Pideau’s head shook.
“His gun was lyin’ right ther’ wher’ he’d flung it—beside Sinclair. I showed him. He just grinned.”
“He admitted?”
Again Pideau denied. His eyes were snapping.
“He said he hadn’t.”
There was a sudden flaming in Annette’s cheeks.
“But he had! He did!” she cried stridently.
“I know.” Pideau’s tone became his surliest. His eyes were on the stove again. “The Wolf’s gun didn’t make the cache on its own two feet. Guns ain’t that way. It can’t pull its own darn trigger. A police boy don’t get shot up ’cos a gun’s lying around. It needs the feller belongin’ it behind it, handlin’ it right. The Wolf shot up Sinclair. Oh, yes. Did he tell you? How did you know?”
While Pideau was growling out his argument Annette was looking into his unlovely face. But she was gazing through and beyond it. She was looking at the pictures her mind conjured. But his question brought her back on the instant.
“I saw,” she said. “I went along, an’ I saw. Sinclair was dead—stone dead, an’ the Wolf’s gun shot him. One shot. Just one shot—from behind. Like you, I saw.”