“I’ve already learned it,” said Clement dryly. “Was the crime a bad one?”
“Real bad. I kept my mouth shut about it until we could be sure—but it was real bad. The feller he killed was a rich dude in Oregon. There was some sort of crazy bucket-shop deal that this feller—his name was Roberts—was interested in.”
“Did Nachbar or Neuburg appear in the deal?”
“He did not.... I see what you mean. His tactics appear to have been the same as now. He didn’t show up in the open, he merely played the part of a disinterested adviser to this rich man’s orphan. Fact is, nobody noticed Neuburg, or Nachbar as he was then, until Roberts died.”
“And he died—how?” Gatineau looked at him quickly.
“He went out on a shooting trip——”
“Yep,” said Gatineau. “That appears to be his method in these things.... Gets people into the wilds. Well, Roberts goes shooting into the wilds and there is a hell of an accident. His gun bursts and he is killed outright.”
“And was it an accident?”
“At the inquest it was. That was the verdict. But when people began poking round they found it wasn’t. I needn’t go into it all, and, in fact, I have only the outline of the business, but the things that came out were these. First, a big, solid block of cash was missing. Second, Nachbar was linked up with that missing cash. Then people began to hunt for things.
“First, they got no change out of Nachbar. He produced letters and papers by the boxful to show that his dealings with Roberts were straight—forgeries, no doubt, but good ones, especially since the victim was a dead ’un—you can bettcher life Nachbar was sound on this. He’s the real brainy bad man, all right, all right. Things were kind of tied up until a fellow from the American Department of Justice began to find the trail of the murder. He found out that Nachbar had been in the district where Roberts was shooting, at the very time of the murder.”