"Where did he spend that half hour?" said Yerrington, in a deep, meaningful voice. "Hi, you Yerrington," cried Babbitts, "this isn’t a case for posing as Burns on the Trail. What’s the matter with him spending it in the seventeenth floor hall?" Molly, who was sitting at the head of the table in a mess of cups and steaming pots, colored the picture. "Pacing up and down, trying to get up his nerve. Oh, I can see him perfectly!" "Strange," said Yerrington, looking somberly at the droplight, "that no one saw him pacing there." "A great deal stranger if they had," cut in Jones, "considering there was no one there to see. It was after six—the offices were empty." They had the laugh on Yerrington who muttered balefully, dipping into his glass. "It fits in with the character of Harland," I said, "the stuff in the papers, all you hear about him. He was an intellect first—cool, resolute, hard as a stone. That kind of man doesn’t act on impulse. As Mrs. Babbitts says, he probably paced up and down the empty corridor with his vision ranging over the situation, arguing it out with himself and deciding death was the best way. Then up with the window and out." "Do you suppose Mr. Barker had any idea he was going to do it when he left?" Molly asked. Babbitts laughed. "Ask us an easier one, Molly." Jaspar answered her, looking musingly at the smoke of his cigarette. "I guess Barker wasn’t bothering much about anybody just then. His own get-away was occupying _his_ thoughts." "You’re confident he’s lit out?" said Jones. "What else? Why, if he wasn’t lying low in that back room, didn’t he come out when he heard Miss Franks’ screams? Why hasn’t he showed up since? Where is he? That idea they’ve got in his office that he may have had aphasia or been kidnapped is all tommyrot. They’ve got to say something and they say that. The time was ripe for his disappearance and things worked out right for him to make it then and there. If he didn’t slip out while Miss Franks and Jerome were at the hall window, he did it after they’d gone down. It was nearly an hour before the police went up. He could have taken his time, quietly descended the side stairs and picked up his auto which was waiting in some place he’d designated." "That’s the dope," said Babbitts. "And it won’t be many more ’sleeps,’ as the Indians say, before that car is run to earth. You can’t hide a man and a French limousine for long." He was right. Johnston Barker’s car was located the next day and the public knew that the head of the Copper Pool had disappeared by design and intention. His clerks and friends who had desperately suggested loss of memory, kidnapping, accident, were silenced. Their protesting voices died before evidence that was conclusive. Judge for yourself.