There in the doorway, filling it up with his big shape, was Tony Ford. For the first moment I got a sort of setback. Mightn't anyone—thinking of home and husband and finding yourself face to face with a gunman?
With one hand still in the satchel I stood eyeing him, not a word out of me, solemn as a tombstone. It didn't phaze him a bit. Teetering from his heels to his toes, a grin on him like the slit in a post box, he stood there as calm as if he'd never come nearer murder than to spell it in the fourth grade.
"It just came to me a few moments ago—as I was passing by here—that the prettiest and smartest hello girl in New York mightn't have gone home yet," he said.
Now if you're experienced about men—and take it from me hello girls are—you never believe a word a chap like Tony Ford hands out. But hearing those words and looking at his broad, conceited face, it came to me that these were true. He'd been passing, suddenly thought of me, and dropped in to see if I was there.
"Well," I answered, "here I am. What of it?"
"First of it," he said, "is how long are you going to be there?"
"Till I get this satchel closed," I said and pressing hard on the catch it snapped shut.
"And second of it," he went on, "is where are you going afterward?"
My first thought was I was going to get away from him as fast as the Interborough System could take me—and then I had a second thought. Why had Tony Ford dropped in so opportune at my closing hour? To ask me to dinner. And why couldn't I, hired to do work for Whitney & Whitney, do a little extra for good measure? I knew they wanted to hear Ford's own account of what he did the evening of January fifteenth, but that they couldn't get it. What was the matter with me, Molly Babbitts, getting it for them?
It flashed into my head like lightning and it didn't flash out again. Frightened? Not a bit! Keyed up though—like your blood begins to run quick. I'd taken some risky dares in my time but it was a new one on me to dine with a murderer. But honest, besides the pleasure of doing something for the old man, there was a creepy sort of thrill about it that strung up my nerves and made me feel like I was going to shoot Niagara in a barrel.