At the door there were general good-byes, a very cordial parting all round. I slipped out behind her to escort her through the hall to the elevator. As we brushed along side by side she said nothing and glimpsing down at her face, I saw it set in a still pondering—sphinx-like it seemed to me. Waiting for the car I said a few civil commonplaces to which she made short conventional answers. Biting her lip, her eyes on the ground, she looked preoccupied, impatient, I thought, for the car to come. I wanted to ask her if I could see her again, but I didn’t dare, she seemed so indifferent, so shut away in her own brooding. But when she entered the elevator and the gate shut, I saw her through the grill-work, looking at me from behind that iron barrier, and the sight stirred me like a hand clasped on my heart. It wasn’t only the expression of her face, which was sad, almost tragic, but it was a strange and eerie suggestion that it was like a face looking through the bars of a prison. The thought haunted me as I walked back. In the office George and the chief were talking over the interview. They’d noted every tone of her voice, every change of her color. That she’d lied had not surprised them. She had had to lie. "Must love the old rascal to death," George commented. The chief rose lumberingly and moved to his cigar box on the mantelpiece. "I understand now why Barker—who never was known to care for a woman—finally fell. She’s a splendid creature—brains and beauty." "Both to burn," George agreed. "You couldn’t get much out of her." "All I wanted just now," said his father, striking a match, "the rest’ll come in time." I was just going to ask him what more he expected, when a clerk opened the door and said: "Mrs. Babbitts is outside to see Mr. Whitney." The chief squared round like a flash, the lit match dropping to the hearth. His face, usually heavy and stolid, lit into an almost avid eagerness. "Show her in," he ordered and the clerk disappeared. "What are you expecting to get from Molly?" George asked. "Isn’t she finished?" "Not quite." The old man’s eyes were on the door, his cigar unlit in his hand. I hadn’t often seen him so openly on the qui vive. "Molly’s had further orders." "What?" "You’ll see," was the answer. Molly entered with the cold of the night still around her. Her long coat was buttoned wrong, her hat on one side. Haste was written all over her, haste and that bright-eyed, jubilant exhilaration that took possession of her when things were moving her way. She was like a little game dog on the scent, and I’d often heard the old man say she’d make the best woman detective he’d ever known. He was awfully fond of her, and took a sort of paternal pride in her nerve and cleverness, just as he did in George’s. "Well, Molly," he said—"got that stuff for me?" She nodded, her little body seeming to radiate a quivering energy: "Today at the lunch hour. I came the minute I got off."