Handerson was dead when we got to him—McClump’s bullet had taken him over one eye.
McClump spoke to me over the body.
“I ain’t an inquisitive sort of fellow, but I hope you don’t mind telling me why I shot this lad.”
“Because he was Thornburgh.”
He didn’t say anything for about five minutes. Then: “I reckon that’s right. How’d you guess it?”
We were sitting beside the wreckage now, waiting for the police that we had sent our commandeered chauffeur to phone for.
“He had to be,” I said, “when you think it all over. Funny we didn’t hit on it before! All that stuff we were told about Thornburgh had a fishy sound. Whiskers and an unknown profession, immaculate and working on a mysterious invention, very secretive and born in San Francisco—where the fire wiped out all the old records—just the sort of fake that could be cooked up easily.
“Then nobody but the Coonses, Evelyn Trowbridge and Handerson ever saw him except between the tenth of May and the middle of June, when he bought the house. The Coonses and the Trowbridge woman were tied up together in this affair somehow, we knew—so that left only Handerson to consider. You had told me he came to Sacramento sometime early this summer—and the dates you got tonight show that he didn’t come until after Thornburgh had bought his house. All right! Now compare Handerson with the descriptions we got of Thornburgh.
“Both are about the same size and age, and with the same color hair. The differences are all things that can be manufactured—clothes, a little sunburn, and a month’s growth of beard, along with a little acting,