Racking his brains was a sheer waste of time until he could talk to somebody who had the answers. He drove back to town.

He’d better get a place to stay. The chances were he’d be here all day, and he should try to get some sleep before he made the drive back. Upcoming on the right was the Conestoga Motel, which seemed as likely a prospect as any. He swung in and stopped under the porte cochere in front of the office. Beyond the glass wall a row of slot machines lay in wait for the tourist with the patient inevitability of snares in a game trail, and a woman with blue-white hair sipped coffee and flipped through a newspaper at the desk. She looked up with a smile as he entered. Yes, there was a vacancy.

“And a king-size bed, if you’d like one,” she added, with a not entirely objective appraisal of his size.

“Fine.” He began filling in the registration card while she plucked a key from the pigeonholes behind her.

“How long will you be staying, Mr.—”

“Romstead,” he replied. “Just one day, probably.”

“Oh.” As the boy in the service station had, she glanced up sharply and appeared on the point of saying something, but did not. “I see.” The smile was still there, but something had gone out of it; it was now straight out of the innkeeper’s manual. He passed over the American Express card, wondering at this seemingly unanimous response to the name around here. Well, the old man had never been one to blush unseen, even in larger places than Coleville, and whatever his hangups might have been, awe of community opinion wasn’t one of them.

He signed the slip and went out with the key. Room 17 was on the ground floor at the rear of the U which enclosed the standard small swimming pool and sun deck with patio furniture and umbrellas. Several of the cars parked before the units were being loaded now as travelers prepared to hit the road again.

The day’s heat was beginning, but the room was cool, dim behind the heavy green drapes, smelled faintly of some aerosol gunk masquerading as fresh air, and was wholly interchangeable with a million others along the concrete river. He dropped the bag on a luggage rack and switched on a light. Sitting on the side of the bed, he reached for the thin directory beside the telephone. It covered the whole county, rural subscribers and the other small towns in addition to Coleville, but there was no Gunnar Romstead in it, no Romstead of any kind. Unlisted phone, he thought. The yellow pages revealed there were two mortuaries in town, but no monument works or stonecutter. The stone no doubt had come from Reno then, but he could probably find out from the sheriff’s office and see if there were any accounts to settle.

He shaved and showered and came out of the bath scrubbing himself vigorously with the towel, a heavy set figure of a man with haze-gray eyes, big, beat-up hands, and an all-over leathery tan except for a narrow strip about his middle. He ran a comb through the sun-streaked blond hair without noticeably improving an indifferent haircut, shrugged, and tossed the comb back into the toilet kit.

He put on slacks and sport shirt. It was only a short walk to the center of town; there was no need to take the car. He went up the sidewalk under the increasing weight of the sun, accustomed to it and scarcely noticing it but aware at the same time of the unfamiliar dryness of the air and the faint odors of dust and sage. Not many of the places of business were open yet, and the pace was unhurried along the street.

Just ahead was a coffee shop with a couple of newspaper vending racks in front. One of them held the San Francisco Chronicle. He fished in his pocket and was about to drop in the coins when he saw it was yesterday’s; it was too early yet for today’s. Something half forgotten nudged the edges of his mind as he went inside and ordered coffee. What was it? And where? Then he remembered, and grinned, but with a faint tightness in his throat.

It was in New York. He’d got permission from the military academy he attended in Pennsylvania to come down to meet his father for a day while his ship was in port. They’d had lunch somewhere, and afterward out on the sidewalk his father had flagged a taxi to take them to the ball game at Yankee Stadium.