“How do you know you are not going to find it?” was Oliver’s surprising question. Malone stared. “What has caused you to change your tone like this, Baxter?” “It’s getting on my nerves, Malone—I don’t mind saying so,” said the younger man, frowning. “At first I laughed at all this fuss, but lately I’ve been lying awake thinking that maybe we’ve been wrong all the time and that he is out there—My God, Malone, it—it turns the blood cold in my veins.” “I get you,” said Malone, sympathetically. “It does give a fellow the shivers. But now about this getting off the ticket. Don’t you do anything of the sort, Baxter. Don’t lay down. You’ve got this election sewed up—and say, what if we do accidentally find your old man—what’s that got to do with it? Haven’t you been looking for him for over a year? Supposing he did wander off into the swamp that night—” “Malone, I can feel it in the air that a great many people believe I know what became of him. It’s in the air, I say. There may be people who believe that I had something to do with putting him out of the way. People like to believe the worst. The Democratic speakers are mighty decent and so are the newspapers. They haven’t uttered a word or printed one that isn’t fair and square. But back in the minds of a lot of people is the thought that perhaps, after all, I did murder my father. You can’t blame—” Mr. Sikes, who had shuffled around the corner, overheard the remark. He fairly barked: “It don’t make a particle of difference what they believe provided nobody is able to find the corpus delicti. I don’t want to hear you say another word about murder, young man—not another damned word. They’ve got to dig up your father’s corpus delicti before—What in thunder are you laughing at, sir?” Malone, to whom this question was addressed in Mr. Sikes’s most aggressive manner, put his hand to his mouth and, after a brief struggle, succeeded in replying with as straight a face as possible: “I’ve been reading an awfully funny book, Mr. Sikes. It’s about detectives.” Now, for the past two weeks Mr. Sikes and other overripe citizens of Rumley had made frequent and profound allusions to the corpus delicti. They didn’t know what it was at first but Mr. Link soon found out. He said it was French for “body.” Corpus delicti sounded so well—after considerable practice—that most people preferred to use it instead of “remains”; besides, it wasn’t quite so personal. There is no telling what Mr. Sikes would have said to Mr. Malone about detectives in general if the delegation from Republican headquarters had arrived a minute or two later. He could have said a great deal in a minute or two.