The enforced waiting was—to me anyway—distracting. With the hope I’d had of Barker gone, I was now looking to Ford. He _must_, he _could_ exonerate her, there wasn’t the slightest doubt of it. But to have to wait for it, to be cool and calm, to get through the next few days—I felt like a man caught in the rafters of a burning building, trying to be patient while they hacked him out. After the news from the hospital the temperature of the office fell to an enforced normal. O’Mally went back to his burrow and Babbitts to his paper with his big story still in the air. That night in my place, I measured off the sitting room from eight till twelve—five strides from the bookcase to the window, seven from the fire to the folding doors. If _I_ could only induce her to speak, if she herself would only clear up the points that were against her, there was still a chance of getting her out of it before Ford opened up. That she had something to hide, some mystery in connection with her movements that night, some secret understanding with Barker, even I had to admit. But whatever it was it would be better to reveal it than to go on into the fierce white light that would break over the Harland case within a week. In that midnight pacing I tried to think of some way I could force her to tell—to tell _me_, but the clocks chimed on and the fire died on the hearth and I got nowhere. She knew me so slightly, might think I was set on by the office, the very fact that I was what I was might seal her lips closer. Instead of breaking down her reticence I might increase it, strengthen that wall of secretiveness behind which she seemed to be taking refuge like a hunted creature. When I went to the office on Friday morning the chief asked me to go to Buffalo that night, to look up some witnesses in the Lytton case. It would take me all Saturday and I could get back by Sunday night or at the latest Monday morning. A phone message sent to the hospital before I came in had drawn the information that Tony Ford would not be able to see the Philadelphia detectives—O’Mally and Babbitts posed in that rôle—till Monday. That settled it—better to be at work out of town than hanging about cursing the slowness of the hours. But the questions of the night before haunted me. Why, anyway, couldn’t I go to see her? Wasn’t it up to me, whether I succeeded or not, to make the effort to break through her silence—the silence that was liable to do her such deadly damage? I _had_ to see her. I couldn’t keep away from her. At lunch time I called her up and asked her if I could come. She said yes and named four that afternoon. On the stroke I was in the vestibule, pushing the button below her name, and with my heart thumping against my ribs like a steel hammer.