His first stop that day was Bert Surratt's saloon, where he stated his problem bluntly.
“Think back, Bert, to just before the bank fracas yesterday. Do you remember a hardcase stranger buyin' a drink or so off you?”
The saloonkeeper rubbed a hairy fist across his mouth, thinking. “There was a stranger in, all right, but I wouldn't peg him as a hardcase. Oh, he was heeled, but all travelers go heeled unless they're fools. Gray-haired geezer, as I remember, about fifty. Looked harmless enough to me.”
“Did you get a look at his animal or rig?”
“No,” Bert said slowly. “Guess I didn't pay him much attention, Marshal. Why do you ask?”
“Was Nate Blaine in here the same time the stranger was?”
Surratt thought about it, scowling. “Sure. I remember because Nate was giving the old bird a goin' over. I figured Nate might have known him from somewhere, but they didn't speak. The stranger pulled out maybe fifteen minutes before Nate did.”
Blasingame listened to the sound of hammering in the alley behind the saloon. “What's that noise?” he asked.
The saloonkeeper smiled. “Carpenters. They're buildin' Jed Harper's casket.” He took a swipe at the bar with a dirty towel. “That damn Blaine; they should have strung him up the minute they caught him.”
“But you wouldn't want to try it single-handed, would you, Bert?” Blasingame turned and walked out of the saloon.
He made several stops between the saloon and the bank building. A clerk in Baxter's store claimed he caught a glimpse of the stranger riding up the street away from Bert's place. Old Matt Fuller, in the saddle shop, had seen the drifter watering his horse at the trough in front of the bank building; he had paid strict attention to the rig because of its quality workmanship, but had hardly noticed the man himself. After that, the stranger could have dissolved in thin air, for all anyone, saw of him.
Just a drifter passing through. There was no telling where he was by now.
But the marshal didn't let it go at that. He went to the bank and stared at the bleak two-story brick building with cool, impersonal eyes. Aside from the Masonic Temple, it was the only brick building in town. Now it was locked tight. There was a black-bordered funeral notice on the door.
For the sake of supposing, Elec tried to reconstruct a situation as it might have been. The stranger had been seen watering his horse in front of the bank some time after he had left Surratt's which would put it close to four o'clock. Now, Blasingame reasoned, it's just possible that he was here when Jed let Beulah Sewell in the bank to deposit her money.
Stretching it a bit further, it's just possible that he could have heard Jed Harper telling Beulah that his help had gone and he was alone. Now, if this drifter had been a hardcase type, as Nate swore he was, maybe that was all the invitation he needed. When he saw the banker leave the door unlocked, maybe he just walked in.
That much Elec might be made to swallow. But how this stranger could have shot the town banker and pulled out of town without a person laying eyes on him—that was the bone that caught in the marshal's throat. He went around behind the bank building and studied the lay of the ground. Now, Nate claimed he saw the man hightailing it out of the side door, probably crossing the street. That being the case, where had the stranger kept his horse?
Blasingame crossed the street where the Ludlow Dry Goods sprawled into the tall weeds of the alley. Not a chance of finding any tracks there; Phil Costain's dray wagon had been back there earlier in the morning.
Anyway, the chance that the killer would run across the street and simply sit tight while the whole town looked for him was a very long one. Not many men had the nerves for that kind of waiting.
There was not an ounce of solid evidence to back up Nate Blaine's story. On the other hand, there was the money that hadn't been found, and Nate's gun, which had been fully loaded when they found him. Those things would be explained easily enough—still, the marshal didn't like the smell of it. He didn't like the doubts that were growing in his mind. Elec headed back to the office to see if Kirk Logan, his day deputy, had showed up yet.
Kirk, a towheaded youngster in his middle twenties, was just strapping on his cartridge belt when the marshal came in. He grinned, but it turned uneasy when he saw the glint in Elec's eyes.
“Sorry I'm late, Elec. But the baby had the croup and I had to rout out Doc Shipley—”
“Never mind,” the marshal said shortly. “I want you to round up some men and scour every inch of this town between the bank and the public corral. If that bank money is hidden in Plainsville, I want it. Understand?”
Logan swallowed. “Sure, Elec. I'll get right to work.” He turned to go out of the office, but stopped when he reached the steps. “I just thought of something. What if somebody has already found that money?”
Elec's shaggy eyebrows almost covered his eyes as he frowned. The possibility had already occurred to him. He did not try to fool himself—there were plenty of people in Plainsville who would never say anything about it if they found that money. The whole town knew it. The jury would know it. In the light of this knowledge, Nathan Blaine's main line of defense became purely academic.
Blasingame sat solidly at his plank desk for a full minute after his deputy had mounted the steps to the street. Suddenly he hit the desk with his big right fist.
The chances were a thousand to one that Beulah Sewell was telling the truth and that Nate Blaine was guilty as hell. Still, it was that one chance in a thousand that bothered him.
At last he got up and went back to the cell. “Nate,” he said, “I'm going to ride over to Landow and get the county sheriff to look for this drifter of yours.”
Nathan lay on his bunk, his dark eyes fixed on the ceiling.
“Understand something, Nate,” the marshal said. “I think you're guilty as hell. But before I'm through, I'm going to know it..”
When Blasingame returned from Landow late that night, he learned that his prisoner had escaped. Nathan had flung a cup of scalding coffee in Ralph Striker's face —coffee that the night deputy had paid for and brought to him. During Striker's momentary blindness Nathan had grabbed him through the bars and got his revolver. After forcing the deputy to unlock the cell, Nathan gagged him and locked him in his own cage. Then, at gunpoint, he had taken his horse and rig from the public corral and disappeared in the night.
They formed a posse, of course, but it was a big county and the night was black. They did not find Nathan Blaine.
Chapter Ten
A DARK CLOUD OF ANGER rolled over Plainsville when the lawyers came from Landow to make an accounting for Harper's bank. Twelve thousand dollars had been lost in the robbery.