"Any minute now." Worth looked at me queerly, but I went on,
"You said he phoned from the ranch. Did he answer you in person—from out there?"
"That's what I told you, Jerry."
My searching gaze made nothing of the boy's impassive face; I plunged again into the diaries, running down a page, getting the heading of a sentence, not delaying to go further unless I struck something which seemed to me important, and each minute thinking of the strangeness of a man like this killing himself. It was in the 1916 volume, that I made a discovery which surprised an exclamation from me.
"What would you call this, Worth? Your father's way of making corrections?"
"Corrections?" Worth spoke without looking around. "My father never made corrections—in anything." It was said without animus—a simple statement of fact.
"But look here." I held toward him the book. There were three leaves gone; that meant six pages, and the entries covered May 31 and June 1. I had verified that before I spoke to him, noticing that the statement of the weather for May 31 remained at the foot of the last page left, while a run-over on the page beyond the missing ones had been marked out. It had nothing to do with the weather. As nearly as I could make out with the reading glass I held over it, the words were, "take the woman for no other than she appears."
"Worth," I urged, "give me your attention for a minute here. You say your father did not make corrections, but one of the diaries is cut. The records of two days are gone. Were those pages stolen?"
"How should I know?" said Worth, and added, helpfully, "Pity they didn't steal the whole lot. That would have been a relief."
There were voices and the sound of steps outside. I shoved the diary back into its place on the shelf, and turned to see Barbara at the broken door with Jim Edwards. She came in, her clear eyes a little wide, but the whole young personality of her quite composed. Edwards halted at the door, a haggard eye roving over the room, until it encountered the blood-stain on the rug, when it sheered abruptly, and fixed itself on Worth, who crossed to shake hands, with a quiet,