Susan had of course been listening all this time, but seemed to find it all distasteful as well as confusing. She rose to her feet and said, “The crowd down there has thinned out enough for us to leave. Or would you rather stay a while? I could meet you at my place, later.”
Longarm said, “Hold the thought, honey. I’m just about done here and I don’t want you on the streets without no escort.”
She started to protest. Then Billy Vail joined them to announce, “Well, Longarm, I’ll allow I thought it was a wild shot, and the judge who issued the search warrant thought it was even wilder. But when you’re right, you’re right.”
Then he held up an all-too-familiar sample case and, as Susan gasped in dismay and Longarm sighed in resignation, Vail continued. “We found this in the hotel room you intimated we might. It sure was heavy, like you said, for a case packed with frilly female notions. That was because of all the silver certificates in high denominations packed in under the false bottom, of course.”
All three lawmen in the box turned to Susan to see what she might have to say about the luggage Longarm had carried to her hotel for her, earlier. But she didn’t say a word. She turned to grab the railing of the box and vault gracefully over it before anyone could stop her.
She almost made it. She landed feet-first on a seat far below. Then the seat folded under her. She crashed down, face up, to snap her spine on the upright backs of the seats one row closer to the stage. They could hear the ghastly crackle of her parting vertebrae, then her body crumpled down between the seats in a series of dull thuds. Then it got very quiet.
Longarm broke the silence by muttering, “AW, she didn’t have to do that. All we had on her for certain was aiding and abetting. But I noticed on the train, coming up from El Paso, that she was sort of excitable.”
Some Denver lawmen were moving toward the dead girl down there, now. Vail said, “I never heard that remark about anyone coming excited on any train, official. But for my own informal curiosity, would someone please tell me how a gal could get that passionate with a lawman who’d just shot it out with her own father, and won?”
Longarm shrugged and said, “Desperation. Knowing I was a lawman still searching for her friends and relations must have excited her more than any desire for revenge and, well, you know what they say about love and hate being close kin. She picked me up to find out how close I might be to figuring the whole deal out—It was a trick she’d either taught or learned from her kid sister, and I have to confess it almost worked on me a second time. Ain’t us men fools when it comes to nice-looking women?”
Guilfoyle sighed and said, “I’ve noticed that, myself. But how did you get on to her, pard?”
Longarm said, “I didn’t, until I’d been on her a spell. It’s a shuddersome thing to study on. I even went to sleep a few winks, with her and my guns in the same compartment. I wasn’t thinking all that much about members of the gang at large until Billy told me some of ‘em at least were in Denver.”
He reached absently for a smoke as he continued, “Once I knew that, and that the early arrivals had to be strapped for cash if they were cashing in stamps so risky, I started thinking again.”
He lit his cheroot and explained, “I recalled how heavy that one sample case had been, and that reminded me that I’d have had a time meeting any gal aboard that train from El Paso if she hadn’t been in El Paso about the time I was shooting it out with the last male members of the gang. I was still hoping she just admired my shoulders as much as she let on, but I thought it only common sense to wire the outfit she said she sold stuff for and, guess what, she’d been fibbing about that. She knew a lot of show business terms for a traveling saleswoman. But, like I said, we’d have never convicted her all that serious if she hadn’t kept acting so wild to the end.”
He turned to Vail to ask, “Do you reckon her sisters in sin will get off light, seeing we recovered the money and all?”
Billy Vail said, “I doubt any of the others will have to serve much time. I don’t want either of you two to testify how any of ‘em might have served you!”
All three had to laugh. Then Guilfoyle said, “It was mean of them to poison me like that. But I have to admit that this time the law came out ahead, in more ways than one.”