He sat down with us and poured a drink.
“I thought you might be interested,” he said. “We gave that waiter a going-over. We wanted to know who put him up to it. He tried to sell us the line that he was a New Texan patriot, trying to kill a tyrant, but we finally got the truth out of him. He was paid a thousand pesos to do the job, by a character they call Snake-Eyes Sam Bonney. A cousin of the three who killed Mr. Cumshaw.”
“Nephew of Kettle-Belly Sam,” Parros interjected. “You pick him up?”
Nelson shook his head disgustedly. “He’s out in the high grass somewhere. We’re still looking for him. Oh, yes, and I just heard that the trial of Switchblade, and Jack-High and Turkey-Buzzard is scheduled for three days from now. You’ll be notified in due form tomorrow, but I thought you might like to know in advance.”
“I certainly do, and thank you, Captain. … We were just talking about you when you arrived,” I mentioned. “About the arrest, or rescue, or whatever you call it, of that trio.”
“Yeah. One of the jobs I’m not particularly proud of. Pity Hickock’s boys didn’t get hold of them before I got there. It’d of saved everybody a lot of trouble.”
“Just what impression did you get at the time, Captain?” I asked. “You think Kettle-Belly knew in advance what they were going to do?”
“Sure he did. They had the whole jail fortified. Not like a jail usually is, to keep people from getting out; but like a fort, to keep people from getting in. There were no prisoners inside. I found out that they had all been released that morning.”
He stopped, seemed to be weighing his words, then continued, speaking very slowly.
“Let me tell you first some things I can’t testify to, couple of things that I figure went wrong with their plans.
“One of Colonel Hickock’s men was on the porch to greet Mr. Cumshaw and he recognized the Bonneys. That was lucky; otherwise we might still be lookin’ and wonderin’ who did the shootin,’ which might not have been good for New Texas.”
He cocked an eyebrow and I nodded. The Solar League, in similar cases, had regarded such planetary governments as due for change without notice and had promptly made the change.
“Number two,” Captain Nelson continued, “that A.A.-shot which hit their aircar. I don’t think they intended to land at the jail—it was just sort of a reserve hiding-hole. But because they’d been hit, they had to land. And they’d been slowed down so much that they couldn’t dispose of the evidence before the Colonel’s boys were tappin’ on the door ’n’ askin,’ couldn’t they come in.”
“I gather the Colonel’s task-force was becoming insistent,” I prompted him.
The big Ranger grinned. “Now we’re on things I can testify to.
“When I got there, what had been the cellblock was on fire, and they were trying to defend the mayor’s office and the warden’s office. These Bonneys gave me the line that they’d been witnesses to the killing of Mr. Cumshaw by Colonel Hickock and that the Hickock outfit was trying to rub them out to keep them from testifying. I just laughed and started to walk out. Finally, they confessed that they’d shot Mr. Cumshaw, but they claimed it was right of action against political malfeasance. When they did that, I had to take them in.”
“They confessed to you, before you arrested them?” I wanted to be sure of that point.
“That’s right. I’m going to testify to that, Monday, when the trial is held. And that ain’t all: we got their fingerprints off the car, off the gun, off some shells still in the clip, and we have the gun identified to the shells that killed Mr. Cumshaw. We got their confession fully corroborated.”
I asked him if he’d give Mr. Parros a complete statement of what he’d seen and heard at Bonneyville. He was more than willing and I suggested that they go into Parros’ office, where they’d be undisturbed. The Ranger and my Intelligence man got up and took a bottle of superbourbon with them. As they were leaving, Nelson turned to Hoddy, who was still with us.
“You’ll have to look to your laurels, Hoddy,” Nelson said. “Your Ambassador seems to be making quite a reputation for himself as a gunfighter.”
“Look,” Hoddy said, and though he was facing Nelson, I felt he was really talking to Stonehenge, “before I’d go up against this guy, I’d shoot myself. That way, I could be sure I’d get a nice painless job.”
After they were gone, I turned to Stonehenge and Thrombley. “This seems to be a carefully prearranged killing.”
They agreed.
“Then they knew in advance that Mr. Cumshaw would be on Colonel Hickock’s front steps at about 1030. How did they find that out?”
“Why … why, I’m sure I don’t know,” Thrombley said. It was most obvious that the idea had never occurred to him before and a side glance told me that the thought was new to Stonehenge also. “Colonel Hickock called at 0900. Mr. Cumshaw left the Embassy in an aircar a few minutes later. It took an hour and a half to fly out to the Hickock ranch. …”
“I don’t like the implications, Mr. Silk,” Stonehenge said. “I can’t believe that was how it happened. In the first place, Colonel Hickock isn’t that sort of man: he doesn’t use his hospitality to trap people to their death. In the second place, he wouldn’t have needed to use people like these Bonneys. His own men would do anything for him. In the third place, he is one of the leaders of the annexation movement here and this was obviously an anti-annexation job. And in the fourth place—”
“Hold it!” I checked him. “Are you sure he’s really on the annexation side?”
He opened his mouth to answer me quickly, then closed it, waited a moment, answered me slowly. “I can guess what you are thinking, Mr. Silk. But, remember, when Colonel Hickock came here as our
