is not the sort to exhibit it?"

"Yes, I reckon Fancy is a cold sort of a proposition."

"How have you got him sized up?"

"I'd hardly know how to tell it. He's some of a mystery to me, and he
ain't never let no one as I know of snuggle beneath his jacket."

"But, as an officer, you must have kept some sort of tab on him."

"Sure. I know Fancy as well as most. I always looked upon him as a
crook, and a very dangerous man with a gun."

"Has he ever been convicted of a crime?"

"Ain't never been able to land him. Generally he gets away by some slick
trick, just as he did to-night, or he bluffs off the fellows who go
after him with his guns."

"Has any crime ever been fastened on him so positively that there was no
doubt that he committed it?"

"Can't say there was; but that don't cut no ice, for he's been in
several killings where no gun got busy but his, an' we've been able to
track him right up to crimes, but there we lose him. He's too slick to
get caught."

"Something like the murder of Miss Mowbray? He is seen leaving the
vicinity of the murder, and is immediately suspected of the crime,
although probably fifty other men in the town were near the house or on
the road before the murder was discovered, eh?"

"That's true enough. I passed the house myself on my way home, just
before midnight."

"Why don't you arrest yourself as a suspect? But how was the murder
discovered?"

"Some one passing saw a flame at the corner of the house, and, looking
through a window, saw that the house was afire. He gave the alarm, and
the blaze, which was in a corner of the library, was put out before much
damage was done."

"Then the body was discovered, I suppose?"

"Yes; a fireman found it in the bedroom on the floor."

"In what condition?"

"She was dressed for bed, and around her neck a cord was tied so
tightly, in a peculiar slipknot, that she could not breathe, and her
face was black and her tongue protruding."

"Simply strangled to death, eh?"

"That's about it, I reckon."

"What became of the two Japanese?"

"Disappeared."

"Where are the ingots of gold?"

"Gone."

"What became of the cord by which she was strangled?"

"I have it."

"How does it happen that you have it?"

"At the alarm of fire I left my home and ran to the scene. As I entered
the house by the front door, one of the firemen came running out of the
bedroom, crying that he had found a dead woman. I ran into the room, and
saw Miss