Spearman to get back to town.
The circumstances are such that I felt myself obliged to talk them over
first with him; I have done that this morning; so I was going to send
for you, if you had not come down."

Sherrill thought a minute, still holding the envelope closed in his
hand.

"On the day after your father disappeared," he went on, "but before I
knew he was gone--or before any one except my daughter felt any alarm
about him--I received a short note from him. I will show it to you
later, if you wish; its exact wording, however, is unimportant. It had
been mailed very late the night before and apparently at the mail box
near his house or at least, by the postmark, somewhere in the
neighborhood; and for that reason had not been taken up before the
morning collection and did not reach the office until I had been here
and gone away again about eleven o'clock. I did not get it, therefore,
until after lunch. The note was agitated, almost incoherent. It told
me he had sent for you--Alan Conrad, of Blue Rapids, Kansas--but spoke
of you as though you were some one I ought to have known about, and
commended you to my care. The remainder of it was merely an agitated,
almost indecipherable farewell to me. When I opened the envelope, a
key had fallen out. The note made no reference to the key, but
comparing it with one I had in my pocket, I saw that it appeared to be
a key to a safety deposit box in the vaults of a company where we both
had boxes.

"The note, taken in connection with my daughter's alarm about him, made
it so plain that something serious had happened to Corvet, that my
first thought was merely for him. Corvet was not a man with whom one
could readily connect the thought of suicide; but, Alan, that was the
idea I had. I hurried at once to his house, but the bell was not
answered, and I could not get in. His servant, Wassaquam, has very few
friends, and the few times he has been away from home of recent years
have been when he visited an acquaintance of his--the head porter in a
South Side hotel. I went to the telephone in the house next door and
called the hotel and found Wassaquam there. I asked Wassaquam about
the letter to 'Alan Conrad,' and Wassaquam said Corvet had given it to
him to post early in the evening. Several hours later, Corvet had sent
him out to wait at the mail box for the mail collector to get the
letter back. Wassaquam went out to the mail box, and Corvet came out
there too