Burke rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “That’s psychologically correct,” he agreed. “But, Myra would have known...”
“And would have lied about it if she did know,” I interrupted excitedly. “There’s been something fishy about that dame all along. She was throwing suspicion off Dwight by accusing the first person who came into her mind... Laura Yates.”
“Possibly. But, are you theorizing that Dwight killed Young... then carried the pistol home and shot himself with it and threw it out the window?”
“I’m not theorizing,” I growled. “I’m simply pointing out one way by which that pistol could have gotten out of the Young house into the possession of some one other than Laura Yates. If Dwight took it home with him for safe-keeping... any one of the others might have picked it up at Dwight’s. Desta, Michaela, Hardiman... any of them.”
Jerry Burke nodded and said mildly: “I haven’t accused Laura Yates of having stolen the pistol. I was merely stating the latest developments at your request.”
“Here’s another angle,” I exclaimed, warming up to the subject. “Why couldn’t Leslie Young have stuck that pistol in his pocket when he rode away from the cabin? His murderer could have taken it away from him and done the shooting... then carried it on away to use on Dwight later.”
“All right, all right.” Burke held up his hand in resignation. “You convince me that anyone might have gotten hold of that particular pistol and done murder with it. What next?”
“Coffee,” I told him, going toward the kitchen. “Will you have a cup with me?”
He followed me to the doorway, shaking his head. “I haven’t time. I stopped by to ask you to attempt a research job that I thought might be in your line. I want to get a definite line on that silver cross.”
I turned to stare at him, still blinking sleep from my eyes. “What about it?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I want you to find out. Anything. Everything!” His doubled fist pounded the palm of his left hand. “It has to mean something. As our friend Jelcoe points out, there has to be a reason for everything... even a cross with an extra bar. You’re supposed to know something about books and research. I want to know where such a bastard cross popped up from... what significance it carries.”
I put water on to boil, shaking my head doubtfully. “Damned if I know where to start looking,” I confessed. “Of course, there are all sorts of different-shaped crosses... all with certain symbolic meanings, I suppose. I don’t know whether I can turn up any dope on this one or not.”
“I’m betting you can.” Jerry slapped me on the shoulder and turned away. “You’ll know what to look for if you find anything at all. I’ll be at my office.”
He paused at the front door to turn and warn me: “I consider this damned important, Asa. Don’t stop digging until you exhaust every avenue of information. Here’s your dogs. I let them out when I came in.”
He opened the door and Nip and Tuck trotted in with red tongues lolling. The door closed behind him and I measured coffee into the dripolator, wondering where to start looking for what he wanted.
I kept on wondering, while I made coffee, and decided against trusting any food in my stomach on top of the dog-food I had eaten not so many hours earlier.
It seemed pretty hopeless to me, with nothing at all to go on. If I could just find a starting point... find out what it was called...
I finished a cup of coffee and was half-way through a cigarette when I guiltily realized I was just killing time... and Jerry was depending on me.
Without much hope, I went into my study and opened Webster’s New International dictionary at “cross.”
The first thing I saw was a plate showing pictures of twenty differently shaped crosses.
And number three on the list was an exact reproduction of the silver cross lying on my living room table.
With the blood tingling in my veins I read the descriptive phrase beneath the plate:
“# 3 Patriarchal or Archiepiscopal”
That was all, and that didn’t help much. Disappointed, I skimmed over the small type on the subject of crosses, and gathered that those pictured were formerly used as emblems in heraldry.
Tucked away in my book case was a seldom-used set of “The Americana Encyclopedia” which a fast-talking book agent had sold to me years before on the premise that no author could hope to be successful without a reference set in his home.
I dragged out the “H” volume and brushed off the dust, looked up “Heraldry” on the off-chance that I’d run onto something. At the beginning of the article on Heraldry I was coldly advised to see “Crosses and Crucifixes” if that was what I was interested in.
So I laid “H” aside and dusted off “C.” Under “Crosses and Crucifixes” I found an entire plate of various-shaped crosses, and there again was my old friend with the double bars. The caption this time informed me that it was a: “Patriarchal or double cross.”
I already knew that. Which is my chief argument against wasting money on an encyclopedia. I’m always looking something up and discovering I already know what they tell me.
But I buckled down and read through the text on the subject of crosses in general, finding one paragraph relating to my cross:
Reliquary crosses of small size were made for use of the general public as amulets, and were extremely popular in the Middle Ages. They were termed encolpia. Cardinals and Archbishops, for hierarchical distinction, are empowered to use a Latin cross furnished with two arms (patibula) or traverses. A special, distinctive, three-barred cross is dedicated, solely, for the use of the Pope. These two styles of crosses are known respectively as Patriarchal and Papal.
That was all of that. Not much help yet, but at least it wasn’t a dead-end. Turning back to the beginning of the information on Crosses I began reading every word carefully until I was brought up with a start by the hidden and seemingly insignificant statement: “...Prescott says that when the first Europeans arrived in Mexico, to their surprise, they found ‘the Cross, the sacred emblem of their own faith, raised as an object of worship in the temples of Anahuac...’”
I read that over and over, trying to decide whether it meant a great deal, or nothing.
Mexico!
I don’t know why it excited me. Modern Mexico is predominantly Catholic. There are crosses and shrines all over Mexico. But the idea of a cross before the advent of Catholicism stimulated my imagination. I supposed Prescott didn’t mention a double cross, but...
I have a well-thumbed three volumes of Prescott’s “Conquest of Mexico.” I dug them out and went to the index in Volume III.
On page 484 I found: “Cross, the common symbol of worship, i, 267 note. See Crosses.”
The note on page 267, Vol. I, gave the following not particularly relevant information:
In the passages here referred to, the author has noticed various proofs of the existence of the cross as a symbol of worship among pagan nations both in the Old World and the New. The fact has been deemed a very puzzling one; yet the explanation, as traced by Dr. Brinton, is sufficiently simple: “the arms of the cross were designed to point to the cardinal points and represent the four winds — the rain-bringers.” Hence the name given to it in the Mexican language, signifying “Tree of our life” — a term well-calculated to increase the wonderment of the Spanish discoveries. “Myths of the New World,” p. 96 et al. — ED.