I know nothing of what was said."

"And where is this man Rhodes to be found?" asked the coroner, and
Conrad smiled meaningly.

"Nowhere,--or so I am told! He and a companion are said to have
crossed the line into Sonora twenty-four hours before the death of Mr.
Singleton."

"Well, unless there is some evidence that he was seen later on this
side, any threat he might or might not have made, has no relation
whatever to this case. Is there any evidence that he was seen at, or
near, Granados after starting for Sonora?"

No evidence was forthcoming, and the coroner, in summoning up,
confessed he was not satisfied to leave certain details of the case a
mystery.

That Singleton had discharged Rhodes in anger, and Rhodes had, even by
intimation, voiced a threat against Singleton could not be considered
as having any bearing on the death of the latter; while the voice of
the unknown calling him to a meeting at Jefferson's ranch was equally
a matter of mystery, since no one at Jefferson's knew anything of the
message, or the speaker, and investigation developed the fact that the
telephone wire was broken between the two ranches, and there was no
word at Granados Junction Central of any message to Granados after
five o'clock the afternoon of the previous day.

And, since Philip Singleton never reached the Jefferson ranch, but
turned his car off the road at the cottonwood canon, and was found
with one bullet in his head, and the gun in his own hand, it was not
for a coroner's jury to conjecture the impulse leading up to the act,
or the business complications by which the act might, or might not,
have been hastened. But incomprehensible though it might seem to all
concerned there was only one finding on the evidence submitted, and
that was suicide.

"Papa Phil never killed himself, never!" declared Billie. "That would
be two suicides in a month for Granados, and two is one too many. We
never had suicides here before."

"Who was the other?"

"Why, Miguel Herrara who had been arrested for smuggling, was searched
and his gun taken, and yet that night found a gun to kill himself with
in the adobe where he was locked up! Miguel would not have cared for a
year or two in jail; he had lived there before, and hadn't tried any
killing. I tell you Granados is getting more than its share."

"It sure looks like it, little lady," agreed the coroner, "but
Herrara's death gives us no light or evidence on Singleton's death,
and our j