It was not very light out of doors, but I had my first lesson in pistol shooting that late afternoon. The place he had chosen was the small ravine beside the playhouse, and I can’t claim to have made any records. I did learn, however, not to shut my eyes when I squeezed the trigger, and Jim squeezed my arm in brotherly fashion when it was over.

“Good girl,” he said. “I’m leaving it with you. Carry it in your car, will you? Not in a pocket, either. Keep it on the seat beside you.”

“I can’t see why I need it, Jim.”

“You may know something you don’t know you know,” he said cryptically.

But he had not finished with me. He went back with me to the house that day. There was a fire in the library, and I ordered him a highball while he warmed his hands. He said nothing until, with his drink beside him, he had lit a cigarette. His first question surprised me.

“See here, Pat, did it ever occur to you that Maud Wainwright knew Don Morgan?”

“I don’t think she did,” I said. “He went away two or three years after the Wainwrights moved to the Hill, and the valley didn’t know the Hill people much at that time. Not intimately. I know she didn’t know Lydia. She asked me about her.”

“Ever occur to you that he came to the playhouse to see Mrs. Wainwright the night he was killed?”

“In pajamas? Why would he?”

“Well,” he said reasonably, “if that’s all he had, and had to see her—All right. Let’s go back to Evans, and night you found him in the playhouse. He’s knocked out and somebody takes his keys. Why?”

“I suppose,” I said, “anybody might want the keys to this house. It has a million dollars’ worth of stuff in it.”

“You know better than that. So do I. Whoever wanted those keys wasn’t out for burglary. If Morgan got them, as seems pretty certain, what did he want them for?” He looked at me over his cigarette. “Who answers the telephone here?”

“I do, or Reynolds. Whoever’s around.”

“Easy to get Mrs. Wainwright on it?”

“She never used it if she could help it. People gave their names or their businesses. Usually I took the messages to her, and she’d tell me what to do about them.”

“I see,” he said thoughtfully. “If Morgan wanted to talk to her on the phone he hadn’t a chance, had he?”

“I don’t think he tried. Jim, what’s all this about? Why would he want to talk to her? About Bessie?”

“Maybe Bessie. Maybe not. But he got into this house twice. Why? Suppose he tries to get in touch with Maud Wainwright, and he can’t do it. Maybe he hangs around the place, but at first she’s sick, and later on she’s never alone. Bessie’s here. You’re here. People are coming and going. If he rings the doorbell he has to state his business, and the one thing on earth he doesn’t want to state is his business. That could happen, couldn’t it?”