This conversation had taken place on Thursday. To-day was Tuesday. They were very reticent at the hospital, but he had reason to believe that Dr. Anna had taken a turn for the worse. Could Alys Crumley be out there, and could she have taken that minx Sarah Austin with her? It would be just like a girl to go back on a good pal like himself and hand a signal triumph over to another girl, who would get out of the game the minute some fellow with money enough offered to marry her. He ground his teeth. He was standing near the doors of the court-room and staring at the clock whose hands pointed to a quarter to one. Suddenly he heard his name called from below. He sauntered out and leaned over the balustrade. A weary page was ascending when he caught sight of the star reporter. "Brabant Hospital wants you on the 'phone," he announced, with supreme indifference. Broderick leaped down the winding stair and into the booth. It seemed to him that his very ears were quivering as he listened to Alys Crumley's faint agitated voice. "Come out quickly and bring a stenographer," it said. "And suppose you ask Mr. Rush to come too. Just tell the sheriff--to--to postpone things a bit if the jury should be ready to come in before you return. Hurry, Jim, hurry." CHAPTER XXXVII It was two o'clock and ten minutes. The eleven remaining spectators, one of them a woman in evening dress, were sound asleep. The sheriff was pacing up and down with his hands behind his back, his perturbed glance ranging between the clock and the door leading into the jury-room. Occasionally he slipped on a bit of the debris and kicked it aside. The reporters slumbered at their tables or stared moodily ahead. One gnawed his pencil; another tore leaves of copy paper into morsels and laboriously built something that looked like a child's house of blocks. Outside it was deathly still. The snow was falling softly. It was too early for a cock-crow. Occasionally some one snored. The footfalls of the sheriff made no noise. Suddenly every reporter present sat up with the scent of blood in his nostrils. Their ears twitched. The fumes blew out of their highly organised brains like mist before a bracing wind. An automobile was dashing down the road, its horn shrieking a series of brief peremptory notes, which sounded like "Wait! Wait! Wait!" It came to an abrupt halt before the Court-house door, and almost simultaneously Wagstaff, who had wandered forth once more, ran up the stairs and into the court-room. "There's something in the wind, boys," he cried, smoothing his hair and steering carefully for his chair. "Rush, Broderick, three other men, Sarah Austin and Alys Crumley, were in that car. They've all gone straight to the Judge. Something big is going to break, as sure as death." The sheriff retired hastily to the region behind the court-room.