fifteenth the ticket agent of the Pennsylvania Line remembered selling a Philadelphia ticket to a man answering the description of Barker. He did not see this man board the train, being busy at the time in his office. None of the train officials had any recollection of such a passenger, but as the coaches were full, the coming and going of people continuous, he might easily have been overlooked.
After this there was no more doubt as to Barker's flight. The papers announced it to an amazed public, shaken to its core by the downfall of one of its financial giants. The collapse of the Copper Pool was complete and Wall Street rocked in the last throes of panic. From the wreckage the voices of victims called down curses on the traitor, the man who had planned the ruin of his associates and got away with it.
They congregated in the Whitney office where the air was sulphurous with their fury. And from the Whitney office the Whitney detectives, Jerry O'Mally at their head, slipped away to Philadelphia, with their noses to the trail. With his picture on the front page of every paper in the country it would be hard for Barker to elude them, but he had three days' start, and, as O'Mally summed it up, "It has only taken seven to make the world."
CHAPTER IV
MOLLY TELLS THE STORY
The day after the Harland inquest I meant to go down and see Iola and find out if she'd heard anything from Miss Whitehall. But that day I got sidetracked some way or other and the next it rained.
Usually I don't mind rain, but this was the real wet, straight kind that would get in at you if you wore a diver's suit. As I stood at the parlor window, looking down at the street all pools and puddles, with the walls shining under a thin glaze of water, and the umbrellas like wet, black mushrooms, I got faint-hearted. I could just as well phone, and if anything had transpired (it was the business I was uneasy about) go down and help Iola through the fit of blind staggers she'd be bound to have.
So presently it was:
"Hello, Iola, I was coming down today but it's too moistuous."
Then Iola's voice, sort of groaning:
"Oh, Molly, is that you? I do wish it had been fine and you'd have come."
"Why – anything wrong?"
"Oh, yes, everything. Miss Whitehall isn't back yet, and Mr. Ford's hardly been in at all and has such a gloom on him you wouldn't know him, and I'm awful discouraged."
"Have you tried to see Miss Whitehall?"
"No, I can't seem to get up enough spunk."
"Why don't you phone her?"
"Well, I don't know, I'm sort of scared of what I'll hear. I thought I'd better sit around and wait, and then I thought I ought to find out, and between the two – Oh, dear, what's the use!"
That was just like Iola. The only way you can be sure she's got a mind at all is the trouble she has making it up. If it's true that men like the helpless kind she ought to have a string of lovers as long as the line at the box office when Caruso sings Pagliacci. I wonder I ever got married!
"Tell you what, girlie," I said, "you come up tonight and dine with me. Himself is going to be late and we two bandits will steal out after dinner and make a raid on Miss Whitehall's."
Even then she hung back. I had to coax and urge and it was only me promising I'd see her through and if necessary ask the questions, made her finally agree.
The rain held on all day and it was teeming when we started out. Miss Whitehall's flat was on the other side of town – the East Sixties – and we had to go round the Park, crowding on and off cars, fighting our way through packs of people, Iola clawing at my back and catching her umbrella in men's hats and women's hair till you'd think she did it on purpose. When we got to the street we turned east, walking from Madison Avenue over Park with its great huge apartment houses, and then on a ways – not far, but far enough to make you feel Miss Whitehall's home wasn't as stylishly located as her office. Iola was that nervous I was afraid she'd forget the number, but we found it, on a corner over a drug store, where there were large, glassy bottles in the window and advertisements of ladies offering pills and candy with such glad, inviting smiles you'd know it was damaged stock.
The entrance was round on the side, and as we stood in the vestibule, dimly lit, with a line of letter boxes on each side, I couldn't help but whisper:
"You'd never think from her offices she'd live over a store."
And Iola answered, pushing the button under a letter box marked "Mrs. Serena Whitehall."
"It's a shock to me. I'd no more connect her with a push-button than I would you with a glass-topped entrance and a man in knee pants."
The door clicked and we went up the stairs, one feeble little electric bulb furnishing the light. There was a smell in the air like one of the tenants had had lamb stew for dinner and another was smoking the kind of cigar that tells you it's strong and hearty half a block off. The first-floor landing was hers – a card in a frame by the door told us so – and we pressed on the bell, hearing it give a loud, whirring ring inside.
The door was opened by a young girl, very neat in a black dress and white apron. She was sure we couldn't speak to Miss Whitehall, but perhaps Mrs. Whitehall would see us and she showed us up the tiny little hall into the dining-room. I'd never have believed a room furnished so plain could be so elegant. There was a square of brown carpet on the floor and ecru linen curtains – no lace, just hemstitched – at the windows and on the side table some silver; yet it had a refined, classy look. Two doors opened from it, one into the hall hung with a blue portière and double ones that I guessed led into the parlor. We could hear voices coming from there, low and murmuring.
By this time Iola was that nervous she was licking her lips with her tongue like a baby that's had a sugar stick. I was just edging round to give her a dig and whisper, "Brace up," when the curtain into the hall was lifted and a lady came in.
As she was well along in years – near to fifty I'd say – I knew she was Mrs. Whitehall. She was very dignified and gentle, with black hair turning gray and lots of lines on her forehead and round her eyes, which were dark like her hair and had a sad, weary expression. I guessed she'd been handsome once, but she looked as if she'd had her troubles, and when I heard her voice, low and so quiet, there was something in it that made me feel she was having them still.
I'd promised to be spokesman and not seeing any reason to waste time I went straight to the point. Mrs. Whitehall stood listening, her hands clasped on the back of a chair, her eyes on the little fern plant in the center of the table.
"Perhaps it would be best," she said, in that soft, faded sort of voice, "if Miss Barry were to see my daughter. I hardly know what to say to her."
She turned and left the room by the hall door and Iola gasped at me:
"Oh, Molly, it's true!"
"Don't cross your bridges till you come to them," I said, but all the same, I thought it looked bad.
"What'll I do if the business shuts down?"
"Shut up till you know if it does," I whispered back.
The double doors rolled back and Mrs. Whitehall stood between them. She looked at Iola.
"If you'll come in here, Miss Barry," she said, "my daughter will see you."
It was plain she didn't expect me, so I stood by the table without
