"Midnight?" I echoed. "Is that usual?"
"Used to be. Chung's been with father a long time. Good chink. Always given his whole Sunday, and if he was on hand to get Monday's breakfast—no questions."
"Left last night, you think?"
Worth shot me a glance of understanding.
"Sometimes he would—after cleaning up from dinner. But he wouldn't have heard the shot, if that's what you're driving at."
He left me, going out through the hall. My fire burned. I thawed out the kinks the long, chill ride had put in me. Then Worth hailed; I went out and found him with a coffee-pot boiling on the gas range, a loaf and a cold roast set out. He had sand, that boy; in this wretched home-coming, his manner was neither stricken nor defiant. He seemed only a little graver than usual as he waited on me, hunting up stuff in places he knew of to put some variety into our supper.
Where I sat I faced a back window, and my eye was caught by the appearance of a strange light, quite a little distance from the house, apparently in another building, but showing as a vague glow on the fog.
"What's down there?" I asked. Worth answered without taking the trouble to lean forward and look,
"The garage—and the study."
"Huh? The study's separate from the house?" I had been thinking of the suicide as a thing of this dwelling, an affair in some room within its walls. Of course Chung would not hear the shot. "Who's down there?"