The Desert Moon Mystery by Kay Cleaver Strahan

"Not with me," I said, and started up the stairs.

Curiosity like mine is a curse. I'd gone about four steps up when it caught me. "What's your old dicker? " I said.

"If you'll persuade Sam to give me the ten thousand for producing the murderer, I'll split it with you."

I am tired of apologizing for myself. I will state, merely, that I managed to say the one thing, under those circumstances, that I should not have said. "Do you know who the murderer is? " Thereby proving that I was possessed of about as much diplomacy as an alarm clock.

"Certainly not," he answered. He had not hesitated; he had looked straight into my eyes. But I knew that he believed that he had lied.

"See here," I said. "I take it that one five thousand dollars is as good to you as another. If you know who committed the murder, and will produce him, I'll give you the five thousand dollars myself."

"Don't say that, Mary," Danny stepped out from behind the long curtains at the end of the south windows.

Canneziano jumped like a spurred bronco. "Spying, eh, my lady?"

She spoke directly to me. "Listen, Mary; don't ever, for any reason, enter into any sort of an agreement with this man. If he knows, or thinks that he knows, who the murderer is, he can be forced to tell without a bribe. If he had known for one day, one hour, and had withheld the information, he is, in effect, an accomplice-there is a legal term for it, but I have forgotten it. I am going out, now, to find Uncle Sam, and to bring him here and tell him that this man says that he knows who committed the murder. Mary, you telephone to the sheriff in Telko -- "

"Just a moment, please," Canneziano spoke smoothly and smilingly. "I have said, definitely, that I do not know who killed the Gaby. And-I do not know. I am bored, unspeakably bored. I should like to try my hand at detecting this-er, villain. But," he shrugged his narrow shoulders, "with no impetus -- "

"The fact that she was your own daughter -- " I began, hotly.

"Don't, Mary," Danny interrupted, with a sigh. "There is no use. You and he do not speak the same language."

"How is this? " Canneziano said, and went on speaking, very rapidly, in some foreign language.

Danny stood and stared at him without a mite of expression on her face. He paused for breath. She said, "I have forgotten my Italian. I do not understand you, and I am glad that I do not. Come, Mary, shall we go upstairs?"

In the upper hall she said that she wanted me to go with her to Miss MacDonald, because she wanted to tell Miss MacDonald what had just happened.

We knocked on her door. She greeted us pleasantly enough, but there was a pucker between her eyebrows.

"You have asked us," Danny began at once, "to tell you nothing about the case. Does that mean that you do not wish to have us tell you of day by day developments, which seem to have a direct bearing on the case?"

"As, for instance? " Miss MacDonald questioned.

Danny told her about what had happened, from the time she had stepped behind the curtains, until she and I had come upstairs together.

Miss MacDonald's first question was, "Why were you watching him?"