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 tended to pass; perhaps he would have passed without other words, but Hale stopped him.

"Has any one hurt her?" he demanded savagely. "Answer me straight, you fool! Has any one hurt her?"

But Billy was not in the least cowed by him. "Not in the sense which alone seems to disturb you in relation to a girl and then only when she is your daughter. No, not yet."

Hale let go of him and in a moment was alone, staring at the shut door; mechanically he went over and locked it. From his dressing stand he picked up a cigarette, lit it and stared in the glass; mechanically he picked up his brushes and smoothed his hair, diminishing the grayness. He felt his chin and, in the bathroom, he set to shaving.

"What did she ask about me?" he thought. "Did she ask?" He had not been able to bring himself to inquire that of Whittaker. Then he thought, "If she asked, what did he tell of me? If she asked me about myself, what could I say?" His anger at Whittaker rose hotter. "Fool; fool; the fool!" Then he thought about Marjorie on Clearedge Street. "She went there to watch me." And with a rise of defiance for her, his fears again were less and he returned to fury at Whittaker and at his own helplessness before him, at his own helplessness now to go to his daughter.

"Ask the police for the address of the poison case!" he rehearsed the contempt of Billy's reply. Hale had no idea of inquiring anything of the police; now he could trace Marjorie otherwise; but for what result to her or to him? What when he found her? For it was certain that Billy had done everything in his power to