It was after midnight when he set to work on the papers in the case. He worked all night. The old servant bringing Mrs. O'Bannon her breakfast in the early morning reported Mr. Dan as being up and away. He had come into the kitchen at six for a cup of coffee, his face as white as that sheet and his eyes nearly out of his head. This was the afternoon that Eleanor selected to take the matter into her own hands and come to his office. She came late in the afternoon. It was after six. She saw his car standing in the street and she knew he was still there. She went in past the side entrance to Mr. Wooley's shop, up the worn wooden stairs, through the glass door with its gold letters, "Office of the District Attorney of Princess County." The stenographers and secretaries had gone. Their desks were empty, their typewriters hooded. O'Bannon was standing alone in the middle of the room with his hat and overcoat on, as if he had been caught by some disagreeable thought just in the moment of departure. Eleanor's step made no sound on the stairs. He looked up in surprise as she opened the door, and as their eyes met she knew clearly that he did not want to see her. There was something almost brutal in the way that he looked at her and then looked away again, as if he hoped she might be gone when he looked back. If she had come on her own business she would have gone. As it was, she couldn't. She came in, and closing the door behind her she leaned against the handle. "I'm sorry to bother you, Dan," she said, "but I must talk to you about Lydia Thorne." "Miss Thorne's friends are doing everything they can to prevent the preparation of a case against her. They take all my time in interviews," he answered. "Who else has been here?" asked Eleanor with a sinking heart. "Oh, Bobby Dorset has been here. That interview was brief." "And Governor Albee?" O'Bannon looked at her with eyes that suddenly flared up like torches. "Yes, the old fox," he said. There was a pause during which Eleanor did not say a word, but her whole being, body and mind, was a question; and O'Bannon, though he had become this strange, hostile creature, was yet enough her old friend to answer it. "If you have any influence with Miss Thorne tell her to keep politics out of it--to get a good lawyer and to prepare a good case." Eleanor saw that Albee's mission had failed. She would have rejoiced at this, except that the hostility of O'Bannon's manner hurt her beyond the power of rejoicing. She was not like Lydia--stimulated by enmity. She felt wounded and chilled by it. She told herself, as women always do in these circumstances, that there was nothing personal about his attitude, but there was something terribly personal in her not being able to change his black mood. "She has a good lawyer--Wiley. Who can be better than Wiley?" she asked. "He's often successful, I believe."