Part 12

Then, all at once, he discovered something. The curve of the doves' wings were all alike--almost. In a dozen hands he had it. It was an artistic vagary; the right wing of the middle dove was the thousandth part of an inch more acutely angled on the ace; on the king the right wing of the second dove to the left.

It would have taken a tuition of probably three days for a man to memorize the whole system, but it was there--which was the main thing. And the next most important factor was that somebody at the table knew the system. Who was it?

Seth had won; but a strong run of luck could have accounted for that, and Seth as a gambler was a joke. The Stranger, if he were a super-crook, hiding behind that juvenile smile, would be quite capable of this interesting chicanery--but he had lost.

Cranford, the Engineer, who had played with the consistent conservativeness of a man sitting in bad luck, was two hundred loser. The man of machinery, Shipley, was two hundred to the good; he had played a forcing game, and but for having had two flushes beaten by Seth would have been a bigger winner. These two flushes had troubled Carney, for Shipley had drawn two cards each hand. Either he was in great luck, or knew something.

Carney debated this extraordinary thing. His courage was so exquisite that he never made a mistake through over-zealousness in the fomenting of trouble; the easy way was always the brave way, he believed. In the West there was no better key to let loose locked-up passion than to accuse men of cheating at cards; it was the last ditch at which even cowards drew and shot. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his eyes, and dropped it into his lap. At the next hand he looked at his cards, ran them together on the very edge of the table, dropped one into the handkerchief, placed the other four, neatly compacted, into the discard, and said, "I'm out!"

Then he wiped his eyes again with the handkerchief, and put it back in his pocket.

At the third deal somebody discovered that the pack was shy--a card was missing. Investigation showed that it was the ace of hearts.

A search on the floor failed to discover the ace.

The irritation caused by this incident was subdued.

"I'll slip over to the hotel and get another pack,"

Seth Long suggested, gathering up the cards and putting them in his pocket.

From the time Carney had discovered the erratic curve to the doves' wings he had been wanting to ask, "Who owns these cards?" but had realized that it would have led to other things. Now the query had answered itself--they were Seth's, evidently.

This decided Carney, and he said, "I'm tired--I've had a long ride to-day."

He stacked up his chips and added: "I'm shy a hundred."

He slid five twenty-dollar gold pieces on to the table, and stood up, yawning.

"I think I'll quit, too," Cranford said. "I've played like a wooden man. To tell you the truth, I haven't enjoyed the game--don't know what's the matter with me."

"I'm winner," Shipley declared, "so I'll stick with the game; but right now I'd rather shove the two hundred into a pot and cut for it than turn another card, for to play one round with a card shy is a hoodoo to me. I've got a superstition about it. It's come my way twice, and each time there's been hell."

The boyish smile that had been hovering about Hadley's lips suddenly gave place to a hard sneer, and he said: "I'm loser and I don't want to quit. The game is young, and, gentlemen, you know what that means."

Shipley's black brows drew together, and he turned on the speaker:

"I haven't got your money, mister; your losin' has been to Seth. I don't like your yap a little bit. I'll cut the cards cold for a thousand now, or I'll make you a present of the two hundred if you need it."

Carney's quiet voice hushed into nothingness a damn that had issued from Hadley's lips; he was saying: "You two gentlemen can't quarrel over a game of cards that I've sat in; I don't think you want to, anyway. We'd better just put the game off till to-morrow night."

"We can't do that," Seth objected; "I've won Mr. Hadley's money, and if he wants to play I've got to stay with him. We'll square up and start fresh. Anybody wants to draw cards sets in; them as don't, quits."

"I've got to have my wallet out of your box, Seth, if we're to settle now; besides I want another sensation--this bottle's dry," Hadley advised.

"I'll bring over the cards, your wad, and another bottle," Long said as he rose.

In three or four minutes he was back again, pulled the cork from a bottle of Scotch whisky, and they all drank.

Then, after passing a leather wallet over to Hadley, he totaled up the accounts.

Hadley was twelve hundred loser.

He took from the wallet this amount in large bills, passed them to Seth, and handed the wallet back, saying, with the boy's smile on his lips, "Here, banker, put that back in your pocket--you're responsible. There's forty-eight hundred there now. If I put it in my pocket I'll probably forget it, and hang the coat on my bedpost."

Seth passed two hundred across to Shipley, saying, "That squares you."

Cranford had shoved his chips in with an I. O. U. for two hundred dollars, saying, "I'll pay that tomorrow. I feel as if I had been pallbearer at a funeral. When a man is gloomy he shouldn't sit into any game bigger than checkers."

Seth now drew from a pocket two packs of cards--the blue-doved cards and a red pack; then he returned the blue cards to his pocket.

Carney viewed this performance curiously. He had been wondering intently whether the new pack would be the same as the one with the blue doves. The red cards carried a different design, a simple leafy scroll, and Carney washed his mind of the whole oblique thing, mentally absolving himself from further interest.

Seth shuffled the new cards, face up, to take out the joker; having found it, he tore the card in two, threw it on the floor, and asked, "Now, who's in?"

"I'll play for one hour," Shipley said, with an aggressive crispness; "then I quit, win or lose; if that doesn't go I'll put the two hundred on the table to Mr. Hadley's one hundred, and cut for the pot." Curiously this only raised the boy's smile on Hadley's face, but inflamed Seth. He turned on Shipley with a coarse raging:

"You talk like a man lookin' for trouble, mister. Why the hell don't you sit into the game or take your little bag of marbles and run away home."

"I'm going," Carney declared noisily. "My advice to you gentlemen is to cut out the unpleasantness, and play the game."

Somewhat sullenly Shipley checked an angry retort that had risen to his lips, and, reaching for the rack of poker chips, started to build a little pile in front of him.

Cranford followed Carney out, and though his shack lay in the other direction, walked with the latter to the Gold Nugget. Cranford was in a most depressed mood; he admitted this.

"There was something wrong about that game, Carney," he asserted. "I knew you felt it--that's why you quit. I was to go up to Bald Rock on the night train to make a little payment in the morning to secure some claims, but now I don't know. I'm sore on myself for sitting in. I guess I've got the gambling bug in me as big as a woodchuck; I'm easy when I hear the click of poker chips. I lose two hundred there, and while, generally, it's not more than a piker's bet on anything, just now I'm trying to put something over in the way of a deal, and I'm runnin' kind of close to the wind, financially. That two hundred may--hell! don't think me a squealer, Bulldog. Good night, Bulldog."

Carney stood for ten seconds watching Cranford's back till it merged into the blur of the night. Then he entered the hotel, almost colliding with Jeanette Holt, who put a hand on his arm and drew him into the dining-room to a seat at a little table.

"Where's Seth?" she asked.

"Over at the police shack."

"Poker?"

Carney nodded.

"Mr. Hadley there?"

Again Carney nodded. Then he asked, "Why, Jeanette?"

"I don't quite know," she answered wearily. "Seth's moral fibre--if he has any--is becoming like a worn-out spring in a clock." Then her dark eyes searched Carney's placid gray eyes, and she asked, "Were you playing?"

"Yes."

The girl drew her hand across her eyes as if she were groping, not for ideas, but for vocal vehicle. "And you left before the game was over--why?"

"Tired."

Jeanette put her hand on Carney's that was lying on the table. "Was Seth cheating?"

"Why do you ask that, Jeanette?"

"I'll tell you. He's been playing by himself in his room for two or three days. He's got a pack of cards that I think are crooked."

"What is this Shipley like, Jeanette? Do you suppose that he brought Seth those cards?"

"I don't know," the girl answered; "I don't like him. He and Seth have played together once or twice."

"They have! Look here, Jeanette, you must keep what I am going to tell you absolutely to yourself, for I may be entirely wrong in my guess. There was a marked pack in the game, and I think Seth owned it. This Shipley acted very like a man who was running a bluff of being angry. He and Seth had some words over nothing. It seems to me the quarrel was too gratuitous to be genuine."

"You think, Bulldog, that Shipley and Seth worked together to win Hadley's money--he had six thousand in Seth's strong box?"

"I can't go that far, even to you, Jeanette. But to-morrow Seth has got to give back to Hadley whatever he has won. I've got one of the cards in my pocket, and that will be enough."

"But if he divides with Shipley?"

"Shipley will have to cough up the stolen money, too, because then the conspiracy will be proven."

"Yes, Bulldog. I guess if you just tell them to hand the money back, there'll be no argument. I can go to bed now and sleep," she added, patting Carney's hand with her slim fingers. "You see, if Seth got that stranger's money away it wouldn't worry him--the moral aspect, I mean; but somehow it makes it terrible for me. It's discovering small evil in a man--petty larceny, sneak thieving--that pours sand into a woman's soul. Good night, Bulldog. I think if I were only your sister I'd be quite satisfied--quite."

"You are," Carney said, rising; "we are seven--and you are the other six, Jeanette."

As a rule nothing outside of a tangible actuality, such as danger that had to be guarded against, kept Carney from desired slumber; but after he had turned out his light he lay wide awake for half an hour, his soul full of the abhorrent repugnance of Seth's stealing.

Carney's code was such that he could shake heartily by the hand, or drink with, a man who had held up a train, or fought (even to the death of someone) the Police over a matter of whisky or opium running, if that man were above petty larceny, above stealing from a man who had confidence in him. He lay there suffused with the grim satisfaction of knowing how completely Seth, and possibly Shipley, would be nonplussed when they were forced on the morrow to give up their ill-gotten gains. That would be a matter purely between Carney and Seth. The problem of how he would return the loot to Hadley without telling him of the marked pack, was not yet solved. Indeed, this little mental exercise, like counting sheep, led Carney off into the halls of slumber.

He was brought back from the rest cavern by something that left him sitting bolt upright in bed, correlating the disturbing something with known remembrances of the noise.

"Yes, by gad, it was a shot!"

He was out of bed and at the window. He could have sworn that a shadow had flitted in the dim moonlight along the roadway that lay beyond the police shack; it was so possible this aftermath of card cheating, a shot and someone fleeing. It was a subconscious conviction that caused him to precipitate himself into his clothes, and slip his gun belt about his waist.

In the hall he met Jeanette, her great mass of black hair rippling over the shoulders, from which draped a kimono. The lamp in her hand enhanced the ghastly look of horror that was over her drawn face.

"What's wrong, Jeanette--was it a shot?"

"Yes! I've looked into Seth's room--he's not there!"

Without speaking Carney tapped on a door almost opposite his own; there was no answer, and he swung it open. Then he closed it and whispered: "Hadley's not in, either; fancy they're still playing." Jeanette pointed a finger to a door farther down the hall. Carney understood. Again he tapped on this door, opened it, peered in, closed it, and coming back to Jeanette whispered: "Shipley's not there. Fancy it must be all right--they're still playing. I'll go over to the shack."

"I'll wait till you come back, Bulldog. It isn't all right. I never felt so oppressed in my life. I know something dreadful has happened--I know it." Carney touched his fingers gently to the girl's arm, and manufacturing a smile of reassurance, said blithely: "You've eaten a slab of bacon, _à la_ fry-pan, girl." Then he was gone.

As he rounded the hotel corner he could see a lighted lamp in a window of the police shack. This was curious; it hurried his pace, for they were not playing at the table.

He threw open the shack door, and stood just within, looking at what he knew was a dead man--Seth Long sprawled on his back on the floor where he had tumbled from a chair. His shirt front was crimson with blood, just over the heart.

There was no evidence of a struggle; just the chair across the table from where Seth had sat was ominously pushed back a little. The red-backed cards were resting on the corner of the table neatly gathered into a pack.

Cool-brained Carney stood just within the door, mentally photographing the interior. The killing had not been over a game that was in progress, unless the murderer, with super-cunning, had rearranged the tableau.

Carney stepped to beside the dead man. Seth's pistol lay close to his outstretched right hand. Carney picked it up, and broke the cartridges from the cylinder; one was empty; the barrel of the gun was foul.

Seth's shirt was black and singed; the weapon that killed him had been held close.

Carney's brain, running with the swift, silent velocity of a spinning top, queried: Was the killer so super-clever that he had discharged Seth's gun to make it appear suicide?

Subconsciously the marked cards that probably had led up to this murder governed Carney's next move. He thrust his hand in the pocket of the coat where Seth had put the discarded pack--it was gone. He felt the other pocket--the pack was not there. A quick look over the room, table and all, failed to locate the missing cards. He felt the inside pocket of the coat for the leather wallet that contained Hadley's money--there was no wallet.

At that instant a sinister feeling of evil caused Carney to stiffen, his eyes to set in a look of wariness; at the soft click of a boot against a stone his gun was out and, without rising, he whipped about.

The flickering uncertain lamplight picked out from the gloom of the night in the open doorway the face of Shipley. Perhaps it was the goblin light, or fear, or malignant satisfaction that caused Shipley's face to appear grotesquely contorted; his eyes were either gloating, or imbecile-tinged by horror.

"My God! what's happened, Carney?" he asked. "Don't cover me, I--I----"

"Come into the light, then," Carney commanded.

In silent obedience Shipley stepped into the room, and Carney, passing to the door, peered out. Then he closed it, and dropped his gun back into his belt.

"What's happened?" Shipley repeated. And the other, listening with intensity, noticed that the speaker's voice trembled.

"Where have you come from just now?" Carney asked, ignoring the question.

Shipley drew a hand across his eyes, as if he would compel back his wandering thoughts, or would blot out the horror of that blood-smeared figure on the floor.

"I went for a walk," he answered.

"Why--when?" Carney snapped imperiously.

"I quit the game half an hour ago, and thought I'd walk over to Cranford's house; the smoking and the drinks had given me a headache."

"Why to Cranford's house?"

Shipley threw his head up as if he were about to resent the crisp cross-examining, but Bulldog's gray eyes, always compelling, were now fierce.

"Well,"--Shipley coughed--"I didn't like the looks of the game to-night; that ace being shy---- Didn't you feel there was something not on the level?"

"I didn't take that walk to Cranford's!". The deadliness that had been in the gray eyes was in the voice now.

"I thought that if Cranford was still up I'd talk it over with him; he'd lost, and I fancied he was sore on the game."

"What did Cranford say?"

"I didn't see him. I tapped on his door, and as he didn't answer I--I thought he was asleep and came back. I saw the door open here, and----"

Shipley hesitated.

"Did you leave Seth and Hadley playing?"

"Yes."

"And you didn't see either of them again?"

"No."

"Did you hear a shot?" and Carney pointed toward the blood-stained shirt.

Shipley looked at Carney and seemed to hesitate. "I heard something ten minutes ago, but thought it was a door slamming. Where's Hadley--have you seen him? Were you here when this was done?"

"Come on," Carney said, "we'll go back to the hotel and round up Hadley."

As they went out Carney locked the door, the key being still in the lock.

When the two men entered the Gold Nugget, Carney stepped behind the bar and turned up a wall lamp that was burning low. As he faced about he gave a start, and then hurried across the room to where a figure huddled in one of the big wooden arm chairs. It was Hadley--sound asleep, or pretending to be.

When Carney shook him the sleeper scrambled drunkenly to his feet blinking. Then the boy smile flitted foolishly over his lips, and he mumbled: "I say, how long've I been asleep--where's Seth?"

"What are you doing here asleep?" Carney asked, the crisp incisiveness of his voice wakening completely the rather fogged man.

"I sat down to wait for Seth. Guess the whisky made me sleepy--had a little too much of it."

"Where did you leave Seth--how long ago?"

"Over at the police shack; we quit the game and Seth said he'd tidy up for fear the Sergeant'd be back in the morning--throw out the empty bottles, and pick up the cigar stubs and matches, kind of tidy up. I came on to go to bed and----" Hadley spoke haltingly, as though his memory of his progress was still befogged--"when I got here I remembered that he'd got my wallet, and thought I'd sit down and wait so's to be sure he didn't forget to put it back in the iron box."

"Did you have a row with Seth when you broke up the game?"

Hadley flushed. He was in a slightly stupid condition. During his nap the whisky had sullenly subsided, leaving him a touch maudlin, surly.

"I don't see what right you've got to ask that; I guess that's a matter between two men."

Carney fastened his piercing eyes on the speaker's, and shot out with startling suddenness: "Seth Long has been murdered--do you know that?"

"What--what--what're you saying?"

Hadley's mouth remained open; it was like the gaping mouth of a gasping fish; his eyes had been startled into a wide horrified wonder look.

"Seth--murdered!" then he grinned foolishly. "By God! you Westerners pull some rough stuff. That's not good form to spring a joke like that; I'm a tenderfoot, but----"

"Stop it!" Carney snarled; "do you think I'm a damned fool. Seth has been shot through the heart, and you were the last man with him. I want from you all you know. We've got to catch the right man, not the wrong man--do you get that, Hadley?" The fierceness of this toniced the man with a hang-over, cleared his fuzzy brain.

"My God! I don't know anything about it. I left Seth Long at the police shack, and I don't know anything more about him."

There was a step on the stairway. Carney turned as Jeanette came through the door. He went to meet her, and turned her back into the hall where he said: "Steady yourself, girl. Something has happened."

"I know--I heard you; I'm steady." She put her hand in his, and he pressed it reassuringly. Then he whispered:

"I'm going to leave you with these two men while I get Dr. Anderson, and I want you to see if either of these men leaves the room, or attempts to hide anything--I can't search them. Do you understand, Jeanette?"

"Yes."

He came back to the room with the girl and said:

"I'm going for the coroner, Dr. Anderson, and for your own sakes, gentlemen, I'll ask you to wait here in this room--it will be better."

Then he was gone.

In twenty minutes he was back with Dr. Anderson. On their way to the hotel Carney and the Doctor had gone into the police shack to make certain, through medical examination, that Seth was dead.

Upon their entry Jeanette had gone upstairs, the Doctor suggesting this.

Dr. Anderson was a Scotchman, absolute, with all that the name implies in canny conservative stubborn adherence to things as they are; the apparent consistencies.

Here was a man murdered in cold blood; he was the only one to be considered; he was the wronged party; the others were to be viewed with suspicion until by process of elimination they had been cleared of guilt. So there was no doubt whatever but that Carney had as good a claim as any of them to the title of assassin.

In the flurry of it all Carney had not thought of this.

When the three stories had been told, Dr. Anderson said:

"Sergeant Black will be back to-morrow, I think; then we'll take action. I'd advise you gentlemen to remain _in statu quo_, if I might use the term. There's one thing that ought to be done, though; I think you'll agree with me that it is advisable for each man's sake. A wallet with a large sum of money has disappeared from the murdered man's pocket, and as each one of you will be more or less under suspicion--I'm speaking now just in the way of forecasting what that unsympathetic individual, the law, will do--it would be as well for each of you to submit to a search of your person. I have no authority to demand this, but it's expedient."

To this the three agreed; Hadley, with a sort of repugnance, and Shipley with, perhaps, an overzealous compliance, Carney thought. There was no trace of the wallet.

Carney had said nothing about the missing cards, but neither were they found.

No pistol was found on Hadley, but a short-barreled gun was discovered in Shipley's hip pocket.

The Doctor broke the weapon, and his eyebrows drew down in a frown ominously--there was an empty chamber in the cylinder.

"There're only five bullets here," he said, his keen eyes resting on Shipley's face.

"Yes, I always load it that way, leaving the hammer at the empty chamber, so that if it falls and strikes on the hammer it can't explode."

With an "Ugh-huh!" Anderson looked through the barrel. It was of an indeterminate murkiness; this might be due to not having been cleaned for a long time, or a recent discharge.

"I'd better retain this gun, if you don't mind," he said.

Shipley agreed to this readily. Then he said, in a hesitating, apologetic way that was really more irritating than if he had blurted it out: "Mr. Carney, as I have stated, was discovered by me standing over the dead man with a gun in his hand. I think as this point will certainly be brought up at any examination, that Mr. Carney, in justice to himself, should let the Doctor examine his weapon to see that it has not lately been discharged."

Carney started, for he fancied there was a direct implication in this. But the Doctor spoke quickly, brusquely. "Most certainly he should--I clean forgot it."

Carney drew the gun from its leather pocket, broke it, and six lead-nosed.45 shells rolled on the table; not one of the shells had lost its bullet. He passed the gun to Dr. Anderson, who, pointing it toward the light, looked through the barrel.