“A young lady hailing from this hacienda was out gathering flowers all mo’ning. She was in her runabout. The tracks led straight from here to the head-gates. I followed them through the sands. There’s a little break in one of the rubber tires. You’ll find that break mark every eight feet or so in the sand wash.”
“I opened the head-gates, then, did I?” 148
“It looks that way, doesn’t it?”
“At a signal from father?”
“I reckon.”
“And that’s all the evidence you’ve got against him and me?” she demanded, still outwardly scornful, but very much afraid at heart.
“Oh, no, that ain’t all, Miss Lee. Somebody locked the Chink in during this play. He’s still wondering why.”
“He dreamed it. Very likely he had been rolling a pill.”
“Did I dream this too?” From his coat pocket he drew the piece of black shirting she had used as a mask. “I found it in the room where your father put me up that first night I stayed here. It was your brother Dick’s room, and this came from the pocket of a shirt hanging in the closet. Now, who do you reckon put it there?”
For the first time in her life she knew what it was to feel faint. She tried to speak, but the words would not come from her parched throat. How could he be so hard and cruel, this man who had once been her best friend? How could he stand there so like a machine in his relentlessness?