“Anything wrong?” said the sergeant. “Excuse the apple. I didn’t have time for breakfast. We’re pretty busy here just now.”

“Where’s the chief?”

“He’s up in the city. He’s been there since last night.”

My heart sank like a stone. “What’s happened?” I said. “Have they arrested anybody?”

The sergeant grinned, “I couldn’t say, miss.”

I was turning away when Cracker Brown spoke. “Don’t be a sap, Sam,” he said. “It’s all over the place already.” He turned to me. “Take it easy, Pat. They took Bill Sterling up to the city last night, and nobody’s come back yet.”

“You mean they’ve arrested him?”

“I don’t know. Held as a material witness or something. They got something new on him yesterday. I don’t know what it was.”

But I knew, of course. They had found the gun.

There were other things, too, that I did not know. For instance, that Hopper had already been in Beverly early that morning. He had had three hours’ sleep, breakfast, and a shave, and he went at once to Bill Sterling’s house. Like most valley houses it sat in its own grounds; that is, there was perhaps half an acre to the property. It was an old place, and when Bill took it he had added a small one-story wing with three rooms which were his offices. There was a narrow cement walk to this wing, with a sign at the entrance and shrubbery on both sides, and when Mrs. Watkins first spied Hopper he was on his knees there, looking at a recently dug hole in the ground.

She descended on him with a fury.

“Where’s the doctor?” she demanded. “If you idiots are keeping him you can come in and answer the telephone. It’s driving me crazy. And what are you doing there?”

“Looking at a hole,” said Hopper cheerfully. “Just curious, that’s all.”

“If you look hard enough you’ll find a bone in it,” she said. “The dog’s been working there for the last hour.”

She stooped and triumphantly produced the bone, and Hopper got up, looking sheepish.

“Sure you didn’t put it there yourself?” he said.

“When I feel like burying something—and I do at this minute—I won’t do it in the front yard.”

All this, of course, I learned later. That morning I simply stood in the station house and wondered what to do next. What I finally did do was to go to Lydia. I did not ask to see her. I simply marched up the stairs and into her room, to find her standing by a window. She had not bothered to dress. She had thrown a kimono over her nightgown, and she looked as if she had not slept all night.

“Are they holding him, Pat?”

“He’s still in town; I don’t know.” Then I plunged. “Lydia, where’s that gun of Don’s that you buried?”

“What gun?” she said, almost in a whisper.

“You know better than I do. Do you know that Audrey took it yesterday and left it in Bill Sterling’s desk?”