“Didn’t I mention him by name? He is the ruffian who shot Harding’s sister in the affray at Gaynard’s—the fellow that Brant winged and would have killed, if I had let him.”
The editor’s pivot chair made a quick half circle, and Forsyth smote upon the table with his fist in an ecstasy of exprobration.
“What an infernal lot of idiotic chumps we are!—saving your presence, judge,” he burst out. “Why, the thing is as plain as daylight! Gasset is the man who was plotting with Harding against Brant, and he is the man who followed Brant into the Osirian that night and fired the shot which killed Harding. And that shot missed its mark; it was meant for George Brant!”
Hobart’s pose was self-repression, but he sprang to his feet with something very like an imprecation. “Why, of course! If I’d had any time at all to pull myself together! Why, gentlemen, I knew—knew all about it, but it didn’t occur to me. This man Gasset got out of the hospital before I left Silverette, and it was the talk of the camp that he was hunting for Brant with blood in his eye. I meant to write George about it at the time; but since he had cut the whole business I didn’t think there was any great danger.”
But it was the judge who went to the heart of the matter in two words. “Thank God!” he said earnestly, “at last we have something with which to go to his Excellency, the Governor. And afterward, if we can only lay hands on this man Gasset——”
There was a volley fire of suggestions from Hobart and Jarvis, but the night editor’s genius for organization came quickly to the fore:
“We shall have him, if he is anywhere this side of his master’s smelting pot, and——”
“And when you find him,” Jarvis cut in, “he will probably have in his possession a big 45-calibre Colt’s with the name ‘J. Harding’ scratched on the butt.”
“What’s that? how do you know?” demanded Forsyth; and the marshalling of forces paused while Jarvis explained.
“I know, because the existence of that same big pistol has been the one thing which has kept me alive. Everybody took it for granted that the murder was committed with the pistol which was found on the floor. I wasn’t sure of that, and when I began to doubt, I saw the possibility of another weapon and another man behind it. Gasset was the man who had the original ‘J. Harding’ weapon at the time of the killing, and if he still has it when we catch him—if we catch him—it will be a strong point in evidence if he happens to have the pistol he stole from Brant’s room in his possession.”