"COME CLEAN, JACK"
Jack Cunningham, co-heir with James of his uncle's estate, was busy in
the office he had inherited settling up one of the hundred details that
had been left at loose ends by the promoter's sudden death. He looked
up at the entrance of Lane.
"What do you want?" he asked sharply.
"Want a talk with you."
"Well, I don't care to talk with you. What are you doing here anyhow.
I told the boy to tell you I was too busy to see you."
"That's what he said." Kirby opened his slow, whimsical smile on Jack.
"But I'm right busy, too. So I brushed him aside an' walked in."
In dealing with this forceful cousin of his, Jack had long since lost
his indolent insolence of manner. "You can walk out again, then. I'll
not talk," he snapped.
Kirby drew up a chair and seated himself. "When Uncle James sent a
messenger for you to come to his rooms at once on the evening of the
twenty-first, what did he want to tell you?" The steady eyes of the
cattleman bored straight into those of Cunningham.
"Who said he sent a messenger for me?"
"It doesn't matter who just now. There are two witnesses. What did he
want?"
"That's my business."
"So you say. I'm beginnin' to wonder if it isn't the business of the
State of Colorado, too."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that Uncle sent for you because he had just found out your
brother and Miss Harriman were married."
Jack flashed a startled look at him. It seemed to him his cousin
showed an uncanny knowledge at times. "You think so."
"He wanted to tell you that he was goin' to cut your brother out of his
will an' leave you sole heir. An' he wanted you to let James know it
right away."
Kirby was guessing, but he judged he had scored. Jack got up and began
to pace the room. He was plainly agitated.
"Look here. Why don't you go back to Wyoming and mind your own
business? You're not in this. It's none of your affair. What are you
staying here for hounding the life out of James and me?"
"None of my business! That's good, Jack. An' me out on bond charged
with the murder of Uncle James. I'd say it was quite some of my
business. I'm gonna stick to the job. Make up your mind to that."
"Then leave us alone," retorted Jack irritably. "You act as though you
thought we were a pair of murderers."
"If you have nothin' to conceal, why do you block anyway? Why aren't
you frank an' open? Why did you steal that record at Golden? Why did
James lose the Jap's confession--if it was a confession? Why did he
get Miss McLean to disappear? Answer those questions to my
satisfaction before you talk about me buttin' in with suspicions
against you."
Jack slammed a fist down on the corner of the desk. "I'm not going to
answer any questions! I'll say you've got a nerve! You're the man
charged with this crime--the man that's liable to be tried for it.
You've got a rope round your neck right this minute--and you go around
high and mighty trying to throw suspicion on men that there's no
evidence against."
"You said you had a quarrel with your uncle that night--no, I believe
you called it a difference of opinion, at the inquest. What was that
disagreement about?"
"Find out! I'll never tell you."
"Was it because you tried to defend James to him--tried to get him to
forgive the treachery of his fiancée and his nephew?"
Again Jack shot at him a look of perplexed and baffled wonder. That
brown, indomitable face, back of which was so much strength of purpose
and so much keenness of apprehension, began to fill him with alarm.
This man let no obstacles stop him. He would go on till he had
uncovered the whole tangle they were trying to keep hidden.
"For God's sake, man, stop this snooping around! You'll get off.
We'll back you. There's nowhere nearly enough evidence to convict you.
Let it go at that," implored Jack.
"I can't do that. I've got to clear my name. Do you think I'm willin'
to go back to my friends with a Scotch verdict hangin' over me? 'He
did it, but we haven't evidence enough to prove it.' Come clean, Jack!
Are you and James in this thing? Is that why you want me to drop my
investigations?"
"No, of course we're not! But--damn it, do you think we want the name
of my brother's wife dragged through the mud?"
"Why should it be dragged through the mud--if you're all innocent?"
"Because gossips cackle--and people never forget. If there was some
evidence against her and against James--no matter how little--twenty
years from now people would still whisper that they had killed his
uncle for the fortune, though it couldn't be proved. You know that."
"Just as they're goin' to whisper about Rose McLean if I don't clear
things up. No, Jack. You've got the wrong idea. What we want to do
is for us all to jump in an' find the man who did it. Then all gossip
against us stops."
"That's easy to say. How're you going to find the guilty man?" asked
Jack sulkily.
"If you'd tell what you know we'd find him fast enough. How can I get
to the bottom of the thing when you an' James won't give me the facts?"
Jack looked across at him doggedly. "I've told all I'm going to tell."
The long, lithe body of the man from the Wyoming hills leaned forward
ever so slightly. "Don't you think it! Don't you think it for a
minute! You'll come clean whether you want to or not--or I'll put that
rope you mentioned round your brother's throat."
Jack looked at this man with the nerves of chilled steel and shivered.
What could he do against a single-track mind with such driving force
back of it? Had Kirby got anything of importance on James? Or was he
bluffing?
"Talk 's cheap," he sneered uneasily.
"You'll find how cheap it is. James had been speculatin'. He was down
an' out. Another week, an' he'd have been a bankrupt. Uncle discovers
how he's been tricked by him an' Miss Harriman. He serves notice that
he's cuttin' James out of his will an' he sends for a lawyer to draw up
a new one. James an' his wife go to the old man's rooms to beg off.
There's a quarrel, maybe. Anyhow, this point sticks up like a sore
thumb: if uncle hadn't died that night your brother would 'a' been a
beggar. Now he's a millionaire. And James was in his room the very
hour in which he was killed."
"You can't prove that!" Jack cried, his voice low and hoarse. "How do
you know he was there? What evidence have you?"
Kirby smiled, easily and confidently. "The evidence will be produced
at the right time." He rose and turned to go.
Jack also got up, white to the lips. "Hold on! Don't--don't do
anything in a hurry! I'll--talk with you to-morrow--here--in the
forenoon. Or say in a day or two. I'll let you know then."
His cousin nodded grimly.
The hard look passed from his eyes as he reached the corridor. "Had to
throw a scare into him to make him come through," he murmured in
apology to himself.