He gave her a chance to comment. When she just went on staring at him bug-eyed, he said, 'Your boss had no call to keep such a list. There was no question the money coming in had just been printed for him by the federal mint. There'd have been no point in recording the serial numbers on notes to be paid out within days to honest folks the government owed money to.'
She said, 'We were asked about that at the time. Neither of us could say why Mister Godwynn had been extra cautious. Perhaps he'd been tipped off about a planned robbery, or...'
'Or perhaps it was one or both of you two survivors who'd made up the list, over a period of days or weeks, by writing down numbers of high-denomination notes being paid out in good faith to honest folks.'
She laughed incredulously and demanded, 'Why would anyone want to do that, whether they were honest or not?'
He sighed and said, 'You sure stick to your guns, considering how far down in the water you are right now. We both know the two of you knew that even if you gunned your boss and fellow workers to leave no witnesses, someone was sure to consider all that money leaving the office safe another way. So you made up that list in advance, to let notes with those serial numbers spread far and wide, before the two of you just smoked up your own office one Friday around closing time. Then you told your whopping fish story to the first lawmen on the scene, and produced that list you said your late boss had made, just to throw suspicion off your ownselves as all that stolen money turned up here, there, and everywhere but around you. So I figure the two of you have been waiting for that impressive but unrecorded money to-'
Then the front door of her rooming house burst open, and it was a good thing Longarm had already drawn his.44-40 and covered it with his Stetson. Because it was still too close for comfort as the dark figure in the doorway threw down on them, but had to watch where he was aiming as his doxie screamed, 'Get him! He knows!'
Longarm didn't have to worry about his own fusillade, so he got three rounds of rapid fire off in time to stagger his foeman back against the doorjamb, and put a fourth round in him when he took a full extra second to drop his own six-gun and slide silently down to the doorstep while Lorena Fenward wailed like a banshee and might have scratched Longarm's face off if he hadn't stiff-armed her back on that porch swing.
He was standing over them both, reloading, when that same old landlady joined them, yelling 'What is the meaning of all that noise and, oh, my stars and garters, who shot poor Clifford Stern in the breast like that?'
Longarm said, 'It was me, ma'am. I told you I was the law. Would you kindly go down to your front gate and wave in any other lawmen as they come running? Miss Lorena and me still have to talk about some money, if she knows what's good for her.'
The End
