t certain that--if what had happened to him was
death at the hands of another--he must have foreseen that death and,
seeking no protection for himself ... it implied, that he preferred to
die rather than to ask protection--that there was something whose
concealment he thought mattered even more to him than life. It--it
might have meant that he considered his life was ... due to whomever
took it." Her voice, which had become very low, now ceased. She was
speaking to Alan of his father--a father whom he had never known, and
whom he could not have recognized by sight until she showed him the
picture a few weeks before; but she was speaking of his father.

"Mr. Sherrill didn't feel that it was necessary for him to do anything,
even though he thought that?"

"If Mr. Corvet was dead, we could do him no good, surely, by telling
this to the police; if the police succeeded in finding out all the
facts, we would be doing only what Uncle Benny did not wish--what he
preferred death to. We could not tell the police about it without
telling them all about Mr. Corvet too. So father would not let himself
believe that you had been attacked to be killed. He had to believe the
police theory was sufficient."

Alan made no comment at once. "Wassaquam believes Mr. Corvet is dead,"
he said finally. "He told me so. Does your father believe that?"

"I think he is beginning to believe it."

They had reached the little bridge that breaks the Drive and spans the
channel through which the motor boats reach harbor in the lagoon; he
rested his arms upon the rail of the bridge and looked down into the
channel, now frozen. He seemed to her to consider and to decide upon
something.

"I've not told any one," he said, now watching her, "how I happened to
be out of the house that night. I followed a man who came there to the
house. Wassaquam did not know his name. He did not know Mr. Corvet
was gone; for he came there to see Mr. Corvet. He was not an ordinary
friend of Mr. Corvet's; but he had come there often; Wassaquam did not
know why. Wassaquam had sent the man away, and I ran out after him;
but I could not find him."

He stopped an instant, studying her. "That was not the first man who
came to the house," he went on quickly, as she was about to speak. "I
found a man in Mr. Corvet's house the first night that I spent there.
Wassaquam was away, you remember, and I was alone in the house."

"A man there in the house?" she repeat