LITMIR.BIZ

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Why had he needed the money by a certain night—the night he was to meet M. J. B., the night he killed himself? Unknown.

      M. J. B., the Fair Unknown:

      1. What was her connection with Balliol? Mystery.

      2. Did his suicide hinge on his meeting with her? Problematical.

      3. She had said: “They killed him!” Were “they” microbes or gunmen? Unknowable.

      4. Why her warning against my going to the ranch?

      My answer to that final query was: “Because she liked me!” It was a satisfactory answer, too. It made me glow happily. I had always been a sedate bachelor, but I must say that M. J. B. was the most attractive girl I had ever met, and to find her interested in me was, to say the least, very pleasing.

      My only regret was that I had left her in San Francisco. I thought of going back to the city as soon as I had inspected my ranch—

      Just then I observed that my radiator was boiling, what with the grade and the hot sun; and ahead of me was a spring beside the road, with a turnout. I halted the car at the turnout, baled cold water into the radiator with a rusty tin can, and sat down to smoke and let my engine cool off. It was a cool and pleasant spot, under lofty pines.

      I was just knocking out my pipe when I heard voices and the creaking of a vehicle. Around the sharp bend ahead came a horse and buggy, the latter occupied by three men. All three carried rifles and knives, and beneath the buggy trotted a big hound. They nodded to me and drove to the spring, letting the horse have a mouthful. Obviously, they were natives.

      “Good afternoon,” I returned their greetings. “Why the artillery? Sheriff’s posse?”

      They grinned and laughed.

      “Deer season opened yesterday,” one of them replied. “Thought you’d come up from the city for the same reason.”

      “Not I,” was my answer. “Plenty of deer around here?”

      “That’s what they say—but there ain’t none when we want to get ’em. Most of the folks in Lakeport are out, from the Chink laundryman to the sheriff.”

      They drove on down the trail, but as they went I could see that they were looking back and making observations—probably on my car. Until they passed out of sight at the next curve they were still staring backwards and discussing something: either me or the car. I took for granted that it was the car, and it was.

      The deer season did not interest me particularly, because I have no taste for hunting. Cursing the foot-thick dust in the road, I got into the car and went on.

      At last, to my deep relief, I attained the summit of the divide, where the tollgate was located. I paid my dollar fifty and had a magnificent view of Clear Lake in the distance amid the hills, then started downward. The descent was steep enough and winding, but three miles of it brought me to the floor of the valley, in a region of jackpine and brush and hogbacks.

      And, as I turned a quick curve, there before me in the road stood two deer—does. For the fraction of an instant they gazed at me, then they flung away. Like brown streaks they went over the nearest hill and were gone. Instinctively I halted the car, gazing after the graceful creatures. A moment later, I shoved my foot toward the starter, but I was still staring at the hillside; instead of touching the starter, my foot touched the accelerator—and touched it with a particular pet corn. I smothered an oath and leaned far forward to clutch my aching tow, for the stab of pain was acute. And, as I leaned over thus, a bullet came exactly where I had been sitting, at about the height my head had been.

      I know it was a bullet, because I heard it—and because the effect was terrific. It plumped through the rear of the top, on one side; it passed above me, and its shrill song was lost in a rattling smash of glass as it took the top half of my windshield into slivers. Then came the crack of a rifle to prove that it had been a bullet.

      If I had not happened to lean over, and to lean over pretty far, that bullet would have finished me—sure!

      My first instinct was to start the car and get away; then I checked the impulse and slid out to terra firma. Someone not very far off was shooting recklessly, and it made me angry.

      Hopping out in the road, I stared around. Naturally, I saw nobody. If any hunter had mistaken the maroon top for a deer, he was not advertising his mistake to me.

      “Shove fer home, Balliol!” cried out a rough voice. “Shove quick, or he’ll give ye a closer one!”

      The voice came from somewhere behind and to the left of the car. Balliol! I was being mistaken for Balliol—and there was no mistake being made!

      As this astounding fact percolated to my brain, I wasted no time asking questions, but climbed into the car, started her up, and rolled away from here in a hurry. Balliol! Who in the name of goodness was trying to assassinate John Balliol?

      In that rough voice from the hillside had been a deadly earnestness which had impelled me to flight; it brought home to me in a flash that I was up against something serious. Under the blue sky, under the hot August sunlight, the thing was extremely matter of fact. I thought again of the young man who had been jabbing my tire, and of the warning administered by M. J. B. The sequence was pretty plain!

      Absurd as it seemed, this land-cruise of mine was actually taking me into perilous waters.

      It was the fault of car, of course; people though that Balliol was driving it. As I rattled across a bridge and entered upon excellent dirt roads, the realization cheered me immensely. Balliol had admitted that he had gotten into trouble up here of a private nature. Well, the minute his enemies discovered that I was not John Balliol, but Yorke Desmond, I would be left alone! Yet why, in such case, had the girl warned me? I gave it up.

      With a suddenness for which I was unprepared, Lakeport jumped into my immediate foreground. I had anticipated a county seat of some importance, but I found it a village straggling along the lakeshore, with a single main street and outlying residences. The valley had been settled by Missourians back in the fifties—and they were still here.

      Presently I descried a charming square and courthouse, with a fine new Carnegie Library down by the lakefront. Except for a couple of docks and some moored launches and houseboats, the lakefront consisted of reed-beds and was not beautiful. But the lake itself, with the mountains opposite, was magnificent!

      Volcanic action had done its work well in this place, and it was the sweetest spot I had seen in California. Once the town was wakened from its sleepy repose, it would be a second Geneva.

      As the deed to my ranch had been sent on here for recording, I drove directly to the courthouse, left the car, and walked up to the county recorder’s office on the right of the main building. There I found everything in order and awaiting me. I inquired for the sheriff, meaning to set him on the trail of my near-assassin, but found that he was hunting deer. So was everyone else in town who could get away, even as my hunter-informants had stated.

      I walked half a block to the bank, with whom my Los Angeles bank had corresponded. The bank was closed, for it was after four o’clock, but I telephoned and obtained admission. I presented my credentials to the banker, an extremely cordial chap, and asked directions to my property. He showed me exactly where my ranch lay and outlined the road.

      “Tell me one thing confidentially,” I inquired; “do you know why Balliol left here? Do you know anything against that property—any reason why I shouldn’t have bought it?”

      “Certainly not!” he answered with evident surprise. “Balliol left because of his health, I believe, and for no other reason. The property is absolutely good, and a give-away at the price, Mr. Desmond! You got a good thing.”

      He was in earnest, beyond a question. But as I sought the street again I found myself wishing that he had phrased it in some other fashion than “because of his health.”

      After my late experiences, it had an ominous sound!

      CHAPTER V

      I

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