_cantenas_ lying on the floor at the head of his cot
had certainly been moved. He recalled distinctly having, the previous
evening, piled the _cantenas_ on top of the saddlebags. And now the
saddlebags were on top of the _cantenas_.

He glanced at Swing's warbags. They had not been moved. He wondered
if Jack Harpe and the Starlight's owner were still in their rooms. He
listened intently. Hearing no sound he went out into the hall, and
knocked gently on Jack Harpe's door and called him softly by name.
Getting no reply, he lifted the latch and walked in. There were Jack
Harpe's saddlebags, _cantenas_, and rifle in a corner. A coat lay on
the tumbled blankets of the cot. Otherwise the room was empty.

Racey went out, being careful to close the door tightly, and went to
the room of the Starlight's owner. This room, too, was empty. Racey
returned to his own room, tossed his _cantenas_ and saddlebags on the
cot, and began feverishly to paw through their contents.

Nothing had been subtracted from or added to the heterogeneous
collection of articles in the _cantenas_. The contents of the off-side
saddlebag were in their familiar disorder. There was nothing in or
about the off-side saddlebag to arouse suspicion. Not a thing.

He unbuckled the flap of the near-side saddlebag, and flipped it back.
Somebody had been at this saddlebag. He was sure of it. His extra
shirt, instead of being wadded into the fore-end of the saddlebag on
top of a pair of socks, had been stuffed into the hinder end on top of
a pair of underdrawers. Which underdrawers should by rights have been
at the bottom of the leather hold-all.

But there was something else at the bottom of the saddlebag. It was
something long and hard and wrapped in the buttonless undershirt
despised and rejected by Swing.

Racey unrolled the undershirt. His eyes stared in genuine horror at
what the unrolling revealed. It was the commonest of butcher knives
that someone's busy hand had wrapped in the undershirt. But what was
not nearly so common was that the broad, thin blade was stained with
blood. From point to haft the steel was as red as if it had been
dipped in a pail of paint. Indeed, being dry, it looked not unlike
paint. But Racey knew that it was not paint.

"It was dry before it was wrapped in that undershirt," he said to
himself, testing the blood on the blade with a speculative fingernail.
"There ain't a mark on the undershirt. Gawd! Here it is again--the
earmark