CHAPTER XVIII
THE “FOUR-FLUSH”
THE stillness was grave-like. The room was lit by a glimmer of light percolating through the thickly smoked glass of a kerosene lamp. The shadows were deep in the angles of the room, while around the stove, and on the table near by, upon which the lamp stood, the light was no more than sufficient for the barest visibility.
It was the office at the back of Pideau’s store, that small, partitioned-off apartment where the half-breed was in the habit of seeking hours of brooding solitude, pondering the reflections of a disreputable life. Just now its atmosphere was heavy with tragedy, and Stanley Fyles would gladly have exchanged it for the more wholesome chill of the night outside.
The policeman was standing quite still. He had been standing so for several minutes. Perhaps he was feeling the reaction of his discovery. Perhaps he was merely considering, studying, reading, translating the ugly thing upon which he was gazing. It may even have been that the sense of desolation prevailing, the human disaster of it all, had smote its way clear through the case-hardening with which the years of delving into criminal motive and psychology had armored him.
In spite of inadequate light, or, perhaps because of it, the details of the scene were arresting. There were the misty shadows where dust and cobwebs had accumulated through years of half-breed neglect and uncleanness. There were the shelves which looked to have been gone over by someone, careful that no private document should remain for prying eyes. Then the desk, littered with masses of papers, with every drawer in it standing open. The place had been ransacked from end to end.
An overturned chair lay directly in front of the stove which was itself by no means free from the general wreckage. The faint glimmer of fire in its heart was almost choked out of existence by masses of burned paper that filled the fire box. Then, directly in front of it, sprawled on the unclean floor immediately beside the overturned chair, lay the cold remains of a human life.
Fyles knew that defeat was complete.
It was all that remained of the Wolf’s partner, Pideau Estevan. He was stone dead and cold. He was shot through the mouth, with the result that half the crown of his head had been shattered. And the wreckage of it was splashed in every direction.
No great discerning was needed to tell the policeman what had occurred. For there, beside the body, just where it must have fallen from the hand that fired the exterminating shot, lay a heavy, old-time, seven-chambered gun, with the bore of a miniature cannon.
With the examination of that weapon had come much enlightenment. It had given Fyles a pretty full understanding of the man it had slain. Only one chamber had been discharged. The other six were still loaded. They were loaded with soft-nosed, explosive bullets!