--or think you
know."
"There is more; a good bit more," was the cool reply. "Three months ago
you had a train wreck on the railroad--two men killed. 'Rough track,'
was the cause assigned, Mr. Bromley; but that was one time when your
cautious chief, Macpherson, fell down. The two surviving trainmen,
questioned separately by me within the past week, both say that there
were at least inferential proofs of pulled spikes and a loosened rail. A
little later one man was killed and two were crippled by the premature
explosion of a charge of dynamite in the quarry. Carelessness, this
time, on the part of the men involved; and _you_ said it, Mr. Bromley.
It was nothing of the kind. Some one had substituted a coil of
quick-firing fuse for the ordinary slow-match the men had been using,
and the thing went off before the cry of 'fire' could be given. How do I
know?"
"Yes; how _do_ you know?" demanded Bromley.
"By a mere fluke, and not by any process of deduction, in this instance,
as it happens. One of the survivors was crafty enough to steal the coil
of substituted fuse, having some vague notion of suing the company for
damages for supplying poor material. Like other men of his class, he
gave up the notion when he got well of his injuries; but it was revived
again the other day when one of his comrades told him I was a lawyer. He
made a date with me, told me his tale, and showed me the carefully
preserved coil of bad fuse. I cut off a bit of it and did a little
experimenting. Look at this." He took a piece of fuse from his pocket,
uncoiled it upon the table, and applied a match. It went off like a
flash of dry gunpowder, burning through from end to end in a fraction of
a second.
"Go on," said Ballard, speaking for the first time since the playwright
had begun his unravelling of the tangled threads of disaster.
"We dismiss the quarry catastrophe and come to the fall of a great
boulder from the hill-crags on the farther side of the river some two
weeks later. This heaven-sent projectile smashed into the dam structure,
broke out a chunk of the completed masonry, killed two men outright and
injured half a dozen others--correct me if I distort the details, Mr.
Bromley. This time there was no investigation worthy of the name, if I
have gathered my information carefully enough. Other rocks had fallen
from the same slope; and after Fitzpatrick had assured himself that
there were no more likely to fall, the matter was charged off to the
accident account. If you and Michael Fitzpatrick had been the typical
coroner's jury, Mr. Bromley, you couldn't have been more easily
satisfied with purely inferential evidence. I wasn't satisfied until I
had climbed painfully to the almost inaccessible ledge from which the
boulder had fallen. Once there, however, the 'act of God' became very
plainly the act of man. The 'heel' used as a fulcrum in levering the
rock from the ledge was still in place; and the man in the case, in his
haste or in his indifference to discovery, had left the iron crowbar
with which he had pried the stone from its bed. The crowbar is still
there."
"Is that all?" asked Bromley, wetting his lips again.
"By no manner of means," was the equable rejoinder. "I could go on
indefinitely. The falling derrick may or may not have been aimed
specially at Macpherson; but it committed premeditated murder, just the
same--the broken guy cable was rotted in two with acid. Again you will
demand to know how I know. I satisfied myself by making a few simple
tests on the broken ends with chemicals filched out of Colonel
Craigmiles's laboratory up yonder in the second story of his electric
plant. No; I'm no chemist. But you will find, when you come to write
stories and plays, that a smattering knowledge of every man's trade
comes in handy. Otherwise you'll be writing yourself down as a
blundering ass in every second paragraph."
Wingfield paused, but it was only to relight his pipe. When the tobacco
was burning again he went on, in the same even tone.
"The falling derrick brings us down to your _regime_, Mr. Ballard. I
pass by the incident of the hurled stone that made that awkward patch
necessary in your ceiling: you yourself have admitted that the stone
could not have come from the blasting in the quarry. But there was
another railroad accident which deserves mention. No doubt Hoskins has
told you what he saw almost on the very spot where Braithwaite's
snuffing-out occurred. He thought it was Braithwaite's ghost--he still
thinks so. But we are less credulous; or, at least, I was. Like
Sanderson, I have been making friends--or enemies--at the Craigmiles
cattle ranch. In fact, I was down there the day following Hoskins's
misfortune. Curiously enough, there was another man who saw the
Braithwaite ghost--one 'Scotty,' a cow-boy. He was night-herding on the
ranch bunch of beef cattle on the night of the accident, and he saw the
ghost, leather leggings, Norfolk shooting-jacket, and double-visored
British cap all complete, riding a horse down to the river a little
while before the train came around the curve. And after the hullabaloo,
he saw it again, riding quietly back to the ranch."
Bromley was gripping the edge of the table and exchanging glances with
Ballard. It was the Kentuckian who broke the silence which fell upon the
group around the table when the playwright made an end.
"Summing it all up, what is your conclusion, Wingfield? You have reached
one long before this, I take it."
The amateur Vidocq made a slow sign of assent.
"As I have told you, I went into this thing out of sheer curiosity, and
partly because there were obstructions put in my way. That's human
nature. But afterward it laid hold of me and held me by its own grip.
I'm not sure that there have been any simon-pure accidents at all. So
far as I have gone, everything that has happened has been made to
happen; has been carefully planned and prepared for in advance by some
one of more than ordinary intelligence--and vindictiveness. And,
unhappily, the motive is only too painfully apparent. The work on this
irrigation project of yours is to be hampered and delayed by all
possible means, even to the sacrificing of human life."
Again there was a silence in the thick-walled office room; a silence so
strained that the clickings of the stone hammers in the yard and the
rasping cacophonies of the hoisting engines at the dam seemed far
removed. It was Bromley who spoke first, and his question was pointedly
suggestive.
"You haven't stopped with the broad generalisation, Mr. Wingfield?"
"Meaning that I have found the man who is responsible for all these
desperate and deadly doings? I am afraid I have. There would seem to be
only one man in the world whose personal interests are at stake.
Naturally, I haven't gone very deeply into that part of it. But didn't
somebody tell me there is a fight on in the courts between the Arcadia
Company and Colonel Craigmiles?--a fight in which delay is the one thing
needful for the colonel?"
Ballard came back to the table and stood within arm's-reach of the
speaker. His square jaw had taken on the fighting angle, and his eyes
were cold and hard.
"What are you going to do about it, Mr. Wingfield? Have you arrived at
that conclusion, also?"
Wingfield's doubtful glance was in young Blacklock's direction, and his
reply was evasive.
"That is a very natural question; but doesn't it strike you, Mr.
Ballard, that this is hardly the time or place to go into it?"
"No."
"Very well.... Jerry, what we are talking about now is strictly between
gentlemen: do you understand?"
"Sure thing," said the collegian.
"You ask me what I am going to do, Mr. Ballard; and in return I'll ask
you to put yourself in my place. Clearly, it is a law-abiding citizen's
plain duty to go and lay the bald facts before the nearest prosecuting
attorney and let the law take its course. On the other hand, I'm only a
man like other men, and----"
"And you are Colonel Craigmiles's guest. Go on," said Ballard,
straightening the path of hesitation for him.
"That's it," nodded Wingfield. "As you say, I am his guest;
and--er--well, there is another reason why I should be the last person
in the world to make or meddle. At first, I was brashly incredulous, as
anyone would be who was mixing and mingling with the colonel in the
daily amenities. Later, when the ugly fact persisted and I was obliged
to admit it, the personal factor entered the equation. It's bad
medicine, any way you decide to take it."
"Still you are not telling us what you mean to do, Mr. Wingfield,"
Bromley reminded him gently.
"No; but I don't mind telling you. I have about decided upon a weak sort
of compromise. This thing will come out--it's bound to come out in the
pretty immediate hence; and I don't want to be here when the sheriff
arrives. I think I shall have a very urgent call to go back to New
York."
Bromley laid hold of the table and pulled himself to his feet; but it
was Ballard who said, slowly, as one who weighs his words and the full
import of them: "Mr. Wingfield, you are more different kinds of an ass
than I took you to be, and that is saying a great deal. Out of a mass of
hearsay, the idle stories of a lot of workmen whose idea of humour has
been to make a butt of you, you have built up this fantastic fairy tale.
I am charitable enough to believe that you couldn't help it; it is a
part of your equipment as a professional maker of fairy tales. But there
are two things for which I shall take it upon myself to answer
personally. You will not leave Castle 'Cadia until your time is out; and
you'll not leave this room until you have promised the three of us that
this cock-and-bull story of yours stops right here with its first
telling."
"That's so," added Bromley, with a quiet menace in his tone.
It was the playwright's turn to gasp, and he did it, very realistically.
"You--you don't believe it? with all the three-sheet-poster evidence
staring you in the face? Why, great Joash! you must be stark, staring
mad--both of you!" he raved. And then to Blacklock: "Are you in it, too,
Jerry?"
"I guess I am," returned the collegian, meaning no more than that he
felt constrained to stand with the men of his chosen profession.
Wingfield drew a long breath and with it regained the impersonal heights
of the unemotional observer. "Of course, it is just as you please," he
said, carelessly. "I had a foolish notion I was doing you two a good
turn; but if you choose to take the other view of it--well, there is no
accounting for tastes. Drink your own liquor and give the house a good
name. I'll dig up my day-pay later on: it's cracking good material, you
know."
"That is another thing," Ballard went on, still more decisively. "If you
ever put pen to paper with these crazy theories of yours for a basis, I
shall make it my business to hunt you down as I would a wild beast."
"So shall I," echoed Bromley.
Wingfield rose and put the long-stemmed pipe carefully aside.
"You are a precious pair of bally idiots," he remarked, quite without
heat. Then he looked at his watch and spoke pointedly to Blacklock.
"You're forgetting Miss Elsa's fishing party to the upper canyon, aren't
you? Suppose we drive around to Castle 'Cadia in the car. You can send
Otto back after Mr. Bromley later on." And young Blacklock was so
blankly dazed by the cool impudence of the suggestion that he consented
and left the bungalow with the playwright.
For some little time after the stuttering purr of the motor-car had died
away the two men sat as Wingfield had left them, each busy with his own
thoughts. Bromley was absently fingering the cartridges from Sanderson's
rifle, mute proofs of the truth of the playwright's theories, and
Ballard seemed to have forgotten that he had promised Fitzpatrick to run
a line for an additional side-track in the railroad yard.
"Do you blame me, Loudon?" he asked, after the silence had wrought its
perfect work.
"No; there was nothing else to do. But I couldn't help being sorry for
him."
"So was I," was the instant rejoinder. "Wingfield is all kinds of a
decent fellow; and the way he has untangled the thing is nothing short
of masterly. But I had to tie his tongue; you know I had to do that,
Loudon."
"Of course, you had to."
Silence again for a little space; and then:
"There is no doubt in your mind that he has hit upon the true solution
of all the little mysteries?"
Bromley shook his head slowly. "None at all, I am sorry to say. I have
suspected it, in part, at least, for a good while. And I had proof
positive before Wingfield gave it to us."
"How?" queried Ballard.
Bromley was still fingering the cartridges. "I hate to tell you,
Breckenridge. And yet you ought to know," he added. "It concerns you
vitally."
Ballard's smile was patient. "I am well past the shocking point," he
averred. "After what we have pulled through in the last hour we may as
well make a clean sweep of it."
"Well, then; I didn't stumble over the canyon cliff that night four
weeks ago: I was knocked over."
"What!"
"It's true."
"And you know who did it?"
"I can make a pretty good guess. While I was down at the wing dam a man
passed me, coming from the direction of the great house. He was a big
man, and he was muffled to the ears in a rain-coat. I know, because I
heard the peculiar 'mackintosh' rustle as he went by me. I knew then who
it was; would have known even if I hadn't had a glimpse of his face at
the passing instant. It is one of the colonel's eccentricities never to
go out after nightfall--in a bone-dry country, mind you--without wearing
a rain-coat."
"Well?" said Ballard.
"He didn't see me, though I thought at first that he did; he kept
looking back as if he were expecting somebody to follow him. He took the
path on our side of the canyon--the one I took a few minutes later.
That's all; except that I would swear that I heard the 'slither' of a
mackintosh just as the blow fell that knocked me down and out.
"Heavens, Loudon! It's too grossly unbelievable! Why, man, he saved your
life after the fact, risking his own in a mad drive down here from
Castle 'Cadia in the car to do it! You wouldn't have lived until morning
if he hadn't come."
"It is unbelievable, as you say; and yet it isn't, when you have
surrounded all the facts. What is the reason, the only reason, why
Colonel Craigmiles should resort to all these desperate expedients?"
"Delay, of course; time to get his legal fight shaped up in the courts."
"Exactly. If he can hold us back long enough, the dam will never be
completed. He knows this, and Mr. Pelham knows it, too. Unhappily for
us, the colonel has found a way to ensure the delay. The work can't go
on without a chief of construction."
"But, good Lord, Loudon, you're not the 'Big Boss'; and, besides, the
man loves you like a son! Why should he try to kill you one minute and
move heaven and earth to save your life the next?"
Bromley shook his head sorrowfully.
"That is what made me say what I did about not wanting to tell you,
Breckenridge. That crack over the head wasn't meant for me; it was meant
for you. If it had not been so dark under the hill that night--but it
was; pocket-dark in the shadow of the pines. And he knew you'd be coming
along that path on your way back to camp--knew you'd be coming, and
wasn't expecting anybody else. Don't you see?"
Ballard jumped up and began to pace the floor.
"My God!" he ejaculated; "I was his guest; I had just broken bread at
his table! Bromley, when he went out to lie in wait for me, he left me
talking with his daughter! It's too horrible!"
Bromley had stood the eleven cartridges, false and true, in a curving
row on the table. The crooking line took the shape of a huge
interrogation point.