Tangled Trails: A Western Detective Story

If Kirby had been a properly authenticated detective of fiction he would have gone to his uncle's apartment, locked the door, measured the rooms with a tape-line, found imprints...

"We're not goin' to arrest Hull yet--not technically," Kirby explained to her. "I'm arrangin' to hire a private detective to be with him all the time. He'll keep him in sight fr...

Kirby Lane did not waste the two hours that lay before the appointment he had made for a meeting at the office of his cousin James. He had a talk with the Hulls and another with...

In spite of the fact that his mind had at times moved toward his cousin James as the murderer, Kirby experienced a shock at this accusation. He happened to glance at Olson, perh...

As Rose saw the hand of the law closing in on Kirby, she felt as though an ironic fate were laughing in impish glee at this horrible climax of her woe. He had sacrificed a pot o...

They followed the head waitress to a small table for two by a window. Rose walked with the buoyant rhythm of perfect health. Her friend noticed, as he had often done before, tha...

Shibo stood on the threshold and sent a swift glance around the room. He had expected to meet James alone. That first slant look of the long eyes forewarned him that Nemesis was...

If Kirby had been playing his own hand only he would have gone to the police and told them he was the man who had been seen leaving the Paradox Apartments by the fire escape. Bu...

Afterward, when Kirby Lane looked back upon the weeks spent in Denver trying to clear up the mysteries which surrounded the whole affair of his uncle's death, it seemed to him t...

The Twin Buttes man had said he would call it a morning, but he carried with him to the restaurant the problem that had become the pivot of all his waking thoughts. He had an ap...

Miss Phyllis Harriman had breakfasted earlier than usual. Her luxuriant, blue-black hair had been dressed and she was debating the important question as to what gown she would w...

The rough riders gravitated back to the fire escape. Kirby had studied the relation of his uncle's apartment to the building opposite. He had not yet examined it with reference...

When Rose heard from Esther next day she and Kirby took the Interurban for Golden. Esther had written that she wanted to see her sister because Cole was going to take her back t...

Esther McLean brought the afternoon mail in to Cunningham. She put it on the desk before him and stood waiting, timidly, afraid to voice her demand for justice, yet too desperat...

The men from Wyoming stepped into the elevator and Kirby pressed the button numbered 3. At the third floor they got out and turned to the right. With the Yale key his cousin had...

Kirby's efforts to find James Cunningham after dinner were not successful. He was not at his rooms, at the Country Club, or at his office. Nor was he at a dinner dance where he...

The less expert riders had been weeded out in the past two days. Only the champions of their respective sections were still in the running. One after another these lean, brown m...

Five minutes later a patrol wagon clanged up to the Paradox. A sergeant of police and two plainclothes men took the elevator. The sergeant, heading the party, stopped in the doo...

The words of the preacher's little wife were like a bolt from a sunny heaven. Kirby could not accept them without reiteration. Never in the wildest dreams of the too vivid imagi...

It was essential to Kirby's plans that he should be at liberty. If he should be locked up in prison even for a few days the threads that he had begun to untangle from the snarl...

Kirby had been bluffing when he said he had evidence to prove that James was in his uncle's rooms the very hour of the murder. But he was now convinced that he had told the trut...

He stepped into a booth and the voice of Rose came excited and tremulous. It was less than ten minutes since he had left her at the door of her boarding-house.

He drew the fingers of his outstretched hand along the nap of a rug and he knew he was on the floor. Then his mind cleared and he remembered that a woman's hand had been impriso...

"Yore uncle. He laid the cigar down on the stand an' asked them what they wanted. He didn't rise from the chair, but his voice rasped when he spoke. It was the woman answered. S...

From a booth in a drug-store on Sixteenth Street Kirby telephoned the police that James Cunningham had been murdered at his home in the Paradox Apartments. He stayed to answer n...

Kirby put Wild Rose on the morning train for Denver. She had escaped from the doctor by sheer force of will. The night had been a wretched one, almost sleepless, and she knew th...

He walked to the Wyndham, entered, and slipped up the stairs of the rooming-house unnoticed. From the third story he ascended by a ladder to the flat roof. He knew exactly what...

Jack Cunningham, co-heir with James of his uncle's estate, was busy in the office he had inherited settling up one of the hundred details that had been left at loose ends by the...

"Chuck" Ellis, reporter, testified that on his way home from the Press Club on the night of the twenty-third, he stopped at an alley on Glenarm Street to strike a light for his...

"I won't have it," Kirby said flatly. "If Miss McLean tells her story to the district attorney he'll probably arrest her. It'll come out about her sister an' the papers will run...

Kirby studied the invitation carefully. Was it genuine? Or was it a plant? He was no handwriting expert, but he had a feeling that it was a disguised script. There is an inimita...

The story of the Cunningham mystery, as it was already being called, filled the early editions of the afternoon papers. The "Times" had the scoop of the day. It was a story sign...

Through the gateway of the enclosure came a girl hardly out of her teens. She was bareheaded, a cowboy hat in her hand. The sun, already slanting from the west, kissed her crisp...

"According to your own story you must have been in your uncle's apartment at least a quarter of an hour, Mr. Lane," said the prosecuting attorney. "What were you doing there all...

"No, sir--not to say trouble." Hull was already perspiring profusely. He dragged a red bandanna from his pocket and mopped the roll of fat that swelled over his collar. "I--we h...

Cole Sanborn passed through the Welcome Arch at the station carrying an imitation-leather suitcase. He did not take a car, but walked up Seventeenth Avenue as far as the Markham...

Kirby was quite right when he said that Hull would go with them. He was on his way downtown when the taxi caught him at Fourteenth and Welton. The cattleman jumped out from the...

Kirby entered. A man sat at a desk telephoning. He was smooth-shaven and rather heavy-set, a year or two beyond thirty, with thinning hair on the top of his head. His eyes in re...

Automatically he hung the receiver on the hook. Dazed though he was, the rough rider knew that the police were the last people in the world he wanted to see just now.

Kirby stared down at the document in front of him. He could scarcely believe the evidence flashed by his eyes to his brain. It was the document he had asked the county recorder...

It was five minutes to ten by his watch when Kirby entered the Paradox Apartments. The bulletin board told him that his uncle's apartment was 12. He did not take the self-serve...

Kirby took his lady love driving in a rented flivver. It was a Colorado night, with a young moon looking down through the cool, rare atmosphere found only in the Rockies. He dro...