For a moment I was nonplused. I couldn’t tell her what I knew—I couldn’t go back on my office. I was tied hand and foot; all I could do with honesty was to try to force the truth from her. Like a fool I stammered out: "In advice—in—in—a larger knowledge of the world than you can have." She gave a slight, bitter smile, and tilting her head backward looked critically at her drawings: "My knowledge of the world is larger than you think—maybe larger than yours. There’s only one thing you can do for me, but there is one." I leaned nearer, my voice gone a little hoarse: "What is it?" She turned her head and looked into my eyes. Her expression chilled me, cold, challenging, defiant: "Tell me if the Whitney Office has found Johnston Barker yet?" For a second our eyes held, and in that second I saw the defiance die out of hers and only question, a desperate question, take its place. "No," I heard myself say, "they have _not_ found him." "Thank you," she murmured, and went back to her play with the pencil. I drew myself to the edge of my chair and laid a hand on the corner of the desk: "You’ve asked me a question and I’ve answered it. Now let _me_ ask one. Why are you so interested in the movements of Johnston Barker?" She stiffened, I could see her body grow rigid under its thin silk covering. The hand holding the pencil began to tremble: "Wouldn’t anyone be interested in such a sensational event? Isn’t it natural? Perhaps knowing Mr. Barker personally—as I told you in Mr. Whitney’s office—I’m more curious than the rest of the world, that’s all." The trembling of her hand made it impossible for her to continue drawing. She threw down the pencil and locked her fingers together, outstretched on the paper, a breath, deep taken and sudden, lifting her breast. It was pitiful, her lonely fight. I was going to say something—anything, to make her think I didn’t see, when she spoke again: "Do any of you—you men who are hunting him—ever think that he may not be _able_ to come back?" "Able?" I exclaimed excitedly, for now again I thought something was coming. "What do you mean by able?" I had said—or looked—too much. With a smothered sound she jumped to her feet and before I could rise or stay her with a gesture, brushed past me and moved to the window. There, for a moment, she stood looking out, her splendid shape, crowned with its mass of black hair, in silhouette against the thin white curtains. "Look here, Miss Whitehall," I said with grim resolution, "I’ve got to say something to you that you may not like, may think is butting in, but I can’t help it." "What?" came on a caught breath. "If you know anything about Barker—his whereabouts, his inability to come back—why don’t you tell it? It will help us and help you." She wheeled round like a flash, all vehement denial.