She looked up and down the street, feeling a little self-conscious about it, knowing how foolish she'd look if anyone from the office saw her. Macklin especially, with his slow, good-natured grin, which could, on occasion, convey more than a hint of mockery. The excavation was only three buildings away from the Eaton-Lathrup offices and she'd probably be seen by someone she knew before she was back on the street again. But to heck with that. She just couldn't afford to lose that locket. It was an act of folly to even hesitate. She climbed resolutely under the rope which stretched between the break in the boarding and started downward, leaning a little backwards and being very careful not to dislodge any of the small stones embedded in the gravel. Two minutes later she was at the base of the excavation, standing in the shadow of an enormous crane which looked not unlike a Martian monster on stilts--a Wellsian _War-of-the-Worlds_ kind of Martian. But nothing like a war of the worlds was taking place about her and the only really ominous thing about the pit was its proximity to the scene of a brutal slaying. In the depth of the excavation the sunlight seemed deeper and redder than it should have been, the shadows so thickly clustering that they seemed to be conspiring together to cast a pall upon her spirits. But she refused to allow the dismalness of the pit to upset her. Any deep, hewed-out hollow in the earth was dismal, with the damp smells of freshly-turned earth conjuring up a cemetery-like atmosphere. She didn't envy the men who had to work sixty feet beneath the sidewalk all day long, in rain and slush on bad days and always with the deafening clatter of steam-shovels and riveting machines to add to their woes. She found the locket without difficulty, because she had a quick eye for tracing the course of small glittering objects falling from a height and the crevice into which it had fallen was a yard long and it stood out. She picked it up, examined the chain and shook her head in chagrin. One of the tiny links had simply parted and now the chain was in two parts and she would throw it away and get a heavier one this time for sure--no further putting it off. She snapped open the locket, looked at the picture of her father and a twinge of guilt shivered through her. She'd replaced her father's picture with a photograph of Roger, and had carried Roger around her neck like an evil talisman for almost a year. She was cured of that now and she hoped her father would forgive her, if a man dead twenty years could forgive, for what she had done. All of it--not just the disloyalty to his memory she'd committed by giving Roger a preferred place close to her heart.