I located a paper bag and picked up the shattered glass of the syrup pitcher. I soused his dish towel in the water pail, wrung it out, and mopped up the syrup, dropping the towel in the bag when I had finished. What else. Oh, yes—the plate I had used for an ash-tray. I scraped the butts into the bag, wiped the plate with a handful of paper from the wood-box to remove the rest of the ashes, and put the paper in the fire-box of the stove. Better burn all that, I thought. I stuck a match to it, and then shoved in the carton the money had been in, and the waxed paper that had been used to wrap that hidden under the house. When it had all burned down and gone out, I pulverized the ashes with the poker and replaced the lid. I put the blackened pieces of hardware from Haig’s suitcase in the paper bag, shoved the table back where it had been, and looked around. What else? There was nothing to indicate I had ever been here.

Of course, I had left footprints out there in a few places in the hard earth of the yard and in the trail, but it didn’t matter, even though my shoes were larger than his. Nobody would be looking for footprints. What had happened to him would be perfectly obvious. He’d stumbled over the tackle box, fallen overboard wearing that gun-belt and gun, and had drowned when the boat plowed on and left him. An autopsy would bear it out.

I picked up the paper bag, blew out the lamp, and went out. When my eyes were accustomed to the darkness again, I walked down to the lake about fifty yards above the cove, and threw the bag out into the water. The hardware and broken glass were heavy enough to make it sink. Picking my way through the dark trees, I went back down to the cove.

I rolled my shirt, trousers, and socks into a bundle and knotted the tie around it. Putting on the jacket and the hat, I picked up the crutch, the three pails and the bundle of wet clothing, and started down the lake through the timber. It was slow going and it was farther this way because I had to follow the shore-line to keep from being lost. Brush scratched my legs, and it required intense and constant alertness to keep from running into tree trunks. The sound of the outboard motor grew fainter behind me. I stopped once to tear the padding from the crutch and dispose of it under a log. A few hundred yards farther along I threw the forked sapling itself into the water. I was conscious that I was tiring, but had no conception of the passage of time. It could have been twenty minutes or it might have been hours that I’d been wrapped in this furious concentration, impervious to everything except this Problem I was working on. Nothing else existed, or could exist until I was through with it.

I stumbled into an open space and realized I had reached the camp-ground. I swung left, located the road, and in another minute was standing beside the station wagon. The moves remaining in the Problem were dwindling rapidly now, being checked off one by one. I fished the keys from the pocket of my jacket and unlocked the door. Grabbing a flashlight from the glove compartment, I hurried out to where I had hidden the can of gasoline and refueled the car. I replaced the registration certificate. Lifting out the suitcase, stripped off the jacket and wet shorts, and dressed in the slacks and sports shirt I’d had on before.

Like an operating team making a sponge count, I spread out the wet clothes and checked to be sure I hadn’t lost anything. It was all there—shirt, tie, socks, trousers, cuff-links, lighter, pocket-knife, wallet, bogus credentials, the sodden remains of the warrant, the brown paper bag containing the ten dollar bills, and even the drowned and mushy package of cigarettes in my shirt. I tossed the paper bag in the suitcase, and put the wallet, knife, and lighter in the pockets of my slacks. Rolling everything else back up in the shirt, I stowed the bundle in the rear of the car.

I took out the knife and pried the lids off the three pails. So oblivious was I to everything but the closing moves of the Problem I scarcely