"Mrs. Babbitts is outside to see Mr. Whitney."
The chief squared round like a flash, the lit match dropping to the hearth. His face, usually heavy and stolid, lit into an almost avid eagerness.
"Show her in," he ordered and the clerk disappeared.
"What are you expecting to get from Molly?" George asked. "Isn't she finished?"
"Not quite." The old man's eyes were on the door, his cigar unlit in his hand. I hadn't often seen him so openly on the qui vive. "Molly's had further orders."
"What?"
"You'll see," was the answer.
Molly entered with the cold of the night still around her. Her long coat was buttoned wrong, her hat on one side. Haste was written all over her, haste and that bright-eyed, jubilant exhilaration that took possession of her when things were moving her way. She was like a little game dog on the scent, and I'd often heard the old man say she'd make the best woman detective he'd ever known. He was awfully fond of her, and took a sort of paternal pride in her nerve and cleverness, just as he did in George's.
"Well, Molly," he said—"got that stuff for me?"
She nodded, her little body seeming to radiate a quivering energy: