“Yo’re as clear as a bell, Len,” said the sheriff. “Baggs confessed the whole thing. Cole and Prentice and Baggs pulled the job. You are cleared of everythin’.”
Nan impulsively reached out and grasped Len by the arm.
“Oh, I’m glad!” she said. “Just so glad.”
“Are yuh? Then come clean on this deal, Nan. I’ve got the goods on yuh, so yuh might as well tell us.”
Nan looked around at the circle of faces, some of them blurred by the eddying tobacco and powder smoke. She looked at Hashknife, and his gray eyes were watching her closely.
“I took a dead girl’s name,” she said slowly. “She was my room-mate. We were both poor and out of jobs. She was killed in a wreck, and Jack Pollock was hurt at the same time.
“There was a letter to her from Amos Baggs, telling her to come and claim her inheritance. There was a hundred-dollar cheque in the letter. Well, I took it and came here. I’m an impostor. My name is Nan Whitlock—not Singer. Mr. Baggs said he’d send me to prison. Pollock had told him that I wasn’t the right girl. Baggs tried to get me to sign papers out at the ranch. He said I would be sent to jail if I didn’t sign them, but I—I said I’d rather go to jail.
“They—Baggs and Pollock—brought me to town that night and were going to send me to San Francisco, but we were late getting here and Pollock had lost his pocket-book, which contained the tickets and his money. They said they would protect me from the law until they could safely ship me away; so they took me to a house and kept me there, locked up. I—I didn’t know just why they were afraid to send me away. Then to-night I heard the shooting in the house, and—and that is about all I know.”
“Thank heaven!” said Len. “That’s good news.” He turned savagely on the handcuffed Baggs. “I’ve got the goods on you, Baggs. You or some of yore gang murdered Harmony Singer. I knew it, but I couldn’t prove it. I couldn’t prove anythin’, but Hartley did. So you picked a girl named Singer to inherit the ranch, eh? Goin’ to buy her out and split the pot, eh? You fool! His name wasn’t Singer. His name was Ayres. He was my uncle, Baggs. But he was kinda wild in New Mexico; so he changed his name when he came here. His name was Jim Ayres. Here!” he handed a folded paper to Hashknife. “Read it out loud, Hashknife. That’ll explain.”
It was an old sheet of writing paper, slightly yellowed, and the writing was in ink, slightly hard to decipher. Hashknife read aloud: