rungs of his chair. This attention to personal details of his
conformation was embarrassing.

"Those small feet stuck in my mind," Kirby went on. "Couldn't seem to
get rid of the idea. They put James out of consideration, unless, of
course, he had hired a killer, an' that didn't look reasonable to me.
I'll tell the truth. I thought of Mrs. Hull dressed as a man--an' then
I thought of Shibo."

"Had you suspected him before?" This from Olson.

"Not of the murders. I had learned that he had seen the Hulls come
from my uncle's rooms an' had kept quiet. Hull admitted that he had
been forced to bribe him. I tackled Shibo with it an' threatened to
tell the police. Evidently he became frightened an' tried to murder
me. I got a note makin' an appointment at the Denmark Building at
eleven in the night. The writer promised to tell me who killed my
uncle. I took a chance an' went." The cattleman turned to Mrs. Hull.
"Will you explain about the note, please?"

The gaunt, tight-lipped woman rose, as though she had been called on at
school to recite. "I wrote the note," she said. "Shibo made me. I
didn't know he meant to kill Mr. Lane. He said he'd tell everything if
I didn't."

She sat down. She had finished her little piece.

"So I began to focus on Shibo. He might be playin' a lone hand, or he
might be a tool of my cousin James. A detective hired by me saw him
leave James's office. That didn't absolutely settle the point. He
might have seen somethin' an' be blackmailin' him too. That was the
way of it, wasn't it?" He turned point-blank to Cunningham.

"Yes," the broker said. "He had us right--not only me, but Jack and
Phyllis, too. I couldn't let him drag her into it. The day you saw me
with the strained tendon I had been with him and Horikawa in the
apartment next to the one Uncle James rented. We quarreled. I got
furious and caught Shibo by the throat to shake the little scoundrel.
He gave my arm some kind of a jiu-jitsu twist. He was at me every day.
He never let up. He meant to bleed me heavily. We couldn't come to
terms. I hated to yield to him."

"And did you?"

"I promised him an answer soon."

"No doubt he came to-day thinkin' he was goin' to get it." Kirby went
back to the previous question. "Next time I saw Shibo I took a look at
his feet. He was wearin' a pair o' shoes that looked to me mighty like
those worn by the man that ambushed me. They didn't have any cap
pieces a