written anything that would throw a light on his death. Clane, too, had given up mining, and now had a small string of racehorses which occupied all his time.
He was in the city for a rest between racing-meets, had arrived two days before the murder, but had been too busy with his own affairs—he had discharged his trainer and was trying to find another—to call upon his friend. Clane was staying at the Marquis hotel, and would be in the city for a week or ten days longer.
“How come you’ve waited three days before coming to tell us all this?” Dean asked him.
“I wasn’t noways sure I had ought to do it. I wasn’t never sure in my mind but what maybe Henny done for that fellow Waldeman—he disappeared sudden-like. And I didn’t want to do nothing to dirty Henny’s name. But finally I decided to do the right thing. And then there’s another thing: you found some fingerprints in Henny’s house, didn’t you? The newspapers said so.”
“We did.”
“Well, I want you to take mine and match them up. I was out with a girl the night of the murder”—he leered suddenly, boastingly—“all night! And she’s a good girl, got a husband and a lot of folks; and it wouldn’t be right to drag her into this to prove that I wasn’t in Henny’s house when he was killed, in case you’d maybe think I killed him. So I thought I better come down here, tell you all about it, and get you to take my fingerprints, and have it all over with.”
We went up to the identification bureau and had Clane’s prints taken. They were not at all like the murderer’s.
After we pumped Clane dry I went out and sent a telegram to our Toronto office, asking them to get a line on the Waldeman angle. Then I