She'd have to decide. She'd have all morning to decide, to think about it. She'd put the hand-bag in her desk and pretend that nothing had happened to upset her, that it was a perfectly normal morning as far as she was concerned, if a morning six days after a murder could be thought of as normal. Eaton would come into her office, smiling a little, still worrying about the problem of replacing Lathrup, and putting twice the usual amount of responsibility on her shoulders, and on the shoulders of Lynn Prentiss and Macklin and Ellers--who would probably be too tight to give a damn. With Lathrup gone he probably wouldn't be fired, although he deserved to be, with his inability to remain sober two days in a row. The whole staff had been under quite a strain. It helped her to swear inwardly, to be as cynical and hard-boiled as she could in a moment of torment and uncertainty such as this. Her father's face in the locket flashed once more across her mind and she thought: "Poor dad! Poor gentle, kind, moralistic, unworldly dad, who never quite knew what it was all about and whom I loved so very much. Do you know what your darling daughter has become? She has not only slept with a man out of wedlock, she's about to become an accessory to murder after the event. Or she may decide not to. It would make her much more of a hypocrite and less honorable and decent, actually, because she wanted to kill Lathrup herself. But maybe you'd prefer her to stay on the right side of the law." Climbing up out of the excavation took her less than three minutes but she was conscious every moment of the bulge which the big pistol made in her hand-bag--it was a miracle she'd been able to fit it in--and she hoped no one would notice how lopsided and distended the bag looked when she arrived at street level. It was only when she reached the pavement above the pit again that she realized that the worst possible calamity had taken place. Not one member of the office staff but three saw her climb out of the excavation, for it was now five minutes to nine and a rush to reach the office on time was in progress. Lynn Prentiss passed and stopped to stare, raising her eyebrows slightly and then continuing on, as if she did not wish to embarrass a fellow editor in any way. But there had been more than a glimmer of bewilderment in her eyes, as if she found it difficult to picture Ruth Porges scrambling out of an excavation in such haste and in so undignified a manner. What could have prompted her to climb down in the first place? A rendezvous with the foreman of the construction gang? Unthinkable ... if you knew what kind of a girl Ruth Porges was-- Then Tommy Anders, the oldest of the two office boys passed, turning what was probably the sports pages of a morning newspaper, and probably not even seeing her, although he was looking straight in her direction. Then Susan, who had the courtesy not to stare at all, but must have been as startled as Lynn, and just as bewildered.