Wayland's professional friend, who was a psychologist,
explained both incidents as auto suggestion from the coat awakened by
the uneasiness of the unconscious fears; an explanation that explains
by saying x is y.

At all events, she never again used the coat; and having nothing to
conceal, didn't conceal it, which is the most damning evidence you can
offer to a tortuous mind. She hung the coat in the apartment off the
big living room. Then, the despatch came out about the two bodies
found in the Desert. The same mail brought a letter from her father
asking her to meet him at Smelter City; and there at the Ranch House
gate stood Mr. Bat Brydges, handy man of the Valley, quizzing the ranch
hands, quizzing the German cook, quizzing Calamity at the very foot of
rustic slab steps that ran up from the basement.

"What is he after, Calamity?"

The half breed woman had dashed up the back stairs to Eleanor's room.

"He want t' know if Waylan--Ranga fellah--has ever stay here, dis
house--he ever go back Cabin House--tepee on hill--night dey keel
leetle boy?"

Even then, Eleanor did not realize the drift of the handy man's
activities. She thought perhaps, he, too, might be anxious about
Wayland.

"What did you tell him, Calamity?"

"I tell heem," Calamity dropped her soft patois to a guttural, "I tell
heem, y' go Hell!"

"Ca-lam-ity?" rebuked Eleanor.

But what was it in the gentleman's jaunty air, in the smile of the
sleepy tortoise-shell eyes, in the play of a self-conscious dimple
round the fat double chin? Eleanor had not passed from her own
apartment to the big living room before a repulsion that she could not
define swept over her in a physical shudder; and Mr. Bat Brydges'
report to the Senator of that interview had been fairly accurate. She
did not know that she had not greeted him with the common courtesy due
a caller, that she had stood looking past him to the open door, that
she had left him standing first on one leg then on the other till Bat
had been forced to terminate the interview; and she had not the
faintest conception of what her own feeling of repulsion meant. He had
scarcely gone before she wished she had asked him about those two
bodies found in the Desert. As a matter of fact, she called up the
"Smelter City Independent." The editor could give her no details. He
asked her very particularly who was inquiring; and having nothing to
conceal, she did not conceal it. He allayed her fears in