"Not a wor-rd. I'm sittin' in a parquet seat. It's your show, son." Kirby's disarming smile won the Chief's heart. "I want to say now that I've talked with the Chief several times. He's given me a lot of good tips an' I've worked under his direction." The head of the police force grinned. The tips he had given Lane had been of no value, but he was quite willing to take any public credit there might be. He sat back and listened now while Kirby told his story. "Outside of the Chief every one here is connected closely with this case an' is involved in it. It happens that every man an' woman of us were in my uncle's apartments either at the time of his death or just before or after." Kirby raised a hand to meet Olson's protest. "Oh, I know. You weren't in the rooms, but you were on the fire escape outside. From the angle of the police you may have been in. All you had to do was to pass through an open window." There was a moment's silence, while Kirby hesitated in what order to tell his facts. Hull mopped the back of his overflowing neck. Phyllis Cunningham moistened her dry lips. A chord in her throat ached tensely. "Suspicion fell first on me an' on Hull," Kirby went on. "You've seen it all thrashed out in the papers. I had been unfriendly to my uncle for years, an' I was seen goin' to his rooms an' leavin' them that evening. My own suspicion was directed to Hull, especially when he an' Mrs. Hull at the coroner's inquest changed the time so as to get me into my uncle's apartment half an hour earlier than I had been there. I'd caught them in a panic of terror when I knocked on their door. They'd lied to get me into trouble. Hull had quarreled with Uncle James an' had threatened to go after him with a gun in _two days_ after that time--and it was _just forty-eight hours later he was killed_. It looked a lot like Hull to me. "I had one big advantage, Chief, a lot of inside facts not open to you," the cattleman explained. "I knew, for instance, that Miss McLean here had been in the rooms just before me. She was the young woman my uncle had the appointment to meet there before ten o'clock. You will remember Mr. Blanton's testimony. Miss McLean an' I compared notes, so we were able to shave down the time during which the murder must have taken place. We worked together. She gave me other important data. Perhaps she had better tell in her own words about the clue she found that we followed." Rose turned to the Chief. Her young face flew a charming flag of color. Her hair, in crisp tendrils beneath the edge of the small hat she wore, was the ripe gold of wheat-tips in the shock. The tender blue of violets was in her eyes.