Garth took Nora from the courtroom well aware that, given the opportunity, Slim and George would not let them move a foot without exacting full payment.
Garth respected Nora's mood. He put her in a cab and sent her home, then wandered restlessly about the down town streets.
Perhaps Nora's attitude was partly responsible for his feeling of oppression, of imminence. Nothing could happen, he told himself again. Slim and George would start for the death house to-morrow. They would have no chance. If they delegated such work to their subordinates still at large, Garth fancied that he could take care of himself and Nora, too. It was the exceptional cunning of Slim and George that he shrank from, had feared ever since the night Nora and he had trapped them.
Angry with himself he went to headquarters. The inspector admitted that he, too, would breathe easier when the two were in the chair.
The next day Garth managed to dismiss his premonition. He chatted with two or three detectives in the outside office. The inspector sent for him. The moment he answered the summons he knew something disastrous had occurred. He felt that the exceptional, almost with the effect of a physical violence, had entered the room ahead of him.
The inspector held the telephone. The receiver was at his ear. His huge figure projected to Garth an uncontrolled fear. His voice, customarily rumbling and authoritative, was no more than a groping whisper.
"Why the devil doesn't Nora answer? Do you know, Garth, that Slim and George are loose on the town?"
Garth started back. He would have responded just so to a blow in the face.
"They are on their way to the death house," he countered.
"You mean they were," the inspector said, "condemned by your testimony and Nora's."