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Page 41
Personal revenge they decided eventually could be the only motive.
Robbery was out of the question, as the personal belongings of the dead
man had been found to be intact, including a valuable diamond ring, about
a hundred and fifty dollars in bills, and his watch, papers, etc. A
jovial, light-hearted young rancher, hailing originally from the Old
Country, a bachelor of more or less convivial habits, he had enjoyed the
hearty good-will of the country-side, incurring the enmity of no one,
with the exception of Moran, as far as they knew. The latter's alibi
having established his innocence beyond doubt, no definite clues were
forthcoming as yet, beyond the foot-prints, the horse, and the "Luger"
shell. Moran, too, they ascertained had ridden in alone, and was not in
the habit of chumming with anyone in particular. Slavin had prepared a
list of all known out-going and incoming individuals on and about the
date of the crime. This was carefully conned over. All were, without
exception, well-known respectable ranchers, and citizens of Cow Run, to
whom no suspicion could be attached.
"No!" commented the inspector wearily, at length. "In my opinion this
has been done by someone living right here in this burg--a man whom we
could go and put our hands on this very minute--if we only had something
to work on. You'll see . . . it'll turn out to be that later. Just
about the last man you'd suspect, either. Cases like this--where the
individual has nerve enough to stay right on the job and go about his
business as usual--are often the hardest nuts to crack. You remember
that Huggard case, Sergeant?"
Many years previous he and Slavin had been non-coms together in the
Yukon, and other divisions of the Force, and now, delving back into their
memories of crime and criminals, they cited many old and grim cases, more
or less similar to the one in hand. Yorke and Redmond listened eagerly
to their narration, but Gully betrayed only a sort of taciturn interest.
If he had any experiences of his own, he apparently did not consider it
worth while to contribute them just then; though to Slavin and Yorke he
was known to be a man who had travelled far and wide.
"Ah!" remarked the inspector, a trifle bitterly. "If only some of these
smart individuals who write fool detective stories, with their utterly
impracticable methods, theories, and deductions, were to climb out of
their arm-chairs and tackle the real thing--had to do it for their
living--they'd make a pretty ghastly mess of things I'm thinking. It all
looks so mighty easy--in a book. You can see exactly how the thing
happened, put your hand on the man who did it, and all that, right from
the start. And you begin to wonder, pityingly, why the police were such
fools as Dot to have seen through everything right away."
He paused a moment, continuing: "This is a law-abiding country. Crimes
like this are exceptional. We're bound to get to the bottom of this
sooner or later. When we do--there'll be quite a lot of things crop up
in our minds that we'll be wondering we never thought of before. Let me
have another look at that paper imprint of that over-shoe, Sergeant!"
Silently, Slavin handed it over. Kilbride scrutinized it carefully, and
again went over all notes and figures connected with the crime. "Must
have been a tall man--possibly six feet, or over, from the length of the
stride," he muttered, "and heavy, from the depth of the imprint." He
noted the distance from the big boulder to where the body had first
fallen. "Gad! what shooting! . . . The man must have been a holy
fright with a revolver--to have confidence in himself to be able to kill
at that range. I've never known anything like it. Well! . . . One sure
thing"--he laughed grimly--"you can't go searching every decent citizen
here for a Luger gun, or demanding to measure his feet--without
reasonable suspicion. Why! It might be you, Sergeant--or Mr. Gully,
here . . . you're both big men. . . ."
Long afterwards, well they remembered the inspector's random jest--how
Gully, with one hand slid into his breast, and the other dragging at his
great drooping moustache (mannerisms of his) had joined in the general
laugh with his hollow, guttural "Ha! ha!"
The inspector's levity suddenly vanished. "That old fool of a
livery-stable keeper, Lee, or whatever his name is . . . if only he, or
someone had been around when the horse was brought back that night!
D----n it! there must have been somebody around, surely. That's what
this case hinges on."
He looked at his watch. "Well! Work on that--to your utmost, Sergeant.
Stay right with it until you get that evidence. You'll drop onto your
man sooner or later, I know. That train should be in soon, now. I'll
have to get back. The Commissioner's due from Regina, sometime today,
and I've got to be on hand. Wire the finding of the inquest as soon as
it's over, and send in a full crime-report of everything!"
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