[Illustration: A lean, muscular hand fell lightly upon his shoulder
and he was jerked back promptly.]
A thin, saturnine man whose lips never seemed to move, a man with dead-looking eyes into which no light of emotion ever came, watched them expressionlessly from where he stood with Carson. It was Poker Face.
"No," Poker Face answered, to a sharp question from the persistent Carson.
"Sure, are you?"
"Yes."
At last word came from Judith. Carson and Lee were to bring both of the suspected men to the house. Doc Tripp, wiping his hands on a towel, his sleeves up, bestowed upon the two of them a look of unutterable contempt and hatred.
"You low-lived skunks!" was his greeting to them.
"Easy, Doc," continued Judith from her desk. "That won't get us anywhere. Who are you?" she demanded of the man standing at Lee's side.
"Me?" demanded the man with an assumption of jauntiness. "I'm Donley, Dick Donley, that's who I am!"