“I was going to say that you have mighty little to be supercilious about. You don’t know any more about this man than I do, and you’ve been here a year. You don’t like him because he hurt your vanity, and you’re so crusted over with vanity that whatever is inside of it is quite lost to sight.... He had you discharged as superintendent of schools, and it rankles.... It’s childish, like that letter of yours.... Oh, you irritate me.” “Er--at any rate you have the quality of making yourself clear,” he said, dryly, not offended, she was surprised to note, but rather amused and tolerant. He was so cocksure, so wrapped up in himself and his abilities, so egotistical, that no word of criticism could reach and wound him. Carmel wanted to wound him, to see him wince. She was sorry for him because she could perceive the smallness, the narrowness, the poverty of his life; yet, because she felt, somehow, that his character was of his own planning and constructing, and because it was so eminently satisfactory to her, that it was a duty to goad him into a realization of his deficiencies. Evan Pell did not seem to her a human being, a man, so much as a dry-as-dust mechanism--an irritating little pedant lacking in all moving emotions except boundless vanity. She had taken him into the office, half from sympathy, half because somebody was needed and he was the only help available. At times she regretted it. Now she leaned forward to challenge him. “You’ve boasted about your abilities as a trained investigator,” she said. “Very well, then, investigate. That’s the business of a reporter. Gibeon is your laboratory. You’ll find it somewhat different to get at facts hidden in human brains than to discover the hidden properties of a chemical or to classify some rare plant or animal.... I haven’t a trained mind. I wasn’t an infant prodigy. I haven’t spent my lifetime in educating my brain out of all usefulness, but I can see there’s something wrong here. Now, Mr. Pell, take your trained faculties out and discover what it is. There’s investigation worth while.” “Are you sure,” said Evan, “you will have the courage to publish what I find?” She shrugged her shoulders. “There’s no use talking about that,” she said, “until you find something.” “What,” he said, provocatively, “do you want me to investigate first?” “The one thing that cries out for investigation. Find out why nothing is done to discover what happened to Sheriff Churchill. Find out why he disappeared and who made him disappear and what has become of him. Fetch me the answers to these questions and I’ll take back all I’ve said--and apologize.” “Has it--er--occurred to you that perhaps Sheriff Churchill disappeared because he--investigated too much?” “Are you afraid?” she asked. He wrinkled his brows and peered at her through his spectacles, and then, nonplused her by answering, calmly, “I rather fancy I am. Yes, now I come to give consideration to my emotions, I find I am apprehensive.”