it, the
rush of boiling blood that in the end made me blind. I had sense enough
left to know I'd got to keep it down and I did it. But if there'd been
no need for restraint, for dissimulation, it would have burst out as it
has in the past, burst against O'Mally with a fist in the middle of his
cock-sure, sneering face. I heard my voice, husky, but steady, as I
said,

"That's all very well, but how about what the chief has just said? Why
should Barker _write_ when he could say what he wanted? Why did he, so
cautious in every other way, do a thing a green boy would have known the
danger of? You're building up your whole case on the vaguest surmises."

O'Mally took his cigar out of his mouth, hisfrom her sleep. In that sort of apartment
they lock the outer doors at half-past ten and to get at the bells you
have to wake the janitor, which I didn't want to do, as no one must know
I'd been there. So before I rang the outside bell that connects with his
lair in the basement, I tried the door, hoping some late comer had left
it on the jar as they sometimes do. It opened--an immense piece of
luck--which made me feel that fate was on my side and braced me like a
tonic.

In the vestibule I pressed the button under her letter box and in a
minute came the click, click of the inner latch and I entered. As I
ascended the stairs I heard the door on the landing above softly open
and looking