“That was Pete Dalcor. If he got killed last night, that was his ghost. I’ll take my oath on it.”
Chapter nineteen
THE BAFFLED LOOK on Sheriff Fleming’s face showed that he didn’t understand any of it, but he whirled out of the room and down the rear hall in the hopes of intercepting the bearded man who had reappeared so mysteriously.
Everyone else in the room was staring at the editor from Telluride. Phyllis Shayne spoke first:
“You must be mistaken, Mr. Raton. That’s the same man we saw at the window last night. I know it is. Didn’t you recognize him, Mike?”
Shayne nodded slowly. “Looked like the same face to me.”
“Can’t help that,” Raton grumbled. “Maybe you did see Pete Dalcor last night. But I saw him just now.”
Two-Deck Bryant spoke up in a voice that trembled with wrath. “This is your doing, Shayne. I knew, by God, you had something up your sleeve. You had that old coot planted out there waiting for dark. I saw you look at your watch while you were driveling on — killing time until you could turn on the lights. You’re fixing it to try and prove the man who was killed last night wasn’t Peter Dalcor.”
“Why,” said Shayne agreeably, “that seems self-evident. We all know Screwloose Pete is dead. But Mr. Raton knew Dalcor intimately years ago, and you just heard him positively identify a live man as his old friend.”
“And I suppose he’ll now conveniently disappear again,” sneered Bryant. “And nobody will be able to prove he isn’t Dalcor. How much did you pay Raton to come here and pull a phony identification?”