Bassett was fairly content. He took the night train out of Chicago and
spent the next day crossing Nebraska, fertile, rich and interesting. On
the afternoon of the second day he left the train and took a branch
line toward the mountains and Norada, and from that time on he became an
urbane, interested and generally cigar-smoking interrogation point.

"Railroad been here long?" he asked the conductor.

"Four years."

"Norada must have been pretty isolated before that."

"Thirty miles in a coach or a Ford car."

"I was reading the other day," said Bassett, "about the Judson Clark
case. Have a cigar? Got time to sit down?"

"You a newspaper man?"

"Oil well supplies," said Bassett easily. "Well, in this article it
seemed some woman or other had made a confession. It sounded fishy to
me."

"Well, I'll tell you about that." The conductor sat down and bit off the
end of his cigar. "I knew the Donaldsons well, and Maggie Donaldson was
an honest woman. But I'll tell you how I explain the thing. Donaldson
died, and that left her pretty much alone. The executors of the Clark
estate kept her on the ranch, but when the estate was settled three
years ago she had to move. That broke her all up. She's always said he
wasn't dead. She kept the house just as it was, and my wife says she had
his clothes all ready and everything."