I had to go down to the station with him, for neither he nor O’Mally knew her. I was desperate afraid she wouldn’t come—get cold feet the way women do when they’re eloping. But at a quarter of eight she showed up. She didn’t look a bit nervous or rattled, and went about getting her ticket as quiet as if she was going for a week-end to Long Island. O’Mally—he was a fat, red-faced man, looking more like a commercial traveler than a sleuth—was right behind her as she bought it. Then as she walked to the track entrance with her suitcase in her hand, I saw them follow her, lounging along sort of neighborly and casual, till the three of them disappeared under the arch. It was late before I went to sleep that night. I kept imagining them tracking her through the Toronto Depot, leaping into a taxi that followed close on hers, and going somewhere—but where I couldn’t think—to meet Barker. For the first time I began to wonder if any harm could come to Babbitts. In detective stories when they shadowed people there were generally revolvers at the finish. But, after all, Johnston Barker wasn’t flying for his life, or flying from jail. As far as I could get it, he was just flying away with the Copper Pool’s money. Perhaps that wasn’t desperate enough for revolvers. When I finally did go to sleep I dreamed that all of us, the fat man, Babbitts, Carol Whitehall and I and Mr. Barker, were packed together in one taxi, which was rushing through the dark, lurching from side to side. As if we weren’t enough, it was piled high with suitcases, on one of which I was sitting, squeezed up against Mr. Barker, who had a face like an eagle, and kept telling me to move so he could get his revolver. I don’t know what hour I awoke, but the light was coming in between the curtains and the radiators were beginning to snap with the morning heat when I opened my eyes. I came awake suddenly with that queer sensation you sometimes have that you’re not alone. And I wasn’t. There sitting on a chair by the bedside, all hunched up in his overcoat, with his suitcase at his feet, was Himself, looking as cross as a bear. I sat up with a yelp as if he’d been a burglar. "_You_ here?" I cried. He looked at me, glum as an owl, and nodded. "Yes. It’s all right." "Why—why—what’s happened?" "Nothing." "You haven’t been to Toronto and back in this time?" "I’ve been to Rochester and back," he snapped. "She got out there, waited most of this infernal night and took the first return train." "Came back?" "Isn’t that what I’m saying?" For Himself to speak that way to me showed he was riled something dreadful. "She got off at Rochester and stayed round in the depot—didn’t see anyone, or speak to anyone, or send a phone, or a wire. She got a train back at three, we followed her and saw her go up the steps of her own apartment." "Why—what do you make of it?" He shrugged: "Only one of two things. She either changed her mind or saw she was being shadowed." CHAPTER VI