"Hi, you Yerrington," cried Babbitts, "this isn't a case for posing as Burns on the Trail. What's the matter with him spending it in the seventeenth floor hall?"
Molly, who was sitting at the head of the table in a mess of cups and steaming pots, colored the picture.
"Pacing up and down, trying to get up his nerve. Oh, I can see him perfectly!"
"Strange," said Yerrington, looking somberly at the droplight, "that no one saw him pacing there."
"A great deal stranger if they had," cut in Jones, "considering there was no one there to see. It was after six—the offices were empty."
They had the laugh on Yerrington who muttered balefully, dipping into his glass.
"It fits in with the character of Harland," I said, "the stuff in the papers, all you hear about him. He was an intellect first—cool, resolute, hard as a stone. That kind of man doesn't act on impulse. As Mrs. Babbitts says, he probably paced up and down the empty corridor with his vision ranging over the situation, arguing it out with himself and deciding death was the best way. Then up with the window and out."
"Do you suppose Mr. Barker had any idea he was going to do it when he left?" Molly asked.
Babbitts laughed.
"Ask us an easier one, Molly."