"Breckinridge had unfortunately taken a bracer or two before he started on his foolhardy expedition and when he found himself face to face with Wolvert he let his feelings get the better of him and in his resentment blustered out how much he knew against the gang. If he had only realized it he was confirming his own death-warrant, for he had found out too much to go free. Wolvert didn't wait to consult the head of the gang, Mrs. Atterbury, but seized a knife from the sideboard and a fight for life began. It must have been a silent one and quickly over, for no one heard it except Welch who slept on the ground floor at the back. He arrived on the scene in time to see Wolvert plunge the knife in Breckinridge's breast.
"Afterward, in desperation, they consulted as to the best method of disposing of the body and Wolvert suggested taking it up the road and leaving it. Welch tied up the dog and then went off to a junk dealer and fence whom he knew, and hired a horse and cart which he brought back to the gate.
"Wolvert, meanwhile, had gone to tell Mrs. Atterbury the truth and it must have been at that time you discovered the body, Miss Westcote.
"When Welch returned, the two men between them carried the body wrapped in an old rug down to the gate, where they loaded it on the wagon and drove to the secluded spot on Vanderduycken Road."
"The body must have been discovered very soon," the girl murmured with a little shiver. "I heard the extras announcing the murder in the early afternoon."
"It was found at dawn. The junk dealer's wagon had been seen and it was traced down finally and spots found which the chemists proved were human blood. The man wouldn't confess who had used his wagon, though he was put through the third degree. He claimed that if it was out at all he had known nothing of it and easily proved his own alibi.
"The case was at a standstill when one of Breckinridge's friends, to whom he had hinted that he was being besieged for hush-money came to me. With what I already knew of the Atterbury gang I put two and two together, but the police were not far from the truth. If we hadn't forestalled them it would only have been a matter of hours before they knocked at the gates on the North Drive and in the cellar of the house they would have found convincing proof; pieces of a rug, blood-stained and charred, where an unsuccessful attempt had been made to destroy it in the furnace. Shreds from the same rug were found twisted about the buttons of the dead man's coat, and clotted in his wound.
"But let us have done with that, Miss Westcote," the detective added hastily as he saw her pale lips quiver. "There are still a few points to be cleared up in my mind. How did you get all that information about the outside members of the gang?"
"From one queer abbreviated note and two cipher letters," the girl responded. "The note was the first and I remember it word for word. It read: 'Five thousand sheep no go. Bulls instead. Pink wash fed. Clearing den. Tail comet yellow.' I couldn't understand it then, but later when I had solved the cipher letters I realized the general drift of it. It evidently meant that five thousand dollars could not be gotten out of somebody although I don't comprehend the significance of the word 'sheep.'"
"Slang among them for shearing the sheep, or blackmail," McCormick explained. "What did you make out of the rest of it?"