All she had to do was stand very still with the bag in plain view and everyone who hadn't reached the office a little earlier would know that she'd been behaving in a very strange manner, because there was dust all over her skirt and she was still breathless from her exertions. A half-dozen more Eaton-Lathrup employees would see her and perhaps even Eaton himself. And they'd be sure to notice the bulge in her hand-bag. The awful thought flashed across her mind that the very outlines of the gun might be visible. And of course it would be all over the office in another half hour, and--_he_ would know. That was the really terrible, frightening thing. Even if he didn't pass and see her, along with the others, he'd be sure to know. At least twenty people would know and he'd be among them. Lathrup's slayer, shaken as he'd failed to be by all the police questioning, although she remembered--now that she thought about it and knew the truth about him--he had paled visibly once and almost betrayed himself. He'd said the wrong thing and had been forced to cover up quickly. The man who had entered Lathrup's office six days before and shot her dead would know that a girl he couldn't possibly have imagined he'd have any reason to fear had gone down into the excavation where he'd hidden the murder weapon and had found it, and he'd remember that he had once showed it to her, and if she went to the police with it-- Or was she taking too much for granted again, letting her fear completely distort her thinking? He'd have no way of knowing she'd climbed all the way down to the bottom of the excavation. He wasn't stupid, he'd consider the possibility that she'd simply dropped something--as she had--and climbed down a few feet to recover it. A book perhaps, or her lipstick. He might not even give the matter a second thought, even though he knew where he'd hidden the gun, and how dangerous it would be if someone stumbled on it ahead of the steam shovel. It was all very strange anyway. Why hadn't he gotten rid of the gun in a simpler, safer way--simply tossed it into the river, as she had thought of doing? Or driven out into the country somewhere and tossed it into a lake or buried it? It wasn't as easy to get rid of small objects of a dangerous nature as some people thought--even small phials of poison had a way of turning up again and sending murderers to the gallows. She'd read about such cases often enough. But still--