"Why don't you answer me? Where are you?" she demanded, in the same husky whisper; "you needn't hide—I know you are here. What have you done to that man? You said you would kill him; you promised me that, Rankin: have you done it?"
Lidgerwood reached up cautiously behind him, and slowly turned off the gas from the bracket desk-lamp. Without wishing to pry deeper than he should into a thing which had all the ear-marks of a tragedy, he could not help feeling that he was on the verge of discoveries which might have an important bearing upon the mysterious problems centring in the chief clerk. And he was afraid the woman would see him.
But he was not permitted to make the discoveries. The woman had taken two or three steps into the car, still groping her way as if the brightly lighted interior were the darkest of caverns, when some one swung over the railing of the observation platform, and Superintendent Leckhard appeared at the open door. Without hesitation he entered and touched the woman on the shoulder. "Hello, Madgie," he said, not ungently, "you here again? It's pretty late for even your kind to be out, isn't it? Better trot away and go to bed, if you've got one to go to; he isn't here."
The woman put her hands to her face, and Lidgerwood saw that she was shaking as if with a sudden chill. Then she turned and darted away like a frightened animal. Leckhard was drawing a chair up to face Lidgerwood.
"Did she give you a turn?" he asked, when Lidgerwood reached up and turned the desk-lamp on full again.
"Not exactly that, though it was certainly startling enough. I had no warning at all; when I looked up, she was standing pretty nearly where she was when you came in. She didn't seem to see me at all, and she was talking crazily all the time to some one else—some one who isn't here."
"I know," said Leckhard; "she has done it before."
"Whom is she trying to find?" asked Lidgerwood, wishing to have his suspicion either denied or confirmed.
"Didn't she call him by name?—she usually does. It's your chief clerk, Hallock. She is—or was—his wife. Haven't you heard the ghastly story yet?"
"No; and, Leckhard, I don't know that I care to hear it. It can't possibly concern me."