is the point I'm makin' now. If you like I'll leave a
statement here signed by me to the effect that neither you nor your
husband has confessed killing James Cunningham. It might make your
mind a little easier to have it."

She hesitated. "Well, if you like."

He stepped to a desk and found paper and pen. "I'll dictate it if
you'll write it, Mrs. Hull."

Not quite easy in her mind, the woman sat down and took the pen he
offered.

"This is to certify--" Kirby began, and dictated a few sentences slowly.

She wrote the statement, word for word as he gave it, _using her left
hand_. The cattleman signed it. He left the paper with her.

After the arrangement for the private detective to watch Hull had been
made, Olson and Lane walked together to the hotel of the latter.

"Come up to my room a minute and let's talk things over," Kirby
suggested.

As soon as the door was closed, the man from Twin Buttes turned on the
farmer and flung a swift demand at him.

"Now, Olson, I'll hear the rest of your story."

The eyes of the Swede grew hard and narrow. "What's bitin' you? I've
told you my story."

"Some of it. Not all of it."

"Whadjamean?"

"You told me what you saw from the fire escape of the Wyndham, but _you
didn't tell what you saw from the fire escape of the Paradox_."

"Who says I saw anything from there?"

"I say so."

"You tryin' to hang this killin' on me?" demanded Olson angrily.

"Not if you didn't do it." Kirby looked at him quietly, speculatively,
undisturbed by the heaviness of his frown. "But you come to me an'
tell the story of what you saw. So you say. Yet all the time you're
holdin' back. Why? What's your reason?"

"How do you know I'm holdin' back?" the ranchman asked sulkily.

Kirby knew that in his mind suspicion, dread, fear, hatred, and the
desire for revenge were once more at open war.

"I'll tell you what you did that night," answered Kirby, without the
least trace of doubt in voice or manner. "When Mrs. Hull pulled down
the blind, you ran up to the roof an' cut down the clothes-line. You
went back to the fire escape, fixed up some kind of a lariat, an' flung
the loop over an abutment stickin' from the wall of the Paradox. You
swung across to the fire escape of the Paradox. There you could see
into the room where Cunningham was tied to the chair."

"How could I if the blind was down?"

"The blind doesn't fit close to the woodwork of the window. Lookin' in
f