Shibo turned to Kirby.  “You tellum police I killum Mr. Cunnin’lam and Horikawa?”

“Yes.”

“I plenty sorry I no kill you.”

“You did your best, Shibo.  Took three shots at ten feet.  Rotten shooting.”

“Do you mean that he actually tried to kill you?” James asked in surprise.

“In the Denmark Building, the other night, at eleven o’clock.  And I’ll say he made a bad mistake when he tried an’ didn’t get away with it.  For I knew that the man who was aimin’ to gun me was the same one that had killed Uncle James.  He’d got to worryin’ for fear I was followin’ too hot a trail.”

“Did you recognize him?” Jack said.

“Not right then.  I was too busy duckin’ for cover.  Safety first was my motto right then.  No, when I first had time to figure on who could be the gentleman that was so eager to make me among those absent, I rather laid it to Cousin James, with Mr. Cass Hull second on my list of suspects.  The fellow had a searchlight an’ he flashed it on me.  I could see above it a bandanna handkerchief over the face.  I’d seen a bandanna like it in Hull’s hands.  But I had to eliminate Hull.  The gunman on the stairs had small, neat feet, no larger than a woman’s.  Hull’s feet are—­well, sizable.”

They were.  Huge was not too much to call them.

As a dozen eyes focused on his boots the fat man drew them back of the rungs of his chair.  This attention to personal details of his conformation was embarrassing.

“Those small feet stuck in my mind,” Kirby went on.  “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.  I had learned that he had seen the Hulls come from my uncle’s rooms an’ had kept quiet.  Hull admitted that he had been forced to bribe him.  I tackled Shibo with it an’ threatened to tell the police.  Evidently he became frightened an’ tried to murder me.  I got a note makin’ an appointment at the Denmark Building at eleven in the night.  The writer promised to tell me who killed my uncle.  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.

“So I began to focus on Shibo.  He might be playin’ a lone hand, or he might be a tool of my cousin James.  A detective hired by me saw him leave James’s office.  That didn’t absolutely settle the point.  He might have seen somethin’ an’ be blackmailin’ him too.  That was the way of it, wasn’t it?” He turned point-blank to Cunningham.