born in 1910.

I dropped the wallet back in the drawer and reached for one of the envelopes. When I slid the voucher out, I gave a little start of surprise. The check was still attached to it. It was the same story in the other one. I rooted among the handkerchiefs and came up with one more. The checks were all in the amount of $58.50, payable to Walter E. Cliffords, and he hadn’t cashed one since May. He must be popular with the accounting department, I thought. And suffering from no shortage of money, in spite of the fact she’d said he spent nearly half that amount on comic books and magazines each month. Well, he might get something from Social Security . . . no, you had to be sixty-five, didn’t you? One thing was clear, however; his finances didn’t ring true at all.

The other two drawers held nothing but clothing. I closed them and turned to the trunk. It wasn’t locked. Lifting off the stacks of magazines, I raised the lid, conscious of a strong odor of moth crystals. The compartmented tray on top held a hodge-podge of miscellaneous stuff, shotgun shells, plastic boxes of bass flies and spinning lures, gun-cleaning equipment, some bottles of old patent medicine, and another pair of spectacles in a case. I lifted it out and set it aside. The bottom was full of winter clothing. I snatched it all out, feeling in the pockets of the jackets and the raincoat. There was nothing else in it except some magazines lying on the bottom.

Well, what now? I shook my head, still crouched on my knees beside the trunk and staring musingly into its emptiness. There should have been something. Something besides you, honey, I thought.

The uppermost magazine was another of those true detective things. On its cover a creamy-textured and extremely loth maiden in a Place Pigalle outfit was trying to stay at least one jump ahead of a hearty type with a cleaver. Ah, youth. What mad pursuit? . . . What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Wait a minute . . . . I frowned thoughtfully. Why in the trunk? He must have a half-ton of these things stacked around the room; what was special about this one? I grabbed it up. There were two more under it, another crime magazine of a different brand and one of those pocket-sized digests that can reduce Gibbon to four hundred words. I felt the stirrings of an illogical excitement; here I was going back into left field again. The digest magazine displayed its table of contents on the cover. I ran my eye down it rapidly. Half-way down I stopped.

Wild Bill Haig, Enigma.

So?

I dropped it and began leafing frantically through one of the crime books for its table of contents. There it was. I gulped it at one devouring glance, and drew a blank. Was I wrong again? I started back, more slowly. Girls in Purgatory . . . Clue of the Bloodstained Something . . . Ice-Cold Blonde . . . Nude Something Or Other . . . Is This Man Among the Living? . . .

Hold it. Try page forty-three.

I found it, and then breathed softly. It was Haig, all right. The next one was easy; it was the lead story. Will They Ever Solve the Mystery of Bill Haig?

I don’t know, pal, but give me a little time; I’m working on it. I closed the magazine and dropped it softly back into the trunk.

I put everything back in the trunk the way it had been, closed it, replaced the magazines on top, and went to work. I tore the rumpled bed apart and turned and probed the mattress and pillows. I pulled the drawers out of the chest and looked under and in back of them. I looked in the stove, and pulled the pots away from the wall to see behind them. I tore the piles of magazines down and shuffled them. Every few minutes I stepped to the door to check the cove again, and then returned to the methodical ransacking. I was careful to put everything back the way it was, but I missed nothing. I even went through the groceries and pried the lids off three one-gallon pails of syrup. It was a complete blank. The only money in this cabin was that in his wallet.

Of course it was too big to hide in a place like this. That was obvious, but he should have