CHAPTER 22

DOWNSTAIRS and on the street, he almost ran into a large, darkly clothed fellow with a wide face. The man put out two arms like small logs and held Gunnison back.

“Well!” the man laughed. “Slow down, my friend!”

“I beg your pardon,” Gunnison said. “I was rushing out to see what the excitement was.” He gestured toward the people moving up the street.

“There’s a fire, I hear,” the stranger said. “Someone was saying the office of that magazine on Broadway caught fire.”

“Magazine? Not the American Popular Library?”

“That’s the one.”

Gunnison’s heart nearly stopped. He gaped at the man, unable to speak.

The fellow laughed again. “What is it, young fellow? Have I sprouted devil horns on my brow all of a sudden?”

“What? No … no … dear Lord…”

Gunnison, forgetting all about the woman upstairs, turned and ran in the direction of the Popular Library office building.

*   *   *

The big man whom Gunnison had run into watched him run away, and chuckled. Odd that he should have encountered this fellow in particular. He had observed this fellow and the famous Brady Kenton coming and going from the building, since he lived nearby. A rented room, no doubt. He couldn’t quite account for someone as famous and presumably well off as Brady Kenton renting quarters in such a squalid place as this, but he had the evidence of his own observations.

He watched Gunnison run until he was out of sight, chuckled again, and headed into the building. He’d seen Kenton leave the room much earlier in the day, and not return. With the younger one gone, the place should be empty. Maybe something worth having was lying around in there, waiting to be taken. It was worth a look, anyway. A quick visit in, a poke around, and he might come away with jingling pockets, at little risk.

He began to climb the stairs, hoping he’d find the room unlocked.

*   *   *

Gunnison joined the crowd gathered at the Popular Library building, looking wildly about for Kenton.

He was glad to see no flames, no sign that the building was significantly damaged, and that the crowd was dispersing rather than growing.

Gunnison collared a nearby man. “What’s happened here?”

“A fire … well, there was one, but it’s out now. It put out smoke, let me tell you, but not a lot of flame.”

“How did it start?”

“I heard one of the firemen saying it began on the third floor. Probably a dropped cigar. Some fellow working late in his office.”

The third floor … Gunnison and Kenton had been on the second. Gunnison felt intensely relieved. At least the fire hadn’t begun because of something he and Kenton had done.

“Was anyone hurt?”

“A couple were. The man whose office the fire started in, and a security guard; both were knocked out by the smoke. But Brady Kenton was in there, Brady Kenton himself! He dragged them out. If not for him, they’d surely be dead.”

So there had been not one, but two other people in that building while Kenton and Gunnison were pilfering through Bell’s office! Gunnison was surprised to learn this. “Is Kenton all right?” he asked.

“Yep. But the police hauled him off to talk to him. I suppose about the fire, and maybe about that window the newspaper said he busted in a barroom here recently.”

Gunnison frowned. Kenton was in the hands of the police? Might he be arrested, either for the broken window incident or for his unjustified presence in a burning building, or both?

“Where did the police take him?”

The man gave directions to the station, and Gunnison, having only barely caught his breath from his last run, set off running again, determined to find Kenton.

*   *   *

A block later, Gunnison stopped abruptly. He’d just seen someone he thought he recognized—a figure striding in the same direction he was going, lean and tall. Walking, though, on the boardwalk on the opposite side of the street, and slightly ahead of Gunnison.

He paused long enough to catch his breath to a degree, then crossed the street.

“Jessup Best?” he said, approaching the duster-clad figure.

The man turned, and Gunnison stopped. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I took you to be someone else.”

“Think nothing of it, amigo,” the man said.

I’ll be! thought Gunnison. He not only looks like Jessup Best, but sounds just as Texan.

Gunnison nodded politely at the stranger and headed back to his own side of the street. He moved along quickly toward the police station. He was embarrassed at having misidentified the man … yet even disregarding the fact that he’d confused the man with Jessup Best, he was sure he had seen him before. Where?

He remembered as he rounded the next corner. He’d seen that man walking alongside the policeman who had come to investigate Kenton’s breaking of that barroom window. Even then he’d noticed a similarity to Jessup Best.

*   *   *

The tall Texan across the street watched Gunnison, scratching at his whiskers and looking thoughtful, until Gunnison was out of sight. “What name did he call me?” he muttered to himself.

Glancing up and down the street, he stepped off the boardwalk and fell in behind Gunnison, following at a distance.

*   *   *

Brady Kenton was struggling hard to keep his temper. As he sat in a very uncomfortable, straight-backed chair in a back room of the Denver Police Station, watching his interrogator pace back and forth before him, he was reciting to himself every reason he could think of why a man shouldn’t assault a police officer.

The more time went by and the more smart-mouthed questions he received from Henry Turner, the man interrogating him, the less convincing his list of reasons became.

Turner strode back and forth like a strutting rooster, chewing on an unlit cigar and seeming quite pleased to have a celebrity such as Brady Kenton at his mercy.

“So let me get this straight,” he said, clipping the spit-sodden cigar between his first two fingers and removing it from his lips. “You just happened to be walking by this building after dark, looked up, and saw smoke coming out a window.”

“That’s what I said. Congratulations on grasping such a difficult concept.”

“Why, thank you, Mr. Kenton. I consider being congratulated by such a great man as you to be a true honor.”

“If you’re trying to be subtle with your sarcasm, you’re failing miserably,” Kenton replied.

Turner smirked at Kenton in a way that made Kenton want to strike him down. “Just following your lead, Mr. Kenton. Let’s think about this situation we’re talking about. Smoke coming out a window. Now, what does a man do when he sees smoke coming out a window of a closed-up building, with no lights on, after work hours at night?”

“Gosh, I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me and break all the suspense?”

“It seems to me that what a man does is go find the nearest policeman, or ring the nearest fire bell, or otherwise try to give some kind of alert to the proper authorities.” Turner stopped pacing and wheeled to face Kenton. “What it seems to me he don’t do is break inside the building and go poking around to see what’s going on, all on his lonesome.”