Tangled Trails: A Western Detective Story — John Shaqi
Tangled Trails: A Western Detective StoryRaine, William MacLeod
General
Tangled Trails: A Western Detective Story
Raine, William MacLeod
Detective and mystery stories; Western stories
"Wrong guess, Cole. The boss of this hacienda is a man, an' he's in
Chicago right now."
"You're the dawg-gonedest go-getter I ever threw in with," Sanborn
admitted. "All right. Go to it. If I gotta go to the calaboose I
gotta go, that's all."
Kirby stepped lightly to the railing, edged far out with his weight on
the ledge, and swung to the window-sill. The sash yielded to the
pressure of his hands and moved up. A moment later he disappeared from
Sanborn's view into the room.
It was the living-room of the apartment into which Lane had stepped.
The walls were papered with blue and the rug was a figured yellow and
blue. The furniture was of fumed oak, the chairs leather-padded.
The self-invited guest met his first surprise on the table. It was
littered with two or three newspapers. The date of the uppermost
caught his eye. It was a copy of the "Post" of the twenty-fifth. He
looked at the other papers. One was the "Times" and another the
"News," dated respectively the twenty-fourth and the twenty-sixth.
There was an "Express" of the twenty-eighth. Each contained long
accounts of the developments in the Cunningham murder mystery.
How did these papers come here? The apartment was closed, its tenant
in Chicago. The only other persons who had a key and the right of
entry were Horikawa and the Paradox janitor, and the house servant had
fled to parts unknown. Who, then, had brought these papers here? And
why? Some one, Lane guessed, who was vitally interested in the murder.
He based his presumption on one circumstance. The sections of the
newspapers which made no reference to the Cunningham affair had been
jammed into the waste-paper basket close to an adjoining desk.
The apartment held two rooms, a buffet kitchen and a bathroom. Kirby
opened the door into the bedroom.
He stood paralyzed on the threshold. On the bed, fully dressed, his
legs stretched in front of him and his feet crossed, was the missing
man Horikawa. His torso was propped up against the brass posts of the
bedstead. A handkerchief encircled each arm and bound it to the brass
upright behind.
In the forehead, just above the slant, oval eyes, was a bullet hole.
The man had probably been dead for a day, at least for a good many
hours.
The cattleman had no doubt that it was Horikawa. His picture, a good
snapshot taken by a former employer at a picnic where the Japanese had
served the luncheon, had appeared in all the papers and on handbills
sent out by James Cunningham, Junior. There was a scar, Y-shaped and
ragged, just above the left eye, that made identification easy.
Kirby stepped to the window of the living-room and called to his friend.
"Want me to help you gather the loot?" chaffed Cole.
"Serious business, old man," Kirby told him, and the look on his face
backed the words.
Sanborn swung across to the window and came through.
"What is it?" he asked quickly.
"I've found Horikawa."
"Found him--where?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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