No. Bob, he left at six, same as usual. He hadn't been round since.... His kid, eh? Mebbe the heat had turned her queer. Nuff to addle most folks, the heat was.... I saw that he knew nothing, and snapped him off with a sharp request to crank the car for me. As he did so, I jumped in beside Susan. "Where do you live, Susan? Oh, yes, of course--Birch Street. Bob told me that.... Eh? You don't want to go home?" "Never, please. Never, never! I _won't_!" Proclaiming this, she flung Bob's dinner pail from her and it bounced and clattered down the asphalt. "It's too late," she added, in a frightened whisper: "I know it is!" Then she seized my arm--thereby almost wrecking us against a fire hydrant--and clung to me, sobbing. I was puzzled and--yes--alarmed. Bob was a bad customer. The child's bruised face ... something she had said about a razor----? And instantly I made up my mind. "I'll take you to my house, Susan. Mrs. Parrot"--Mrs. Parrot was my housekeeper--"will fix you up for to-night. Then I'll go round and see Bob; see what's wrong." I felt her thin fingers dig into my arm convulsively. "Yes," I reassured her, taking a corner perilously at full speed, "that will be much better. You'll like Mrs. Parrot." Rather recklessly, I hoped this might prove to be true; for Mrs. Parrot was a little difficult at times.... It was Maltby Phar who saw me coming up the steps with a limp child in my arms, and who opened the screen door for me. "Aha!" he exclaimed. "Done it this time, eh! Always knew you would, sooner or later. You're too damned absent-minded to drive a car. You----" "Nonsense!" I struck in. "Tell Mrs. Parrot to ring up Doctor Stevens. Then send her to me." And I continued on upstairs with Susan. When Mrs. Parrot came, Susan was lying with closed eyes in the middle of a great white embroidered coverlet, upon which her shoes had smeared greasy, permanent-looking stains. "Mercy," sighed Mrs. Parrot, "if you've killed the poor creature, nobody's sorrier than I am! But why couldn't you have laid her down on the floor? She wouldn't have known." In certain respects Mrs. Parrot was invaluable to me; but then and there I suspected that Mrs. Parrot would, in the not-too-distant future, have to go. Within five minutes Doctor Stevens arrived, and, after hurried explanations, Maltby and I left him in charge--and then made twenty-five an hour to Birch Street. However, Susan's intuitions had been correct. We found Bob's four-room house quite easily. It was the house with the crowd in front of it.... We were an hour too late.