For a few hours he slept with a sort of determined tranquillity. But by eight o'clock he was up and dressed, and a few minutes later he answered a summons at the front door. Swinging it open he admitted a short sandy man with the ruddy complexion of the Norsemen. "I'm Annisen, the coroner," this visitor announced.
"Yes. I was expecting you. Come in." The other man swung the portal wider. "Doctor Annisen, is it?"
The visitor nodded and stepped into the hall that was still dim in the cold light of the winter morning. He unwound a black silk muffler from about his throat. "Devilish cold," he commented. "Devilish cold for a place that advertises summer all the year round."
His host smiled with sympathetic appreciation. "California publicity," he commented, "is far and away ahead of anything that we have in the unimaginative East. My furnace-man left me yesterday and I haven't got around to making the fires myself yet. But let me give you something to warm you up, doctor."
While he filled one of the small glasses on the buffet, his guest eyed him stolidly. "Still got some on hand, have you?" he said with a heavy attempt at the amenities. "Well, this wouldn't be a bad place for moonshining out here. Guess you could put almost anything over without fearing a visit from the authorities."
There was a moment of silence. "You've got a beautiful place though," he went on at last. "But Rest Hollow! What a name for it! Rest! Lord! Anything might happen out here, and I guess most everything has. I wasn't much surprised at the message I found waiting me when I got back to town this morning. I've always said that this place fairly yells for a suicide."
The other man's eyes were fixed upon his face with a curious intentness. It was as though he were deaf and were reading the words from his companion's lips. The coroner had raised his glass and was waiting. "No, I don't drink," his host explained. "Very seldom touch anything. I can't and do my kind of work."
Annisen set down his empty glass. "I shouldn't think you could do your kind of work and not drink," he remarked. "Well, let's get this over. I suppose you left everything just as you found it?"
There was the ghost of a smile in his host's eyes. "Glad he didn't put that question the other way around," he was thinking. "It would have been an embarrassment if he had asked if I found everything just as I left it." And then aloud, "Certainly. I haven't touched anything. The body is out here."
"Good. Gifford sent his wagon out last night, but fortunately his man knew enough not to disturb anything until I'd been out. Were you here when he came last night?"