The League of Frightened Men

Drummond had been there, Elkus told me, because each year the doubt whether he had really graduated from a big university became overwhelming and he went back every June to make sure. Elkus was very fond of Drummond, the way a taxi-driver is of a cop. Cabot and Sidney Lang had been in Boston on business, and Bowen had been a houseguest at the home of Theodore Gaines; presumably they were hatching some sort of a financial deal.

Anyway, Fillmore Collard had got in touch with his old classmates and invited them for the week-end to his place near Marblehead. There had been quite a party, more than a dozen altogether.

Saturday evening after dinner they had strolled through the grounds, as darkness fell, to the edge of a hundred-foot cliff at the base of which the surf roared among jagged rocks. Four, among them Cabot and Elkus, had stayed in the house playing bridge. Paul Chapin had hobbled along with the strollers. They had separated, some going to the stables with Collard to I see a sick horse, some back to the house, one or two staying behind. It was an hour or so later that they missed Harrison, and not until midnight did they become really concerned. Daylight came before the tide was out enough for them to find his cut and bruised body at the foot of the cliff, wedged among the rocks.