“I reckon.”  Cole harked back to a preceding suggestion.  “The revenge theory won’t hold water.  If some friend of yore uncle knew the Jap had killed him he’d sick the law on him.  He wouldn’t pull off any private execution like this.”

Kirby accepted this.  “That’s true.  There’s another possibility.  We’ve been forgettin’ the two thousand dollars my uncle drew from the bank the day he was killed.  If Horikawa an’ some one else are guilty of the murder an’ the theft, they might have quarreled later over the money.  Perhaps the accomplice saw a chance to get away with the whole of it by gettin’ rid of Horikawa.”

“Mebbeso.  By what you tell me yore uncle was a big, two-fisted scrapper.  It was a two-man job to handle him.  This li’l’ Jap never in the world did it alone.  What it gets back to is that he was prob’ly in on it an’ later for some reason his pardner gunned him.”

“Well, we’d better telephone for the police an’ let them do some of the worryin’.”

Kirby stepped into the living-room, followed by his friend.  He was about to reach for the receiver when an exclamation stopped him.  Sanborn was standing before a small writing-desk, of which he had just let down the top.  He had lifted idly a piece of blotting-paper and was gazing down at a sheet of paper with writing on it.

“Looky here, Kirby,” he called.

In three strides Lane was beside him.  His eyes, too, fastened on the sheet and found there the pot-hooks we have learned to associate with Chinese and Japanese chirography.

“Shows he’d been makin’ himself at home,” the champion rough rider said.

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’s just an off chance he might ‘a’ seen Rose that night an’ tells about it here.”

A moment later he was telephoning to the City Hall for the police.

There was the sound of a key in the outer door.  It opened, and the janitor of the Paradox stood in the doorway.

“What you do here?” asked the little Japanese quickly.

“We came in through the window,” explained Kirby.  “Thought mebbe the man that killed my uncle slipped in here.”

“I hear you talk.  I come in.  You no business here.”

“True enough, Shibo.  But we’re not burglars an’ we’re here.  Lucky we are too.  We’ve found somethin’.”

“Mr. Jennings he in Chicago.  He no like you here.”

“I want to show you somethin’, Shibo.  Come.”

Kirby led the way into the bedroom.  Shibo looked at his countryman without a muscle of his impassive face twitching.