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But before he heard the silken rustle of Helga Strawn's approach there was to come to him a new sign of the future that was rushing down upon him. As usual Helga kept him waiting. He tapped at the window with a hand that he jerked impatiently from his pocket; he turned, thinking that he heard her steps; he walked back and forth in the room.
It was a deed, properly drawn, needing but his own signature to return to Helga Strawn the lands he had bought from her. "So," he sneered, "you are trying a little blackmail, are you? You are a spy and Helga Strawn's agent, I suppose?" Again she laughed at him. "I attend to my own business, my dear cousin," her voice very like his.
Big footprints on the thick dust which coated the floor showed him that he was being no more thorough than Captain Strawn's brace of plainclothes detectives had been much earlier that evening. Two pairs of giant footprints.... With an exclamation he discovered a smaller, narrow pair of prints, and followed their winding trail all around and across the attic.
Ahead of his roadster were two other cars, and a glance toward the open garage showed that a Ford coupe was housed there. As he was descending Captain Strawn's voice hailed him from an open window of the room nearest the garage. "Hello, Bonnie! Been expecting you.... Damnedest business you ever saw.... There's a door from this room onto the porch. Hop up and come on in." Dundee obeyed.
On the other hand, if nothing came of the campaign for irrigation, it was always worth twenty dollars. It was Helga Strawn's way to play safe. She saw much of Sledge Hume. Or rather she allowed Sledge Hume to see much of her. The same thing with a variation, and that variation important in the woman's shrewd eyes.
"I suppose so. That's business." "And, above all things in the world, Sledge Hume is a business man! Well, I won't ask what you'd do when the offer came, as you'd say that it was none of my affair. I've seen Ruf Ettinger and learned all he knows." He did not answer; he had suddenly resolved to see the drift of Helga Strawn's thoughts before he did a great deal of talking.
"That's just the trouble nothing's happened, and nothing is very likely to happen here. I'm determined to go to New York and work on this pesky case from that end " "Then you've come around to Captain Strawn's theory that it was a New York gunman?" Penny asked hopefully. "Not by a jugful!... But what's the matter with you this morning, young woman?
"Of course I might have known that Captain Strawn's theory about a gunman was just dust in our eyes, and that only a miracle could keep you from fastening on poor Ralph, since he and the gun are both missing.... Naturally it wouldn't occur to you that it might be an outsider, someone who had followed Nita and her lover, Sprague, from New York, to kill her for having left him for Sprague.... Oh, no!
"Captain Strawn's theory," read the text below the large drawing, "is that Sprague had good cause to fear he was being followed on his way to the Miles home; that he telephoned for a taxi to wait for him at the foot of the hill, and that he planned to leave the Miles house by way of the trophy room window, so that his lurking pursuer might have no knowledge of his departure.
"When did you withdraw the guard from the Selim house?" he asked abruptly, cutting short Strawn's cordial welcome-home. "Late Thursday afternoon," the Chief of the Homicide Squad answered belligerently. "I needed all my men, and the Selim house had been gone over with a fine tooth comb half a dozen times.... Why?" "Oh, nothing!"
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