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“Sort of guessed from what I saw the other day. Having a little trouble?”

“You mean Sylvia?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you guessed that too.”

“How do you feel about Sylvia?”

“I’d like to cut her heart out. Not that I care about Dick any more. He’s shown what a conceited boor he is. I’d like to have him at my feet just long enough to walk on him, though.”

“Just to show Sylvia?”

“And to show Dick. Sylvia doesn’t care about Dick. She’s a love pirate, one of the girls who have to satisfy their ego by stealing some man. And I’m... well, I’m living a lie. I wish now I’d played my cards differently, but I can’t do it now. I’ve made my choice. To tell anyone now would make me out a miserable little liar. I don’t want to be ’exposed,’ particularly with Sylvia to rub it in, and I think Sylvia suspects.”

“Never told Nottingham anything about this?”

“Nothing. Should I have done so?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” Eldon answered.

The defiance melted from her face. “I was afraid you were going to be self-righteous,” she said.

Bill Eldon said nothing.

“The marriage was annulled,” she said. “I’m living for the future. Suppose Dick Nottingham and I had married? Suppose I had told him? He’d have been magnanimous about it and all of that, but the thing would have been buried in his mind. Sometime, four or five years later, when I burned the biscuits or was slow in getting dressed to go to a bridge party, he’d flare up with some nasty remark about the grass widow of a jailbird. He’d be sorry the next day, but it would leave a scar.”

She paused. “I suppose I’ll have to repeat this to that deputy district attorney?”

“I don’t think so,” Eldon said. “He’d do a little talking and the first thing you know, you’d be reading all about yourself in the newspapers. What is now just a plain murder would suddenly get a sex angle, and the big city papers would send reporters up to get pictures of you and write up a bunch of tripe. You’d have your past ‘exposed.’ You’d better go right ahead just the way you’re doing.”

“You mean you’re going to keep my secret?”

“I’m going to let you keep it.”

She remained silent.

The sheriff pulled an envelope from his pocket, took out the pictures he had removed from inside the lining of the coat of the murdered man.

“These pictures are of Howard — the man you married?”

She barely glanced at them, nodded.

“You recognized them when I first found them?”

“Yes, and that’s my hand on his shoulder. That ring is a signet ring my father gave me.”

“Any idea what this detective was doing with those pictures?”

“Howard’s sentence expired about two months ago. He’s after Dowling — or me. And the detective somehow got on Howard’s trail. And Howard, with all that fiendish cunning of his... well, he got the detective.”

The sheriff got to his feet, moving with a smooth ease. “Well, I’ve got work to do.”

Roberta Coe moved impulsively forward, said, “I don’t suppose you’d have any way of knowing that you’re a dear!” and kissed him.

“Oh,” she said in dismay, “I’ve ruined your face! Here, let me get that off.”

She took a handkerchief from her pocket. The sheriff grinned as she removed the lipstick. “Good idea,” he said. “That young deputy district attorney would think I’d been bribed. Hell, you can’t tell, maybe I have!”

Bill Eldon reined his horse to a stop, swung his left leg over the horse’s neck and sat with it crooked around the saddle horn.

“How are things coming?” he asked.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Leonard Keating said, “it’s an open-and-shut case. I’m ready to go back any time you’re ready to pick up the prisoner.”

Eldon said, “I want to look around the country a little bit before I start back. Got to check up on some of the homesteaders up here.”

“What are we going to do with Ames?” Keating demanded. “Let him run away?”

“He won’t get away.”

Keating said indignantly, “Well, I’ll tell you one thing, he isn’t my responsibility.”

“That’s right,” Eldon said. “He’s mine.”

John Olney, the ranger, looked at the sheriff questioningly.

“Now then,” Bill Eldon went on, “we, all of us, have our responsibilities. Now, Keating, here, has got to prosecute the man.”

“There’s plenty of evidence to get a conviction of first-degree murder,” Keating said.

“And,” Bill Eldon went on, “part of the evidence you’re going to present to the jury is the evidence of those two cigarette stubs. That’s right, eh?”

“Those cigarette stubs are the most damning piece of evidence in the whole case. They show premeditation.”

“Nicely preserved, aren’t they?”

“They’re sufficiently preserved so I can identify them to a jury and get a jury to notice their distinctive peculiarities.”

“All right,” Eldon said cheerfully, and then added, “Of course, that murder was committed either during the rainstorm or just before the rainstorm. The evidence shows that.”

“Of course it does,” Keating said. “That cloth tobacco sack which was left on the ground had been soaked with rain. The tobacco had been moistened enough so that the stain from it oozed out into the cloth.”

“Sure did,” the sheriff said. “Now then, young man, when you get up in front of a jury with this ironclad, open-and-shut case of yours, maybe some smart lawyer on the other side is going to ask you how it happened that the tobacco got all wet, while those cigarette ends made out of delicate rice paper are just as dry and perfectly formed as the minute the smoker took them out of his mouth.”

The sheriff watched the expression on the deputy district attorney’s face. Then his lips twisted in a grin. “Well, now, son,” he said, “I’ve got a little riding to do. How about it, John? Think you got a little free time on your hands?”

“Sure,” the ranger said.

“What?” the deputy district attorney exclaimed. “Do you mean—?”

“Sure,” the sheriff said. “Don’t worry, buddy. Ames is my prisoner. I’m responsible for him. You just think out the answer to that question about the cigarette ends, because somebody’s going to ask it of you when you get in court.”

“There’s no reason why the murderer couldn’t have returned to the scene of the crime.”

“Sure, sure,” Eldon said soothingly. “Then he rolled cigarettes out of soggy, wet tobacco, and smoked ’em right down to the end. But somehow, I reckon, you’ve got to do better than that, young fellow.”

Bill Eldon nodded to the ranger. “Come on, John, you can do more good riding with me than—”

“But this is an outrage!” Keating stormed. “I protest against it. This man, Ames, was arrested for murder!”

“Who arrested him?” the sheriff asked.

“If you want to put it that way, I did,” Keating said. “As a deputy district attorney and as a private citizen, I have a right to take this man in custody for first-degree murder.”

“Go ahead and take him in custody then,” the sheriff grinned. “Then he’ll be your responsibility. Come on, John, let’s go riding.”

The sheriff swung his leg back over the horse’s neck and straightened himself in the saddle.

“You’ll have to answer for this,” Leonard Keating said, his voice quivering with rage.

“That’s right,” Eldon assured him cheerfully, “I expect to,” and rode off.

Bill Eldon and the ranger found a live lead at the second cabin at which they stopped.