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“A halter strap.”

“You–you’re sure about that?”

“Positive.”

“I see. So far your story jibes with the facts. Now, answer me this question. When and where did you help Jake Miller write that note of farewell?”

“What?” gasped Alf.

“You heard me.”

“I didn’t help him write any note.”

“You didn’t?”

“Nobody helped him write it.”

“How do you know that, sir?”

“Do you mean to tell me that Jake left a farewell note?”

“I’m not sayin’ whether he did or not. You don’t mean to claim that he didn’t leave one, do you?”

“If he did, nobody that I know of has laid eyes on it.”

Anderson smiled mysteriously. “Well, we’ll drop that feature of the case temporarily. You was quite a friend of Jake Miller’s, wasn’t you?”

“Off and on,” said Alf. “Same as you was,” he added, quickly.

“What reason did he ever give you for wantin’ to take his own life? Think carefully, now,–and nothing but the truth, mind you?”

“The only thing I ever heard him say that sounded suspicious was when he told a crowd of us at Lamson’s one night that if this here prohibition went into effect he’d like to have some one telegraph his sister in Buffalo, so’s she could come on and claim his remains.”

“But he wasn’t a drinkin’ man, Alf, and you know it.”

“I know, but he always said he was lookin’ forward to the day when he could afford to get as drunk as he sometimes thought he’d like to be. He was a droll sort of a cuss, Jake was. He claimed he’d been savin’ up his appetite and his money for nearly three years so’s he could see which would last the longest in a finish fight.”

“Was you present when he was cut down?”

“I was.”

“Aha! That’s what I’m tryin’ to get at. Who cut the rope?”

“It wasn’t a rope,–it was a hitchin’ strap. An’ nobody cut it, come to think of it. It was a perfectly good strap, so two or three of us held Jake’s body up so’s Ed Higgins could untie it from the rafter.”

“And then what?”

“Old man Hawkins and Doc Brown said he’d been dead five or six hours.”

“I see. What did Doc say he died of?”

Alf stared at him in amazement. “He died of being hung to a rafter.”

Marshal Crow cleared his throat, and was ominously silent for fifteen or twenty paces. When he next spoke it was with the deepest gravity. There was a dark significance in the look he fixed upon Alf.

“Is there any proof that Jake Miller wasn’t dead long before he was strung up to that rafter?”

“What’s that?” gasped Alf, once more coming to a sudden stop.

“It’s a matter I can’t discuss with anybody at present,” said Anderson, curtly.

“Have–have you deduced something important, Anderson?” implored Alf, eagerly. “Is there evidence of foul play?”

“That’s my business,” said Anderson. “Come on. Don’t stand there with your mouth open like that. He’s still over at Hawkins’s place, is he? I been workin’ on the quiet all by myself since early this morning, an’ I don’t know just what’s been happening around here for the last couple of hours.”

“He was there the last I heard of him,” said Alf.

“Well, you’ve given a purty good account of yourself, Alf, an’ unless something turns up to change my present opinion, you are free to come an’ go as you please.”

“See here, you blamed old hayseed, what do you mean by actin’ as if I had anything to do with Jake Mil–“

“You don’t know what you’re doing when you’re drunk, Alf Reesling.”

“But I ain’t been drunk for twenty-five years, you blamed old–“

“That remains to be seen,” interrupted Anderson sternly. “Now don’t talk any more. I want to think.”

Having obtained certain desirable facts in connection with the taking-off of Jacob Miller, Marshal Crow ventured boldly, confidently, into the business section of the town. He was now in a position to discuss the occurrence with equanimity,–in fact, with indifference. Moreover, he could account for his physical absence from the centre of the stage, so to speak, by reminding all would-be critics that he was mentally on the job long before Ed Higgins made the gruesome discovery. In other words, it served his purpose to “lie low” and observe from well-calculated obscurity the progress of events.