“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 on.”
“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.”