“What have you got?” Olney asked.
“Something that has hitherto been overlooked,” Keating announced importantly.
They bent over to look, and Keating pointed to a crumpled cloth tobacco sack which had evidently been about a quarter full of tobacco when the drenching rain had soaked through to the tobacco, stiffening the sack and staining it all to a dark brown which made it difficult to see against the ground.
“And over here,” Keating went on, “just six or eight inches from this tobacco sack you’ll find the burnt ends of two cigarettes rolled with brown rice paper, smoked down to within about an inch of the end and then left here. Now I’m no ex-cattleman,” and he glanced meaningly at Bill Eldon, “but I would say there’s something distinctive about the way these cigarettes are rolled.”
“There sure is,” Bill Eldon admitted ruefully.
“Well,” Keating said, “that’s my idea of a clue. It’s just about the same as though the fellow had left his calling card. Here are those cigarettes, the stubs showing very plainly how they’re rolled and folded. As I understand it, it’s quite a job to roll a cigarette, isn’t it, sheriff, that is, to do a good job?”
“Sure is,” Bill Eldon observed, “and these were rolled by a man who knew his business.”
“Don’t touch them now,” Keating warned. “I want to get a photograph of them just the way they were found, but you can see from just looking at this end that the paper has been rolled over and then there’s been a trick fold, something that makes it hold its shape when it’s rolled.”
“That’s right,” Olney said — there was a new-found respect in his voice.
“Let’s get that camera, coroner,” Keating announced, “and take some pictures of these cigarettes. Then we’ll carefully pick this evidence up so as not to disturb it. Then I think we’d better go check on the telephone and see if there are any leads to the inquiries Sheriff Eldon put out about someone bringing this chap in by airplane. I have an idea that’s where we are going to get a line on him.”
“What do you make of this evidence, Bill?” the ranger asked Eldon.
It was Keating who answered the question. “There’s no doubt about it. The whole crime was deliberately premeditated. This is the thing that the layman might overlook. It’s something that shows its true significance only to the legal mind. It establishes the premeditation which makes for first-degree murder. The murderer lay here waiting for his man. He waited while he smoked two cigarettes.”
“How do you suppose the murderer knew the man was going to camp right here?” Bill Eldon asked.
“That’s a minor matter,” Keating said. “The point is, he did know. He was lying here waiting. He smoked two cigarettes. Probably the man had already made his camp here and then gone up the hill for firewood, dragging that log down the hill along the trail that you pointed out.”
Eldon’s nod was dubious.
“Don’t you agree with that?” Keating demanded truculently.
“I was just wondering if the fellow that was killed wasn’t pretty tired from his walk,” Eldon said.
“Why? You said he only had to walk three or four miles from an airfield and it was pretty level ground all the way.”
“I know,” Eldon said, “but if he’d already established his camp here and then gone up the hill to get that firewood and dragged it down, the murderer must have moved into ambush after the man went up to get that log.”
“Well?”
“The victim certainly must have been awfully tired if it took long enough getting that log for the murderer to smoke two cigarettes.”
“Well, perhaps the murderer smoked them after the crime, or he may have been waiting for his man to get in just the right position. There’s no use trying to account for all these little things.”
“That’s right,” Eldon said.
“This evidence,” Keating went on significantly, “would have been overlooked if I hadn’t been prowling around, crawling on my hands and knees looking for any little thing that might have escaped observation.”
“Just like a danged bloodhound,” Olney said admiringly.
“That’s right,” Bill Eldon admitted. “Just like a bloodhound. Don’t see anything else there, do you, son?”
“How much else do you want?” Keating flared impatiently. “And let’s try and retain something of the dignity of our positions, sheriff. Now, if you’ve no objection, we’ll go to the telephone and see what we can discover.”
“No objection at all,” Eldon said. “I’m here to do everything I can.”
Information was waiting for them at the Forest Service telephone office.
The operator said, “Your office left a message to be forwarded to you, sheriff. A private charter plane took a man by the name of George Bay, who answers the description you gave over the telephone, into forest landing field number thirty-six, landing about ten o’clock yesterday morning. The man had a pack and took off into the woods. He said he was on a hiking trip and wanted to get some pictures. He told a couple of stories which didn’t exactly hang together and the pilot finally became suspicious. He thought his passenger was a fugitive and threatened to turn the plane around and fly to the nearest city to report to the police. When George Bay realized the pilot meant business, he told him he was a detective employed to trace some very valuable jewels which had been stolen by a member of the military forces while he was in Japan. He showed the pilot his credentials as a detective and said he was on a hot lead, that the jewels had been hidden for over a year, but the detective felt he was going to find them. He warned the aviator to say nothing to anyone.”
Bill Eldon thanked the operator, relayed the information to the others.
“Well,” Keating said, “I guess that does it.”
“Does what?” the sheriff asked.
“Gives us our murderer,” Keating said. “It has to be someone who was in the Army during the war, someone who was in Japan. How about this man Ames? Isn’t he a veteran?”
“That’s right. I think he was a prisoner in Japan.”
“Well, we’ll go talk with him,” Keating said. “He’s our man.”
“Of course,” Eldon pointed out, “if this dead man was really a detective, it ain’t hardly likely he’d tell the airplane pilot what he was after. If he said he was after Japanese gems, he’s like as not looking for stolen nylons.”
“You forget that the pilot was calling for a showdown,” Keating said. “He forced this man’s hand.”
“Maybe. It’d take more force than that to get me to show my hand on a case.”
“Well, I’m going to act on the assumption this report is true until it’s proven otherwise,” Keating said.
Sheriff Bill Eldon said, “Okay, that’s up to you. Now my idea of the way to really solve this murder is to sort of take it easy and...”
“And my idea of the way to solve it,” Keating interrupted impatiently, “is to lose no more time getting evidence and lose no time at all getting the murderer. It’s the responsibility of your office to get the murderer; the responsibility of my office to prosecute him. Therefore,” he added significantly, “I think it will pay you to let me take the initiative from this point on. I think we should work together, sir!”
“Well, we’re together,” Bill Eldon observed cheerfully. “Let’s work.”
Roberta Coe surveyed the little cabin, the grassy meadow, the graveled bar in the winding stream, the long finger of pine trees which stretched down the slope.