"We've just had a visit from the detective—as you've probably guessed," Horace said.
"Oh. Was Melinda with him?"
"No. She spared us that. Well, she's accusing you again!" Horace burst out. "I came very near throwing Mr. Havermeyer, or whoever he is, out of the house. I did throw him out finally, but not before I'd said a few things to him. And so did Mary"
"His name's Havermal. It's not his fault. It's just his job."
"Oh, no. This fellow's the kind who'd inspire anybody to punch his nose. Of course, it doesn't help to have him sitting in your living room asking you if you don't think your best friend could have got angry enough to kill somebody. Or at least shanghai him out of town. I told him Vic Van Allen wouldn't have bothered. I said perhaps Mr. Cameron saw a blond he thought he'd like better than Melinda and went off with her to another town!"
Vic smiled.
"What's this about you being the last person who saw him?" "I don't know. Was I? I saw him at about eleven-thirty yesterday."
Horace shrugged his narrow shoulders. "They can't seem to find anybody who saw him after twelve. And to think, Vic, I had listen to that juvenile business about Melinda getting a divorce order to marry him! I told Havermal he'd better not spread that around. I told him I knew Melinda as well as I knew you—almost—and I know she makes wild threats when she gets angry."
"I'm not sure it was just a threat, Horace. Melinda seemed pretty set on a divorce a few days ago."
"'What'? Well, the fact remains, she didn't start one. I know because I asked. I asked Havermal what he'd found to substantiate die divorce idea. He hadn't found anything."
Vic kept silent.
Finally, Horace sat down. "Well, Vic just what happened when you picked up Cameron and drove him around?"
Vic felt his eyes widen in a protective stare. "Nothing. Melinda wasn't mentioned. He was making conversation. It was the first time I'd seen him act a little unsure of himself. You see, Horace," Vic continued, pushing his luck with Horace just as he had pushed it with Havermal, "that's what makes me think Melinda was telling ne the truth when she said she was going to get a divorce. Matter of fact, she was supposed to start the divorce yesterday. She may not have had an appointment with a lawyer, but she was going to 'start' it yesterday, she told me. Then she mentioned Cameron's having two tickets for Mexico City, and she was going with him. No wonder Cameron wasn't comfortable with me. He didn't have to get in my car, of course, but you know the way he is. He acts first and thinks later, if at all. It crossed my mind that he might have had a date with Melinda at some lawyer's office yesterday afternoon. He'd be just crass enough to go up there and sit with her while they got the papers started."
Horace shook his head in disgust.
"But, as I said to the roving detective, Cameron might also have run out on the whole thing. He'd have to run out on his job, too. At least on this assignment. He couldn't have faced Melinda in Little Wesley after running out."
"No. I see what you mean," Horace said thoughtfully. "That's probably just what he's done."
Vic got up and opened a cabinet in the bottom of his desk. "I think you could use a drink, couldn't you?" He always knew when Horace could use a drink. "I'll go over and get some ice."
"No, thanks. No ice for me. I'll take this for medicinal purposes—and it always seems more medicinal without ice."
Vic got a glass from the top of his desk, washed it in his tiny bathroom, and took his own tooth glass for himself. He poured three fingers for each of them. Horace sipped his appreciatively.
"I need this," Horace said. "I seem to take these things harder than you do."
"You seem to," Vic said, smiling.
"And you're in for another. It's like after the De Lisle business."
"A big year for the detective agencies," Vic said, and saw Horace look at him. Horace had still not asked him outright if Carpenter had been a detective.
"It's funny that Cameron's company doesn't look for him in New York, or Miami, or wherever a fellow like Cameron would go," Horace said. "Or Mexico City. Well—maybe they are looking." Vic deliberately changed the subject, slightly, by talking about the likelihood of finding a man who had chosen, say, to go to Australia to hide himself. The chances would be practically nil that he would be found, if he could get round the immigration authorities and enter Australia. They went on into the subject of individual blood chemistry. Horace said they could now identify an individual from a bit of his dried blood found on something perhaps months after his disappearance. Vic had also heard about that.
"But suppose you haven't the person?" Vic asked, and Horace laughed.
Vic thought of Cameron's blood on the white rocks of the quarry, and of Cameron some forty feet below in the water. If they found the blood, they would logically look for the body in the water, but perhaps there would be no blood left in the body, and no skin left on the fingertips. But Cameron might be identifiable. Vic wished he could go and take another look at the blood spots, do what he could to obliterate them, but he didn't dare go to the quarry for fear he might be seen. It seemed the only careless, stupid thing he had ever done in his life—to leave a trace where he had not wanted to leave a trace, to have failed to do properly something of such importance.
By the time Horace got
