dress and with her feet in slippers, Hale did not know. She had the door open and she went out; she was back in a moment with a newspaper in her hand. That newspaper! He could not see the headlines, for she held them before her. She shut the door and looked, not at him, but at Marjorie. "Here it is, kid," she said; but she did not let go of the paper when Marjorie seized it but held it between them, that front page, while the rest of the sheets—the colored comic section, the thick, black-printed folds of advertisements, slid down to the floor about their feet.
"Kid," said that black-haired girl again, that girl from the slums. "He made a pick-up last night after you left him; that's what happened, kid; and he—he" this was another he now—"he thought it was you, and he didn't care what happened to himself; what happened to himself, why, he didn't care a damn."
Then Hale, standing there, learned how it had occurred; his daughter had been with Rinderfeld at a restaurant early in the evening; Billy must have heard of that. But she had gone home and Rinderfeld almost immediately had taken another companion; Billy had missed that; he must have supposed, as this black-haired girl said, that Rinderfeld had Marjorie at Cragero's and, so supposing, Billy had not cared what happened to himself.
Hale went from the room. Marjorie, his daughter, was safe; that was, at least Rinderfeld had not harmed her; she had never been at Cragero's at all. That was what he had come to know; and, having ascertained it, there was nothing for him to wait for. Billy was dead; he had brought the news, and he had nothing useful to say to his daughter about it. Billy was dead.
Leaving the building, Hale walked down Clearedge
