rom the right, you can see the left half of the room. If you look in
from the other side, you see the other part of it. That's just what
you did."

For the moment Olson was struck dumb. How could this man know exactly
what he had done unless some one had seen him?

"You know so much I reckon I'll let you tell the rest," the
Scandinavian said with uneasy sarcasm.

"Afraid you'll have to talk, Olson. Either to me or to the Chief at
headquarters. You've become a live suspect. Figure it out yourself.
You threaten Cunningham by mail. You make threats before people
orally. You come to Denver an' take a room in the next house to where
he lives. On the night he's killed, by your own admission, you stand
on the platform a few feet away an' raise no alarm while you see him
slugged. Later, you hear the shot that kills him an' still you don't
call the officers. Yet you're so interested in the crime that you run
upstairs, cut down the clothes-line, an' at some danger swing over to
the Paradox. The question the police will want to know is whether the
man who does this an' then keeps it secret may not have the best reason
in the world for not wanting it known."

"What you mean--the best reason in the world?"

"They'll ask what's to have prevented you from openin' the window an'
steppin' in while my uncle was tied up, from shootin' him an' slippin'
down the fire escape, an' from walkin' back upstairs to your own room
at the Wyndham."

"Are you claimin' that I killed him?" Olson wanted to know.

"I'm tellin' you that the police will surely raise the question."

"If they do I'll tell 'em who did," the rancher blurted out wildly.

"I'd tell 'em first, it I were in your place. It'll have a lot more
weight than if you keep still until your back's against the wall."

"When I do you'll sit up an' take notice. The man who shot Cunningham
is yore own cousin," the Dry Valley man flung out vindictively.

"Which one?"

"The smug one--James."

"You saw him do it?"

"I heard the shot while I was on the roof. When I looked round the
edge of the blind five minutes later, he was goin' over the papers in
the desk--and an automatic pistol was there right by his hand."

"He was alone?"

"At first he was. In about a minute his brother an' Miss Harriman came
into the room. She screamed when she saw yore uncle an' most fainted.
The other brother, the young one, kinda caught her an' steadied her.
He was struck all of a hea