Finally came a time that they remained
closed and the young chest rose and fell in the regular
breathing of slumber.
The two ragged, rat-hearted creatures rose silently
and picked their way, half-crouched, among the sleepers
sprawled between them and The Oskaloosa Kid. In the
hand of Dopey Charlie gleamed a bit of shiny steel and
in his heart were fear and greed. The fear was engend-
ered by the belief that the youth might be an amateur
detective. Dopey Charlie had had one experience of
such and he knew that it was easily possible for them to
blunder upon evidence which the most experienced of
operatives might pass over unnoticed, and the loot bulg-
ing pockets furnished a sufficient greed motive in them-
selves.
Beside the boy kneeled the man with the knife. He
did not raise his hand and strike a sudden, haphazard
blow. Instead he placed the point carefully, though
lightly, above the victim's heart, and then, suddenly, bore
his weight upon the blade.
Abigail Prim always had been a thorn in the flesh of her
stepmother--a well-meaning, unimaginative, ambitious,
and rather common woman. Coming into the Prim home
as house-keeper shortly after the death of Abigail's
mother, the second Mrs.
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