“Anyways,” the deputy sheriff went on, “he was in town this mornin’, an’ seen the pictures in the papers from ’Frisco. So he come in here an’ told Tom about it. Tom an’ me decided the best thing was to phone your agency—since the papers said you was workin’ on it.”
I looked at the Italian.
Paget, reading my mind, explained:
“Cereghino lives over in the hills. Got a grape-ranch there. Been around here five or six years, an’ ain’t killed nobody that I know of.”
“Remember the place where you found the picture?” I asked the Italian.
His grin broadened under his mustache, and his head went up and down.
“For sure, I remember that place.”
“Let’s go there,” I suggested to Paget.
“Right. Comin’ along, Tom?”
The marshal said he couldn’t. He had something to do in town. Cereghino, Paget and I went out and got into a dusty Ford that the deputy sheriff drove.
We rode for nearly an hour, along a county road that bent up the slope of Mount Diablo. After a while, at a word from the Italian, we left the county road for a dustier and ruttier one.
A mile of this one.
“This place,” Cereghino said.
Paget stopped the Ford. We got out in a clearing. The trees and bushes that had crowded the road retreated here for twenty feet or so on either