It was Zeke. The smoothness of his skin turned an ashen colour and the whites of his eyes were rolling. He pushed back away from the doorway and stared at Joe. Gradually the terror began to fade out of his face and it was superseded by a sickly grin. Joe was watching him closely. "You plum skeered me to deff," he finally managed to say, his breath coming fast and thick. "Thought you wuz a ghos'." The grin was very weak and it quickly subsided. Zeke was a gaunt "darky" of that peculiar transparent blackness that looks as though it is put on only one layer deep, and yet is black, not brown. He was thin and shambling, with high and prominent cheekbones and eyes that showed a lot of white at all times. Across one cheek was a long, purplish scar reaching up to the corner of one eye. It gave him a look of cunning from that quarter. But on the whole he was an ineffectual, shiftless looking Negro, with hands that were always dangling and feet that always dragged. "Ain' seen you fo' a long time, Mist' Joe." "No. I've been away--down in the city." He paused a moment, considering the best way to begin. "Where were you and Mr. Bushrod last night?" he ventured on a bold stroke. Zeke's eyes opened wide. "Why, we wusn' no place, Mist' Joe, Mist' Bushrod, he--I was to bring him--he and I wuz to have a little bisnis ovah to de house, but I couldn' come." His face clouded and took on an anxious look. "Dey ain' no trubbel, is dey, Mist' Joe?" Joe made no reply and Zeke watched his thoughtful, serious face with growing anxiety. Here was one more avenue of possible solution blocked. Since yesterday afternoon no one had apparently seen him--Uncle Buzz. It was as though the world had swallowed him up. He would have to seek elsewhere. He was on the point of dismissing the matter, of going elsewhere, when a thought suddenly came to him. "You and he were to have some business last night?" he said, looking at Zeke intently. Zeke grinned a sheepish grin. "Yessuh, we wuz--we had a little bisnis." "But you didn't meet him? Sure you didn't meet him?" "Sho I neveh. I ain' able to git de--I was detain'." Zeke had learned from experience and considerable instinct to hedge his utterances about with much generality. It was a good principle. It meant less to retract. Joe thought another moment. "Take me," he said suddenly, "to the place where you get the business." There he might find a connecting link in his chain, he felt growingly certain. "Oveh to Mist' Bushrod's?" The inflection was perfectly naive. "No. Of course not--out where you get it. Over to Fillmore or wherever it is." "Now, Mist' Joe," very reproachfully and with a quick, nervous flashing of the eyes. Joe frowned. "You needn't put on anything with me, Zeke. I'm not going to give you away. Let's go get your car." He stretched out his arm as though to sweep Zeke into doing his bidding and started for the door.