He was thinking of Willie Hogan at the time, which might have been considered a coincidence, in the light of what was about to happen, if he had not been thinking of Willie practically all the time, when he was thinking at all, ever since Monday afternoon. He had even dreamed of her once, and it had been a pleasant dream, although not a dream that one would be likely to tell before breakfast, or any other time. Thinking his pleasant thoughts, creating, in fact, a little fantasy with a beginning and an end, he was so abstracted that he was not aware that he had company until Sergeant Ned Muller, who was half of it, cleared his throat to attract attention. Necessary, returning reluctantly to reality, saw that Muller had with him a rather large young woman, well proportioned, with an adequate face now frozen in lines of rather self-righteous determination. Necessary had seen such faces before, and his heart sank. Standing, he had a notion that he was about to acquire something to do that would need doing immediately.
