That girl—he should know her. Those papers were important to someone. He stooped and picked one last one up and stared at it. It made no sense.
He took it home. It pained him to read it but someone was in bad trouble because of it, and Carroll did not like the idea of a woman being in trouble over a sheet of paper—or a hundred sheets of paper. It made no sense, and he gave up, tired.
But he returned to the same corner at dusk the following evening. And the same girl emerged from the same building with the same box and hurried along the same walk. The same car came up and she entered it this time, and it drove slowly off in the direction she wanted to go.
Carroll's instinctive shout died in his throat. The car turned off about one square further and disappeared. Carroll stood idly on the corner, wondering what to do next. For fifteen minutes he stood there, thinking. Then the car returned, turned the corner, and stopped. The girl emerged and walked up the street for a thousand yards and turned into a building with her box of papers.
Carroll waited in front of the building for her. As she came out she saw him and her face lighted up with mingled pleasure and puzzlement.
"Hello, Mr. Carroll," she said brightly.
"Are you all right?" he asked her.
"Fine," she said. "And you?"
"I was concerned about you last night," he told her. "What happened?"
"Why—nothing happened to me." Her eyes widened in wonder and in them he saw some unknown uneasiness. He smiled at her paternally.