She hesitated.  “Well, if you like.”

He stepped to a desk and found paper and pen.  “I’ll dictate it if you’ll write it, Mrs. Hull.”

Not quite easy in her mind, the woman sat down and took the pen he offered.

“This is to certify—­” Kirby began, and dictated a few sentences slowly.

She wrote the statement, word for word as he gave it, using her left hand.  The cattleman signed it.  He left the paper with her.

After the arrangement for the private detective to watch Hull had been made, Olson and Lane walked together to the hotel of the latter.

“Come up to my room a minute and let’s talk things over,” Kirby suggested.

As soon as the door was closed, the man from Twin Buttes turned on the farmer and flung a swift demand at him.

“Now, Olson, I’ll hear the rest of your story.”

The eyes of the Swede grew hard and narrow.  “What’s bitin’ you?  I’ve told you my story.”

“Some of it.  Not all of it.”

“Whadjamean?”

“You told me what you saw from the fire escape of the Wyndham, but you didn’t tell what you saw from the fire escape of the Paradox.”

“Who says I saw anything from there?”

“I say so.”

“You tryin’ to hang this killin’ on me?” demanded Olson angrily.

“Not if you didn’t do it.”  Kirby looked at him quietly, speculatively, undisturbed by the heaviness of his frown.  “But you come to me an’ tell the story of what you saw.  So you say.  Yet all the time you’re holdin’ back.  Why?  What’s your reason?”

“How do you know I’m holdin’ back?” the ranchman asked sulkily.

Kirby knew that in his mind suspicion, dread, fear, hatred, and the desire for revenge were once more at open war.

“I’ll tell you what you did that night,” answered Kirby, without the least trace of doubt in voice or manner.  “When Mrs. Hull pulled down the blind, you ran up to the roof an’ cut down the clothes-line.  You went back to the fire escape, fixed up some kind of a lariat, an’ flung the loop over an abutment stickin’ from the wall of the Paradox.  You swung across to the fire escape of the Paradox.  There you could see into the room where Cunningham was tied to the chair.”

“How could I if the blind was down?”

“The blind doesn’t fit close to the woodwork of the window.  Lookin’ in from the right, you can see the left half of the room.  If you look in from the other side, you see the other part of it.  That’s just what you did.”

For the moment Olson was struck dumb.  How could this man know exactly what he had done unless some one had seen him?

“You know so much I reckon I’ll let you tell the rest,” the Scandinavian said with uneasy sarcasm.