“The other time?”
“He is under the impression that his mother got the horse for you once before, about ten days before Clark escaped. At night, also.”
“Not for me,” Bassett said decisively. “Ten days before that I was—” he got out his notebook and consulted it. “I was on my way to the cabin in the mountains, where the Donaldsons had hidden Jud Clark. I hired a horse at a livery stable.”
“Could the Thorwald woman have followed you?”
“Why the devil should she do that?” he asked irritably. “She didn't know who I was. She hadn't a chance at my papers, for I kept them on me. If she did suspect I was on the case, a dozen fellows had preceded me, and half of them had gone to the cabin.”
“Nevertheless,” he finished, “I believe she did. She or Hines himself. There was some one on a horse outside the cabin that night.”
There was silence in the room, Harrison Miller thoughtfully drawing at random on the map before him. Each man was seeing the situation from his own angle; to Reynolds, its medical interest, and the possibility of his permanency in the town; to Walter Wheeler, Elizabeth's spoiled young life; to Harrison Miller, David; and to the reporter a conviction that the clues he now held should lead him somewhere, and did not.
Before the meeting broke up Miller took a folded manuscript from the table and passed it to Bassett.
“Copy of the Coroner's inquiry, after the murder,” he said. “Thought it might interest you...”
Then, for a time, that was all. Bassett, poring at home over the inquest records, and finding them of engrossing interest, saw the futility of saving a man who could not be found. And even Nina's faith, that the fabulously rich could not die obscurely, began to fade as the summer waned. She restored some of her favor to Wallie Sayre, and even listened again to his alternating hopes and fears.