CHAPTER XXII
To the world outside the immediate environs of the Toba, beyond those
who knew the people concerned, that double murder was merely another
violent affair which provided material for newspapers, a remote event
allied to fires, divorces, embezzlements, politics, and scandals in
high finance,--another item to be glanced quickly over and as quickly
forgotten.
But one man at least could not quickly forget or pass it over lightly.
Once the authorities--coming from a great distance, penetrating the
solitude of the valley with a casual, business-like air--arrived,
asked questions, issued orders, sent two men abroad in search of the
slayer, and removed the bodies to another jurisdiction, Hollister had
nothing more to do with that until he should be called again to give
formal testimony.
He was left with nothing to do but brood, to sit asking unanswerable
questions of a world and a life that for him was slowly and
bewilderingly verging upon the chaotic, in which there was no order,
no security, no assurance of anything but devastating changes that had
neither rhyme nor reason in their sequence.
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