"An' I tell you so again," Kirby answered, smiling. "I was mentionin' possibilities. On your evidence it lies between my cousin James an' the Hulls. It was the Hulls that had tied him up after Cass Hull knocked him senseless. It was Hull who had given him two days more to live. And that's not all. Not an hour an' a half ago I had a talk with Mrs. Hull. She admitted, under pressure, _that she returned to my uncle's apartment again to release him from the chair_. She was alone with him, an' he was wholly in her power. She is a woman with a passionate sense of injury. What happened then nobody else saw." Mrs. Hull opened her yellow, wrinkled lips to speak, but Kirby checked her. "Not yet, Mrs. Hull. I'll return to the subject. If you wish you can defend yourself then." He stopped a second time to find the logical way of proceeding with his story. The silence in the room was tense. The proverbial pin could have been heard. Only one person in the room except Kirby knew where the lightning was going to strike. That person sat by the door chewing the end of a cigar impassively. A woman gave a strangled little sob of pent emotion. "I've been leaving Horikawa out of the story," the cattleman went on. "I've got to bring him in now. He's the hinge on which it all swings. _The man or woman that killed my uncle killed Horikawa too_." James Cunningham, sitting opposite Kirby with his cold eyes steadily fixed on him, for the first time gave visible sign of his anxiety. It came in the form of a little gulping sound in his throat. "Cole Sanborn and I found Horikawa in the room where he had been killed. The doctors thought he must have been dead about a day. Just a day before this time Miss McLean an' I met James Cunningham comin' out of the Paragon. He was white an' shaking. He was sufferin' from nausea, an' his arm was badly strained. He explained it by sayin' he had fallen downstairs. Later, I wondered about that fall. I'm still wonderin'. Had he just come out of the apartment where Horikawa was hidin'? Had the tendons of that arm been strained by a jiu-jitsu twist? _And had he left Horikawa behind him dead on the bed?_" James, white to the lips, looked steadily at his cousin. "A very ingenious theory. I've always complimented you on your imagination," he said, a little hoarsely, as though from a parched throat. "You do not desire to make any explanation?" Kirby asked. "Thanks, no. I'm not on trial for my life here, am I?" answered the oil broker quietly, with obvious irony. His wife was sobbing softly. The man's arm went round her and tightened in wordless comfort. From his pocket Kirby drew the envelope upon which he had a few hours earlier penciled the time schedule relating to his uncle's death.