Malone hesitated. “Well, it was Pete Hines who is supposed to have seen you, Mr. Baxter, but it was not he who told me about it. I went out to see him yesterday, but his shack was boarded up and there was no sign of him anywhere. Now this may interest you. There was—and still is, as far as I know—a piece of pasteboard tacked on his front door, with these words printed on it in lead pencil: ‘Beware. This house is full of snakes.’ That bears out your statement that he is never completely sober, Mr. Baxter. Now, you say this is the place where you parted that night—here at the turn. You left him standing here, you say. In the middle of the road?” “Yes.” “And you walked off in this direction. Did you look back?” “I did not.” “Just kept right on—in the middle of the road, eh?” “That’s right.” Malone changed the subject abruptly. “That’s a great fish story they tell about the gypsy prophesying you’d be hung before you were thirty. Of all the bunk I ever heard, that’s the worst. Mr. Gooch says he was present when she told your fortune that night.” “If you will excuse me, Mr. Malone, I must be getting back to the house. It’s nearly seven o’clock and I am expecting people to dine with me,” said Oliver a little coldly. “I’m sorry I’ve detained you,” said the detective apologetically. “I wish you had mentioned it, Mr. Baxter. This could have waited till another day. I’ll stroll back with you, if you don’t mind.” “Where is your partner?” inquired Oliver, looking out over the swamp. “Charlie? Oh, he’ll be along directly. There he is, over near the wire fence. He is seeing about how long it would take a man to walk out to the edge of the mire and back,” said Malone coolly. Oliver looked at him sharply. “So that’s the idea, eh?” he remarked, after a moment. “We intend to conduct this investigation in an open and above-board manner, Mr. Baxter. Cards on the table, sir, all the way through. We’re looking for a dead man, not a live one, if you see what I mean.” “And I shall be open and above-board with you, Mr. Malone,” said Oliver, a trace of irony in his voice. “I hope, therefore, that you won’t take it amiss if I suggest that the sensible thing for your man to do would be to make his calculations at night, when progress would naturally be a great deal slower and infinitely more hazardous. Besides, you ought to take into account the fact that this part of the swamp was not drained at the time my father disappeared. There were a lot of chuck-holes and mud flats between here and that wire fence.” “I’ve taken that into account—mud and everything,” announced the detective, looking straight ahead. “I was about to say that it’s going to take a good deal of tight squeezing, Mr. Baxter, to get you indicted, tried and executed inside of the next thirty days. The time is pretty short, eh?” He laughed jovially. Oliver turned on him. “I’ll knock your damned head off, Malone, if you make any more cracks like that. Remember that, will you?” he cried hotly.