e son doesn't know about Hines?"

"No. She warned me. He was surly and suspicious. The sheriff had sent
for him and questioned him about how you got his horse, and I gathered
that he thought I was a detective. When I told him I was a friend of
yours, he sent you a message. You may be able to make something out of
it. I can't. He said: `You can tell him I didn't say anything about the
other time.'"

Bassett sat forward.

"The other time?"

"He is under the impression that his mother got the horse for you once
before, about ten days before Clark escaped. At night, also."

"Not for me," Bassett said decisively. "Ten days before that I was--" he
got out his notebook and consulted it. "I was on my way to the cabin
in the mountains, where the Donaldsons had hidden Jud Clark. I hired a
horse at a livery stable."

"Could the Thorwald woman have followed you?"

"Why the devil should she do that?" he asked irritably. "She didn't know
who I was. She hadn't a chance at my papers, for I kept them on me. If
she did suspect I was on the case, a dozen fellows had preceded me, and
half of them had gone to the cabin."

"Nevertheless," he finished, "I believe she did. She or Hines himself.
There was some one on a horse outside the cabin that night."

There was silence in the room, Harrison Miller thoughtfully drawing at
random on the map before him. Each man was seeing the situation from his
own angle; to Reynolds, its medical interest, and the possibility of
his permanency in the town; to Walter Wheeler, Elizabeth's spoiled young
life; to Harrison Miller, David; and to the reporter a conviction that
the clues he now held should lead him somewhere, and did not.

Before the meeting broke up Miller took a folded manuscript from the
table and passed it to Bassett.

"Copy of the Coroner's inquiry, after the murder," he said. "Thought it
might interest you..."

Then, for a time, that was all. Bassett, poring at home over the inquest
records, and finding them of engrossing interest, saw the futility of
saving a man who could not be found. And even Nina's faith, that the
fabulously rich could not die obscurely, began to fade as the summer
waned. She restored some of her favor to Wallie Sayre, and even listened
again to his alternating hopes and fears.

And by the end of September he felt that he had gained real headway with
Elizabeth. He had come to a point where she needed him more than she
realized, where the call in her of you