"Maybe not," I said, reckoning on something human in Dykeman to appeal to. "You see I know where Worth got that suitcase. It came out of my office vault—evidence we'd gathered in the Clayte hunt. Getting it and using it that way was his idea of humor, I suppose."
"Sounds fishy." Dykeman made an uncomfortable shift in his chair. But Cummings came close, and standing, hands rammed down in the pockets of his coat, let me have it savagely.
"Evidence, Boyne, is the only thing that would give you a license to rout men out at this time of night—new evidence. Have you got it? If not—"
"Wait." I preferred to stop him before he told me to get out. "Wait." I looked at my watch. In the silence we could hear the words of a yawp from one of the noisy rooms when a passerby was hailed:
"There she goes! There—look at the chickens!"
A minute later, a tap sounded on the door. Cummings stood by while I opened it to Barbara, and a slender, veiled woman, taller by half a head in spite of bent shoulders and the droop of weakness which made the girl's supporting arm apparently necessary.
At sight of them, Dykeman had come to his feet, biting off an exclamation, looking vainly around the bare room for chairs, then suggesting,
"Get some from my room, Boyne."
I went through the connecting door to fetch a couple. When I came back, Barbara was still standing, but her companion had sunk into the seat the shivering, uncomfortable old man offered, and Cummings was bringing a glass of water for her. She sipped it, still under the shield of her veil. This was never Ina Vandeman. Could it be that Barbara had dragged Mrs. Thornhill from her bed? I saw Barbara bend and whisper reassuringly. Then the veil was swept back, it caught and carried the hat with it from Laura Bowman's shining, copper colored hair, and the doctor's wife sat there ghastly pale, evidently very weak, but more composed than I had ever seen her.
"I'm all right now," she spoke very low.