Dyke Darrel lifted a cloth from the face of the dead, and Harper Elliston stood gazing down upon the features of wronged and murdered Sibyl Osborne.
The detective watched the expression of his companion's countenance closely.
With bated breath the man-hunter glued his gaze upon the face of the man bending over the casket.
"What a sad face, and yet most wonderful in its beauty. Who is she? A daughter of the house?"
Harper turned and regarded Dyke Darrel questioningly, a sympathetic look in his black eyes.
"Do you not know her?"
"I know her? You forget that I am a stranger in this part of the West, Dyke."
"She, too, was a stranger here, Elliston. Her home was in Burlington, and she has been brought to this by a villain who ought to pass the remainder of his days behind prison bars, if not conclude them at a rope's end. Do you know Hubert Vander?"
There was a stern ring in the detective's voice, and a look of deep, indignant feeling pervading his face. All the time he kept his gaze riveted on Elliston.
That gentleman stood the ordeal without flinching, however.