Now she felt that she was beginning to cry again. Angrily, she sniffed back the tears and poured herself a stiff drink. Bob had been right about drinking, in one way. It settled you down. But after a while the time came when you needed it and yet it still didn’t help you any, and that was when you were finished.

She picked up a phone book and looked for the number of the Gazette. When she found it, she dialed the paper’s office and asked for Lowry.

He picked up and said, “Lowry here.”

“Hello. This is Terry Stafford,” she said nervously. “Perhaps you remember me—”

“Of course I remember you, Terry,” Lowry said. “It’s part of my job never to forget a thing. Not that it would have been easy to forget you. It’s awfully nice hearing from you. How has everything been?”

She ignored the unfortunate question.

“Could you come over here now, Ned? I’d like to talk to you. I think you can do me a lot of good.”

At the other end of the wire, Lowry beamed. “I’ll be over in a jiffy, Terry,” he said. “Just tell me the address.”

She gave it to him. She knew that he had understood what it was she wanted to see him about. That was why he hadn’t even bothered to ask.

He was there in a jiffy, just as he had promised, smiling, hearty, unworried, unless you happened to look at him closely. If you did, you discovered that there was a restlessness in his eyes, a fidgety impatience that meant he was thinking about an innocent man who was cooped up behind bars.

“Tell me the truth, Ned,” she said anxiously. “Is it really as bad for him as all the papers are saying? I mean—that they’re certain to convict him—is it as bad as that—”

“Yes, Terry,” he replied in a solemn voice. “It’s rotten bad.”

“Can’t anything at all be done? Oh, Ned, isn’t there any way at all—”

“I’m trying to dig up some evidence in his favor, Terry. But I can’t say I’ve been having very much luck so far. I was down in El Centro today. I thought I might possibly find somebody who remembered having seen him down there.”

“Did you?”