The Clue of the Screaming Woman

Part Two

The sheriff reined the horse to a stop, swung from the saddle with loose-hipped ease, dropped the reins to the ground and said easily, “Morning, folks.”

He was wearing leather chaps now, and the jangling spurs and broad-brimmed, high-crown hat seemed to add to his weight and stature.

“This is John Olney, the ranger up here,” he said by way of blanket introduction. “I guess I know all you folks and you know me. We ain’t going to move the body, but we’re going to look things over a little bit. Coroner’s not due here for a while and we don’t want to lose any more evidence.”

The spectators made a tight little circle as they gathered around the two men. Sheriff Eldon, crouching beside the corpse, spoke with brisk authority to the ranger.

“I’m going to take a look through his pockets, John. I want to find out who he was. You take your pencil and paper and inventory every single thing as I take it out.”

Olney nodded. In his official olive-green, he stood quietly efficient, notebook in hand.

But there was nothing for the ranger to write down.

One by one the pockets in the clothes of the dead man were explored by the sheriff’s fingers. In each instance the pocket was empty.

The sheriff straightened and regarded the body with a puzzled frown.

The little circle stood watching him, wondering what he would do next. Overhead an occasional wisp of fleecy white cloud drifted slowly across the sky. The faint beginnings of a breeze stirred rustling whispers from the pine trees. Off to the west could be heard, faintly but distinctly, the sounds of the restless water in the North Fork, tumbling over smooth-washed granite boulders into deep pools rippling across gravel bars, plunging down short foam-flecked stretches of swift rapids.

“Maybe he just didn’t have anything in his pockets,” Nottingham suggested.

The sheriff regarded Nottingham with calmly thoughtful eyes. His voice when he spoke withered the young lawyer with remorseless logic. “He probably wouldn’t have carried any keys with him unless he’d taken out the keys to an automobile he’d left somewhere at the foot of the trail. He might not have had a handkerchief. He could have been dumb enough to have come out without a knife, and it’s conceivable he didn’t have a pen or pencil. Perhaps he didn’t care what time it was, so he didn’t carry a watch. But he knew he was going to camp out here in the hills. He was carrying a shoulder pack to travel light. The man would have had matches in his pocket. What’s more, you’ll notice the stain on the inside of the first and second fingers of his left hand. The man was a cigarette smoker. Where are his matches? Where are his cigarettes? Not that I want to wish my problems off on you, young man. But since you’ve volunteered to help, I thought I’d point out the things I’d like to have you think about.”

Nottingham flushed.

Dowling laughed a deep booming laugh, then he said, “Don’t blame him, sheriff. He’s a lawyer.”

The sheriff bent once more, to run his hands along the man’s waist, exploring in vain for a money belt. He ran his fingers along the lining of the coat, said suddenly to the ranger, “Wait a minute, John. We’ve got something here.”

“What?” the ranger asked.

“Something concealed in the lining of his coat,” the sheriff answered.

“Perhaps it slipped down through a hole in the inside pocket,” Nottingham suggested.

“Isn’t any hole in the pocket,” Eldon announced. “Think I’m going to have to cut the lining, John.”

The sheriff’s sharp knife cut through the stitches in the lining with the deft skill of a seamstress. His fingers explored through the opening, brought out a Manila envelope darkened and polished from the friction of long wear.

The sheriff looked at the circled faces. “Got your pencil ready, John?”

The ranger nodded.

The sheriff opened the flap of the envelope and brought out a photograph frayed at the corners.

“Now, what do you make of that?” he asked.

“I don’t make anything of it,” Olney said, studying the photograph. “It’s a good-looking young fellow standing up, having his picture taken.”

“This is a profile view of the same man,” the sheriff said, taking out another photograph.

“Just those two pictures?” Olney asked.

“That’s all. The man’s body kept ’em from getting wet.”

Ames, looking over the sheriff’s shoulder, saw very clear snapshots of a young man whom he judged to be about twenty-six or twenty-seven, with a shock of wavy dark hair, widespread intelligent eyes, a somewhat weak vacillating mouth, and clothes which even in the photograph indicated expensive tailoring.

Quite evidently here was a young man who was vain, good-looking and who knew he was good-looking, a man who had been able to get what he wanted at the very outset of life and had then started coasting along, resting on his oars at an age when most men were buckling down to the grim realities of a competitive existence.

The picture had been cut off on the left, evidently so as to exclude some woman who was standing on the man’s right, but her left hand rested across his shoulder, and, seeing that hand, Ames suddenly noticed a vague familiarity about it. It was a shapely, delicate hand with a gold signet ring on the third finger.

Ames couldn’t be absolutely certain in the brief glimpse he had, but he thought he had seen that ring before.

Yesterday, Roberta Coe had been wearing a ring which was startlingly like that.

Ames turned to look at Roberta. He couldn’t catch her eye immediately, but Sylvia Jessup, deftly maneuvering herself into a position so she could glance at the photographs, caught the attention of everyone present by a quick, sharp gasp.

“What is it?” the sheriff asked. “Know this man?”

“Who?” she asked, looking down at the corpse.

“The one in the picture.”

“Heavens no. I was just struck by the fact that he’s... well, so good-looking. You wonder why a dead man would be carrying his photograph.”

Sheriff Eldon studied her keenly. “That the only reason?”

“Why, yes, of course.”

“Humph!” Bill Eldon said.

The others crowded forward.

Eldon hesitated a moment, then slipped the photographs back into the envelope. “We’ll wait until the coroner gets here,” he said.

Frank Ames caught Roberta Coe’s eye and saw the strained agony of her face. He knew she had had a brief glimpse of those photographs, and he knew that unless he created some diversion her white-faced dismay would attract the attention of everyone.

He stepped forward calmly. “May I see those photographs?” he asked.

The sheriff turned to look at him, slipped the Manila envelope down inside his jacket pocket.

“Why?” he asked.

“I want to see if I know the man. He looked like a man who was a buddy of mine.”

“What name?” Bill Eldon asked.

Frank Ames could see that his ruse was working. No one was looking at Roberta Coe now. All eyes were fastened on him.

“What name?” the sheriff repeated.

Ames searched the files of his memory with frantic haste. “Pete Ingle,” he blurted, giving the name of the first man whom he had ever seen killed; and because it was the first time he had seen a buddy shot down, it had left an indelible impression on Frank’s mind.

Sheriff Eldon started to remove the envelope from his jacket pocket, then thought better of it. His eyes made shrewd appraisal of Frank Ames’ countenance, said, “Where is this Pete Ingle now?”

“Dead.”

“Where did he die?”

“Guadalcanal.”

“How tall?”

“Five feet, ten inches.”

“What did he weigh?”

“I guess a hundred and fifty-five or sixty.”

“Blond or brunette?”

“Brunette.”

“I’m going to check up on this, you know,” Bill Eldon said, his voice kindly. “What color eyes?”

“Blue.”

Eldon put the picture back in his pocket. “I don’t think we’ll do anything more about these pictures until after the coroner comes.”

Ames flashed a glance toward Roberta, saw that she had, in some measure, recovered her composure. It was only a quick fleeting glance. He didn’t dare attract attention to her by looking directly at her.

It was as he turned away that he saw Sylvia Jessup watching him with eyes that had lost their mocking humor and were engaged in respectful appraisal, as though she were sizing up a potential antagonist, suddenly conscious of his strong points, but probing for his weak points.

By using the Forest Service telephone to arrange for horses, a plane, and one of the landing fields maintained by the fire-fighting service, the official party managed to arrive at the scene of the crime shortly before noon.

Leonard Keating, the young, ruthlessly ambitious deputy district attorney, accompanied James Logan, the coroner.

Sheriff Bill Eldon, John Olney the ranger, Logan the coroner, and Keating the deputy district attorney, launched an official investigation, and from the start Keating’s attitude was hostile. He felt all of the arrogant impatience of youth for anyone older than forty, and Bill Eldon’s conservative caution was to Keating’s mind evidence of doddering senility.

“You say that this is Frank Ames’ rifle?” Keating asked, indicating the .22 rifle with the telescopic sight.

“That’s right,” Bill Eldon said, his slow drawl more pronounced than ever. “After the other folks had left, Ames took me over here, showed me the rifle, and—”

“Showed you the rifle!” Keating interrupted.

“Now don’t get excited,” Eldon said. “We’d found it before, but we left it right where it was, just to see what he’d do when he found it. We staked out where we could watch.”

“What did he do?”

“Nothing. Later on he showed it to me after the others had left.”

“Who were the others?”

“This party that’s camped down here a mile or so at the Springs.”

“Oh, yes. You told me about them. Vacationists. I know Harvey W. Dowling, the big-time insurance man. You say there’s a Richard Nottingham with him. That wouldn’t be Dick Nottingham who was on the intercollegiate boxing team?”

“I believe that’s right,” the sheriff said. “He’s a lawyer.”

“Yes, yes, a good one too. I was a freshman in college when he was in his senior year. Really a first-class boxer, quicker than a streak of greased lightning and with a punch in either hand. I want to meet him.”

“Well, we’ll go down there and talk with them. I thought you’d want to look around here. There was nothing in his pockets,” the sheriff said. “But when we got to the lining of the coat—”

“Wait a minute,” Keating interrupted. “You’re not supposed to look in the pockets. You’re not supposed to touch the body. No one’s supposed to move it until the coroner can get here.”

“When those folks wrote the lawbooks,” the sheriff interrupted, “they didn’t have in mind a case where it would take hours for a coroner to arrive and where it might be necessary to get some fast action.”

“The law is the law,” Keating announced, “and it’s not for us to take into consideration what was in the minds of the lawmakers. We read the statutes and have no need to interpret them unless there should be some latent ambiguity, and no such latent ambiguity seems to exist in this case. However, what’s done now is done. Let’s look around here.”

“I’ve already looked around,” the sheriff said.

“I know,” Keating snapped, “but we’ll take another look around the place. You say it rained here yesterday afternoon?”

“A little before sundown it started raining steady. Before then we’d had a thunderstorm. The rain kept up until around ten o’clock. The man was killed before the first rain. I figure he was killed early in the afternoon.”

Keating looked at him.

“What makes you think so?”

“Well, he’d been hiking, and he was trying to establish an overnight camp here. Now, I’ve got a hunch he came in the same way you did — by airplane, only he didn’t have any horses to meet him.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Well,” the sheriff said, “he brought in what stuff he brought in on his back. There’s a pack board over there with a tumpline, and his roll of blankets is under that tree. His whole camp is just the way he’d dropped it. Then he’d gone up to get some wood, and the way I figure it, he’d wanted to get that big log so he could keep pushing the ends together and keep a small fire going all night. He didn’t have a tent. His bedroll is a light down sleeping bag, the whole thing weighing about eight pounds. But he had quite a bit of camp stuff, maybe a thirty-five pound pack.”

“What does all that have to do with the airplane?” Keating asked impatiently.

“Well, now,” Eldon said, “I was just explaining. He carried this stuff in on his back, but you look at the leather straps on that pack board and you see that they’re new. The whole outfit is new. Now, those leather straps are stained a little bit. If he’d had to bring that stuff in from up the valley, he’d have done a lot of sweating.”

“Humph,” Keating said. “I don’t see that necessarily follows. Are there no roads into this back country?”

The sheriff shook his head. “This is a primitive area. You get into it by trails. There aren’t any roads closer than twenty miles. I don’t think that man carried that camp outfit on his back for twenty miles uphill. I think he walked not more than three or four miles, and I think it was on the level. I’ve already used Olney’s telephone at the ranger station to get my under-sheriff on the job, checking with all charter airplanes to see if they brought a man like this into the country.”

Keating said, “Well, I’ll look around while the coroner goes over the body. There’s a chance you fellows may have overlooked some clues that sharper — and younger — eyes will pick up.”

Logan bent over the body. Keating skirmished around through the underbrush, his lean, youthful figure doubled over, moving rapidly as though he were a terrier prowling on a scent. He soon called out, “Look over here, gentlemen. And be careful how you walk. The place is all messed up with tracks already, but try not to obliterate this piece of evidence.”

“What have you got?” Olney asked.

“Something that has hitherto been overlooked,” Keating announced importantly.

They bent over to look, and Keating pointed to a crumpled cloth tobacco sack which had evidently been about a quarter full of tobacco when the drenching rain had soaked through to the tobacco, stiffening the sack and staining it all to a dark brown which made it difficult to see against the ground.

“And over here,” Keating went on, “just six or eight inches from this tobacco sack you’ll find the burnt ends of two cigarettes rolled with brown rice paper, smoked down to within about an inch of the end and then left here. Now I’m no ex-cattleman,” and he glanced meaningly at Bill Eldon, “but I would say there’s something distinctive about the way these cigarettes are rolled.”

“There sure is,” Bill Eldon admitted ruefully.

“Well,” Keating said, “that’s my idea of a clue. It’s just about the same as though the fellow had left his calling card. Here are those cigarettes, the stubs showing very plainly how they’re rolled and folded. As I understand it, it’s quite a job to roll a cigarette, isn’t it, sheriff, that is, to do a good job?”

“Sure is,” Bill Eldon observed, “and these were rolled by a man who knew his business.”

“Don’t touch them now,” Keating warned. “I want to get a photograph of them just the way they were found, but you can see from just looking at this end that the paper has been rolled over and then there’s been a trick fold, something that makes it hold its shape when it’s rolled.”

“That’s right,” Olney said — there was a new-found respect in his voice.

“Let’s get that camera, coroner,” Keating announced, “and take some pictures of these cigarettes. Then we’ll carefully pick this evidence up so as not to disturb it. Then I think we’d better go check on the telephone and see if there are any leads to the inquiries Sheriff Eldon put out about someone bringing this chap in by airplane. I have an idea that’s where we are going to get a line on him.”

“What do you make of this evidence, Bill?” the ranger asked Eldon.

It was Keating who answered the question. “There’s no doubt about it. The whole crime was deliberately premeditated. This is the thing that the layman might overlook. It’s something that shows its true significance only to the legal mind. It establishes the premeditation which makes for first-degree murder. The murderer lay here waiting for his man. He waited while he smoked two cigarettes.”

“How do you suppose the murderer knew the man was going to camp right here?” Bill Eldon asked.

“That’s a minor matter,” Keating said. “The point is, he did know. He was lying here waiting. He smoked two cigarettes. Probably the man had already made his camp here and then gone up the hill for firewood, dragging that log down the hill along the trail that you pointed out.”

Eldon’s nod was dubious.

“Don’t you agree with that?” Keating demanded truculently.

“I was just wondering if the fellow that was killed wasn’t pretty tired from his walk,” Eldon said.

“Why? You said he only had to walk three or four miles from an airfield and it was pretty level ground all the way.”

“I know,” Eldon said, “but if he’d already established his camp here and then gone up the hill to get that firewood and dragged it down, the murderer must have moved into ambush after the man went up to get that log.”

“Well?”

“The victim certainly must have been awfully tired if it took long enough getting that log for the murderer to smoke two cigarettes.”

“Well, perhaps the murderer smoked them after the crime, or he may have been waiting for his man to get in just the right position. There’s no use trying to account for all these little things.”

“That’s right,” Eldon said.

“This evidence,” Keating went on significantly, “would have been overlooked if I hadn’t been prowling around, crawling on my hands and knees looking for any little thing that might have escaped observation.”

“Just like a danged bloodhound,” Olney said admiringly.

“That’s right,” Bill Eldon admitted. “Just like a bloodhound. Don’t see anything else there, do you, son?”

“How much else do you want?” Keating flared impatiently. “And let’s try and retain something of the dignity of our positions, sheriff. Now, if you’ve no objection, we’ll go to the telephone and see what we can discover.”

“No objection at all,” Eldon said. “I’m here to do everything I can.”

Information was waiting for them at the Forest Service telephone office.

The operator said, “Your office left a message to be forwarded to you, sheriff. A private charter plane took a man by the name of George Bay, who answers the description you gave over the telephone, into forest landing field number thirty-six, landing about ten o’clock yesterday morning. The man had a pack and took off into the woods. He said he was on a hiking trip and wanted to get some pictures. He told a couple of stories which didn’t exactly hang together and the pilot finally became suspicious. He thought his passenger was a fugitive and threatened to turn the plane around and fly to the nearest city to report to the police. When George Bay realized the pilot meant business, he told him he was a detective employed to trace some very valuable jewels which had been stolen by a member of the military forces while he was in Japan. He showed the pilot his credentials as a detective and said he was on a hot lead, that the jewels had been hidden for over a year, but the detective felt he was going to find them. He warned the aviator to say nothing to anyone.”

Bill Eldon thanked the operator, relayed the information to the others.

“Well,” Keating said, “I guess that does it.”

“Does what?” the sheriff asked.

“Gives us our murderer,” Keating said. “It has to be someone who was in the Army during the war, someone who was in Japan. How about this man Ames? Isn’t he a veteran?”

“That’s right. I think he was a prisoner in Japan.”

“Well, we’ll go talk with him,” Keating said. “He’s our man.”

“Of course,” Eldon pointed out, “if this dead man was really a detective, it ain’t hardly likely he’d tell the airplane pilot what he was after. If he said he was after Japanese gems, he’s like as not looking for stolen nylons.”

“You forget that the pilot was calling for a showdown,” Keating said. “He forced this man’s hand.”

“Maybe. It’d take more force than that to get me to show my hand on a case.”

“Well, I’m going to act on the assumption this report is true until it’s proven otherwise,” Keating said.

Sheriff Bill Eldon said, “Okay, that’s up to you. Now my idea of the way to really solve this murder is to sort of take it easy and...”

“And my idea of the way to solve it,” Keating interrupted impatiently, “is to lose no more time getting evidence and lose no time at all getting the murderer. It’s the responsibility of your office to get the murderer; the responsibility of my office to prosecute him. Therefore,” he added significantly, “I think it will pay you to let me take the initiative from this point on. I think we should work together, sir!”

“Well, we’re together,” Bill Eldon observed cheerfully. “Let’s work.”

Roberta Coe surveyed the little cabin, the grassy meadow, the graveled bar in the winding stream, the long finger of pine trees which stretched down the slope.

“So this is where you live?”

Frank Ames nodded.

“Don’t you get terribly lonely?”

“I did at First.”

“You don’t now?”

“No.”

He felt at a loss for words and even recognized an adolescent desire to kick at the soil in order to furnish some outlet for his nervous tension.

“I should think you’d be lonesome all the time.”

“At first,” he said, “I didn’t have any choice in the matter. I wasn’t physically able to meet people or talk with them. They exhausted me. I came up here and lived alone because I had to come up here and live alone. And then I found that I enjoyed it. Gradually I came to learn something about the woods, about the deer, the trout, the birds, the weather. I studied the different types of clouds, habits of game. I had some books and some old magazines sent me and I started to read, and enjoyed the reading. The days began to pass rapidly and then a tranquil peace came to my mind.” He stopped, surprised at his own eloquence.

He saw her eyes light with interest. “Could you tell me more about that, and aren’t you going to invite me in?”

He seemed embarrassed. “Well, it’s just a bachelor’s cabin, and, of course, I’m alone here and—”

She raised her eyebrows. Her eyes were mocking. “The conventions?”

He would have given much to have been able to meet the challenge of her light, bantering mood, but to his own ears the words seemed to fairly blurt from his mouth as he said, “People up here are different. They wouldn’t understand, in case anyone should—”

“I don’t care whether they understand or not,” she said. “You were talking about mental tranquillity. I could use quite an order of that.”

He said nothing.

“I suppose you have visitors about once a month?”

“Oh, once every so often. Mr. Olney, the ranger rides by.”

She said, “And I presume you feel that your cabin is a mess because you’ve been living here by yourself and that, as a woman, I’d look around disapprovingly and sniff. Come on, let’s go in. I want to talk with you and I’m not going to stand out here.”

Silently he opened the door.

“You don’t even keep it locked?”

He shook his head. “Out here I never think of it. If Olney, for instance, found himself near this cabin and a shower was coming up, he’d go in, make himself at home, cook up a pot of tea, help himself to anything he wanted to eat, and neither of us would think anything of it. The only rule is that a man’s supposed to leave enough dry wood to start a fire.”

“What a cute little place! How snug and cozy!”

“You think so?” he asked, his face showing surprised relief.

“Heavens, yes. It’s just as neat and spick-and-span as... as a yacht.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about yachts.”

“Well, what I meant was that... well, you know, everything shipshape. You have a radio?”

“Yes, a battery set.”

“And a gasoline reading lamp and a cute little stove and bookshelves. How wonderful!”

He suddenly found himself thoroughly at ease.

Abruptly she said, “Tell me more about this mental tranquillity. I want some of that.”

“You can’t saw it off in chunks, wrap it up in packages and sell it by the pound.”

“So I gathered. But would you mind telling me how one goes about finding it? Do you find it at outcroppings and dig it up, or do you sink shafts, or...?”

“I guess it’s something that’s within you all the time. All you do is relax and let it come to the surface. The trouble is,” he said, suddenly earnest, “that it’s hard to understand it because it’s all around you. It’s a part of man’s heritage, but he ignores it, shuts it out. Look at the view through the window. There’s the mountain framed against the blue sky. The sunlight is casting silver reflections on the ripples in the water where it runs over the rapids by the gravel bar. There’s a trout jumping in the pool just below the bar. The bird perched on the little pine with that air of impudent expectancy is a Clark jay, sometimes called a camp robber. I love him for his alert impudence, his fearless assurance. Everything’s tranquil and restful and there’s no reason for inner turmoil.”

Her eyes widened. “Say, when you warm up to something, you really talk, don’t you?”

He said, “I love these mountains and I can talk when I’m telling people about them. You see, lots of people don’t really appreciate them. During hunting season, people come pouring in. They come to kill things. If they don’t get a deer, they think the trip has been a failure. What they see of the mountains is more or less incidental to killing.

“Same way with the fishing season crowd. But when you come to live in the mountains, you learn to get in time with the bigness of it all. There’s an underlying tranquillity that finally penetrates to your consciousness and relaxes the nerve tension. You sort of quiet down. And then you realize how much real strength and dignity there is in the calm certainty of your own part in the eternal universe.

“These mountains are a soul tonic. They soothe the tension out of your nerves and take away the hurt in one’s soul. They give strength. You can just feel them in their majestic stability. Oh, hang it, you can’t put it in words, and here I am trying!”

The interest in her eyes, the realization of his own eloquence made him suddenly self-conscious once more.

“Mind if I smoke?” she asked.

“Certainly not. I’ll roll one myself.”

He took the cloth tobacco sack from his pocket, opened a package of cigarette papers.

She said, “Won’t you try one of mine?”

“No thanks. I like to roll my own. I—” He broke off and said, “Something frightened those mountain quail.”

He held a match for her cigarette, rolled his own cigarette and had just pinched the end into shape when he said, “I knew something frightened them. Hear the horses?”

She cocked her head to one side, listening, then nodded, caught the expression on Frank Ames’ face and suddenly laughed. “And you’re afraid I’ve compromised your good name.”

“No. But suppose it should be your companions looking for you and...”

“Don’t be silly,” she said easily. “I’m free to do as I please. I came up here to explain to you about yesterday. I... I’m sorry.”

The riders came up fast at a brisk trot. Then the tempo of hoofbeats changed from a steady rhythm to the disorganized tramping of horses being pulled up and circling, as riders dismounted and tied up. Ames, at the door, said, “It’s the sheriff, the ranger, and a couple of other people.

“Hello, folks,” he called out. “Won’t you come in?”

“We’re coming,” Bill Eldon said.

Frank Ames’ attitude was stiffly embarrassed as he said, “I have company. Miss Coe was looking over my bookshelf.”

“Oh, yes,” the sheriff said quite casually. “This is James Logan, the coroner, and Leonard Keating, the deputy district attorney. They wanted to ask you a few questions.”

Keating was patronizingly contemptuous as he looked around the interior of the neat little cabin, found that the only comfortable chair was that occupied by Roberta Coe, that the others were homemade stools and boxes which had been improvised into furniture. “Well,” he said, “we won’t be long. We wanted to get all the details, everything that you know about that murder, Ames.”

“I told the sheriff everything I know about it.”

“You didn’t see anything or hear anything out of the ordinary yesterday afternoon?”

“No. That is, I—”

“Yes, go ahead,” Keating said.

“Nothing,” Ames said.

Keating’s eyes narrowed. “You weren’t up around that locality?”

“I was fishing downstream.”

“How far below here?”

“Quarter of a mile, I guess.”

“And the murder was committed half a mile upstream?”

“I guess that distance is about right.”

“You weren’t fishing upstream at all?”

“No. I fished downstream.”

Keating’s eyes showed a certain sneering disbelief. “What are you doing up here, anyway?”

“I’m— Well, I’m just living up here.”

“Were you in the Army?”

“Yes.”

“In Japan?”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“I was a prisoner of war for a while and then I was held there a while before I was sent home.”

“Picked up some gems while you were there, didn’t you?”

“I had a pearl and— What do you mean I picked up gems?”

Keating’s eyes were insolent in their contemptuous hostility. “I mean you stole them,” he said, “and you came up here to lie low and wait until things blew over. Isn’t that about it?”

“That’s definitely not true.”

“And,” Keating went on, “this man who was killed was a detective who was looking for some gems that had been stolen from Japan. He looked you up yesterday afternoon and started questioning you, didn’t he?”

“No!”

“Don’t lie to me.”

Ames was suddenly on his feet. “Damn you!” he said. “I’m not lying to you and I don’t have to put up with this stuff. Now, get out of here!”

Keating remained seated, said, “Sheriff, will you maintain order?”

Bill Eldon grinned. “You’re doing the talking, Keating.”

“I’m questioning this man. He’s suspect in a murder case.”

“I’m suspect?” Ames exclaimed.

“You said it,” Keating announced curtly.

“You’re crazy, in addition to the other things that are wrong with you,” Ames told him. “I don’t have to put up with talk like that from you or from anyone else.”

Keating said, “We’re going to look around here. Any objection?”

Ames turned to Bill Eldon. “Do I have to—”

Roberta Coe said very firmly and definitely, “Not unless you want him to, Frank; not unless he has a search warrant. Don’t let them pull that kind of stuff. Dick Nottingham is an attorney. If you want, I’ll get him and—”

“I don’t want a lawyer,” Ames said. “I haven’t any money to pay a lawyer.”

“Go ahead. Get a lawyer if you want,” Keating said, “but I think I have enough evidence right now to warrant this man’s arrest. Would you mind letting me see that cigarette, Mr. Ames.”

“What cigarette?”

“The one you just put in the ash tray. Thank you.”

Keating inspected the cigarette, passed the tray silently to the sheriff.

“What’s strange about the cigarette?” Ames asked.

“The cigarette,” Keating said, “is rolled in a peculiarly distinctive manner. Do you always roll your cigarettes that way?”

“Yes. That is, I have for years. I pull one edge of the paper over and then make a little crimp and fold it back before I start rolling. That helps hold the cigarette in shape.”

Keating took a small pasteboard box from his pocket. This box was lined with soft moss and on the moss were two cigarette stubs. “Would you say these were rolled by you?”

Ames leaned forward.

“Don’t touch them,” Keating warned. “Just look at the ends.”

“I don’t think you’d better answer that, Frank,” Roberta Coe said.

“I have nothing to conceal,” Ames said. “Certainly those are my cigarettes. Where did you find them?”

“You rolled those?”

“Yes.”

Keating stood up and dramatically pointed his finger at Frank Ames. “I accuse you of the murder of George Bay, a private detective.”

Ames’ face flushed.

“Will you take him into custody, sheriff? I order you to.”

“Well, now,” the sheriff said in a drawl, “I don’t know as I have to take anybody into custody on the strength of your say-so.”

“This man is to be arrested and charged with murder,” Keating said. “A felony has been committed. There is reasonable ground to believe this man guilty. It is not necessary to have a warrant of arrest under those circumstances, and, as a member of the district attorney’s office, I call on you as the sheriff of this county to take that man into custody. If you fail to do so, the responsibility will be entirely on your shoulders.”

“Okay,” Bill Eldon said cheerfully, “the responsibility is on my shoulders.”

“And I want to look around here,” Keating said.

“As long as you’re halfway decent, I’m willing to do anything I can to cooperate,” Ames told him, “but you’re completely crazy if you accuse me of having anything to do with that murder.”

“It was your gun that killed him, wasn’t it?”

“My gun was at the scene of the crime — near the scene of the crime.”

“And you don’t know how it got there?”

Ames said, “Of course I don’t. Do you think I’d be silly enough to go out and kill a man and then leave my rifle lying on the ground? If I’d killed him, I’d have taken my gun to the cabin, cleaned it, and hung it up on those pegs where it belongs.”

“If you were smart, you wouldn’t,” Keating sneered. “You’d know that the officers would recover the fatal bullet and shoot test bullets from all the .22 rifles owned by anyone in these parts. Sooner or later you would have to face the fact that the man was killed with a bullet from your gun. You were smart enough to realize it would be a lot better to have the gun found at the scene of the murder and claim it had been stolen.”

“I wouldn’t let them search this cabin, Frank,” Roberta Coe said in a low voice. “I’d put them all out of here and lock the cabin up and make certain that no one got in until they returned with a search warrant, and then you could have your attorney present when the search was made. How do you know they aren’t going to plant something?”

Keating turned to regard her with hostile eyes. “You’re doing a lot of talking,” he said. “Where were you when the murder was committed?”

Her face suddenly drained of color.

“Were you up here yesterday in this cabin?”

“No.”

“Anywhere near it?”

“No.”

“Go past here on the trail?”

“I... I took a walk.”

“Where did you walk?”

“Up the trail.”

“Up to the point where the murder was committed?”

“No, not that far. I turned back. I don’t know. Quite a bit downstream from here.”

“See this man yesterday?”

Roberta tightened her lips. “Yes.”

“Where?”

“I met him on the trail. He was walking down toward the place where I was camped.”

“Why was he walking down there?”

“I didn’t ask him. He overtook me on the trail, and we exchanged greetings and then walked together down the trail to the place where I’m camped, and I introduced him to the others.”

“And then he turned back?”

“No. He said he was going op.”

“Well, now isn’t that interesting! I thought you said he was fishing yesterday afternoon, sheriff.”

“He’d been fishing. I found his rod and creel where he’d left it, apparently when he walked down the trail.”

“Well, well, well, isn’t that interesting,” Keating sneered. “So he went fishing and then left his rod and creel by the water. Just laid them down, I presume, and walked away.”

“No, he propped the rod up against the tree and hung the creel over a forked limb.”

“And then what?”

“Apparently he walked on down the trail.”

“What was the idea, Ames?” Keating asked.

Frank said, “I wanted to look over some of the country. I... I walked on down the trail and met Miss Coe.”

“I see. Went as far as her camp with her?”

“Well, I walked on a ways below camp.”

“How far?”

“Oh, perhaps two hundred yards.”

“Then what?”

“Then I turned back.”

“Back up the trail?”

“No, I didn’t. I made a swing.”

Roberta Coe, rushing to his assistance, said, “He was looking over the country in order to find a site for some traps this winter.”

“Oh, looking for traps, eh?”

“A place to put traps,” Roberta Coe said acidly.

“Which way did you turn, Ames? Remember now, we can check on some of this.”

Ames said, “I turned up the draw, crossed over the divide and then the rainstorm overtook me, and I lay in a cave up there by the ridge.”

“You turned east?” the ranger asked, suddenly interested, and injecting himself into the conversation.

“Yes.”

“Looking for a trap-line site?” Olney asked, incredulously.

“Well, I was looking the country over. I had intended to look for a trap-line site and then—”

“What are you talking about?” Olney said. “You know this country as well as you know the palm of your hand. Anyhow, you wouldn’t be trapping up there. You’d be trapping down on the stream.”

Ames said, “Well, I told Miss Coe that I— Well, I was a little embarrassed. I wanted to walk with her but I didn’t want her to think I–It was just one of those things.”

“You mean you weren’t looking for a trap site?” Keating asked.

“No. I wanted to walk with her.”

“In other words, you lied to her. Is that right?”

Ames, who had seated himself once more on a box, was up with cold fury. “Get out of here,” he said.

“And don’t answer any more questions, Frank,” Roberta Coe pleaded. “You don’t have to talk to people when they are that insulting.”

Keating said, “And I’m going to give you the benefit of a little investigation too, Miss Coe.”

Ames, his face white with fury, said, “Get out! Damn you, get out of my cabin!”

Bill Eldon grinned. “Well, Keating, you wanted to do the questioning. I guess you’ve done it.”

“That’s it,” Keating said grimly. “I’ve done it, and I’ve solved your murder case for you.”

“Thanks,” Bill Eldon said dryly.

They filed out of the cabin.

Once more Keating said, “I order you to put that man under arrest.”

“I heard you,” Bill Eldon said.

Keating turned to Olney. “What sort of title does this man have to this property?”

“Well, he’s built this cabin under lease from the Forestry Service—”

“And the Forestry Service retains the right to inspect the premises?”

“I guess so, yes.”

“All right,” Keating said, “let’s do some inspecting.”

Frank Ames stood in the doorway, his heart pounding with anger, and the old nervous weakness was back, making the muscles of his legs quiver. He watched the men moving around in front of the cabin, saw the ranger suddenly pause. “This chopping block has been moved,” Olney said. “It was over there for quite a while. You can see the depression in the ground. Why did you move it, Ames?”

Ames, suddenly surprised, said, “I didn’t move it. Someone else must have moved it.”

Olney tilted the chopping block on edge, rolled it back to one side.

Keating said, “Someone has disturbed this earth. Is there a spade here?”

Olney said, “Here’s one,” and reached for the shovel which was standing propped against the cabin.

Keating started digging under the place where the chopping block had been.

Ames pushed forward to peer curiously over Bill Eldon’s shoulder.

Roberta Coe, standing close to him, slipped her hand into his, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

“What’s this?” Keating asked.

The spade had caught on a piece of red cloth.

Keating dropped to his knees, pulled away the rest of the loose soil with his fingers, brought out a knotted red bandanna, untied the knots and spread on the ground the assortment of things that were rolled up in it.

Ames, looking with incredulous eyes, saw a leather billfold, a card case distended from cards and documents, a fountain pen, a pencil, a notebook, a knife, some loose silver, a white handkerchief, a package of cigarettes, a folder of matches and a small, round waterproof match case.

Keating picked up the card case, opened it to show the cards of identification, neatly arranged in hinged cellophane pockets.

The first card showed a picture of a man with thick hair, a close-clipped dark mustache, and, even in the glimpse he had of it, Frank Ames could see it was the photograph of the murdered man.

“Deputy license of George Bay,” Keating announced. “Here’s another one. Identification showing George Bay licensed as a private detective. Here’s a credit card, Standard Oil Company, made out to George Bay. Some stuff that’s been in here is missing. You can see this card case has been distended with cards that were in the pockets. They’re gone now. What did you do with them, Ames?”

Ames could only shake his head.

“You see,” Keating said triumphantly, turning to Eldon. “He thought he could keep anyone from finding out the identity of the murdered man, so he removed everything that could have been a means of identification.”

The sheriff shook his head sadly. “This murderer is making me plumb mad.”

“You don’t act like it,” Keating said.

“Thinking we’d be so dumb we couldn’t find all the clues he planted unless he was so darned obvious about it,” the sheriff went on sadly. “It’s just plumb insultin’ to our intelligence. He was so darned afraid we wouldn’t find all that stuff he even moved the choppin’ block. I’d say that man just don’t think we’ve got good sense.”

“You mean you’re going to try to explain away this evidence?” Keating asked.

Bill Eldon shook his head. “I’m not explaining a thing. It’s just plumb insultin’, that’s all.”