She was about to leave when a rapping on the back door of the studio attracted Mr. Bangs’s attention, and attracted it so peculiarly that Carmel could not but remark it with something more than curiosity. If one can have suspicion of an individual one does not know, with whose life and its ramifications she is utterly unaware, Carmel was suspicious of Mr. Bangs. It was not an active suspicion--it was a vague suspicion. It resembled those vague odors which sometimes are abroad in the air, odors too faint to be identified, so adumbrant one cannot be sure there is an odor at all.... Mr. Bangs, who had been the picture of self-satisfaction, became furtive. For the first time one ceased to be aware of his clothes and focused upon his eyes.... “Er--pardon me a moment,” he said, in a changed voice, and made overrapid progress to answer the knock. It was inevitable that Carmel’s ears should become alert. She heard a door opened and the entrance of a man who spoke in an attempted whisper, but not a successful whisper. It was as if a Holstein bull had essayed to whisper. “Sh-sssh!” warned Mr. Bangs. “It’s here,” said the whisper. “Back your jitney into the first tote road this side of the hotel, and then mosey off and take a nap. Everything’ll be fixed when you git back.” “Sh-sssh!” Mr. Bangs warned a second time. Carmel heard the door open and close again, and Mr. Bangs returned. “Express Parcel,” he said, with that guilty air which always accompanies the unskillful lie. The zest for selling advertising space had left Carmel; she wanted to think, to be alone and to consider various matters. She felt a vague apprehension, not as to herself, but of something malign, molelike, stealthy, which dwelt in the atmosphere surrounding Gibeon. Perfunctorily she took her leave, and, instead of pursuing her quest, returned to her desk and sat there staring at the picture above her head. Gibeon! She was thinking about Gibeon. The town had ceased to be a more or less thriving rural community, peopled by simple souls who went about their simple, humdrum round of life pleasantly, if stodgily. Rather the town and its people became a protective covering, a sort of camouflage to conceal the real thing which enacted itself invisibly. She wondered if Gibeon itself realized. It seemed not to. It laughed and worked and went to church and quarreled about line fences and dogs and gossiped about its neighbors as any other town did.... Perhaps, unaccustomed to the life, excited by new environment, she had given too great freedom to her imagination.... She did not believe so. No. Something was going on; some powerful evil influence was at work, ruthless, malevolent. Its face was hidden and it left no footprints. It was capable of murder!... What was this thing? What was its purpose? What activity could include the doing away with a sheriff and the services of a rural fop like Lancelot Bangs?...