“Sorry, the well got befouled by the flood and isn’t fit to drink, but I carried a gallon up from a horse trough in town.”

“Coffee it is,” said Bell with a measure of trepidation.

Murphy led Bell into the house and offered him a chair at the kitchen table. There was no sign of the presence of a woman, so Bell assumed that Murphy was a bachelor. The sheriff poured two coffees in tin cups from an enamel pot that sat on the wood-burning stove.

“I don’t know how I can help you, Mr. Bell. I sent a copy of my findings to your agency in Chicago.”

“You neglected to mention Jack Carson’s sighting.”

Murphy laughed. “The guy on a motorcycle? I don’t believe what Jack said he saw.

The description didn’t fit anyone I knew in town.”

“The bandit could have changed his disguise,” Bell suggested.

“There was no time for him to completely alter his appearance, retrieve his motorcycle, and ride off into the blue.”

“The rider and his machine were never seen again?”

Murphy shrugged. “Strikes me odd that nobody else saw him except Jack. A man on the only motorcycle in town is bound to be noticed. And how could he ride out of town without leaving a trail?”

“I admit it sounds a bit far-fetched,” said Bell, not wanting to discard the sighting.

“Jack Carson was an upstanding citizen not noted for being a hard drinker or a teller of tall tales. But I believe he was hallucinating.”

“Was there any other evidence discovered that wasn’t in your report?”

“There was something found after I sent the report to Chicago. Murphy rose from the kitchen table and pulled open a drawer of a rolltop desk. He passed Bell a brass shell casing. “This was found two weeks later, by a young boy playing on the floor of the bank while his father made a deposit. It was under a carpet. The bandit must have missed it.”

Bell studied the cartridge. “Thirty-eight caliber. If it was ejected, it must have come from an automatic weapon, probably a Colt.”

“That was my guess, too.”

“May I keep it?” asked Bell.

“Sure. But I doubt you’ll learn anything from it, except knowing it came from the bandit’s gun. And even that is not cold, hard evidence.”

“If not the bandit, then where did it come from?”

Murphy held up his hands in a helpless gesture. “I can’t begin to guess.”

Bell carefully held the cartridge in the palm of his hand. “Hopefully, we can obtain the bandit’s fingerprints.”

Murphy grinned. “You’ll find mine as well as the young boy’s and two of my deputies’.”

“Still,” said Bell optimistically, “our experts may be able to pull a print. We won’t need a sample of the boy who found it. His print would be small. But I would like sample prints of you and your deputies. You can send them to my Chicago office.”