It was the morning after the night ride of Babbitts and O'Mally, and I was late at the office. The matter had been arranged after I left the evening before and I knew nothing of it. As I entered the building I ran into Babbitts, who was going to the Whitney offices to report on his failure and in the hopes that some new lead might have cropped up. Drawing me to the side of the hall he told me of their expedition. I listened with the greatest interest and surprise. It struck me as amazing and rather horrible. Until I heard it I had not believed the story of the typewriter girl—that Barker was in love with Miss Whitehall—but in the face of such evidence I had nothing to say.
We were both so engrossed that neither noticed a woman holding a child by the hand and moving uncertainly about our vicinity. It wasn't till the story was over and we were walking toward the elevator that I was conscious of her, looking this way and that, jostled by the men and evidently scared and bewildered. Judging her too timid to ask her way, and too unused to such surroundings—she looked poor and shabby—to consult the office directory on the wall, I stopped and asked her where she wanted to go.
She gave a start and said with a brogue as rich as butter:
"It's to L'yer Whitney's office I'm bound, but where is it I don't know and it's afeared I am to be demandin' the way with everyone runnin' by me like hares."
"I'm going there myself," I said, "I'll take you."
She bubbled out in relieved thanks and followed us into the elevator. As the car shot up I looked her over wondering what she could want with the chief. She was evidently a working woman, neatly dressed in a dark coat and small black hat under which her hair was drawn back smooth and tight. Her face was of the best Irish type, round, rosy and honest. One of her hands clasped the child's, his little fingers crumpled inside her rough, red ones. She addressed him as "Dannie," and when passengers crowded in and out, drew him up against her, with a curious, soft tenderness that seemed instinctive.
He was a pale, thin little chap, eight or nine, with large, gray eyes, that he'd lift to the faces round him with a solemn, searching look. I smiled down at him but didn't get any response, and it struck me that both of them—woman and boy—were in a state of suppressed nervousness. Every time the gate clanged she'd jump, and once I heard her mutter to him "not to be scared."
Inside the office Babbitts went up the hall to the old man's den and I tried to find out what she wanted. Her nervousness was then obvious. Shifting from foot to foot, her free hand—she kept a tight clutch on the boy—fingering at the buttons of her coat, she refused to say. All I could get out of her was that she had something important to tell and she wouldn't tell it to anyone but "L'yer Whitney."
By this time my curiosity was aroused. I asked her if she was a witness in a case, and with a troubled look she said "maybe she was," and then, backing away from me against the wall, reiterated with stubborn determination, "But I won't speak to no one but L'yer Whitney himself."
I went up to the private office where the old man and George were talking with Babbitts and told them. George was sent to see if he could manage better than I had and presently was back again with the announcement: