“Can’t do even that,” he said grimly. “You evidently haven’t heard. You’d better get Bendale on the ’phone and find out. Your brother was on the train with us yesterday, it’s true. He went up to the village of the Strangers last night. But his horse brought his body back this morning. They’d killed him.”
Vladimir gasped, and went ashen. Sheer incredulity flashed across his features. Then he believed and was stunned. But there was no grief whatever to be seen on his face. Instead there was a terrible wrath, a rage so beastly and cruel that Cunningham shivered when he saw it.
“They killed him, eh?” he said very softly, like a cat purring. “They dared to kill him, eh? Ah, when I am through with them they will go down on their knees and beg me to kill them! Beg me!”
His eyes were fixed and glassy with fury. Cunningham instinctively looked for the foam of madness to appear upon his lips. But he turned and went softly within the hotel.
“Charming example of family affection,” said Gray. “Why didn’t you take his money?”
“I wouldn’t miss this,” Cunningham told him, “for ten times five thousand. What in blazes is up in those hills?”
“I suggest,” Gray said dryly, “that we go and see. Got a gun?”
Cunningham nodded.
“There’s no time like the present,” grunted Gray. “The sheriff was over here, busily being bribed, when that killing was discovered. Let’s get up in the hills before it’s overrun with deputies. It won’t take a second to get our rooms.”
As a matter of fact it was nearly an hour later when they strode out of the hotel and made abruptly for the mountain-slope.