At two o’clock Lydia called again. Don had not come back. His clothes were all there, but his overcoat was gone. And she had been to the garage. Her car was missing.

She had already notified Jim Conway. He was there now, and the patrol car was out looking for Don. “Although with all these roads—” she said helplessly. She seemed relieved in one way, however. The car showed that he had not gone to the river, and there was the possibility that he had simply been sleepless and taken a ride.

Nevertheless, I roused Amy, and she went down to spend the rest of the night with Lydia. “Not that I care a damn about Don Morgan,” she said, “but I’m sorry for her. It would be a good thing for her if he never showed up again.”

I have always been glad that I did that; sent Amy, I mean. For she was there when word came that they had found Donald Morgan’s body at daylight on Sunday morning, lying in a ditch beside a road leading back from the far end of the valley into the hills. He had been dead for hours.

Chapter Eleven

MAUD BROUGHT ME THE first news, coming in in her nightgown and a negligee, with her long braid down her back. All she knew, however, was the mere fact that he had been discovered.

“I suppose it will be hard on Lydia,” she said, helping herself to a second cup of coffee from my tray. “She will blame herself, although I don’t see why. If he had heart trouble he might go any time. Of course, she may still have cared for him.” She sighed. “The curse God put on women was not the pain of childbearing, Pat. He simply gave them faithful hearts and let them alone.”

The only fact we had that morning was that Don had been found dead beside a road. The further details only reached us at noon when Tony came back from the club, where I gathered that a sort of neighborhood court of inquiry had sat during the morning.

The facts were strange enough, however. Poor old Don, so worthless and so gallant, so careful of his appearance too, had been found face down in a ditch, clad only in a pair of blue silk pajamas. To add to the mystery, Lydia’s car was nowhere about, and that he had not left it and walked to where he was discovered was evident. He wore only one bedroom slipper, and the other foot showed no signs of having walked any distance at all.

The patrol car had found him at seven o’clock in the morning. They had almost missed him, as the ditch was well overgrown. But one of the men caught a flash of blue, stopped the car and got out. He stepped down into the ditch and parted the weeds. Then he straightened.

“He’s here, Nick,” he called. “Guess it’s all over. The poor devil’s dead.”