Nick got out, and the two men surveyed the body. They knew better than to touch anything, although one of them lifted an arm. “Dead for hours,” he said. “I’ll stay here. Better telephone the chief.”

There was a desk sergeant on duty, but he had obviously been asleep. He roused when he got the message, however. “Dead? How?” he inquired. “Hit and run?”

“Looks like he had a heart attack,” said the officer. “Get the chief, will you?”

He gave the location, and a half hour later Jim Conway drew up with a squealing of brakes. He had brought Bill Sterling with him, and Bill had grabbed his case and filled a hypodermic on the way out. But he needed only a look to tell him that Don was gone again, this time to a far distance.

“Dead,” he said. “Looks as though he’d been here all night.”

“What killed him? Any idea?”

“He said he had a bad heart,” said Bill curtly. “I never examined him. All right if I turn him over?”

Jim nodded. This was not the city with a homicide squad all ready for fingerprint men and photographers; and also there was still no suspicion of foul play. Certainly there was no blood in sight.

“Poor devil,” said Nick, helping to roll him over. “Say, Chief, I thought he was wearing an overcoat.”

“So Mrs. Morgan said,” Jim replied. “Look around and see if it’s here. There’s a slipper missing too.”

But it was neither overcoat nor slipper that made Bill Sterling and Jim, after turning over the body, stare at each other. The pajamas were soaking wet. They had dried somewhat on the back, and any moisture there might have been the heavy dew. Rolled over, there was no question about what had happened. The body had been in the water somewhere. Jim was stunned.

“Looks as though he’d jumped in the river,” he said. “Lydia was afraid of that. May have done it and changed his mind.”

“And then walked a mile with one slipper gone and had a heart attack!” said Bill gruffly. “Use your head, Jim.”

“What do you mean?”

“If he’s been drowned he’s been murdered. I think he’s been murdered anyhow.”

That, of course, changed everything. Before he left Beverly, Jim had ordered the ambulance, and it arrived soon after. But he did not let them move the body. He sent word to the coroner’s office, and to the village for his camera. He had taken half a dozen pictures before the coroner arrived.

In the meantime the two patrolmen examined the neighborhood. The road was the one which had once led up to the George Washington Spring, but the body was only a short distance from the main highway. At this point the valley widened, and it was a mile or more to the river. The patrolmen found nothing. The weather had been dry, and the road, little more than a lane, showed no tire marks.

But Jim had noticed one thing, although he had kept it to himself. When the body was turned over he saw that a button had been torn from the coat of the pajamas. He did not mention this, but he made an exhaustive search for it, going down on his knees and examining the ditch thoroughly. After that he walked about with his head down, looking, as he said later, for God knew what. “I had to go through the motions,” was the way he put it. “I had to find a button, a car, an overcoat, and a slipper; and I had to figure out what a man like Don Morgan was doing back there on that road in his pajamas. You know what he was like, Pat. Used to wear gloves and spats. I’d seen him a thousand times when I was a kid. Yet there he was, as if he had just gotten out of bed.”