"I ain't got anything to say. It's not my job to train the young. You've told me what I wanted to know—that's all I'm here for."
Ford turned to Babbitts and asked him to get some letters off the table and then went on to O'Mally:
"How did you come to find it out?"
Babbitts, gathering up the letters, cocked his head to listen, wondering how O'Mally was going to get out of it. But you couldn't phaze that veteran.
"Several ways—you see what we're after is Johnston Barker. It's the Copper Pool that owns us, and nosing round in our quiet little way we got on to the Barker-Whitehall affair and from that followed the scent to that legacy of yours. We didn't altogether believe in that uncle up-state—thought maybe he was Johnston Barker in private life, and that you might know something," he gave a lazy, good-humored laugh. "Got fooled all round. I don't mind telling you now that the way we happened on Sammis was pure accident. Thought he was Barker and had him shadowed. He looked like enough to him to have been his brother."
"That's so," said Ford, as Babbitts handed him the letters, "especially with his hat on. I noticed it myself." He selected two papers from the bunch and handed them to O'Mally. "There—those are the letters I spoke of. This one," he flicked it across the counterpane, "is just a note from Harland making a date. I don't know how I happened to keep it."
They were the three letters Babbitts had taken after the attack, copies of which at that moment were lying in O'Mally's pocket.
It was not till they were out on the hospital steps that they dared to speak. O'Mally's face was a study, his mouth drooped down to his chin and his eyes dismal and despairing like he'd come from a tragedy.
"Well!" he said, "what do you make of that?"
"Zero!"