It was the second day after the suicide and in the afternoon, having a job to see to on the upper West Side, I decided to drop in on Molly Babbitts and have a word with her. I always drop in on Molly when I happen to be round her diggings. Three years ago, after the calamity which pretty nearly put a quietus on me for all time, Molly and I clasped hands on a friendship pact that, God willing, will last till the grass is growing over both of us. She’s the brightest, biggest-hearted, bravest little being that walks, and once did me a good turn. But I needn’t speak of that—it’s a page I don’t like to turn back. It’s enough to say that whatever Molly asks me is done and always will be as long as I’ve breath in my body. As I swung up the long reach of Central Park West—she’s a few blocks in from there on Ninety-fifth Street—my thoughts, circling round the Harland affair, brought up on Miss Whitehall, whose offices are just below those of the dead man. I wondered if she’d been there and hoped she hadn’t, a nasty business for a woman to see. I’d met her several times—before she started the Azalea Woods Estates scheme—at the house of a friend near Longwood and been a good deal impressed as any man would. She was one of the handsomest women I’d ever seen, dark and tall, twenty-five or -six years of age and a lady to her finger tips. I was just laying round in my head for an excuse to call on her when the villa site business loomed up and she and her mother whisked away to town. That was the last I saw of them, and my fell design of calling never came off—what was decent civility in the country, in the town looked like butting in. Bashful? Oh, probably. Maybe I’d have been bolder if she’d been less good-looking. Molly was at home, and had to give me tea, and here were Soapy’s cigars and there were Soapy’s cigarettes. Blessed little jolly soul, she welcomes you as if you were Admiral Dewey returning from Manila Bay. Himself was at the Harland inquest and maybe he and the boys would be in, as the inquest was to be held at Harland’s house on Riverside Drive. So as we chatted she made ready for them—on the chance. That’s Molly too. As she ran in and out of the kitchen she told me of a visit she’d paid the day before to Miss Whitehall’s office and let drop a fact that gave me pause. While she was there a man had come with a note from some bank which, from her description, seemed to be protested. That was a surprise, but what was a greater was that Harland had been the endorsee. Out Longwood way there’d been a good deal of speculation as to how the Whitehalls had financed so pretentious a scheme. Men I knew there were of the opinion there had been a silent partner. If it was Harland—who had a finger in many pies—the enterprise was doomed. I sat back puffing one of Babbitts’ cigars and pondering. Why the devil _hadn’t_ I called? If it was true, I might have been of some help to them.