when it could be anywhere in fifty square miles? Maybe that was the reason; the rest of it was so hopeless I didn’t want to start.

I caught sight of something about fifty yards to the rear of the cabin in the edge of the timber, and walked back to it. It was his garbage dump, a small pile of empty tins and broken jars, old magazines, and ashes from the stove. I located a stick and began moving the litter enough to see the ground beneath; if you were going to bury something in the earth this would be a good way to camouflage it afterward. But there was no evidence the ground had ever been disturbed. I probed all around with the stick and found it solid everywhere. I sighed wearily and began pushing the cans and bottles back the way I had found them. Then I stopped suddenly, staring at something on the ground.

I bent and picked it up. It was a piece of fire-blackened metal, small and vaguely cup-shaped. I recognized it instantly. It was the corner reinforcement off a cheap leather or fiber suitcase. I poked around with the stick some more. Within a few minutes I had scraped up parts of both the clasps, the lock, and one of the rings through which the end of the handle had fitted. Here was the final bit of proof, I thought—if I had needed any more. This was probably what was left of Haig’s famous suitcase.

Then I shrugged and tossed the blackened bits of metal back on the rubbish. This wasn’t accomplishing anything. Sure, he’d burned the suitcase; but what he done with the money? I went on back into the timber and began making long sweeps through it with my eyes on the ground.

Around ten o”clock I heard his motor again as he returned from fishing. Hardly knowing why, I came back toward the clearing. Perhaps it was curiosity. Here was the man who was the key to the whole thing, and I knew next to nothing about him; I’d seen him twice from a distance, and had spent one long and terrible minute staring at the seat of his overalls. I cautiously circled the open space until I could see the door in front of the cabin. Well screened by underbrush, I lay down to watch. Smoke issued from the stove-pipe, and in a short while he came out and sat down in the doorway with a cup of coffee. I still couldn’t see his face clearly because he was almost as far away as he had been those two times he’d passed me in his boat, but I had an impression of a pudgy and ineffectual little man made ridiculous by that gun-belt strapped about his waist. He put down the coffee cup after a while and walked out into the yard, moving with what he apparently considered the deadly crouch of the Western gunman. His hand shot down to the holster and came up with the .38, the cold-eyed and implacable frontier marshal facing his man in the street at sundown and beating him to the draw. Take that, you varmint! He repeated this several times, practicing the blazing wizardry with the Colt that had made him the scourge of the bad ones. The poor barmy little bastard, I thought.

He went back in the cabin, and when he emerged again he was carrying a magazine. He sat down in the doorway with his feet on the step, and began to read. It was probably cooler there than inside. He held the magazine very close to his face, not more than twelve inches away at most, and I noticed he had on a pair of the glasses I had seen while ransacking the place. Apparently his eyesight was considerably below the minimum standard for eagle-eyed lawmen; judging from where he was holding the magazine he wouldn’t be able to read it at all without those cheaters.

Oh? I frowned reflectively; an idea was beginning to nudge me.

Wait. Don’t go off half-cocked, I warned myself. Try to remember. He hadn’t had them on either of the times I’d seen him in his boat, nor just now while practicing his draw. I was certain of the latter, and reasonably sure of the former. Then he could and did get around without them, when he wanted to. Probably they were solely for reading. Could he read without them? I went on studying him, watching the way he labored