He broke through the ring of men and looked around. Then he brightened and stepped briskly across the dirt to a spot some eight feet off, where a high broad-brimmed hat lay ignominiously in the dust. He stooped, picked it up, and returned to his father.
“That’s the hat, all right,” said the Inspector. “Knocked off his head when he fell and, I s’pose, kicked away by some horse.”
They examined it together. Its once noble crown was crushed in, like the head it had adorned; it was a black Stetson of smooth, marvelously soft felt with a very wide brim flaring at the edges. Around the crown there was a fine belt of braided black leather. Inside, in letters of gold, were stamped the initials B H.
Ellery laid the Stetson gently beside the crushed body.
The Inspector was peering intently at the dead man’s two belts; Ellery watched him with some amusement. The pistol belt with its attached holsters was enormously long and heavy, since it was designed to go twice about the body of its wearer. Like the rest of Horne’s showy gear it was elaborately adorned with silver conchas and gold nails, and its cartridge holders gleamed. A silver monogram bore a scrolled B H. Although the belt was soft and pliable and quite obviously kept perfect by loving fingers, it was quite obviously also of great age.
“Had this a long time, the poor coot,” muttered the Inspector.
“I suppose,” sighed Ellery, “it’s like taking care of your precious books when you’re a bibliophile. Have you the remotest notion how many hours I’ve put in oiling the calf bindings of my Falconers?”
They examined the trouser belt. It was in a perfect state of preservation, though very old; so old that the vertical creases — there were two, one crossing the second, the other the third buckle hole — had from long use worn the leather thin; so old, indeed, that the belt might have girdled the waist of a Pony Express rider. And as in the case of the pistol belt, this belt too displayed Horne’s initials in silver.
“The man,” murmured Ellery as he relinquished the belt to his father, “was an antiquarian of the Occident, by the beards of the Academie! Why, that’s a museum piece!”
The Inspector, accustomed to his son’s flights of fancy, spoke softly to one of the detectives near by, and the man nodded and made off. The detective returned with Grant, who seemed to have pulled himself together. He carried himself with unnatural stiffness, as if braced to withstand another blow.
“Mr. Grant,” said the Inspector sharply, “I’m going to start this investigation the right way — details first; we’ll get to the big things later. This looks like a long job.”
Grant said hoarsely: “Anything ya say.”
The Inspector nodded in a curt way and knelt once more by the body. Lightly his fingers moved over the broken clay, and inside of three minutes he had collected a small heap of miscellaneous articles from the dead man’s clothes. There was a small wallet; it contained some thirty dollars in bills. The Inspector passed it to Grant.
“This Horne’s?”
Grant’s head jerked. “Yeah. Yeah. I — hell — I gave it to him for ’is last... birthday.”
“Yes, yes,” said the Inspector hastily, and retrieved the wallet, which had slipped from the rodeo owner’s fingers. A handkerchief; a single key with a wooden tag attached bearing the words “Hotel Barclay”; a packet of brown cigaret-papers and a little sack of cheap tobacco; a number of long matches; a checkbook...
Grant nodded dumbly at all the exhibits. The Inspector examined the check-book thoughtfully. “What was the name of his New York bank?”
“Seaboard. Seaboard National. He opened an account only a week’r so ago,” muttered Grant.
“How d’ye know?” said the Inspector quickly.
“He asked me to rec’mend one when he got to Noo Yawk. I sent ’im over to m’own bank.”
The old man replaced the check-book; its blank checks bore, plainly enough, the name of the Seaboard National Bank & Trust Company. According to its last stub-entry there was a balance of something over five hundred dollars.
“Find anything here,” demanded the Inspector, “that oughtn’t to be here, Mr. Grant?”
Grant’s bloodshot eyes swept over the pile of small possessions. “No.”
“Anything missing?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Hmmm. How about his duds? These things what he always wears? Look all right to you?”
The stocky man’s hands clenched into fists. “Do I have to look at him again?” he shouted in a strangled voice. “Why the hell do ya torture me this way?”
The man’s grief seemed genuine enough. So the Inspector said in a gentle voice: “Pull yourself together, man. We’ve got to check over everything; there’s often a clue on the body. Don’t you want to help us find your friend’s murderer?”
“God, yes!”
Grant stepped forward and forced his eyes downward. And his eyes swept from the horizontal boots to the gruesome concavity of the poor mangled head. He was silent for a long time. Then he threw back his thick shoulders and said harshly: “All there; nothin’ missing. That’s his reg’lar movie outfit. Every shaver from here to ’Frisco knew this rig-out in the days he was makin’ pitchers.”
“Fine! All—”
“Interrogation,” said Ellery. “Mr. Grant, did I hear you say nothing is missing?”
Grant’s head screwed around with unnatural slowness; his eyes met Ellery’s boldly, but there was something puzzled and — yes, fearful — in their muddy depths. He drawled: “That’s what I said, Mr. Queen.”
“Well, sighed Ellery, as his father squinted at him with a sudden alertness, “I suppose it isn’t really your fault. You’re upset, and perhaps your faculty of observation isn’t functioning as well as it should. But the point is: there is something missing.”
Grant turned abruptly back to look the body over again. The Inspector seemed troubled. And Grant shook his head and shrugged with a weary bafflement.
“Well, well,” snapped the Inspector to his son, “what’s the mystery? What’s missing?”
But Ellery, with a glint in his eye, was already stooping over the body. Very carefully indeed he pried open the dead fingers of the corpse’s right hand, and stood up with Buck Horne’s revolver in his hand.
It was a beautiful weapon. To the Inspector, whose acquaintanceship with firearms was an intimate affair of a lifetime’s duration, the piece Ellery studied so attentively was a heavenly sample of the old-fashioned gunsmith’s art. He saw at once that it was not a modern arm. Not only the slightly antiquated design, but the softly rubbed-metal look of it, told of great age.
“Colt .45,” he muttered. “Single action. Look at that barrel!”
The barrel was eight inches long, a slim tube of death. It was delicately chased in a scroll design, as was the cylinder. Ellery hefted the weapon thoughtfully; it was very heavy.
Wild Bill Grant seemed to have some difficulty in speaking. He moistened his lips twice before he could find his voice. “Yeah, it’s a reg’lar cannon,” he rumbled. “But a beauty. Ole Buck — Buck was partic’lar about the hang of his guns.”
“The hang?” said Ellery with interrogative eyebrows.
“Liked ’em hefty an’ liked ’em true. The balance, I’m talkin’ about.”
“Oh, I see. Well, this relic must weigh well over two pounds. Lord, what a hole it must make!”
He broke open the weapon; there were cartridges in all the chambers except one.