He’s your brother-in-law and he’s a poet. We can say that he has been ill—you told me that he had been in delicate health all his life—and that we fear he has dropped dead somewhere or is suffering under some mental derangement. There will be no necessity of mentioning the girl or the money, and our explanation may keep people—especially your wife—from guessing the truth when the fact that he is missing leaks out. It’s bound to leak out somehow.”
He didn’t like my idea at first, but I finally won him over.
We went up to Pangburn’s apartment then, easily securing admittance on Axford’s explanation that we had an engagement with him and would wait there for him. I went through the rooms inch by inch, prying into each hole and hollow and crack; reading everything that was written anywhere, even down to his manuscripts; and I found nothing that threw any light on his disappearance.
I helped myself to his photographs—pocketing five of the dozen or more that were there. Axford did not think that any of the poet’s bags or trunks were missing from the pack-room. I did not find his Golden Gate Trust Company deposit book.
I spent the rest of the day loading the newspapers up with what we wished them to have; and they gave my ex-client one grand spread: first-page stuff with photographs and all possible trimmings. Anyone in San Francisco who didn’t know that Burke Pangburn—brother-in-law of R. F. Axford and author of Sandpatches and Other Verse —was missing, either couldn’t read or wouldn’t.