Collection 1983 - The Hills Of Homicide (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Page B

is, Castro did not come by any trail when he murdered Old Jack Bitner. How it was done I had no idea until I visited Castro’s show. You must remember that he specializes in odd animals, in the strange and the unusual.
    “Crime and criminal practices have been a hobby with me for years. In all the reading and traveling I’ve done, I’ve collected lots of odd facts about the ways of criminals in our own and a lot of other countries. Usually, methods are very much in pattern. The average criminal, no matter how he may think of himself, is a first-class dope.
    “If he had imagination, he wouldn’t be a criminal in the first place. When one does encounter the exception, it is usually in the field of murder. Castro was an exception.
    “He was a man who spent money and who liked to spend money, and he was getting old enough so that the jungles held no more lure. He wanted money, and he wanted it fast. There was some old family trouble, of no importance to us, that left a decided dislike between Castro and his uncle. He knew he could never inherit in any legitimate way.
    “He got his method from India, a place where he had traveled a good deal. When I saw his animals, something clicked into place in my mind, and then something else. I knew then he had scaled the wall under Bitner’s window.”
    “That’s a sheer cliff,” Loftus protested.
    “Sure, and nothing human could climb it without help, but Richard Henry Castro went up that cliff, and he had help.”
    “You mean, there was somebody in it with him?”
    “Nothing human. When I saw his show, I tied it in with a track I saw on the ledge outside Bitner’s window. The trouble was that while I knew how it was done, and that his show had been stopped on the highway opposite the mesa, I had no proof. If Castro sat tight, even though I knew how it was done, it was going to be hard to prove.
    “One of the great advantages the law has over the criminal is the criminal’s mind. He is always afraid of being caught. He can never be sure he hasn’t slipped up; he never knows how much you know. My problem was to get Castro worried, and his method was one so foreign to this country that he never dreamed anyone would guess. I had to worry him, so in leaving I made a remark to him in Malayan, telling him that he had made a mistake.
    “Once he knew I had been in the Far East, he would be worried. Also, he knew that Caronna had seen him.”
    “Caronna saw him?” Loftus demanded.
    “Yes, that had to be it. That was the wedge he was using to cut himself in on Castro’s inheritance.”
    “How could Castro inherit?”
    “There’s a man in his show named Johnny Leader, a master penman with a half-dozen convictions for forgery on his record. He was traveling with that show writing visiting cards for people, scrolls, etc. He drew up a will for Castro, and it was substituted at the time of the killing.”
    “Get to the point,” Holben said irritably. “How did he get up that cliff?”
    “This will be hard to believe,” I said, “but he had the rope taken up by a lizard!”
    “By a
what
?” Holben demanded.
    I grinned. “Look,” I said, “over in India there are certain thieves and second-story workers who enter houses and high buildings in just that way.
    “Castro has two types of monitor lizards over there in his show. The dragon lizards from Komodo are too big and tough for anyone to handle, and nobody wants to. However, the smaller monitor lizards from India, running four to five feet in length, are another story. It is those lizards that the thieves use to gain access to locked houses.
    “A rope is tied around the lizard’s body, and he climbs the wall, steered by jerks on the rope from below. When he gets over a parapet, in a crevice, or over a window sill, the thief jerks hard on the rope and the lizard braces himself to prevent being pulled over, and they are very strong in the legs. Then the thief goes up the wall, hand over hand, walking right up with his