To say that the expectant Whitney office got a jolt is putting it mildly. On the threshold of success, to meet such a setback enraged George and made even the chief grouchy. The new developments added new complications that upset their carefully elaborated theories. There had to be a readjustment. Whoever Sammis was and whatever his motive could have been it was undoubtedly he who had attacked Tony Ford.
It was inexplicable and mysterious. The chief had an idea that there was a connection between Sammis and Barker, that the man now dead might have been "planted" in Philadelphia to divert the search from the live man, who had stolen to safety after a rise to the surface in Toronto. George scouted it; an accidental likeness had fooled them and made them waste valuable time. The devil was on the side of Barker, taking care of his own.
It did look that way. Investigation of the few clues we had led to nothing. The tailor, whose bill was found in Sammis's pocket, remembered selling a suit and overcoat to a man called Sammis on January tenth. He was a quiet, polite old party who looked poor and shabby but bought good clothes and paid spot cash for them. The typewritten letter indicated that Sammis had been sent to Philadelphia and well paid for some work that had not yet started. It was upon this letter the chief based his contention that Sammis's appearance in the case was not a coincidence—he was another of Barker's henchmen, and it was part of Barker's luck that at the crucial moment he should have died.
But it was all speculation, nothing certain except that we had lost our man again. Philadelphia had dropped out as a point of interest and the case swung back to New York, where it now centered round the bed of Tony Ford.
We were in constant communication with the hospital and on Thursday received word that Ford would recover. That lifted us up from the smash of Wednesday night. When he was able to speak we would hear something—everything if he could be scared into a full confession. The hospital authorities refused to let anyone see him till he was perfectly fit, a matter of several days yet. That suited us, as we wanted no speech with him till he was strong enough to stand the shock of our knowledge. Caught thus, with his back against the wall, we expected him to make a clean breast of it.
The enforced waiting was—to me anyway—distracting. With the hope I'd had of Barker gone, I was now looking to Ford. He must, he could exonerate her, there wasn't the slightest doubt of it. But to have to wait for it, to be cool and calm, to get through the next few days—I felt like a man caught in the rafters of a burning building, trying to be patient while they hacked him out.
After the news from the hospital the temperature of the office fell to an enforced normal. O'Mally went back to his burrow and Babbitts to his paper with his big story still in the air. That night in my place, I measured off the sitting room from eight till twelve—five strides from the bookcase to the window, seven from the fire to the folding doors.
If I could only induce her to speak, if she herself would only clear up the points that were against her, there was still a chance of getting her out of it before Ford opened up. That she had something to hide, some mystery in connection with her movements that night, some secret understanding with Barker, even I had to admit. But whatever it was it would be better to reveal it than to go on into the fierce white light that would break over the Harland case within a week.
In that midnight pacing I tried to think of some way I could force her to tell—to tell me, but the clocks chimed on and the fire died on the hearth and I got nowhere. She knew me so slightly, might think I was set on by the office, the very fact that I was what I was might seal her lips closer. Instead of breaking down her reticence I might increase it, strengthen that wall of secretiveness behind which she seemed to be taking refuge like a hunted creature.
When I went to the office on Friday morning the chief asked me to go to Buffalo that night, to look up some witnesses in the Lytton case. It would take me all Saturday and I could get back by Sunday night or at the latest Monday morning. A phone message sent to the hospital before I came in had drawn the information that Tony Ford would not be able to see the Philadelphia detectives—O'Mally and Babbitts posed in that rôle—till Monday. That settled it—better to be at work out of town than hanging about cursing the slowness of the hours.