She stopped—she was finished—but for a moment Leland was afraid that she had noticed his reaction to something she had said. He didn’t know what she could have seen; the feeling had been like being torn out of a fantasy. In fact, however, it had been exactly the opposite of that: he had been intensely interested in what she had been saying; but then she had said, “I’m not the one who should talk, I know”—word-for-word what Karen had written in the note this morning. He had been able to see Karen’s handwriting—everything. He wanted to remember the context in which she had used the phrase. He had to suppress the urge to take out the note and reread it. Of the two strange physical shocks he had sustained in this conversation, he wanted to think that this was the stranger—at first. Really he had brought them both upon himself, with no sane reason for feeling either. During the war he had known scores of men, and many more had known him. And as for this: it was as if he were trying to keep that fear he had felt, the sense of danger, in the forefront of his mind. It did not make sense. His memory of yesterday was telling him something more rational than he had wanted to believe when he had found the note. Karen wanted to see him, it was that simple. If he was afraid that something was going to happen, it was because he wanted to be afraid. Still, he could not forget the pointlessness of so much that she had written. At the least, he intended to ask her about it.

Mrs. MacIver began to read off the names and addresses of her mother-in-law and her husband’s first wife. Leland felt as if he had just come back from answering the door. More subdued, he said, “If there were any friends or relatives he was in touch with here, let us have their names, too.”

“No, there weren’t any—I don’t think.” She looked up from the little book. “I mailed all the letters that were written at home. There could have been somebody he wrote to from the office.”

Leland smiled. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“If it had been a man or a relative, there would have been no need for caution; if it had been a woman and he had wanted to be cautious, he could have telephoned. He could have afforded it.”

“Do you think there could have been another woman?”

“Certainly not up here. He didn’t come here, you said, and certainly she didn’t go down there. Not continually. A person would give up if he or she received no cooperation. I’m not sure that we’ll find one who lives down there, either.”

“Why?”