“You’ll get them. You ever been out to Mock Lake? Well, it’s our summer resort, thirty miles up the canyon road. It’s a dump, but it’s cool in summer, so it gets a good play. This was summer a year ago, the last weekend in August. I was out there with a fellow named Holly. He’s back in England now, but you don’t care anything about that, because he’s got nothing to do with it. He was a funny sort of old woman—used to wear white silk socks turned inside out so the loose threads wouldn’t hurt his feet. I got a letter from him last week. It’s around here somewhere, but that doesn’t make any difference.
“We were up there, and Max was up there with a girl he used to play around with—Myrtle Jennison. She’s in the hospital now—City—dying of Bright’s disease or something. She was a classy looking kid then, a slender blonde. I always liked her, except that a few drinks made her too noisy. Tim Noonan was crazy about her, but she couldn’t see anybody but Max that summer.
“Tim wouldn’t let her alone. He was a big good-looking Irishman, but a sap and a cheap crook who only got by because his brother was chief of police. Wherever Myrtle went, he’d pop up sooner or later. She didn’t like to say anything to Max about it, not wanting Max to do anything to put him in wrong with Tim’s brother, the chief.
“So of course Tim showed up at Mock Lake this Saturday. Myrtle and Max were just by themselves. Holly and I were with a bunch, but I saw Myrtle to talk to and she told me she had got a note from Tim, asking her to meet him for a few minutes that night, in one of the little arbor things on the hotel grounds. He said if she didn’t he would kill himself. That was a laugh for us—the big false alarm. I tried to talk Myrtle out of going, but she had just enough booze in her to feel gay and she said she was going to give him an earful.
“We were all dancing in the hotel that night. Max was there for a while, and then I didn’t see him any more. Myrtle was dancing with a fellow