"Joe was with me last night. We had supper at the White Springs Hotel.
Tell Mrs. Drummond he was in good spirits, and that she's not to worry. I
feel sure she will hear from him to-day. Something went wrong with his car,
perhaps, after he left me."

He bathed and shaved hurriedly. Katie brought his coffee to his room, and
he drank it standing. He was working out a theory about the boy. Beyond
Schwitter's the highroad stretched, broad and inviting, across the State.
Either he would have gone that way, his little car eating up the miles all
that night, or--K. would not formulate his fear of what might have
happened, even to himself.

As he went down the Street, he saw Mrs. McKee in her doorway, with a little
knot of people around her. The Street was getting the night's news.

He rented a car at a local garage, and drove himself out into the country.
He was not minded to have any eyes on him that day. He went to Schwitter's
first. Schwitter himself was not in sight. Bill was scrubbing the porch,
and a farmhand was gathering bottles from the grass into a box. The dead
lanterns swung in the morning air, and from back on the hill came the
staccato sounds of a reaping-machine.

"Where's Schwitter?"

"At the barn with the missus. Got a boy back there."