Friday night I brought the information from Troop in to Mr. Whitney, and knew then for the first time why he wanted it.  
Gee¹, it was an awful thought!
 
As I sat there between him and Mr. George—Jack² Reddy went away, I don't know why—with neither of them saying a word, I saw, like it was a vision, the Harland case spreading out black and dreadful. It made me think of ink spilled on a map, running slow but sure over places that were bright and clean, trickling³ away in directions no one ever thought it would take.
 
I left soon after Jack, as I could see they wanted to get rid of me. Before I went the old man said to try and get a line on the Whitehalls' servant—I might work it through Iola—and find out what time Miss Whitehall came home the night of January fifteenth. If I couldn't manage it I was to let him know and it could be passed on to O'Mally, but he thought I had the best chances. That, as far as he knew now, was the last he'd need of me. My work at the Black Eagle was done. The next day would be my last one there. Say nothing to anyone about it—simply drop out. The reappearance of Miss McCalmont was his affair.
 
In the next twenty-four hours things came swift, as they do in these cases. You'll have a long spell with the wires dead, then suddenly they'll begin to hum. And you've got to be ready when it happens—jump quick as lightning. I learned that in the Hesketh case.
 
The first chance came that night, was sitting in the parlor⁴ when I reached home—Iola! She had the hope of a new job—a good one—and wanted a recommendation letter from Miss Whitehall, and naturally, being Iola, couldn't go unless I came along and held the sponge.
 
It was so pat you'd think fate had fixed⁵ it, and it worked out as pat as it began. While Iola was in the parlor getting her letter I stayed in the kitchen—very meek⁶ and humble—and when the servant came back—Delia was her name—started in to help her with the dishes. We grew neighborly over the work, she washing and I wiping, and what was more natural than that we'd work around to the affairs of the ladies. They'd lost all their money and Delia was going to leave. How did that happen now? Sure, it's the feller that killed himself done it—didn't I know? I only had to let her talk, she was the flannel-mouth Irish kind. Here are the facts as they went in to Whitney & Whitney the next day.
 
Miss Whitehall was generally very punctual, always getting home about half-past six. On the night of January fifteenth she didn't get back till a quarter to eight. Such a delay was evidently not expected as Mrs. Whitehall became extremely nervous, couldn't keep still or settle to anything. At a quarter to eight, hearing the key inserted in the door, Delia had gone into the hall, and seen Miss Whitehall enter. She was very pale and agitated⁷. Delia had never seen her look so upset. She walked up the passage, met her mother and without a word they went into a bedroom and shut the door.
 
At dinner she ate nothing and hardly spoke⁸ at all—looked and acted as if she was sick. The next morning when she read of the Harland suicide in the paper she nearly fainted, and after that was in bed for three days, prostrated⁹ by the shock, she told Delia.
 
I guessed this would be my last piece of work on the Harland case and I wasn't sorry. There was an awfulness coming over it that was too much for me. But it wasn't, not by a long shot. I was in deeper than I knew, so deep—but that comes later. I'll go on now to tell what happened that last night I was in the Black Eagle Building.
 
It was coming on for closing time and I was making ready to go. I'd cleared up all my little belongings¹⁰, and was standing¹¹ by the switchboard pressing the tray cloth careful into my satchel¹², when I heard a step stop at the door and a cheerful voice sing out:
 
"Just in the nick of time. Spreading her wings ready for flight."
 
There in the doorway¹³, filling it up with his big shape, was Tony Ford¹⁴. For the first moment I got a sort of setback¹⁵. Mightn't anyone—thinking of home and husband and finding yourself face to face with a gunman?
 
With one hand still in the satchel I stood eyeing him, not a word out of me, solemn as a tombstone. It didn't phaze him a bit. Teetering from his heels to his toes, a grin on him like the slit¹⁶ in a post box, he stood there as calm as if he'd never come nearer murder than to spell it in the fourth grade.
 
"It just came to me a few moments ago—as I was passing by here—that the prettiest and smartest hello girl in New York mightn't have gone home yet," he said.
 
Now if you're experienced about men—and take it from me hello girls are—you never believe a word a chap like Tony Ford hands out. But hearing those words and looking at his broad, conceited¹⁷ face, it came to me that these were true. He'd been passing, suddenly thought of me, and dropped in to see if I was there.
 
"Well," I answered, "here I am. What of it?"
 
"First of it," he said, "is how long are you going to be there?"
 
"Till I get this satchel closed," I said and pressing hard on the catch it snapped shut.
 
"And second of it," he went on, "is where are you going afterward¹⁸?"
 
My first thought was I was going to get away from him as fast as the Interborough System could take me—and then I had a second thought. Why had Tony Ford dropped in so opportune¹⁹ at my closing hour? To ask me to dinner. And why couldn't I, hired to do work for Whitney & Whitney, do a little extra for good measure? I knew they wanted to hear Ford's own account of what he did the evening of January fifteenth, but that they couldn't get it. What was the matter with me, Molly Babbitts, getting it for them?
 
It flashed into my head like lightning and it didn't flash out again. Frightened? Not a bit! Keyed up though—like your blood begins to run quick. I'd taken some risky²⁰ dares in my time but it was a new one on me to dine with a murderer. But honest, besides the pleasure of doing something for the old man, there was a creepy sort of thrill about it that strung up my nerves and made me feel like I was going to shoot Niagara in a barrel.
 
"Going home, eh?" said he. "It's a long, cold ride home."
 
"That's the first truth you've said," I answered. "And for showing me you can do it I'll offer you my grateful thanks."
 
I began to put on my gloves, he standing in the doorway watching.
 
"To break the journey with a little bit of dinner might be a good idea."
 
"It might," I said, "if anybody had it."
 
"I have it. I've had it all day."
 
"What's the good of having it if you haven't got the price." I picked up my satchel and looked cool and pitying at him. "Unless you're calculating to take me to the bread line."
 
"There you wrong me," he answered. "Nothing but the best for you," and putting his hand into his vest pocket he drew out a roll of bills, folding them back one by one and giving each a name, "Canvas back, terrapin²¹, champagne²², oyster²³ crabs²⁴, alligator²⁵ pears, anything the lady calls for."
 
Those greenbacks, flirted²⁶ over so carelessly by his strong, brown fingers, gave me the horrors. Blood money! I drew back. If he hadn't been blocking up the entrance, I think I'd have quit it and made a break for the open. He glanced up and saw my face, and I guess it looked queer.
 
"What are you staring so for? They're not counterfeit²⁷."
 
The feeling passed, and anyway I couldn't get out without squeezing by him and I didn't want to touch him any more than I would a spider.
 
"I was calculating how much of it I could eat," I said. "My folks don't like me to dine out so when I do I try to catch up with all the times I've refused."
 
"Come along then," he said, stepping back from the doorway. "I know a bully²⁸ little joint²⁹ not far from here. You can catch up there if you've been refusing dinners since the first telephone was installed."
 
So off we trotted³⁰ into the night, I and the murderer!
 
Can you see into my mind—it was boiling with thoughts like a Hammam bath with steam? What would Soapy say? He'd be raging, but after all he couldn't do anything more than rage. You can't divorce a woman for dining with a murderer, especially if she only does it once. Mr. Whitney'd be all right. If I got what I intended to get he'd pass me compliments that would take O'Mally's pride down several pegs³¹. As for myself—Tony Ford wouldn't want to murder me. There was nothing in it, and judging by the pleasant things he said as we walked to the restaurant, you'd think to keep me alive and well was the dearest wish of his heart.
 
The restaurant was one of those quiet foreign ones, in an old dwelling³² house, sandwiched in among shops and offices. It was a decent place—I'd been there for lunch with Iola—in the daytime full of business people, and at night having the sort of crowd that gathers where boarding houses and downtown apartments and hotels for foreigners give up their dead.
 
We found a table in a corner of the front room, with the wall to one side of us and the long curtains of the window behind me. There were a lot of people and a few waiters, one of whom Mr. Ford summoned with a haughty³³ jerk of his head. Then he sprawled³⁴ grandly in his chair with menus and wine lists, telling the waiter how to serve things that were hot and ice things that were cold till you'd suppose he'd been a chef along with all his other jobs. He put on a great deal of side, like he was a cattle king from Chicago trying to impress a Pilgrim Father from Boston. The only way it impressed me was to make me think a gunman with blood on his soul wasn't so different from an innocent clerk with nothing to trouble him but the bill at the end.
 
As he was doing this I took off my veil and gloves, careful to pull off my wedding ring—I wasn't going to have that sidetracking him—and thinking how I'd begin.
 
We were through the soup and on the fish when I decided³⁵ the time was ripe to ring the bell and start. I did it quietly:
 
"I guess you've got a new place?"
 
"No, I'm still one of the unemployed³⁶. Don't I act like it?" He smiled, a patronizing smirk³⁷, pleased he'd got the hello girl guessing.
 
"You act to me like the young millionaire cutting his teeth on Broadway."
 
He lifted his glass of white wine and sipped³⁸ it:
 
"I inherited some money this winter from an uncle up-state. You're not drinking your wine. Don't you like it?"
 
In his tone, and a shifting of his eyes to the next table, I caught a suggestion of something not easy, put on. Maybe if you hadn't known what I did you wouldn't have noticed what was plain to me—he didn't like the subject.
 
"No, I never touch wine," I answered. "I don't want to speak unfeelingly but it was mighty³⁹ convenient your uncle died just as your business failed. Wasn't it too bad about Miss Whitehall?"
 
"Very unfortunate, poor girl. Bad for me but worse for her."
 
"She had no idea it was coming, I suppose?"
 
He looked up sudden and sharp:
 
"What was coming?"
 
His small gray eyes sent a glance piercing into mine, full of a quick, arrested attention.
 
"Why—why—the ruin of Mr. Harland."
 
"Oh, that," he was easy again, "I thought you meant the suicide. I don............