Louis Bassett had left for Norada the day after David's sudden illness,

but ten days later found him only as far as Chicago, and laid up in his

hotel with a sprained knee. It was not until the day Nina went back to

the little house in the Ridgely Road, having learned the first lesson of

married life, that men must not only be captured but also held, that he

was able to resume his journey.

He had chafed wretchedly under the delay. It was true that nothing in

the way of a story had broken yet. The Tribune had carried a photograph

of the cabin where Clark had according to the Donaldson woman spent the

winter following the murder, and there were the usual reports that he

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had been seen recently in spots as diverse as Seattle and New Orleans.

But when the following Sunday brought nothing further he surmised that

the pack, having lost the scent, had been called off.

He confirmed this before starting West by visiting some of the offices

of the leading papers and looking up old friends. The Clark story was

dead for the time. They had run a lot of pictures of him, however, and

some one might turn him up eventually, but a scent was pretty cold in

ten years. The place had changed, too. Oil had been discovered five

years ago, and the old settlers had, a good many of them, cashed in and

moved away. The town had grown like all oil towns.

Bassett was fairly content. He took the night train out of Chicago and

spent the next day crossing Nebraska, fertile, rich and interesting. On

the afternoon of the second day he left the train and took a branch

line toward the mountains and Norada, and from that time on he became an

urbane, interested and generally cigar-smoking interrogation point.

"Railroad been here long?" he asked the conductor.

"Four years."

"Norada must have been pretty isolated before that."

"Thirty miles in a coach or a Ford car."

"I was reading the other day," said Bassett, "about the Judson Clark

case. Have a cigar? Got time to sit down?"

"You a newspaper man?"

"Oil well supplies," said Bassett easily. "Well, in this article it

seemed some woman or other had made a confession. It sounded fishy to

me."

"Well, I'll tell you about that." The conductor sat down and bit off the

end of his cigar. "I knew the Donaldsons well, and Maggie Donaldson was

an honest woman. But I'll tell you how I explain the thing. Donaldson

died, and that left her pretty much alone. The executors of the Clark

estate kept her on the ranch, but when the estate was settled three

years ago she had to move. That broke her all up. She's always said he

wasn't dead. She kept the house just as it was, and my wife says she had

his clothes all ready and everything."




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