122
The Green Bag
His old friends were astonished at the magnitude of his wealth and wanted to know how in hades he got all that money. “Huh,” he contentedly replied, as he
shuffled the cards, “I sold my pass." Just as this story was finished, a
colored
messenger
handed
Josephus
Demos a telegram from the sheriff of
Hamilton county, which read: — “Looks like awful murder at Flora
fountin. Better come right away." “That beats hell," softly remarked the state's attorney to himself, and he wasn't
thinking of the poker story just at that particular moment either. There was no help for it'so he “went,” and was soon in the midst of an exciting investigation. It seemed a clear case of murder. All the indications at the Slidem place were of a desperate struggle and hurried escape. The final deed evidently took
place in the kitchen. There was broken furniture, and marks of apparent blood in various places. Near the centre of the room on the floor, where the unfor tunate victim, or one of them, evidently finally succumbed, was quite a clot of
clearly apparent dried blood. True, there was no body found as yet, but the murderer evidently cunningly disposed of this evidence of his crime. The body might be buried somewhere in the vicinity, or what appeared alto gether probable, from some dragging marks in the soil, the body of the victim was disposed of in the Stone River
No trace could be obtained of Bill Sykes or of Slidem's wife. Pete Slidem had been last seen alive,
but nobody knew where he was.
The
only clew as to his whereabouts was contained in the mysterious anonymous note.
The origin of the note itself was a pro found mystery. The envelope in which it came bore only an indecipherable im
pression which indicated that it was probably posted in a railway mail car somewhere. But where, was a mystery. There were two points in sight to work on. One was to determine definitely, if possible, whether a murder was in fact committed, by having the clot of blood
scientifically examined. So the state's attorney had the piece of board with the apparent blood-clot thereon, sawed out of the kitchen floor
and placed in the custody of the expert public chemist at the capital for micro scopic examination. The other clue was to follow out the suggestion of the anonymous note and try to trace Pete Slidem in the Alberta country in Canada in the neighborhood of Medicine Hat. After some astute and most commend
able detective and investigating ser vice that would have done honor to Sherlock Holmes, the resourceful state's attorney located, in the provincial bas tile at Medicine Hat, a man under the apparently assumed name of Pierre
which flowed peacefully along only some
Slickem, whose description tallied in every particular with that of the missing
twenty rods away.
Pete Slidem.
Neither of the three people who in habited the Slidem place had been seen for several weeks. There were no neigh bors nearer than half a mile away, and owing to the evil reputation hovering over the ill-omened trio, everybody had long shunned the locality.
The similarity of name was also a sus picious circumstance, and, indeed, under
the application of the police sweat-box proceedings of the third degree, the prisoner admitted his identity. It ap pears that he was in jail simply on a minor charge of vagrancy under an inde
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