MURDER!


A day or so after Jan's first meeting with Sourdough a thing occurred in
Regina which, for a little while, occupied the minds of most people, to
the exclusion of such matters as the relations between any two dogs.

A woman and her husband were found murdered in a little fruiterer's and
greengrocer's shop. Evidence showed that the murder must have occurred
late at night. It was discovered quite early in the morning, and before
the first passenger-trains of the day stopped at Regina the line was
closely watched for a good many miles. It was believed that the murderer
could not be very far away. Suspicion attached to a compatriot of the
murdered pair, a Greek, who was found to be missing from his lodging.
Within three hours Sergeant Moore had rounded this man up a few miles
from the city, and placed him under arrest. But the man had been found
in the act of fishing, and there was not a tittle of evidence of any
kind against him.

Then a neighbor called at the R.N.W.M.P. barracks with word of an
Italian, now nowhere to be found, who had done some casual work for the
murdered couple, and had more than once been seen talking with the woman
in the little yard behind their shop. As it happened, the bearer of this
information imparted it to Dick Vaughan, who promptly went with it to
Captain Arnutt.

"Look here, sir," said Dick, with suppressed excitement, "my Jan is half
a bloodhound, and a splendid tracker. Will you let me take him down to
the shop and--"