Though hours may drag themselves into the past so sluggishly that one is fairly maddened by the snail's pace of them,into the past they must go eventually.Jean had sat and listened to the wheels of the Golden State Limited clank over the cryptic phrase that meant so much."Letter-in-the-chaps!Letter-in-the chaps!"was what they had said while the train pounded across the desert and slid through arroyas and deep cuts which leveled hills for its passing."Letter-in-the-chaps!Letter-in-the-chaps!"And then a silence while they stood by some desolate station where the people were swarthy of skin and black of hair and eyes,and moved languidly if they moved at all.Then they would go on;and when the wheels had clicked over the switches of the various side tracks,they would take up again the refrain:"Letter-in-the-chaps!Letter-in-the-chaps!"until Jean thought she would go crazy if they kept it up much longer.
Little by little they drew near to Los Angeles.And then they were there,sliding slowly through the yards in a drab drizzle of one of California's fall rains.Then they were in a taxicab,****** for the Third Street tunnel.Then Jean stared heavy-eyed at the dripping palms along the boulevard which led away from the smoke of the city and into Hollywood,snuggled against the misty hills."Letter-in-the-chaps!"her tired brain repeated it still.
Then she was in the apartment shared with Muriel Gay and her mother.These two were over at the studio,the landlady told her when she let them in,and Jean was glad that they were gone.
She knelt,still in her hat and coat and with her gloves on,and fitted her trunk key into the lock.And there she stopped.What if the letter were not in the chaps,after all?What if it were but a trivial note,concerning a matter long since forgotten;a trivial note that had not the remotest bearing upon the murder?
"Letter-in-the-chaps!"The phrase returned with a mocking note and beat insistently through her brain.
She sat back on the floor and shivered with the chill of a fireless room in California,when a fall rain is at its drizzling worst.
In the next room one of the men coughed;afterwards she heard Lite's voice,saying something in an undertone to Art Osgood.She heard Art's voice mutter a reply.She raised herself again to her knees,turned the key in the lock,and lifted the trunk-lid with an air of determination.
Down next the bottom of her big trunk they lay,just as she had packed them away,with her dad's six-shooter and belt carefully disposed between the leathern folds.
She groped with her hands under a couple of riding-skirts and her high,laced boots,got a firm grip on the fringed leather,and dragged them out.She had forgotten all about the gun and belt until they fell with a thump on the floor.She pulled out the belt,left the gun lying there by the trunk,and hurried out with the chaps dangling over her arm.
She was pale when she stood before the two who sat there waiting with their hats in their hands and their faces full of repressed eagerness.Her fingers trembled while she pulled at the stiff,leather flap of the pocket,to free it from the button.
"Maybe it ain't there yet,"Art hazarded nervously,while they watched her."But that's where he put it,all right.I saw him."Jean's fingers went groping into the pocket,stayed there for a second or two,and came out holding a folded envelope.
"That's it!"Art leaned toward her eagerly.
"That's the one,all right."
Jean sat down suddenly because her knees seemed to bend under her weight.Three years--and that letter within her reach all the time!