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For instance, he had not been able to account for Horikawa in it at all unless he represented X in that ten minutes of time unaccounted for. It was inaccurate. Olson was entirely vague as to time, but he could be checked up pretty well by the others. Hull was not quite sure of his clock, and Rose could only say that she had reached the Paradox "quite a little after a quarter to ten."
The cattleman had no doubt that it was Horikawa. His picture, a good snapshot taken by a former employer at a picnic where the Japanese had served the luncheon, had appeared in all the papers and on handbills sent out by James Cunningham, Junior. There was a scar, Y-shaped and ragged, just above the left eye, that made identification easy.
A second possibility is the unknown man from Dry Valley. A third is Horikawa." "How about Horikawa? Did you know him well?" "One never knows an Oriental. Perhaps I'm prejudiced because I used to live in California, but I never trust a Japanese fully. His sense of right and wrong is so different from mine. Horikawa is a quiet little fellow whose thought processes I don't pretend to understand."
Lane picked up the paper. There were two or three sheets of the writing. "Might be a letter to his folks or it might be " His sentence flickered out. He was thinking. "I reckon I'll take this along with me an' have it translated, Cole." He put the sheets in his pocket after he had folded them. "You never can tell. I might as well know what this Horikawa was thinkin' about first off as the police.
There were pieces in the puzzle Kirby could not fit into place. One of them was to find a sufficient cause for driving Horikawa to conceal himself when there was no evidence against him of the crime. The time element was tremendously important in the solution of the mystery of Cunningham's death. Kirby had studied this a hundred times.
The proverbial pin could have been heard. Only one person in the room except Kirby knew where the lightning was going to strike. That person sat by the door chewing the end of a cigar impassively. A woman gave a strangled little sob of pent emotion. "I've been leaving Horikawa out of the story," the cattleman went on. "I've got to bring him in now. He's the hinge on which it all swings.
"He's maybe spoiled our chance of laying hands on the man who killed Uncle. I can't get over my disappointment." "Don't worry, old man," Lane said quietly. "We're goin' to rope an' hogtie that wolf even if Horikawa can't point him out to us with his dead hand." Cunningham looked at him, and again the faint, ironic smile of admiration was in evidence. "You're confident, Kirby." "Why wouldn't I be?
He was about to call for help. Shibo knew what that meant. He and Horikawa were in a strange land. They would be sent to prison, an example made of them because they were foreigners. Automatically, without an instant of delay, he acted to protect himself. Two strides took him back to Cunningham.
"Unless tyin' him up here was an afterthought to make it look like the other," suggested Lane. He added, after a moment, "Or for revenge, because Horikawa killed my uncle. If he did, fate couldn't have sent a retribution more exactly just." "Sho, that's a heap unlikely.
Horikawa, according to the confession, had been in Cunningham's rooms sponging and pressing a suit of clothes when the promoter came home on the afternoon of the day of his death. Through a half-open door he had seen his master open his pocket-book and count a big roll of bills. The figures on the outside one showed that it was a treasury note for fifty dollars.
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