A mocking grin twitched the gambler’s saturnine features. “I’ve been thinking about taking a little flyer in the mining game. Looks to me like a chance to hit a real jackpot without laying too much sugar on the line.”
Shayne shook his head. “You know an easier way of making money, Bryant — with all the percentages in your favor. Casey tells me that clip-joint of yours on the Parkway is wired so heavy that the only play you get nowadays is from out-of-town suckers who don’t know the ropes. Storekeepers in town on buying trips from jerkwater towns like this.”
Again, he failed to get a rise out of Jasper Windrow. If the barbed shaft struck home, the man wasn’t giving out. He interrupted impatiently, “I’ve still got a bone to pick with you, Shayne. Your championship of the Carson girl’s claim against Pete’s estate isn’t going to mean very much. The sheriff and I failed to find a single thing among his effects to indicate he was her father.”
Shayne glanced sardonically around the orderly cabin.
“And I suppose you ripped everything to pieces trying to find some such evidence?”
Windrow reiterated, “We found nothing. Perhaps you’d like to look for yourself — while I’m here to see you don’t plant something to support her contention.”
That, Shayne agreed, would be a hell of a good idea. “I’ll at least try, which is more than I think you’ve done.” He turned to Cal Strenk. “You batched here with Pete. Any idea where to start looking for private papers?”
“I don’t reckon Pete never had no papers. Never showed me none.”
Shayne slid off the table and went to cupboards behind the stove. He rattled pots and pans to reach back behind them, then began a slow circuit of the four mud-chinked walls of peeled logs, feeling into crevices in the corners and studying the bare wooden floor for signs of a cache as he moved about.
Bryant stood spread-legged on the brick hearth in front of the fireplace when Shayne finished his search without finding anything. The gambler laughed softly. “Looks like you forgot your magnifying glass, Sherlock. Oughtn’t you to pick up samples of the dirt and cigarette ashes from the floor to test in your laboratory?”