WASHINGTON — The urgent message that came in to the head of criminal enforcement at the Environmental Protection Agency was short and to the point: “The boys did good — they did what needed to be done.” It added one more detail: “All good — except for a couple of doors we’ll have to pick up the tab for.”

On March 29 last year, Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the E.P.A., had vanished for several hours after reporting to his staff that he was feeling ill. Security was dispatched to the $50-a-night, lobbyist-owned Capitol Hill condo where he was living to see if he was O.K.

To gain entry, the agents had to knock down the front door to the building.

Mr. Pruitt was fine. But the episode grew into one of the early mysteries of his tenure: What happened that day? New documents obtained this week through a Freedom of Information request help to explain the sequence of events, and the monthslong effort to get the E.P.A. to pay for the door.

It began that day when Mr. Pruitt’s staff made repeated phone calls to him that went unanswered. So they called Washington emergency dispatchers. “They say he’s unconscious at this time,” a 911 operator was told that evening, according to recordings of the emergency call obtained by ABC last year. “I don’t know about the breathing portion.”