"Bailed out! Who by?"
"Didn't he tell youse?" Surprise showed in the crabbed face of the officer. "Why, before he done anything he went down to talk it over with youse."
"Not Mr. Driscoll?"
"I don't know his name. That red-faced old geezer in the glasses. Huh!—his coin comes easier'n mine."
Tom put his name to the bond, already signed by Mr. Driscoll, and stumbled out into the street, half blinded by the rush of sunlight into his cell-darkened eyes, and struck through with bewilderment at his unexpected liberation. He threw off a number of quizzing reporters, who had got quick news of his release, and walked several aimless blocks before he came back to his senses. Then he set out for Mr. Driscoll's office, almost choking with emotion at the prospect of meeting Ruth again. But he reached it too late to spend his thanks or to test his self-control. It was past six and the office was locked.
He started home, and during the car ride posted himself upon his recent doings by reading the accounts of the trial and his part in the Avon outrage. On reaching the block in which he lived he hesitated long before he found the courage to go up to the ordeal of telling Maggie his last misfortune. When he entered his flat it was to find it empty. He sat down at the window, with its backyard view of clothes-lines and of fire-escape landings that were each an open-air pantry, and rehearsed the sentences with which he should break the news to her, his suspense mounting as the minutes passed. At length her key sounded in the lock, he heard her footsteps, then saw her dim shape come into the sitting-room.
In the same instant she saw him at the window. "What—Tom!" she cried, with the tremulous relief of one who ends a great suspense.
He had been nerving himself to face another mood than this. He was taken aback by the unexpected note in her voice—a sympathetic note he had not heard for such a time it seemed he had never heard it at all.
He rose, embarrassed. "Yes," he said.
She had come quickly to his side, and now caught his arm. "You are here, Tom?"