“He just walked out, eh?”

“Well, I don’t know. He walked out, all right, but when he came back I thought maybe he’d had bad news. If he had, he never spoke about it. Only one thing I did notice. Now and then he used to get a letter from somebody. He’s never had one since.”

It was early October by that time. The trees were already turning, making the hillsides a soft blending of red and yellow and brown. The hunting season was on, meeting at the Stoddards’. It was bad hunting country, but rides had been cut, and there were some native foxes, as well as others which had been imported. In the valley the summer season was definitely ended. The city bachelors who had used the Beverly Hotel as summer quarters had gone back to town, the horse show was over, and both Hill and village had been prepared for a rest before Palm Beach or Jekyll Island or Nassau.

Into this peace, however, had come Don’s murder and the disappearance of Evans. True, life went on. The gardeners were getting ready for winter, wheeling about mulch or manure, digging up Maud’s annual garden, and still nursing along their dahlias, asters, and chrysanthemums. The golf links were filled, especially on Saturday and Sunday. The river boats were pushing huge scows laden with coal for the coming cold weather, and one day a couple of police boats appeared, and systematically set about dragging the river bed.

Maud was still in ignorance of Evans’s disappearance, but I was allowed to see her for a few minutes each day. It was early in the week that she asked about Evans.

“How is he getting on? We might send him some fruit, Pat.”

She must have seen something in my face. She tried to lift herself up in bed. “Not Evans, Pat!” she said. “Don’t tell me anything has happened to Evans.”

I had to tell her. I made it as easy as I could, but she looked so strange that I called Amy. That afternoon she sent for Dwight Elliott, and he was shut in her room for a long time.

Whatever happened during the talk, he looked badly shaken when he came out. Amy, going in to tell him that the time was up, said she found him standing over Maud, his face red with indignation.

“You can’t do it,” he was saying. “Think of what it entails. At least I implore you to wait until you are yourself again.”

“I’ve had plenty of time to think it over, Dwight.”

Then he saw Amy and pulled himself together.

I do not remember much of that week. Evans had not been found. Wearing a pair of hospital slippers and carrying his pipe, he had vanished as completely as if, Amy said, he had been rubbed out with an eraser. There were still guards at night in the Cloisters grounds, and a man at the gates all day. Tony looked exhausted. Bessie had taken to spending most of her time in her room, with the door locked. And one day Hodge at the cemetery, crawling into a clump of shrubbery, found a pick which he believed had been used to cause the damage and took it down to the station house.