“So long,” Malone said. He hung up the phone, put the car into gear again and roared off down U. S. Highway Number One. He didn’t feel entirely happy about the way things had gone; he’d been forced to lie to Tom Boyd, and that just wasn’t right. However, there was no help for it. It was actually better this way, he told himself hopefully. After all, the less Tom knew from now on, the better off he was going to be. The better off everyone would be. He went on through Fredericksburg without incident, but he didn’t continue on to Richmond. Instead, he turned off U. S. 1 when he reached a little town called Thornburg, which was smaller than he had believed a town could be and live. He began following a secondary road out into the countryside. The countryside, of course, was filled with country, in the shape of hills, birds, trees, flowers, grass and other distractions to the passing motorist. It took Malone quite a bit longer than he expected to find the place he was looking for, and he finally came to the sad conclusion that country estates are just as difficult to find as houses in Brooklyn. In both cases, he thought, there was the same frantic search down what seemed to be a likely route, the same disappointment when the route turned out to lead nowhere, and the same discovery that no one had ever heard of the place and, in fact, doubted very strongly whether it even existed. But he found it at last, rounding a curve in a narrow black-top road and spotting the house beyond a grove of trees. He recognized it instantly. He had seen it so often that he felt as if he knew it intimately. It was a big, rambling, Colonial-type mansion, painted a blinding and beautiful white, with a broad, pillared porch and a great carved front door. The front windows were curtained in rich purples, and before the house was a great front garden, and tall old trees. Malone half-expected Scarlett O’Hara to come tripping out of the house at any moment. Inside it, however, if Malone were right, was not the magnetic Scarlett. Inside the house were some of the most important members of the Psychical Research Society. But it was impossible to tell from the outside. Nothing moved on the well-kept grounds, and the windows didn’t show so much as the flutter of a purple curtain. There was no sound. No cars were parked around the house, nor, Malone thought as he remembered _Gone With the Wind,_ were there any horses or carriages. The place looked deserted. Malone thought he knew better, but it took a few minutes for him to get up enough courage to go up the long driveway. He stared at the house. It was an old one, he knew, built long before the Civil War and originally commanding a huge plantation. Now, all that remained of that vast parcel of land was the few acres that surrounded the house.