“I’m only tired,” I said, trying to smile. “I’ll feel better when I’ve had a hot bath and dressed.”

He let it go at that. He said afterward that he had not believed me, that I looked a million years old and the complete hag that night. But I got through dinner somehow; only the two of us now to eat there, the silver shining, the candles and flowers, the three men never leaving us alone, and Tony watching me, suspecting I did not know what. It was in the library later that I told him I was going back to Miss Mattie’s on Monday.

“I’ll come up every day until everything is cleared up,” I said. “After that you won’t need me.”

“I’ll always need you, Pat. You know that. But one thing’s sure, and it’s final. I won’t have you driving after dark. It’s not safe.”

“Why not? I’ve done it right along.”

“Read this,” he said, and handed me the evening paper. “Most of it’s the usual rubbish, but maybe the fellow’s right at that.”

It was rather an unnerving thing to find, sitting there in the very center of what the writer designated as the reign of terror. As I kept it I give it here verbatim:

The disappearance of a witness in the Morgan murder case draws attention once more to the strange sequence of events which have taken place in the once peaceful river town of Beverly. Two people have been killed, one murdered and one by her own hand, and two other persons have disappeared, the watchman Evans, who had previously been murderously attacked, and the wife of Mr. Anthony Wainwright. A quiet search for her has been instituted by the police, so far without result.

We publish today a letter from a resident of Beverly, stating that a reign of terror now exists there, and suggesting that an inmate of the State Mental Hospital, located at Burton, some six miles away, may have escaped and be responsible. Inquiry at the institution reveals that no such escape has taken place. Nevertheless this correspondent’s demand for additional police protection is apparently justified.

I may say here that the net result of that editorial was one officer from the city, who spent most of his time playing pinochle with the sergeant at the station house. That night, however, it made me shudder.

“Do you believe in this lunatic, Tony?”

“I don’t know what to believe.”

I went upstairs early, leaving him alone. He did not try to keep me. I know now that he thought I was up to something that night, although he had no idea what it was. “It stuck out all over you,” he told me elegantly a few hours later. But I knew well enough what I had to do. I had to see Margery Stoddard, see her and warn her. Not for a minute did I believe that she had ever killed anybody, and if Julian had done it I could even see a sort of elementary justice in it.