United States or Israel ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He reached across his body for the automatic and sent a bullet into the brain of the man bound to the chair. Horikawa, to judge by his confession, was thunderstruck. He was an amiable little fellow who never had stepped outside the law. Now he was caught in the horrible meshes of a murder. He went to pieces and began to sob. Shibo stopped him sharply. Then they heard some one coming.
He never let up. He meant to bleed me heavily. We couldn't come to terms. I hated to yield to him." "And did you?" "I promised him an answer soon." "No doubt he came to-day thinkin' he was goin' to get it." Kirby went back to the previous question. "Next time I saw Shibo I took a look at his feet. He was wearin' a pair o' shoes that looked to me mighty like those worn by the man that ambushed me.
It was under some impulse of self-protection that he had written the statement. Shibo heard the confession read without the twitching of a facial muscle. He shrugged his shoulders, accepting the inevitable with the fatalism of his race. "He weak. He no good. He got yellow streak. I bossum," was his comment. "Did you kill him?" asked the Chief. "I killum both Cunnin'lam and Horikawa.
"Couldn't seem to get rid of the idea. They put James out of consideration, unless, of course, he had hired a killer, an' that didn't look reasonable to me. I'll tell the truth. I thought of Mrs. Hull dressed as a man an' then I thought of Shibo." "Had you suspected him before?" This from Olson. "Not of the murders.
According to his custom, he plunged abruptly into what he wanted to say. He had discovered that if a man is not given time to frame a defense, he is likely to give away something he had intended to conceal. "Shibo, why did you hide from the police that Mr. Hull was in my uncle's rooms the night he was killed?"
I took a chance an' went." The cattleman turned to Mrs. Hull. "Will you explain about the note, please?" The gaunt, tight-lipped woman rose, as though she had been called on at school to recite. "I wrote the note," she said. "Shibo made me. I didn't know he meant to kill Mr. Lane. He said he'd tell everything if I didn't." She sat down. She had finished her little piece.
Cunningham dead?" "If I have to." The janitor had no more remarks to make. He lapsed into an angry, stubborn silence. For nearly half an hour Kirby stayed by his side. The cattleman asked questions. He suggested that, of course, the police would soon find out the facts after he went to them. He even went beyond his brief and implied that shortly Shibo would be occupying a barred cell.
But he faced without a flicker of the lids the destiny he had prepared for himself. "You write me note come see you now," he said to Cunningham. James showed surprise. "No, I think not." "You no want me?" The Chief's hand fell on the shoulder of the janitor. "I want you, Shibo." "You write me note come here now?" "No, I reckon Mr. Lane wrote that." "I plenty busy. What you want me for?"
They didn't have any cap pieces across the toes. I'd noticed that even while he was shootin' at me. It struck me that it would be a good idea to look over his quarters in the basement. Shibo has one human weakness. He's a devotee of the moving pictures. Nearly every night he takes in a show on Curtis Street. The Chief lent me a man, an' last night we went through his room at the Paradox.
We found there a flashlight, a bandanna handkerchief with holes cut in it for the eyes, an' in the mattress two thousand dollars in big bills. We left them where we found them, for we didn't want to alarm Shibo." The janitor looked at him without emotion. "You plenty devil man," he said. "We hadn't proved yet that Shibo was goin' it alone," Kirby went on, paying no attention to the interruption.
Word Of The Day