Two hours after Roger Kenwick had taken his gruesome departure from the house of the iron gate, a mud-spattered car turned in at the side entrance to the grounds which he had quitted. The man behind the wheel drove recklessly, careening between the double row of eucalyptus-trees like some low-flying bird of prey seeking its carrion. At the shallow front steps he brought the car to an abrupt halt as though he had found the thing for which he sought. Tugging at his heavy gloves he sprang up the steps, two at a time. "Lord! What a handsome place this is!" he muttered. "What a place for dinners and dancing—and love!"

He pressed the electric button and heard its buzz pierce the stillness of the house. "It's a crime!" He was walking up and down before the closed door, flapping his gloves against his chest. "It's a crime for a man to live in a place like this alone." He pressed the button again, keeping his finger upon it this time until he felt certain that its persistent summons must tear at the nerves of whoever was within. But still there was no response. Then he tried the knob, turned it, and went inside.

The house was in complete darkness. He felt his way along the front hall until his fingers found the switch-button. At the hat-rack he divested himself of his heavy coat, hat, and gloves. The face which the diamond-shaped mirror reflected was dark with disapproval and gathering anger. "Door unlocked at one o'clock at night! Might as well leave a child in charge of things!"

Walking with noisy, impatient tread, he ascended the stairs, taking the left flight on the landing, and snapping on the light in the upper hall. The doors were all closed. He turned the knob of the first one and went in. The sitting-room was in perfect order. He crossed it and entered the alcove beyond. It, too, was in order with fresh linen upon the bed. Having made a tour of the suite he came back and stood beside the center-table in the sitting-room. A half-burned cigar caught his eye, and he drew it out of the ash-tray and turned it speculatively between his fingers. Then, still holding it, he visited the other rooms in the left wing. They were all orderly, silent, deserted. Somewhere in his progress from one to another he dropped the cigar stump and did not notice it. Moving like a man in a dream he found himself at last over in the right wing, standing outside a heavy mahogany door. His movements were no longer speculative. They were nervous and jerky as though propelled by a disabled engine.

He did not at first try to open this door but called in a low uncertain voice that seemed to dread a reply, "Marstan, are you here?" When there was no response he tried the door in a futile sort of way as though he were expecting resistance. When it yielded to his touch and he stood upon the threshold the desolation of the room seemed to leap out at him. He felt no desire to switch on the light here, but stood motionless in the open doorway, transfixed, not by a sight but by an odor.

"Heliotrope!" he muttered at last, and brought the panel shut with a jerk. "Some woman has been in that room!"

For long moments he stood there in the lighted upper hall. In his face bewilderment struggled with alarm. At last he made his way downstairs to the living-room and on to the den. Here he stared long at the half-drawn shades and the crumpled cushions of the window-seat. Something was gone out of that room; something that was a vivid, vital part of it. He couldn't quite determine what it was.

Over in the dining-room he examined the bowl of English walnuts with several empty shells mixed in among them and the nutcrackers lying askew upon the centerpiece. All at once he dropped these with a crash that made an ugly scar upon the polished table-top. His eyes had fallen upon the wide board nailed across the shattered window. He went over and investigated it carefully, his quick eyes taking in every detail of the crude carpentry. Under his touch the sagging lower board suddenly gave way and fell with a heavy thud to the gravel walk below.

The new-comer went back to the front hall, searched for an instant in the pocket of his overcoat, and then, clutching a black cylindrical object, he went out of the house and around on the dining-room side. His hands were trembling now, and the path of light blazing from the little electric torch made a zigzag trail across the dank flower-beds. He found the dislodged board lying with its twisted nails sprawling upward and dragged it off the path. As he dropped it his eyes fell upon an object lying beneath a giant oleander bush. At last he knew what it was that he had missed from the den. It was the Indian blanket. Mystified, he bent down and picked it up, finding it heavy with the added weight of dampness. The next moment he gave a startled cry, dropped the blanket and torch, and staggered back against the wall. And the blackness of night rushed over him like a tidal wave.

But his was the temperament which recuperates quickly from a shock. Resourcefulness, the key-note of his character, impelled him always to seek relief in action. Cursing the sudden weakness in his knees which retarded haste, he strode, with the aid of the recovered torch, toward a small frame cottage in the rear of the garage. Here he rapped sharply upon the closed door, then pushed it open. This room, too, was empty. Pointing the torch, like the unblinking eye of a cyclops, into every corner of the apartment, he made certain of this. Then he drew a solitary chair close to the door and sat down, the torch across his knees.

More slowly now his glance traveled around the room. The blankets upon the bed were in a disheveled heap. There were some soiled dishes upon the table, a cup half full of cold tea, and under the small stove a pot of sticky-looking rice. The fire had gone out. He crossed the room and lifted the lid of the stove. Under the white ashes a few coals glowed dully. There were no clothes in the closet. It was easily apparent to him that the former inmate of the room had left unexpectedly but did not intend to return.

For half an hour he sat there motionless. Then he rose, pushed back the chair, and went out, closing the door behind him. Very deliberately he followed the side path back to the dining-room window. This time he retained the light, pressing one end of it firmly with his thumb. The soggy Indian blanket he folded back, and, stooping close to the ground, examined intently the dead cold face which it had sheltered.

It was the face of a man, young but haggard. The cheeks were sunken, and through the skin of his clenched hands the knuckles showed white and knotted. His hair was in wild disorder, but it seemed more the disorder of long neglect than of violent death. The helpless shrunken figure presented a pitiful contrast to that of the man who knelt beside it.

His was a large, well-proportioned frame that suggested, not corpulence but physical power. His hands were powerful but not thick. His whole bearing was self-assured, almost haughty. But it was the eyes, not the carriage, that gave the impression of arrogance. They were the clearest amber color with a mere dot of black pupil. Here and there tiny specks were visible showing like dark grains of sand in a sea of brown. A woman had once called them "tiger eyes," and he had been pleased. A child had once described them as "freckled" eyes, and he had been annoyed. As he knelt there now, searching the face of the dead man, his eyes, under their drooping lids, narrowed to the merest slits. When at last he rose and drew the blanket back over the still form, he moved with the brisk effectiveness of one animated by definite purpose.

First, he drove the mud-spattered roadster into the garage and left it there beside the beetle-black limousine. Then he let himself into the deserted house again, went up to the second bedroom in the left wing, and began sorting over some miscellaneous objects from one of the chiffonier drawers. "Ghastly!" he muttered once. "Ghastly! I'll have to take something to brace me up."

Back in the dining-room he took one of the long-stemmed glasses from the sideboard and poured himself a drink from a bottle in the cupboard underneath. But first he scrutinized its contents under the light. "Why didn't you take it all?" he inquired sardonically of some invisible being.

For a few hours he slept with a sort of determined tranquillity. But by eight o'clock he was up and dressed, and a few minutes later he answered a summons at the front door. Swinging it open he admitted a short sandy man with the ruddy complexion of the Norsemen. "I'm Annisen, the coroner," this visitor announced.

"Yes. I was expecting you. Come in." The other man swung the portal wider. "Doctor Annisen, is it?"

The visitor nodded and stepped into the hall that was still dim in the cold light of the winter morning. He unwound a black silk muffler from about his throat. "Devilish cold," he commented. "Devilish cold for a place that advertises summer all the year round."

His host smiled with sympathetic appreciation. "California publicity," he commented, "is far and away ahead of anything that we have in the unimaginative East. My furnace-man left me yesterday and I haven't got around to making the fires myself yet. But let me give you something to warm you up, doctor."

While he filled one of the small glasses on the buffet, his guest eyed him stolidly. "Still got some on hand, have you?" he said with a heavy attempt at the amenities. "Well, this wouldn't be a bad place for moonshining out here. Guess you could put almost anything over without fearing a visit from the authorities."

There was a moment of silence. "You've got a beautiful place though," he went on at last. "But Rest Hollow! What a name for it! Rest! Lord! Anything might happen out here, and I guess most everything has. I wasn't much surprised at the message I found waiting me when I got back to town this morning. I've always said that this place fairly yells for a suicide."

The other man's eyes were fixed upon his face with a curious intentness. It was as though he were deaf and were reading the words from his companion's lips. The coroner had raised his glass and was waiting. "No, I don't drink," his host explained. "Very seldom touch anything. I can't and do my kind of work."

Annisen set down his empty glass. "I shouldn't think you could do your kind of work and not drink," he remarked. "Well, let's get this over. I suppose you left everything just as you found it?"

There was the ghost of a smile in his host's eyes. "Glad he didn't put that question the other way around," he was thinking. "It would have been an embarrassment if he had asked if I found everything just as I left it." And then aloud, "Certainly. I haven't touched anything. The body is out here."

"Good. Gifford sent his wagon out last night, but fortunately his man knew enough not to disturb anything until I'd been out. Were you here when he came last night?"

"No. I didn't get here till later."

The two men crawled out through the broken window and in the gray light of the November morning knelt together beside the still form under the Indian blanket. Mechanically the coroner examined it and the empty revolver which they discovered a few feet away. But he offered no comment until he had finished. Then his verdict was curt. "Gunshot wound in the head, self-inflicted. When did this happen?" He took out a small book and noted down the answers to this and a variety of other questions. Then he stood for a moment staring down at the white, drawn face of the dead man.

"Young, too," he murmured. "But I suppose it's a merciful thing. There was no life ahead for him, poor devil."

They followed the path around to the front of the house where Annisen's car was waiting. "Be in to the inquest about two o'clock this afternoon," he instructed. "That hour suit you all right, Mr.——? Don't believe I know your name."

"Glover. Richard Glover. I'll be there at two, doctor."

Late that morning the hearse made its second trip out of the side entrance of Rest Hollow. A mud-splashed roadster followed it. The cortÈge had just passed the last gaunt eucalyptus-tree and turned out upon the public highway when it was halted. A man in heavy-rimmed goggles got out of his car and made his way across the road. His glance wavered uncertainly between the driver of the hearse and the man in the muddy roadster. He decided to address the latter.

"I heard the news last night. It got around the neighborhood. But I thought——I didn't know——Those rumors get started sometimes with no foundation of fact. But it's true then—that he is dead."

"That who is dead?"

The question seemed to be shot back at him. And he had the uncanny conviction that it emanated, not from the lips, but from the amber eyes of the man in the roadster. He stammered out his reply.

"Why—I think his name——He told me his name was Kenwick; Roger Kenwick, I think."

The roadster started again. "Yes, that's the name. Did you know him?"

"No. But wait a minute, please." The goggle-eyed man hurried back to his own car and returned with a handsome spray of white chrysanthemums. They were tied with a broad white ribbon bordered with heliotrope. "I'd like to have you take these if you will." He handed them up to the hearse-driver.

The man in the roadster fired another question. "Your name, please?"

"They are not from me. One of the ladies in the neighborhood sent them. She felt it was too sad—having him go away this way, all alone." He went back to his machine and was soon lost in the distance. And the funeral procession proceeded on its way to Mont-Mer.

The coroner's inquest was brief and perfunctory. Annisen was on the eve of retiring from office and seeking a more lucrative position in a Middle Western city where the inhabitants, as he contemptuously remarked, "were not afflicted like this place is with a chronic sleeping-sickness."

The jury returned the verdict that "the deceased came to his death by shooting himself in the head." After they had departed, Gifford held brief parley with the chief witness. "I suppose you'll attend to notifying the family?"

Richard Glover nodded. And at his direction the haggard body was removed from the cheap black coffin in which it had made the trip from Rest Hollow. Following Richard Glover's instructions, it was embalmed for the trip across the continent. But just as it was ready for the long journey, he announced to Gifford that he had received orders from the family to inter the body in the little cemetery of Mont-Mer. And so, on the following day, it was taken to the quiet resting-place overlooking the sea. In the presence of no one except the undertaker's assistants and Richard Glover there was lowered into the lonely grave a handsome gray casket with silver handles and a frosted silver plate on which was inscribed the name "Roger Kenwick."