Bassett closed his notebook and lighted a cigar.

There was a big story to be had for the seeking, a whale of a story.  He could go to the office, give them a hint, draw expense money and start for Norada the next night.  He knew well enough that he would have to begin there, and that it would not be easy.  Witnesses of the affair at the ranch would be missing now, or when found the first accuracy of their statements would either be dulled by time or have been added to with the passing years.  The ranch itself might have passed into other hands.  To reconstruct the events of ten years ago might be impossible, or nearly so.  But that was not his problem.  He would have to connect Norada with Haverly, Clark with Livingstone.  One thing only was simple.  If he found Livingstone’s story was correct, that he had lived on a ranch near Norada before the crime and as Livingstone, then he would acknowledge that two men could look precisely alike and come from the same place, and yet not be the same.  If not—­

But, after he had turned out his light and got into bed, he began to feel a certain distaste for his self-appointed task.  If Livingstone were Clark, if after years of effort he had pulled himself up by his own boot-straps, had made himself a man out of the reckless boy he had been, a decent and useful citizen, why pull him down?  After all, the world hadn’t lost much in Lucas; a sleek, not over-intelligent big animal, that had been Howard Lucas.

He decided to sleep over it, and by morning he found himself not only disinclined to the business, but firmly resolved to let it drop.  Things were well enough as they were.  The woman in the case was making good.  Jud was making good.  And nothing would restore Howard Lucas to that small theatrical world of his which had waved him good-bye at the station so long ago.

He shaved and dressed, his resolution still holding.  He had indeed almost a conscious glow of virtue, for he was making one of those inglorious and unsung sacrifices which ought to bring a man credit in the next world, because they certainly got him nowhere in this.  He was quite affable to the colored waiter who served his breakfasts in the bachelor apartment house, and increased his weekly tip to a dollar and a half.  Then he sat down and opened the Times-Republican, skimming over it after his habit for his own space, and frowning over a row of exclamation and interrogation points unwittingly set behind the name of the mayor.

On the second page, however, he stopped, coffee cup in air.  “Is Judson Clark alive?  Wife of former ranch manager makes confession.”

A woman named Margaret Donaldson, it appeared, fatally injured by an automobile near the town of Norada, Wyoming, had made a confession on her deathbed.  In it she stated that, afraid to die without shriving her soul, she had sent for the sheriff of Dallas County and had made the following confession: