Dr. Green laid his paper on his knee and looked over his spectacles.
"Did you find him?"
"I found he was Mrs. Lister's brother, but not much more. They seem singularly averse to answering questions about him, to say nothing of offering any information."
"Possibly there isn't anything to offer," said Dr. Green, returning to his paper.
Thus dismissed, Utterly departed, having taken a long and astonished stare into Dr. Green's chaotic office, and having decided that he never saw a spot better suited to the harboring of germs.
Now he sought the cemetery beside the college church, and there gave expression to a "By Jove!" The building copied exactly the old Colonial church first built on that spot, and was as beautiful in proportions and design as any Colonial building he had ever seen. Still looking up, he walked round it, gazing at the tall steeple with its fine lantern and at the high, narrow windows with their delicate, diamond-patterned old glass. Then with another "By Jove!" he began to search for the family plot of the Evermans.
Without difficulty he found the place where Richard Everman and his wife lay side by side under heavy slabs of marble. Of their son Basil there was no memorial. For a while he wandered about reading names and inscriptions, then, shaking his head in strong disapproval of death and all its emblems, he passed through the gate once more and out to the street. He decided that he would wander about and steep himself in Waltonville's primitive atmosphere. He grew more and more baffled and angry, and more certain that information was being kept from him. Descriptive sentences formed themselves tantalizingly in his mind. "Here in this quiet spot, surrounded by quiet influences, belonging to the family of a clergyman, growing up under the shadow of the old church, was developing one of the most somber geniuses to which our nation has given birth." Until noon, still constructing sentences, he wandered unhappily.
In the afternoon he returned to the Listers' for his magazines. Again Dr. Lister sat on the porch; Utterly said to himself angrily that his manner was as stolid as his mind was stupid.
Dr. Lister agreed with him that Basil Everman's contributions to "Willard's Magazine" were remarkable, that they gave extraordinary promise.